TravelChick

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.

posted by Travel Chick @ 4:42 PM