RWLindell

Mobile Test 1

2011-12-30T23:17:00.001+03:00

This is my mobile post, there are many like it but this one is mine

William is Born!

2008-01-07T20:21:00.000+03:00

William Edward Lindell was born on December 26, 2007 at 9:30AM GMT+3. He was 19.5" / 8ibs 2oz (50cm / 3.69Kg).

He was 3 weeks early and had problems with breathing and was placed in the NICU for almost two weeks. Today he came home to a very happy family. Below are some pictures and videos of William's 1st two weeks.

View Album

Get your own

William Coming Home

William's 3rd Day

William's 2nd Day

William is born

SiCKO

2007-06-22T17:51:00.001+03:00

I watched Michael Moore's SiCKO recently and I don't have the same passionate agreement that I had with his last two movies. I think he did a good job in bringing up an important point but he didn't do a very good job in backing up those points with proper analysis.

He basically said:
- US insurance companies are corrupt
- The US should have universal health care
- Countries with universal health care are happier
- Doctors under UHC are doing well and can concentrate on fixing people not requiring payments.
- The taxes are not that bad with UHC
- Patients under UHC are happy, the lines are not as long as we are lead to believe
- People in Cuba get $120 prescriptions for 5 cents
- People in the UK get it for ~$10

I don't have a problem with what he said the problem is he did it in his typical the world is so simple Michael Moore fashion. I do agree that based on the evidence in the film that there is an issue with the insurance companies. But these are private companies which means that their charter is to make a profit not to the welfare of the masses. This means the US should step in like the countries with UHC have. But what does that really mean? According to Moore its pretty simple. I'm not saying he's wrong but I am saying he did a poor job of explaing the cost / benefit of the switch.

How much longer will our waits be? Will this affect the medical research that is being done? Will our doctors be happy with the switch, will the patients? How will it be paid for?

Moore insinuated people in France didn't worry about taxes (they have the #1 ranked UHC in he world). He told us how much people made and we're they lived but left out the taxes all together. He interviewed US expats who are not exactly typical citizens.

Then the prescriptions. He showed how cheap they were in other countries but he never explained why. The truth is research for future prescription drugs are paid with the cost of current ones.Most of these costs are incurred by US citizens. If we regulate the cost of drugs then how will we ensure the free market will produce better drugs for future diseases.

I think the system has significant problems, Moore did a good job of bringing this to our attention but he didn't provide any real solutions. Just a bunch of theatrics that discredit him as a legitimate documentry maker. This may be his goal all along. To make a point and let others figure out the non superficial details. This will be a campaign issue for me in the up coming election. Thanks Mike.

Emma's Walking

2007-05-24T03:09:00.000+03:00

Kara took this video on her Mother's Day camera. She took some steps before leaving for the US but now it looks like she's taking off.

Microblogging

2007-05-24T02:47:00.000+03:00

You might have noticed the little box to the left labeled "What am I doing..." It's another Big Brother tool for me to publicize my thoughts. I’m using a tool from Twitter that allows me to Text / SMS a message from my phone and it will make it’s way to my website. The limit / gimmick is your message can only be 140 characters. Not sure why since the limit on an SMS is 160. The term microblogging is starting to be the new buzz word to describe this. MS Word’s spell checker doesn’t recognize it yet but I imagine it will by the next edition. I’m actually pretty intrigued by the idea. I did 4 posts in 24 hours. It allows me to say stuff like “Hey, walking to work is fun and why do people insist on bugging you on an airplane when it’s obvious you just want to read your magazine?” Just whip out the phone, send a text and keep on wondering about the people around me. We’ll see how long it lasts

Faith of a child

2007-05-16T01:21:00.000+03:00

I was going through some photos when I should have been packing and I came across this shot of Emma. I took it with my camera phone as we waited for our order of Papa John's pizza. I had set her in a grownup size chair with a hole in the back. As I became lost in the blinking lights on my phone she slowly sank into the chair to a point where it looked like her knees were going to meet her mouth.

I pulled her up but instead of fixing the situation I set her back down again to see if there would be the same result. Sure enough there was and I decided to capture it with my phone. What I love about this picture in all its 1.3 mega pixel glory is the innocent look on her face. Knowing this can’t be right but not convinced that her dad would purposefully put her in such an awkward predicament. It’s more of a hey dad it be great if you could help but I don’t want to complain. I picked her up gave her a big kiss and we shared a bottle of water. I hope I don’t overlook to many of these moments with my little angle.

Batching It

2007-05-05T18:09:00.001+03:00

Kara and Emma have made the annual expat migration back to the place of distant familiarity. Because of ITS travel restrictions I’m faced with the challenge of living by myself and remembering some of the reasons I decided to get married in the first place. The funny thing about being by yourself is the overly idealistic thought of how productive you will be. The fact is, without my wife here my ability to get through a to do list has suffered quite a bit. I’m hoping this won’t last the entire 7 weeks or else I’ll have lost 20 pounds, lost my job, flunked out of school and be living in a van down by the river.

Here’s my official to do / honey do list:
Fix Kara’s car (she would prefer to not have to use tape to keep the fog light in)
Clean and organize my home office
Move outside plants
Steam Carpets (I don’t know if you can rent one of these in Doha)
Yearly ./ Monthly finance audit
Square away training travel plans

What I did this weekend:
Thursday night
- Fix friends computer
- Downloaded Friday Night Lights
- Worked on travel plans
- Watched pilot episode

Friday
- Went to church
- Had lunch with pastor until 4:00 (We decided God was working on me)
- Watched FNL until 3:00 AM

Saturday
- Got out of Bed at 12:00
- Watched some FNL
- Cleaned Kitchen
- Watched some FNL
- Cooked and stored 2 pounds of hamburger meat. I got creative and put graded cheese into the meat itself.
- Raided my daughter’s stash of corn rice puff disks
- Watched some more FNL
- Prepared for homegroup tomorrow
- Watched some FNL
- Blogged my slothful weekend

So my question is, why does this happen to me? Does it happen to a lot of people? Have a reverted back to being a 3rd grader who needs to sit in the kitchen until his homework is done? I think it is a matter of everyday life and wondering if only I had some time to myself. If only I could do what I want to do. Well it turns out what I want to do is watch 8 hours of Friday Night Lights and eat cereal in my boxing shorts. I hope that after I’ve indulged in the forbidden fruit of FNL to 3:00 AM I’ll understand it wasn’t that big of a deal and get to a little more productive things. But I gots to know, will the Panthers make it to state? I think this is why I like the idea of school so much. I have a defined schedule with set goals and it keeps me honest.

And don’t worry too much honey. I think my sloth stage is over. With 5 empty cereal bowls sitting on my desk I've decided I'm was a little to close to having a hazmat team being called.

Howdy Mr. Ambassador

2007-04-28T22:45:00.000+03:00

This happened a while back but I never got to blog about it. Enough people found it funny so I thought it was worth a post. In March TAMUQ celebrated the opening of the new 200 million dollar engineering building. It wasn’t really an opening it was a celebration of its existence and the idea that someday it would be open. A number of VVIPs came into town for this including former President George Bush and Rick Perry.

Among the VIPs, who people may not know by face, were ambassadors and former ambassadors from the United States. I happened to meet one of these gentlemen by the name of Edward Djerjian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Djerejian). As I was outside instructing some movers where to park their truck so they could pick up equipment from training the week before, I saw a car from the Ritz drop a man off in a suit. Not a big deal, it happens fairly often here. He then came up and asked me where the advisory board met. This clued me into the fact that one he was important and two I was going to have to ask my mover friends to wait for a second. After he patiently walked with me to seek out the advisory board we determined that they were in the new building that was a good walk away. Our official drivers were gone and I nominated myself to escort this gentleman to meet his counterparts in my ’97 Hyundai Galloper. Not exactly a step up from a Ritz Limo but I figured if he was over here doing business he could handle it.

At this point I decided to ask who this person was and what he was doing with TAMUQ. That’s when I learned he was the former ambassador to Israel and Syria. My first thought was “Don’t say anything stupid”. That was good advice to myself seeing that my second thought was “Wow Israel, that’s a sticky one.” So I just nodded my head wanting to explain to him I wasn’t completely ignorant of the gravity of those posts but didn’t know how to say it. I then learned he was the founder of the Baker Institute for Public Policy. How do you match that, tell him I founded the Qatar Foundation running club? He did give me a compliment when I was able to talk my way through a closed gate to get a shortcut to the building. Saying something about diplomacy. I got out of the galloper and explained to the guard that there was a very important person in my sputtering truck. I then persuaded him to move the road block while shaking his hand the whole time. I guess it was better then driving over the curb and giving him the finger.

After looking up the ambassador’s bio I later found out he was a member of the Iraq study group and I’ve actually read their report. I guess I should have looked at the authors. I think I could have made some intelligent comments to that respect. Then he would have replied saying thanks, Secretary Gates is on board with this but now we’ve got your green light we’ll give it a go ahead. So after taking the long short cut, he managed to link up with the army of suites. I went back to making sure the boxes made it back to the UK. Yet another random day in Doha.

A Trip to the Desert

2007-04-20T23:41:00.000+03:00

A few weeks ago my mom and brother came out to visit me and the family. We did a city tour, country tour, visited the souqs but our most exciting trip was to the inland sea.

Google Maps

There are a couple of rules you try to follow when driving 20 miles into the desert. Things like not going alone and using a reliable car are on the top of the list. Well, I’m Russell and I’ve been out in the desert enough to take a couple of chance. Since it wasn’t a weekend there wasn’t anybody else available to go with us. My car’s performance had been a little spotty but I figured as long as I took it easy it would be OK.

Well, as you can probably guess things didn’t go as well as planned. We made it to Sealine which is the resort right outside where the dunes begin. This is where you let the air out of your tires so they have bigger footprints. Well I forgot the tire gauge so we had to estimate what 15 psi looked like. No big deal but I should have taken it as a sign. After letting out the air we went up and down a couple of the safe dunes. These were considered safe because if I got stuck we could walk back to Sealine. We got stuck a couple of times but nothing too big and it added to the experience. After this we decided to head to the inland sea. For most of the way we stayed on what’s called the desert highway. It’s a worn path that you can drive 60 miles an hour on. It’s what I would imagine the Utah salt flats to be like, except surrounded by dunes. We made it to the inland sea without incident and decided to stop and take some pictures from on top of a dune. After the photo op we got back in to the Galloper and nothing happened. The car wouldn’t start. My first thought was huh, I must have left it in drive. Looked down, nope it’s in park. I had my reoccurring urge of wishing I had taken that auto shop class instead of Spanish back in high school. I then go into denial. No, no way I’m stuck in the middle of the desert with a car that’s not starting. Not a big deal something always turns up. And it did, a car came over the ridge and saw us. I waved and they turned around and drove away. Great. So my brother and I kicked tires and analyzed the little noises a car makes when it’s not doing what it’s supposed to. So after I came to the conclusion that we were in a fix I went on a walk to try and find some help.

I had a couple of things going through my mind. Kara just suffered a miscarriage, my mom being diagnosed with breast cancer and now I just got us stuck in the middle of nowhere because I was stupid. The book of Job did come to mind at this point. So I started praying. Some people call it desperate but I decided it was about time. After about 30 seconds of telling God that I’ve had enough and I need intervention the car I apparently waved off came back with another one. It was two English families who were completely useless with cars but did give me the idea to call the police. They also told me the car I was walking to earlier was abandoned and appeared to be stuck in the sand. Apparently I’m not the first person to get stuck out here. I did call the police and they quickly connected me to the local post where nobody spoke English. As I was making this call the guy in charge of this mystery outpost drove up and asked if we needed any help. He was the one guy who did speak English. I asked him to translate to the guy on the phone but he informed me he was who I needed and he would tow me to the station.

This is where it got weird. He pulls my car through the dunes to the police station. A bunch of guys in traditional dress walk out and start poking and prodding at my engine. They all argue in Arabic about what the issue is and keep on asking me to try and start the car. During this time my mom and brother are enjoying a drink in the shade with the support team of a guy who just Kayaked around the country (http://www.axabelifeconfident.com/challenge.htm). I went to see how they were doing and all of a sudden my car was started. The starter was broken and apparently one guy stuck a pipe in the engine to bridge a connection and bam we were ready to go. But this is the Middle East, a stranger just pulled me out of the desert and fixed my car. We were practically family now. He invited us in for tea and my mom and brother had their second sit down Arabic tea session. Next we were invited to go see a small “island” (Google Maps) on the police company boat with the kayak crew. After that we were invited for a sit down lunch. Sit down lunch being we sat down on the floor around a plate of rice and chicken.

After that we said our goodbyes and I gave our new friend my mobile incase he ever needed a favor. Offering money would have been highly offensive. He in return gave us Supreme Council for the Environment gift packs consisting of a hat, t-shirt and PR brochure written in Arabic. Our friend also called us to make sure that we got out of the desert OK. We made it back without an incident and I called my mechanic friend to work his magic and my mom and brother have had an experience that I could have never planned. Just another random day in Qatar.

Surprised by Joy - C.S. Lewis

2007-04-17T20:07:00.000+03:00

I just finished listening to C.S. Lewis' "Surprised by Joy". I don't think I grasped everything it had to offer because I listened to it in 10 - 15 minute increments as I drove to work and that’s not how you listen to an author like him. His writing is simply brilliant. If you want to present Christianity to somebody holding a Ph.D. in literature he's your man. Many times I reread / relisten to what he says just to admire the way he puts the words together. In Suprised by Joy the last paragraph of chapter 14 was one of those cases. It apparently had the same affect on a lot of people because when I googled a sentence of it I got 37,000 results back.

The last paragraph of chapter 14:

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused be wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/ownwords/joy.html

The Lord gives and takes away

2007-04-12T08:11:00.000+03:00

It’s been a while since I’ve written a post. This is mainly been because school has sucked up all of my free time but Kara and I recently experienced a loss that I need to blog about. This is more for personal therapy then anything else.

Kara learned that she was pregnant with our second child about a month ago. The news was met with a combination of joy and surprise. We were not expecting to be expecting quite yet. That surprise quickly changed to the joy you have when thinking about a new baby and all the uninhibited speculation about the next 20 years. The thoughts of Emma having younger sibling and I can honestly say it didn’t matter if the baby was a boy or a girl.

Even though I thought about it in the abstract the feeling was never real to me, I don’t know why but the idea of being a father to two was in my head but hadn’t made it to my heart yet. We were making plans and adjusting schedules but it never really hit me that there was a new life growing inside of Kara.

This past Sunday morning Kara and I lost the baby when she suffered a miscarriage. She went in for a D&C later that day. Our friends from work and church have been quick to send their condolences and they all want to make sure that we are doing OK and ask if they can help in anyway. The problem is that I don’t know how I’m doing, good or bad. I don’t know how I will move on and how much this actually affected me. I have a very thick skin that has been built up over the years. The problem with it is even though it protects me from worries of other people’s thoughts it also tends to trap mine inside. Other people would call this an emotional wall.

When bonfire stack collapsed in November of 1999 I knew two of the students who died. I couldn’t bring myself to cry even though the whole school was. 4 months later I was at the funeral of my God parent’s son whom I don’t ever remember meeting and it all came out at once. At my grandmother Lindell’s funeral I didn’t cry until I got up to give a Eulogy. Then it inconveniently all came out at once. So the emotions are there but I tend to run from them until circumstances force me to see them.

So how does somebody who is uncomfortable with showing vulnerable emotions or ask for help handle a miscarriage in a healthy way. When trying to title this post I couldn’t think of something appropriate and was actually going to put “No Words” as the title. I then thought about a verse that I though I knew the meaning of.

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
And naked shall I return there.
The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away;
Blessed be the name of the LORD.”
Job 1:21 (NKJV)

There is a song that is inspired by this verse called “Blessed by your name” that I love.
http://www.lyricsbox.com/matt-redman-lyrics-blessed-be-your-name-pfs45jc.html

It brought some tears to my eyes and has helped me to deal with my emotions. I don’t know how much pain is actually down there but I believe the more I can deal with it the better.

Back in my day you were lucky to have AOL and a unix email address

2007-01-18T22:57:00.000+03:00

I’ve finished my first week of grad school without too much drama. I’m pursuing an MBA online through UTDallas right now. Currently I’m taking two courses one is statistics and the other is a project management course. Both are interesting enough and I can already see how both will be useful if I adequately absorb the teaching. I was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly the online interface runs. I have taken a couple of online courses before that were not supported with a campus wide approach. The professor’s tried hard but it usually looked like a “My First Website” website with default colored links to and directions on how to use yahoo groups or chat. UTDallas is using a package called WebCT 6.0 Campus Edition and this is the first time I’ve been exposed to it. It has a couple of quirks but it seems to meet my generations online expectations. Clean useful interface without any unnecessary spinning flaming logos. Multimedia seems to be used where it’s appropriate but not overdone.

In the two classes I’m attending the lecture is recorded and downloadable or it can be streamed from the server. I like this aspect of online classes the most. Mainly because of my knack for falling asleep in most of my classes as an undergrad. It’s a little harder to rewind a live lecture compared to a pre-recorded one. I’ve also started loading the lectures onto my ipod so I can listen to them while I’m driving. I’m not trying be an ubergeek but it makes sense and I actually learn more in 15 minute increments.

In my project management class we have 5 people who have to collaborate on a project. We had our first meeting this morning at 8:00 PM CST or 5:00 AM my time. One person is in Washington state, two in Texas, one on his way to Afghanistan and myself. We meet in a virtual wiz-bangy meeting room where we can chat by typing, one person at a time can talk (disappointed we could hold a fluid conversation), we can use a virtual white board or share programs on our computers. I can do a walkthrough of a website and everybody else can see what I’m doing. People have been doing this stuff for a while but it costs around $40 - $80 an hour using Webex. I was impressed that our school offers this stuff for free. Of course there is the whole tuition thing.

So far I’m enjoying it but I definitely see it eating up a lot of my time. I’ll try to keep everyone updated.

Happy Holidays Y'all

2007-01-05T14:42:00.000+03:00

As with my Christmas cards this post is running a little late. The past month has been very relaxing and truly enjoyable. After we celebrated Thanks Giving we got to see Qatar finally host the Asian Games they had been talking about for the past 3+ years. Most people quietly expected an implosion but I was pleasantly surprised in how well the games were pulled off. I did hear some grumbling about the lack of local volunteers and the marathon wasn’t exactly done in a professional manner (9:00 am start, 4 loop course and only 9 participants). Ironically it rained most of the time. Who would have expected a barren country to get a monsoon during the most important event in its history? Before it was all over, we left for the states and read about the ending online.

We left on December 11th on KLM. After making this trip 7 times and numerous ones to Europe under different conditions and with different airlines these are my recommendations. If you fly business, use BA because the seats fold flat. If you travel economy use BA and Qatar Airways because QA has Audio Video on demand. It can be more expensive then just flying BA though. If you are flying with a young child and are trying to stretch the vacation dollar use KLM. You don’t switch airports and it doesn’t matter that the entertainment stinks because you are going to worry about your child the whole time anyways. It may even be better so you won’t be tempted to turn to the movie and look like a jerk to your wife. I base these off my airplane priorities which are to survive the 24 hours with out going mad, mainly by turning off my brain as much as possible. Sleep and movies usually do the trick for me.

So what about flying with a child? Two words “Game Face”. If you are going 8,000 miles with a kid you better prepare yourself for 24 hours of patience and zero relaxation. Your sleep routine is a subset of theirs and movies usually don’t play into the equation. I had it easy because Kara and I tag teamed during the flight. Since Kara is coming back by herself it will be more of a challenge but I know she’ll be able to do it. Game face also means being prepared. 3/4s of the stuff we bring in carry on luggage is for Emma. Some people call it obsessive but I think they would prefer it to a screaming kid in their ear. Doing those two things kept Emma comfortable and the people on the plane pleasantly mostly oblivious to the young passenger. She cried now and then but never screaming.

When we got to Houston it wasn’t a big “Woo Hoo we’re in Texas” since I was in Dallas only 3 months earlier. It didn’t help that when we started driving I realized that I had lost my Aggie Ring somewhere between here and Amsterdam. I got a sick this can’t be happening feeling in my stomach. Well it did and I had to be a big boy and eventually come to terms with it. I had told Kara a while ago I prayed that if I ever treated the ring like an Idol that God would take it from me. I know that sounds a little extreme but I had been convicted that at times I was a little to prideful of the hunk of gold on my right hand. Sometimes answered prayers hurt. I’m giving it a year to surface before I’ll consider purchasing another one.

Time in Houston was pretty relaxing. Kara and I spent 3 days in Galveston at a hotel next to the ocean. Of course you couldn’t tell it was next to the ocean because of all the fog but that really didn’t matter much. We completed our Christmas shopping and absorbed the American commercialized Christmas experience. We even took a picture of Emma with Santa. We haven’t solidified our position on what we are going to tell her about Santa yet. 2 hours in line with no crying but as soon as she sits on his lap she starts bawling. We got a great picture of her with a terrified look on her face. Memories. San Antonio was great as well, the highlight of the trip was going to the buckhorn museum where we exposed Emma and her cousins to enough dead animals for a life time. They had a Texas Ranger museum but my dad was concerned that he didn’t see Walker or Trevet anywhere. We gave both sets of parents web cams so that Emma could practice her video conferencing skills and they can see her moving more then once every 6 months.

When I tried the web cams out with a conversation with my mom it was strange to see the house I had just been in and know that it was 8000 miles away. This trip has been a bit of geographical and reality mind bender for me. I enjoyed the relaxed three weeks in Texas more this time then ever before and I was a little uneasy about my return. I talked to Kara about missing Texas as she drove me to the airport. Qatar actually seemed a little distant for me. Part of it maybe the fact that I sporadically checked my email so I didn’t feel in the loop while I was gone. My perspective was also pretty skewed though because I spent the whole time sleeping in and eating out. The other could be since I relaxed so much I was putting small roots back into the Texas dirt. I could just be analyzing this to death as well. So when I got back I had a slight case of the blues which haven’t been helped by being here alone without Kara and Emma. As I’ve eased back into work it’s getting better. I also think about some of the places that I still want to visit and become more comfortable with the current situation. I guess for the first time I’m really feeling the emotional cost of living so far from your “home”. Alright enough Debbie downer crap. Life is good here, you just have to put on the right lenses.

Hope everybody had a Merry Christmas

Green Leaves? Oh, you meant Greensleeves.

2006-11-30T16:49:00.000+03:00

I mentioned in my last post that an Education City student gave a performance entitled Green Leaves and ended up playing “What Child Is This?” I was confused on why he picked this song, said he wrote it and then called it something different. After talking telling this story to my infinitely more musically literate wife I learned that he had actually said the song was called “Greensleeves”. This is a song believed to be written by King Henry VIII sometime in the 16th century. “What Child is This?” was written in 1865 to the melody of “Greensleeves”. A little bit more information can be found in the two wikipedia articles below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensleeves

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Child_Is_This%3F

So in the end, I alluded to the idea of this person committing plagiarism who in reality was just playing a classical tune, calling it by the proper name and may have gotten a few word mixed up in his second language. I guess the lesson here is to give people the benefit of the doubt and ignorance can be dangerous. Despite the misunderstanding it was nice to here the song in late November.

D.A.G. Pictures

A friend of mine who’s a photo nut brought all of his toys to the torch lighting yesterday. He’s going to take a number of pictures throughout the Asian Games. I’ve always been impressed with his work, so I would suggest checking back at the below link over the next 2 – 3 weeks.

http://mlucas01.zenfolio.com/f114460686

D.A.G. Yo!

2006-11-29T22:10:00.000+03:00

The 2006 Doha Asian Games are almost here. I've heard about them for the past 2 1/2 years and I'm looking forward to seeing them actually happen. The opening ceremonies will be on December 1st so the Torch is making its way around town. Today it was at Education City and stopped at all the different schools for photos.

Myself and a few others from ITS went out to EC's new outdoor event area which is 80% done and much to the dismay of Her Highness is still sporting the scaffolding. Before the torch made it there we were entertained for about an hour by students from the different campuses. Some read Arabic poetry, a portion of the Quran was read and right afterwards a student prepared a song he called “Green Leaf” and played it on his guitar. The funny thing was he played the Christmas song “What Child Is This?” (http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/w/h/whatcist.htm). I’m not sure what his intentions were in playing the song and calling it something different but I enjoyed it either way.

Halfway through the presentation Her Highness Sheika Moza rolled up in her Rolls Royce limo. We watched the torch go by and went back to work. I’ve criticized the planning for these games and wonder how they will go off but It’s nice that they are here. And while they are here clogging up the streets and causing panic and the grocery stores I might as well enjoy them. Below are a couple of shots I took with my phone. I felt pretty dumb not bringing my Digital Rebel but lesson learned. I’ll post shots that some of my friends took when I can get a hold of them.

The Torch at TAMUQ

So we know where the torch was going

They gave out Qatar flags for us in the crowd to wave

EC's new outdoor event center or something like that

What I’m thankful for

2006-11-27T17:04:00.000+03:00

The Doha Lindell clan celebrated Emma’s first Thanksgiving this past weekend. We had some friends over, a big turkey that I attempted to carve and even watched the Thanksgiving Day parade. It required me to adjust my wireless access point, mess with my laptop and borrow access to somebody’s slingbox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingbox) but gosh darn it we had oversized hot air balloons in the shape of cartoon characters floating across the screen. It’s not so much that I like watching the parade, it’s nice to have that bit of home on in the background.

It was my idea to have a small dinner on Thursday along with the TAMUQ dinner on Friday because I missed the family element to the gathering. Having a moment of silence before we ate in lieu of a prayer makes sense given our cultural makeup but it’s lacking at the same time. We didn’t go around the table saying what we were thankful for but it was nice to have some friends over. So what am I thankful for? This past year we had Emma, check. I have a great marriage to my wonderful wife Kara. I love my job and where I live. I have my wonderful family in the states. God has kept my family safe in a relatively unsafe world. Oh, A&M beat the ever lovin hell out of t.u. 12 – 7 Woo Hoo!

Speaking of the game, this is what college football is all about. I was asked before the game who I realistically thought would win. Begrudgingly I said Texas would probably win this one. Logically speaking, they had home field advantage, beaten better teams then A&M had and it had been 6 year since we beat them. I guess we were due. I wasn’t totally surprised that we won and nobody who was watching it assumed anything until the game was over. I literally had a slight buzz for the rest of the weekend. Flat tire? That’s OK A&M beat tu. Work on Saturday? 12 – 7, woo hoo! We watched it live using a slingbox. Usually we use the campuses VBrick (http://www.vbrick.com/) but something was up so we had to go with the poor man’s solution.

As long as OU beats Nebraska it looks like we will be going to the Holiday Bowl (http://www.holidaybowl.com/). BTHOHB

Indian Impressions part 2

2006-11-27T12:21:00.000+03:00

We attended our conference for the next 5 days and it was really refreshing. Mostly because we had a constant but not too strenuous schedules of worship and teaching. We started our days with being woken up by an annoying loud doorbell at 7:30, eating our “American” breakfast and leaving for the LTT in a tuk tuk by 8:30. The breakfast consisted of eggs, toast and coffee. They may call it American but it was still Indian. Like Taco Bell calling itself Mexican food. After heading arriving at the LTT we did about 30 minutes of praise and worship (singing) followed by a lesson, 30 minute tea break, lesson, mini lesson then lunch. We had traditional Indian buffet style food for lunch and mixed with other people from the conference.

My natural inclination was to sit with people I know and stay in my comfort zone. I felt convicted and it was also suggested that we meet other people. So I started some conversations and met some interesting people from all over the world. One guy started a church in Australia, one in London another in Nepal. I had to use a translator once but it was one of the most rewarding conversations. After lunch we had about 3 ½ hours of free time. 4 out of the 5 days Sandeep and I headed to the markets to see the area and bargain with the locals. The one day we didn’t go we watched some students give a traditional Nepalese dance performance. It was cool to watch and seemed more fulfilling then haggling over the cost of a shirt. After the 3 ½ hour break we’d come back for another teaching and then go to dinner. Our places varied from Subway to traditional Indian food. I went to McDonalds once and found a very different menu. After about two minutes of searching for the double cheese burger I realized they had not beef on the menu. Not surprising seeing that a cow was walking in the street outside. Dang, that would have been a good picture.

