Howdy Mr. Ambassador
This happened a while back but I never got to blog about it. Enough people found it funny so I thought it was worth a post. In March TAMUQ celebrated the opening of the new 200 million dollar engineering building. It wasn’t really an opening it was a celebration of its existence and the idea that someday it would be open. A number of VVIPs came into town for this including former President George Bush and Rick Perry.
Among the VIPs, who people may not know by face, were ambassadors and former ambassadors from the United States. I happened to meet one of these gentlemen by the name of Edward Djerjian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Djerejian). As I was outside instructing some movers where to park their truck so they could pick up equipment from training the week before, I saw a car from the Ritz drop a man off in a suit. Not a big deal, it happens fairly often here. He then came up and asked me where the advisory board met. This clued me into the fact that one he was important and two I was going to have to ask my mover friends to wait for a second. After he patiently walked with me to seek out the advisory board we determined that they were in the new building that was a good walk away. Our official drivers were gone and I nominated myself to escort this gentleman to meet his counterparts in my ’97 Hyundai Galloper. Not exactly a step up from a Ritz Limo but I figured if he was over here doing business he could handle it.
At this point I decided to ask who this person was and what he was doing with TAMUQ. That’s when I learned he was the former ambassador to Israel and Syria. My first thought was “Don’t say anything stupid”. That was good advice to myself seeing that my second thought was “Wow Israel, that’s a sticky one.” So I just nodded my head wanting to explain to him I wasn’t completely ignorant of the gravity of those posts but didn’t know how to say it. I then learned he was the founder of the Baker Institute for Public Policy. How do you match that, tell him I founded the Qatar Foundation running club? He did give me a compliment when I was able to talk my way through a closed gate to get a shortcut to the building. Saying something about diplomacy. I got out of the galloper and explained to the guard that there was a very important person in my sputtering truck. I then persuaded him to move the road block while shaking his hand the whole time. I guess it was better then driving over the curb and giving him the finger.
After looking up the ambassador’s bio I later found out he was a member of the Iraq study group and I’ve actually read their report. I guess I should have looked at the authors. I think I could have made some intelligent comments to that respect. Then he would have replied saying thanks, Secretary Gates is on board with this but now we’ve got your green light we’ll give it a go ahead. So after taking the long short cut, he managed to link up with the army of suites. I went back to making sure the boxes made it back to the UK. Yet another random day in Doha.
Among the VIPs, who people may not know by face, were ambassadors and former ambassadors from the United States. I happened to meet one of these gentlemen by the name of Edward Djerjian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Djerejian). As I was outside instructing some movers where to park their truck so they could pick up equipment from training the week before, I saw a car from the Ritz drop a man off in a suit. Not a big deal, it happens fairly often here. He then came up and asked me where the advisory board met. This clued me into the fact that one he was important and two I was going to have to ask my mover friends to wait for a second. After he patiently walked with me to seek out the advisory board we determined that they were in the new building that was a good walk away. Our official drivers were gone and I nominated myself to escort this gentleman to meet his counterparts in my ’97 Hyundai Galloper. Not exactly a step up from a Ritz Limo but I figured if he was over here doing business he could handle it.
At this point I decided to ask who this person was and what he was doing with TAMUQ. That’s when I learned he was the former ambassador to Israel and Syria. My first thought was “Don’t say anything stupid”. That was good advice to myself seeing that my second thought was “Wow Israel, that’s a sticky one.” So I just nodded my head wanting to explain to him I wasn’t completely ignorant of the gravity of those posts but didn’t know how to say it. I then learned he was the founder of the Baker Institute for Public Policy. How do you match that, tell him I founded the Qatar Foundation running club? He did give me a compliment when I was able to talk my way through a closed gate to get a shortcut to the building. Saying something about diplomacy. I got out of the galloper and explained to the guard that there was a very important person in my sputtering truck. I then persuaded him to move the road block while shaking his hand the whole time. I guess it was better then driving over the curb and giving him the finger.
After looking up the ambassador’s bio I later found out he was a member of the Iraq study group and I’ve actually read their report. I guess I should have looked at the authors. I think I could have made some intelligent comments to that respect. Then he would have replied saying thanks, Secretary Gates is on board with this but now we’ve got your green light we’ll give it a go ahead. So after taking the long short cut, he managed to link up with the army of suites. I went back to making sure the boxes made it back to the UK. Yet another random day in Doha.
posted by Russell at
10:45 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home