TravelChick

10 March

2009-03-12T08:08:00.003+02:00

I had a bit of a grocery buying spree Tuesday. Craving some lime pickle and having searched for it in my neighborhood grocery stories, I looked up the address for an Indian grocery store online and walked up to Adams Morgan, only to find it doesn't exist.

So I went to the Harris Teeter, where they had only garlic pickle and mango chutney. I bought both, along with some fresh cauliflower, and made myself some potato/cauliflower curry and basmati rice for dinner. It's not the same with garlic pickle. I hope my homemade lime pickle pickles nicely; even if it does, though, it still has several weeks to go.

I can't believe DC doesn't have good ethnic grocery stores. Apparently there are some in Virginia and Maryland, but given the number of people from different ethnic groups that work in the District, I'd think there would be a better variety of ethnic foods at the grocery stores. Maybe I was just spoiled for choice in Doha, because there are so many Indians there, and one could get great Indian produce, spices, and condiments.

09 March

2009-03-11T09:37:00.002+02:00

08 March, after the farmer's market

2009-03-10T02:54:00.002+02:00

Still haven't eaten that grapefruit. Went to the farmer's market and bought a bag full of spinach, just because it looked so good, a few of the season's last honeycrisp apples (actually, the season for those is in the fall, but I'll take an old honeycrisp over just about every other apple), and some parsnips.

07 March

2009-03-08T05:57:00.004+02:00

Today was a very busy day. Woke up early and went to a volunteer orientation at Walter Reed. I took the bus up there, which was quite nice because I got a little tour of the city that lies north of my neighbourhood. I tend to stay in a 10-block radius of my home most of the time since work, groceries, and restaurants are all in that area, so it's nice when I get out of the comfort zone and explore more of DC. I spied some nice-looking restaurants on the way up to the medical centre, so I'll have to go back and check them out.

The bus back took ages. And I got a good dose of crazy man on the trip. A black man with a lovely, booming voice got on and said about three things in a loop:

'I'm a German Jew! My grandfather was white!'
'I'm glad my cousin Barack Obama is in the White House. Yes, he's my cousin.'
'My OTHER cousin Fenty is running the district. My cousin Barack runs the country, my cousin Fenty runs the District.'

He pointed out a sale at a furniture store called Wilson's, or something like that, and a smart-aleck kid on the bus said, 'Yeah, that's my uncle.' Crazy man responded, 'Boy, you don't say someone's your uncle unless you're BLOOD related. Let me tell you about what I told my cousin Barack before he decided to run for the White House.'

It was good entertainment.

I ended up near Chinatown later in the afternoon, and on my walk home started craving a Coke. Not just any Coke, but an ice-cold soda fountain Coke with ice. Of course, every place I passed sold Pepsi, so I ended up getting a bottle of Coke, and now half of it is sitting in my fridge.

March 06

2009-03-07T06:57:00.004+02:00

The grapefruit is still there, and I think these photos should be a reminder why I usually never buy grapefruit: because I don't usually eat grapefruit.

Tonight a friend and I went to see a spoken word/classical Arabic music concert at the Kennedy Center, part of the Arabesque series of arts events. The woman who did the spoken word bit played the roles of several Iraqi women: an artist, a child, a Bedouin, and an Iraqi-American. It was an interesting blend of spoken word and classical music, and the story of the Bedouin woman was really fascinating, but it's probably not something I would go see again.

March 05, end of leftovers...sort of

2009-03-07T06:55:00.003+02:00

I managed to eat some of my leftovers. The pasta, anyway. I still have a bit of potato and chick pea curry, and I think I've already eaten it for about seven meals.

I am also sick of seeing that grapefruit.

March 04, or squash day

2009-03-05T05:47:00.005+02:00

I had the day off today, so I walked over to Trader Joe's to do some grocery shopping. It's further from my house than my usual grocery store, but it's good for things like tea, whole wheat pasta, cookies, and, as I discovered today, peeled and cut up butternut squash. I have pretty minimal prep space in my kitchen, so cutting attacking a slippery butternut squash with a 7 inch knife out of my prep work seems like a good idea.

I made myself some pasta and veggies, and as per usual, have leftovers stashed in the fridge. That will be my dinner at work tomorrow, I think.

On the way over, I listened to music via Pandora Radio on my iPhone. Pandora's a nifty little app into which you enter a song or artist you like and it creates a radio station for you based on that information. It's brought me nice tunes like Lights Camera Distraction by The Hey Day.

March 03

2009-03-04T07:04:00.004+02:00

That bowl on the bottom shelf is the remnants of my breakfast. That's right, I couldn't finish my yogurt and blackberries. Some mornings are weird like that.

I ate the rest of my stew, and I have to say, it was exceptionally delicious. I think it was due to the red wine and two types of mushrooms.

My fridge, part 1

2009-03-02T19:35:00.003+02:00

So I moved back to the U.S. a few months ago, and now live around the corner from an excellent grocery store. It's great news because I have access to good produce, as opposed to the often wilted fruits and vegetables I found find in Doha in the summer.

Because I'm so close to the supermarket now, my fridge is a little emptier than it was when I lived in Qatar. My Doha friends know that my fridge there was packed. It was often the subject of wonderment and ridicule at my dinner parties.

In that spirit, I thought I'd post pictures of my fridge to keep track of what's in it. At the moment, that would be some yogurt, green grapes, apples, tomatoes, a grapefruit, chocolate, leftover chickpea and potato curry, some lime pickle, ginger marmalade, white wine, butter, cream of coconut, chili sauce, lemon juice, milk, water, two Michelob Lights (courtesy a friend, I have to note), avocado, lettuce, spinach, cilantro, a hot pepper, and some leftover stew from last night.

I 1/2 tonsillitis

2008-08-17T17:20:00.002+03:00

I have tonsillitis.

The good thing about getting sick is that I’ve been reminded how amazing my friends here are. They’ve brought me soup, kept me company when I wanted to chat, stayed away when I was feeling too miserable to talk, and one of my friends made me the most amazing lemon-ginger-honey tea and brought me bits of her novel to read. I loved them all already, but I think I love them even more now.

The bad thing about getting sick is that I had to see a doctor. And that I’ve been coughing so much my stomach muscles hurt from all the wheezing.

I started feeling weird during a morning meeting at work. I thought maybe it was just because the meeting felt like it was dragging on, or that there were so many people in such a small room, and despite the enthusiastic air conditioning that pumps through buildings here during summer, it was starting to feel quite warm.

I stuck it out at work that day, but then the next day couldn’t concentrate, and felt dizzy. I went home, where I developed a full-blown cough and runny nose, and what felt like a fever.

The next day I wasn’t feeling any better, and sounded worse (or, as one person described, ‘husky’). I’m reluctant to see doctors in Doha, for many reasons, but after a friend who lives in a different country started sounding rather concerned and suggested he call a doctor to come round to see me at my flat, I promised I’d go see a doctor the next day if I didn’t feel better.

I was, of course, hoping I’d wake up feeling like sunshine. But I didn’t, and after a long, warm bath that made me feel so dizzy I sprawled out on my bed in my towel, hoping my head would clear up, I realized I needed to go see a doctor.

Then I realized it was Friday, which meant all the clinics were closed, so I’d have to go to the emergency room. That was almost enough to make me not go at all, but I decided to go to what I think is the best hospital in Doha, which to me means the one that smells cleaner than the rest.

So after letting my cleaning lady in and fortifying myself with some chocolate, and packing a few snacks (I’ll never remember if it’s feed a cold or starve a fever. Generally when I’m sick I just want to eat), I set off for the hospital.

When the doctor came in to see me, she didn’t wash her hands or put on gloves. That always makes me nervous, because, if you know anything about hygiene, you’ll know that people can be rather efficient conveyors of germs, viruses, and other nastiness if they don’t wash their hands, and this is particularly a problem in hospitals where doctors and nurses are touching sick people and going from patient to patient.

I asked her to wash her hands or put on some gloves, and after explaining that, in addition to my not wanting to pick up any residual germs from other patients she might have seen, I also didn’t want to risk her getting whatever I had, or spreading it to other patients. I think that people find arguments more convincing when you point out what's in it for them. She tried to convince me that she wouldn't touch me, but I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to look as stubborn as I could manage while resisting the strong urge to curl up on the hospital bed. She was, in the end, reluctantly persuaded by this argument and put on some gloves.

This is why I don’t like going to see doctors in Doha, because just about every time I’ve gone to see one I’ve had to ask them to wash their hands or put on gloves. And I know it’s my right as a patient (and, I would argue, their duty as a doctor), but it never gets a medical visit off to a good start. And that was the case this time, as she was rather curt and not at all interested in any of my medical history, and briskly prescribed me with antibiotics.

It was only when the nurse came back to give me my prescription that I saw that the diagnosis was tonsillitis, which I thought rather important for me to know. I’ve had tonsillitis once before, also in Doha, soon after I moved here. Some doctors, it seems, don't seem to be bothered by germs or by your medical history. I was too tired and dizzy to argue again, or to ask her if I should be at all concerned this is my second diagnosis. I took my prescription and went to the pharmacy.

Christmas, Doha Style

2008-01-04T13:45:00.000+02:00

The day before Christmas, someone hit my car. It was one of those days: I was feeling sick, went to the pharmacy to get some medicine, and as I was waiting patiently for a parking spot, indicator on, the guy in a 4x4 behind me decided he didn’t want to wait the minute it would take for the car to pull out of the parking spot I was waiting for. He drove up onto the curb on the left side of us and started moving forward. Of course, there wasn’t enough room for his to go past, so he skidded against the side of my car, making an awful squelching sound.

I rolled down my window and attempted to open my door to get out, but of course his 4x4 was flush with my car. He managed, in the end, to squeeze by and I chased after him, cold medicine forgotten, and got him to pull over. As I got out of my car, someone else in a 4x4 (really, this is why I dislike people who drive them; they’re not only usually driving a car bigger than what they need, but they also quite often turn out to be the jerks and bullies of the road) pulled over, rolled down her window, and yelled over her teenage son in the passenger side that I deserved to be hit and I was holding up traffic (how people justify hitting someone simply because they have to wait a minute for someone to pull into a parking space, I don’t know. Don’t ask me, I’m not stupid). I yelled at her to shut up.

Then the guy who hit my car also said I deserved to be hit, that I was holding up traffic and parking illegally, and that I had hit his car. He also said that white people like me didn’t treat him well, and that he’s a human being, too. Funnily enough, I’m not white, and he and I have pretty much the same skin tone. He also told me I needed to learn how to drive.

I called the police and a male, Arab colleague and said I needed help, so he came on over with one another one of my male, Arab colleagues. I’ve lived in Doha for two years now and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that in the Middle East, it always useful for a woman to have a man around. Sure enough, once my two male colleagues showed up, this man admitted to hitting my car, said it was a waste of time to wait for the police to show up, and offered me 100 riyal to fix my car. I happily refused, pointed out that since he couldn’t wait a minute for me to pull into a parking space now he had to waste several hours dealing with the police, and that maybe he could learn something from this. In cases like this, one absolutely has to get a police report, otherwise no garage will fix your car. That's just the way things in Qatar work.

It looked like the police weren't going to come, so we went to the police station, and the man defended himself by saying he noticed there were several cars behind him that started honking, so he thought it better to cause (and I quote) some ‘small damage or injury’ rather than keep them waiting. Why yes, it was better to risk injuring me than waiting a minute for me to pull into a parking spot. The police said it was his fault, filed a report, then told me to come back the next day to finish up the report as the office was closed.

So I spent my Christmas morning at the traffic police building, which is severely lacking in signs. I took my report in to an office that seemed to be processing police reports, a cheerless woman signed it and then waved me off. I knew completing my police report couldn’t be as simple as getting one signature on a piece of paper, so I asked in Arabic, ‘Excuse me, what do I do now?’ She sighed and said, ‘Go over there’, waving in the direction of the exit. Not extremely helpful or specific. I said, ‘Over there where?’ and she asked one of the other people waiting in line for help to explain to me where I had to go. Clearly she had better things to do, so I asked her if there was anyone there who spoke English.

Eventually I found out I had to go to the cafeteria to get some stamps for my police report and then take the document back to the police station that had issued me the report. I thought I was mistaken when I heard I had to go to the cafeteria, but sure enough, I wandered in, asked for some stamps, and the guy behind the counter full of juice and lunch paraphernalia dutifully produced two stamps. I walked back to the police station, got some more signatures, and was told I could go to the insurance company to sort out repairs.

So that taken care of, I went to take care of my car registration. I got to the room teeming with men, did a quick scan and discovered I was the only woman there, got a number, and found there were about 100 people in front of me in line. I decided to run some errands for an hour, came back, and found there were still about 100 people in front of me.

People were crowding in front of the three people working in the office, waving their vehicle papers and trying to push to the front of the line. Clearly the strategy of waiting patiently for my number to come up wasn’t going to work.

I edged to the front, leaned over the counter, and asked in my best, helpless woman voice how long the office would be open, and if I would be helped at all that day. The man behind the counter waved me off in the direction of the one woman working in the office. I dutifully shuffled over, asked the woman if she could help me, and after she finished up with the man in front of her, she took my papers and processed my registration.

Yes, I used a helpless woman act to jump a queue of about a hundred people waiting in line, and I’m proud of it. I think I even did a little skip as I walked out of the office. That’s the way it’s done here.

So my Christmas morning was spent taking care of car business and ending up feeling quite triumphant that I had worked the system. Two years in Qatar and I’m finally getting it.

Working in Dubai, Part 1

2007-01-21T19:17:00.000+02:00

I don't know anything about working in Dubai as an expat, but while in Dubai I learned a lot about what it's like to work there as a migrant worker. I guess I should start off by explaining that there seem to be three classes of foreign workers in Dubai, and in the Gulf in general. There are the expats, who earn a tax-free salary, usually live in company housing, and live a lifestyle they could never afford to live in their home countries. There are the Arab expats, who are treated pretty similarly to the other expats, although it seems they sometimes get fewer benfits.

And then there are the other workers, the ones who are usually from India, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Indonesia. They often work jobs in the tourist industry, drive cabs, are nannies, or do construction or cleaning work. Don't get me wrong, there are skilled workers from these countries in the Gulf, but there are a large number of unskilled workers from these countries and they work at jobs that often require them to work 6 days a week, don't pay terribly well, and are plain back-breaking. Sometimes they get to go home every few months, but it's most likely they get to go home once a year, or once every two years.