Dinner was a good time of fellowship with people from our local church and the different people we met. On our last night we had dinner with a couple from the UK who imparted some wisdom on us. Mainly about how to adjust to this new season in Kara’s and my life. Handling church and our marriage while having a new child. I guess networking has a place outside the corporate world.

On our last full day Sandeep and I for the 2nd time met a student who just wanted to practice his English with us. He offered to show us some good places to shop for no fee as long as he could practice his English. Sounds like an honest desire. I didn’t even pick up on it until Sandeep mentioned how strange it was that this was the second time we heard this story. The deal is the shop gives these guys a cut of whatever we buy. Well we ended up not buying anything from the shop and scored free hospitality sodas. The purpose of the soda is to make you feel obligated to buy something but after fending off a barrage of small cons all week long I didn’t care. They called it hospitality and I wasn’t going to insult them by turning it down.

On our last day we visited the red fort (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Fort) in Old Delhi. I had amazing architecture but there is a definite difference between a 400 year old structure in India and one in Prague. Of course the entrance fee was about $2 compared to the $10 – 15 in Europe. It had a number of components to it and even a small weaponry museum. We ran into a group of 200 or so kids who all wanted to say hi to the tall white guy and shake my hand. So for about 5 minutes I shook all these kids hands who thought I was a novelty. I then had a father ask if he could take a picture of me with his two kids. After the red fort we went into old Delhi where the streets are tight with people, bullock carts, rickshaws, tuk tuks and any other mode of transport. It was more of a functional market area. You won’t find any colored hand bags or people trying to pull you into their shops. You will however be able to find the hardware store, firecracker stall and wedding supplies. It was real India.

So after spending the day in a place where personal space does not exist we grabbed a Tuk Tuk and headed for the oasis of our hotel. It is strange how reality shifts with a new perspective. The place I was skeptical about when I arrived now seemed like the Ritz compared to the places I had seen. We got there in time to enjoy one last meal, load up our luggage and head to the airport. Here everything was going well until we learned that they had overbooked the flight. I got on fine but a number of our friends holding Indian passports did not. I’m not sure if it was random, the fact they were in their home country or Qatar airways thinking it would be easier to handle them. If you lived here, the last reason would sound the most plausible. In the end I made it home and Emma didn’t forget me this time. It was a great trip and experience and I hope to make it back again.

Indian Impressions part 1

2006-11-16T14:07:00.000+03:00

I visited India almost three weeks ago and I thought it was about time that I wrote my experience down. The fact that it was three weeks ago means I’ve already forgotten some of the experience. It started by waking up at 5:30 and getting to the airport about 1 hour later. I along with half our group got bumped up to business class. It was nice but not amazing. Mainly because it business class with economy class service, the flight was only three hours long and Qatar Airways has a pretty good economy class to begin with. But like I said, it was nice.

When we the Delhi airport the pilot, in a somewhat surprised voice, commented on something about there being a smoke alert. I’m not sure what he said but I gather that it was because of all the pollution coming from the city. The city itself was not very impressive from the sky. There was a definite lack of tall imposing structures. I read in “The World Is Flat” that this is because there is not a dependable enough source of electricity to support elevators for buildings over 6 stories. I saw a few that exceeded six stories but not very many. Before we got off the plane they sprayed the entire cabin with disinfectant. I think they do this because on the way back they repeat the routine and it would be insulting to only do it when we were leaving.

Going through customs was uneventful but as we walked from outside the airport to our bus we were accosted by a number of people wanting to carry our bags for 5 euros. I’ve worn the sucker badge a number of times but not that big. I gave the guy 10 rupees ($0.22) which he didn’t seem too impressed with. The same guy then asked everyone getting on the bus for some money. This was with several locals escorting us. I took a number of pictures from our bus as we drove to the airport. I spent most of the time looking out the window at all the strange and foreign sites of everyday life in a different land. My first thoughts were on the hierarchy of transportation. People walking, on bikes, rickshaws, motorized rickshaws (tuc, tucs), mopeds, motorcycles, taxis, compact cars and ginormous busses. I saw very few “nice” private cars. My other thought was that this place makes Doha look clean and organized.

Do Indians smile at strangers, not like they do in Doha. A big bus drove by and my friend Sandeep waved at all of them. Not one waved back and they all gave him a look of what are you looking at. I was taking pictures later in the week and had a school bus go by so I gave a wave. Some of the kids smiled and one gave me the finger. I just laughed.

The hotel was more then I expected but I wasn’t expecting a whole lot. The first room they gave us had only one bed. Since my friend Sandeep and I were sharing the room we felt like it wasn’t gong to be quite enough. After some convincing the hotel maintenance guy was able to create a new bed out of various pieces of a couch synched together with a sheet. Good enough for me. The room was clean but I was glad that I brought my own soap, shampoo and toilet paper. The shower curtain hadn’t been washed in a couple of years and the 1 foot band at the bottom did give me some concern. While there I never got sick but that is probably due to the fact that I preemptively took stomach medicine everyday and was anal about using my hand sanitizer. About 1/3 of our group did get sick at one time or the other. One lady actually had to go to the hospital because she was so dehydrated. In the end there was no permanent damage and the malaria pills seemed to have done their job.

The purpose for this trip was to go to a conference that helped to equip you in leadership roles at a church. It’s called a Leadership Training Time (LTT). So we spent most of our time traveling to our from this conference or being at it. We got to Delhi on Saturday and the conference started on Monday. We went to the local church on Sunday and then spent the rest of the day seeing a little bit of the city. Sandeep and I saw the Indian Gate and The National Museum. The gate was impressive and the museum is good if you are interested in art from the different periods in India’s history. I wasn’t but it was too late to turn back once realized this.

Traveling to the LTT and other parts of India was mainly done in a Tuc Tuc. It’s a 3 wheel motorized rickshaw that runs on clean CNG (compressed natural gas) to help with the pollution problem. The switch to CNG by these guys has apparently been pretty successful in making a dent in the pollution problem. They fit the driver in the front and 2 ½ adults with an American sense of personal space in the back. Of course we’ve seen whole families in the back of some of these. When there were four adults riding in one I sat up front with the driver very closely. There is a strange sensation when you are taking a roundabout on the left side of the road at full speed with a bus about 12 inches next to you. You reason that everybody else does it but you can’t help to think of how absurd it is that everybody is OK with it.

Sunday night we went to visit families who were somehow involved with the local church. I had no idea what to expect. I was just told that we were going to meet with some locals who attend the church. The church meeting area had become flooded and the scheduled meetings and activities had to be canceled. Since it’s a relationship oriented society, it was important that we stay in touch. We split up into 3s and 4s to go meet the families that were about a 10 minute walk from the church. I had read that in India the slums are often hidden from the main roads but that night I saw what they really met. We walked down a street and behind a building into another world. 4 to 6 story buildings were built with about 10 feet between them. Electrical wires and clotheslines crisscrossed between the different buildings. It was dark so I could only see a silhouette of the top of the buildings. Most of the powerful lights were on first floors. Shops selling food, clothes and haircuts were located on the 1st floor. Most of them you didn’t walk into, you just stopped on the muddy street and picked what you wanted from the display. After about 10 minutes of walking and seeing how close people really can live together we came to our families building. We walked up a concrete staircase with no banisters for a couple of floors. It was the same amount of light as if you were walking in a hallway at night and the room at the end had it’s light on with the door halfway open. We arrived had our family’s house and were greeted with a large amount of hospitability.

It was an 8’ by 8’ room with one bed, one electrical outlet, a light bulb with two wires sticking into the outlet, and a small freestanding cupboard. Honestly my first impression was that the father of this home was a simple man. He insisted that I sit on the bed and then he introduced us to his wife and 3 children. He talked about Jesus in simple broken phrases that I assumed he had overheard numerous times from people in church. He then broke from the polite conversation and said that he was a snake and he had been very bad. He was actually drunk when we came to visit and his wife was visibly embarrassed. He then pointed to an old bible in a basket on the wall. He told me that he had read and memorized most of it. So we talked for a while longer about his depression because of lack of work and what he may do next. It wasn’t a fluid smooth conversation but thankfully we had interpreters to make sure everything was being understood. Before we left the church we were asked not to bring bags or camera’s. There was not a problem with crime here, it was just a matter of keeping honest people honest. I think it was good for me so I didn’t obsess about trying to capture what life was really like. The only picture I really wish I could have taken was one of a crayon drawing made by one of the kids. It was of an extremely colorful freestanding home with blue skies and birds. It was the ultimate contrast to where they were currently living.

I’ll finish my impressions in my next post. For now check out the pictures that I could take.

http://rwlindell.com/digpics/Delhi,%20India%202006/

Did you hear about the Aggie who went to Washington?

2006-11-09T08:50:00.000+03:00

In this age of constant polling and instant communication, there are few things that actually catch us by surprise. Kinky coming in 4th, It’s too bad but we saw it coming. Dems taking control of the house and senate, not a shock. Secretary of Defense resigning, that was a shock. Dr. Robert Gates getting tapped for the position, I did an audible “Dag yo!” I think both were good pieces of news. Rumsfeld has always appeared to be too inflexible and made my head want to explode half the time I heard him talk. My hope for Dr. Gates is that he’ll be the same agent of change in our defense policy that he was for A&M. He kept the good and seemed to change only as much as was needed with the bad. When he did make the changes, he did it unapologetically and with purpose.

The change I remember the most was when he made the decision not to use affirmative action in the admissions process. He then decided legacy would no longer be a factor, if your parents went to A&M it doesn’t help you anymore on paper. Both decisions were controversial but I believe that both were logical. He then setup centers around Texas to educate mostly minority students on how to apply to and be accepted to A&M. There weren’t any secrets, just providing information that kids with parents who went to college probably already had. He was basically saying, we’re not giving out any freebees but we see the problem and if you want to help yourself we’ll show you how. This might be an optimistic view but it fits well with me.

By the number of facebook groups that have already popped up, I can tell he will truly be missed. It’s bittersweet but his legacy won’t be going anywhere. Below is the letter he sent to the A&M community last night.

http://www.tamu.edu/home/spotlight/gatesannouncement.html

Note to self: Vote!

2006-10-25T14:47:00.000+03:00

I’m currently looking at my todo list, which I would like to point out is sorted by relevance, priority and project thanks to views in Microsoft Outlook. I have scribbled at the bottom (it’s where I put the important stuff) to vote. It seems like such an obvious thing but I felt the need to remind myself to do my due diligence in respecting the fact I don’t have to own land, be a certain race or gender to pick my fearless leader. I don’t even have to know how to read, but if I don’t I should only ask somebody who I trust to read my ballot to me. That’s according to the directions of my absentee ballot.

I blogged about voting for Kinky earlier and that is still the direction I’m leaning. The analyzer part of me struggles with the idea of putting a character like him in charge. The emotional side of me says damn the consequences and send the political machine a message. According to Kinky’s website, early voting in Bexar County is up some 60% in the first day. Seeing that his goal was to get the nonvoters to vote for him, this sounds like early good news for our cigar toting odd ball. I’m still leaning towards Kinky but I won’t say 100% until I send my ballot off in the next few days.

Vote early and vote often.

Eid Mubarak عيد مبارك

2006-10-23T15:58:00.000+03:00

Kara and I are celebrating Eid right now. All that really means for us is that Ramadan is over and I get three days off from work. Another bonus is I get to post Emma’s almost crawling video.

To see the pictures click here

type="application/x-mplayer2"
name="MediaPlayer"
autostart="0"
showcontrols="1"
showstatusbar="1"
autorewind="1"
showdisplay="0">

Back from Educause

2006-10-17T11:04:00.000+03:00

I’m back from Educause and I would say that the trip was an overall success. This conference was different from the Microsoft TechEd conferences I usually attend. It gives me a higher level view of some of the technologies and policy making that goes into IT. At Tech Ed you are watching guys write code about 75% of the time. Both have their advantages but it was good to see how the other 1/2 lives for a while.

My presentation went pretty well. I would estimate that about 75 people pulled themselves out of bed for the 8:10 showing of “Conecting Your Campus with SMS”. I got a lot of questions and several people asked me about collaborating on this topic in the future. I even made somebody’s blog but I believe it’s in Dutch so I don’t know exactly what they were saying.

http://edutrip2006.blogspot.com/2006/10/connecting-your-campus-with-sms.html

After the conference I drove down to San Antonio and got to see my family for about 40 hours. Even though it was a short amount of time it was great to see everybody. I then spent about 30 hours in airports and planes getting back to Doha. I’m still recovering from jet lag. For some reason it hit me pretty hard this time around.

One of the more surprising events of my trip was when I got back. I don’t know if it was me being gone for a week but Emma looks noticeably bigger. She may be just sitting up straighter but I couldn’t get over the fact of how big she looks. I was only gone a week but something happened.

Facebook

So I’ve given in to the social networking experiment and have signed up on facebook. Only 14 people from my high school have signed up but I actually knew most of them. I guess it takes a certain “type”. It is interesting to see what people are up to and is kind of like a high school reunion without all the annoying small talk.

The Texas Governor’s Race

If you didn’t see the debate you can see it at:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/VideoPlayer/videoPlayer.php?vidId=93181&catId=104

Kinky Friedman for Governor

2006-10-04T16:36:00.000+03:00

This summer my dad mentioned to me that a guy by the name of Kinky Friedman is running for governor. Any time somebody mentions to me that an independent has a real shot at an election I’m halfway to voting for them. I’ll try not to play the all politicians are worthless but I’ve been disillusioned by Washington lately. I don’t know if the idea of just trying something different is good one but I’m tired of what we have. I looked at Kinky's platform and I could tell that he’s shooting from the hip on some of these issues and may be too simplistic in his views to be a reponsible choice.

His famous quote “"How hard can it be?" speaks to this.

Other quotes:
"May the God of your choice bless you,"

"Last time, they spent $100 million just to drive 71 percent of us away from the polls, this time, that 71 percent is coming roarin' back -- with pitchforks ! -- to throw the money-changers out of the temple!"

"Hi, folks, it's Kinky Friedman, here to wish the Houston Comets a happy tenth anniversary." He pauses, then leans forward and jabs his cigar at the camera. "Houston Comets basketball -- it's not just for lesbians anymore!"

A good article, and the source for most of these quotes is at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/17/AR2006071701461_pf.html

He has taken positions that are definitely against my views, pro-gay marriage, pro-choice and allowing casinos to be opened in Texas. The upside of the casinos is they will fund the school system. The decision that I have to make is which is better? A slick talking governor that ignores me or one that tells me what I don’t want to hear to my face. Maybe my analyzer side will kick in later and change my mind but for now I feel like Kinky and I'm going to use my vote to support him. Like he said "I can't screw things up any worse than they already have."

Episode 100 – All things Texas

2006-10-01T13:47:00.000+03:00

Below are some scattered thoughts. The only thing in common is that I refer to Texas in each one of them. It looks like I will be visiting my home state more frequently this year which is exciting for me. Especially since one of the trips will be during the Christmas holiday season.

They like me, they really like me

This October I’m going to be attending a conference in Dallas where I will speak at one of the sessions. One of my colleagues prompted me to submit a proposal and a couple months later they accepted it and we were committed. I’m pretty excited / nervous about the presentation but I’m trying not to get too obsessive about it.

You can read about it at:

http://www.educause.edu/E06/Program/9155?PRODUCT_CODE=E06/SESS058

Thoughts of Texas

The last time I went to the US was this summer and while I was in the car driving from the airport I jotted down my first impressions. I added a few more thoughts throughout the first 24 hours of my trip. I’ve been told that whenever you go somewhere new take as many pictures as you can right away. This is because you are more likely to capture all the unique things before you become desensitized to them. It had been a year since I was in Texas so it was the closest thing that I had to culture shock in my home state. It really wasn’t a shock but more of a buzz.

First impressions after getting off the plane:

Spanish accents in the cleaning staff

Local out of towners are from Mexico not GCC (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE and Oman)

Lots of trucks

New car lots off the highway

Support our troops and USMC stickers

Grass and huge highways

Dixie chicks hate em and love em

People are conservative, sometimes blinded conservative

There are a lot of churches and you don't have to hide them

There are more then 5 types of SUVs

Large American drinks = super gigantic Doha drinks

Annoying shouting guys on the radio telling me to buy now and pay later.

Law of diminishing returns

I remember the first time that I was headed back to Texas. I was really excited, freakishly dangerous excited. It had been a year since I was there and I couldn’t wait. I would spend a week in Florida first but that was OK. Kara had left a few weeks before me, and I was excited to just talk to her while she was in the states. When she called from her parents house I kept on asking “Aren’t you excited to be in Texas”. It was like some long endurance race had come to an end for me.

It reminded me a lot of when I was at A&M and I left for San Antonio for a weekend after my first month of being away. The trips were always exciting but the time between them grew and I was no longer home sick after a while. The same is happening here. I’m excited about going but I’m not beside myself. I think there are a couple of reasons for this. One is Kara and I have learned to cope with living in Doha. We still live the American life through the Internet, season old TV shows, telephone calls and the good memories. So we miss Texas but we’re halfway living there already. So maybe that’s why we only halfway missing it. Living in the flat world makes life a lot easier for us.

http://www.amazon.com/World-Flat-History-Twenty-first-Century/dp/0374292795/ref=pd_ts_b_20/002-6055789-6020028?ie=UTF8&s=books

Going back to School

I just found out that I got accepted to UT-Dallas’ Global MBA program. I will still be living in Doha but I will take online courses from UTD. I expect it to take me 3 to 4 years. At that point I expect to reenter the real world wherever that might be. I picked it because I get the same degree as if I was taking classes on campus and the school is AACSB Acredited. I’m looking forward to the new challenge and really don’t have any more information about it for right now.

For us Texas Ex-pats, a little taste of home...

The Budweiser Real Men Of Genius – Mr. Way Too Proud of Texas Guy

The words are below...

Today we salute you Mr. Way Too Proud of Texas Guy.

Mr. Way Too Proud of Texas Guy!

Men from lesser states might know their state's capital, but you? You know you're state's bird, tree and even reptile.

Love that horny toad.

You display your pride with your Lone Star tattoo, "Native Texan" bumper sticker, and contempt for any state that doesn't start with "Tex" and end with "as."

That spells Texas.

Sure, there are 49 other states in the Union, but they are smaller, wussier, and the people talk funny.

Yankee wussies.

So crack open a nice cold Bud Light, oh lover of the Lone Star state.

Because all that flag waving must have made you thirsty.

For the best Internet county station that I’ve found so far

http://www.radiofreetexas.org/

Registering the Car

2006-09-26T15:36:00.000+03:00

Like in states you are required to register your car with government each year. And like in the states I usually do it 3 to 6 months late. Three weeks ago I decided I was going to dedicate my Saturday morning to taking care of this. I woke up called a friend to find out where this place was, brought a book and made my way over to the industrial area of town and only had to ask for directions once. My destination was the technical inspection center. The process here for cars older then three years is to get a technical and legal inspection on one side of town, then register your car with the traffic department on the other side of town. Since Kara’s car is now three years old this was my first trip to this place. I found it to be surprisingly efficient. The only bottlenecks were caused by me not taking a second to look around at the instructions posted on the wall. I showed up and got a ticket as soon as I drove onto the lot. Sat down and waited for my number to be called. Next I paid the fee, sat down and waited for my number to be called again. Next I got my keys back and drove my car to the line where they do the actual inspection, went back inside and waited for my number to be called again.

Finally my number was called for me to pick up my inspection and luckily I failed both the technical and legal inspection. It was like I was back in school again after a bad exam. Now what? Luckily there are official shady looking guys trained to spot the dazed white kid trying to figure out what the two “FAILED” messages really meant. He told me he would take care of the technical issues across the street. OK, why not, I’ve got nothing better to do with my hard earned code monkey money. I went to this guys shop which consisted of medium size prefab steel building with 0 spare parts. They had a couple of cars sitting to one side, one of them with Texas license plates. It looked like their core competency laid more in their location across the street from the technical inspection site then anything else. For a mere $25 they changed two lights and proclaimed I was good to go.

So I went back and this time I got directed towards the retesting line. I parked my car and you guessed it, sat down and waited for my number to be called again. This time I got my report back with only one FAIL mark. Everyone was telling me to go to the police but I wasn’t sure why. It didn’t matter because at 12:00 they were closed anyways.

The next day I went to the traffic department before work ignoring the fact that I had failed the legal inspection and expecting it to work itself out. Now I don’t actually go into the office because they speak less English then I speak Arabic and have no interest in playing language school. I go to the office across the street and pay a guy from the Sudan $15 to do all the paper work / haggling. As soon as he saw my inspection he told me to go back to the police station on the other side of town to get them to wave the citation. The citation was for having windows with too dark of tint. I guess they can’t just waive it on this side of town. So what’s another week of being late with registration? The next Saturday I made the trip back to the technical inspection center got in line at the police station with all the other cars that had really dark tint. A police officer looked at my report, scribbled something on it and that was it. I’m really not sure of why they fail you on one side and waive it on the other. Either way I made it back to the traffic department. The same guy took my money, showed me a chair and went to go do whatever they do.

The other parts I had uncertainty about but by this point I knew I was home free. That’s where I made my mistake. 10 minutes later the agent I paid $15 to came back and told me I had two fines. One traffic and one with CID (plain clothes cops you really don’t want anything to do with). The first was for running a red light which I had no objections to. I was half way through the intersection and it turned red. No big deal, my fault. The 2nd one was with CID and they had no idea what it was. The agent said for $15 more he would drive over there and take care of it. OK, I don’t speak Arabic and you do, sounds like a good idea. I also gave him some extra money to pay the fine. Two hours later I get a call saying that I need to show up there to take care of this. Nice, if I’m not back by 2:00 call the embassy. So on Sunday morning me and the agent make our way over to the other side of town in the general area of the technical inspection. This whole time I’m wondering what I could have done in my car to warrant this. We get there and after some talking the officer tells me that it’s big trouble and I will have to get my car impounded for 3 to 6 months. Now you really have my attention. Apparently our car had been caught driving around round-a-bouts on two wheels. You say funny, I say that I want to keep my car and I know they don’t play by innocent until proven guilty on this side of the world. They said that I will need to speak with the captain so come back early tomorrow. The thing I found interesting at this point was nobody volunteered any information. I had to pry the details out of the officer about what actually happened.

I get to work and I asked an Arabic speaking colleague about what had happened and if he could go with me tomorrow. He agreed and the next morning we drove back to the police station. After some more talking we were told that we came too late. It was 7:30 AM and we were told 8:00 AM but I knew to not say anything and this was how things were done. My friend gave them his number and asked that they call him when they had more information. My friend was able to get more information this time. Apparently I wasn’t driving on two wheels but I had burned out at a round-a-bout. The date was 12:00 on April 2nd. My emails showed that I was at work at this time and Kara was 9 months pregnant. Good to know. We waited two days and heard nothing so my friend tracked down the number of the guy who issued the ticket. Apparently he was the top guy at CID but that’s a relative term so I will just say that he was somebody wielding a whole lot of influence. When my friend called they told him to come by in person to the traffic department. This was good since it was on our side of town. I’m still confused as to why we had to go to the police department in the first place but it is Doha.

We get there, he talks to the guy’s assistant for a few minutes and then we wait in the waiting area for about 30 minutes. The guy comes out and says “Hallas” (finished) and that was it. No explanation of what happened or why it is being waived. I don’t know if he admitted to making a mistake, didn’t have the time to deal with it or was feeling particularly benevolent that day. As we walked out, we ran into the agent and he asked if it was taken care of. We said yes and he had us follow him to the counter at the registration office. We then walked to a back office, a guy in a uniform signed a form and then I was told to come back at 5:00 where my registration would be complete.

So as quickly as the idea of losing my car for 6 month came, it left. And the task I started two weeks ago was finally done. The great thing about not having a system is there is always a way around it. Now I need to do my car.

Emma Says

2006-09-09T21:31:00.000+03:00

To celebrate Emma being 5 months old we've created another low budget film of her doing her thing. She has learned to roll over and eat everything in site. I put it to some music I liked in high school with no particular meaning in mind. We've also posted some more pictures.

To see the pictures click here

Enjoy

type="application/x-mplayer2"
name="MediaPlayer"
autostart="0"
showcontrols="1"
showstatusbar="1"
autorewind="1"
showdisplay="0">

Life is back to Doha normality

2006-09-03T10:29:00.000+03:00

Life is slowly moving back to some sense of normality since Kara and Emma are back in the house. I've started to wake up early each morning to do some "paper work" and eventually hope to do some studying. I've completed my application to the UT-Dallas' Global MBA program. Now it is a waiting game of getting all the little pieces to filter in to the admissions office. Things like GMAT scores, transcripts from every campus I've taken a class at, letters of recommendation and anything else they can use to "Determine the potential success of an applicant in graduate school".

I'm a little nervous about making my intentions too public because of TAMU shooting me down the last time I tried this. I think I have a better shot this time around for a number of reasons but nothing is 100%. So the purpose of getting up early is mainly to get in the routine of studying in the morning since it is not going to happen at night.

Last year I tried running in the morning because I thought the afternoon would be unbearable, well it's not. 5:00 pm is more conducive to not getting a heat stroke then 6:00 am. Its also much more likely that any exercise will happen. Through a suggestion from a friend I found a new place to run that is just a useful as not having your brains baked out of your head. It's the new sports academy where the Asian Games are being held. The coolest part is they have a running track that can keep my occupied for almost an hours without too much monotony. This is a nice alternative to dodging Land Cruisers on poorly lit roads. I haven't actually run an hour but it's nice to know that I could. The location also contains the highest concentration of grass in the entire country. It almost creates the illusion of not being in a barren wasteland, almost. The best part of it is the water boys. This is a public track but they have dedicated water boys scooting around in golf carts with bottled water dispensers strapped to the back of them. All you have to do is wave to them and they will stop, give you a plastic cup and you can get your water. I still get fascinated by this place at times.

Other then finding places to run, it's been a challenge to find time. Emma is much more active and she is a ball of fire at times. I love it when she goes into her laughing tirades for no reason whatsoever. She learning to flip onto her back. She usually does it when she's not ready to go to sleep and wants to get our attention. I expect that she will be mobile in the next month or so.

Everybody who sees her says that she looks just like me. I'm happy about this but feel bad for Kara. Seeing she had the more difficult role in producing Emma compared to my briefer and arguably more enjoyable part. One thing she has heard a couple of times is: she looks just like her father, I'm sorry. We're not quite sure what they mean by that but I'm hoping it has something to do with the efforts described above and not our actual physical appearance. I'm sure it's the former.

And for a good laugh

http://www.chumfm.com/MorningShow/bits/march24.swf

How many Aggies does it take to fill up a gas tank

2006-08-10T17:49:00.000+03:00

My friend and co-worker ran out of gas in the middle of a round about due to a faulty gauge. Since it was a new car and she was new to driving we all wanted to make sure she was OK. Unfortunately among the 4 guys who left, we had about enough combined automotive knowledge to check if the gas was empty and if her tires were flat. Luckily it was the former. After much deliberation it was true, yes she ran out of gas. So how many Aggies does it take to fill up an empty gas tank?

I have some pictures to help answer that question:

1) One person to actually put the gas in the car

2) One person to observe the gas being placed into the car

3) One person to question if this was the most efficient option

4) One person to disagree with the concept of cars in general

5) One person to document the incident

Emma's 2nd Video

2006-07-07T01:47:00.000+03:00

While I was at class Kara and her brother Travis took pictures of Emma doing her thing. I got the great idea to play them to sounds from Strong Bad of homestarrunner.com. Enjoy.

type="application/x-mplayer2"
name="MediaPlayer"
autostart="0"
showcontrols="1"
showstatusbar="1"
autorewind="1"
showdisplay="0">

Confessions from a Geek

2006-06-27T08:28:00.000+03:00

Can you hear me now? Crap!

