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William is Born!

William Edward Lindell was born on December 26, 2007 at 9:30AM GMT+3. He was 19.5" / 8ibs 2oz (50cm / 3.69Kg).

He was 3 weeks early and had problems with breathing and was placed in the NICU for almost two weeks. Today he came home to a very happy family. Below are some pictures and videos of William's 1st two weeks.

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William Coming Home


William's 3rd Day


William's 2nd Day


William is born

SiCKO

I watched Michael Moore's SiCKO recently and I don't have the same passionate agreement that I had with his last two movies. I think he did a good job in bringing up an important point but he didn't do a very good job in backing up those points with proper analysis.

He basically said:
- US insurance companies are corrupt
- The US should have universal health care
- Countries with universal health care are happier
- Doctors under UHC are doing well and can concentrate on fixing people not requiring payments.
- The taxes are not that bad with UHC
- Patients under UHC are happy, the lines are not as long as we are lead to believe
- People in Cuba get $120 prescriptions for 5 cents
- People in the UK get it for ~$10

I don't have a problem with what he said the problem is he did it in his typical the world is so simple Michael Moore fashion. I do agree that based on the evidence in the film that there is an issue with the insurance companies. But these are private companies which means that their charter is to make a profit not to the welfare of the masses. This means the US should step in like the countries with UHC have. But what does that really mean? According to Moore its pretty simple. I'm not saying he's wrong but I am saying he did a poor job of explaing the cost / benefit of the switch.

How much longer will our waits be? Will this affect the medical research that is being done? Will our doctors be happy with the switch, will the patients? How will it be paid for?

Moore insinuated people in France didn't worry about taxes (they have the #1 ranked UHC in he world). He told us how much people made and we're they lived but left out the taxes all together. He interviewed US expats who are not exactly typical citizens.

Then the prescriptions. He showed how cheap they were in other countries but he never explained why. The truth is research for future prescription drugs are paid with the cost of current ones.Most of these costs are incurred by US citizens. If we regulate the cost of drugs then how will we ensure the free market will produce better drugs for future diseases.

I think the system has significant problems, Moore did a good job of bringing this to our attention but he didn't provide any real solutions. Just a bunch of theatrics that discredit him as a legitimate documentry maker. This may be his goal all along. To make a point and let others figure out the non superficial details. This will be a campaign issue for me in the up coming election. Thanks Mike.

Emma's Walking

Kara took this video on her Mother's Day camera. She took some steps before leaving for the US but now it looks like she's taking off.

Microblogging

You might have noticed the little box to the left labeled "What am I doing..." It's another Big Brother tool for me to publicize my thoughts. I’m using a tool from Twitter that allows me to Text / SMS a message from my phone and it will make it’s way to my website. The limit / gimmick is your message can only be 140 characters. Not sure why since the limit on an SMS is 160. The term microblogging is starting to be the new buzz word to describe this. MS Word’s spell checker doesn’t recognize it yet but I imagine it will by the next edition. I’m actually pretty intrigued by the idea. I did 4 posts in 24 hours. It allows me to say stuff like “Hey, walking to work is fun and why do people insist on bugging you on an airplane when it’s obvious you just want to read your magazine?” Just whip out the phone, send a text and keep on wondering about the people around me. We’ll see how long it lasts

Faith of a child

 

I was going through some photos when I should have been packing and I came across this shot of Emma. I took it with my camera phone as we waited for our order of Papa John's pizza. I had set her in a grownup size chair with a hole in the back. As I became lost in the blinking lights on my phone she slowly sank into the chair to a point where it looked like her knees were going to meet her mouth.

I pulled her up but instead of fixing the situation I set her back down again to see if there would be the same result. Sure enough there was and I decided to capture it with my phone. What I love about this picture in all its 1.3 mega pixel glory is the innocent look on her face. Knowing this can’t be right but not convinced that her dad would purposefully put her in such an awkward predicament. It’s more of a hey dad it be great if you could help but I don’t want to complain. I picked her up gave her a big kiss and we shared a bottle of water. I hope I don’t overlook to many of these moments with my little angle.

Batching It

Kara and Emma have made the annual expat migration back to the place of distant familiarity. Because of ITS travel restrictions I’m faced with the challenge of living by myself and remembering some of the reasons I decided to get married in the first place. The funny thing about being by yourself is the overly idealistic thought of how productive you will be. The fact is, without my wife here my ability to get through a to do list has suffered quite a bit. I’m hoping this won’t last the entire 7 weeks or else I’ll have lost 20 pounds, lost my job, flunked out of school and be living in a van down by the river.

Here’s my official to do / honey do list:
Fix Kara’s car (she would prefer to not have to use tape to keep the fog light in)
Clean and organize my home office
Move outside plants
Steam Carpets (I don’t know if you can rent one of these in Doha)
Yearly ./ Monthly finance audit
Square away training travel plans

What I did this weekend:
Thursday night
- Fix friends computer
- Downloaded Friday Night Lights
- Worked on travel plans
- Watched pilot episode

Friday
- Went to church
- Had lunch with pastor until 4:00 (We decided God was working on me)
- Watched FNL until 3:00 AM

Saturday
- Got out of Bed at 12:00
- Watched some FNL
- Cleaned Kitchen
- Watched some FNL
- Cooked and stored 2 pounds of hamburger meat. I got creative and put graded cheese into the meat itself.
- Raided my daughter’s stash of corn rice puff disks
- Watched some more FNL
- Prepared for homegroup tomorrow
- Watched some FNL
- Blogged my slothful weekend

So my question is, why does this happen to me? Does it happen to a lot of people? Have a reverted back to being a 3rd grader who needs to sit in the kitchen until his homework is done? I think it is a matter of everyday life and wondering if only I had some time to myself. If only I could do what I want to do. Well it turns out what I want to do is watch 8 hours of Friday Night Lights and eat cereal in my boxing shorts. I hope that after I’ve indulged in the forbidden fruit of FNL to 3:00 AM I’ll understand it wasn’t that big of a deal and get to a little more productive things. But I gots to know, will the Panthers make it to state? I think this is why I like the idea of school so much. I have a defined schedule with set goals and it keeps me honest.