The first person I met in Dubai was a woman who drove a taxi and her story broke my heart. Her story, and the story of others like her is next.

Dubai, Dubai

2007-01-14T22:47:00.000+02:00

I went to Dubai for the first time over the weekend. Dubai is a strange city. It's at once enchanting and depressing. The amount and type of construction there is staggering: a hotel shaped like a sailboat, a ski slope in the middle of a mall, and man-made islands in the shape of the continents. It's breathtaking.

But I've never had the divide between rich and poor laid out so starkly for me. In contrast to scores of wealthy people, there are a lot of migrant workers there who don't get paid enough, or sometimes don't get paid at all. They give up being with their families to try to earn money to support their families and often end up alone and poor. It's heartbreaking.

More on this - and other things about Dubai - later this week.

Eid Mubarak Indeed!

2007-01-07T22:33:00.000+02:00

Last night after going to the gym I drove over to the Family Food Centre near my apartment to do my grocery shopping. This FFC center, a regular grocery store, is on Al Nasr Street, which is known for being somewhat of a happening place. I've never reallyknown why, until last night, when I encountered a big long traffic jam of shiny new SUVs, 4x4s, Hummers, Mercedes, BMWs, and other 'come look at me' cars. They all still had lot stickers on them, plastic on the seats (which is actually not quite so unusual; quite a few people here leave the plastic on for ages), just a sense of complete shiny newsness about them. It was like every guy in a dishdash had gotten a new car for Eid. And then they decided to patrol this one street.

Now, the funny thing is, not that many of them had their windows rolled down or were playing any music, as one might normally do when cruising. Nor did there seem to be any women out cruising in shiny new cars. Just me in my little Tiida hatchback, men in dishdashes peering at me.

I got my groceries and headed home, eager to cook my dinner, crash on my couch, and go to sleep. As I was unloading my groceries, I realized that the bag boy had left a bag out (at the FFC, the bag boy will usually offer to take your groceries to the car, and I usually accept. I know I can do it, but they earn a little money), so I drove back, picked up the bag, and got back in my car.

I turned up my iPod, and, feeling in the mood for some Arabic music, turned up the Amr Diab and turned off Al Nasr Street as soon as I could. Then I noticed there was a Land Cruiser (to say it's a popular 4x4 here is like saying that chocolate is a popular flavor. Every other car here is a Toyota Land Cruiser.) behind me, two guys in dishdashes up in the front.

As I navigated the turns towards my house, I noticed the Land Cruiser wass making the same turns. Then, as I approached a large speed bump, I noticed there were two sets of headlights, one next to the other, headed towards me. One was in my lane. I slammed on my brakes and narrowly missed being in a head-on collision. I was so incensed that I rolled down my window and screamed a slurry of obscenities at the moron in the Red Mercedes who had almost killed us both (for some reason he stopped just behind me).

Then the 4x4 pulled up beside me. I ignored the guys, drove off, and got stuck at a red light at the next intersection. The 4x4 pulled up beside me again; out of the corner of my eye I saw the driver roll down his window. I ignored him and pulled out my cell phone, wondering who I could call for help.

In the U.S. I would have driven to a local police or fire station, but I don't think there are local police and fire stations here. I decided to see if I could lose the 4x4 before I called the handyman/housing officer who lives at one of the nearby apartment buildings where some of my colleagues live. Luckily, as I got closer to home I saw the headlights of the 4x4 grow further away.

I got home exhuasted and unsure of what I think of this place. I've been here a year and still don't know how to interact in this society. I don't know what to think of all these shiny new cars and the bored, rich youth.

The Art of Gift-Giving, Etta James, and the New Year

2006-12-30T21:52:00.000+02:00

I'm going to write about something that even a good, long run on the treadmill couldn't quite shake out of me.

I've been sick. I had a thyroidectomy. I had treatment. I'm still recovering and yes, sometimes that makes me crabby because sometimes it's really tough. I was gone from work and from my apartment in Doha, Qatar, for three months. During that time, two of my friends with keys to my apartment helped themselves to things in my apartment: food, toilet paper, soap, cooking utensils, things like that. I don't think anyone would ever call me laid back but I'm not entirely annoyed that they went shopping in my apartment. I was certainly okay with their taking some things, but some of the food items they took were irreplacable in Doha, like bacon I had brought back from the UK.

So, some people say, well, at least you're alive. Yeah, that's true, but I also like to have friends who have manners, and the guy who took my bacon didn't seem to think it was a big deal he had taken it, been to the UK afterwards, and hadn't replaced the bacon he took.

I ran into him last week, after he had made another trip to the UK, and he said he had a Christmas present for me. I got it today, and it was a package of bacon and a package of proscuitto. I pointed out that replacing items you took from someone's house doesn't constitute a Christmas present. He said, 'Oh, but I got you proscuitto, too!'

Here's a little advice for anyone who gives gifts: giving someone the same thing you took from them without their permission does not constitute a gift. And you're nuts if you think it does.

What makes me more annoyed is that I've given this friend several thoughtful gifts that did not consist of things I've taken from his apartment.

Here's where Etta James comes in. She wouldn't take this from anyone. She would have thrown the bacon back in this guy's face and walked out. At least her songs give me that impression. Me, I just took the bacon and left.

I don't usually make New Year's Resolutions, but I am making myself some promises. I will make every day count. I will not tolerate crap friends. I will try not to be a crap friend. I will finish that scarf I've been knitting for a year. I will pamper myself more. I will take good vacations. I will eat well. I will listen to good music. I will finally learn how to make good coffee and scuba dive. I will beat Nic at Scrabble. And I will never, ever take something from someone's apartment, buy them a replacement, and try to pass it off as a gift. I'm not that person.

Being Here

2006-10-26T18:11:00.000+03:00

People ask me if it's good to be back in Doha, or if I'm glad that I'm back. The truth is, it's lonely. I was away for three months, and I had really just started to establish a group of friends when I left. I feel like it has all fallen apart a bit and I'm starting over. That's difficult. I can probably count on one hand the number of times someone here has called me to ask me how I'm doing, or just to check up on me. I'm fully aware of the fact that I'm not twelve, but I think we need comfort and friendship at every age.

My Current Soundtrack

2006-10-25T21:53:00.000+03:00

Five songs I can't get out of my head right now are:

Nature and the Wreck - Mates of State
I Feel Like Going Home - Yo La Tengo
Marching Bans of Manhattan - Death Cab for Cutie
Decatur, or Round of Applause for Your Stepmother! - Sufjan Stevens
Wound Up - Office

Doha Sweet? Doha

2006-10-21T23:22:00.000+03:00

I've been back in Doha since Tuesday evening. Friends and colleagues have asked me how it feels to be back and honestly, I don't know. It's lonely, it's strange, it's slightly overwhelming.

Tonight one of my friends and his wife invited me over to their place for dinner. Since I'm still not driving, my friend picked me up. on the way, we stopped off at a strip mall across from his housing complex to get a few things for dinner, including some ice cream. While he popped into the supermarket, I ducked into a store promisingly called Ice Cream Plaza.

I walked up to the counter and noticed a glass display case containing pineapples and other fruit. Thoughts of tasty, fresh fruit ice creams popped into my head. I saw two men behind the counter, slicing and preparing things. Three men waited and hung out in the front of the shop.

The glass wall at the counter stretched about a foot over the top of my head, so I poked my head around the counter wall and caught an employee's attention. I asked him what sort of ice cream they had. He told me they don't sell ice cream.

Yes, the Ice Cream Plaza does not sell ice cream.

I walked out of the store, one of the employees shouting, 'Juice, we sell juice' after me. This, I think, is what being in Doha is all about: an Ice Cream Plaza that sells juice.

*!%$#!

2006-09-29T06:05:00.000+03:00

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up for today. *!%$#!

I Dream of Bacon

2006-09-20T17:33:00.000+03:00

Because I'm going through some medical treatment, I've been on a low-iodine diet for almost two weeks. It's generally not too bad, although I wouldn't want to be on it for a long time. Things I'm restricted from eating include: dairy products, seafood, most types of beans, soy products, seaweed, chocolate, anything made with iodized or sea salt, bacon, egg yolks, and certain food dyes. It's amazing how many foods contain these ingredients. Salt is in practically every cracker out there except for matzo, and matzo only comes in those massive boxes (I guess matzo companies know they have a captive market).

I'm so strict about keeping to this diet because I know that, in order for my treatment to work effectively, I have to be strict about it. It's penetrated my dreams, though. Monday I had a dream I was at a restaurant for a birthday party for a guy I knew in college. I forget his name, but he fronted a band called the Jimmy Carter Experience and sometimes showed up to gigs wearing a gold lame shirt. The weird part of the dream was not that, after not having seen or spoken to this guy for over a decade, I was at this his birthday party. No. The weird part was that I ordered some fries and and the waiter came over and dipped them in ketchup for me and lined the perfectly condimented fries up for me on my plate. My mouth watered.

That's when I woke up. I literally just sat up in my sleep and then woke up in a panic. That had never happened to me before. It was six in the morning and I couldn't get back to sleep. How could I? I couldn't eat ketchup, not even in my dreams.

One Month

2006-09-15T08:07:00.000+03:00

It's been a month since my throidectomy. One of the oddly significant things for me has been that I haven't worn a necklace since I had surgery. I have a horizontal scar a few inches long and, for the moment, wearing anything in that area is pretty irritating. I love my necklaces, and most people would say that I own quite a bit of jewelry. Buying and wearing it is quite a hobby for me.

But because I haven't been wearing necklaces, I haven't worn any other jewelry, either. It would feel odd to wear it when I'm not wearing a necklace. Somehow my jewelry has real comraderie. It's either all or nothing.

10 Things I Like About Doha

2006-09-10T23:53:00.000+03:00

Okay, it's not quite ten yet, but I'll keep adding to it. Recently when I saw one of my close friends for the first time after my move to Doha, she helped me start a list. Since I'm not in Doha at the moment, I thought I'd try to remember some nice things about it. I'm not sure I've remembered all the things I said when we brainstormed. In no particular order:

1) You can wear flip flops year-round.
I've discovered I really like that.

2) Qataris appreciate brunch*.
Most of the hotels, from the Movenpick to the Four Seasons, have slightly over-the-top and sterile but generally tasty brunches that feature sushi, mounds of fresh fruit, oysters, carvery stations, and rows and rows of desserts. The Movenpick has a chocolate fountain; the Four Seasons has individual chocolate souffles. The Four Seasons also has a bowl of marshmallows; the only thing missing is a fireplace to toast them in. This point gets an asterisk because all of the brunches feature some poor, non-pork imitation of bacon.

3) Doha is on the ocean
There's something nice and comforting about seeing a large body of water every day, and even though I don't take advantage of it as much as I should, going in the Gulf is great.

4) I have a rooftop pool
How sweet is that? I've lived in apartment buildings with pools before (in boozy, hazy Atlanta, of course. It's practically the law that apartment complexes have to have pools), but I'd never lived in an apartment building with a rooftop pool. Having said all this, the pool isn't large enough to do laps in, but at least it's big enough to jump around in.

5) There's a samosa store that sells good, crispy samosa
I've eaten enough doughy, chewy samosa. Bagels should be chewy; samosa should be crispy. This samosa place sells great samosa for something like 20 cents each. Maybe less. To top it off, the owner, a genial Indian guy, fries them fresh for me and often gives me a bag of homemade potato chips to eat while I'm waiting.

6) Okay, now I'm stuck. More to come.

Sneakin' Out The Hospital

2006-08-14T06:06:00.000+03:00

I spent the weekend doing things to prepare for my surgery. I've been asking friends to recommend their favorite books to me; I went to the library and borrowed those books so I can read them while I'm recuperating. I went to a nice, long yoga class for a good little workout. I ate good food and drank great beer and wine (which is really a good way to prepare for anything). This morning I baked muffins for my parents so they'll have something yummy to eat while they're waiting around in the hospital. I bought some seasons of the Simpsons so I have something to watch while I'm recuperating, just in case the books aren't enough. I washed my pajamas, I packed an overnight bag, I set an alarm. I guess I'm ready.

Last Monday

2006-08-08T07:24:00.000+03:00

Today was my last full Monday with my thyroid. Only a week now until my operation. I'll miss my thyroid. We've had some good times regulating my metabolism together.

Bring My Car I Feel to Smash It

2006-08-08T07:00:00.000+03:00

The person who hit my car eventually, grudgingly, supposed it seemed like she had hit my car and went with me to the police to file a report. In Doha, one has to have a report before going to get repair work done. Aside from temporarily misplacing my insurance papers once I had handed them over, the police were pretty efficient. The whole process, like many other things in the Middle East, involved getting multiple stamps and signatures and going to several different buildings to get them (I'm always very charmed by the stamps, somehow. They're like postage stamps, but are made specifically for these sorts of tasks).

I got that report just a few days before I had to leave to come back to the US and most of my time between getting the report and leaving Doha was spent running around to various doctors and hospitals trying to get appointments. So my car is still sitting in my apartment building's garage, waiting to be fixed. I've driven that car a total of something like three weeks and now it will be at least September before I am back in Doha.

All the credit for finding out who had hit my car goes to my friend who makes me coffee in the mornings. In addition to making fabulous coffee, he's a pretty fabulous friend. I'm not going to cover myself in glitter and have a parade for him, but sometimes when he does this sort of investigative work for me, cooks me dinner, and gives me good music, I feel like I might at least shower him with confetti.

A Strange Turn of Events

2006-08-01T05:41:00.000+03:00

A while ago I wrote about coming down with an odd rash while I was on vacation. One visit to the doctor and not only was I diagnosed with a bacteria-caused rash, but it also seemed likely I had a growth, a goiter. Another trip, another doctor, and the doctor confirmed I had a goiter and recommended I have an ultrasound on my throat.

One ultrasound later and it turned out my goiter was not just any old goiter: it's a multi-nodular goiter, and a huge one at that. My neck is significantly thicker than it used to be. My doctor recommended I have it biopsied and, rather curiously I thought at the time, asked if I had undergone radiation treatment as a child. I hadn't.