So I had my first $1000 meeting yesterday. That’s a term that I’ve just coined and will soon patent. It means that the combined hourly rate of all the people in the room exceeds $1000. I don’t have any records on the attendees’ salaries so I guess my new phrase is based on pure speculation. Anyways it being my first $1000 meeting I spent a large amount of time getting ready for it so I wouldn’t look stupid in front of people who I’m sure can spot stupid 8,000 miles away. Everything was going well I tested the Video Conferencing equipment, set up an account with webex which in a nutshell allows them to see my computer screen in their conference room and I even contacted their IT guy the week before to make sure everything was setup correctly. Not bragging but I was expecting and preparing to wow people. Well I forgot one thing, their phone number. More specifically, the IP address to their video conferencing equipment. Their IT guy was going to be there 30 minutes prior to the meeting and I had expected to take care of that small but extremely vital piece of information then. Unfortunately he was sick that day and the IP address was not in the main phone book. With 15 minutes to go a I began to panic. Emails were flying. 10 minutes to go people started showing up on my side. Crap. I had tried to call everyone in the meeting to get the IP address but no love. Problem is, when people go to a meeting they aren’t at their desk to answer the phone. With the help of somebody on my side I got a hold of their head IT guru for TAMU – Finance and he called a guy who called a guy and they got my the magic 4 numbers to call the room.

The meeting started 15 minutes ($250) late which wasn’t the first impression I wanted to make. So I was digging out of a credibility hole from the very beginning. Kind of like wearing jeans and t-shirt to a job interview. By the end of the meeting I was very grateful that I had prepared in a matter that I originally considered overkill. I believe everybody got out of the meeting what they needed and no resignations were requested. So why write about a professional blunder to the world on a site that one day will hold my resume. It’s more for therapeutic purposes then anything else. A time for reflection and realization that sometimes you see the forest before the trees or the coolness of an international multimedia presentation/video conference before the IP address.

On another note Apple is the devil

I now have an Apple Video IPod thanks to work. The purpose of the IPod is so that I can tote large amounts of data around such as Images (snapshots of a computers hard drive) which can be several gigs in size. I will also be able to watch training videos on my airplane trips. So what did I do with my new 60 GB toy? Snagged the 2nd season of LOST from my friend and plugged it into my TV. Well it looks like Apple made a little mistake because when I plugged in my little A/V cable to the IPod then plugged it into the TV I got a strange buzz and not much else. So I figured that it was some proprietary signal that I needed a fancy white Apple branded cable to fix. Nope, not at all. After doing a search on the internet to buy such a cable I found the below article.

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2005/11/18/video-ipod.html?page=2

It turns out Apple made a mistake in how it sends it signal out of the Video IPod. The fix is summed up below which was taken from Erica Sadun’s article above.

* Plug the red RCA plug into your TV's yellow RCA jack.

* Plug the yellow RCA plug into your TV's white RCA jack.

* Plug the white RCA plug into your TV's red RCA jack.

So why does this get me so mad? People at Apple are smart, really smart, they made the IPod a device that I could fit 20 seasons of Seinfeld on and stick into my pocket. The likelihood they got their colors mixed up is very minimal. I believe it’s much more likely they saw an opportunity to sell some more equipment by confusing their consumers. I was on my way to buy such equipment in the first place. For promoting their free loving, liberal, nonconformist style of computers and life they sure know how to stick to you. While the utilitarian Bill Gates is off trying to figure out how to cure Malaria Jobs is tricking us into buying proprietary equipment. Who’s big brother now?

http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2006/06/gates_buffett_h.html

Emma’s first video

2006-06-13T22:36:00.000+03:00

We bought a video camera to document Emma’s every step and poop. I haven’t figured out how to get this gadget to put moving pictures onto the computer yet. I actually haven’t tried, it looks a bit daunting and I want to make sure I have enough time and caffeine to do it right. So in the mean time we took some shaky photos from my little camera of Emma's bath time. I had fun playing with Microsoft’s movie maker so you will probably see some more of these.

type="application/x-mplayer2"
name="MediaPlayer"
autostart="0"
showcontrols="1"
showstatusbar="1"
autorewind="1"
showdisplay="0">

baby poop

2006-05-30T11:31:00.000+03:00

These past couple of weeks have been somewhat enlightening. Without Julie here to be a third set of hands we have had ours full. We started this process as advocates for breastfeeding instead of bottle feeding. It made sense, it was free and it seemed like the in thing to do. Well it hasn't been as easy as expected. Now we are at the point where our 3rd try at a formula works enough that 3mma doesn't look like her head will explode each time she tries to squeeze one out. It works so well that she managed to get her diapers to overflow in our last church service. It wasn't because of poor craftsmanship or improper assembly but actual lack of capacity. This was literally a case of ten pounds of crap in a five pound bag.

So Emma is passing without much effort these days which I hope will aid another challenge. I thought being a cadet would prepare me for the sleep deprivation. Not a chance, apparently emma is unaware of the Texas anti-hazing laws. As a cadet lights out was a rule. Not so much here. Kara has been doing most of the heavy lifting in this area. I have still managed to collect a large pile of clothes at the foot of my bed. This has resulted from me disrobing and crashing each night last week. It's only a phase right?

Sri Lanka Woes

2006-05-15T09:17:00.000+03:00

Each morning my friend Soojie comes by and we go through a ritual that only two people from totally different worlds can go through without getting really annoyed with one another. It goes a little something like:

Soojie pops his head in with a big smile and say “Good morning sir”

I smile and tell him “Good morning”

He asks me how I’m doing

I reply with either “Nadaley Soo Home” or “Kadiy Welly” which are the only two tamil phrases I know. The first means I’m doing well and the second means I’m really busy.

I’ll then say “Paper” and he’ll say yes

I’ll then go to the most recent Tamil website he’s provided me and print off the news for today.

Every couple of weeks he will bring me a new scrap of paper with another URL on it. I have no idea what I’m actually printing out but based on the English papers I imagine it has something to do with potential of civil war breaking out on their peaceful island. I had no idea if he really appreciated this until when we had Emma. He actually found my number and gave me a call in broken English to congratulate me on my new girl. For a guy who makes $110 a month and knows about 10 words of English I was touched.

So what prompted me to write about Soojie? Today when I printed off his paper it had some vivid images of a family that was murdered. It included the mom, dad and several small children but they let the damn dog live. He tells me that it was by the government army. There is a long history of conflict between the government and Tamil people. It’s not black and white by any means either. I should have known something was wrong when his smile wasn’t as big as it usually is. I imagine he had gotten word from some of his friends that this had happened and he wanted to read first hand what had really happened. What this meant in my world was a gut check on what I have and how much it really meant to me. I have several pictures of Emma up in my office and it was a gut wrenching contrast between the two lives of the families in the different pictures. Both of us holding our children. Just my thoughts for the day.

Good Hair Day

2006-04-29T22:20:00.000+03:00

I have another round of Emma photos to post but I'm too tired from playing in the sand to post them right now. I thought I would leave all you grandparents and relatives something to oooh and ahhh at until I get the next round up tomorrow. We love you all.

Scary Daddy Stuff

2006-04-23T08:46:00.000+03:00

First of all Emma is OK so don’t worry about how this ends.

This past week I had my first really scary daddy moment. Since Emma was a cesarean baby she didn’t get pushed through the birth canal. When a baby is pushed through the canal not only do they get a bullet head they also squeeze all the gunk that has been building up in them for the past nine months. Some of thing gunk made it’s way to the back of her throat while we were changing her. She doesn’t like being changed in the first place so initially this didn’t catch my eye. She started flailing her arms and opening her mouth like she was about to scream. She was getting really worked up about it as well. The problem was she never started to scream and all of a sudden I got flash backs to High School health class CPR training. My teacher told me that if somebody is screaming they can breath. It’s when they are silent you need to be worried. Kara knew what to do and she flipped Emma over and popped her back a couple of times. Some mucus came out and shaken I walked next door to our midwife neighbor to ask her to take a look at her. She explained the whole mucus scenario and showed us a different was to rub the baby’s back to get things moving. Emma let out a couple of large farts and we all felt a little better. About 10 minutes after she left I went to Amazon.com and got 3 DVDs on baby first aid, CPR and general what to expect. I also picked up Ron White’s “You can’t fix stupid” because I needed a laugh.

Looking back Kara and I were able to nervously laugh about the situation. I’ve been a bit of a camera nut with Emma (See Emma’s photo albums 1 – 5) and I’ve wanted to get a video of Emma’s changing routine because I found her faces so amusing. So when I first saw Emma flailing my initial thought was get the camera, she is really worked up this time. It was when she turned beet red my panic mode kicked in. I’m still going to attempt to video tape one of her burping sessions. Mainly that is when she does the most interesting stuff. Kara and I got a little Sony HandyCam and I intend to put some clips on my website once I figure out how to do it.

Nipples and Poop

On the lighter side of having a baby I’ve learned that once you become a parent your conversation topics change almost immediately. It has gone from political and economic views to discussing Emma’s latest bowel movement.

Yeah shs’s been really gassy but last night she had a real diaper filler. I mean it was everywhere. We were really happy.

I also found it appropriate to now talk about my wife’s nipples to most anybody. It’s all in context of course but since they are a vital part of breast feeding the topic comes up a lot. Thankfully it’s among women and Julie (my mother-in-law) or Kara fields those questions. It’s all asked in very civilized ways, mainly by asking if she is nursing OK or does she have to express a lot. What they are really asking is if Emma has latched on. If not has Kara tugged, pulled, squeezed, brushed (scrub with a tooth brush) or tortured one of the most sensitive areas of her body enough so it will be palatable for Emma. If that hasn’t worked they ask about expressing. This is the process of sticking a mini hoover vacuum cleaner to her breast to pump the milk into a bottle for later use. This is done if the baby doesn’t latch on or if we want to have some milk on reserve in case mom’s not around at feeding time. Then there it goes into leaking but I believe I’ve used up all my good will in typing about tasteless (no pun intended) topics.

I am proud of Kara for all the effort she has put into this, especially because it’s so draining :) Get it draining, it never gets old.

Happy Easter

2006-04-16T21:33:00.000+03:00

عيد فصح مجيد

Happy Easter

Emma celebrated her first Easter today. Yeah, I guess we’re going to be those type of parents.

Welcome to Fatherhood

2006-04-15T14:35:00.000+03:00

It has now been 5 days since Emma (who has now just woken up) was born. I knew that I was entering an unknown like no other unknown I’ve experienced before. Billions of people have done it before and now it was my turn. I feel like last night was my first real taste of the not so pleasant side.

Since Kara had a cesarean she has had to stay for a few extra days in the hospital. Emma has been kept under observation in the nursery because Kara had a fever and infection while in labor. It has only been as a precautionary measure and Emma has a clean bill of health. This has meant that she has not been sleeping in the same room as Kara at night. Since it was our last night we asked to have her in the same room with us so that we could feed and take care of her. It was seen more of a test run with safety net. Well it got real pretty quick.

Emma is already on 4 hour interval feedings which is something that we both wanted. My first lesson learned is that a 15 minute feeding does not last 15 minutes. A 15 minute feeding includes 15 minutes of feeding, 15 – 30 minutes of burping and adjusting to get as much gas out, changing the diaper and promising her a pony if she would go back to sleep. Then we will sleep for two to three hours and do it again.

I also learned that all those jodies (things the group yells when running in a military formation) that I learned in the Corps still have a use. Since I have no musical talent I have used these to calm her down instead of the Rock-A-Bye Baby variety. Of course I replaced all the references of guns and killing with baby friendly ones about diapers and bottles (well that reference only changed in meaning). The one working best for me right now is "Hi Ho Diddley Bop Bop".

Now Emma and the family are back home and as I was told by my neighbor, the real work now begins. Our first couple of hours were a bit humorous because it was coming up on feeding time when we got home so Kara sat down and started the breast pump Julie and I started finding all the little bits and pieces that are needed for this process which the hospital had been providing. We discovered that we had most everything but we needed to organize a little better. Emma finished off with a poop that challenged the diapers weight limit which caused Kara start laughing. She was laughing so hard that she ran to the bathroom so she wouldn’t pee in her pants. I believe we officially entered our new season in our lives.

Emma is here!

2006-04-11T03:04:00.000+03:00

Born: 11:36PM GMT+6 (Doha, Qatar)

Weight: 3.48 Kg = 7ib 10 oz

Length: 53 cm = 21 inches

Kara’s water broke at about 3:00 pm this afternoon and an hour later we were at the hospital. This was amusing in the respect that I had just taken all of our stuff out of the car about 3 hours earlier because we were told to come back on Thursday. Kara called me at work and since it wasn’t a text message I knew it was something big. She told me that either her water broke or she just peed on herself. My first thought was I don’t want to tell anybody her water broke because what if it turns out she really did just pee on herself.

So we show up at the hospital and they started the inducement drip pretty soon after. There is a little monitor that measures the baby’s heartbeat and something else. When the something else is between 0 and 19 nothing is really happening but between 20 and 90 she is having a contraction. Kara was going between 40 and 60 a couple of times but didn’t feel any pain. I don’t know if this is normal or if she is just super woman. During this time we had moved from our room to a labor room and we had no less then 3 doctors coming in and out to see how Kara was doing. I always heard the stories of nurses doing all the hard work and the doctors coming in to catch but not here. They are running at 20% capacity so everybody has low stress and wants to help. Even though there were three it wasn’t overwhelming at all. I don’t know how they have done it but everybody in this hospital is smiling and has a calm positive disposition.

After about 5 hours Kara told me to take a nap because we both thought it was going to be a long night. I crashed on the couch in our room and two hours later a nurse got me and I went back to the labor room. Kara greeted me and said they were going to do a cesarean. It turns out Emma wanted to come now but the cervix hadn’t dilated enough to let her through. The doctor said we needed to do a cesarean ASAP. Dr. Risvy had said the whole time that she never did a cesarean unless absolutely necessary so I knew this wasn’t some time saving measure. So in ten minutes I went from being asleep to watching my wife go into surgery. Talk about feeling really really alone. I sent out text messages to friends asking for them to pray for their safety and a good friend came up to see me. By the time he made it there the procedure was over and I was in the nursery with my new girl.

I had seen him with his new boy a few months prior so this was pretty cool. We didn’t talk much but it was nice to have a friend there. After looking in awe at my daughter for a while it was time to feed her. The nurse was about to feed her when Josh suggested it was OK if I did. I’m really glad he did because I got to give her her first bottle and spend even more time with her. After this Kara came out of surgery and I walked with her as they pushed her bed back to our room. She was in some pain but as usual was toughing it out. She got to see the little blessing for a couple of minutes before conking out. So that’s the new news. Thanks for everybody’s thoughts and prayers. I’ll be sure to keep the site up to date with pictures as they come.

Emma’s first pics

No new news

2006-04-08T19:57:00.000+03:00

Well the news is no new news. Kara has taken two inducement “treatments” and things are progressing at their own pace. We have set up a laptop and DVD player to keep in ADD tendencies in check. Kara is in great spirits and we’re taking embarrassing home movies to show Emma’s first date.

I’ll keep everybody posted but right now I’m back off to the hospital.

Getting ready for labor day

2006-04-07T23:49:00.000+03:00

Kara and I got the news that Tomorrow (Saturday April 8) is the big day. She is now 2 centimeters dilated and we are going to get ‘er done starting at 8:00. Not sure exactly what to expect but I am in a little bit of panic / nervous / last minute detail mode. I think we got everything and if we didn’t oh well.

I feel a little bit like the night before Kara and I got married. I had a dream that I forgot to plan the honeymoon and I had to get one of my groomsmen to make some calls during the reception. I was driving to the airport hoping we would figure it out when we get there. Hmmm, dreams tonight should be interesting.

My eye actually started twitching for about two hours when I found out it was going to be this Saturday. Not noticeably but I could feel it. I’m excited but feeling a bit overwhelmed. So I thought the easiest way to deal with that would be to let the whole world know. When I think about it, we’re OK. Kara’s strong, we’re prepared and if I forget to wear pants, I’m sure they’ll have a couple of extra ones there.

Sooner then later

2006-03-29T20:22:00.000+03:00

It’s about 2 weeks until Emma’s due date and I can honestly say I’m not that nervous. Kara is doing well and Emma looks healthy. The only thing the doctors have mentioned was that she is above average size for how far along Kara is. In my mind I was thinking no crap, you think that’s possible. I’m 6’ 5” and Kara is 5’ 9”, I’m not surprised. The only issue that makes this significant is it’s a policy here not to deliver babies over 4 Kgs (8.8 ibs) naturally. On Sunday Emma was 3.2 – 3.4 Kgs and we are going to take another look next week to see where she is at. Then we will be a little clearer on when she will be joining us on the outside.

Speaking about Emma being born, WOW, it’s almost here. I feel a lot like I did before going to college, joining the corps or coming out here. I’m as prepared as I probably could be but I know to expect something I’ve never experienced before. We have all the little do dads, cribs, strollers, walkie talkies and all in a subtle shade of pink. Kara and I have spent several weekends having fun putting together furniture and setting up her room. Now all we need is the little girl to finish it off.

Along with all of the gifts, people also love to give advice. My favorite piece is to sleep now because you won’t for the next 20 years. Huh, thanks for the encouragement. I don’t know what I will think about this statement in 6 months but I’m not that worried. I know life will change a lot but I don’t see me life coming to a screeching halt. I still have the goal of attending grad school online next year, I just won’t be taking a full load. Kara and I still want to travel, we just won’t do the backpacks and trains quite as much. Right now I’m truly excited about this next step and I think that’s why I don’t see this as being a hindrance but a blessing that will enrich us.

The moon test

2006-02-10T23:08:00.000+03:00

Not a whole lot to report, just playing with my camera. I used all my extra pennies, Christmas money and gift certificates to buy a Canon digital rebel camera. Some people know I’m pretty much a picture taking nut. After about two years I think I finally reached the limit of my point and shoot camera and bought one that would keep my occupied for a while. One thing I’ve tried to do with my first camera was take a nice photo of the moon. For no other reason then that I thought it would look cool.

I took the below two pictures with my new camera. The first one used the auto settings that and produced a picture that my old camera would make. The second one is at 1/1000 of a sec shutter speed, 400 ISO and with a 300 mm lens. I need a longer lens to get it to where I can print it at a decent size but for now I’m happy. I thought I would just share.

Going to IKEA

2006-02-02T17:02:00.000+03:00

I’m writing this blog as I’m waiting for the rest of the group (everybody else) to show up for our weekly HR meeting. I don’t know why I get here 10 minutes early to check the AV equipment when the I could show up 10 minutes late and still be prepared. I have started to bring my laptop to these meetings to kill time by doing something productive like updating my blog. I don’t know why I have dropped out of the blogosphere lately. I had attributed it to not really seeing anything that new or interesting in my second year in the Middle East but I don’t think that is true. Things are still new and interesting but my tolerance for the different has grown quite a bit over these past 18 months.

So what has been going on besides the standard boycotts over inflammatory cartoons, a terrorist group being granted power through democratic means and the country next door building nukes? I went to IKEA. That seems more interesting then any of the above. I could rant over them take both sides, talk about the hypocrisy of the world and in the end not take a clear stance on either side. Why can I do this? Because I’m an analyzer and it’s clear that nothing is clearly right or wrong. That drives me nuts when what makes me happy is clear clean answer to my view of the situation. Well I may tie up some of my server space with those rants at another time. For now it’s all about IKEA.

Why is going to IKEA such a big thing you might ask. Sure we all love the Sweeds and their kooky little cartoons and amazingly efficient and cost effective flat packed furniture. Is it enough to dedicate almost a whole blog entry to? Well it is when you live in Doha and the nearest IKEA is in Dubai (actually it’s Abu Dhabi). So After going to Dubai for my half marathon a while back, Kara and I decided we wanted to make a dedicated visit just to buy stuff from IKEA. Since the budget airlines only allow so much luggage and shipping it back as cargo would off set some of the saving we decided to drive. Actually we decided myself and a friend would drive while our wives wore abayas and flew to Dubai.

I did have one Russell moment. After paying for insurance in two different countries I was running low on cash and gas. So I decided not to be a stubborn mail and pulled into the first gas station I saw. At this point I wasn’t aware that I was low on cash. I said fill ‘er up and the man did. Nobody pumps their own gas here so I wasn’t being a snob. The guys who work the pumps are glad to because they usually make a lot more money in tips then from their salary. So when the guy told me it was 70 Dirhams ($20) and I only had 25 he wasn’t amused. I’ve learned that people will tolerate most things over here but when not paying is not on that list. Money is the reason why people will tolerate most things. So I asked if I could come back. He looked at me like I was an idiot, I can’t blame him. I handed over my driver’s license and registration and asked for directions to the nearest ATM. That was the part that ultimately got me. I assumed everybody took credit cards or had an ATM. Well not here, apparently he didn’t have a phone line. So even though my friend Shane and I were easily 4 times this guys size we did the right thing. So 15 minutes later I’m driving through a compound following some random guy on a moped looking for an ATM. Kara calls me at this exact time and I felt like a kid who just got caught cleaning up a mess he made. She thought it was funny but wasn’t completely surprised. We made it back to the gas station, resisted the urge to do some little people tossing, got my license and registration and we were on our way.

In the end the shopping trip was a pretty well executed plan. We got our Saudi passports without much hassle and we never really got lost. There was still a little bit of adventure in driving from Doha to Dubai but it wasn’t like the first time. Once we got to IKEA we spent 9 hours shopping. The first phase was evaluating what all was available. Phase 2 was purchasing and loading the larger furniture. The last phase was getting all the smaller odd shaped stuff. It went pretty well and I was dead tired afterwards. Out X-Trail was sagging in the back. Because of my limited knowledge of vehicles I was honestly worried the axle was going to break and I had visions of the back wheels shooting off into the Arabian desert.

Nothing like that happened. We actually got through the border posts quicker then my first trip. I was afraid they were going to make us unload all the stuff at both crossings but no such luck. They looked at the car and our receipts, shook their heads and told us to keep on going. So now we have brand new IKEA furniture for Emma’s new room.

Good job sips

2006-01-07T18:50:00.000+03:00

So I watched the Texas – USC game this past Thursday (Doha time). It was kind of like the presidential election, I didn’t know who I wanted to win until I started seeing the score. My mind wanted t.u. to lose while my heart wanted a Texas team to beat the California school. Well in the end my heart won and I celebrated when Vince Young ran for the final touchdown. One thing that impressed me about t.u.’s quarterback was the amount of self-control he had. After making what he should have known was the winning touchdown of the National Championship game he simply moved on to the next play. He didn’t fly around the in zone screaming how great he was. Good onto him, and good onto Texas.

I don’t know when my view of t.u. softened some. One of the people watching the game said that her class of 50 dad would have never gone for Texas. He would have cheered against them even if they were playing Russia. I think it was probably the game after Bonfire fell and the Texas band gave a tribute to A&M. It was one of the classiest things I’ve ever seen. After then I went from my two favorite teams being A&M and whoever is playing t.u. to just A&M. So that’s enough of that.

Russell Lindell Fighting Texas Aggie Class of 2001
BTHOTU

H@cK3d

2006-01-03T07:50:00.000+03:00

So I got an email this morning from my mom telling me she was worried. That made me a little worried. I read it and it turns out this website that you are looking at right now got hacked. It wasn’t nuked and all my data became unrecoverable but the main page was replaced with a nice political message from some individuals in Turkey against the war in Iraq. There’s nothing quite so humbling as an IT professional being notified by his mom that he got hacked. Son, when did you become a member of VatanHack and are you still going to put the pictures of Doha back up?

If you would like to see the front page that was posted click here. I should be mad that they did this but this was like when I got into a small car accident in high school. It was enough to knock some sense into me but it didn’t cause permanent damage. My only question is why me. Should I feel proud my site is hack worthy. Probably not. Even though the blog does reach number 5 on the google scale and is on the second page for “Qatar Blog”. Seriously though, who looks up qatar blogs. I wonder if they randomly came across my blog and it looked like a good target and the fact that I live in the Middle East was just a coincidence. Either way VatanHack 1 RWLindell.com 0.

On another note when I was looking to see where my page ranked I found this site which looked somewhat interesting. http://www.qatarliving.com/

And ever since then ... I was running

2005-12-13T21:39:00.000+03:00

Dubai Half Marathon

This past weekend I ran in the Dubai Creek Striders 1/2 marathon. It was a great weekend for a number of reasons. The main one being that I got to run in my first major race while living over seas. We got T-Shirts, racing numbers and everything. The race itself went along the Dubai Creek which comes from the Arabian Gulf. Even though it was a major race (400 runners) it wasn’t what I was used to. Mainly because none of the roads were blocked off for the runners. They had volunteers along the route giving out water and police officers helping with traffic but all in all we weren’t shielded from any of the interruptions that you would have on a training run. The race wove us through a city park, the docks which were pretty active, through an underwater tunnel that was under construction and my favorite the local souqs (open air markets). The starting instructions were different then I had ever heard of. They made mention of the bridge should be down, watch out for the fishermen, when going through the tunnel mind the scaffolding and try not getting lost in the souqs.

My time was about 40 minutes slower then what I ran in high school and college but I was just happy that I finished. After 10 miles I had to walk some but the way I reasoned it, if I didn’t walk then I probably wouldn’t have finished. So I finally made it to the finish line doing my best to not start dry heaving in front of everybody and collapsed after I crossed in a staggering time of two hours and fifteen minutes.

One of the cooler parts of the run was that seven other members my virtual running club actually fabricated at the same time. They all finished the race as well which was nice seeing that we had started training sometime in September. I got a group shot of seven of us that I tried to get into the local newspaper. Unfortunately they were not as excited about eight expats flying to Dubai and running in a circle as I thought they would.

One of best parts of the weekend was after the race during breakfast. They had a breakfast buffet for everybody which included pork bacon. Just for future reference, anytime you work out for two hours, a pile of bacon is probably not the best thing to eat. Oh well, it felt good going down. After that we had the prize drawings where I missed out on the $20 at the local sports shop and got the GPS watch instead http://www.garmin.com/products/forerunner201/. Somebody else was supposed to get it but since he wasn’t there I got it. I had said a prayer asking for it while at the same time feeling ridiculous. Well 20 minutes later they called my name for it. I kept on asking myself ”Why would God bless me with this cool toy?” Was there some eternal purpose that GPS has in my future :) I reasoned that it was just God telling me, you have your doubts some time and you shouldn’t. I’m always here. There has been a number of times when God has answered my prayers in such a quick and odds defying way that I felt an extra close connection. So what did I get, God’s in the room and I shouldn’t forget it.

Dubai vs Doha

The race was in Dubai which is in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Dubai to Doha is like Austin to College Station in culture and Dallas to Austin in size. I kept on trying to put the difference into words and I finally figured it out. Doha is an Arabic city with large pockets of western and asian culture. Dubai is a western city with pockets of Arabic culture. You don’t see a mosque on every corner, you barely every here the prayer call and a lot of the restaurants had English only menus as apposed to the bilingual ones you get here. I’m not saying it’s better or worse but it is a city that I hope Doha doesn’t fully emulate. I have my gripes about my home town but in reality I’ve started to like this culture more then I thought I would.

So that’s my happy weekend. Hope all is well with everybody.

20 to 1 You'll be buying barbies next Christmas

2005-11-16T16:39:00.000+03:00

Kara and I just found out that there is a 95% chance that our baby is going to be a girl. That basically means our doctor didn’t find any bits and pieces in the ultrasound but you can never be 100% sure until birth. I’ve been thinking about the next 18 years. Little girls turn into teenage girls and teenage girls start making their own decisions and I can’t control that. I thought it would be easier with a boy. Just throw him to the wolves and say toughen up or you’ll never make it. With a girl the word “balance” comes to mind. I want her to know she’s loved and doesn’t need to date until she’s 30 but at the same time I don’t want to spoil her. Hmmmm.

Thinking about it, it’s a good thing you don’t get to pick the gender of your baby. We would make our choices based off of superficial reasoning and miss out on things we never thought of. Maybe she’ll want to still go hunting with me or take that hike along the Appellation Trail. Maybe I’ll like playing with polly pocket and braiding hair, who knows. One thing is for sure, a lot of my friends are having boys right now and they better not get any wise ideas. I don’t care if they are only 5 days old. I know what it was like to be that age. That’s what scares me the most. I remember being a slimy fork tongued little kid in middle school and high school. Some day she’s going to entertain the thought of talking to one of those hormone drugged, cracked voice kids and I’ll have to pretend I don’t mind. I think I’m getting a little ahead of myself but I’m just being honest. I wonder if I’ll become one of those feminist dads. The ones that insist their daughter’s are able to play on the football team if they want to. I’ve already started flipping through early learning center toy catalogue looking for possible instances of gender bias. How come only the boys play with the gladiator arena of blood play set?

