More Doha Happenings
I am loving the life over here so far. My place is feeling more and more like home, I am getting lots of exercise, meeting new people, and generally dictating my own schedule at work. Yesterday I went out to dinner with a few people and it was a really good time. The thing about working here in Doha, is that everyone is here for a unique reason. Going around the table, we had a mother who is a physician who is specializing in internal disorders; her daughter who is a hippy doing a bit of everything; a teacher from LA who has taught in Venezuela, Japan, and now Doha; me who works for the devil; a very self centered young biologist who teaches nursing on the side…
Time out: The thing about self centered people (and I fall prey to this too) is that they enjoy talking about themselves more than they enjoy listening or hearing about anyone else. The reason these people succeed in living this lifestyle without becoming social outcasts is because these people are usually very interesting. They do interesting things, they follow their own path, and this gives them more to talk about which makes them seem more interesting, which makes them want to do even mooore interesting things, and the cycle continues. Basically, egocentric people are pretty annoying but you still cant hate them completely because they usually lead extremely interesting lives. In the case of this young biologist, he studies sea snakes and especially the ones that get caught in the giant seawater intake pipes up at the gas tanks. He milks, tags and releases these highly deadly (their sting will kill you) critters back into the wild. Pretty cool, but that’s not it, he is also a backpacker who has traveled to a whole bunch of awesome places. I know this much, because in the 30-second introduction that we all did, he took up about five minutes. Back to the story.
…; a visiting friend who was either high, slow or jetlagged; a Japanese-american professor who teaches at Qatar Academy…
Time out: This guy was cool too. He was relatively quite, but when it came to his introduction, it was as if a light switch was turned on. He was far more interesting than the egotistical teacher (and he knew it) but let us draw it out of him rather than forcing it on us. The bait he provided were his research topics: something boring, the evolution of lions (he used some technical terms) throughout some time long ago (some other technical term for one age or another), and the behavioral abnormalities in the reproduction of mammals (or something like that). He refused to talk about his sex research, claiming it to sensitive for the conservative Moroccan restaurant we were eating at, but gave us plenty of anecdotes related to his research on tigers. This guy was also fond of memorable statements like: you have very polish morphology (translation: you look polish) and to live in japan you must be a self inflicting masochist (is there any other kind of masochist I asked). He also told us why professors are so boring and hard to understand. It is intentional he explained. Most professors only care about the research, so lecturing is just an exercise of confusing as many people as possible by talking in circular and elaborate English in a monotonous tone. Back to the program.
…; a kid who got out of school and had the choice of working in the oil industry in Canada or going to Qatar with his parents…
Time out: He was cool too. He decided to try out Qatar and so he arrived and started looking for a job. He had no experience and no one would hire him except for some school that needed a professor for one of their oil classes. This is the same school that the egotistical biologist works at, and evidently they take anyone. Probing him about what that means for the school, having a professor who clearly does not know anything (I asked him in a nice way). He explained that his job was not really to teach but to pass everyone that came in the course. His students, Qataris, take a test at the end of the year, and if they pass they go and get a job in the government and if they fail they take the test over and over again until they pass. It was also interesting to hear that when surveying his class, only 50% of the young men in his class ever intended to have a career. Women responded at around 25%. Most would evidently prefer to work more as a hobby and to live off of the assistance provided by the government. I take these statements with a grain of salt, but that is an interesting claim. Returning.
…; an emergency health service guru; and a random guy and his wife that came late and did not speak much. We had a wonderful dinner at a Moroccan restaurant, where I had a camel sandwich and some wonderful Arabic tea, and then parted ways.
I realize I spent a ridiculous amount of time talking about last night, so let me breeze through the rest of the weeks highlights. I went to a high end auto show at Qatar’s man-made island called the Pearl (still under construction), where I saw some Rolls Royce’s. Bentleys, Lambo’s, Ferrari’s, etc. The thing about seeing these things here is that you are probably just as likely to see them driving around town, so that made it slightly less exciting than normal. They had a bugatti veyron that they did not even uncover, and I was not interesting in waiting for the unveiling, because I will probably see one of those driving around town one day. The highlight of the show for med was the Konesseg (sp?) CCX. This car was priced at well over a million bucks and is one of the fastest cars in the world. I will post pics on Facebook. The best thing was that they turned it on and revved the engine for everyone. It was like a rapid fire machine gun with rabies, loud and uncontrollable.