I had my biopsy and the results came back negative, which is the good news. The bad news is that I have to have a total thryoidectomy, which is exactly what it sounds like: a surgeon will remove my thyroid. Since the growths are large and on both sides of my thryoid, it's what's recommended. Once the growths are removed, they'll be tested and, hopefully, they'll be benign. The question about whether or not I had radiation treatment now made sense.

One of the odd risks associated with this surgery is that I could lose my ability to sing. I'm no opera singer, I'm not even a good kareoke-er, but I do like to sing. I like kareoke so much I dragged most of my classmates in my Masters course to a kareoke bar for my birthday. And one of my not-so-secret goals in life is to finally take singing lessons. So while I realize that losing ones ability to sing isn't the end of the world, it's a little bit of the end of my musical world. I hope it doesn't happen.

After my diagnosis and my consultation with the surgeon and learning all the risks associated with a total thyroidectomy, I had lunch with my parents and then went home, where I took off my necklace. All of a sudden I realized that, for a while now, my necklaces haven't been fitting me as well. A lot of them have felt tight around my neck. It was something I noticed but didn't really comprehend until taking off my necklace that day. I don't know if I had thought I was just getting fatter, but for some reason it didn't occur to me that it could mean that something was wrong with my neck. I just brushed it off.

Apparently that's how some people notice they have growths on their neck: stuff doesn't fit like it used to. Men will be buttoning their shirts and notice that their collars are too tight.

I wonder how long it would have taken me to notice the growths on my neck if I hadn't gotten a strange rash. As odd as the rash was, I'm so grateful I got it. Without it, I think it might have been a few more months before I noticed something abonormal about my neck.

In My Dreams I'm Dying All the Time

2006-07-22T18:54:00.000+03:00

My trip back to the US was really long this time: 30 hours and three nightmares about plane crashes, two delayed flights, and one cancelled flight.

Aside from the planeload of bodybuilders on my last flight, I think the most disconcerting thing about my trip was that three times I dreamt the plane I was on was crashing. The first time we crashed on a highway in Saudi Arabia, the next time it was a slow crash through beautiful alleyways in Morocco. The third time we crash landed in San Francisco. This time a friend of mine was seated next to me and when I turned to him, concerned about how I would make it to my final destination, he simply shrugged and said 'San Francisco's perfect for me', then got up and left.

Yeah, I don't know either. The end of those 30 hours felt really good.

Theme Song

2006-07-12T00:03:00.000+03:00

A few years ago, I had a discussion with a co-worker about what our theme songs were. His was 'The End' by the Doors. I forget what mine was, but for a few weeks now I've thought that this could be mine: http://www.eeniemeenie.com/media.php?play=70

It's by a Los Angeles band called Irving. I'm fond of most of their songs. They've got some great songs about things like being in love with a friend's girlfriend and all kinds of melancholy love.

Dust

2006-07-11T23:27:00.000+03:00

I got back from my vacation to find a layer of dust, sand, and grit all over my apartment. I feel it on the floor and see it on the tables. This place is just a little part of the desert indoors; I have to mop and dust.

I wasn't entirely unprepared for this film of dust; when I came back from Indonesia my apartment was rather dusty, even after just a week. What I wasn't prepared for is how much sand there is swirling around outside. This evening when I left home around 6.30 the sky was dusky and hazy, swollen with dust. It clung in the air and made the sky and dirty blue.

I've lived in polluted and pollinated Atlanta, the choked air of London, and Damascene air thick with the fumes of oil burned for heat, and I'd never seen air like this. The sand particles glistened when I took a picture and came out as specks of light on my display. I may not like Doha, but living here certainly is an experience.

In Italo Calvino's Seasons in the City, he writes about a man who cannot get rid of the dust that seeps into his life and his apartment. I always remembered that story during pollen season in Atlanta, when my car would be covered with a veneer of yellow pollen, and when a mixture of pollen and dust would seep into my apartment. Doha also reminds me of the man in Seasons in the City. Calvino managed to write about something so ugly and irritating really beautifully. Sometimes I think that, with all the experiences I've had in my life, my life should inspire me to write more.

In Other News...

2006-07-10T00:36:00.000+03:00

I got back to Doha tonight to find that, while I was on vacation, someone hit my parked car. My parked car! In my building's garage! I've now got a dent the size of a salad plate adorning my front left bumper.

And no, no one left me a note.

East/West

2006-07-10T00:11:00.000+03:00

I've just spent six days in London so I could attend my friend and colleague's wedding. It was nice to be back in London but a bit bittersweet as well. Attending my friend's wedding was lovely, but I think I would have also liked to spend a bit more time in the US. I think I was also feeling somehow reluctant to go back to Doha, not for any particular reason. Perhaps it was because I'm starting to feel that living outside the US for three years now is starting to alienate me a little from the things that I know and the things I grew up with and love.

My last night in London my friend Nic and I met up with my friend Natalie to go to her friend's 30th birthday party at his flat. His fabulous flat, I should say, because it is right next to Tower Bridge and, in addition to having an amazing view of the bridge, it has an amazing wrap-around balcony from which to view it.

A few hours and many drinks into the party, a belly dancer turned up and someone started blasting Tarkan from the stereo. I jumped up and danced, and the belly dancer, the music, and the dancing made me remember that this music and the way it makes me want to dance are just some of the reasons I like the Middle East. For all my complaints about Doha, I love many things about the Middle East and sometimes just needed to be reminded of them, especially when I'm in London and thinking that it might just be nice to stay there.

I'm not sure any of the things I love about the Middle East add up to a good reason to live in the region forever in the same way that I'm not sure that my love for the wealth of choices in the US or my strange, passionate love for the City of London means I want to live there, either. I don't know how I choose a home, though.

Although I had thought that I didn't want to move back to the US, I think something in me has changed. I'm not sure if I want to move back to the US but I'm not sure where I want to be. Maybe that's a feeling more disconcerting that living in a place you don't want to live: living without knowing where you want to live. I feel like a large part of me is in the West and a small, but significant, part of me is in the East. I'm not quite sure how to reconcile the two parts or make both of them happy or if that's even possible.

San Francisco Dinner

2006-06-18T09:19:00.000+03:00

I'm on vacation in the States at the moment and am currently in San Francisco visiting my brother. Aside from sometimes feeling like I'm going to get mugged (a strange thing is: in the Middle East I never feel like I'm going to get mugged, so being back in the US and worrying about these things is certainly a new feeling), being in San Francisco is pleasant. The weather's great: hot for San Francisco, but, with temperatures in the 80s, to me it feels amazing.

Tonight I met up with a college friend, Arthur, for dinner. We went to a pub/brewery in the Haight for dinner and talked about what we're doing, what we plan to do, and a little bit about politics. He told me that, out of all the people he knows from college, I'm probably doing the most interesting things, leading the most interesting life.

That's certainly a very flattering thing to hear and I like to think that, for the most part, I'm leading the life I want to live, which makes me happy. Earlier this week a friend of mine said to me that he believes in living abroad every opportunity you get. I guess I have, without even thinking about it, lived that school of thought.

There are things that I love about living abroad: learning about different cultures, learning languages, and meeting people from just about everywhere. I miss things like going to concerts and eating Mexican food for lunch and Thai food for dinner and family and eating meals with friends I've known for more than two years.

But Arthur asked me something that I found really interesting. He asked me if I find it difficult not living around friends I've known for years. And I realized that maybe it's not always so difficult. I have one or two really good friends in Doha and I've only been there five months. I've only known one of my best friends in London, a guy who's one of my best friends period, just over a year and a half, and we only lived in the same city about five months. But we know each other so well it's like we've known each other for decades.

Every time I move I think I'm never going to find as good friends as I've made in the past. And I'm constantly proven wrong. After feeling I had no friends in Doha just a month or so ago, I suddenly realize that I do have some. Moving so much is difficult but it's not so difficult that I want to stop living abroad. Not just yet.

Earthquake Zone

2006-06-16T23:08:00.000+03:00

I was fast asleep in San Francisco this morning when I felt my bed shaking, so I woke up. I had a brief thought that I might have felt an earthquake but thought, 'Well, I don't actually know what an earthquake feels like; I'm sure I was just dreaming that I felt my bed shake.' So I went back to sleep.

Then at dinner tonight my brother's girlfriend mentioned how strong the earthquake this morning had been! So I actually did feel an earthquake. How strange, especially considering how close I was to feeling a major earthquake in Indonesia just a few weeks ago. I'm feeling very lucky to have missed the earthquake in Java by just a few days and to have experienced just a small earthquake in San Francisco.

Where is Home?

2006-06-08T16:49:00.000+03:00

The problem with moving around so much is that you start to have a lot of homes. Or possibly none at all. Sitting here in my apartment in Doha, I think that this place certainly doesn't feel like home. After all my longing for some permanence last year while I was in Syria, here I am in permanent limbo in Doha. I'm working for a network that isn't yet on air and I know I don't like this city, so there's nothing permanent about this situation.

Today while driving home I started to think that, despite my thoughts that Pittsburgh, Chicago, London, Damascus, and most parts of Germany feel like home, maybe my home isn't actually a place. Maybe my home is wherever my friends are. Seeing my friend Avi in Jakarta felt like being at home. Maybe the reason I feel so at home in Chicago isn't necessarily because I've lived there but because I have such good friends there and I always feel so comfortable with them. Maybe the reason why I feel so at home in San Francisco, even though I've never lived there, is because my brother is there and seeing him feels like home.

I sometimes think that living in Doha will never feel like home, but maybe it will, if I find really good friends here. Maybe one day I'll look back and think that Doha felt like home, if only for a little while, because of people here.

Stowaway

2006-06-07T16:44:00.000+03:00

There was a cat in my car yesterday. It crawled under the hood from underneath and got itself wedged underneath the engine and near the wheel. One of the guys who
washes cars at work pointed it out (he heard a meowing sound) in the morning and I thought it was simply beneath the car. Not so. When I stopped off at a shop near our offices at the villa in the afternoon some guys ran out of the shop when they heard the meowing. They said 'You have a cat in your car!' I popped the hood and almost threw up when I saw a little cat's face poking out from near the wheel.

The shop guys and I tried to get it out but it wouldn't come out (dumb cat! it was definitely over 100 degrees yesterday; why did it crawl into my hot, hot NEW car?), so the guys suggested I take it to a gas station. I drove across the street to the gas station next to the Nissan dealership, as I figured I could get the dealership to look at it if the guys at the gas station couldn't help me. Driving across the street of course meant a ten minute drive down to a nearby roundabout and back because of all the construction.

I got to the gas station, jumped out of the car saying, 'There's a cat in my car! There's a cat in my car!' in both Arabic and English, and realized the meowing had stopped. After getting many puzzled looks from the gas station attendants, who surely thought I was crazy, I finally found a mechanic who seemed to understand the problem. One of the guys at the garage looked under my car and assured me that the cat was gone. Somewhere on the way to the garage, perhaps when I hit a speed bump, that cat had fallen out of my car. Yes, terrible, I know, but I also feel lucky
that the cat didn't die in my car. So, I returned to work, my car cat-free, late for my meeting because of the cat. Yes, I heart Doha.

Indonesia

2006-06-01T01:22:00.000+03:00

I decided to go to Indonesia for my birthday. Why not? I'm closer to Indonesia here than I would be in the US, it was only slightly more expensive than a flight to Turkey, and I have a good friend there I wanted to visit. It was my 29th birthday and I wanted to treat myself to a great vacation for it. I thought I'd live up to the idea of being single and fabulous; being able to jet off to Indonesia on somewhat of a whim is pretty fabulous, I think.

Crap Music

2006-05-14T08:50:00.000+03:00

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

2006-05-07T00:12:00.000+03:00

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

2006-05-02T21:24:00.000+03:00

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

2006-05-01T23:42:00.000+03:00

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.

And...

2006-04-12T20:43:00.000+03:00

There are, of course, other reasons why I find living in Doha frustrating. I think there needs to be a debate about whether citizens who are well-provided for but don't live under democratic rule can be truly happy. Citizens here are well-off, but does security without a voice in the government and future of your country really not cause dissent?

reason number 1

2006-04-12T20:35:00.000+03:00

Reason number 1 why I don't like living in Doha is because it's not a pedestrian/non-car owner friendly place. I know it's poor form to complain about a city I've only recently moved to, but tough. I'm not loving Doha today.

I called for a cab at 6.30. I asked for it to be at the offices at 7.30 and they said they could only get one out for 7.45 (this is typical of the cabs here. They suck). I walked out at 7.45. No cab. I called and they said '15-20 more minutes, ma'am. We'll call you when the cab is there'. Fine. I walked back into the office, wrote a few e-mails, then glanced at the clock. It was 8.30. No cab. So I called again. '15-20 , minutes, ma'am'. ARGH. I had a slew of complaints about this service.

I feel sorry for the poor woman on the end of the line, but aside from the fact that there is no alternative to these cabs, I'm frustrated that this is a country that thinks it is ready for the Asian Games in December, and this is just indicative of how unprepared they are. Honestly. In addition to bad roads, the transportation here is appallingly poor. You're definitely out of luck if you don't have a car or want to walk someplace.

I have to say that there has never been a day when I thought I could live for anything more than two years in Doha. One year is pushing it, I think. It's great that I love my job, otherwise I'd be really frustrated. I had enough of living in a city I didn't like when I lived in Atlanta (which Doha might actually nudge out from top position of worst places I have lived at some point). I've got to say that Doha definitely pushes my tolerance level to new heights.

Talking Makeup with Benazir Bhutto

2006-02-18T22:36:00.000+02:00

It all started yesterday when I found out that my academic hero, my sensei, Peter Singer, is in town this weekend for a conference. I made up my mind that I'm going to meet him. I found out where the conference is, called his hotel, and left a message for him. This morning I called him and managed to catch up just as he was leaving for breakfast; he told me to call the press office for the conference to set something up. Of course I couldn't get through to the press office. No one was there.

So I gave up for a bit, went and got my hair cut, and then tried again. No answer. As I was eating lunch I thought, 'I should just go down to the Ritz-Carlton. I'm sure I could find the press office there and set something up'. When I got there, though, I somehow ended up getting a press pass and coming back in the evening to go to the opening gala. I walked in and saw a few of my co-workers from both International and Arabic, so I chatted with them and ended up sitting with a few of the producers from Arabic and a co-worker who is in Scheduling. Although there were several speakers at the opening event, including Karen Hughes and Syed Hamid Albar, the Malaysian Minister of Foreign Affairs, the best one by far was Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr al-Thani, the Qatari First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He spoke very eloquently about Hamas and misconceptions of Arab governments.