Can I still buy girls Legos? I was advised that it was still a good idea but make sure I get the lavender and pink colors. This is going to be fun.

We watched our friend’s two girls this weekend and they were very well behaved. They are different then boys and I have to remember that but at the same time they were OK with playing Frisbee and going to the video arcade. I was however told by them that the females in my cartoons left much to be desired. That’s enough ranting for now, I’m sure there will be more.

2 my boyz

2005-11-06T09:26:00.000+03:00

So I got an email from my boys say they weren’t feelin the lovin... Spend ten years knowing them but my sites not showin… Did I forget the days we ran from fishers mill… Talking late nights about girls and what was real… Did I forget my heritage or forget my past… Did all this sun burn my brain and put it last… Did I forget the parties and the fights… did I forget not taking a bath for 7 nights… how about taking the neighborhood lights… marking my back and the next day jumping out of our flight… Aw nah, of coure I didn’t… I’m still as dirty and there’s no forgettin it… I don’t mind saying I cut down trees… it was with a hatchet when tequila wuz my disease… That I miss the days we broke stuff for fun… and when people started stepping we took em down by the ton… Mike we ran double digits more then once… during high school did you ever pay for lunch… now your married and thinking of moving… are you going to Africa or is China where you cruzin… I’ll see you when you least expect it… keep the doors locked I don’t want to walk in when your getting pregnant… my kid better not have read hair… 8000 miles nothing, your butt will be blistered bare… Khris its been too long… I saw you in Dallas now we’re singing the same song… kid on the way starting to feel real… bought a wooden rocking camel just to get the feel… talking about moving with a friend of mine… how many times did we fill you rider truck, I think it was nine… You running Austin now and inspiring me still… wish I could do 26 in Texas but I have to stay here for my thrill… It’s the pain of living here, the only thing with a sting… you know if it was a car drive away you’d here my bells ring… I can’t forget Dave the original traveling man… took off to Colorado, laughed when I asked to see his plan… said he doesn’t need one, he’s smart enough to exist… just another life experience he didn’t want to miss… Now he’s got a real job being a smart man… next thing he’ll own the mountain and surrounding land … Joe emailed me with an update, I do miss that soul … I guess this will be the last time I can call him troll… grown ass man that he’s become it’s hard to call him that… Wife, kid, commission he’s living phat… So forgive my lack of phone calls, the time difference is jacked… I end my day and yours is just getting on track… I’ll never forget you taught me Jesus was cool… and so was wearing second hand clothes we found at school… We all strayed once or thrice… but like the prodigal son we know His love can’t be cut with a knife… even if we tried every trick to see what we could prove… the foundation we stand on will never move… So to the grown ass men and prodigal sons you’ll always be my boys… forgive my lack of shout outs and the quiet in my noise… I’ll see you this summer, I hope we remember it the next day… Remember Mike, we still love you even if you’re gay.

Things I learned from a Muslim

2005-10-22T15:34:00.000+03:00

For the past month or so I’ve been meeting with a guy that I met at a mosque. I’ll call him Nick because I don’t know what types of people are in the 200 or so visitors this rant gets each day. Mom, I really think you count for half of those but I’m OK with that. Anyways, so I’ve been meeting with Nick for a while now and he makes no bones about telling me that Christianity is wrong and Islam is right. He has a number of papers from a lot of smart people telling me the same thing. He himself is fairly smart. He’s the son of a veterinarian and is pursuing a technical degree at the local college. He has also memorized verbatim about a third of the Quran. The meetings we have can go from 1 to 4 hours and I have asked that we start having them at a local fast food place. There was something about discussing this stuff in the library of the Qatar Center for the Presentation of Islam that was a little unnerving for me. He graciously obliged me so we have continued our conversation over 7-Ups and Pepsi instead of Arabic tea.

I’ve learned a number of things about Islam at an Academic level. There have not been too many revelations in my heart (notice I didn’t say zero) but there has been a lot of information that would surprise most Americans. The biggest being that Muslims revere Jesus. They love him and think he is one of the greatest prophets. They detest that Christians have turned him into a deity with their polytheistic blasphemy (not my words, just repeating) but they still acknowledge his life and say PBUH (peace be upon him) in most writings when mentioning his name. I’ve talked with Kara about this and she brought up a good point. There are a lot of the same people in the Quran who are in the Bible. That doesn’t mean we see them the say way or associate them with the same characteristics. Nick has a huge misunderstanding with what the Holy Trinity actually is. He sees it as us worshipping three Gods. I explained that it is God in three forms. He wasn’t convinced. I’ve also dispelled a number of myths about Muslims by speaking to Nick. Overall I’ve been very happy with the experience.

My real inspiration for writing this though was not what I’ve learned about Islam but what I have learned about my own faith. I see Nick who knows one third of the Quran by heart and I know maybe 10 verses by heart. He is in the middle of the month of Ramadan where he fasts from food, water and smoking from sun up to sun down. This lasts for approximately 30 days. I’ve never spent this much time fasting or sacrificing to gain a better appreciation of who my God is. I’ve also found that church answers don’t cut it when answering the hard questions he asks me about my faith. Who is Jesus? How can he be both God and Man? What’s up with the Holy Spirit? Why did God need to rest on the seventh day? This has been a huge benefit to me. It has caused me to reevaluate what I actually know and what I think I know. My decision has been that I need to go back to the source and find the answers for myself. I don’t need to fill my bookshelf with another book that mentions one verse for each page and feeds me regurgitated theology. I need to open the Bible and figure out exactly what is in there. It’s not that it has been sitting on my shelf collecting dust but I haven’t been looking at it the way I should have been. So I started last night with Luke and it felt great. Something like sinking my teeth into a nice steak after living off of fruit juice and cheese sticks for a long time. I pray that I will continue with this and not quit half way like I have on so many other projects. Who knew learning about Islam would bring me closer to God.

Virtual Running Club

2005-10-20T07:52:00.000+03:00

As some of you know, I consider running one of my hobbies and something that I enjoy doing a lot. Now that it is getting cooler in Doha this is something I can now do more readily without worrying about a heatstroke. So after complaining to a friend of mine that there were no races in Doha he suggested I run the Dubai triathlon. Sounds like a good idea, I think I’ll look it up. Well I found the page for it but was immediately distracted by another race that was listed. There is a half marathon in Dubai this coming December. To me the half marathon is like that old friend that never did you wrong. I have run seven to date and every time I have felt great afterwards. I also have been injured preparing for one. That is something I can not say about its nasty big brother the full marathon. So in mid August I started to get my training on like Donkey Kong. Unfortunately it was a bit demoralizing when the temperature was about 95 degrees at 6:00 am. So after going to Europe I was slow to get started again. What was my solution? Start a running club.

I sent out an email to the Education City Listserv asking who would be interested in training for a half marathon. I got a surprising 10 to 15 replies. So I have been communicating with these people over the listserv for about a month now and occasionally we even run together. Mainly people show up on the weekends other then that most people do their own thing. I guess it is just different from when I was a student and anytime was OK to meet because all your responsibilities were very flexible. So now I’m in charge of a virtual running club.

First Baby Pics

2005-10-18T16:17:00.000+03:00

Here they are, Felix's first baby pics. Welcome to a life of being photographed kid. You're going to be able to make a flip book of yourself by the time you are 18 and you have sworn to move to a place where cameras are a religous taboo. Currently Felix is 9cm long top to bottom.

Baby’s heartbeat

2005-10-17T10:02:00.000+03:00

Kara and I just heard Felix’s heartbeat for the first time about 30 minutes ago. We saw him shift side to side and stretch his little toothpick arms and give us a big ol scary grin. Not to get too cliché but it was a surreal experience to actually see a form inside of Kara. It’s no longer a little sack of cells that’s simply doing something. It is actually taking a form. The heartbeat is about 140 bpm which makes it sound like he’s going to explode but the Dr. assured me that was normal. Give me 15 years, I’ll have it down to 50 resting. So all and all it was a very cool experience.

I’m actually experiencing the miracle of life (That’s the cliché phrase I was looking for). It’ll be 6 months before he crawls out but it is still a real living thing just sitting in side Kara. Woah. I’ll post the picture that was taken once I can wrestle it away from Kara long enough to get it to my scanner. I’m sure it will look like all the other ones everyone sees but this one will be mine and Kara’s. It’s a pretty heady feeling. It gives a new point to looking at all those baby clothes and early learning fuzzy gadgets.

Episode 71

2005-10-16T09:15:00.000+03:00

I can’t feel my legs. But Lieutenant Dan, you aint got no legs.
So I’m back from my Guerilla .Net training. Actually I have been back for 2 weeks. I just wrote this paragraph two weeks ago. My brain is almost up to 70% functionality. The class lasted from 9AM to 9 or 10PM depending on the instructors’ ability to read a 24 hour clock. 21:30? What time is that, 8:30? No, 9:30 and my brain is on the verge of hemorrhaging if you add one more bullet-point to that list. Even with the exhausting schedule I think it was one of the best classes I’ve ever taken. They managed to crowbar more content then a three hour college level course into 5 days and make some of it stick. They even added the drinking aspect of the educational experience. I’m not against having a beer but I when we would wrap up somewhere around 10:00 and everybody headed straight to the bar for a couple of hours I was just amazed. I on the other hand crawled to my room, watched some crappy British TV until I passed out. No alcohol necessary this time. The class was like drinking from a fire hydrant but I really did enjoy it. I even won the programming contest they put on. Actually I got 3rd place … out of 5 people. It was still fun so back off. There were 35 other people in the class who didn’t have the two brain cells left to enter or were to intoxicated to try. Either way my adaptation of rock, paper, scissors to the .NET 2.0 framework got some applause.

Iraqi Airspace
Just another reminder I live where I do and people still find it funny. As we were flying back and I saw a number of Iraqi cities associated with insurgencies and road side bombs I thought how peaceful they looked from the sky. We flew over at night and they were these hazily lit cities with four or 5 highway roads shooting out from each side. Our pilot was kind enough to let everybody know that we have just left Iraqi Airspace. I think even with their professional uniforms and funny Brit accents, they still got a kick out of flying 300 hundred civilians over a war zone even if it was 30,000 feet in the air.

Going back to London
So now that I’m back to my normal routine, I will be leaving for the UK one more time for unrelated training. I will actually be 90 minutes west of London but its close enough. I’m doing a 3 day course to learn a piece of software that will virtualize all of our documents so we don’t have to have any messy human interaction. It should be fun and a whole lot more efficient then the usual process. It will at least be another cool system that makes use of this budget they give us. Here’s a lot of money make something happen. Hmmm … OK. I am glad that we use our budget on functional stuff as apposed to gaudy crap that I see in a lot of other places though. I still wonder what it will be like when this rodeo is over and I have to go back to the real world. I hope I still have my anal frugal ways when cost is a much bigger factor in making a decision then it is now. That won’t be for a while anyways so I’m not going to worry. I think I’ll stop talking on this subject now.

Watching Kids – They scare me
So a friend and colleague is on his way to the states for a conference. He is from Germany and his wife has never been to the states. They also have two kids so they asked if we wouldn’t mind holding the fort down while she got to take advantage of seeing a country she has never been to. No problem it will good to help out a friend and spend some time with some young types. They are really good kids and shouldn’t be a problem but I just realized that I don’t know anything about kids. How do you really interact with them? No wonder adults seemed so awkward when I was a kid. They didn’t know what to say to me. Uhhh, so how’s your retirement strategy shaping up? Well I have a week to try to warm up to them and see if I can get to know them a little better. It honestly scared the crap out of me that I was going to have to hold a conversation with them for about 30 minutes before they went to bed last night. Kara on the other hand does a great job of talking and relating to them. This will just have to be something I work on. I always thought it was strange / pathetic when adults would get so caught up in their kids lives as if they were their kids age as well. I guess they were just trying in some way to relate to their kids. This is something I’ll have to remember when Felix becomes old enough to have his / her own life. Blah.

Speaking of little ones
My sister Jenny and husband Jason are going to be a having a baby around the same time Kara and I are. This will be number three for her and she has definitely been able to share her experience with us. It will be nice for Felix to have a cousin his age growing up. I hope he / she will be close with all of the cousins no matter where we live. I think it would be good for them to be pen pals. Know your family and learn how to write all at the same time. That’s me, always striving for efficiency. Well by the sound of the cracking of my wrists I think that’s all I’ve got to say for right now.

Learning to be me

2005-09-24T00:28:00.000+03:00

== Edited on advice from my wife ==

Does a baby change you that much?

Well I was having lunch and somebody mentioned I better live the next 6 months up because after the baby is born I won’t have a life. I disagree. I may get less sleep, have to change more diapers then I am now and not get stuck in the dunes as often. I don’t think that means I won’t have a life though. I just won’t have the exact life I had before. I see people toting their kids all over the place. It takes longer to get ready and there is more to consider but I think that is a small price to have a child. I can’t believe I have done such an about face on the topic but I’m looking forward to this new season in my life. Life will be different but so was it when I went away to college, got married and moved out here. Still being 6 months away from holding a William Edward or Emma Anne I’m in a pretty good mood. I’ll let you know how optimistic I am when I’m changing diapers at three in the morning.

Getin my training on

I don’t know if it is a good or bad thing that I’m sent to training as often as I am. I like to think good for the time being. I’m leaving Saturday night for London where I will attend a guerilla .net class. I will spend 12 hours a day for 5 days baking my head with all the fun things you can do with this language I’ve played with for the past 3 years. It should be fun. Too bad I won’t be able to actually see anything while I’m in London.

"I’ll make you famous" - Billy the Kid

2005-09-20T08:25:00.000+03:00

You know you are living in a major city when a group of Ags getting together for a football game makes the front of the sports page. It’s funnier when you read the article and see the mistakes that would have been hard to check. The picture itself is labeled current students. Actually it is a group of staff and former students with one student from Cornell sporting the A&M logo. That ruffled some feathers on campus because there is a little friction between the two schools. I guess gun toting rednecks and Yankees with a role of quarters up their butt will always have something to disagree about. Our CIO wasn’t happy that they called it a satellite feed. We were actually watching it with a VBrick which does MPEG-2 encoding / decoding that allows you to watch video over the Internet. I guess it is just in the details.

American Soccer

2005-09-18T08:12:00.000+03:00

I got to spend a few hours in Texas this weekend. Since A&M played their game at 11:30 it was a 7:30 PM kickoff on this side of the world. We have a little toy that allows us to stream TV from College Station over the Internet with little if any deterioration in quality. That, approval from the athletics department, a few dozen pizzas and some ice chests full of sodas and you got an Aggie football game day party. Watching the game was great but seeing the local commercials was pretty cool as well. I was hoping for the Bryan transmission one with Larry Bird (not the basketball player) in it but I think this was above their advertising budget. They did have Rudy’s BBQ with sausage in it. Mmmm … sausage.

The game itself was a lot of fun to watch. It was interesting during the first half and then A&M smacked SMU around pretty severely throughout the second half. With a score of 66-8 there is not much need for explanation. There was a student who came and sat next to me because he thought he might have questions about American Soccer. Either my whooping or yelling scared him away or he found his laptop that he brought to the game more interesting but he never asked for clarification on anything that was happening. I didn’t take too much offense. I can’t say that I get too excited when there is a soccer game on. But after 3 quarters it was 10:30 and I decided I should go home. I wanted to stop by Rudy’s for some brisket but I couldn’t find it. I’ll watch the commercial a little bit closer next time.

Katrina

2005-09-08T08:27:00.000+03:00

Even in Doha the news of this disaster is ever present. CNN covers it 24 hours a day, people talk about it at lunch and it’s on all the websites. So even though I hadn’t watched the news for the first 5 days that this occurred, I’m pretty knowledgeable about the current situation. I have heard faithful Bush supporters dismiss it as being New Orleans fault for building their city on a swamp in the first place. This has proved to me once again that Intelligence and Ignorance are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I don’t want to harp on this too much but I do feel the federal government truly screwed the pooch on this one. I don’t care what the excuses are, you look at how the evacuees existed in their own country and no matter what way you look at it they were let down. I’m not talking about the national guardsman wading through the water to bring food and shelter or the many other government employees that are making things happen. As so often is the case, they make things happen in spite of what the decision makers did right or wrong.

I’m going to stop there with the negative vibes and talk about something that made me smile. It sounds corny but after reading the below letter from Dr. Gates (TAMU President) I was again truly proud to be an Aggie. It illustrated another reason why America is a great country. We have all the resources in the world but it’s the people themselves that make things possible. I never saw a call from the President to the people of the US to open their homes and donate their time but that’s what they did. People decided that the federal government dropped the ball and they picked it up. I only wish I could be there in person to do my part. So when JFK said “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” I wonder if this is the spirit he was talking about. My history is a little hazy but those words sound like they fit.

OK, now for an email Dr. Gates sent to all Faculty and Staff on campus. I think it speaks for itself.

Any Aggie of any age who believes the Spirit of Texas A&M is waning should have been at Reed Arena over the past three days.

Under an agreement with local government officials, Texas A&M has made Reed Arena available as a temporary shelter for a little over two hundred or so evacuees from New Orleans through September 9th.
Probably like many parents and others, I was deeply concerned about security given what we all had read about violence in New Orleans. I only agreed to the use of Reed after being assured that the evacuees would be vetted, processed and security wanded at a facility elsewhere in Brazos County, wanded again upon arrival at Reed, and that University police and other security would be present at all times at Reed. Students who park at Reed Arena (mostly freshmen) will be parking elsewhere on campus for the week. The evacuees are escorted by
non-students wherever they go.

I asked the Commandant of the Corps of Cadets, Lt. General John Van Alstyne, to take charge of this endeavor, in no small part because one of his last responsibilities at the Pentagon was taking care of displaced military families after 9/11. I also wanted a no-nonsense person in charge. He has told me that he is quite comfortable with the security arrangements. Either he or his chief of staff are at Reed 24/7.

Now to the best part. With little advance notice, Aggies sprang into action last Friday. The Corps of Cadets was asked on Friday afternoon to set up several hundred beds on the floor of Reed Arena; to help establish a structure for processing the evacuees; to make arrangements for them to shower and get new clothes; to help develop a process for medical checks; and so on. (Contrary to some rumors, the Corps was never asked or expected to provide security.) Lt. General Van Alstyne asked the Corps Commander, Matt Ockwood, for 300 volunteers to do these tasks. 900 cadets volunteered, and Reed Arena was ready after the cadets worked all night.

The first evacuees began to arrive around midnight Saturday. They had boarded busses in New Orleans that morning, had been driven to Dallas and then finally to College Station - all in one day. Of the more than 200 arrivals, most were families, including some 40 children and a number of elderly. They arrived exhausted, dirty, hungry and many in despair.

They then encountered an Aggie miracle. Clean beds (not cots but surplus beds from a refurbished Corps dorm), showers, hot food, medical treatment, baby supplies for mothers, toys for children and more. But most of all, what they encountered were a couple of hundred compassionate, caring Aggie cadets and other volunteers. The cadets escorted them to their assigned beds, and not only saw to their individual needs, but sat on the side of their beds with them, talked with them - treated them like they were a member of the family. The cadets made them feel welcome and cared about.

Sunday, when I visited Reed, I learned that the women of the Aggie Dance Team had organized and were running a distribution center for pillows, towels, bedding, personal hygiene kits, baby food, diapers and much more; that sorority women were running a child care facility for dozens of children, well supplied with toys, juice, coloring books and cartoon videos; and that plans were under way for other student leaders and students to replace the cadets, some of whom had been at Reed for more than 50 hours. Plans were underway for some of our athletes (and
escorts) to take some of the evacuee boys ages 10-16 to the Rec Center to shoot hoops - boys perhaps including one I met who had treaded water under a bridge for 11 hours before being rescued by a helicopter.
There is a communications room where the evacuees can use both telephone and internet to try to reach relatives and friends. The Red Cross, United Way, and other community organizations are right there on the Arena floor, and the Salvation Army is serving three meals a day.
Escorted trips are being organized throughout the day to laundromats and stores. Area physicians, supplemented by the Aggie Care Team and the Health Science Center are available. Being treated with dignity, respect and compassion, our guests have responded accordingly.

Many other Aggie students are involved in the relief effort on campus, in the local community, and at our Galveston campus. Sunday afternoon, students organized a massive collection effort to gather canned food and clothes as part of the MSC's Open House. Student Government, led by Student Body President Jim Carlson, is planning other relief- associated activities, including helping organize more volunteers to work at Reed Arena the rest of this week.

By agreement with Brazos county officials, Reed Arena is a temporary location for these evacuees, and during this week, we are assured that most, if not all, of the evacuees will move to longer-term housing.

Aggies need to know that the past few days have been a high point in the history of Texas A&M as we have responded to this terrible disaster named Katrina. Seeing the desire to serve, the organizational skill, the willingness to work, the caring and compassion, and more, on the part of the Corps of Cadets, the Dance Team, the sororities and so many other students who have worked incredibly long hours - has been a profoundly moving experience. I do not know a single University official who, having watched our students over the past three days, does not choke up with emotion out of pride in these amazing young people.

And it's not just the students who have been amazing. It is also our staff, including those who today began admitting and helping up to 1,000 students displaced by the Hurricane. Faculty and administrators have volunteered as well, and also put in long hours to ensure that these displaced students can be processed into Texas A&M and their classes with speed and efficiency. I visited the processing center this morning and met many of the parents and students; I know now that they will never forget our generosity and warm welcome to Aggieland.

Aggies often speak of "the other education" here. My original intent had been to keep the evacuees entirely isolated from our students.
Once assured of the safety of the students, that would have been the wrong decision. I have no doubt that the Aggie students who are participating in this extraordinary humanitarian endeavor will never forget it -- or what they are learning from it about crisis management and, far more importantly, about their own humanity and character. Nor do I doubt that the evacuees, all of whom are now wearing Texas A&M t- shirts, will always remember how these young people treated them and cared for them.

The hearts of every Aggie should swell with pride in what this University is doing for fellow Americans in trouble, and especially in what our students and staff are doing, to help those devastated by Hurricane Katrina. I thanked a University policeman inside Reed yesterday for what he was doing, and he looked at me with tears in his eyes and replied, "It's an honor to be here, sir."

Robert M. Gates
President, Texas A&M University

I need to pray just to make it today - DC Talk

2005-09-06T17:35:00.000+03:00

Kara and I have had a pretty bloggable past 7 days. It started on Thursday morning when I was driving to work and opted not to listen to the Vanilla top 40 radio because my ipod ran out of batteries. Something in me decided that it has been way too long since I had a talk with God. So for 15 minutes I tried to praise him and thank him for all that Kara and I have been blessed with over these past 13 months. I just wanted to say thanks and that I want to follow him. I asked to stay in his favor and thanked him for all the things he has given us. I also prayed that I could be his tool while I’m here. Something that I have forgotten a number of times since moving here.

So I got to work and I was just happy with the time I spent with God. Around 10:00 our housing coordinator came by and said the villa we wanted had opened up so if we could move in by Monday it was ours. I’m the first to admit we do not live in a real world. We had a baby, we needed a bigger place and after all the effort of sending an email, Kara and I waited a week and one was open. I’m without words. Actually as you can see, I do have some. So after letting people know the good news we had enough volunteers to move our house in one trip. A caravan of 9 cars picked everything up and dropped it off in about 2 hours.

About 11:00 on Thursday I got an email from a friend of mine who said he had been invited to a mosque and wanted to know if I was still up for the trip. He had been approached the week before and spent the evening talking to some guys about Islam and Christianity. He was then invited to come back the next week, when he told me this I thought this would be an awesome opportunity for me to build some relationships. I shot him back an email and said I was up for it. So that evening we met his friend on the other side of the town. When you meet locals here, it is not uncommon for individuals to park in a roundabout and wait for you. So we did the Qatari thing and met him there. We then followed him to one of the biggest mosques in Doha. This was definitely not sanitized tourist trip. This was a sandal wearing, Allah praising, Islam brotherhood crowd. I’ve watched foxnews, I was a little nervous but I have to say these were some of the nicest people I have met in this area. We pulled up around 7:30 and walked in on the middle of the nightly message. We sat down where a guy was doing the English translation and listened to what they were saying. Minus the mention of Jesus, this could definitely have been a sermon from your local church. The brief 30 minutes I listened to was mainly about how Muslims should not worry just about their countrymen, people in this region or Muslims alone. He was saying Allah loves all and you should seek to serve all. What I’m getting at, is it was a pretty loving message.

After the message all eyes in our circle were on us. I guess me and my friend kind of stuck out. Everyone introduced themselves and we discussed the message for about 30 minutes. We pushed it back and forth and it was a nice intro. After this the prayer call was made and the whole mosque filled up. There were several hundred men packed in doing the traditional evening prayers. My friend and I sat in the back and did our own prayers. After the prayers two guys bee lined over to us and started making friends. The conversation progressed and pretty soon we became bigger then Elvis. We had about 30 or 40 guys staring at us. Arabs have a very small bubble for personal space so we all were getting cozy. Well after talking with these guys for a bit, the original translator pulled us out and sat us down separately so we wouldn’t feel overwhelmed. Before we sat down everyone wanted to shake our hands and congratulate us. Some how everyone got the idea we had converted.

So when we sat down I made it clear that I had no intention of converting from Christianity. I was only here to make friends and share our culture. They all took it in stride and just asked us to keep our minds open. It really was a challenging talk but it was good to have. It’s been a while since I sharpened my whit in this area. After this we were invited outside to have dinner. We ate from a bowl of rice and chicken while we sat on a mat under the desert night. After passing around a bowl of camel milk and talking some more we headed home.

This was a surreal experience on about 10 different levels. I hope to continue meeting with some of these guys and build friendships. I talked to my pastor about this on Friday and he gave me some realistic advice that I was surprised to hear come out of a pastors mouth but he has more life experience in this area then I have. He basically said that I should try to build relationships, do the culture exchange thing but I should never and he repeated that, argue the Bible inside of a mosque. I told him I agreed and he was happy. Words can’t really describe how happy and emotionally draining this was. Now that my hands hurt, I think I will leave it at that.

Who's your daddy?

2005-08-27T18:34:00.000+03:00

So I know I’m supposed to finish or start writing something about the trip that Kara and I took to Europe a month ago but I’ve been busy. Real busy. As soon as I got back I had a couple of deadlines I had to make and because making those deadlines will help ensure that I get to go back to Europe another time I opted to make those my priority.

A lot has happened between then and now. Some small and some big things. The small being that Kara and I have gone past our 1 year mark for living in Qatar. Now any time we say last year it will refer to a time that we were living in our new home. We are now asked for advice on how to live here, and the new batch of newbies emphasizes the fact that our freshman year is over. It was a lot like my freshman year as a student. I wonder if I will live here for as long as I was a student as well. Most likely yes, if not longer. I would like to think that I have some big words of advice but nope nothing. So will I have anything more to write about since I have lived here for over a year and have experienced all the seasons in this land? Well, speaking about seasons, Kara and I are about to enter a new one.

I guess this merits a new paragraph. About a week and a half ago Kara and I found out we were going to have a baby. I recommend a trip to Europe over fertility pills any day. It looks like we are going to have a souvenir from our two days in Paris if I had to make a guess. Conception isn’t really on my mind anymore, April 16th is the date that occupies my head the most. That is when Felix the fetus will be the third member of our little family. I’m excited and I can’t wait. Two years ago when I thought Kara was pregnant I freaked out and almost had a nervous breakdown, this time all the logistics are taken care of. The hunting, gathering and providing shelter is all there … now what. Now the there is the whole issue of actually raising a kid. Making sure they get the food they need, not too much. Be careful that they don’t hurt themselves, at least anything permanent. Is it wrong to think that it is OK if they fall down and you don’t pick them up? I want to make sure he or she knows I love them but want them to be their own person. How will I pass down my values without making them mandatory? Who knows, now I’m just trying to expand the shelter a little.

Kara and went to look at a new place that was perfect for the three of us. Of course now I’m thinking chances are we will have more then one child before we move back to the states. I’ll wait another year before I even try to say something definite about that though. So for now, woo hoo I’m going to be a papa.