And don’t worry too much honey. I think my sloth stage is over. With 5 empty cereal bowls sitting on my desk I've decided I'm was a little to close to having a hazmat team being called.

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.

A Trip to the Desert

A few weeks ago my mom and brother came out to visit me and the family. We did a city tour, country tour, visited the souqs but our most exciting trip was to the inland sea.

Google Maps

There are a couple of rules you try to follow when driving 20 miles into the desert. Things like not going alone and using a reliable car are on the top of the list. Well, I’m Russell and I’ve been out in the desert enough to take a couple of chance. Since it wasn’t a weekend there wasn’t anybody else available to go with us. My car’s performance had been a little spotty but I figured as long as I took it easy it would be OK.

Well, as you can probably guess things didn’t go as well as planned. We made it to Sealine which is the resort right outside where the dunes begin. This is where you let the air out of your tires so they have bigger footprints. Well I forgot the tire gauge so we had to estimate what 15 psi looked like. No big deal but I should have taken it as a sign. After letting out the air we went up and down a couple of the safe dunes. These were considered safe because if I got stuck we could walk back to Sealine. We got stuck a couple of times but nothing too big and it added to the experience. After this we decided to head to the inland sea. For most of the way we stayed on what’s called the desert highway. It’s a worn path that you can drive 60 miles an hour on. It’s what I would imagine the Utah salt flats to be like, except surrounded by dunes. We made it to the inland sea without incident and decided to stop and take some pictures from on top of a dune. After the photo op we got back in to the Galloper and nothing happened. The car wouldn’t start. My first thought was huh, I must have left it in drive. Looked down, nope it’s in park. I had my reoccurring urge of wishing I had taken that auto shop class instead of Spanish back in high school. I then go into denial. No, no way I’m stuck in the middle of the desert with a car that’s not starting. Not a big deal something always turns up. And it did, a car came over the ridge and saw us. I waved and they turned around and drove away. Great. So my brother and I kicked tires and analyzed the little noises a car makes when it’s not doing what it’s supposed to. So after I came to the conclusion that we were in a fix I went on a walk to try and find some help.

I had a couple of things going through my mind. Kara just suffered a miscarriage, my mom being diagnosed with breast cancer and now I just got us stuck in the middle of nowhere because I was stupid. The book of Job did come to mind at this point. So I started praying. Some people call it desperate but I decided it was about time. After about 30 seconds of telling God that I’ve had enough and I need intervention the car I apparently waved off came back with another one. It was two English families who were completely useless with cars but did give me the idea to call the police. They also told me the car I was walking to earlier was abandoned and appeared to be stuck in the sand. Apparently I’m not the first person to get stuck out here. I did call the police and they quickly connected me to the local post where nobody spoke English. As I was making this call the guy in charge of this mystery outpost drove up and asked if we needed any help. He was the one guy who did speak English. I asked him to translate to the guy on the phone but he informed me he was who I needed and he would tow me to the station.

This is where it got weird. He pulls my car through the dunes to the police station. A bunch of guys in traditional dress walk out and start poking and prodding at my engine. They all argue in Arabic about what the issue is and keep on asking me to try and start the car. During this time my mom and brother are enjoying a drink in the shade with the support team of a guy who just Kayaked around the country (http://www.axabelifeconfident.com/challenge.htm). I went to see how they were doing and all of a sudden my car was started. The starter was broken and apparently one guy stuck a pipe in the engine to bridge a connection and bam we were ready to go. But this is the Middle East, a stranger just pulled me out of the desert and fixed my car. We were practically family now. He invited us in for tea and my mom and brother had their second sit down Arabic tea session. Next we were invited to go see a small “island” (Google Maps) on the police company boat with the kayak crew. After that we were invited for a sit down lunch. Sit down lunch being we sat down on the floor around a plate of rice and chicken.

After that we said our goodbyes and I gave our new friend my mobile incase he ever needed a favor. Offering money would have been highly offensive. He in return gave us Supreme Council for the Environment gift packs consisting of a hat, t-shirt and PR brochure written in Arabic. Our friend also called us to make sure that we got out of the desert OK. We made it back without an incident and I called my mechanic friend to work his magic and my mom and brother have had an experience that I could have never planned. Just another random day in Qatar.

Surprised by Joy - C.S. Lewis

I just finished listening to C.S. Lewis' "Surprised by Joy". I don't think I grasped everything it had to offer because I listened to it in 10 - 15 minute increments as I drove to work and that’s not how you listen to an author like him. His writing is simply brilliant. If you want to present Christianity to somebody holding a Ph.D. in literature he's your man. Many times I reread / relisten to what he says just to admire the way he puts the words together. In Suprised by Joy the last paragraph of chapter 14 was one of those cases. It apparently had the same affect on a lot of people because when I googled a sentence of it I got 37,000 results back.



The last paragraph of chapter 14:



You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused be wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.



http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/ownwords/joy.html