We had a big party at work because we unveiled our new building (the one I work in), and it was pretty boring. They said there were going to be refreshments so everyone took that to mean drinks and ate lunch before hand. Turns out there was like a million pounds of food and desert at this thing, the vast majority of which will go to waste.
That’s about it so far. Later.
Time out: The thing about self centered people (and I fall prey to this too) is that they enjoy talking about themselves more than they enjoy listening or hearing about anyone else. The reason these people succeed in living this lifestyle without becoming social outcasts is because these people are usually very interesting. They do interesting things, they follow their own path, and this gives them more to talk about which makes them seem more interesting, which makes them want to do even mooore interesting things, and the cycle continues. Basically, egocentric people are pretty annoying but you still cant hate them completely because they usually lead extremely interesting lives. In the case of this young biologist, he studies sea snakes and especially the ones that get caught in the giant seawater intake pipes up at the gas tanks. He milks, tags and releases these highly deadly (their sting will kill you) critters back into the wild. Pretty cool, but that’s not it, he is also a backpacker who has traveled to a whole bunch of awesome places. I know this much, because in the 30-second introduction that we all did, he took up about five minutes. Back to the story.
…; a visiting friend who was either high, slow or jetlagged; a Japanese-american professor who teaches at Qatar Academy…
Time out: This guy was cool too. He was relatively quite, but when it came to his introduction, it was as if a light switch was turned on. He was far more interesting than the egotistical teacher (and he knew it) but let us draw it out of him rather than forcing it on us. The bait he provided were his research topics: something boring, the evolution of lions (he used some technical terms) throughout some time long ago (some other technical term for one age or another), and the behavioral abnormalities in the reproduction of mammals (or something like that). He refused to talk about his sex research, claiming it to sensitive for the conservative Moroccan restaurant we were eating at, but gave us plenty of anecdotes related to his research on tigers. This guy was also fond of memorable statements like: you have very polish morphology (translation: you look polish) and to live in japan you must be a self inflicting masochist (is there any other kind of masochist I asked). He also told us why professors are so boring and hard to understand. It is intentional he explained. Most professors only care about the research, so lecturing is just an exercise of confusing as many people as possible by talking in circular and elaborate English in a monotonous tone. Back to the program.
…; a kid who got out of school and had the choice of working in the oil industry in Canada or going to Qatar with his parents…
Time out: He was cool too. He decided to try out Qatar and so he arrived and started looking for a job. He had no experience and no one would hire him except for some school that needed a professor for one of their oil classes. This is the same school that the egotistical biologist works at, and evidently they take anyone. Probing him about what that means for the school, having a professor who clearly does not know anything (I asked him in a nice way). He explained that his job was not really to teach but to pass everyone that came in the course. His students, Qataris, take a test at the end of the year, and if they pass they go and get a job in the government and if they fail they take the test over and over again until they pass. It was also interesting to hear that when surveying his class, only 50% of the young men in his class ever intended to have a career. Women responded at around 25%. Most would evidently prefer to work more as a hobby and to live off of the assistance provided by the government. I take these statements with a grain of salt, but that is an interesting claim. Returning.
…; an emergency health service guru; and a random guy and his wife that came late and did not speak much. We had a wonderful dinner at a Moroccan restaurant, where I had a camel sandwich and some wonderful Arabic tea, and then parted ways.
I realize I spent a ridiculous amount of time talking about last night, so let me breeze through the rest of the weeks highlights. I went to a high end auto show at Qatar’s man-made island called the Pearl (still under construction), where I saw some Rolls Royce’s. Bentleys, Lambo’s, Ferrari’s, etc. The thing about seeing these things here is that you are probably just as likely to see them driving around town, so that made it slightly less exciting than normal. They had a bugatti veyron that they did not even uncover, and I was not interesting in waiting for the unveiling, because I will probably see one of those driving around town one day. The highlight of the show for med was the Konesseg (sp?) CCX. This car was priced at well over a million bucks and is one of the fastest cars in the world. I will post pics on Facebook. The best thing was that they turned it on and revved the engine for everyone. It was like a rapid fire machine gun with rabies, loud and uncontrollable.
We had a big party at work because we unveiled our new building (the one I work in), and it was pretty boring. They said there were going to be refreshments so everyone took that to mean drinks and ate lunch before hand. Turns out there was like a million pounds of food and desert at this thing, the vast majority of which will go to waste.
That’s about it so far. Later.
posted by Anthony Jackson at 9:51 AM
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