Eri & Paul visit Doha just as I start work. Lunch at the Intercontinental September 07. 
Hans and I at my first (and last!) Doha ball. Theme was "movie star" ...September 2006
This is a mass email – so if you object, stop reading and write to me directly. I have been much better at keeping in touch with people since I go here, but have not had hotmail access for a while and heaps has happened so I thought I’d drop everyone a line.
This is a mass email – so if you object, stop reading and write to me directly. I have been much better at keeping in touch with people since I go here, but have not had hotmail access for a while and heaps has happened so I thought I’d drop everyone a line.
The big news is that I have started driving again. I rented a baby Renault (better to dent a rent, as they say) and had my first lesson yesterday with Ronel, a guy who drives for the uni. At first it was like starting all over again – god I was so bad!!! I almost crashed into the side of a Qatari driving a 4WD. He looked at my car in utter bewilderment as I braked just in time in front of his car door. “Ooops” said Ronel.
When I went out today, though, it was much easier and I was starting to feel a bit like Toad of Toad Hall hooning down the road with great enjoyment (hopefully without the same consequences). On Ronel’s advice (poor man, it must have been scary), I’m not going to drive into uni until next week as it is over the other side of the city, but it’s not as bad as Sharjah and of course we have roundabouts in Sydney which is where I learnt to drive, so they don’t seem as scary as they do to the other people here.
It’s also a bonus that I’m living in a compound (like a big complex of town houses) next to the new stadium where the Asian Games will be held in December. Its torch, known to the North Americans here as ‘the finger’ (as in, give someone the ~), can be seen right across Doha, so it’s easy to at least see the direction I should be going in – although the roads are ALL being constructed so once roughly here it can be quite an effort to get to the compound as access around changes daily, and lot of the time you’re just driving through potholes.
The reason I’m driving again is that there are no taxis, and because without a car I would spend about one hour a day walking from building to building at the uni – not fun in 45 degree heat... I have been arriving in class with sweat and the remnants of my eye-shadow running down my face while the girls (two classes, both girls – mostly 18 year old school-leaver Qataris with a few Palestinians, Egyptians and the odd Syrian thrown in) sit there looking cool, calm and collected.
Most of them don’t have the slow-moving elegance of the Emirati women (I have actually seen one of them RUN!) but there are a group of princesses (in at least one case, literally) in one of my two classes that are just amazing: mega-gold, mega-make-up, mega-hair, mega-attitude and mega-wasta (familial influence) that they clearly think they are going to use to walk all over me. Boy, have they got another think coming... They are quite adorable however. Think Beyonce in more sequins and gold than usual (and yes I know she does wear a lot) and you’ll have a mental picture.
I’m still having trouble working uni out. I’ve only been teaching a week. And Orientation was talking at us for 50 minutes and then telling us to come back in 3 days. We have a syllabus, they gave us a lap-top (IBM, very nice) but I don’t have a working photocopier in my building and there is no paper or any other stationery anyway. And get this: I am using blackboards for the first time in my life!!!!!!! Disaster – I not only get chalk all over me, but all over the students. Black abayat (robes), sequins and chalk. The princesses were not amused...
Everything has shut down for Ramadan. I am eating once a day after I get home from work. The worst thing is water. I leave my office and then it’s 4 hours until I can drink some. I could go into the toilet, but the toilet has been locked. It’s terrible for the teachers who need to eat. One of my friends has bottles of water and granola bars and goes into a loo in her 10 minute break to eat and drink. I don’t have time anyway – I have to get to the next class which is a 10 minute walk away.
But despite this I am loving being here. When I flew into Dubai on the way here, I felt a sense of overwhelming relief that I was back in this part of the world. And Doha is so beautiful. The city is built on a lagoon, and you can walk around it (takes 1-2 hours). There are restaurants overlooking the water and the Old Souq and main mosque are right on the water as well. The rest of Doha is a construction site in the desert but they are bunging in palm trees left, right and centre, and I’m hoping the bougainvillea will follow. The apartment blocks and houses are mainly low rise as well, and left a stony, desert kind of colour so even the ones that are very Italianate don’t look too tacky.
My office at work overlooks the desert, so when it all gets too much for me I stick my head out the window and breathe...
My furniture finally arrived last week a month late with a lot of metal things crushed and minus my gym-quality treadmill, but they’ve discovered it sitting in a warehouse in Sharjah so hopefully it won’t be too long before I get it.
There are the normal teething problems because it’s a new apartment built way too quickly (friends from Melbourne spent a long Ramadan day without food or drink outside the door because the front door lock had stopped working after 3 days).