Afterwards I wandered outside and saw someone very familiar standing with a delegation from Jordan. I realized it was a guy I met in Damascus last year, so I went to say hello. He's a senior researcher in the Jordanian government, definitely a good person to know, but also a nice, really smart guy. It was good to see him because I had lost his contact information. The world of people who study Arabic is pretty small; my friend was right when she said I would run into him again someday.

After the opening event, my co-worker and I went to the dinner and networked a bit. We met Benazir Bhutto after the dinner and were quite excited about meeting her. We introduced ourselves and said that we're from Al Jazeera International and she remarked that our channel was making quite a showing at the event. Then she talked to us about her makeup. She was excited that Al Jazeera's makeup artist did her makeup when she went in for an interview earlier today; it meant that she didn't have to do her own makeup for the evening! I hadn't quite expected the former Prime Minister of Pakistan to say something like that.

I did end up getting closer to setting up that meeting with Dr. Singer. I finally tracked down the press guy, he took my number and I took his, and I'm going to get a meeting. All this at my first day at the conference! I'm going back tomorrow for more. Maybe I'll get to talk jewelry with Karen Hughes.

One Month

2006-02-02T16:05:00.000+02:00

I've been here one month today. I'm not going to lie: it hasn't been easy. On occasion I get terribly lonely, I miss my friends and family, and I wish there was more to do here. I'm not in love with Doha; I'm not even sure I like it. But I do really like my job and I think there's a lot of potential for this network and for me. I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe that this is all going to work out terribly well.

On the other hand, it is difficult. I haven't heard from some people I thought were really good friends of mine since I moved here. I don't have a lot of time or great facilities to e-mail outside of work, so keeping in touch with people isn't easy. I got tonsillitus last week and once again felt how tiring it can to be sick and on one's own. I'm used to it but I really did appreciate the night when two of my neighbors cooked me dinner.

Thursday Night Barbeque

2006-01-15T17:52:00.000+02:00

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?

2006-01-10T16:42:00.000+02:00

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

2006-01-10T16:36:00.000+02:00

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

2006-01-06T14:17:00.000+02:00

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.

Ticket

2005-12-27T16:41:00.000+02:00

I finally got my confirmation number for my ticket Thursday evening so scrambled to get to the ticket office off of Oxford Street on Friday, the 23rd.

Now the 23rd is not Christmas Eve. It's not a holiday of any sort, so it should be a normal business day. Not in England. After running various other errands near my house, I got to the ticket office just after 4 to discover that it was closed. Closed! There were people inside, and they mouthed 'We're closed.' I checked the door. The opening hours indicated that they were open until 5.30. No special holiday hours were posted.

I tried communicating with some Arabic gestures, trying to figure out when they would open next and if I would be able to make it back in order to pick up my ticket before I left. Apparently the office was going to re-open the 28th, when I would be in Paris. I pretended not to understand and one of the men in the office made the mistake of coming up to the door to tell me what I already knew, that they wouldn't be re-opening for several days.

I pleaded, telling him that there was no other time I would be able to pick up my ticket before my flight. He said 'You can pick it up at the airport.' I replied obstinately, 'No, I can't.' I explained that I'm moving to Doha, that I'm going to work for Al Jazeera, that...I didn't get to finish the sentence. 'Al Jazeera?' The man gestured for me to go in through a side door.

I picked up my ticket, thanked all of them profusely, and got the hell out of there. Well, after I asked how much they charge for excess baggage. I get an allowance of 20kg. 20 kg! I foresee more pleading at the airport.

Grinch-y

2005-12-22T17:25:00.000+02:00

This year I'm actually not as grouchy about Christmas as I usually am. I have no idea why that is, but it's not such a bad feeling. I've bought a few people Christmas presents, I gave my friend who was lamenting the difficulties of decorating a tree an ornament, and I've been enjoying mince pies. I think I even would have baked cookies had I had my own kitchen.

Slumped Over Various Random Items

2005-12-22T17:00:00.000+02:00

I'm really exhuasted. I'm not necessarily tired, but I'm ready for a good day in which I'm not running around trying to meet someone, buy some random item, or pick up my ticket/passport photos/etc.

I packed up some boxes for shipping today. I'm shipping some random stuff. While packing things this morning I found myself slumped over a strange collection of items: a tea strainer, a pink satin skirt, a travel Scrabble set, and egg cups. Yesterday I bought two lovely striped egg cups. I happen to like boiled eggs and an egg cup is rather dandy for keeping those balanced for easy eating. I don't know how readily available they'll be in Qatar. I remember spending several weekends dragging Cara around looking for one in Atlanta; I didn't want to repeat that, although I imagine wandering around the souk asking where to find an egg cup would be quite an adventure.

I've had a good past week. I got together with some friends for going-away drinks at my favorite pub, saw a great play, and have been meeting up with friends. One of my friends got quite sad the other night when we got dinner. I didn't know what to say.

This morning while I was packing I got the urge to cry but didn't. That's unusual. Lately I've been bursting into tears when I hear the Dixie Chicks' 'Wide Open Spaces' or Death Cab for Cutie's 'Transatlanticism'. Because of this, I'm looking forward to leaving. I need to not be saying goodbye anymore. I need to not be looking around and wondering when I'll see dear gray England again. I need to just be on a plane.

Three Staropramens to the Wind

2005-11-27T23:14:00.000+02:00

Oof. Am drunk. Had three Staropramens with my good friend Hannes and am already at the point where I’m starting sentences and forgetting what I had started them with.

I had a lovely time with Hannes. He’s the sort of guy I’d like to be dating, if only he liked me. He likes spending Sunday afternoons in pubs. We wandered around Spitalfields Market for a while, then made our way over to Brick Lane, where we ran into two of his friends. Freezing after having been outside for a while, we all headed to a bar to get a pint and Hannes and I ended up staying there for hours talking about Middle Eastern politics, techno, and studying. We had three pints, by which point I was thoroughly at the moment where I wanted to lean over to kiss Hannes. We went to get salt beef bagels.

Hannes told me rumor has it that the man I’m sweet on had an affair with one of his students. Not so surprising, I suppose but it was still difficult to keep a straight face when he told me that. Okay, I’m dismayed to hear it. It’s not like any of the men I’ve liked recently have been good for me or good people, but oh please, just once could I fall for an upstanding guy?

Ugh, I'm Sweet on Him

2005-11-26T13:11:00.000+02:00

Last night my friend Natalie asked me about a man I like, someone I’m in a very nebulous relationship with, one that seems to be petering out slowly as I approach my moving date. I stuttered trying to explain how I feel about him, repeatedly saying ‘I don’t know’ confusedly. She laughed and said ‘You’re so sweet on him.’ I looked at her and realized that I am sweet on him, that I’m sweet on someone who’s as completely inappropriate for me as say, a frilly dress.

The thing is, you can never predict whom you might like. In the past year I’ve discovered that all these rules I’ve had about who I would and wouldn’t date have gone out the window. Smokers, divorced, fathers, non college-educated: they’ve all popped up in my life recently and I’ve enjoyed spending time with them.

Thanksgiving Day

2005-11-25T02:27:00.000+02:00

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday; I think maybe my mom and my friend Cara know that. I like it because it revolves around three of the most important things in my life: food, family, and friends. To me there's nothing better than eating good food with people you care about and a holiday designed just for that is splendid.

Today I woke up, had tea and raspberry jam toast, lazed about, and then checked my e-mail and set off for the city. When I got to Tottenham Court Road, the weather had turned blustery and wet, hard drops of rain pelted walkers. I darted over to Covent Garden and a cozy coffee shop there, where I ensonced myself at a table for one that was just big enough for me to rest my elbows on and dig into my book, a cappuccino, and a cookie.

After sating myself with good coffee and a novel, I rounded the corner to a bead shop and found exactly the item I'd been looking for to complete a scarf that I'm knitting. While browsing in an accessories store, I realized the dangly bit on one of my earrings was missing, and hastily rushed back to the bead store and then to the coffee shop to see if it had by chance fallen off there. Serendipitously, it was in the coffee shop, and I felt good about Thanksgiving all the way to the bead shop, where the owner lent me her pliers so I could repair my earring.

My Thanksgiving dinner was spent with three married Mormon couples. We ordered in some pizza (very American) and each of us talked about what we are thankful for. For dessert, the couple who hosted the gathering surprised us with a lovely pumpkin pie from Harrod's. It was delicious and made us all deliriously happy.

On the tube home I noticed a woman with sparkly, green, dangly earrings. She'd better watch out for those dangly bits. The young woman sitting next to me was wearing too much makeup and arguing with someone about the way they were treating her on her birthday. She kept getting fed up and teary, hanging up on them, and then calling them back for more arguing. She had a large black bag with sequined straps she lugged around as if it contained a bowling ball. Perhaps it did. I was thankful for all this, the warmth of the day, and for feeling at home even though I'm very much home-less.

Words

2005-11-23T12:27:00.000+02:00

I went to the Scrabble World Championships on Sunday and started wondering why I love Scrabble so much. Then someone posted a comment on my blog about a development called The Pearl currently being built in Qatar and I remembered that the Arabic world for pearl, Lu'hlu'h, is one of my favorite Arabic words because it’s consists of a syllable repeated. All my other favorite Arabic words, like ‘filfil’ (pepper) or ‘waTwaT’’(bat) follow the same pattern. There’s something really beautiful about how words are constructed, which is why I think I appreciate Scrabble.

Don't Answer Your Mobile When...

2005-11-18T00:38:00.000+02:00

You're in the bathroom. Today I rang one of my friends and he said he was indisposed, that he would ring me back in a few minutes. When he rang, he said he had to learn when not to answer his mobile; I laughed and said 'oh yeah, the other day I was in the library and three people answered their phones.' To this he responded, 'There are some rooms you just shouldn't answer the phone in'.

Yeah. Don't answer the phone while you're in the bathroom. I really have no desire to talk to you while you're peeing. Whatever it is I have to tell you, it can wait.

In other news, I'm moving to Doha.

Tomorrow I Will Stop Stressing Out

2005-11-01T17:34:00.000+02:00

Tomorrow the human resources department will get back to me about my salary negotiations. My salary demands, I should say. So tomorrow I will either have a job in Doha or I will be back to square one.

To distract myself, today I read Maureen Dowd's New York Times Magazine article on what women are to do. Basically, she concludes that, for contemporary women, having a successful career and a family is a myth. She also argued that, while successful women tend to date or marry men who are are at least as smart as them, successful men tend to marry women who are not as smart as them.

While I don't agree with this, I do think that smart, career-driven women have a harder time dating than smart, career-driven men. Most of my male friends my age are happily partnered or married while most of my female friends my age are single. That's a completely unscientific observation but it's all I have.

The fact is that people don't view this as a problem so it's not something that's extensively polled; most people seem to accept that, at some point, a woman *will* have to choose between getting married and/or having a family or having a career. Governments seem happy to live with this as well: while women get maternity leave, in most instances men don't get paternity leave. The UK recently introduced a scheme to grant limited paternity leave and there were outcries about the pressure that would put on small businesses.

While I empathize with small businesses and realize the strain it could put on them, I do believe that governments and societies have to find some way to allow women to pursue both a career and family and paternity leave is part of that solution. Finding men who appreciate smart women is another problem altogether.

Having now written all of this, I recognize that I'm quite possibly moving to Doha, a complete career move and one that's not likely to better my chances of marrying or having kids.

A Watched Phone Never Rings

2005-10-31T16:53:00.000+02:00

I'm still pondering that job in Doha. The last sticking point is salary and the only thing left to do is for the company to get back to me about it so here I am, sitting by the phone, waiting for it to ring. It's not very interesting and all I can do is think about possibly having a job.

I know I should be doing work but it's just too much for me. I'm tired of job-hunting, I'm tired of the stress of thinking about this decision, I'm just tired because I haven't been sleeping well. It would be nice to go to sleep tonight knowing whether or not I have a job.

Job News

2005-10-17T07:05:00.000+03:00

Well, after that last post it was bound to happen. I got offered a job on Thursday; I'm really excited about it as it was quite unexpected and lovely. Now I'm in the position where I don't yet know if I'll take it. First, it's in Doha (which sounds great but also means uprooting myself for the third time in a year, or something like that - I'm beginning to lose count) and second, it's for a job I actually didn't interview for so, while I know somewhat vaguely what the position entails, I don't know the specifics of it.

One of the things that I keep thinking about is that I have no compelling reason to stay in London other than just a desire to. I have good friends in London, I'm in love with the city, and I feel at home. What I consider compelling is someone giving me a reason to stay, though, and I just don't have that. I never have that, which makes my life both interesting and lonely. It gives me the freedom to move but at the same time it almost compels me to move.

Am I a Moron?

2005-10-06T22:42:00.000+03:00

Why can't I find a job? Soon I will have been looking six months, have applied for over 120 jobs, and have had three interviews. I'm feeling simultaneously under and overqualified. I am networked out and tired of trying to sing my praises.

I am Short

2005-09-29T08:49:00.000+03:00

I am Short

While it’s not entirely obvious to me, it’s something that’s instantly known to other people: I am short. I’m five foot two on a good day but that’s the liberal view of my height.

The problem with being short is not so much in the actually being short but the way that other people react to it. Aside from the limited availability of pants for short people, most average and taller-than-average height people fail to realize that being short means I can’t walk as fast as they can, can’t hold onto the hanging straps or overhead bars in subway cars, and can’t reach the top rail of clothing in stores (which is, oddly enough, where stores that do have clothes for short people often hang them).

I understand that, from the perspective of someone who is average height or taller, these are not easy things to grasp. But there are days when I don’t want to be the ambassador for short people.

Over the weekend, my tall friend and I were at Hampstead Heath and, though he’s normally conscientious of the fact that I am short, he was racing around the Heath (rather pointlessly, I thought) and expecting me to keep up. Racing around anywhere is not my idea of a pleasant Saturday. Yes, even if it’s in the park. Having raced to keep up with him for half an hour as we dashed from one end of the Heath to the other to meet his grandmother, he decided he wanted to go back to where we had set off from to have lunch.

