Thursday Night Barbeque
My next door neighbor, a nice fellow named Guy, organized a barbeque on our rooftop patio Thursday night. All of us who live in the building - me, Guy, Tom, Julian, Hannah, and Casey brought drinks and food and we set up everything around the pool, stopping briefly to gaze out over the city at the Eid fireworks and marvel at how lucky we were to be there.
It was one of those parties where everything seemed to be just right. It was a clear night, the food was good, we had plenty of drinks, a lot of people showed up, and we had really organized everything well. We even had an enormous fruit platter for dessert. I talked with some people I hadn't spent much time with during my first week at the office and met some people who had just returned from their holidays. Casey nipped downstairs for a while and returned munching on an apple. He approached me as I was talking to a few people as asked, 'Want a bite?' I took one. Strange, but why not?
After quite a few drinks and quite a few hours, people started to leave and Guy, Tom, Hannah, and I, were left standing around the pool talking. Tom started talking about how fantastic it is that we have a pool and all of a sudden said, 'Let's jump in the pool!' I said no. Hannah said she would if he did, so he jumped in, surfaced, and started yelling as he splashed around, 'We have a pool! *We* have a pool!' He waited expectantly for Hannah to jump int. She didn't, not surprisingly, as it had cooled down quite a bit. So Tom jumped out and pushed her in.
He then tried to convince me to jump in. I again refused, and it was just too obvious what was going to happen. He got out of the pool, slung me over his shoulder, and headed for the pool. 'Tom! My phone, my phone! It's in my pocket!' I yelled. He reached into my pocket, fished it out, and then chucked me in, clothes, shoes, and all. At that point Guy jumped in. Yes, we have a pool!
So How About Some Work?
I spent my first three working days settling in, doing things like renting a car, buying some supplies for my apartment, and getting started on the residency process. It's not easy to move to a new country and jump right into work.
In accordance with the Muslim calendar, our work week is Sunday to Thursday, so Sunday was my first day of work in the newsroom. I went in at 8, and, keeping in mind that I have to come up with five story pitches for Thursday, asked my co-workers what they typically do. They said 'Research story ideas.' Right.
I opened my work e-mail, home to over 180 e-mails already, and started sorting through them. Around noon I asked one of my co-workers where the canteen was and he said he'd go to lunch with me. We went up to the canteen and realized that they had a woefully small selection, as they bring out the warm food like chicken and rice shortly before one. We had some processed cheese sandwiches and, while we were sitting around chatting, we noticed that the canteen employees were putting out yummy looking chicken. So we ate again. A processed cheese sandwich on a spongy roll is not filling, I found.
Monday was quite a good day at work. In addition to being on a roll with my story ideas, I volunteered to do research on Hizbollah and Lebanese politics. Any time I get to do research on the Levant, I'm quite excited.
Happy that I was doing research on topics I'm interested in, I left work in a good mood. I had just taken the first turn out of the offices to go home when I glanced in the rear view mirror and noticed that one of my co-workers, someone quite high up, was in the car behind me. Then I saw him picking his nose. I cringed a little, then laughed.
Instead of heading straight home, I braved going to Carrefour for some more house supplies that I couldn't find in my neighborhood. Carrefour is in a big mall in the West Bay, one of the newer parts of Doha, one that seems quite posh. It's a time sucker because it takes a while to park at the shopping mall and Carrefour is so massive that it takes ages to navigate through there. I always get hungry and cranky walking through there so, ignoring the signs admonishing me not to eat or drink, I grabbed a baguette and tore the end off it so I could munch on it as I walked through the store. It was the first time I had gone to Carrefour and not walked out of there having forgotten something crucial on my list, which was a small victory. I get the feeling that Doha is going to be about the small victories.
After another small victory of getting home without getting lost or sideswiped at one of the many roundabouts, which are really just like bumper cars, I met up with a co-worker to go for dinner.
We walked to a small Indian place just around the corner from our apartment building. My co-worker had told me it was small, but good, but I wasn't prepared for just
how
good it was. We both ordered chicken curry then sat down at one of the six tables in the clean, quiet restaurant. First the cook, who is also the owner, brought over huge, fluffy, hot nan from the bakery next door. Then he brought us large bowls of curry laden with coriander, and, on the side, chopped onions and yogurt. The chicken was perfectly tender, the sauce wonderfully spiced and fragrant.
