Dentists & Dating

Photos of Helen, Me, Danny and Cody (the beagle) in South Uist, Outer Hebridean heaven. The last shot was taken outside at about 8pm, proving that the place does, in face, have something that could be called summer...

Back to work last week, but god forbid they make it easy for us. Half a kilometer before I reach the building where I have to sign in for another year, I meet a road block: ‘Deep Excavation.’

I wend my way around a variety of car parks and finally arrive at the building, only to find that they have a shortage of the aforesaid buildings, and have therefore have ripped out all the ‘old’ (new and expensive) desks, drawers and cabinets to replace them with new (expensive and that much smaller) desks, drawers and cabinets.

And made way for an extra person in each room. Well done! Except that person does not come with their own personal power point. So they can sit. But I’m buggered if I know how they’re going to plug in their computer.

Anyway, back to the office, with its new, expensive and (slightly) smaller desks, drawers, cabinets. All looking marvelous. You will be pleased to know that I can open the door. And, with some line-dancing type skills, I can get to my desk. However, it will not actually be possible to open any of these beautiful new desks, drawers and cabinets because they back onto other drawers and cabinets and also things called walls, but such are the joys of living in Qatar.

On the plus side, they have finished building the road that goes from here (University Housing Complex, on the far side of the city from the university – 19km, go figure) to the uni. And I am quite sad about this since it has meant the demise of my absolute favourite diversion.

Quite a number of diversions in Qatar go absolutely nowhere, disadvantaging me as a non 4WD driver, because the point at which one gets fed up, after 25-45 minutes, is usually the point at which the undercarriage of my car is going to be shattered by exiting off the road My favourite diversion, however, had a pleasing symmetry to it. It brought all drivers into a perfect, circular loop. The only point at which you could exit, was the point at which you had entered, and to get back to it took at least 20 minutes.

From this I have concluded that the mind of the Pakistani construction worker works in mysterious ways. And if the mysterious ways of this same construction worker involved getting back at the state and all the comparatively wealthy people living within it, then may I raise my glass to this glorious worker! On with the Revolution.

On the other hand, it is slightly disappointing to note that rather than saving us time, the new direct roads have actually almost doubled the time it takes to get to work. This is because everyone whooshes onto the new roads with great glee only to find themselves banked up at the adjoining roundabouts, on which traffic police are increasingly present and having to employ new traffic light replacement strategies. The current ones seem to be that they stop the traffic on the roundabout itself, until half the roundabout becomes grid-locked, then they move round to the next exit and stop that one. It works… Well kind of… Well not at all, but that’s Qatar, I guess.

It is all very frustrating after coming back from a week in the Outer Hebrides in which there is a single lane through most of the islands, but on which the traffic moves peacefully and cooperatively and in which flashing your lights at someone means “No, no after you” rather than “Get the f*&! out of my way NOW.” And people give you cheery little waves as they pass by your car which appear to mean “How nice it is that you’re part of our community, hope things are okay with you” rather than, “thanks so much for deciding not to run me off the face of the earth into the concrete barricades even though, actually, I did have right of way.” (that at least is the meaning of my cheery little waves…)

In short, the friend I was visiting on South Uist off the western coast of Scotland, Helen Cherry, appears to have made a much wiser choice than I have regarding her place of habitation, and coming back to dust storms, road-rage, technological dysfunction, and Ramadan, I find myself longing for the silvery water and sky, although not the midges. The appearance of having contracted measles is not a terribly attractive look, I find.

I thought that after the holiday in Scotland and Amsterdam, where I spent another 10 days, I would be okay to come back and deal with everything here, but it doesn’t seem to have made a great difference. There are about 50 or so new teachers here, asking things like “do we have access to smart white boards?,” and it’s quite difficult to express concepts like “no darling, you’ll have to buy your own chalk, and just be thankful you’ve got paper” in any sort of tactful or positive way. (Post any suggestions on strategies you may have on this topic below!)

My only other news is that I have had braces put in (repeatedly, since the bloody things are continually breaking off; witness Simone having to hack out one the entire lower wire with a pair of paper scissors in Amsterdam so as not to have to appear in public with the aforesaid bloody great wire sticking out of her mouth), and that I have finally experienced for myself the Gulf Arab form of dating.

What a hoot!

You may have wondered what people over here do about finding a partner since, as you may remember from previous emails, school and university campuses are split and comings and goings very tightly controlled to the point of checking car boots, households are separated along gender lines (little kids can wander back and forth, but this stops somewhere about age 8-10), and girls are not allowed to go out on dates or in mixed-gender groups with their parents’ knowledge.

So what happens is this: Young men and women cruise malls in cars or in groups, and either text their mobile number, or send a photograph of their shoe or hand to recipients via Bluetooth broadcasting to nearby mobile phones. Alternatively, if you can find someone who knows the object of your lust to give you their phone number, you can send a direct message requesting that they “be your friend” to them. And, failing that, should the person be really desperate, there is also the old fashioned Tissue-Box Technique which involves writing your number on a box in the car window and someone else reading it…

And I have nothing else to add to this, except to say that, in addition to very big differences in their ways of dealing with people, and solving problems, Qatari men have different underwear under their kandoora (which they call thoub) to Emiratis…

So finally to Ant. The animal is alive, kicking, and still negotiating small improvements in her living conditions like the small, bolshie, unionist member that she so clearly is.

I am continuing to win the Bottom of the Bowl Wars (whereby Ant refuses to eat the food at the bottom of her bowl, and I refuse to provide any more food until she does) but she is gaining the upper hand in terms of the use to which she puts the living room from about 4am when she reincarnates as SuperKat! and goes bouncing off walls, furniture and sundry other objects, destroying much in the process, and forcing me to pay large amounts to maintenance men who are slowing turning my living room into an Ant-proof fortress.

They think she’s hysterically funny. I am not in accordance with this view, although the young animal does have her moments.