I couldn’t do it. Having been on the go the whole day I said ‘I don’t care where we go or what I eat, it’s more important for me that I spend some non-stressful time with the two of you. I want to sit down.’ So we sat down for a while but, having been racing around most of the day, I was too tense to thoroughly enjoy the Heath on a gorgeous autumn day.

Then later that day, on the way back from the theatre, my friend jaywalked without warning, leaving me with too little time to get my short little legs across the street without being hit by oncoming traffic.

When I got to the traffic light and did cross, I pointed out that I know we’ve talked about this, that I can’t cross streets as fast as he can, and it’s pointless for him to run across streets when I’m with him because he’s just going to have to wait until I can cross, anyway. He was apologetic and I was frustrated after a day of feeling sort of put out by having to match myself to his speed.

In Which Our Heroine Remains Single

2005-09-20T01:04:00.000+03:00

For the past few days I had been thinking perhaps I was dating someone, which is one of those tricky things. My brother came into town on Saturday and I was mulling over telling him that perhaps there was someone, but I refrained, wanting to wait until I knew in a shouting it from rooftops sort of way.

Then today, the day I was supposed to go out with said possibility, he cancelled. In itself, it is not such a big deal, but in the greater scheme of things, was the event that started today's decline into lousiness. I started thinking that, looking back on our interactions, that perhaps he doesn't like me as much I thought and that, whatever we have, it's not a relationship. I then started thinking about how much I wish I were doing something even remotely connected to my skills, how I'm 28 and single and surrounded by friends but still terribly lonely, and how some days I'm entirely convinced my life would be much easier if I were taller, blonde, and white. It's entirely easy to say you're comfortable with who you are, but when you're stuck in perma-singleville and can't buy pants that fit because they're all too long, sometimes it's lovely to think about how life might be easier.

Experiencing a shortage of appropriate length pants is not tragic but being stuck certainly is. I reached a point today when I thought 'London, Doha, DC, who cares? Is my life really going to be so different wherever I go?' Here I am in London feeling exactly as I did in Atlanta: underemployed and mad that I'm not ever in a relationship.

The bad thing about being single, part 1

2005-09-11T23:48:00.000+03:00

I just read the Vows section in the New York Times, which is admittedly one of my favorite parts of the paper. I like reading peoples' love stories, even on days like today when I realize that mine just don't exist. Having now determined that the guy I may or may not have been dating has now turned simply into the guy I'm not dating, by nature of the fact that I'll text him about something important to me and he'll text back saying he'll call me, and he doesn't, I was feeling a little melancholy today. I understand that this guy has a complicated life but I feel that shouldn't preclude him from making a two minute phone call.

With this in mind and feeling rather cranky for various other reasons (such as: I'm hungry, my uncle was driving me crazy, I want to see my friend Nic but I have to do my laundry so it couldn't be for long), today I really wanted to be comforted by someone who loves me. And that's where being single begins to suck.

Dreamboat

2005-09-09T00:54:00.000+03:00

I'm currently temping as a recruiter and recently received a resume I decided I loved. I loved it because the guy was a definite over-achiever, he had founded his own company, he traveled a lot, he listed 'sustainable development' as one of his interests (that made me laugh, actually), he has earned salaries twice as high as I'll probably ever earn, and he's 30 and single. My colleague and I started joking about how I was turning the recruitment consultancy business into a dating business once I decided I heart-ed the resume, and I became increasingly interested in meeting this man.

Luckily, we have to interview him.

Today was the day of his interview, 15.00, and at 15.01 I turned to my colleague and said 'he's late.'

He turned up less than 10 minutes later, apologized, and explained that it's been quite some time since he's taken London Transport, as he hasn't lived here for 5 years. My colleague and I couldn't have cared less. We were just glad he turned up. The resume I loved looked even better in person. He was achingly well-spoken and passionate about his interests, fantastic looking, and wore a camel colored coat that draped beautifully. I thought 'Why does he have to be my client? Can I quit my temp job so I can ask him out? It's just a temp job. Surely I'll find another.'

Oh, beautiful men. I've been lamenting the fact that the man I may or may not be seeing has gone missing again but I sometimes forget that there are choices. Just when I've had it with men, in walks a dreamboat like this guy and it's like I've hit the man lottery. Except my winnings are in escrow?

My Music

2005-08-22T23:42:00.000+03:00

Robert Moog died yesterday. Without him I think half of the music I listen to would genuinely suck. So I think it's only appropriate to finally answer the little challenge that my friend David, waxelastic.com, issued a few months ago and I'm just now getting around to doing. He answered a few questions about his music; now I'm doing the same.

Total volume of music on my computer:

A sad 25G. I don't have all my music on my computer because it won't fit and I only recently got one of those 300G drives to put all of my stuff on.

The last CD I bought:

The last one I got was The Magic Numbers; the last one I bought was something I was very excited about but must have sucked since I don't remember it. The last ones I remember buying are Beck's Guero and one of Fairuz's best of CDs.

Song playing right now:

Since I started writing this, 'It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane' by the Ark and now 'July, July!' by The Decemberists

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

Luna - Tiger Lily
Billy Bragg and Wilco - California Stars
The Postal Service - Such Great Heights
The Decemberists - The Soldiering Life
Khaled - Aicha

Really close to being on that list are Yo La Tengo's 'Our Way to Fall', The Fall's 'Victoria', and Cheb Mami's 'Azwaw 2'. I know, that's cheating because technically I have eight songs listed now.

Fixing Up Friends

2005-08-22T01:59:00.000+03:00

Tonight I got together for drinks with my friends Tom and Hannes, guys I know from Damascus and really like but am just friends with. They're both good-looking (Hannes happens to be one of the best-looking guys I know), extremely smart, have wicked senses of humor, and are incredibly nice to boot. Why they're single is one of those mysteries I can't figure out, like Stonehenge or Ashlee Simpson's popularity.

Two drinks into the night, I decided that Tom and Hannes should meet some of my female smart, gorgeous London friends. I mentioned this and Hannes looked at his watch. I asked him why he was doing that and Tom pointed out I'd been hanging out with Hannes for hours (we had met for coffee earlier on and had indeed been hanging out for several hours at that point) and I was just now mentioning my wonderful, available friends. Having both spent the past seven or eight months in Damascus, a very tricky place to date, they were both excited about the possibility of my fixing them up with my fantastic friends.

I pointed out that, in return, it would be great it they could fix me up with one of their single friends. They reluctantly asked me what I'm looking for. I said 'Witty and sarcastic, smart, well-traveled, perhaps.' At this point Tom pointed out that he thought that eliminated most of his friends as 'they're not well-traveled.' 'I guess they don't have to be well-traveled,' I said. By this point we had walked outside and were saying goodbye. 'Well?' I asked them. 'I really don't know what you're looking for,' Hannes said. 'Witty and smart? Is that so hard?' I asked.

My friend David once flat out said that he could never set me up with one of his friends, as I was too good for all of them (I still, by the way, refuse to believe this). Women are, I think, more willing to put their friends out there to meet nice, single guys. There's nothing I'd like to see more than my fabulous friends getting together. Men seem to have some problem with fixing up their female friends with their male friends. Or is it just that my male friends aren't very comfortable fixing me up with their friends?

A V. Bridget Jones Day

2005-08-19T17:51:00.000+03:00

Last week I went out to dinner with my cousin and his wife and my friend Nic. We split a few bottles of wine, ate some good food, and by the time we were done it was around 10.30 (disasterously late for London, I feel). My cousin and his wife kindly offered to let me spend the night at their place, since I would otherwise have a long train ride home. I happily accepted (I love their place. It's a spacious loft with a lot of good light), said goodbye to Nic, and we headed home.

We sat around chatting for a while once we got home. Before they both turned in they happily mentioned that they now have a spare set of keys, so, although they were both leaving for work around 7, I could leave whenever I wanted and just drop the keys in their mailbox.

I woke up sometime around 9, showered, and then headed downstairs to check my e-mail and grab some music my cousin had recommended. Feeling peppy and generally full of goodness from having had a really nice evening, I grabbed the keys and tried to get out. The top lock was locked, but I couldn't open it. I tried both keys. No luck. Then I somehow managed to get a key stuck in the bottom lock. I strained to get it out and broke the metal key ring it was on. At this point I realized I was in trouble.

I called Nic and explained what had happened. 'You're locked *in*?' he said incredulously. 'This is great!' He sweetly offered to come down to Brixton and try to help me get out. 'Are you going to stand on the other side of the door and watch me struggle?' I asked wryly. I thanked him for his offer and said that I thought it would be a little pointless. He told me to try watching tv for a bit and then try wrestling with the keys after half an hour or so, that maybe I would have a better perspective on the situation once I had managed to concentrate on something else.

I called my cousin to ask him if he had used the keys before. 'Loads of times', he said. Then he said 'Little key goes in the top lock, big one in the bottom one.' I looked at the keys. The little key was stuck in the bottom lock. I couldn't tell him what I had done. I hung up and called Nic again.

'I got the wrong key stuck in the lock,' I hiccuped through tears. 'I'm such an idiot!' He started laughing. 'It's not funny', I said. 'I know', he said. He told me a story about how he was out driving and got pulled over by a cop on a horse. It made me feel a bit better. 'You have to call your cousin,' he said.

Before I could pull myself to call him, though, my cousin called and asked me if I had managed to get out. 'Er, no,' I said. I explained the bit about having the wrong key stuck in the lock. He gave me directions to another set of keys, I managed to put the correct key in the correct lock, open the door, and, apologizing profusely, I ended my conversation with him.

Outside the house, I called Nic again, sniffling. 'I'm out,' I said. 'Yay!' he cried. 'I'm such a moron,' I said. 'Well, at least your cousins got a good story.' Yes, they did.

London

2005-08-18T16:34:00.000+03:00

When I got to London I wasn't sure that this is where I wanted to be. Since I left Syria I've just spent all of my time feeling out of place and a little lost. I miss the friendliness of Damascus, the way that people are inviting and take time to talk to you and treat you like a person. There's not much of that in the US or in the UK and I think that's a big hole in society. Whereas Syrians genuinely care about their neighbors, I feel like Americans and Brits would prefer not to have neighbors.

Now that I've been in London about a month, I'm feeling a little better about being here and possibly calling London home. People here are rude as hell but I think having a few people here I really care about makes up for that.

#!& job hunting

2005-08-08T00:20:00.000+03:00

The joy that I felt about finding free wireless out here in zone 4 where I'm staying with my aunt was short lived. I know I've been looking for a job for less than three months, but I'm still feeling frustrated. I've had three interviews, one of which was for a job that was interesting but would have paid me enough to go out for one beer a week (clearly not enough for a girl who has lived in Germany and the UK and lists beer among her hobbies) and definitely did not pay enough for me to live without mortal fear of getting a flat tire I would not be able to afford to repair (this is my other measurement of whether or not a salary is a living wage).

One of the disheartening things about my job search is I get comments like 'oh, so you know Arabic and German but you don't know SPSS?' or 'I see you have a lot of research skills but can you draft a letter?' No, I've never written a letter in my life. I will, for the records, admit that I make a terrible cup of coffee, which should immediately disqualify me from ever working as an office assistant.

As one of my friends pointed out tonight, the worst thing about my being frustrated about job hunting is that the only thing that will make me feel better is getting a job. So that leaves me unemployed and unhappy for some time longer.

Brown People Move Slowly!

2005-07-30T02:45:00.000+03:00

Several people have pointed this out to me; I thought it deserves a link here:

http://www.rimeallaf.com/mosaics/index.php

Given the amount of panic in London I'm surprised that TFL isn't just printing something like this up as a leaflet and distributing it to anyone who has the misfortune of not looking pasty white in the middle of summer.

As my friend Shaadi put it in his sign when he went to protest the police killing of Jean Charles de Menezes:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/07/319572.html

A Much Needed Break

2005-07-25T02:21:00.000+03:00

I needed a break from blogging. I really loved writing when I was in Syria and, though I generally love writing, for some reason when I got back to the US I was spent and didn't want to force myself to write. But tonight I suddenly got the urge to write, so here I am.

I'm currently in London, where the police shot and killed an unarmed Brazilian man in the tube on Friday. They shot him in the head five times. I've read conflicting details of the series of events, but it seems clear to me that the police acted rather hastily and need to be held accountable for shooting an innocent man. There was no reason that this man had to die. Today two of my friends and I went to Scotland Yard to protest. We ran into a group of Brazilians there and walked over to Big Ben with them. We stood there for a few hours, holding up our signs and thinking about how awful it is when paranoia about terrorism grows to have such a grip on a nation that events like these happen.

On the tube ride home, my friend and I noticed some unattended bags next to an empty row of seats. He got up and asked if they were anyone's and finally a man sitting a row away from them said they were his. My friend and I got a little irritated that, after the events of the past two weeks, this man was sitting rather far away from his bags.

oh dear. last day.

2005-06-08T17:22:00.000+03:00

Today is my last day here. I spent part of the morning running errands. I picked up some linen pants and skirts I had made from the tailor, who really nicely told me to contact him if I ever need anything, even when I'm not in Syria. I got my morning juice and said goodbye to my friends at the juice store, then hopped on a service to meet one of my friends at his store in the Old City.

While waiting for the service I noticed a young Syrian man staring at me and thought 'This guy might be trouble'. I felt like I had been on a service and had him stare at me before. He got onto the service and stared at me the whole time. I ended up jumping out of the service just before the driver pulled away from a stop and the guy, seeing that I was getting out, jumped out, too. Then he followed me and asked if we could walk together for a bit as I dashed across a busy street, dodging minivans and taxis careening across the intersection. I turned to him and said flatly 'No, I have an appointment in 10 minutes. Sorry'. This guy was persistent. He kept following me saying 'Can we just talk for a bit? Give me you phone number!' I said 'I'm leaving tomorrow!' To this he said 'Well, let's get together tonight!' 'Enough!' I snapped. 'Go away!' He asked for my phone number again.

I had a mission. You see, I wanted to snap some photos of the sheep that graze on dry dirt near the Old City, and I wasn't going to let this loser stop me from it, so I stopped in front of the sheep and snapped away. I took video. He asked me what I was doing and I ignored him and set off for my friend's shop. He kept calling after me but eventually finally figured out that I had no interest in talking to him and stopped.

