Crap Music
I have an ongoing discussion about music with one of my friends here. We're both pretty passionate about music and I find it nice to have someone else to talk about music with.
Friday night he was looking through my music collection and kept commenting on all the crap music he thinks I have. I was patiently looking through his music and would every once in a while hear him exclaim incredulously 'Kylie Minogue'? Or 'Robbie Williams'? It seemed he thought that music like that is crap, whereas I think it serves a purpose because it's just fun.
I thought I'd point out all the music in his collection that I think is crap. All I found was one Eagles song. One Eagles song! What sort of person has just one crap song in their collection? A music snob, that's who.
I will find a way to sneak some carefully selected Journey songs into his collection. I think they'll round it out.
Meltdown
I hate this city. I hate having to drive or be driven everywhere, I hate going to malls, I hate going to strip malls, I hate socializing mainly with people from work and living with them as well, I just hate this place.
I spent four and a half years of my life living in a place I didn't like, Atlanta. But the other day one of my good friends who lives in Japan wrote to me to say that she's being sent to Atlanta for a meeting and I got jealous. Jealous! I couldn't believe that there was anything that would make me miss anything about Atlanta, but there I was, missing good restaurants and cozy places to eat.
I know I've got a fabulous job opportunity, but sometimes I sit here in my apartment, bored out of my mind, and think that it's not worth living in a place where living seems so difficult. I'd like to live in a place that feels alive, where the city has expression and life.
Tonight someone asked me what my favorite thing about Doha is and I couldn't think of a single thing. Not a thing.
Perhaps it's just been a particularly rotten day.
You know what I wish, though? I wish that some of my friends would call. I sometimes get pissed off that I hardly ever get phone calls from my friends, and people I consider my good friends, too. In the days of Skype and cheap calling cards, especially from the US, it's really not that difficult to call. It only adds to the frustration of being so far away, the fact that people don't call.
In Which I Become Quite Crabby
I had a rather large shoot I was supposed to do cancelled today, for reasons I don't quite understand. It's not just that I'm itching to get out of the building and do some work that's making me crabby; it's that I worked really hard on budgets and proposals and shooting schedules and making plans, too.
I think I'll make myself a cup of tea and try not to think about it.
Yes, There Are Nice People Here
I might not like Doha but I have met some really nice people here. I feel fortunate that, despite living in a city I don't quite like, I do have some lovely friends here. Some of them even live in my building.
I don't have a car at the moment because i've stopped renting one. I am going to buy one, and I even went to the dealership this weekend to finally get the one I want, but they don't have the color I'd like in stock. A guy in my building often gives me a ride to work (and sometimes even a ride back). A few weeks ago we were driving through the gate to work when he turned to me and said, 'You know, if I'm going to be giving you a ride into work more often... (I didn't think he was going to say something about gas money, because that's not like him, but somehow this didn't sound like the beginning of a sentence that was going to end well)...should I make you a cup of coffee in the morning as well?'
Yeah, that wasn't how I had been expecting that sentence to end. I was quite surprised. And promptly said yes. And now when I get a ride to work with him in the mornings he makes me coffee. And he plays good music in the car. Really, it's not an incentive for me to buy a car.
It's a unexpected and great surprise to find someone who's nice enough to make you coffee in the morning and is just a nice person. He's not my only friend, but having just come back from his flat, where he played the opening sequence of a Western movie he really likes for me, I had a moment where I thought about how having friends like him makes living in Doha worthwhile.