Back from Europe

2005-08-08T10:30:00.000+03:00

We’re back. Kara and I finished our Europe trip this past Saturday and I’m at work today. I’m sifting through the 1400 pictures we took and we have found about 200 that are presentable. Not bad 1 in 7 :) I should have those posted on the site in the next few days. I will also write about all of out amazing adventures and some thought provoking insight. Or I might just ramble on like I’m presently doing.

Hello from an Cafe de Internet

2005-08-01T11:06:00.000+03:00

Kara and I are catching up on what is going on in the world at $2 and hour. Kara just sneezed and the whole place said bless you. Yeah, not exactly a local hang out. Our time in Prague was fun but I don't know if this is a city I'll come back to. I took this picture this morning.

We are on our way to Berlin for 4 days where we will probably do more sitting then walking. It was suggested that we do all the active parts of the trip at first and rest at the end. I'm glad we took the advice.

A note from Prague

2005-07-29T10:31:00.000+03:00

I'm sitting in a Prague Internet cafe right now reading some messages and musing about Kara's and my first week in Europe. The first thing that I have decided is, despite what was in the back of my mind, European countries are different from one another. No crap, huh. The change from Paris to Germany was marked by rougher accents and cleaner streets. Going down the Rhine was fun because we saw a number of towns and villages that fit the mold of small town Germany. We missed a train which meant a night in Assmanhausen (it was easy to remember that name for some reason) which turned out to be very enjoyable.

Now that we are in Prague it definitely feels closer to Moscow then London. I'm going to learn more about the history today. But from what I have read it used to be a communist country that is finding its way in a capitalist world. People are skinny and don't smile too much. My knack for being cheap or at least trying to save a few bucks on a hotel has put us right outside the tourist zone into what like to call real people. Nobody speaks Englsh, and I didn't exactly brush up on my Czech before I made it here. So I have been working a lot on my mime routine but it seems to be working. I realized that there were two types of european plugs. The power strip I brought to plug in all of my electronic gadgets only works in Germany, not France or the Czech Republic. I found an adapter after a lot of drawing and gesturing.

Right now I'm coping my latest batch of photos to my iPod. Can you believe I have taken over 400 so far? I'm sure most of you can. I even bought a travel tripod with me. I thought it might be a little too much but we have used it quite a bit when Kara and I were trying to get the perfect shot at the Eifel Tower.

On another note I was reading some of the forwards I recieve and found an interesting one about Ben Steins last column. I wasn't sure if it was real or not but after checking the ever faithful Snopes.com it turns out that it was. So take a look at it if you want to read something short and with some substance.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/benstein.asp

Planes Trains and Automobiles plus Boats

2005-07-21T17:15:00.000+03:00

A lot has happened these past 4 weeks but nothing terribly new or interesting. The most notable thing being pulled over by a Qatari police officer for the first time. It’s funny because this never happens. Never. But as I have acclimated to driving here I have learned to, lets say, bend the rules on occasion. If you are stuck in traffic it is not unheard of to go over a sidewalk or median and cut through a dirt field. I wouldn’t do this right in front of a police officer but I wouldn’t worry about one going out of their way to track me down either. Well as I was showing some friends of Kara and mine the way to the only restaurant that I could say “Hey I know a good place” about I was pulled over. The cop thought that I did an illegal U-turn when I actually just did a left hand turn into a parking lot. He laughed and said “No, you are just parked here until I leave then you will drive off.” After I convinced him that I really was going to eat at this restaurant he said “OK, but your registration is still out of date.” Doh, you got me there. The guy was actually very cordial and gave me his mobile number in case I had any problems taking care of the ticket.

Well we had dinner and the next Sunday I called my friendly mechanic friend and he took care of the registration. Well I called him on Sunday and when it was all said and done I got the registration on Thursday. I had until Thursday to turn it in or I would get a 700QR (~$180) fine. Well this was another adventure in finding something in Doha. Nobody uses street names and nobody speaks much English on that side of town or in government offices. My first shot was actually only off by about ½ a mile. But when I couldn’t find it we called a friend who pointed me to another station where I couldn’t pay my fine. They pointed me to another one that said I had to go to the one behind the fruit and vegetable market. I got to that area asked a few people after doing a little off roading and in the end it was right where the officer told me it was. Of course by this time is was closed and they said to come back on Sunday. One thing about bendable rules and mentality is sometimes it works in your favor. I got there the next Sunday and they said no problem. They shook their head I said halas (its finished) he said yes and I went on my way.

::: Warning Geek Talk :::

I also spent two weeks implementing this huge project that I have been working on ever since I started here. It was a professional accomplishment for me but work has been very hectic since I got back from the states. I just spent the last week getting C# and Java to talk with each other in a secure way. Love me some of that XML Kool-Aid. The hardest part was reaching back and relearning Java. It’s actually not such a bastard of a language after all. The biggest gripe I had with it is the lack of documentation. I get the whole open source free love idea but it’s not always economically feasible. Should you spend $50 an hour on somebody to untangle all the different pieces that all these open source types donate to the community or a few hundred bucks on something that runs out of the box? I think the open source idea works for students and when it’s cheaper to have an open source geek untangling everything because your systems are so huge that licensing would be cost prohibitive. But I’m in neither one of those positions.

I might end up writing this up someday but for now this is what I had to do. Encrypt a string with a username and password in it send it to our server that hosts a third party Java app. Decrypt the string and store it along with a guid in an XML file. Do a response.redirect to a .jsp page that then picked up the string from the XML and did a server.transfer type of function to the 3rd party’s default.jsp page. I promise it makes sense. I also had to get Tomcat and IIS working on the same port. Well not really I found some software that tunnels all jsp requests from IIS to Tomcat.

I know about 2 of you actually cared about what I wrote there but it’s my blog and this how I rant.

::: End Geek Talk :::

Now I’m preparing or have been preparing for Kara’s and my Europe 2005 vacation. We’ve been planning this for a while and I’m proud to say that we have done it without a travel agent, come in under budget and it should kick butt. I will give a better description when I get back. I’m posting the general areas will be in during the trip. If you need to call me just look up my parents phone number on yahoo. If you don’t know that call my office. Either one of them will have my mobile which can make and receive calls from all over the globe. Not that big of a deal, I just switched plans after not being able to make calls in Sri Lanka. If you don’t know either one, well just wait until I get back because I’m not putting it up here. I’m not being paranoid but after what happened in Sri Lanka I don’t mind giving a little bit of information out.

I also just heard about the bombs that went off in London. Small bombs but they were real. We had already planned on not taking the underground while we were there because a friend was going to drive he to and from the different airports. I wonder if I would if I didn’t have a friend to do that. Pay a huge amount for a taxi? Probably not.

Where we’ll be sleeping:

July 22 – 23 Paris, France

July 24 – 25 Koblenz, Germany

July 26 – 27 Munich, Germany

July 28 – 31 Prague, Czech Republic

August 1 – 4 Berlin, Germany

August 5 London, UK

August 6 Doha, Qatar

Yawn - I'm Here - Yawn

2005-06-26T21:03:00.000+03:00

I’m back in Doha with the worst case of Jet Lag that I have ever experienced. It was the normal trip that I usually take except for the extra leg through Orlando. I didn’t sleep much on the way to London or between London and Doha. I thought cool, I’m really tired but this is a good way to whip me back into my sleep schedule. Well unfortunately I didn’t set an alarm on Saturday because I figured I would wake up when I need to. Well that ended up being 4:00 PM my time and 8:00 AM Texas time. This was depressing because I just lost all the anti-jet lag sleep I had on the plane and I was back to Texas time. Kara and I got up and got about 4 hours of sleep last night. I’m now doing my best to stay awake for a little longer so that I can wake up at a normal hour tomorrow.

We have two individuals in from College Station for the next two weeks. I have been videoconferencing with them ever since I’ve been working here and today was the first time to actually meet them face to face. One of them told me I was taller then they had thought I was. I guess a 13” monitor doesn’t really give you anything to reference a person’s height by. Especially when they are sitting down. I was some what worried about how I would be with them here since I was so jet lagged but they are hurting as bad as I am so no big deal. They coded this HR Database system that I have been in charge of from the Qatar end. It was a lot bigger of a responsibility than I expected when I started. Luckily the people in College Station were experienced enough to fill any holes I might have had in my experience.

Not to have some corny segue but the whole responsibility thing reminded me of something one of the elders in my church told me at dinner. I was talking about wanting to work with the church more but not knowing where I should be. I’ve always secretly been annoyed by those seemingly melodramatic types who would wine about God not telling them anything and they were not sure what they wanted to do. To me it always seemed like a convenient excuse to not have a job and still act like you are in college without any real responsibilities. I actually heard this same comment while hanging out with Kara and her sister’s friends. One girl was there talking to this guy and said those exact same words “I don’t know where God wants me” And I thought to myself, I wonder how many times she has even left The Woodlands. Well I later found out when she asked me how much Arabic that she had spent time as a nurse in the Sudan and I believe Afghanistan and has seen most of the Middle East countries. Lets just say I felt about 6”s tall then. Nothing like a good piece of humble pie to put you in your place. Luckily I had kept all of my cynical comments to myself or I would have been walking to the airport to catch my flight to Orlando. Lesson learned here, get off your I have world experience high horse and realize that people don’t have to live in the sand just to live life. It reminded me of the time I used to think the only way that I could serve God was by going to the most oppressed and poverty stricken countries in the world. If I didn’t go who would and what was my excuse. Anybody who stuck around in the states was just taking the easy way out. Learning their theology in their seminaries but not know what ministry was really about. Although I know there are still some of those over scholastic Christians this point of view, I’m happy to say, has been changed.

Well back to the talk with my elder. I wanted to know how I could work into having a role with more responsibility. He flat out told me start coming to the prayer meetings on Tuesday night and you will know where the needs are. I have learned over the years not to make a knee jerk reaction to taking on responsibility. In the past I would say yes to 10 different things and in the end I would be stressed out with a 2.0 GPR and nothing done right. So I have done my best not to promise anything I can’t deliver, unfortunately I have not always held true to that, but I that is how life goes. He also told me to keep on doing the small things. I’ve been working with Power Point to keep the words on the screen during worship and now he says I need to look for a few more people to do my job so I will be free to take on different responsibilities. It sounds a lot like Amway with building a down line but it makes sense. He also asked if I would work on the soundboard and I told him I would give it my best shot. I’m tone deaf so I’m going to ask Kara to be there with me at first to help with the mic checks. Right now when I hear them do it, I really can’t tell the difference between what sounds good and what doesn’t. Once that is good to go, my job will be mainly a technical one.

The elder told me something that totally made sense. He said that if I ever plan on planting a church I’m going to need to be able to do all of these small things and teach others how to do them as well. I don’t know if Kara and I will ever be planting a church but it does make sense to me. Learn the guys’ job above of you and teach yours to the one below you. I’m not sure why God put me here, but I’m pretty sure it was for more then writing code and going to church on Friday morning. There are so many needs here that are so evident. It is my responsibility to do my best to meet these needs. I just can’t be a bull in china shop when I’m doing it.

Thoughts in the Orlando Airport

2005-06-23T23:01:00.000+03:00

I’m currently sitting in the Orlando Delta Crown Lounge. It’s one of the nicer lounges that I have seen but unfortunately all the snacks I was depending on when I skipped breakfast this morning are not here.

Not a whole lot to say I’ve just been doing some reflections on my trip and what it means to my life in Doha. After three weeks in the states I began to like it again. I don’t know exactly what it is but when Kara and I drove from San Antonio to Houston I felt some nostalgia when we drove through some small towns and by some open fields with actual tree lines. Kara and I talked a lot about how long we wanted to stay in Doha and the benefits of our life there. Kara is definitely a little more pro Doha then I am. It might be that I’m just a little more pro Texas. I don’t plan on coming back to Texas for a while but there something that just resonates with me there. There’s family and friends, memories and the Texas I don’t give a crap what you think arrogant redneck mentality. Who knows. I do know that this is triggered when I’m out in the more rural areas and not when I’m in Dallas, San Antonio or Houston. Am I really just a redneck in a Microsoft T-Shirt? Who knows.

I’m excited to get back to my routine and there will be no time for rest once I do. Two weeks of working with the folks in College Station, one week of normal work and then off to Germany. I’m not complaining my head just thinks a lot about these things. I’m really excited about our Germany trip. One of the cool things about backpacking around Europe is its OK to wear the same pair of clothes for a couple of days. At least that’s what I’m telling Kara. On our trip back we had a grand total of 320 pounds of stuff. We shipped 80 of it through my 4 box a month allowance A&M gives me. The rest was meticulously divided up between 4 checked pieces of luggage and 4 pieces of carry on luggage. I took a picture minus the boxes we mailed this morning. I’ll show it later.

Well that’s just a quick note, I’m on my way to London next.

Finding Home

2005-06-20T18:49:00.000+03:00

After going to Florida for a week of training and then to Dallas for two days I spent a week in San Antonio, the town that I was born and raised. The place that I’m supposed to feel like is my home. Honestly it felt like a place that I was very familiar with, but I can’t say that it was home. Maybe because ever since I left for college 8 years ago I have not really lived there. At least that is what my mom tells me. In a good way, she is just reminding me of my need for independence. It felt as much like home as Florida did. I’ve never been to Florida before this trip so that should put it in perspective.

If San Antonio no longer feels like home then what does. I would assume College Station is next on the list. I have a lot of good memories there, but most of the people I share those memories with are no longer there. That’s not 100% true, there was the post graduation crowd but that was another phase of my life all together. So if College Station was to feel like home it wouldn’t be because of my college roommates but because of the people I used to work with. I liked living in Conroe, but I don’t think I’ll have too much nostalgia coming from the 6 months Kara and I lived there.

So what does that leave? Doha? This Texas boy now calls Doha home. Not just a place he is living for a while but this is actually my home. Where I’ll have memories and where someday I’ll write about in some obscure blog. Then will I feel nostalgia about the local shwarma stands and learning Arabic at QCPI. I think, based off these past two weeks, it will probably be a place that I enjoy in my memories but walking by the physical bricks and sand won’t bring back a rush of good feelings.

This confirms something that I have been tossing around in my head for a while. I don’t really miss any specific place (except for Colorado in the summer) I do however miss people. Anytime people ask me what I miss about the states, family and friends are first on my list and I still struggle to find anything that would be a very distant second. Pork maybe, but it’s not really worth the plane ride. So my conclusion is people make memories and places worth going back to. Not the pretty view or the first house we bought as a married couple. Memories usually require somebody to share it with. Maybe that is why we are not in any hurry to leave Doha. We made a home here with a solid set of friends. It’s not the sand storms or cool 115 degree days that made us sign another year long contract.

I once mocked a friend of mine who said he was going to move to New Mexico to live next to his Old Lady from college. I was thinking how pathetic could you be. Now I’m realizing that is his family and what makes his home a home. Why do we all have to be so damn independent? We kill our selves so that we can make it on our own in our own autonomous lifestyle but if we don’t like it what did we prove. Who knew that guy was so enlightened this whole time.

So to all my friends and family who read this, thanks for making wherever we meet home. I love you guys.

Going to Florida

2005-05-31T08:29:00.000+03:00

So I’m heading off to Tech Ed on Thursday and more anticipated Texas the next week. Like every other time I fly I have now entered the of crap portion of my planning. I have not packed one thing and I probably won’t until the last minute. Getting to fly and going on vacations for me is quite an indulgence. I look forward to it quite a bit. This is probably one of the reasons why I don’t plan enough for it. I almost feel guilty when I spend time planning because I think I should wait to enjoy it when it is the proper time. Does it make sense? No. Kara on the other hand is much more practical and ever since we have been married has packed my bags and kept me in line. Of course I had the prestigious job of carrying the bags but that is why we make a good team. So with a few days left I have decided it is OK to pack and I better start or I will have a nervous breakdown and not be able to enjoy the flight. Why do I enjoy flying? Because I’m going business and I can relax and think to myself for 24 hours while catching all the movies that I don’t get in the states. It’s like a little pod of solitude that I get for the time period. Also the fact that I’m going to arrive somewhere new is a bonus.

Teacher Russell

I was asked by the computer teacher at the American School to give a presentation to his class about what it means to be a Software Developer. He asked me because Kara told him I would be interested in helping him get kids interested in technology. Well I did my best and I just hope I didn’t turn them away from it. I have several friends and family members who are teachers and I can not imagine what it would be like to do that job everyday. The kids were well behaved they just didn’t seem to care about what I was saying. Of course I guess I can’t expect all kids at that age to be in love with the idea of being a computer geek. That’s why you teach them.

First off I prepared a powerpoint presentation that was about an hour long. I tried to make it interactive but it is pretty intimidating when you ask a question like “Where do you see software being used” and they all just give you blank stares. Right thanks for the help. So I went through my presentation and nobody fell asleep. The second class actually had some questions. The thing that surprised me the most was how young they were. I kept on trying to tone down the presentation when I was creating it but I was thinking of non-technical adults not 15 and 16 year old kids. It was a good experience and if I’m asked back again I think I will be better prepared.

Memorial Day

2005-05-30T15:41:00.000+03:00

It is Memorial Day in the states today and I was thinking about what that meant. For most of my life it has meant an extra day off and not much else. I ashamedly admit for many years I didn’t even know what it was for. The official holiday is to honor the men and women who died defending our country. So to them and their families I would like to say thank you. Thank you for making the sacrifices you did. It is because men and women like yourself that I am able to enjoy the freedoms and protection that I do as an American. No matter where I live, at home or abroad. So thanks.

I would also like to thank members of my family who have served in the military and chose to do a job that I chose not to. My grandfather Russell Workman, my dad Tom Lindell and my cousin John Horning who is on his way to Germany this fall. Thanks for everything.

If you want more information about Memorial Day you can visit http://www.usmemorialday.org/

Gun smoke

2005-05-29T09:16:00.000+03:00

Gun Club

This weekend I went to the Doha gun club with some friends of mine. I was unaware that there was such a thing but a friend was in a competition so we went to watch. I have never shot skeet before but this may be a good place to get my gun fix. They are opening it up to the public in June and are trying to encourage expats to come out and use the facilities. Along with skeet shooting there is a rifle and pistol range. They are only shooting .22s but it will be enough for me to get back in practice. It’s not a fancy indoor range with an automatic arm that moves that target however far you want but I’m still excited about it. It even has a mosque on site. I don’t think you would ever see that in Texas.

Say hello to my little friend

Speaking about guns I went for a walk yesterday and passed by the embassies that are down the street from my building. I do this because I like to listen to books on tape and this way I get out of the house but I’m not completely bored. Well while I was walking I noticed the vacant lots by the embassies. The embassies are on the beach with the water coming up to their back door. I had never gone to this waters edge and thought today would be a good day. After walking to it and back up to the street I was greeted by an Egyptian embassy guard with an older automatic rifle slung over his shoulder. He signaled me to be wait a second and what appeared to be his boss rolled up in the LandCruiser. Neither one of us spoke the other’s language so there was a lot of gesturing. I didn’t think they cared if I could spell my name in Arabic or not. In the end I told them I was walking for exercise and they said “Oh, sports” I shook my head yes and they let me go. No big deal, they just wanted to know why I was down by the water. Guess I won’t go there again.

Small World

Some friends that I have known through a weird series of coincidences came in last night on a recruiting trip. It is for the PR folks so I’m not sure what exactly the job is. They are Shane and Desi Porter and I first met them while I was a fish in the Corps. They were friends with my buddy Chris and we did the whole wave thing every time we saw each other. When I worked at The Association I ended up working in the same department as Desi. Now they are coming out here for a recruiting trip. Danna who used to work at The Association was the one who prompted Desi initially but it is still funny how things work out.

I’ll be heading to Florida this Thursday and then to Texas the next week. I’m really excited to see everybody. It has been a while but in the grand scheme not all that long. I hope I don’t spend the whole time talking about my self. I have been warned by others who go back that it can happen. So that’s it for now.

Spinning a rhyme

2005-05-24T22:08:00.000+03:00

Well after going to church tonight for some reason I was reminded of this piece I wrote a while ago. I searched through my backup hard drive and what do you know there it is. I wrote it over 5 years ago and showed it to a couple of friends but thought for some reason I would make it public tonight. No real reason but it just hit me. FYI, Kara and I were not dating at the time of this writing so keep that in mind when you read it.

Hope you like it

prodigal son

Just talking and thinking of back in the day, remembering games we used to play…

Talking about us being boys, and treating girls like they were toys…

Struggling hard feeling the drama here, last night toe up, too much, caused by fear…

What causes a brother to look for that high, its not even enough to help you get by…

It’s good for the moment then its gone, can't hit replay like with a song…

When its done you don't stay feeling good, like having candy instead of real food…

You had your choice of water to take, but you made another mistake…

In front of you sits all the joy ever known, instead we build our own worldly thrones…

Ones made of lust greed and cheap highs, but in the end you sit down and just want to cry…

Knowing the walls and idols we made, when he comes they'll do more then just fade…

They’ll be burned to ashes and rest in a pile, the only thing that could make our Lord smile…

Every dollar, every car, every girl on the side, they won't mean a thing just as empty as pride…

He gives us more then we could ever want, we just ignore where we're supposed to hunt…

Lord I thank you for I have sinned, your forgiveness is worth more then whiskey and gin…

More then jobs and the girls I look for, more then every opportunity that has walked out the door…

Lord I love you more then I can say, and every time I sin it pains me in that way…

To know your love and sacrifice, and I just treat it like the roll of the dice…

Down on my knees with my heart open wide, Lord I pray you crush this foolish pride…

Keep me solid and keep me real, keep me reminded you are stronger then steel…

I'm the prodigal son that has been so far away, yet you love me and ask me to stay…

Ragged and unworthy no more then a peasant, I only want to hear well done good and faithful servant…

To know I did your will and not my own, to know I'll kneel before your thrown…

I end this prayer asking to be strong, and the next time we talk not to be long…

Lord give me strength for the troubles I hit, Lord let me know what actions will fit…

We struggle and fight for what we think we should have, but in the end we deserve less then a half…

With you on my side I will never fall, but the first step is for me to make the call…

So I go to bed thinking of friends and my fam, resting in that you will meet me where I am…

Whether on my knees in the front pew, or passed out on a worn bar stool…

Your love is that large your love is that strong, I just don't know why it has taken me this long.

Things can change in a year

2005-05-22T09:26:00.000+03:00

Well as I let the one year anniversary slip by of my Blog it reminded me that I have been a slacker with it and I decided I should send everybody an update to what I’m doing.

Kara has been gone visiting family and friends in the states for the past two weeks. Which means that I’m living like a bachelor, dirty, naked and starving. I’ve actually been doing OK on my own but it sue hasn’t been fun. She is helping a good friend of hers get ready for her wedding. She is also visiting with everyone she ever knew in the Houston area. I wonder if this is going to be our routine for however long we live here. I guess that is why they give us an extra two weeks of vacation each year. We’ll just take it one year at a time. It has been good to hear all about what she is doing. It sounds like she is having a lot of fun. She went to a cocktail party in Louisiana and was asked where she was from. She initially said Texas but was prompted by the groom’s mom to be more accurate and she told the group Qatar. She then explained that was in the Middle East. When she said that one guy blurted out “That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard, that is so dumb.” I really wish I could have been there to interact with this enlightened argument but I was not. I guess money doesn’t make you immune to ignorance. I may have thought the same thing myself if my only source of information on this was Fox news but I doubt that I would have ever said anything so disrespectful.

I guess it shows me how much things have changed in my mind since arriving here. I hear a comment like that and to me it’s like calling A&M a third rate country bumpkin school, Texas a state of hillbillies or teaching an easy job. You just don’t know until you’ve been there. I do complain about my host country from time to time but overall it has been a great new home for us to live. What I need to remember is people won’t and really can’t know where I’m coming from. As long as they are respectful I can tolerate that. I don’t know what life in Louisiana is like. Maybe its acceptable to make an ass out of yourself in front of complete strangers.

An Era has Passed

Well, it was fun while it lasted but I decided to put the Beast up for sale. I don’t know if it was 5th or 6th trip to the mechanic or the impending summer and its weak AC but I felt it was time for us to part ways. The last time I drove it the engine was overheating but you couldn’t tell by the broken temperature gauge. It was the rattling of the engine that gave it away. I know from experience what an engine low on oil sounds like. Thanks to my old escort that ran out of oil on a regular basis. I checked the engine and smoke was coming out of where you put the oil in but the dipstick was telling me I had plenty. I guess something wasn’t working. A $100 later it was fixed. The engine would do a couple of victory laps when I turned it off as well. That was fixed to. So I slapped a for sale sign on the window with my number and in 24 hours I had 10 calls asking to see it. The first guy wanted it to pull his boat on the weekends. I told him that would be a good use for it because it is not an everyday car. He paid the full price ($1200) and it was done. I used that money to buy Kara’s and my tickets to Germany and it was done. I was really amazed how fast it went but much more relieved.

As I followed him to the traffic department to change the title I started to get seller’s remorse. I was thinking that I was going to miss it and wondering if I really should have sold it. When we got to the traffic department the guy who bought it told me the engine was heating up but that was OK he knew how to fix it. Good for him because I didn’t have a clue. I then thought to myself “Now that’s why I sold it.”

My new not so new ride

Before I sold the beast I bought a Hyundai ’97 Galloper which is based off the Mitsubishi Pajero. Both are vehicles you probably haven’t heard of but are big on this side of the world. It was being sold by a female teacher returning home. This is important because she was selling it because she had to, she had her maintenance records and it had never been to the desert. It only has 45k miles on it. It helps that she only lives 1 mile from where she works. So I bought it for a good price and at this point I went from 0 cars that I could drive to 3 in a matter of a day. Kara left for the states, the beast was fixed and I bought this car. So I decided I didn’t need to start collecting cars and that’s when I sold the beast. I also leased the Galloper back to the teacher for her remaining stay here. It was cheaper then her going through a dealer and I didn’t need two cars until Kara got back.

John 3:3

I was walking out of the mall yesterday and a guy walked up to me and said John 3:3.

In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."

I was like well hello I’m Russell. I was wearing a BUCs (Brother’s Under Christ) Island Party T-Shirt that had a scripture on the back of it so I figured that is what had triggered his comment. We talked for a while and the guy poured out quite a bit in the first 5 minutes about his walk with God. I’m quite an introvert with people I don’t know and it amazes me to see people who can just start talking with in 30 seconds of meeting you. It turns out the guy is from Conroe about 15 minutes from where I used to live. It brought me back to running through the neighborhoods on cool spring mornings. That’s hard to forget. He’s been living here for 6 months and hasn’t found a church to go to. I got his email and told him I would connect him with the one I go to or the other predominately western expat one. You never know who you will meet when you go for shwarmas (Arabic Fast-food).

Qatar Aggie Muster and Stuff

2005-04-26T08:01:00.000+03:00

Aggie Muster

As did tens of thousands of other Aggies I celebrated Aggie Muster this past April 21st. For those not familiar with the tradition muster is the time of year when Aggies get together, tell good bull stories and remember fellow Aggies who died in the past year. They are remembered by having their names called out and a friend or classmate answering here for them. This was the second time Muster was celebrated on the Qatar campus and it turned out to be an enjoyable event. I was asked to call out the names and was happy to accept the honor. The muster speaker was Dr. Curtis Farmer. His family has lived in Texas literally from its declaration of independence from Mexico. He gave everybody in the room a brief history of Texas and how the mentality of the state relates to the ceremony of Muster that we were celebrating.

From what I hear last year the students were cautious about celebrating it because they thought it might be some religious ceremony. I guess even those who haven’t heard the jokes about A&M being a cult gets the impression from time to time. This year was different and the students were happy to participate. One of them played a keyboard while I read the names and the rest that were present lit candles for the 21 names that were called. It was decided that we would call the names of all the current students who had passed away and the names of the soldiers killed in action while in Iraq.

For more information visit:

http://www.aggienetwork.com/muster/tradition.aspx.