Recounting this story to a male, Syrian friend later, he asked why I didn't slap the guy who followed me. I said I didn't know why but I thought that insulting him would have been good, and I didn't do that, unfortunately. It's really annoying to be followed and to have someone be very persistent.

I did eventually get to my friend's shop, where, tuckered out from the heat, I collapsed on a chair and we sat talking for a while. He asked me for advice about his girlfriend. She's British and headed home in a few days; he just got rejected for his British visa yesterday, so they don't know when they'll see each other again and he wasn't sure if they should stay together until it's possible for them to see each other. I gave him the only advice I could think of, which was that if he really cares about her and thinks that their relationship is want he wants, then he should try to make it work.

We ended up going to his brother's store, where we drank tea and chatted with his brother for a while. Then we parted ways and I went to the Omayyed Mosque. Kids were chasing pigeons in the courtyard, men were sleeping in the mosque, and it was bright and sunny and glorious.

I then went to another friend's shop and, feeling a little shaky from the heat and possibly from thinking about the idea that I'm leaving tomorrow, I sat down for a minute. Realizing I hadn't eaten anything other than a banana and juice the whole day and it was already four, I picked up some schwarma and orange juice and sat in the shade outside my friend's shop to eat.

So tomorrow it's off to my parents' house in the US, where I'll be for just over a month before I go to London for my graduation and possibly to stay. I'm not sure where my next home is. I hope that it will be as good to me as Damascus has been.

No, I Can't Stay Here Longer

2005-06-07T17:52:00.000+03:00

Even though I wish I could, I can't stay here any longer. I have to go back and find a home and find work. Hopefully I will be back here soon and then I can hang out with anyone who wants to meet up with me and we'll go to Seidneyya, Aleppo, even Deir-e-Zur. Yes, even Deir-e-Zur, the place where I was attacked with a radish leaf.

A Little Adventure

2005-06-07T17:09:00.000+03:00

After my usual stop at the juice place this morning I went to a souk in Ruknedin to buy some movies. On my way out I stopped at my friend's friend's dry goods shop to say hello and he invited me to sit down and hang out with him. We chatted for a while, me in Arabic, he in English, about his work, learning languages, and his future. Last year he married a British-Pakistani woman who was studying here and, though she's moved here, she's eager to go back to Britain and for him to go with her. He pointed out that moving to Britain would be a huge move for him economically. Here he works at his father's shop, which is well-established and in a good, busy location. It's a business that's worth a lot of money and one that his father spent much time building up.

In Britain he'd have to find work with people he trusted, save money to possibly start his own business, and simultaneously try to save money to visit Syria. He sighed and said 'It would take me five years if I saved all the money from my work and ten years if I saved half". He said that there are about a thousand questions he must find the answers to and he has to think many nights about this. He's in love with his wife but leaving Syria would be enormously difficult for him. His life is so family-oriented, he's well established here, and, as he pointed out, he has so many people here he trusts.

He asked me if I had eaten and I said yes, I had some eggplant and juice. He laughed and, while I was paying attention to the tea he had poured for me, he gave his friend money to go get zaatar for us. His friend showed up with piles of freshly baked bread with zaatar and he handed me a piping hot one, insisting that I eat with him. I sat there munching my zaatar as he helped customers.

His brother came by the shop and all of a sudden he said 'Okay, let's go!' I asked him where we were going and he said I'd see. I shrugged and followed him out of the shop and through some alleyways. He told me we were going to go to his house. We ended up at his family's house, not the house where he and his wife live, and I was quickly invited to eat lunch with his sisters. Despite having told her that I had already eaten (twice by this point), his younger sister insisted that I eat. She gave me a large piece of flatbread and I gave in. While I was eating she asked me how old I am. She guessed I'm 22, but upon finding out I'm 28, asked if I'm married. I said no and she said 'Why not? You're 28!'

Lacking the word for 'goal' in Arabic, I couldn't tell her that it's not everyone's goal to get married; I suppose I could have told her that in American culture, not everyone wants to get married. She then asked me if I'm Muslim and, when I said yes, she looked at me in shock and said 'But why don't you cover up when you're outside?' I tried to explain that, in America, not many women cover up. Even though she's only fifteen, that girl certainly moved quickly with the questions. It was very Syrian.

After a while I thought I should leave, so I thanked my friend for inviting me over and thanked his family for the delicious food and then left. I stepped out into the sunlight, still a little dazzled and thoroughly delighted by the idea that I could go to the shop of a friend of a friend and end up being invited to his family's house for lunch. Never mind the culture shock he would have in Britain, I'm going to be shocked when I go to the US and things like this don't happen.

The Unexpected, as Always

2005-06-06T16:43:00.001+03:00

Today I went to the hammam for the last time. It was so relaxing but also sad knowing that I won't be able to indulge in a good steam, sauna, and scrub for a long time. The woman who scrubbed me and my mom when we were there a few weeks ago was there again today and she asked about my mom, about how she is doing. She's not only thorough with her scrubbing; she's also really nice. Since this is one of the few times in my life when I've been able to do so, I gave her a really generous tip. She definitely deserves it.

While at the hammam I was thinking about how comfortable women here, the women at the hammam are with their bodies. Hijabed woman walk into the hammam and go into the hamman in just their underwear to be scrubbed really thoroughly by other women. In a society where quite a few women cover up, it's nice to see women so comfortable in their skin.

Afterwards I got juice, met my friend in the souk, and headed to pick up some items my parents had ordered while they were here. While we were at the store one of them men there handed a photo album to my friend and, thinking that it might be an album of pictures of his family, I moved my chair next to his to look. These were not family photos. It was an album of women in belly-dancing costumes. The man makes them and wanted my friend to buy them from him.

We headed back to his shop and, while sitting outside, we saw a little boy no more than 3 years old wandering around. He and my friend exchanged hellos and the little kid kept walking. Despite having been here seven months and knowing that Damascus is a safe city, I was still a little surprised. I love it, though. I love that little kids can wander around by themselves. Even better, about ten minutes after the kid walked past, the shopkeeper I usually buy water from walked by, holding the kid's hand. It turned out he was taking him home. The little boy was lost.

Walking to the internet cafe, I saw that a lot of stores were empty, as many shopkeepers had gone for the afternoon prayer. Some stores were locked while others were just empty. I had several people point out to me that it's not just the police presence that makes Syria so safe, it's also that Syrians have a strong concept of family and they value the idea of community. While I still think that the police presence greatly adds to the safety here, it's absolutely right that Syrians just see their society in a different way than we in the US or Europe see society. That's what makes is possible for little kids to wander around the streets of the souk by themselves and for shopkeepers to run to the mosque to pray, leaving their shops unattended.

Things in Syria are changing; I've seen a lot of changes since I arrived here in November. More about that tomorrow.

The Unexpected, as Always

2005-06-06T16:43:00.000+03:00

Little Piddly Things

2005-06-05T19:53:00.000+03:00

The problem with leaving a place is that you always end up with little piddly things to do. Today I have:

-exchanged photos with one of my good friends
-bought olive soap for my mom
-picked up a Koran pendant for a friend
-studied

I have about twelve other things that are still on my list of things to do, of course, stuff like 'pick up things from tailor', and 'buy Arabic movies'.

Job Hunting, More on Leaving

2005-06-04T16:57:00.000+03:00

I'm looking for a job. It's not the easiest thing to do from Syria (slow internet connection, problems accessing job sites, and of course the conflict between how much time I should spend on job hunting and learning Arabic). Part of my problem is that I left my job as a journalist to get a Masters in International Studies and while I really want to work in security analysis, doing research on the Middle East, or working on US foreign policy, I don't always feel that journalism wasn't the place for me.

I belong to a professional organization for women who work in or are studying international security. It's useful for job listings, events, and contacts, Last summer when I was thinking about whether or not I should move to Damascus to learn Arabic I wrote to a woman who gave me really good advice; feeling at a bit of a dead end recently, I wrote to her again and she again gave me some stellar suggestions and even put me in contact with Peter Singer, someone whose work I really admire.

Of course, this made me think about the professors I've asked for job advice who, though we get along well and they were enormously supportive of my dissertation work, have not been so helpful when it comes to looking for jobs. I think this is partly because their careers have been so focused on academics that they just can't give me terribly relevant advice about how to go about looking for a job or where to look.

The other thing I've been doing, of course, is studying. I had a lesson with my tutor this morning; we went over relative pronouns and read some texts. I told him that I'm sad because I know I'm leaving Thursday and he asked me if I'm going to come back. This is, I think, the most difficult part about leaving. I know I will be back, but I don't know when (there are so many factors involved in this: I need to find a job, if I end up working in the US, Syria is a long way to travel from there, flying to Syria is not cheap). I feel that the other places I have left have been much easier to go back to. Chicago, London, small towns in Germany, somehow I've made it back to my other homes.

The other difficult part about leaving is that it's so difficult for Syrians to get visas to go to the US or to the UK, so I don't know if or when my Syrian friends will be able to visit me. Even if they do get visas, it's terribly expensive for them to travel. Making friends from Indonesia, Taiwan, and Syria over the past two years, I've learned to remember that traveling is difficult for many people.

Yesterday one of the guys at my favorite juice place, Abu Shaker, looked sad when I said I'm leaving and don't know when I'll be back. He suggested I open a branch of Abu Shaker in the US. It's all fresh, fabulous juice; I can't imagine how phenomenally expensive it would be in the US, but it would definitely work. Juice here is about a dollar for a liter of amazing, fresh, made to order tastiness. In the US I'm sure a liter would be at least six dollars. I'm really addicted to the juice; lately I've had to get it every day and today I just caved and bought an enormous bottle of the stuff. I don't know how I'll survive in the US. I think I just won't be able to drink juice. That said, it's nice to enjoy what I can while I'm here, so tomorrow I'm hopefully headed to my favorite restaurant, Beit Shammi, for some tasty lamb and some lemon and mint juice.

Lazy Friday

2005-06-03T17:45:00.000+03:00

Fridays in Damascus are the equivalent of Sundays in the US or the UK. Friday prayers are especially important, shops are closed, people have the day off, and since Thursday is the big party night here, many of my friends and I spend the day lazing around, studying, eating a big lunch or brunch, and enjoying some calm.

Today I woke up ready to do some work, so I sat down with my textbook and studied vocabulary while eating Syrian flatbread and some honeycomb honey. I turned the tv on to an Arabic music channel and watched several videos of Gulfi, probably Omani or Bahraini, singers in gallabieh (the long, white robes worn by many male Gulfi Arabs) dancing around with other men in gallabieh and waving and twirling sticks or rifles. These shots were intercut with shots of women with straight, long hair leaning forward and moving their heads around so their hair swirled around them. They're interesting videos not because of their production value but because they're different from Lebanese or American or European videos. Women are objectified in a completely different way: in one of these videos one of the women was shown drawing a veil around her head very slowly. Men are shown dancing arm in arm with friends, something foreign to American and European videos. They're fascinating to watch for a few minutes.

Around 1 several friends and I went over to a friend's house in the Old City for lunch. She had prepared a massive amount of delicious food and we sat around eating and talking about politics and the media for a few hours. She lives in an old house, renting a room from a fifty-something woman who has never married.

It's one of my last days here so, while walking to this internet cafe in order to do some work, I looked up at the beautiful old houses, some of them crumbling, and tried to appreciate everything I've seen for seven months just a little bit more. The houses lean in and almost touch each other in the alleyways, people leave their doors open to let in whatever breeze might be blowing by as they smoke nargileh, and strains of Arabic pop float through the streets. I miss seeing these things sometimes when I'm walking purposefully, so it's nice to have a somewhat imposed day of laziness so I can enjoy some of the things that make Damascus pretty.

The Unexpected, as Always

2005-06-03T08:10:00.000+03:00

Today I went to the hammam for the last time. It was so relaxing but also sad knowing that I won't be able to indulge in a good steam, sauna, and scrub for a long time. The woman who scrubbed me and my mom when we were there a few weeks ago was there again today and she asked about my mom, about how she is doing. She's not only thorough with her scrubbing; she's also really nice. Since this is one of the few times in my life when I've been able to do so, I gave her a really generous tip. She definitely deserves it.

While at the hammam I was thinking about how comfortable women here, the women at the hammam are with their bodies. Hijabed woman walk into the hammam and go into the hamman in just their underwear to be scrubbed really thoroughly by other women. In a society where quite a few women cover up, it's nice to see women so comfortable in their skin.

Afterwards I got juice, met my friend in the souk, and headed to pick up some items my parents had ordered while they were here. While we were at the store one of them men there handed a photo album to my friend and, thinking that it might be an album of pictures of his family, I moved my chair next to his to look. These were not family photos. It was an album of women in belly-dancing costumes. The man makes them and wanted my friend there is nothing like hands on.

I don't have Adwords Analyzer or CBMall. I just search the products at clickbank. I do check out the free overture search tool at times and I will read any free info I can get. Other than that I keep it simple. Reread Googlecash and highlight things you might think will be important. You can always refer back to these notes and highlights.

I think all your other questions have been asked and answered on my blog. You really are in the right direction by doing. Keep working on your campains and remember to do what is outlined in Googlecash as far as limits go. If one doesn't profit, move on. If you stick with it, you Will hit one, you have too : )

Keep in touch and visit my blog for updates.

Regards,
Diane

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
Keep working and never give up. Remember, I did 80 test before hitting it big. You have to jump right in like Gordon did. Hands on is the best way to learn. Don't put things aside, just do it. And never doubt your own success, why would you do that? Have the confidence to know this does work and certainly if I can do it, YOU can too.5E*^*^*^*^*
Keep working and never give up. Remember, I did 80 test before hitting it big. You have to jump right in like Gordon did. Hands on is the best way to learn. Don't put things aside, just do it. And never doubt your own success, why would you do that? Have the confidence to know this does work and certainly if I can do it, YOU can too.

Syria, habibi

2005-06-02T13:25:00.000+03:00

Some people have asked me how living in Syria has been. I'm not sure how to answer a question like that. Living here is phenomenally fascinating. It's completely different from any other place I've lived, and learning a new alphabet and language so I could get around here has been challenging.