After my co-worker and I finished eating, the owner sat down at the table next to us and chatted with us for a while as his kids ran in and out with various questions and things to drop off for him. Over the course of half an hour, we met three of his five children, one of them one of the cutest little boys my co-worker and I had ever seen. The owner, an ebullient man from Pakistan, told us how he's lived in Doha for 25 years, but that he's not sure he likes it. Qatar, he said, is about money. Neither my co-worker or I could disagree with that.
After chatting for a long time, we got up to pay. The total for our meal? Less than two dollars. And he makes biryani, too. He's the favorite part of my neighborhood so far.
Eating with my co-worker was really nice. He's one of my neighbors and ever since I first met him at our orientation meeting in London I've thought that it would be nice to be friends with him. We talked several times but last night was the first time I felt like we had a really comfortable conversation, the sort that just flows without feeling like an interrogation. Afterwards he invited me to his apartment for tea and then realized that, in addition to not having a kettle, he only had a five quart saucepan. He rather skillfully managed to pour boiling water from the saucepan into teacups and we sat around and chatted for a while longer. It was a nice end to my first good day in Doha.
Doha, at Last, Part II
After I picked out my apartment, I went to one of the large shopping centers here to get some things for it. I had thought that my apartment came with kitchen supplies such as pots and pans, sheets, pillows, and so on, but it didn't, so I had to purchase a few things.
In the evening I went out to dinner with two co-workers, Tim and Sarah, and Sarah's husband. We ended up finding a lovely Syrian restaurant which I hope I can find again soon because it was delicious and cheap. The fattyr was not as good as in Damascus, nor was the juice, but it was still tasty, and the schwarma was excellent.
It was a good end to my day, a little Syrian comfort in strange Doha.
Doha, at Last, part I
I got to Doha really early in the morning on January 3rd, around 1 in the morning. A suited, smiling woman was waiting for me as I stepped off the plane into tepid air, holding a sign that said 'Virji Anar' atop three other names. I said, 'That's me', pointing to my first name, and she motioned for me to get on the bus headed to the terminal.
She was waiting as I stepped off the bus and took me to a room right next to the immigration area. It had comfortable chairs, tables with bowls of sweets and dates, and was separated from the main area by a wall of glass. She asked me if I wanted something to drink and I said 'Yes, water, please'. She took my passport, visa, and baggage claim tags from me, and a few minutes later, I had only had time to drink half my glass of water, she came back and said they had my bags and I had cleared customs. I followed her out to a waiting car, which took me and a non-linear editor named Tim to the villa where we would spend the night. All this time I didn't touch any of my bags: someone put them on a cart, someone put them through the x-ray machine, someone put them in the car.
I spent a somewhat fitful night of sleep in a very large bed after I noticed what seemed to be cat hairs on my sheets (cat hairs? where did those come from?). I've slept on worse, I was really tired; I shrugged and went to sleep.
The next morning Tim and I wondered if someone was coming to pick us up. We checked our welcome materials; on one of the sheets it stated we should call a number if we needed a driver to pick us up and take us to work. I dialled it. No answer. There were names and numbers on the bottom of the list. I tried all of those until I got someone on the phone; she said our driver would be there in half an hour.
We got to work, temporary offices in a villa. I blinked in the hot sun. We were introduced, in quick succession, to the people in the front offices (Sabr, who will give you keys - Anar, you have to pick out your apartment today - Rev, Carina, and Hosni). Hosni, an excitable man with a lot of energy, quickly took us outside to the other villa and tried to locate our line managers. First he speed walked over to external affairs, then upstair to human resources. On the way up the stairs, trailing Hosni and Tim by ten or so steps and having broken into a sort of jog, I asked 'Could we possibly slow down? I'm short; I can't walk as fast as you.' Hosni didn't slow down.
My line manager wasn't in, so I was introduced to someone else, who introduced me to several people and then tried to locate someone I could shadow. He couldn't locate her, so I was sent off to the bank to open a bank account. Quickly fading in the bank while I waited for someone to help me open an account, I rummaged around in my purse and found a Clif bar my brother had given me in Paris and I had smartly stuck in my purse that morning.
After I opened up my account, I went to the ATM (a drive-through, of course) and tried to withdraw money. I tried both my accounts several times; neither card worked. I walked back to the van where my co-workers were waiting and sighed. ONe of them asked me if I had cashed up and I said in a small voice, 'Neither of my cards worked.' They asked me if I minded if we went to the mall to get phones. I didn't mind.
Back at work, I went over to the finance department to get an advance on my pay so I could have some cash. Their cash shipment hadn't come in that day, so while I was waiting for it to come, Sabr took me over to the apartment building I was supposed to move in to later that day to pick out an apartment.