Its an amazing website. Whoever worked on it must be a genius. :)

Car Woes

This blog really isn’t intended to be a listing of mishaps that I’ve had while here in Qatar it just seems that way. Well I think the beast has had it and if it hasn’t I don’t care. I’m rolling it off a cliff. Well if there was a cliff around here I would send it off of it. I have resigned to fix it one more time and put it up for sale. I don’t know what triggered this, maybe the rattling / burning engine, who knows. It has oil in it, but I don’t think it is making it to where it needs to go. I’m having my trusty mechanic guy work on it and I will then put it up for sale.

In the mean time I thought I was going to be the owner of an almost new ’04 Lancer with a 1.3 liter engine. That reads as a reliable safe car with a small motor that isn’t going to turn any heads. About 12 hours before the purchase I was called and told it was no longer for sale because the price of new cars has gone up since the value of the dollar has dropped. I never thought the falling dollar would affect me but it looks like it just did. No big deal, I’m just going to have to do some hurry up offense on finding a replacement this weekend.

1984

I have just finished listening to two pretty interesting books. The first one was "1984" written by George Orwell. It has some pretty interesting ideas that rival any conspiracy theory I've come across. The premise of the book is that we are all being watched by Big Brother. There are three classes in the books society, Inner Party (The puppet masters), The Party (The enforcers) and the mindless drones (remaining 85% of Society). The inner party gives the orders, while the party carry's out the orders and the mindless drones just do whatever makes them happy. This usually includes killing themselves with gambling and drugs or other cheap tools that keeps them from reaching self awareness. Everybody listens to Big Brother because if they don't they will be killed. Anybody who appears to go against the party will be killed. So I thought it was going to be the usual story of corrupt power taking advantage of the little man for their monetary benefit. The twist that made you sick was the idea that big brother did this not for some cash payoff but power was the payoff. Big brother had the ability to create a society that would raise the quality of life for all of its citizens but chose to rule them by fear in order to keep control of the power. Their ultimate goal wasn't to create a better society but only to keep the power. Their methods were focused on having submission as the end not just a means to it. The most consistent way submission was coerced from the public was by war propaganda. They had to do X because it was for the good of the nation and it would help them beat whoever they were at war with.

It reminds me of real life scenarios that you see in countries all over the world. How many people just listen to what the news tells them and trust that it is not being controlled. If not the news what about their religious leaders or simple rumors that are spread. It creates an environment of fear where conformity is the best option on an individual basis but the worse option for the society. I haven't seen anything as bad as what was in the book but the book is fiction after all.

I really can't do justice to this book in a couple of paragraphs so if you would like to read more here are a few links

Cliff Notes

Information from Amazon

I'll talk about Dirk Gentry's Holistic Detective Agency next time.

And in other less depressing news

Qatar's Robot Camel Jockeys

Why do nerds confuse Halloween and Christmas? Because OCT31=DEC25.

Blogs from Iraq, just random ones I came across

http://baghdadgirl.blogspot.com/

http://aviraqi.blogspot.com

If you don't pay your phone bill in Doha

How do I get myself into these situations?

2005-04-19T13:24:00.000+03:00

So it’s been a while since I wrote something. This has mostly been for the fact that life has been the same as usual without too many distractions. Actually that’s something I have found to be the most interesting. My schedule has gotten to the breaking point where actually don’t have any free time except for one day a week when I’m to dazed to enjoy it. Everything just wants one or two nights a week but when you add it all up you don’t have any time to yourself. Oh well, my Arabic classes will be done soon. At least until when the next session starts.

Neurology … oh, I though you said Neurotic

For those who do not know I have a mild case of ADD (attention deficit disorder). This causes me to lose focus and can affect my ability to get things done. I decided to start getting treatment for it a while ago and have been taking a drug called Concerta. It wasn’t anything revolutionary but it did take the edge off of my ADD just enough for me to get my work done. About a month ago I ran out of my wonder drug and for some reason I keep forgetting to call the doctor to make an appointment for a prescription refill. That’s the irony in the condition, you don’t get a prescription refill because you forget, you forget because you don’t get your prescription refilled. It’s a vicious cycle. I called the local hospital a couple of times to work on this and when I could get through they would ask me to call back later. I was like Noooo, it took me two weeks to remember to make this call. So this is when I decided to drive to Hamad (the local hospital) and make and appointment myself.

On my way there I knew it would be a series of misunderstandings before I got anything that I needed. And is if they knew what I was thinking the first person pointed me to the psychiatric department but they had no idea where it was. Just in the general direction of another place I was unfamiliar with. So I decided I would go find it and after a couple of calls I made it to the “Medical Center” or better known as the floor above the Jaguar show room. It had a nice big sign on the outside declaring this was the place for sexual dysfunction and psychiatry needs. Man I hope nobody sees me going in here. I look around and after asking for the medical center and I was pointed towards the stairs. At this point I realized that I was spending my lunch on a wild goose chase that presently had my climbing a dark stairwell to Doha’s center for the sexually dysfunctional. That’s when I asked myself “How do I get into these situations?” I went into the clinic and talked to what looked to be the receptionist and she told me that their psychiatrist only comes once a month and asked if I wanted to make an appointment. After reviewing in my mind the steps I took to get here I thought it might be possible that I made a mistake somewhere along the way. I told her no, and called the Hamad Psychiatry department again. After being asked to call back on a different number I got more concrete directions which included turning off the paved road, drive around the vacant old hospital and you’ll see our building. Hot Dog, I can’t wait.

So I trudged along with these very useful directions and found myself in Doha’s psychiatric ward. I was seated in the waiting room with several guys who were mentally disturbed and I kept wondering to myself “how, how do I do it?” I managed to make it from my somewhat nice office to an old shack looking to score some Concerta. Talent that’s how. While I was sitting there this guy sat next to me where is traditional garb and just stared at me. Once or twice he said “I love you” but that was it. Yeah, didn’t know how to answer that one. With in about an hour a nurse took me to a waiting room to see what I needed. They were very confused I didn’t have a referral and wanted to know why I just walked in. After I told them my objective they said I needed to go back to Hamad and go to the Neurology department. Excellent. So I wasted three hours but I got to see another side of Doha.
I went by there this morning and wasn’t able to make an appointment because their computers were down. I was however was able to call them and make one later in the day. It won’t be until May so I wonder if I should have just gone to the sexual dysfunction place instead.

I got my iPod Woo Hoo

A big thanks to all those who contributed to the iPod fund this past Christmas. I finally got mine a few weeks ago. After the initial frustration that any new tech object gives me, I am now enjoying it. At first I learned that they are only formatted for Macs unless you plug it into a PC via a fire wire port that to my knowledge most PCs do not have. I scrounged up an adapter and was good to go. I then had a bum USB cable that caused a lot of frustration. Once I got a new one I was somewhat happy. I then learned I had to convert all my WMA files to MP3s or MAC compatible ones. No big deal, I opted for the MP3s because despite them being bigger in size (meaning I can put fewer on my iPod) I refuse to use any MAC proprietary formats. I sold out to Bill Gates and the Microsoft beast years ago, I’m not going back now. The issue here is iTunes (the software used to interact with the iPod) only offered to convert them to their format.

Well after looking around the web I found what I needed. I went from a product I had to buy, to a work around to that product and finally to one that I could get for free. In the end 3 hours of effort saved me $20. Not quite sure if it was worth it, but I wasn’t doing anything else that afternoon anyways.

So now I have my brand spanking new iPod I decided that I needed to download some books from Audible.com. I apparently forgot how to read when I was commuting from Conroe to College Station last year so now I listen to all of my books. Well here we go again with the whole proprietary format thing. I found out after downloading my first book that it comes in one big file. So if I pause in the middle of “War and Peace” I’m going to have to use the nifty click wheel and my memory to get back my original spot. Well I’m not a big fan of getting carpel tunnel syndrome in my thumb (can you do that) so I went through the same routine as I did for the last piece of software and found that the free one did the job again. I found a toy that let me put it in my favorite MP3 format and splice it up for your easier listening pleasure. For those who are interested go to goldwave.com I love those guys.

And in other News

One of the wealthiest nations in the world (Qatar) had decided to focus it’s inept police force from poorly directing traffic to preventing it’s most impoverished class of citizens (expats from India and East Asia) from making a phone call home.

http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=Local_News&subsection=Qatar+News&month=April2005&file=Local_News2005041833743.xml

I think it’s “interesting” how they refer to them as low paid expats in the same breath that they condemn them for using these cheaper services.

One last note

I found out about maps.google.com just recently and this is cool. It might be that I live 8,000 miles away from TX but being able to see my old high school track gives my a warm fuzzy.

My old neighborhood

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=78255&ll=29.684973,-98.653686&spn=0.021672,0.015385&t=k&hl=en

My parents house (On the corner, in the center)

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=78255&ll=29.684865,-98.656583&spn=0.010836,0.007693&t=k&hl=en

My old high school

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=78255&ll=29.565496,-98.581095&spn=0.010836,0.007693&t=k&hl=en

Texas A&M

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=77844&ll=30.608940,-96.347394&spn=0.043344,0.030770&t=k&hl=en

The quad

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=77844&ll=30.613403,-96.336751&spn=0.010836,0.007693&t=k&hl=en

Doha Qatar Car Bomb

2005-03-25T23:23:00.000+03:00

So it is likely you have heard about Qatar's first terrorist car bomb this last weekend. I’ve been meaning to write about it for awhile but things have been popping up this week so I haven’t been able to give it justice. Now it’s Friday night over here so I thought I would finally sit down and write out what happened from my perspective.

I heard the bomb go off when I was actually walking back to my building as Kara drove to the airport to pick up Danna who is a friend of ours. We were running late so I asked her to drop me off a block away from our building. So while I was on my random walk home I heard a definite boom. It wasn’t like an earsplitting explosion but a solid noise. My first thought was a car bomb. I then thought no way this is Doha, it's probably a construction accident. I guess I felt incompetence was much more of a danger here then terrorists were.

Well as you probably know by now it was a bomb and not an accident. From what I understand the terrorist was an Egyptian man who lived in Doha for 15 years. He had a steady job, a wife and two children. He was a computer programmer for Qatar Petroleum and on most accounts was an average upper middle class family man. His wife was reported to say that he was a devout Muslim and never imagined that he would do something like this. In the Muslim culture men are the ones who primarily go to the mosque while the wife stays at home. It is not surprising that she did not know what was happening. I want to be clear, I see terrorists as a very small subset of the Muslim community. Much in the same way the KKK is a small subset of the Christian community. He could have also been part of a sleeper cell this whole time. All I can really do is speculate so I won’t say anymore about it.

Life in Doha has changed or at least the attitude in the expatriate community has. The security has been stepped up at the building we live in and all of the compounds. The security at education city is no longer a joke. I got to see my first car bomb detector and they are not allowing anybody to park under the building I work in. We also have a full time police officer watching our parking lot. We went to church today after much talking and praying. One of the other churches in Doha is actually not meeting for a while. This past week the government knocked on the doors of our church and pretty much said we are going to protect you. From what I heard it wasn’t up for debate not that there would have been any protest if it was. I don’t want to give out too many details except we now have concrete blocks located around the existing concrete wall that encloses our building. They’ve also taken several other measures for our protection. It’s a great thing that they took the effort to protect us. I see it partly as God working in this area. On a secular level you could argue that having a church full of westerners is better then having a bombed church full of westerners.

I don’t know how to explain it, for the most part everything is the same but it seems like Doha lost its "innocence". I think what we saw was a definite turn in the history of this country. This is the first time something like this has happened here. We can no longer laugh about being in the Middle East because we know what connotations it carries compared to the actual reality. We never really thought of Doha as the "Middle East". In contrast to last week I spent most of the church service today scanning the exits to see what would the quickest way be out if a car came through the wall. I also thought about which outside wall was the most likely to be hit. When a car went roaring by I tensed up some. The car that hit the theatre raced into it before exploding. This maybe residual paranoia but in the end I think it’s somewhat helpful. I feel like it’s good to be alert / scared but you can’t let it control you. I’ve done a lot of praying for protection in the past 6 days. In the end I know prayer is the reason we didn’t have an incident today. Concrete barriers are nice, but nothing man can do is full proof.

Below are a couple of links to different news stories about the bomb in case you have not read any yet.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2005/March/middleeast_March615.xml§ion=middleeast&col

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2005/March/middleeast_March618.xml§ion=middleeast&col

http://www.forbes.com/home/energy/2005/03/25/cz_0325oxan_qatarattack.html

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2005/March/middleeast_March705.xml§ion=middleeast

These aren’t exactly the most comforting articles but they are not meant to scare our family or friends either. It’s just an account of what we are reading over here. I hope all is well with everybody.

Jumpy, who’s jumpy?

2005-03-17T08:19:00.000+03:00

Well this morning I had a fun little incident that I would like to share. As you may have picked up by now I drive a rather old vehicle that has more character then actual value. Well as I do every morning I went down stairs to my basement parking lot and got into what I affectionately call “The Beast”. As I turned the ignition the motor started turning and BAMMM!!! it backfired. When a car backfire’s it’s pretty loud but added to the enclosed parking it sounded like a bomb went off.

After the sound of the bomb I mean back fire I heard a guy in the garage yell “S***” and duck below the car next to him. I think he chose the fall on your face approach as apposed to the tuck and roll because his torso was hidden while his briefcase still hung in the air. Apparently the sound of my trucks ignition and then a backfire brought back conversations of “You’re going to get blown up over there” to this guy.

Well I got out of my truck and walked over to see if he was OK. He first asked me if I was OK, apparently thinking the car bomb was a dud. I just smiled and told him that it was just a back fire. He just laughed and admitted that he needed to sit down for a second. He ended up to be OK so I laughed and told him good morning and we both went to work.

That’s my funny story for the week.

My Bah Tah Thas

2005-03-06T22:14:00.000+03:00

And this is how you say "In the name of God" (Bismillah)

I have recently started taking Arabic classes at the local QCPI (Qatar Center for the Presentation of Islam). They offer free classes in Arabic with the intent of converting you to Islam. Most expats in Doha understand this concept and many won’t take the classes because of it. My thoughts were that I am strong enough in my faith that this should not be an issue. It is a great chance to interact with some locals and get my whiteness on. With that said one of the reasons I’m comfortable about taking the class is because I’m taking it with two of my friends from church and we are keeping each other accountable.

During the first set of classes we are simply learning the alphabet. At the end we should be able to read and write classical and modern Arabic. That doesn’t mean we will know what it is saying we will just be able to read it. It will be like reading Spanish. You can make out the words for the most part but that doesn’t mean you know what you are saying. Our instructor is pretty humorous but they seem pretty squared away in the structure. They are teaching us the fundamentals (Yeah I get it, fundamentals) from the ground up. At the end of the class they will teach us a couple of phrases but it is not the main point of this class. I will keep everyone posted on how it goes.

Fighting the monsters

Last Saturday I got food poisoning and was out of commission for several days. I did a lot of magazine reading but it wasn't as fun as it sounds. I’m not sure what food it was but I have my suspicions. So after missing work from Sunday to half way through Tuesday and feeling hung over for most of the rest of the week I am finally feeling conscious this week.

Car drama finishes its 2nd curtain call

We have wrapped up the latest fender bender without much incident. After dropping the car off with the guy’s uncle cousin who ran into us I wasn’t 100% on how the car would end up. Well all went well and the damage from Kara’s second run in was fixed to. My Sudanese friends held to their word and everything was fixed. After picking up Kara’s X-Trail I got another offer on the beast. The guy’s friend wanted to buy it from me on the spot. I tried to tell them I would like to but I can’t until I buy another car. That didn’t translate so I just told them no.

That’s it for now

Because it's Doha, that's why

2005-03-02T19:35:00.000+03:00

Kara and I got to meet some new people today. Well Kara got to meet them first when they rear ended her X-Trail and then I got to meet them when she called me. Kara and I had made plans to eat lunch at A&M around 12:00. When she called me back before she got to the school I had a feeling about what had happened before she said anything. The good news was she was OK, the bad news was I knew this would be another adventure in the land of Qatar bureaucracy and laziness. Bureaucracy of having to jump through a hundred hoops to get a form filled out and laziness of the individuals in charge of filling out such forms doing as much as they can not to have to fill them out.

Well once she called me I headed to where I thought I heard her tell me to go. She called me back in ten minutes asking me where I was and letting me know that the guys who had hit her were telling her that it wasn’t a big deal and she should go. I knew this routine because it had happened to her a month earlier. So I did a u-turn and drove the beast the fastest I’ve ever taken it. In a couple of minutes I was at the roundabout where three guys were standing outside of their truck behind Kara’s X-Trail. Their truck was this small blue Toyota single cab that looked older and more warn down then my beast. I parked on the curb about 2 feet behind where they were standing. I got out and asked them why they were telling my wife to go. Of course this being Qatar we didn’t have a common language between us. They pointed at the dent and said it was small I told them I don’t care, how dare you talk to my wife that way and other things they probably didn’t understand. It turns out that this group was from Sudan and had been living here for eight years. I didn’t get much else out of them but by the slight differences in their dress and attitude it was interesting to see another Arabic subculture.

The first police car finally made it. He took the other guys registration told us to go and drove off. I assumed that he was saying get out of the road and we’ll discuss it. Well he vanished and we drove around the roundabout and we regrouped when we realized that the police had left. One of their friends showed up as an interpreter. I told them it was going to be fixed I don’t care how small. So the police came a 2nd time. When I showed him my registration he wrote it all down, when the other guy showed his he laughed and gave it back to them. At this time the bilingual friend offered my 50QR ($14) to fix the car. I laughed and he then offered 100QR. I told him no way. So we then drove to the police station to file a report. Yes, if you are counting we spoke with two officers and we then had to drive ourselves to the station to file the report.

At the station everyone was having a grand ol’ time. I had tried to call several Arabic speaking friends but couldn’t get a hold of any of them. Luckily Kara was able to contact a friend of hers. I figured by about this time I needed to know what was being decided. So I learned that the other guy was seen at fault and it was agreed that since the damage was so small and probably because he didn’t have insurance and the police officer didn’t want to fill out a form that he was going to pay for it himself. So the next step was to meet him at the auto shop (Shack with some tools) and they would do the repairs. We dropped the X-Trail off and I’ll see tomorrow how this saga ends. Well lets hope that it ends.

Ramadan Kareem!!! (What Kara says when she’s frustrated)

Tech-Ed 2005

2005-02-21T17:18:00.000+03:00

Woo Hoo, it’s official, I’m going to Tech-Ed 2005. A time and place where geeks can become bigger and better geeks. I have gone to this for the past two years, once in Dallas and once in San Diego. This year it will be in Orlando but the format will probably still be the same. Basically there are about three hundred classes that are given on a number different Microsoft based technologies. Even with all the slack that Microsoft gives this is a pretty cool event that they put on. I like the format because you are not stuck learning one specific technology the whole time. This way you do not blow your whole training budget on web development in ASP .NET but never talk about how to make your SQL Server run more efficiently.

I also like Tech Ed because it is some what of a vacation. Even when your brains are leaking out at the end because of information overload you still enjoy it. And the T-Shirts, did I mention the T-Shirts. If for some reason you are not able to clothe yourself but can manage the $2000 registration fee this place is perfect. I wonder if employers enjoy the fact that their employees spend a good 2 hours a day talking to sales reps who’s product they have not intention of buying for a piece of cotton with their loge scrawled across the back. The first year I went I was more then guilty of this. Last year I slipped a little but tried to keep it in perspective. I was having flashbacks from college when I would sign up for a credit card to get a T-Shirt I didn’t even like. Because I can, that’s why. I’m coming to the realization that some legitimate learning will probably do more for me when I get back to the office then a couple of extra pieces of cotton.

For more information about this Woodstock for geeks go to http://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2005/.

Dunes and the Beast

2005-02-20T22:21:00.000+03:00

We took Phil to the dunes this past weekend and I took the beast out for the first time. I am happy to say that they both had a good time. The beast did a great job of making it up most of the dunes. Where it lacked in speed and momentum it made up in low gear 4x4 torque. There was one dune I tried to speed up a couple of times but could never do it. Each time I switched gears I lost too much speed. If I didn’t switch gears I couldn’t go fast enough either. So I slipped it into 4x4 low gear and the little engine that could crawled all the way to the top.

(Click the picture for a larger image)

Phil had a good time as well. When we came to the edge of the first dune he cautioned me to be careful because I was driving to close to the edge. The funny part was when we went over the edge. It’s funny because it looks like you are about to go off a cliff. When the nose finally hits the slope and you can see over the hood you realize it is just a gentle slide in the sand. Don’t get me wrong you can kill yourself if you are stupid but luckily my tolerance for adventure does not include any of those activities. The picture is after I got stuck in a sand bowl, then Anton got stuck pulling me out and then Zach pulled Anton out while he was pulling me out.

Good times good time.

Yes Doha

2005-02-19T00:26:00.000+03:00

I guess there is been a bit of a lull in my blog recently. No specific reason just going about with my daily life. I finished up an update to my SMS gateway last week. It reminded me of being back in College and cramming for an exam. It wasn’t like I had been putting it off but it wasn’t like I had been working over time on it either. Two weeks before it was due I decided that I needed to start putting some extra time in or all I was going to have was a bunch of excuses instead of a product on the day it was due. I started working a few extra hours each day and during the first weekend. Each day I wasn’t as far as I wanted to be but felt that I had more then enough time to get it done. Well after working 13 days straight I wrapped it up with a good 8 hours to spare. The day after it went live the department requesting the changes started using it. My previous boss once told me that the most efficient tool is an immovable deadline and I agree. It was immovable because I finished it on Saturday and on Sunday aconsultant came in from London to help me install some software and I wouldn’t be able to get back to the SMS Gateway for two weeks at the earliest.

To make matters worse I ran out of my ADD medicine during the middle of this. I had been contemplating taking myself off the medicine but I’ve realized what an impact that it has. It doesn’t make me Einstein but it does take the edge off and helps me to focus that much more during meetings and while I’m writing code. It will most likely be another week before I can get around to see a doctor and getting a new prescription. Isn’t that the most ironic thing? I have ADD which causes me to be scatter brained and forget things but to get help I have to remember to make an appointment etc.

London Huh

The consultant from London is a nice guy but kind of exemplifies the stereotypical Londoner like John Wayne or George Bush exemplifies the typical Texan. I felt like a little kid when he came to set things up. I had spent all my time on the other project so when we were getting things rolling on the ImageNow software it was a little rough at first.

Phil: So did you get those passwords and accounts setup like I asked?
Me: Yeah, you see there was this project and well … no.
Phil: How about those ISIS drivers do we have those for the scanners
Me: Hmm … again I’m going to have to say no on this one.

It really wasn’t that big of a deal and in the end it made sense. Should I bust my butt to prepare 100% for a guy we are paying to be over here or for a project that my boss needs. I got all the major things done and we just took a little while to get the ball rolling. After the first week we are on schedule and the Office of Admissions and Records have a fun new toy to work with.

Pilgrim’s Bug

Poor Phil had trouble with more then just me not getting all my work done. After the first couple of days he got some nasty stomach bug. While we were at dinner on Thursday I literally watched him throw up and catch it in his mouth. It wasn’t like it coming half way up your throat and swallowing it. It looked like projectile vomit hitting the back of his teeth and then him trying to send it back down with as much force. After his brief fit of convulsions at the table he was great and insisted that we stay there so not to ruin the rest of the evening for the rest of us.

A friend of mine who shall remain nameless had a bout of the same bug. Unfortunately it was much worse and after 24 hour asked Kara and I to take them to the hospital. Before going Kara suggested acquiring a stool sample before going. Apparently it’s easier to zip lock your stool at home then to oblige any request they give you there. We tried calling the hospital before leaving but no luck on them answering. What emergency room is going to answer the phone anyways? Usually it’s just some sick people looking for sympathy. Ahh my stomach hurts, ow I broke my leg, look at me my right eye popped out. Boo hoo, if you are sick just come by. So with stool sample in hand that’s what we did. It was pretty amusing to see a person sick as a dog trudge up to the counter let them know it was coming out of both ends and drop the specimen next to the red crescent jar telling them what it is. The doctor ended up giving them a two IV and sent us all home. While waiting learned that in South Africa a stool sample is referredto as a monster. Wow, that’s hard not to laugh at.

Kara has been sick as well. Not to the extent that requires a doctor’s visit on to play vomit ping pong in her mouth but enough that it has sidelined her for a while. Some coworkers said that those coming back from Haj (the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca) have brought back some sort of bug. Mainly because a lot of people coming from a different area will tend to bring back some new bacteria that everybody has to get used to.

In other news

Other then feeling a little sick Kara has picked up the perfect job. She is teaching one class at the American School of Doha for 45 minutes a day. Since she is there already that means she is the first person on the sub list as well. Yes she is now my Sugar Mama. She really likes it and it still gives her the freedom she needs to do Ladies Bible Studies and meet with local types.

We have been determining when we will get to go home for a while now and we have just about got it all hammered out. I will be attending Microsoft’s Tech Ed at the beginning of June and then go to Texas for about 10 days. I must say that I’m looking forward to seeing Texas after being away for so long. I also know the time will go by incredibly fast. We are still planning on spending two weeks in Germany and Sweden but the Lonely Planet books haven’t even come in yet so those plans are still tentative. We had considered going to Syria on our way to Europe but after learning that our ambassador has been brought back to the US we are thinking that this may not work out. But who knows I never thought Saudi Arabia would be possible. We want to go to Syria only because a friend of ours is getting married and we thought it would be a great time to see a wedding from another culture.

Thanks GMSV for the valentines day love

http://www.zefrank.com/valentine/flash.html

Fast Cars, Fast Boats, Fast Bikes and a 3K

2005-02-06T08:44:00.000+03:00

But I live here

Living here has given me a new appreciation to “Role with the flow” something I learned when I was a kid but never thought I would be using it here. Doha has made a big push, and is doing a pretty good job of it, to bring big events here. They have brought world class tennis players, speed boat races, a Tour de Qatar bike race and a formula one car race. I don’t know much about formula one cars except they can apparently race outside of a track that their cousins in NASCAR use. I know this because as part of the race course they used the road in front of our building which happens to be the only way to access our building without having to walk a mile. So Kara and I found ourselves scheduling our events this weekend based on when we were allowed to leave. Not a big deal but it’s interesting to read on the bulletin board when you are leaving for work on Thursday.

Racing … well running with a number

It’s been a while since I ran in a race so when I heard about a 3K at the end of the week I was all about it. 3K = 1.875 miles so it’s not exactly a marathon but it’s all they had. It was put on by Doha Bank and The Intercontinental Hotel to benefit those affected by the Tsunami. I was pleasantly surprised by how well organized it was. There was a false start when about 50 people took off early but luckily order was restored. It had the four major components of a race for a weekend warrior. T-Shirts, numbers, marked course and free food. I was told there is an 8K (5 mile) race coming up and I’m looking at running that one as well. I’m going to have to train for it a lot more then this one. I have four weeks so I’ll keep all interested informed.

SMS v2.0

I’m finishing the revisions on my SMS gateway project (The website that allows you to send messages to a cell phone) at work and am pretty happy with it. In terms of functionality it has a few new features like a personal address book that works along side the one in Active Directory. For the end user it won’t be a life altering experience but I learned a lot in this cycle of coding. One thing I’m very thankful for is the chance to relearn a lot of the things that didn’t exactly stick in my college classes. Things like UML drawings (blue prints for programs) and proper coding structure make a big difference. I’m thinking about scribbling down the things I learned about working with XML during all this but that will be in a while.

For your moment of Zen

If you haven’t seen it or didn’t know there was an update JibJab.com has a new short movie. First time viewers should watch “This Land” if they want to pee in their under shorts.

You might be a redneck if http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/005004.php

Random pictures of Qatar that I have taken lately Click Here

Just for fun

2005-01-27T16:48:00.000+03:00

For those who do not know I have become a geek. I’m not sure when it happened or how but one day I woke up and realized that I was a geek. Not an ubergeek but enough of a geek to know the word ubergeek. As a geek I have my own website which you know because you are currently there. Not only do I have my own website but I track who comes to it. I don’t have your name and phone number yet but I'm working on it. I do know how many visitors, their average length of stay and what I found to be the most interesting, what they were searching for when they clicked on RWLindell.com.

The following is a list of some of the more common / interesting words people search for in Google, Yahoo or MSN and come up with my website.