There are many things that I like about Syria. People here are really friendly and welcoming, even in the face of all the hardships life here brings and even to Americans. It's impressive to me that many people here are careful to make a distinction between Americans and their government, something that many Americans fail to do when thinking about the Middle East. It's shameful to me that fellow Americans speak so harshly about the Middle East when they know so little about it.

I like that it's relatively safe here, that I can walk around without fearing being mugged or attacked, even at night. I realize that this is because of the everpresent police force and that's discomforting. It's one thing that makes living in Syria sort of wistfully difficult. I want to walk around at night but I don't know if I'm willing to permanently live with such a police force.

I like living in Damascus, a city with so much history. It's the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world and it shows in the Roman ruins that dot the old city and in Straight Street, the street on which, in the Bible, Saul has an encounter with God, changes his name to Paul, and becomes an Apostle. Today it's lined with restaurants, shops, and houses. It's difficult to live here and not to think about religion, history, and how the thousands of years of history shape the way people here think.

There are things I will not miss about Syria, though. I will not miss men staring at me and making comments (such as the man next to me at the bank this morning who looked at me appreciatively and said 'So chic'. I had to supress my laughter, as I'm currently wearing black pants, a lime shirt, and some red and white socks with my black sneakers, as I got tired of rummaging through my suitcase looking for clothes that matched). It really is bothersome that men feel free to stop and stare at foreign women here. There are definitely double standards for foreign women. Whereas it would be awful for a man to whistle at a woman in hijab and just damning for him to touch her, as I've experienced, somehow it's okay for men to reach out and grab foreign women.

I won't miss the sadness of knowing the paradox of Syrians being such hard workers and having so much potential and the feeling that I get from some of my friends that there is little hope here. Syria is a beautiful place and, while it's difficult to predict what will happen, it's sad to think that there are people here with so much talent who might never get to use it.

Living in Syria has been fantastic. I'll definitely be back. No Inshallah about it.

One More Week

2005-06-01T22:55:00.000+03:00

I have one more week left in Damascus and I'm finding even writing about leaving difficult. I didn't know what I expected when I came here and I'm not sure I know what to expect when I leave. It will, I imagine, be a bit of a shock to return to the US from the Middle East after 7 months, especially after being in a country free of the American consumerism that has spread across the world.

Smoke This

2005-06-01T18:11:00.000+03:00

Two nights ago I went out to dinner with some friends for a good friend's birthday. We went to Ararat, a Chinese restaurant in the Old City. Yes, this is Syria. It used to be an Armenian restaurant and I guess when ownership changed and it became a Chinese restaurant they decided to keep the name. Just as there's something odd about seeing a McDonald's in a 600 year old building in Germany (go to Celle), there's something strange about seeing a Chinese restaurant in a wobbly alley in the Old City in Damascus.

The interesting part about this story is not the Chinese restaurant, though. The interesting part is the smoke. I've lived here for seven months now and this, combined with my previous 13 odd months in London, has somewhat acclimatized me to smoke. To give you an idea of what smoking means here, Syria is a place where my teacher made us have a discussion about the pros and cons of smoking for your health. Cigarettes cost about a dollar a pack here and you can smoke everywhere: schools, restaurants, and hospitals. Yes, hospitals.

I'm a strict non-smoker, I've never smoked, I never will. I've learned to deal with people smoking, which is fine. Though I don't smoke and really don't like smoke wafting around my face, people have a right to smoke.

At this restaurant, though, something was wrong with the ventilation and my eyes were burning from the smoke. I mean hurting so much that I was not only tearing up but I could barely open my eyes. And everyone except for me and one friend smoked, in shifts, it seemed. I asked if people could stop smoking because my eyes were really hurting and apologized profusely and one of my friends actually got annoyed with me for asking him to stop smoking. Another friend suggested that perhaps I sit at another table or go outside.

Had it not been my friend's birthday, I would have gotten up and walked out. I couldn't believe that my friends were being so obnoxious. It's not as if I was asking them to stop smoking just because I don't like smoke; the smoke was actually burning my eyes. I understand that smoking is an addiction but I don't feel that asking someone to stop smoking for an hour is a huge imposition.

Although I like Syria, the fact that there's far less smoke in the US is one reason why I will be glad to go back there. I like non-smoking sections in restaurants, I like that you can't smoke in bars in California and New York, I like that you can't smoke in hospitals. And as much as life in Syria can be nice, the ever-present smoke is awful.

Kids Wandering Around

2005-05-29T18:59:00.000+03:00

I wandered up to the market near Ruknedin today. It's quite a nice long, fairly straight souk, tucked away under shade and with several picturesque mosques along the way. School had just gotten out and little kids were running around eating ice cream, wandering around with friends, and doing errands. I saw one little girl probably no older than four trapising along purposefully with a bag full of beans.

That's one thing that I will miss about Syria. Kids here run around with abandon. There's no fear that they will be kidnapped, so you see them by themselves in parks and the souk. There are no worried parents watching them constantly or keeping them at arm's length. It's nice that they're allowed to be kids like that and that parents don't have to live in fear.

The flip side of this, of course, is that you also see kids who are quite young who are working. I see boys who can't be older than eight or nine selling cigarettes and gum. It's hard to see them doing that. Life here can be blissfully lovely, like when you see kids running around by themselves, but it is also really difficult. Today it was fantastic, though, to see so many kids being just kids.

Cat Ladies

2005-05-28T19:33:00.000+03:00

The five months I was living in Sha'alan, I didn't write about the cat ladies. As in most neighborhoods in Damascus, there are a swarm of stray cats in Sha'alan. The stray cats here are generally not cute. They're scraggly, dirty, and make horrible screeching mewls that sound like enormously unhappy babies.

For whatever reason, a few women in my neighborhood feed the cats on a regular basis. They come out sometime mid-morning and make little platters of gooey, slippery animal innards for the little felines. It's enormously disgusting to see the innards and to see the cats slurping them down. The cats seem happy, which I think sometimes diminishes my recoil upon seeing them eating.

I don't have a soft spot for cats eating chicken innards, but I do on occasion find the stray cats amusing. Just down the street from my apartment building is a bustling vegetable market. The past few months quite a few people have been selling fresh grape leaves and they'll often sit with their boxes of produce on my street, away from the noise of the market, to count and prepare their grape leaves.

One morning I was walking to school and saw two men sitting on the sidewalk, boxes of grape leaves surrounding them. They had stashed one box in a shady spot, and one of the stray cats was sitting regally on top of it. Between the regular feedings and the nice spots to laze around, the stray cats in Sha'alan have a pretty good life.

Moving, Democracy

2005-05-28T10:19:00.000+03:00

A fellow Syrian blogger pointed out to me that the comment about democracy having Arabic roots was made by Colonel Mohammar Qaddafi of Libya. That came up in our conversation on Thursday but I had forgotten to write about that. What I thought was interesting was that one of my friends who attends IFEAD, the French center for learning Arabic here, said that her professor had told her that as well and a few of our Syrian friends agreed that the word democracy has Arabic roots. Looking up the word, I saw that it has Latin, Greek, and Indo-European roots.

In other news, I'm moving today. After talking to her the morning of the 24th and reminding her that I would be moving out on the 31st, as we had agreed, my landlady decided later that day that she wanted me to leave on the 25th but I managed to work it out so I could move today. I hate packing and I hate moving my stuff. It's so stressful. Oh well. It will all be over today. It makes my leaving Syria rather final, though, at least packing up my stuff. I'm leaving in about a week and a half, this after coming here and thinking I would be here for two months.

Thursday Night

2005-05-26T02:20:00.000+03:00

Two of my friends who also have birthdays at the end of May and I had a party at my place last night. It was a typical sort of party. We bought a case of beer and several bottles of wine, made some fruity alcoholic punch, and invited a slew of friends over. I hooked up my iPod to my friend's speakers and - voila - party.

Among the hot topics last night: the origin of the word 'democracy'. My friend's teacher insisted to her that the word has a partial Arabic root, with 'cracy' coming from the Arabic word for chairs, 'kuwarsi'. Another hot topic: tarantulas. Recently quite a few of my friends and I have seen quite a few large, fist-sized furry spiders around the Old City. We've wondered if they're tarantulas. They're certainly rather scary, especially when you run across one scampering across a cobblestone street late at night.

We didn't come to any conclusions on either of these topics and the conversation shifted abruptly when a friend got a call from his journalist friend saying there had been an explosion in Mezzeh, a neighborhood in Damascus. We couldn't find any information on Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya (and, over 12 hours later I still haven't seen anything on the tv or internet news). Since there was no moreinformation, though, we went back to drinking and joking. What else do you do?

Ah, Birthday

2005-05-26T00:17:00.000+03:00

My birthday was rather low-key. I got some kiwi-mango-orange juice from my favorite juice place and sat in the park watching some huge, tall-legged ants run around while waiting for my friend to pick me up to go to lunch. He had rented a car so he can travel around Syria with his friend, so we took advantage of this and went up to Jebel Qassion for lunch. Restaurants on the mountain are usually ripoffs but we, surprisingly, managed to end up at one with a menu, admiring the view and saying, over and over 'What a nice view!', 'Oh why yes - did you notice the view?'

Afterwards I went to my friend's shop in the Old City and hung out with him for a while. We sat outside, watching people walk past: a group of four military-looking American men, kids in the neighborhood, and vegetable vendors pushing large wooden carts. My friend jumped up when he saw our tall British friend and his parents, who were in town for a week and a half. His mom was on the hunt for feather dusters (which are rather expensive in the UK) and was insistent that my friend acquire one for his flat in London. He was rather embarassed that the one thing his mother wanted to buy here is feather dusters. I thought it was rather cute.

I went out to dinner with some friends at my favorite restaurant, Beit Shammi. It's a beautifully restored courtyard house and the food and service is always good; I think the fresh, hot bread there really wins me over, though. It's such a disappointment to go to a restaurant and get pita bread in little plastic bags.

I don't expect people to lavish me with attention on my birthday, but a few people turned up and didn't even say hello to me. That's just rude. it was a nice evening, though. I got to see some people that I don't see very often, and I met one of my friend's dad who is visiting for a few weeks.

Afterwards, several of us went to get some stiffly overpriced beers at Oxygen, a deeply red restaurant bar in the Old City, the sort that is decorated fairly well except for the large, plastic pharaoh statue in the middle of the wall. Somehow we got into a discussion about working long hours and the resultant decrease in productivity and I mentioned that I know that, when I had to work 12 hours or more, at some point my productivity and my concentration significantly decreased. To this one of my friends said rather snarkishly, 'What sort of job did *you* ever work where you had to work long hours?' I very cooly said 'I was a journalist working during the war in 2003.' This is from a guy who has casually mentioned to me that he's possibly interested in a career in journalism; I know I've told him I used to be a journalist.

It was definitely a low-key birthday. Fairly relaxing. And now I'm 28.

Today is...

2005-05-24T00:21:00.000+03:00

my birthday!

In Which I Am Vigorously Scrubbed Clean

2005-05-23T16:39:00.000+03:00

This morning my mom and I went to a hammam in the Old City. I hadn't been since shortly after I got to Damascus; my first experience was at a hammam I didn't particuarly like and this hammam is open to women only on Mondays, when I had classes (Such is life in the Arab world).

My mom was particularly excited about the experience. Spa days in the US cost a lot and I had told her that the hammam here costs about $6. It's all wonderful, too. We walked in through two sets of doors and curtains straight into a marble tiled, skylit courtyard changing room (hence the multiple curtains and doors, to keep eyes on the street from looking in). Women in hijab came in, undid their hijab and settled in for some relaxation at the hammam. After wrapping up in towels and putting on getting our bowls full of loofahs, a scrub mitten, olive soap, and sumptuous smelling shampoo, we too were on our way and headed into the steam room to sweat a little.

While we were in there a woman strolled in and, after refusing our offer to make room for her to sit down, ever-so-casually asked us where we were from and what we were doing in Damascus. As she pressed us for more information, we found out that she's from Morocco. For the first time since I started learning Arabic, I was talking to someone from Morocco and I at last understood that their dialect is difficult to understand. I also finally understood that the hammam really is a place for women to socialize and check each other out.

Although my mom and I had decided against getting the rubdown/scrub with the scrub mitten, when the woman came into the steam room and asked us if we were getting the scrub, we decided to go for it. We had been trying to scrub ourselves with the mittens ourselves and weren't bringing up any dirt, so I thought it would be good to get a scrub. I went first, and, after scrubbing me all over while I was sitting down, the woman had me lie down and scrubbed me all over again. She had me turn over several times. She even scrubbed my hand and my fingers. My skin felt so smooth and lovely afterwards. My mom got similarly scrubbed, and then (after I nearly slipped and cracked open my head on the marble floor after failing to notice a small water channel in the floor) we moved on to wash ourselves, dipping the bowls our supplies came in to big marble basins filling up with water from wall taps and letting the water splash over us.

A nice wash with a loofah, olive soap, and sumptuous shampoo later, we stepped into the sauna to relax. My mom was so pleased; it was such a soothing experience, and we ended up with glowingly soft, smooth skin. All for the low price of $12 for the both of us, including our loofahs and the rest of our supplies. I know that, if my mom lived here, she would go to the hammam every Monday. She told me that I should go more often. It was fun to go with my mom because she enjoyed the experience so much. It really is wonderful, to walk into a soothing courtyard with a marble fountain in the center, into a hamman that's probably a few hundred years old, and walk out glowing, pores humming,

Oh Fun!

2005-05-22T00:24:00.000+03:00

Traveling around with my parents is really nice. It's great to see them get excited about Syria; it makes me excited about being here. We've traveled to Aleppo, the Dead Cities, to Byblos and Beirut in Lebanon, and to Palmyra. It's been quite an extensive and fun trip. They like to do a lot of the things I like to do, to: eat well, walk around, get some juice, see some history.

One of the best parts has been seeing my dad walk around without any problems for the first time in over 5 years. He had knee problems the past several years, making it difficult for him to walk. After undergoing two knee replacements over a period of three years, though, he's walking like he used to before any of the problems started. He's been scrambling over rocks, running up and down stairs, walking kilometers, and jumping into cabs with no problems. He's really been enjoying himself because of that, and that makes me happy.

Yay! Parents!