The first 3 weeks here I was in a state of self-righteous calm as I watched everyone else lose the plot around me but I had my turn in week 4 during which time everything I touched broke, people promised repeatedly that things would happen at a certain time when they meant days later etc etc and I screamed and shouted a lot, but I’ve got over that now. I just have to buy enough equipment to be able to work (printer, CD player, paper, stationery etc), and unpack my flat. It’ll all happen – and then you can come and visit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Keep your fingers crossed for me in my new persona as rev-head. And keep writing.
Love,
Simone
When I went out today, though, it was much easier and I was starting to feel a bit like Toad of Toad Hall hooning down the road with great enjoyment (hopefully without the same consequences). On Ronel’s advice (poor man, it must have been scary), I’m not going to drive into uni until next week as it is over the other side of the city, but it’s not as bad as Sharjah and of course we have roundabouts in Sydney which is where I learnt to drive, so they don’t seem as scary as they do to the other people here.
It’s also a bonus that I’m living in a compound (like a big complex of town houses) next to the new stadium where the Asian Games will be held in December. Its torch, known to the North Americans here as ‘the finger’ (as in, give someone the ~), can be seen right across Doha, so it’s easy to at least see the direction I should be going in – although the roads are ALL being constructed so once roughly here it can be quite an effort to get to the compound as access around changes daily, and lot of the time you’re just driving through potholes.
The reason I’m driving again is that there are no taxis, and because without a car I would spend about one hour a day walking from building to building at the uni – not fun in 45 degree heat... I have been arriving in class with sweat and the remnants of my eye-shadow running down my face while the girls (two classes, both girls – mostly 18 year old school-leaver Qataris with a few Palestinians, Egyptians and the odd Syrian thrown in) sit there looking cool, calm and collected.
Most of them don’t have the slow-moving elegance of the Emirati women (I have actually seen one of them RUN!) but there are a group of princesses (in at least one case, literally) in one of my two classes that are just amazing: mega-gold, mega-make-up, mega-hair, mega-attitude and mega-wasta (familial influence) that they clearly think they are going to use to walk all over me. Boy, have they got another think coming... They are quite adorable however. Think Beyonce in more sequins and gold than usual (and yes I know she does wear a lot) and you’ll have a mental picture.
I’m still having trouble working uni out. I’ve only been teaching a week. And Orientation was talking at us for 50 minutes and then telling us to come back in 3 days. We have a syllabus, they gave us a lap-top (IBM, very nice) but I don’t have a working photocopier in my building and there is no paper or any other stationery anyway. And get this: I am using blackboards for the first time in my life!!!!!!! Disaster – I not only get chalk all over me, but all over the students. Black abayat (robes), sequins and chalk. The princesses were not amused...
Everything has shut down for Ramadan. I am eating once a day after I get home from work. The worst thing is water. I leave my office and then it’s 4 hours until I can drink some. I could go into the toilet, but the toilet has been locked. It’s terrible for the teachers who need to eat. One of my friends has bottles of water and granola bars and goes into a loo in her 10 minute break to eat and drink. I don’t have time anyway – I have to get to the next class which is a 10 minute walk away.
But despite this I am loving being here. When I flew into Dubai on the way here, I felt a sense of overwhelming relief that I was back in this part of the world. And Doha is so beautiful. The city is built on a lagoon, and you can walk around it (takes 1-2 hours). There are restaurants overlooking the water and the Old Souq and main mosque are right on the water as well. The rest of Doha is a construction site in the desert but they are bunging in palm trees left, right and centre, and I’m hoping the bougainvillea will follow. The apartment blocks and houses are mainly low rise as well, and left a stony, desert kind of colour so even the ones that are very Italianate don’t look too tacky.
My office at work overlooks the desert, so when it all gets too much for me I stick my head out the window and breathe...
My furniture finally arrived last week a month late with a lot of metal things crushed and minus my gym-quality treadmill, but they’ve discovered it sitting in a warehouse in Sharjah so hopefully it won’t be too long before I get it.
There are the normal teething problems because it’s a new apartment built way too quickly (friends from Melbourne spent a long Ramadan day without food or drink outside the door because the front door lock had stopped working after 3 days).
The first 3 weeks here I was in a state of self-righteous calm as I watched everyone else lose the plot around me but I had my turn in week 4 during which time everything I touched broke, people promised repeatedly that things would happen at a certain time when they meant days later etc etc and I screamed and shouted a lot, but I’ve got over that now. I just have to buy enough equipment to be able to work (printer, CD player, paper, stationery etc), and unpack my flat. It’ll all happen – and then you can come and visit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Keep your fingers crossed for me in my new persona as rev-head. And keep writing.
Love,
Simone
Hi Simone,
ReplyDeleteLove your new blog and the photos - and the colour!! You're looking so good. I'm off to Sth Africa tomorrow - will let you know how I get on.
Jax