Everwood Torrent - #1 Single phrase by a long shot
Sunami Pictures (Different variations) – Yes I misspelled Tsunami at first
The Anola Gay Ship – 2nd Page on Google
U.A.E. Call Girls (And other more explicit variations) – Yeah, I don’t know
Ramadan Kareem – The Arabic Equivalent to Merry Christmas and my site was the first to come up
Satirical Comment – Another #1 on google. Really I thought these guys were smart

I have also found out that I’m getting between 100 and 400 visitors a day. Now I know the Christmas pictures are fun to look at but I’m thinking something else might be pinging my site but I don’t know. About 90% of the IP addresses are 66.xxx.xxx.xxx or 68.xxx.xxx.xxx if this makes sense to anybody please let me know. Otherwise have a great rest of the week.

Reflections at 6 Months

2005-01-25T13:45:00.000+03:00

525600 minutes divided by two

Kara and I have now lived in the Middle East for 6 months. I am almost half way through my original contract (I started on August 1) and have given notice that I will sign for the next year. It’s hard to imagine being here at 6 months because I remember counting the days during my first week like it was a jail sentence. I’ve lived here for 5 days, only 360 more to go. Of course at that point buying a cell / mobile was the most pressing thing I had to figure out. Buying a car, going to hospitals, setting up a bank account and figuring out how to drive through Saudi Arabia were still things I had yet to consider.

I have learned a lot about living in Qatar that will probably serve of no use anywhere else except as a good story. I have also learned some skills that I hope will be useful when Kara and I travel and our day to day lives wherever else we land.

I really haven’t had any life altering revelations but here are a few things that I have learned:

Life goes on. Not that I expected it not to but you realize that your good friends still have lives to lead. You miss each other and catch up when you can but the reality is they are not living in the Middle East right now you are.

Setup your house quick. It took me almost 5 months to set things up in terms of budgeting, where my papers go, what bank to use and all that. My problem is unless I have all the information in front of me I usually don’t do anything. Lesson learned was to make due because it’s not a good idea to store insurance papers in a big box of old photos.

Get involved but not too much. Kara and I have gotten involved with our local church and really enjoy it. We also went from having every night of the week together to only one or two. I think we have found a balance.

Money isn’t everything and time isn’t always best spent earning it. Kara went from working full time at a job she hated to part time at a job she loves. With less of a total income both of us are happier.

Life here is a revolving door of people. Just as life goes on back home the people you meet here have their own lives and needs. Kara and I had our Bible study over for a game night this week. We met a number of people just off the plane so to speak. They still have that dazed look in their eyes and were asking all the same questions we were asking 6 months ago. I guess it’s just the cycle that is over here. Nobody is an expert but we just relay the information we heard before to the new people.

Eid Al Adhav

On a non-philosophical note Happy Eid Al Adha. If you do not know what Eid Al Adha you probably do not live in the Middle East because it is big over here. Big like Elvis big. The whole Hajj to Mecca and 1 prayer equals 100,000 there story. Below is the most concise definition of this holiday that I have found:

Eid al-Adha or Feast of Sacrifice is the most important feast of the Muslim calendar. It concludes the Pilgrimmage to Mecca. Eid al-Adha lasts for three days and commemorates Ibraham's (Abraham) willingness to obey God by sacrificing his son. Muslims believe the son to be Ishmael rather than Isaac as told in the Old Testament. Ishmael is considered the forefather of the Arabs. According to the Koran, Ibrahim was about to sacrifice his son when a voice from heaven stopped him and allowed him to sacrifice a ram instead.

The feast re-enacts Ibrahim's obedience by sacrificing a cow or ram. The family eats about a third of the meal and donates the rest to the poor.

Source: http://www3.kumc.edu/diversity/ethnic_relig/eid-al-adha.html

For the most part the practical celebration of this holiday is not that different from any other holiday in Qatar or the US for that matter. It sounds like a pretty serious thing when you read the definition but the only celebrations I have seen are days off and sales at the mall. It’s just like home.

And for a laugh

My friend Eric has started blogging again and for all of you who are making new years resolutions I thought you would like to read one of his latest postings.

http://ericag02.blogspot.com/2005/01/spinning-fun-childhood-memory.html

Doha Update

2005-01-20T10:03:00.000+03:00

It’s been a while since I have posted anything new so in the absence of any life changing events or adventures I’m going to write about everyday life in Doha for the past few weeks.

New Car

We got a new used car a few weeks back. It is a black 2003 Nissan X-Trail with almost solid black tint on the back windows. I assume that is because I Qatari used to drive it and it is the custom to shield females from as many unwanted stares as possible. It turned out to be a pretty good deal compared to the new one we were on our way to buy. It was roughly about a $6,000 difference for one year and 20,000 miles. Of course what we saved in money we paid for in patience. Buying a used car here is a lot different from Lawrence Marshal and his clobber line. Most used car lots only have around 10 cars each. They are conveniently located next to each other so it’s like a big lot but every car has it’s own rules and you have to deal with somebody different for each one. They are also sold on consignment meaning that the car guy is getting a flat $280 for each car he sells and the actual owner is the one setting the price. What this means is you can find the same car in the same lot at two totally different prices. This is great if you are patient, know the language and have the time because eventually a great deal will pop up. You just don’t know where. I think this is why most expats just drive new cars. It’s a lot more consistent.

So as we were literally making our last pass through Salwa Road (where all the car lots are) Kara saw this car, I checked the price and we were sold. The next step was getting a loan and this is where it gets good. I go to my bank with some print off in Arabic and all I can make out is the name of my car and the price. It even had a stamp. The first thing they told me was that they did not work with this show room so they could not give me a loan for the car. I thought the guy was kidding so I broke it down for him. I want to buy a car, I want you to give me the loan which you will make money on, if you do not want to lend me the money I will give somebody else my business. The guy at least told me he would talk to the head office and ask if they could work with this new dealer. One thing I’ve learned is it’s not the policy you are dealing with but the people who interpret it. So I went back to the same place the next day and asked the same questions. Unfortunately the answers were worse this time. The new teller suggested that I buy another car from one of the dealers they work with as the solution. So I went to the banker at the school branch on Sunday morning (first day of the work week) told him the situation and he said he would take care of it. This I believed.

After several days of him calling the dealer and the dealer promising to bring the papers, me going to the dealer on their request and them saying we’ll bring it to you tomorrow my friend Khaled got involved. He is originally from Syria and studied in the states for several years and works down the hall from me. He talked to the dealer on the phone in Arabic and then told me we should just go down there. So we did and we got the papers and the loan was started but there was the 10% down that I wasn’t expecting. Since I live over here and most of my money is in the US it’s not uncommon for 1/2 of my months salary to be in limbo between the two. Eventually I worked it out but since this was right before I left for Sri Lanka I had to wait until we got back to proceed. So after this surprise all we had to do was register the car. Right no big deal. The first day we showed up and got a number. We noticed the line was going slow but hey, they are still giving out numbers. Well 2 and a half hours later they closed he window and we got nothing done. I can understand if you want to close at a certain time but don’t give out numbers unless you plan on serving the people. We got up early the next morning and went through the whole process again but this time we got the little piece of paper we needed. Of course we were sent back once because my name was spelled differently in Arabic on the different forms from each respective institution. Luckily I now know how to spell my name in Arabic so this doesn’t happen again.

Doha Debates

This past week I went to something called the Doha Debates which is sponsored by BBC and features a topic that people on both sides debate and the audience decides who wins. This months topic was “Do Iraq’s neighbors want Democracy?” Those arguing against were Mohammed Aldouri (former ambassador to the UN under Saddam Hussein) and Patrick Theros (former US ambassador to Qatar). Those arguing for were Clare Short (former Secretary of State for International Development under Tony Blair who resigned because of her opposition to the war in Iraq) and Abdel Bari Atwan (Editor of a London based pan-arab newspaper).

You would think that with all these “smart” people in the
room you would get a pretty lively debate going on the topic but what ended up happening was neither side opposed the other. The first two argued that neighboring governments were opposed to Democracy while the second two argued that neighboring populations were for it. They all basically agreed so to burn time they all went off on their own soap boxes about how they felt about the war in Iraq.

The only interesting points were from the audience. One student asked Mohammed Aldouri if he thought Iraq was better now or with Saddam Hussein? Aldouri talked in circles for a couple of minutes with out a yes or no. The moderator asked the student if he was satisfied with the answer he said no and Aldouri did the same routine again. The crowd thought it was funny and it was very telling to me. The other moment came when Clare Short asked a student in the audience who mentioned he was Iraqi what he thought about the elections. He said he loved the idea (something like that I believe) but his parents were to scared to vote.

The debate boiled down to a more controversial topic that everyone found more enjoyable. Afterwards when I walked out I realized there were probably about 10 ambassadors in the room along with Her Highness Sheikha Mozah. The next one will be debating the issue of Israel and Palestine. I’ll be going to that one.

Work going well

Work is going well my projects are nice and challenging and are keeping more then busy. I got a raise with my 6 month evaluation which was a very pleasant surprise. The best thing was the accompanying letter which basically said I was being a good geek. It’s a compliment I promise. Don’t worry, I won’t let it go to my head. I’m still cruising in the beast.

I’m now the warden for my building because the other guy asked me to, no other real reason. This means if everything goes to crap around here I have to make sure the 2 other people in my building know. The only cool perk is I get a satellite phone for communications purposes. It’s nice to know in case there is a Coup or nuclear war there is at least an evacuation plan. I asked for a badge and whistle to but I haven’t heard back on that.

I hope all is well with everybody else. Kara and I love your emails.

Sri Lanka

2005-01-07T19:43:00.000+03:00

As most of you know by now, for our first vacation Kara and I decided to go to Sri Lanka. This seemed like a fun idea because it was relatively inexpensive and we had heard nothing but good things from people who had gone before. Despite the incomprehensible size of the natural disaster that occurred we did have some good come out of it. Mainly the recreation we had prior to the disaster and revelations we had after it. So I think I should start at the beginning.

It’s not first class

Kara and I have become somewhat spoiled in our flying lately. This has been mainly because my employer has been footing most of the bill. When it was time for us to pay we decided that economy made sense. The only thing that I really appreciated about business and first class was the leg room. Being 6’ 5” does have its disadvantages when you are squeezed into a small rhombus shaped area. I didn’t know traveling wasn’t supposed to be painful until my recruiting trip in June.

Something else that I did not experience up there were raging drunks trying to get my attention. I guess being the only fair skinned individual and Kara being one of about five females helped us to stick out some. Well about an hour into the flight the guys to the left of me wanted to learn about America, if I was a Christian and how to talk with an American accent. At first it seemed like innocent conversation and I thought it would be fun to meet some new people. I first explained that I had no idea how to learn to speak with an American accent because it just came natural to me. I then told them about the differences between a North East accent and a South Texas accent. I also taught them the cultural word of y’all. I told them that they will sound like real Texans if they learned that.

Next topic: Are you a Christian? This seems to be an OK question to be asked around here. Like what color is your car, how old is your kid, how much money do you make and are you a Christian. It’s just information that people want to know about and there is no taboo in asking. So I told him yes and he asked me what I believed and what church I went to. I told him I believed all that the Bible says and that I go to a nondenominational church that basically goes through the Bible. He thought that was cool so we talked about our different points of view. He then told me he was a Christian but he was feeling guilty for stuff that he had done. I talked about forgiveness, how it was free and all that. While all this was going on I watched him down three 10 to 12 ounce glasses of rum. I’ve seen this before so I knew what was coming.

By the time we got to the airport he had moved several times, harassed to the cabin crew for more liquor and cried several times loudly proclaiming he was the f*ing prodigal son. He had asked to speak to Kara but I stopped him there and told him we should just continue our conversation.

Our First Day

So after a sleepless plane ride we get to the airport and our Driver Chris was there to pick us up. It was like the movies where the driver has a sign with your name on it. Chris turned out to be a great guy who was really talkative and wanted to make sure we had a fun time. The only problem was we wanted to sleep so we probably didn’t appreciate it as much at first. The first thing we did was stop at an ATM where I left my card but luckily the guard at the bank noticed and ran out to give it to me. About an hour later we stopped for some fresh pineapples and king coconut juice. The pineapples here were awesome because they had almost zero acidity in them. We then moved on to another restaurant for breakfast french-fries and an amazing view. We were just waking up by then but were still not all there. Next we drove for a few more hours until we got to our hotel. We took a nap for about an hour and got up just in time for the monsoon. I didn’t realize it until later but that was the first time I had seen rain in about 6 months. Woo Hoo.

The first thing we did was ride an elephant through the “jungle”, or more realistically the backyards of the local village, for about an hour. It was actually a lot of fun and we had one guy spend the whole time making jokes and taking our pictures for us. After that we went to Christmas Eve dinner which really didn’t feel like Christmas Eve at all. They had the nativity scene, Santa Clause and all the alcohol you wanted but something was missing.

Day Two

The next day we climbed a rock in a town called Sigiriya that was an ancient fort about a thousand years ago. Everything about it was amazing. Basically instead of using steel and concrete they carved everything out of rock. Even the sizable swimming pool that was the top of the hill was carved out of rock. The pictures are a better at describing it though. All together it was about 1,200 steps to the top. So by the time we made it back down we were ready to relax.

The next thing we did was climb another hill that wasn’t nearly as hard. It is called the mountain temple or something like that. It was a Buddhist temple that was carved into the side of the mountain. I don’t know how to describe it except it was different and that was it.

After this we saw a spice garden and shop where they made hand painted cloth prints. There is an official word for it but you get the point. The tour guide at the spice garden turned into a medicine man who showed us all the cures for your ailments. I think the hair on my leg will eventually grow back from one of his demonstrations but I’m not sure.

After this we made our way to Kandy where we went on a jewel hunt. Kandy is famous for mining different minerals and everybody was ready to tell you how and offer you sample to buy. A green garnet caught Kara’s eye and after several trips to the same store we bought a ring for 40% of the original price. Even our driver was impressed with her bargaining skills. I think it is her matter of fact this is how much I’m going to pay attitude that helps her out. By the end of it I wanted to buy it just because the guy was so willing to bend over backwards to make the sale. I bought a Sri Lankan cricket jersey across the street.

Day Three: Bad News

We started looking at the jewelry on day two but didn’t buy the ring until the next day. When we first got up Chris told us that there had been a small earthquake in Colombo but not to worry. I briefly crossed my mind to call home but I didn’t think it would be more then a blip on the red tape on CNN. Well after ring shopping we heard that it was a little more severe but we were already out of reach of the hotel so I decided we should wait on the call. We got to the train station and this is where we started to hear strange reports of the water level dropping in Colombo by 15 feet and how bad things were in Galle.

We got on the train and headed out on a four hour journey bouncing along the hill country getting a neck strain because I was looking out the window so much. The sites were beautiful and it was interesting see the country side. We had only expected it to be a one to two hour journey for some reason so we were happy when it was time for us to get off. Chris picked us up and we drove to the tea plantation where we saw how tea was made and bought two shopping bags full of tea boxes to give as small gifts. After this Chris drove us back to Kandy. Yes we took a train for four hours and then drove back to where we started from. We’re such tourists.

On the way back Chris told us of the devastation he had been listening to on the radio as he went to pick us up. He also told us how he switched tours with a coworker who was now missing. At that pointed 9,500 were known to be dead in Sri Lanka and I knew that it was a lot bigger then I originally thought. So we headed back in the night and not a whole lot was said. Chris had said he wanted to take us out for our anniversary the night before but at this time it didn’t seem right. He asked if we could postpone it until he could be in a better mood and we had no problem obliging. But on the way to the hotel he decided he should not let this spoil the dinner. So we went to this nice restaurant and had squid and fish. Chris then gave us an extremely nice painted wall hanging. They embroidered a personal message wishing us a happy 2nd anniversary. Coming from a guy who pays for everything in his home on about $150 to $300 a month I didn’t know what to say.

We got to know each other a little better. He told me about being tea boy in Saudi Arabia and how him and his wife met. It was a great dinner to have. Later we finally made it a phone where Kara and I called home. My first instinct had been wrong and my parents had heard about it 12 hours earlier making for a big relief when I finally reached them. Kara’s dad had heard something but didn’t tell her mom until they got home from church and they got my message on the answering machine telling them that we were OK. I put something up on our blog and SMSed my boss. I couldn’t get to my hotmail until later because the computer I was on was so slow.

Day Four

The next day was pretty somber and people were moving from shock to survival. We were told that we needed to get to our hotel in Negombo as soon as possible. So we skipped a couple of tours and stopped to watch elephants for about 30 minutes. We then rambled into Negombo and checked into the Blue Oceanic Hotel that had been flooded the night before. After realizing there was no TVs, the ocean was restricted and all the shops were closed we decided it was time to call it quits. We didn’t want to abandon this place but there wasn’t anything we could do and the tourists had to be housed in the local church the night before. I figured they didn’t need anybody else to worry about. They probably had enough mouths to feed.

I talked to the travel agency and they obliged us. It was strange to describe. It was better for us to leave but you could also tell it was a sign to them of what business would be like for a while. I thought it would be more tasteful if I didn’t ask for any money back.

That night Kara and I ate dinner in the hotel with a couple from Sweden. They had brought their son who they had adopted in Sri Lanka to meet his family. They spoke English well enough for us to have some what of a conversation. Kara and I both told them we had relatives from Sweden but that was the extent of our knowledge on that.

Day Five: Happy Anniversary

When talking to the travel agent I asked if it was possible to do a tour of Colombo while we are here. He said sure and Chris was going to take us around. That morning we got a call from Chris telling us that most of the shops were closed and so were many of the streets. He still picked me up to take care of the plane tickets and to show me a little bit around Negombo. We ran into some camera men who were either coming or going while in line. For the most part the airport was surprisingly not busy. I also noticed on the way in several fox holes with automatic rifles poking out of them. Chris told me three years ago Tamil Tigers from the north came down and blew up ten planes so they put in some extra security.

That reminded me of our first conversation. Chris told us how much he loved George Bush because of the peace he brought to the country. For the past two years there has been a huge growth in their economy and he was thinking about buying a car. I could have never imagined how different things were going to be once we left.

He later took me around to see some of the damaged areas where I took a lot of pictures. It was hard to grasp what happened since we were on the fringes of it but when Chris talked about knowing ten people who had died so far it hit home. A certain hotel where all the staff died, 20 BBC staff members. It’s hard to think about 125,000 but when you break it down it’s even harder to think about.

Kara and I had our anniversary dinner on the plane ride home. It wasn’t as eventful as the way out there but that’s because most of the guys were going back to work instead of leaving for a holiday.

At Church

I was asked with about 5 minutes notice to get up and talk about what happened in Sri Lanka and the experience that I had. Thanks, it’s a lot easier to hide your emotions when you are not in front of a hundred plus people. So while talking about how amazing the people were and how precious and unpredictable life was I broke down a little. I talked about what could have been and what a blessed people we were. I hope I got my point across.

The problem I have is I don’t like to cry so it is usually forced out of me at the most inopportune times. The funeral of my God parents son who I didn’t know popped the bubble on my feelings about bonfire, speaking at my grandmother’s funeral was even worse because I didn’t say me speech out loud until I was in front of everybody then this. It wasn’t bad but I was slightly embarrassed. Especially when a number of other people started crying as well. Kara was able to give her testimony on the situation as well. She was able to do it without breaking down though. Yes, I’m still a man.

If you made it this far I hope you enjoyed this rather long entry. We have pictures posted as well if you haven’t seen them yet.

We are OK - Update

2004-12-26T20:34:00.000+03:00

Tsunami Update
Kara and I have made it back to Qatar safely. We left Sri Lanka two days early because the rest of our trip was on the beach and as the news indicated it wasn't the best place to stay. In a way I felt like I was leaving a sinking ship but then I figured having our driver showing us the sites of Sri Lanka would be the best use of anybody's time. He told us this morning that he lost 10 friends so far that he knows of. It's hard to describe the swing in emotion I saw in the past few days. He's working today simply because there are a thousand other people ready to take his job if he doesn't do what his boss asks of him.

In case you heard about the sunami that hit Sri Lanka and wondered if we were there the answer is yes an no. Yes we are in Sri Lanka and no we did not see it. It is a huge thing and so far I have been told over 4,000 people have died. Please pray for these people in this time. I have witnessed a huge transformation in the way everybody acts in a matter of hours. Imagine how you felt on 9/11 and they are feeling something similar.

I'll write more when I get back I just wanted eveybody to know that we are OK.

Love,
Russell and Kara

A quick note for Christmas

2004-12-23T13:52:00.000+03:00

Well this will be our first Christmas in Qatar. Actually it won’t be because we are getting on a plane to go to Sri Lanka in about 4 hours. You know Sri Lanka, everybody has heard of it. Well maybe not everybody but it’s a cool place that is just south of India. Prior to this trip my only exposure to it was through my friend Shaun whose family is from there. I talk about that later just like I finished the road trip series … or plan to at least.

Since getting back from the US things really haven’t slowed down at all. If they have I haven’t noticed because I haven’t exactly been the most energetic lately. Blah. I have had a lot of thoughts going on in my head so please forgive me when everybody gets their Christmas cards in February. It’s been a little tougher then I expected but thanks to my emotionless personality it’s easy for me to handle. It has definitely been tougher for Kara who had done a great job looking on the brighter side of things.

We are hoping this trip will help us spend some actual time together and we will be able to forget about all those retched lists that fill your head and make you mad. It will be a time where we can think about one another and how lucky we are right now. Even though we are 8000 miles from the people we truly love we have found a family here that helps us get through this stuff.

I’m going to cut this blog short because I shouldn’t miss my plane and I don’t want to drone on about life being tough. We are lucky, blessed and where we have always wanted to be. I give praise to God this season and thank him for all these gifts. For forgiveness for all my wrongs and the love he shows us all.

Merry Christmas Everybody
Love Russell and Kara

Talking with Al Jazeera

2004-12-20T11:10:00.000+03:00

Things happen here in day to day activities that seem normal but remind me that I’m not in Texas anymore. One such occurrence happened last Thursday. A documentary was done about a reporter from Al Jazeera during the start of the Gulf war and what was considered major conflict. One of the English professors was showing it with a Q&A from the reporter afterwards.

My brief thoughts

Just on a side note I’ve made my position on the war very clear to people around me so why not to the world. I believe we owed it to the Iraqi people to go in there and remove Saddam. It was either keep the sanctions, have Saddam unleashed or something along the lines of what we did. The sanctions were killing thousands and not stopping big boy, leaving Saddam there without any regulations meant something even worse so in my mind the war was the least of the three evils. It was in our interest to help because we did put him in power at least gave him the guns we complained he was using. Check your history books it’s there. More realistically it was in our interest because the current situation needed to change and it works better for the US if we control how this is done. Right or wrong it’s what keeps us strong and safe.

Back to my story

So as I was saying we were watching this movie that was slanted. It wasn’t slanted like Rush Limbaugh slants the evils of a teacher union who doesn’t want janitorial staff to be part of their job description. It’s the type of slant you have when describing something you care about. You try to be balanced but your personal views will come out and it’s part of the story. The reporter even admitted to it. He said this is my story and I’m telling it. I do my best to be objective but we are going to see things different ways and that’s how I’m going to report it.

During the video it showed the reports interaction with Cent Com’s press officer who over the course of the film became good friends with the reporter. A few things stood out. One was when a reporter in the field died because a US airplane dropped a bomb on his building where he was shooting live footage from. The way it was presented you could tell their conclusion. That was the only Michael Moore like bit in the film though. The rest of it was honest reactions from the Al Jazeera staff which many times included praise for the American people and their way of life. Whether it was for the country as a whole, or the desire to trade the Arab nightmare for the American dream, you could tell they were not the perceived car bombing friends of Osama Bin Laden that most people see them as.

Some Questions

After the documentary was shown the floor was opened up to questions. Just so you don’t mistake this for Cinemark, I’ll describe the room. It’s a typical lecture hall with stadium seating. There are about 50 students and faculty in the room. Most of them Arab and most in traditional dress. The reporter was introduced and asked for questions. I was a little hesitant at first because I figured my views were really different from the people in the room and I didn’t want to say anything unless I could fully explain myself. Well finally I got the nerve to ask my questions. The first seemed loaded so I prefaced it by saying this is not a loaded question. I asked “Do you think Iraq should have been left in its current state, before the invasion?” He said “No”. So not to look stupid I asked “In an ideal world what would you have done?” He expanded talking about using locals who were already there. This is where I yielded and said thanks. I wanted to discuss how we did the in Afghanistan and produced Osama Bin Laden but my argument would have boiled down to that it’s not good for the US unless they have control of the situation. Given the current setting I backed off.

I did get another question in. I asked where the line was being journalism and giving a voice to Osama Bin Laden that could cause more attacks. I don’t think I agitated him but he did go on to say how foolish that common misperception was given the age of the Internet we were in. He talked a lot about how complex the code was to find the next website which will post information etc. The argument made sense and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that before.

In the end I thought it was a great documentary and would suggest buying it if you can. A complete synopsis is at IMDB.com http://imdb.com/title/tt0391024/

What we really did in the states

2004-12-20T10:16:00.000+03:00

Well I realized that my last post was a little abstract and really didn't talk to much about our time in Denver and DC. I do that sometimes but there were actually some cool things that happened in the real world. As apposed to the abstract confusing one that I refer to as my gray matter.

Denver

We got into the airport and nothing unusual happened except being picked to get our bags x-rayed again when we flashed where we were coming from. The looks we get are interesting but as long as we were patient in explaining our story of where we were from and what we were doing the customs guys played nice. I got taken pretty bad at the rental car place. The people were so nice but after I realized how much they lied / deceived me and after talking to my coworker the next day I returned the car. From now on Hertz = Bad Enterprise = Good. Part of it was me not knowing the options and part of it was them phrasing things in a way were misleading. My biggest gripe was when they said how about you agree to pay for us to fill up your car here so you don't have to before you drop it off. We are also a dime cheaper then the gas station down the road. If you don't agree to, we will charge you $5.90 a gallon for anything you missed. Huh, well I guess it would make sense. The trade off was I agreed to purchase a full tank, not whatever was left to be filled. Well live and learn. I still wanted to burn the place down.

I had my first taste of American food at Jason's Deli with a fresh Rubin. I guess it's the German blood in me but that's my favorite sandwich when it is prepared right. We got to the hotel where we slept all the way to 2:00 in the morning. We spent the next day wondering around these neat places that they call malls and making sure that we got all of our "We'll wait until we get back to that states" stuff done. I got to see my “Old Lady” from A&M and his new wife of two years. He’s been doing ministry with the Navigators since he graduated A&M and decided to enlist in the Marine Corps Reserves just for fun. It reminded me how far away I was from my friends and family while living over here.

I didn't get to see my best good friend Dave on Sunday because he was delayed by a winter storm. Yeah, a winter storm by CO's terms. Easy transition from the Middle East. The first day of class I was met with a car that had a foot of snow on it and roads that were more white then anything else. I was glad to see that even natives took it slow. The first class was pretty interesting. It was an in-depth look at XML schemas which basically a new way to describe data.

I picked up Dave that evening and we did what good guy friends do who haven’t seen each other in a while. Yeah that’s right, fart on and punch each other. It’s hard to describe Dave but I’ll try. I’ve known him since my freshman year in high school and we ran cross country together for three years. At about the same speed as well. We both worked at Macaroni Grill, helped to start BCA at A&M and he was the best man at my wedding. After graduating and doing a tour with Kelloggs through all the Wal-Marts in the Southern United States he took off to CO with nothing more then a desire to do something. I was incredibly envious but in a way that I wanted him to succeed. He’s done all the jobs that people usually just talk about and his next one is to be a ski instructor. He’s the type of guy who you call when you want to Trek South America for a couple of weeks. It was good to see him.

Coming home from dinner one night we saw a bunch of water coming off the roof. I logically came to the conclusion that it was snow melting, actually a lot of snow melting. I realized I was wrong and found out that the top floor where our room happened to be was flooded. Luckily we were on the dry side of the hallway. Not so luckily we still had to move all of our stuff to the hotel next door.

Before leaving I got to see Drew one more time. His reserve unit was training in Denver and he had the first night off. We basically talked about the future and it was a lot like being in college except we had wives and actual jobs now. Our goals were for the most part the same we just have a better picture of the landscape now.

Washington D.C.