2005-05-15T01:28:00.000+03:00

My parents got to Damascus yesterday and it's wonderful to see them. Walking around with them is like walking around with new eyes. Because I walk these streets every day, I often forget how fascinating and weird Damascus is. We've walked around the Old City an enormous amount, gone to one of my favorite juice places, and eaten schwarma and falafel. My parents tried zatar for the first time today and declared it delicious. I had it for the first time in months and realized that, even though I had gotten sick of it, it is rather tasty.

The best part is just seeing them. They're so much fun to be with.

Oh Homs

2005-05-12T23:41:00.000+03:00

I just got back from a bit of a whirlwind trip around Syria with my Finnish friend. We took off for Krak des Chevaliers Monday morning. In order to get to Krak des Chevaliers from Damascus we took a bus to Homs, where we were promptly accosted by a taxi driver who assured us there are no buses to the castle from Homs. This is, of course, not true, and we made our way to the line for buses to Tartus, where a nice employee helped us buy tickets and then told the bus driver to drop us foreigners off at the highway intersection leading to the castle.

That’s exactly what happened. The driver stopped at the edge of the highway and we stumbled out, a bit perplexed. I had read there was a bus up the mountain to the castle but wasn’t exactly sure where this bus would be. This being Syria and us looking like foreigners, it took about a minute before someone walked up to us and asked us where we were going, then flagged down a van to take us up the mountain. For once I managed to negotiate a good deal, walking away from this first driver, who I thought was charging too much, then doing the same with a second driver. Unfortunately, the third driver, who I drove a hard bargain with, turned out to be a bit of a creep, gesturing to us to sit in the front next to him. My friend and I told him, no, thanks, we loved sitting where we were and firmly refused his offer to wait for us while we wandered around the castle.

We wandered around the castle for a while. It’s pretty, set up on a hill overlooking green farmland. It was fun to walk around the ramparts and, since the weather was temperate, it was a good day to be climbing around ruins. It was pretty interesting to see a mosque in a castle.

In order to get to Hama, our next destination, we had to go back through Homs, a city that’s the butt of Syrian jokes. We soon made our own determination of why that is. We got to the bus station and were immediately accosted by men yelling city destinations at us: ‘HALAB’ ‘HALAB’ ‘HALAB’ ‘SHAM’ ‘SHAM’ ‘SHAM’. It’s all rather irritating when you’re in the best of moods but, when you’re hungry, as we were, it was especially grating. We just wanted to get some schwarma. We plowed through the screaming men, found a schwarma place, and then, after I bought a bottle of water, a man, realizing I spoke Arabic, stuck his face out in front of my face and started blabbing away in Arabic. I don’t know what he was saying, but for some reason, his bobbing head, persistently following me as I wrenched around and tried to get away from him, was too much. ‘Enough! Go away!’ I yelled. ‘I don’t want anything!’ Sometimes the words for 'Piss off you wanker' just elude me in Arabic. I make do with what I know. My friend and I ran off to find our bus, eating our schwarma in the middle of moving buses, away from the madness of the bus terminal.

Our arrival in Hama was blissfully peaceful: with no taxi drivers chirping in our faces as soon as we got off the bus we got into a taxi with a meter, found our hotel, and collapsed on comfy beds. When we were checking in the man at reception sold us on an organized trip to Apamea and the Dead Cities, and informed us that two Americans would be going with us. I turned to my friend and said ‘I’m so sorry – you’re going to have to spend a day with three Americans!’ The receptionist offered her some painkillers as preparation. I ruefully admitted she might need them.

Syrian Social National Party

2005-05-09T10:02:00.000+03:00

I meet with a young Syrian woman to do a language exchange once or twice a week: I help her study English and she helps me with my Arabic. Yesterday when I went over to her house she excitedly told me that her father was going to be interviewed on tv in an hour so she wanted to know if it was okay if we watched it. I said sure, we sat down to work on her reading, and then when it came to my time, I asked her why her father was being interviewed.

It turns out he's a member of the Syrian Social National Party, a political party that was only recently once again allowed in Syria. I asked her what the party stands for and she told me that they advocate a greater, unified Syria that would include Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, and Kuwait. Their flag is the flag I had seen at the support rally in March and been unable to identify, so it was quite exciting to learn more about the party and find out that my friend is a supporter of it.

I had quite a few questions for her, like why she thought these areas that are currently separate states and territories should be under one government, why they should be one country. She emphasized her belief that these areas should be unified because they have a common history and language.

There was so much I wanted to ask her: how many people support this idea? How do the Kurds figure into this? What about Jerusalem? that I forgot some other, important questions, like what did she think about the pullout of Syrian troops from Lebanon? What implication does that have for the party's agenda? How does the party plan to bring the 'greater Syria' about?

It was fun to talk about this topic and I hope I get to talk to her about it some more but it talking politics in the Middle East still often makes me a little anxious. I still don't know my way around Middle Eastern politics that well and I definitely have strong opinions on American politics, but sometimes I feel like what I perceive as my curiosity about politics in the region is taken as criticism of political activity here.

About a Month Left...

2005-05-07T22:27:00.000+03:00

Houses on the Barada River, Old City, Damascus
Originally uploaded by HalfPintGirl.

I have about a month left in Damascus. I keep changing my travel dates, I know, but this time I'm fairly certain I'll be leaving by the middle of June. I came here in November with a return ticket for the end of December. I soon decided to stay until the middle of May, and then about a month ago realized I'd be staying longer.

My birthday is coming up at the end of the month and, as happens to me around this time every year, I've been thinking about what I've learned and done in the past year. Since my last birthday I've learned that I never know where I'm going next and, though I often express anxiety about it, I'm actually pretty comfortable with that. I don't have enormous confidence that I will find the job I'm looking for but I have confidence that somehow things will work out.

A large part of this past year has been my time in Damascus. Some of the most exciting things that have happened to me have happened while I was here: I've been in a traffic jam with a donkey, I've lounged along the Euphrates, I've slept under the stars in the desert, and I've struggled with and enjoyed Arabic. I've grown very fond of the scene in this picture in Damascus and will miss it. I also feel it is time for me to go home, wherever that is. I think I have to make one.

little triumphs are all it takes

2005-05-07T14:04:00.000+03:00

In a few weeks I will be 28. I've made it this far and have been a journalist, lived on three continents, speak five languages in varying degrees of fluency, have embarassed myself to the point of tears at least five times in my adult life, have finally learned how to dance, wear great accessories, have a music collection I'm so pleased with I'd happily let you scroll through my iPod, and I'm still not sure if I like dogs.

I had a particularly cringingly embarassing moment over the weekend and related it to a good friend of mine. I pointed out one small detail I thought made my story just a little less embarassing and he said 'little triumphs are all it takes [to make you feel better]'. My life is full of little triumphs I'd like to think make my awful moments a little easier to bear. At least that's what I need to believe today.

Beirut, part 1

2005-05-05T18:49:00.000+03:00

This past weekend my friend and I went to Beirut. We survived a fairly reckless taxi ride there, our driver making it from Damascus to Beirut in two hours, including about twenty minutes or half an hour we spent at the border. He passed trucks on mountain curves, ate, talked on his cell phone, and drove, and turned around to look at me and my friend when we expressed some sort of anxiety.

Our driver dropped us off in Martyr's Square and under a bright blue sky we blinked and tried to get our bearings. Directly across the street was us was a wall with grafitti saying 'Syria Out!'. We walked over to get a closer look and then headed across the square to Hariri's grave.

Although I've been aware of the consequences Hariri's assassination might have for Lebanon, and understanding of the depth of emotion surrounding his death eluded me until I stepped into the tent over Hariri's grave, a quiet, cool place filled with his photos, flowers, and people walking around quietly. My friend and I walked in front of Hariri's grave, a mound covered in flowers, and then walked back to his bodyguards' graves. I think that's when the enormity of this event overwhelmed me. My friend and I stood there, stunned, looking at the photos of the bodyguards, one of them younger than us, and felt an absolute sadness.

We walked back out into the sun and over to a group of tents set up in the middle of Martyr's Square and ended up talking to a group of enthusiastic young Lebanese guys, all of whom had been sleeping in the Square since Hariri's assassination and were moving out the next day, their mission to get the Syrian troops out of Lebanon accomplished. One of them, a thirty-something man in a green silk East-Asian jacket, leaned over and told me he had lived in the US for 22 years when he found out I am from the US. He told me he had lived and studied with Steven Segal. I was duly not impressed. At the same time, another eager young fellow was asking my friend for her e-mail address (this before he had asked what her name is). That was about the time we decided to leave and wander off to the coast.

A Very High Fidelity Moment

2005-05-05T00:36:00.000+03:00

Last night I went to a friend's birthday party at her house in the Old City. I was one of the first guests to arrive, so I was checking out the house, a beautifully restored courtyard house, when three guys I didn't know walked in. It turns out they're visiting. I've been in the mood to meet new people recently so I talked to two of them (the third wasn't feeling fantastic, so he was resting for a a good majority of the party) for a long time. One of them, a Brit, in addition to be a big broccoli fan like me, turned out to be a music fanatic. In typical music geek style, we were talking about our iPods, the iTunes store, and rediscovering music from our childhoods. Then, suddenly, he asked me the one question I always want people to ask me but they never do, which is 'What's the last song you listened to?'

I made a face, because, of course, after years of waiting, I had to admit to listening to something that I didn't want to be his first impression, musically, of me. I told him that the last song I had listened to was Kylie Minogue, probably I Believe in You.

Like Rob Fleming, the protagonist in High Fidelity, I'm obsessed with music. I love listening to it. In London, I had soundtracks for taking the underground, studying, cooking, and chilling out. I've always got a song in my head; my life has a soundtrack. I'm the girl who plans the perfect mix. I stay up too late because I can't stop listening to music. And there I was, having to admit that the last song I listened to was Kylie Minogue. I really wanted it to be something fantastically cool, like the Postal Service or Outkast.

Maybe next time.

Animal Life in my Kitchen

2005-04-28T14:13:00.000+03:00

This morning I got up and stumbled to the kitchen to put water for tea on. I opened the door and was greeted by a sparrow flapping madly about and whizzing around the kitchen. I shut the door. When I opened it again the bird flew rapidly towards my head then spun around and made a dash for the glass doors leading to the balcony, crashed, then hopped around and settled on top of the refrigerator. I glanced up at it. It blinked at me sadly.

Arming myself with a pot lid to protect myself in case the sparrow decided to dive towards my head again, I ran to the doors, opened them, then closed the kitchen door and waited a few minutes to head back into the kitchen.

I cautiously opened the door. No sparrow flapping about. No bird on top of the refrigerator. Excellent. I shut the balcony door, made my tea, grabbed a banana, then started to walk out to the living room to enjoy my breakfast.

But something wasn't right. For some reason, I glanced down behind the door, and there was the sparrow, cowering defeatedly in the corner. Oh dear.

I opened the door again. The bird stayed where it was. 'Come on!' I said (in Arabic, of course). 'Go!' 'Freedom!' I yelled, as I gestured towards the door. Nothing. I tried startling it, but it wouldn't budge. So I left the balcony door open, shut the kitchen door, and started to eat my breakfast. Halfway through my tea, I heard some cheerful chirping coming from the direction of the balcony. 'Ah, success', I thought.

I ran to the kitchen. No sign of the sparrow. I shut the balcony door triumphantly.

Aside from wondering how to get the bird out of my kitchen when I first saw it, I wondered how it got into my apartment. We keep some of the windows open, but they all have screens. I checked this morning and none of them have holes. Maybe it flew in with me when I came home last night and spent the night crashing about in the kitchen. Maybe it had a key. It's a Damascus mystery.

I'm Worth How Many Camels?

2005-04-27T13:26:00.000+03:00

I’m Worth How Many Camels?

In my quest to explore more of Syria, about a week and a half ago two German friends and I headed off to Deir-E-Zur, in the Eastern part of Syria. Because the bus ride there takes about five or six hours from Damascus, the bus stopped at a rest stop in Palmyra for twenty minutes so we could have a bit of a break.

I went into the rest stop to buy some water and immediately was met by a man who wanted me and my friends to stay at his hotel in Palmyra. He kept talking to me in English and I kept responding that, no, my friends and I didn’t need a hotel because we were traveling on to Deir-E-Zur. He said I speak Arabic well, so he kept talking to me and asked me how I like Syria. I told him that it’s great, that the people here are really nice. To this he said, ‘Great! You should stay here. I can set you up with a nice Bedouin who will give you 1000 camels, you can live near Palmyra!’ I hastily told him that I’m married and slipped away to get some water. So there you have it. Apparently I’m worth 1000 camels.

TravelChick

10 March

09 March

08 March, after the farmer's market

07 March

March 06

March 05, end of leftovers...sort of

March 04, or squash day

March 03

My fridge, part 1

I 1/2 tonsillitis

Christmas, Doha Style

Working in Dubai, Part 1

Dubai, Dubai

Eid Mubarak Indeed!

The Art of Gift-Giving, Etta James, and the New Year

Being Here

My Current Soundtrack

Doha Sweet? Doha

*!%$#!

I Dream of Bacon

One Month

10 Things I Like About Doha

Sneakin' Out The Hospital

Last Monday

Bring My Car I Feel to Smash It

A Strange Turn of Events

In My Dreams I'm Dying All the Time

Theme Song

Dust

In Other News...

East/West

San Francisco Dinner

Earthquake Zone

Where is Home?

Stowaway

Indonesia

Crap Music

Meltdown

In Which I Become Quite Crabby

Yes, There Are Nice People Here

And...

reason number 1

Talking Makeup with Benazir Bhutto

One Month

Thursday Night Barbeque

So How About Some Work?

Doha, at Last, Part II

Doha, at Last, part I

Ticket

Grinch-y

Slumped Over Various Random Items

Three Staropramens to the Wind

Ugh, I'm Sweet on Him

Thanksgiving Day

Words

Don't Answer Your Mobile When...

Tomorrow I Will Stop Stressing Out

A Watched Phone Never Rings

Job News

Am I a Moron?

I am Short

In Which Our Heroine Remains Single

The bad thing about being single, part 1

Dreamboat

My Music

Fixing Up Friends

A V. Bridget Jones Day

London

*#!&* job hunting

Brown People Move Slowly!

A Much Needed Break

oh dear. last day.

No, I Can't Stay Here Longer

A Little Adventure

The Unexpected, as Always

The Unexpected, as Always

Little Piddly Things

Job Hunting, More on Leaving

Lazy Friday

#!& job hunting