After a flight on Frontier Airlines which sounds sketchy but is a great value we landed in DC. Unfortunately it was at the wrong airport from a friend of Danna’s. No big deal we just went to pick him up. We were staying in Reston VA next to our training facility. It’s close enough to get to DC but you’ll have to drive for about 1/2 to 2 hours depending on the time of day. The first night we went to eat some real Tex Mex food with some more college friends Shane and Desi Porter. They did a great job of showing us around the different areas of town. Another travel tip from me is when you go somewhere define a couple of places that you want to really see and enjoy them. It’s a lot better then running around snapping pictures of everything but never seeing anything. We spent the most time at the museum of American History and the new Aerospace Museum. I got to see the Anola Gay and several other planes that I can’t remember right now. That night we saw all the memorials and the White House at night. It was hard to be impressed by it because it was so far away from the fence but I guess I wouldn’t want to have people looking through my windows while I was trying to sleep either.

After our weekend of touring I spent another week doing some insightful training that wasn’t nearly as interesting as the week before. Kara and I got to see some more friends of ours before we left. We knew Rollin and Mary from College. Rollin was in my Corps Outfit and Mary was in the girlfriend support group with Kara. They took us to another Mexican food restaurant but you can never get enough of that while you are back in the states. The last night there we went to a Christmas concert that kind of drove home the fact that we were not going to be home for Christmas. It was tougher for Kara seeing that I don’t have any emotions to worry about. Then it was off to Doha.

After piling about 30% above the maximum in luggage on the plane we were on our way. I was in business class the first leg and Kara told me to take it for the second one as well. I appreciated her being practical about me needing the rest seeing I had to be at work the next morning. She luckily got bumped up to economy plus and we were all happy shiny people. When we got to Doha the first thing we saw was a really smashed up car and both a the police and an ambulance outside of our building. Two separate incidents from what I could tell. The first was usual Doha driving while the second was some fight where one guy was going to the hospital and the other was being arrested. At least they both had a ride. Welcome home :)

Visiting home away from home

2004-12-06T20:33:00.000+03:00

There will be a slight interruption in the "Road Trip" series to blog a little bit about my current visit to Denver and Washington DC. I have to admit that even though I wouldn't call it culture shock I can definitely say that I have had to squeeze a couple of things through my head that would have been normal to me about four months ago. I have also realized a couple of things about both myself and my country in these couple of days. Good or bad I have taken a more critical look at the land of the free and home of the brave since I have moved outside of its borders. I don’t know if it is the constant negative feedback that I hear from other people, or if I simply had a different perspective. Coming back has given me yet another point of view.

There are a lot of things that jump out. Commercialism and the amount of effort and energy we put into acquiring “things”. The idea that we will be happy if we can purchase enough stuff and pay for it in a year. Logic, things work here. People think things through for the most part. You might get mad at the guy who cut you off on the way to work but at least society as a whole acknowledges that is stupid. Power, we don’t sing it too much, but this country could kick anybody’s butt on the planet. Safety and comfort. Most people live their life to be as safe and comfortable as possible. Live free or die. The idea of freedom is a wonderful thing. Americans have the mentality that we have the right to live our lives as we please and there are no predetermined limits to where we can go. Even if in reality this isn’t true it’s a nice thought.

I’ve also concluded something else about the US. We are not a group of war mongers but we are just a country that looks after itself first. We have a conscious but that is usually second to the stability of our nation. I don’t think we act any differently then any other country does, we are just better at it. Even among the criticism I am told that we are fortunate that the states are the ones with the excess of power, who knows how any other country would act with this much power.

Why Denver

Kara and I left for Denver on Thanksgiving night so that I could go to training to learn about XML and how it was going to save the world. We then flew to DC where I am currently learning about Tamino which is an XML server that aids in said saving of the world. Initially I looked at it like it was some burden but I'm starting to understand why it is so nifty therefore costing the entire GDP of some 3rd world countries.

So we get to Denver where Kara and I are like "Huh, so we’re in the states again. Lets go get some bacon" (pork products are illegal in our current place of residence). So we did and then checked into our hotel where we had a weird sleep schedule for a while. What was strange was we did not have the reaction of "Finally, we are on US soil. No kissing the tarmac when we got off the plain."

Missing family and friends not the soil

After getting to visit with several friends I felt like it wasn't the physical location that I missed at times it was the people there. We could have a BBQ in Thailand with all of our family and friends and it would be just as good as meeting in Texas. It was the conversations of past stories and things that we have done. Laughing about three legged dogs and our old ways of life. How does anybody ever survive adolescence and subsequently college?

I said that I don't miss the soil but that's not completely true. We turned on some country music and some relatively new songs were playing that I heard before I left. I didn't see them as the most poetic pieces of work but they still struck a chord with me. I guess it's unlikely the desire for twangy good ol boy music will ever be fully removed from me. "It's a cultural thing" - Robert Earl Keen

It's also amazing to actually be in our nation’s capital. Seeing that I have been in five others I felt that it was time to see my own. The first adjective that comes to mind is power. This isn't some port city where the government is located out of convenience. This is the Government and everything that has to do with the government. It's big and not going anywhere. Flags are everywhere, the flag that I can't wear where I live is waving from every place that is possible.

Thoughts on traveling

Just one more thought. When traveling don’t kill yourself. If you go to lets say Washington DC don’t try to see everything. Read a little bit about the place, pick what you want to see and enjoy your time seeing it. Save something for next time. If you don’t ever plan on coming back at least you remember what you saw. What’s better, 100 pictures of the outside of all these awesome buildings or actually learning / experiencing something that you will remember. Just a small bit of advice that I have come up over that past couple of months.

Road Trip: Part 3

2004-12-01T10:05:00.000+03:00

RTT

After our exciting introduction to border crossings we made it to Dubai where we were fortunate enough to have a free place to stay. It was the house of Bill and Cordilia. Bill works in Doha during the week while Cordilia stays in Dubai with their beautiful four year old daughter Moray.

The next day we went to the RTT (Regional Training Time) which is a three day conference on how to work in churches in the Middle East. It was very different to me because it was geared towards the leadership of the church but I showed up anyways. Zach and I missed the first day because of work but the next two were pretty interesting. The speakers talked a lot about leadership and putting the right people in the right place. From the two days that I was there, that is all I can really remember. But it was still interesting I promise.

I’m Healed

There was also a message on healing. It was really interesting in a “take you out of your comfort zone” kind of way. There was this one guy who called a woman out of the crowd who had back pain and he said that her legs were not the same length. So they had her in a chair and the camera was fixed on her feet on the big screen. Then all of a sudden they were the same length. At least that’s what he said. Now I do not doubt this can happen but I watched those two feet like a hawk and I would be lying if I said that I saw anything happen, so I won’t. Several people around me said they saw it but I didn’t share their same experience.

In ninth grade I read a book about an aboriginal medicine man and how he was able to pull a snake out of his mouth. All the people in the village swore by it. So this anthropologist wanted to see the medicine man do his thing. He asked the guy to pull the snake out of his mouth. To the disappointment of the anthropologist the medicine man pulled a line of saliva out of his mouth instead. At the same time the other villagers saw the snake pop out. What does this have to do with our healing lesson? Maybe nothing because there were a lot of real life testimonies from these people that were healed but I’m just saying I didn’t see any snakes.

No Really I’m Healed

Well after the first demonstration for healing people were invited to go to the front to be prayed for. I decided that despite my cynicism that I would go up and ask for prayer about some stressful struggles I was having. Kara went up at the same time and asked for some ladies from our church to pray for her neck that was still sporting a soft brace from the car accident. Well I had a feeling that true healing was happening that I couldn’t describe. At the same time the pain in Kara’s neck completely went away. She took off her neck brace and has not needed to put it on since then.

When telling this story I have felt like I needed to explain each time that I’m a rational human being and that this is out of my comfort zone. Almost like an apology for telling them this story because it may make them feel uncomfortable. It might make them feel like they have to acknowledge or agree with something that they think is crazy. The logical side of me does this but luckily my faith is larger then anything the left hemisphere of my gray matter can throw at me.

New Friends

At this meeting we also met some cool “Brews” (friends) from South Africa. We also learned a couple of new slang words like “Dodgy” (Shady, low class or poor quality) and “Tuning” (To tease or mess with). These guys were about our age and doing the expat thing in the UAE. They showed us the souques (markets) in Dubai and were pretty cool to hang out with.

One thing about living over here is you meet a lot of people with a lot of different backgrounds. Everyone has a different story and it all adds to your perspective of the world and your own little circle. My paradigm on how life works has changed countless times since my time here and I hope that is one thing that continues. Some people say ignorance is bliss, but I’d rather know what is going on around me.

Road Trip: Part 2

2004-11-29T17:50:00.000+03:00

The road to Dubai from Doha is an interesting novelty for a first time traveler but is probably considered a hassle for the experienced veteran. Your first time through you laugh at the missing roads that are still on the map, comment on the Arab style border towns and truck stops. You want to take a picture with the border guard (that never happened but you think about it) maybe even ask to look at his assault rifle. You laugh at the inspections because even they seem like a new experience. Even the bureaucracy to get a visa makes a good story at least. I wonder if I will enjoy all the little nuances and delays the next time I go.

We’re still driving … aren’t we?

The week before the trip we ran into several obstacles that some might have interpreted as divine intervention pointing us to the airport and not the border. At the beginning of the week Kara and I got into an accident when somebody rear ended us. After enjoying a night in the hospital, some tests and back aches we were cleared to go on our trip. The next day “Big Red” Zach’s LandCruiser was giving him some fits and he had to take it into the shop. We did not know if it would be ready so we started looking for Air Arabia tickets on the web. The day of the trip we still didn’t know if we had a ride and subtle hints were being dropped by all of our co-workers. The way I saw it was if God didn’t want me crossing the border then he was going to make it impossible. He had my attention and I was listening and I just told him that I have a hard head so please make it clear.

At 2:00 the truck was ready to go and we were on our way. We bought some last minute road trip munchies, loaded up “Big Red”, fired up the GPS and did a lot of praying.

But it’s on the map

Within the hour we got to the border which we found to be somewhat unimpressive. It was a couple of plastic barricades and a single soldier with a cammo t-shirt and no visible insignia of what country he belonged to. He was enjoying some tea on a rug in the middle of the road. Interesting. Our conversation went something like this. I put additional explanations in parenthesis because words are only part of the language here.

Us: “As-salaam alaykum” (General greeting meaning peace be with you)

Him: “Wa alaykum as-salaam” (the reply)

Us: “Ma Baraf Arabi” (Literally: I don’t understand Arabic. Translated: As you probably have guessed I have yet to learn the language of your country. Pease compensate for my ignorance/arrogance and speak in my native language which I’m going to assume you know is English. It’s more in the inflection then the words.)

Him: “Where you going”

Us: “Dubai”

Him: “The road has been torn up for 20 years now” (You’re not getting through here)

Us: “But it’s on the map” (You are obviously hiding something and have the power to make the road passable if you want to”

Him: “I know but it’s impassible, you need to go to Salwa” (1. Are you kidding me 2. Of the three of us it is my job to know if this road is passable or not, guess what it’s not 3. Go away)

Us: “You’re serious”

Him: “Yes, people come here all the time and I have to tell them to turn around” (There are a lot of dumb westerners who can’t find their way out of this county.”

Us: “Shokran” (Thank you)

Him: “Goodbye”

Actually the guy was really nice and laughed a lot. I guess when you are stuck out in the middle of a wasteland and your only conversation entails have to tell people they went the wrong way you get a sense of humor about things. So we sent a text message to the girls that we would be a little later then we thought did a U turn and headed to Salwa.

The real border

After another hour of driving we got to the passable border crossing. Our first impression was “Wow this looks big.” Do we go into that line or that one? We ended up going into the right line and learned a new Arabic word. We now know that “mar - key – ah” means that they want to see your license and registration. Going through the border was pretty easy, they just checked our paper work stamped our passport and told us “Good Luck”. Huh, good luck thanks guys … I think.

So Zach and I were excited we had conquered the border without any problem at all. The only problem was we never saw what looked like a Saudi Uniform and we didn’t get an entry stamp for SA just an exit stamp from Qatar. But hey at least we didn’t have to get inspected, the road was nice and the border crossing looked relatively well taken care of woo hoo.

About a mile down the road we realized we were in a no man’s land between the two borders. We hadn’t entered SA we had just left Qatar. Soon enough we saw a building that looked a little more, how would I put it, utilitarian. We got past the first guards who checked our papers next we were pulled over for a full search. They took out most of the things in our vehicle and checked my computer. They did a search for all images and movies. The only thing that caught their attention was a movie I had where two trucks were crashing in the sand dunes. They liked it so they played it a couple of times, laughed and let us through. The only thing I was worried about was some campaign mail from the states that was forwarded to me in Qatar. I had stuffed it in my laptop bag on my way out that day. It had pictures of George Bush and Military personal. Judging by our limited conversation I’m assuming that my new friends wouldn’t be able to read the wording on these flyers so their judgment of them and then me would probably come from those images. So you like this war huh? He didn’t say anything and let us go on our way. After buying a 7 day car insurance policy for SA we were on the road.

This was really SA. Since it was dark by now we really couldn’t see any of the landscape but the torn up roads and 30 years old huge Mercedes semi trucks gave us the feeling that we were not in Qatar anymore. The only interesting thing was the lines on the roads were yellow on the side and white in the middle.

After less then an hour we were at the border again and going through the process in reverse. Getting out of Saudi was easier then getting in and the next stop was UAE. There was the same no man’s land between the two countries and we had to go through another inspection. Seriously though, what could we possibly bring out of SA that wouldn’t be allowed in UAE. UAE is one of the most westernized countries in the Arab world while SA is well SA. I did think of something funny though. Now any border I cross I can always say “Hey, at least it’s not Saudi Arabia.”

The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful. I made a friend at the country fried chicken place who was from Egypt. He seemed to take it as a real compliment when I told him that we have places just like this in Texas. We are all not so different after all.

Road Trip: Part 1

2004-11-21T10:06:00.000+03:00

Pain in the neck

After our accident I didn’t know how Kara would be feeling but the pain in her neck has gone away and she feels great. It happened while we were in Dubai on vacation.

To infinity and beyond

Well we made it. Zach and I are back from our little adventure on the Arabian Peninsula. We’ve been planning this in one way or another for the past month and a half and it was well worth it. Our trek took us from Qatar, briefly through Saudi Arabia (2 hours of total driving), through UAE and into Oman. We stayed in Dubai (UAE) at night with Kara, Danna and Libby who flew there.

There were a couple of reasons for the trip. One was to go to an RTT (Regional Training Time) to learn how to work in churches in this area. It was the first time I had gone to a conference where the focus was on leadership skills in a church. I honestly did not know what to expect but I found it pretty interesting and was glad that we went. Zach and I wanted to do some exploring in the Omani mountains as well. This was why we drove as apposed to flying. While we were playing Lewis and Clark the girls did a lot of shopping and girl bonding stuff. The last reason was to test the path between Qatar and Oman and see if all the ghost stories were true. Since this is a lot to write about I won’t do it all in one post so stay tuned. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think my life is so exciting that it requires a multipart series but lets face it this is the best material I’ve had in a while and I need to make it last.

Socks, Underwear, GPS unit and Satellite phone

Preparing for this trip was a little different from any other road trip I have been on. It might be a little bit from experience, a little from my new surroundings but my to-do list was a little different. Some new additions were:

- Passport

- Saudi Arabia Visa

- GPS Unit

- Satellite Phone

- Used only when testing but was questioned about it at the border

- Register with the embassy

- Embassy phone numbers – The 24 hr Oh Crap! line

- 4 different currencies - You can just call me Jason Bourne from now on

- Check travel advisories

- Road map of the Middle East – On this map all of Israel is called Palestine

- UAE / Oman off-road guide

- IPod - Not a necessity but we didn’t have these in College

- Cell phone - A certain CO trip engrained this into my head

First Look

All of the above were pretty easy to get, especially since we are in the IT department and get to play with the cool toys. The biggest hassle was the Saudi Arabian visa. No lie, it took us 6 trips to the embassy to get this. This was mainly because there was no written instructions on how to apply for one. At least none that were offered to us. Each time we would go they would just tellus what we did wrong and to go away. The trips went something like this:

Trip 1: Get the paper application. We had to convince the guy that we needed more then one. He told us to Xerox it even though he had a stack in front of him. We eventually got the original from him. After this we had to get a letter from our employer saying that we worked here, a passport photo and a copy of our passport. This was one of the first times I have filled out government paperwork and it asked for my religion.

Trip 2: We go to turn in our paperwork and they tell us we need a UAE visa first. After walking to the UAE embassy we learned the guy in the SA embassy didn’t know what he was talking about and it was suggested we try another day.

Trip 3: We try another guy he accepts our 50 riyals a piece and suggests coming back the next day when they open because the line is too long. He also tells me my passport photo with the blue background will be fine and not to worry about the one with the white background.

Trip 4: We get there early when they open and it turns out I needed the white background photo and we also need the license and registration of the car we will be driving. Thanks, information I could have used yesterday.

Trip 5: We get there early we have our paperwork and we bypass the payment line and go straight to the first window where some guy in traditional garb and a massive beard is waiting. I felt like I was 6 years old saying “please sir, can I have a visa?” I timidly passed him my packet of documents, certifications, 3rd grade teacher character reference and all the other stuff they wanted from me. He looked through it for a couple of minutes and mumbled something about coming back on Thursday at 12:00. I couldn’t believe it, it actually worked.

Trip 6: I show up at the right day and time and see a stack of passports with tickets on the back of them. The same bearded guy is calling out the numbers in Arabic. Now I understand this is a SA embassy in Qatar so English probably won’t be used but it just made things even more interesting. I know my Arabic numbers on paper but I still don’t know how to say them. I guess a lot of people were in the same boat because after 30 minutes of this we all rushed up to the window and chaotically pointed and gestured to our passports on the other side.

In the end I got my passport with a shiny new visa in it. It was only good for a month and I couldn’t spend more then three days in the country at one time. No problem, I’m just passing through.

Another word from The Embassy

2004-11-13T14:43:00.000+03:00

Just Kidding

Well a week after we were told to buy ducked tape and plastic wrap we were told that everything was OK and we could continue our dinners at The Ritz without any concern. Most of the "experts" said there wasn’t any real risk but just to be safe we thought we’d cry wolf.

Meeting the locals

While Kara and I were on our way to buy a car we got to meet a local Qatari by the name of Yusolf. We were at a round-a-bout when he ran into the back of us with his car. Apparently he had mistaken our brake lights for go ahead we’ll get out of your way. Yosulf was actually a pretty nice guy and apologized somewhat for hitting our car. He was careful not to admit guilt. In this country though your guilt is dependent on your nationality so it was clearly the fault of Kara and myself. It doesn’t matter either way because the insurance companies no the situation and premiums never change.

After the police came him and Yosulf talked for awhile in Arabic and I received a small sheet of paper. About that time the guy who I lease my car from showed up and said he would take care of everything. From what I observed, the little differences in the culture seem to cancel each other out. A Qatari hits me and it’s my fault but I have a friend who can make it like it never happened. Different I know.

Well after the cars were taken care of our friend Danna took us to the Doha Clinic for what I thought would be a routine exam and a prescription for some meds. It turned out to be a little more serious then that. The doctor felt like Kara had a pinched nerve and kept us there over night to run tests. The MRI showed that everything was OK but Kara would need to wear a soft neck brace for about three days. She seems to be doing better now but still needs your thoughts and prayers.

The hospital was very clean and our doctor made us feel very comfortable. It just wasn’t a fun situation to be in on the whole.

Traveling the land

Kara and I are now in UAE with some friends for a long weekend. Zach and I will be driving to Oman for a few days to do some hiking and 4x4ing. We are not sure how it will turn out but it’s mainly an exploratory trip to feel out the area and get an idea for what is there and what we can and can’t do. Don’t worry that sounds a lot more irresponsible then we plan to be.

Ramadan Kareem

2004-10-30T16:29:00.000+03:00

Umseya

Last night, the Qatar Foundation (the organization over TAMU) held their annual shindig for Ramadan. It was really a lot of fun and a lot of free food. The purpose of it was to celebrate the halfway mark of Ramadan and teach all their staff about this time of the year simultaneously. They had a few woman doing henna, a huge buffet, fireworks and band playing traditional Arabic music. I posted some pictures from the night. Click here to see them.

A note from the embassy

If you have not heard already, and chances are that you haven’t, the US Embassy has sent out an advisory to Americans located in Doha. We were instructed that over the next week we should stay away from all hotels that are frequented by Americans. We first got word of this on Thursday night (the start of our weekend) and I have to admit it shook me up a little.

A few weeks earlier a friend had knocked on our door at 2:00 AM and it took Kara a while to wake me up. Apparently I have the habit of being able to sleep through anything short of a nuclear explosion (no reference intended). So with this in mind I was wondering if I would be able to wake up in time in the event that we had to do some sort of level three evacuation. My solution was to cross the street buy some Pepsi and watch a couple of movies that we got from Columbia House. I try not to let things like this get to me but when I was in the mall I couldn’t help but look at everybody with a little bit of suspicion. Who’s this new guard? Why are these cars outside my building? Who’s that guy with the towel on his head? Oh crap, there’s 100s of them! Wait, there are always 100s of them, I live in the Middle East.

I then thought to myself as I transitioned of from fear to anger, would they really care if a hotel was targeted? That is to say, other then the financial implications that they would have on them personally. Would they morn for Americans? Did we when a bomb went off in Jakarta a few weeks ago? So I got over my little panic attack and desire to vote for W in the upcoming elections, watched a couple of movies and went to sleep. One bright spot in all of this was the fact that out crisis alert system ran fairly well. In a matter of 5 minutes I got a phone call, SMS message and email alerting us to the situation. In case you were wondering, yes it was my SMS application that was used to send the message :). So no worries, just reviewing our “evacuation plan” and buying bottle water and ducked tape.

Here’s the story on CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/29/qatar.threat/index.html

Ramadan

2004-10-18T09:15:00.000+03:00

Ramadan just started over here and it is really emphasizing the fact we don't live in Texas any more. During Ramadan Muslims fast from sunup to sundown and locals work half days. All the shops are closed from 1:00 to about 5 or 6:00. The roads are really quiet for most of the day but during midday, sundown and about 8:00 they fill up all at once. It's because everybody is on the same schedule. Midday go home, sundown go to a big dinner and 8:00 go see friends. It's actually at a point where I ask Kara not to drive during those times. I've seen more accidents in the last couple of days then I have seen all year. The other big thing is since Muslims do not eat, drink, smoke, or come close to any sustenance during the day nobody else can indulge in such luxuries in public either. This does make getting a Big Mac or Mc Arabia impossible because this causes them not to be open during the day. Luckily our cafeteria is gracious enough to serve us a crust of bread and glass of water.

In the malls there are Ramadan decorations very similar to Christmas ones in terms of bright colors and being everywhere. There are also Ramadan sales which we are going to take advantage of when buying our 2nd car. It seems both cultures are more similar then I originally thought.

Power point pro

I have decided to use my College Degree and years of experience as a software developer to help out our local church. How you might ask. Well I’m now the newest member of the presentation team. This basically means I run the power point presentation (ppt) during the service. This is actually more difficult then what I originally expected. When you run ppt for songs it means you have to follow along with the people who are leading them. Well in this church there is not always a concrete plan for how a song will be played or even which songs will be played. This is good for everybody else because it allows for the music to evolve with the current feelings of everybody. Of course if you are an anal retentive control freak it has a different effect. What do you mean you’re going to sing that song, I don’t care what you feel like God was telling you. I have a list and even though it’s hand written on the back of a ATM receipt it’s my list and we’re not changing. Luckily people are gracious enough when the words don’t show up right away during one of these transitions. At least nobody threw their sandals at me.

Driving lessons

We took another trip to the inland sea this weekend. This has become a favorite activity for us because well, there really isn’t a whole lot to do in Doha. I got to actually drive my friends 4x4 down a couple of the dunes. I’m still not excited about bringing the beast out there but I think it will eventually have to happen. When driving up a dune you have to go full speed or you will get stuck and then slow down at the edge or you may roll down sideways which isn’t healthy for anybody. You then slide down the slope and do it again. It’s pretty intimidating because you can’t see the slope you are going down until you are committed to it. Everybody does it so it has to be fun. While in the dunes we saw some camels. This was pretty cool and we got some shots that I will post pretty soon. My favorite part is the snorkeling. I’ve decided that I need to get some fins because even though I don’t sink in the ocean it’s still an effort to use your arms when you are trying to go any sort of distance. Not much else is going on just the usual Ramadan desert life.

Vice Provosts Gone Wild

2004-10-14T09:23:00.000+03:00

Word from the mother land

This week a delegation of about 40 representatives from College Station came for the 2004 Academic Convocation. It’s a pretty interesting group of people, they include several vice provosts, deans, professors and students. There is a lot of meetings, social events and idea sharing. So overall it’s a pretty cool thing to see the interaction between the two cultures.

One of the social events was a dinner on a Dhow (two story traditional fishing boat) while it cruised around the bay. The invitation for this stated that it would go from 5:30 to 7:30 and I had assumed we would be meeting with the students. When we got on the boat we learned it was a 4 hour dinner. All I could think of was great another night gone. It wasn’t too bad Kara and I met some people we didn’t know and talked about random things. We were all on the top level of the boat for this part. We then went down to the first floor for our dinner which was the usual Arabic dish. There were lots of meat and bread with a little bit of steamed vegetables.

Then it happened

I’m not going to judge others but personally I disagree with the concept of exotic dancers, strippers or whatever you call them on about 10 different levels. So as I was eating dinner with my wife, a number of other couples and some pretty important people in the TAMU system that I thought we were trying to make a good impression on when we got a surprise. The music was cranked up and out popped a belly dancer that looked like she was one step above a stripper. Not only was she three quarters naked but she was eliciting some interaction from the crowd.

I was told that this was normal and it’s an art. Well I can appreciate going to a ballet and watching that type of dancing or Hawaiian hula girls and guys doing their traditional dance. This was definitely not either. The whole time I was just thinking who thought this was a good idea with this company and maybe next time they could indicate that there will be adult entertainment on the invitation. I was definitely not the only one who was embarrassed but of course the single guys messed with me for not looking. So fun times, I’ll try to post some pictures that the nights photographer took but this is a PG website so there might not be that many.

Geeks in the Middle East

2004-10-11T11:10:00.000+03:00

Gitex

This past Thursday I went to Dubai for the regions big tech expo. Basically anybody who had anything to do with technology and has a presence in this region, were trying to hock their goods. I wish I could have spent more time there but because I flew in and out of Dubai on the same day my time was a little limited. I did find a cool PDA / Cell Phone that was a pretty good balance between having a big enough screen and not feeling like you were holding a brick to your head. It’s the Treo 600 from Palm.

Dubai as a city looks amazing. It is somewhere between Dallas and New York. In certain places the streets are lined with high-rises and all their roads are like what you would expect to find in the US. The roads in Doha are good enough but they are in the process of moving from main city streets to actual highways. This is accented by the fact that locals still don’t have any problem sprinting across the road when cars are going 60 and 70 mph.

Gitex

Take this job and shove it

Kara and I have decided that the happiness level in our home would increase exponentially if she did not work at The Learning Center anymore. It was turning out to be a very unrewarding job and experience for her. So she turned in her resignation they smiled and said she would always be welcome back to sub or whatever. She will still be tutoring a 9th grade Qatari girl about 4 times a week and substituting 2 or three times a week. We came to the realization that earning as much money as possible may not make us the happiest. With this plan we will still be able to travel as much as we wanted to but in between trips we won’t be stressing out from work too much.

For those who know me you can probably guess this wasn’t an easy concept for me to grasp. I really had to define what the true value of Kara working a full time job was compared to her taking care of the home, building relationships with locals and working part time. I needed to remind myself there was more to do here then just earn money. We’ll let you know how it goes.

We have a new phone number

2004-10-06T07:30:00.000+03:00

eight six seven five three oh nine

We have a new number in Qatar. That’s right the day Kara and I have been waiting for is here. We have a new US number that sounds a lot better then our scratchy dialpad.com system that we were using. It was OK but this is a lot better. It is an phone that uses the Internet instead of traditional landlines. So we can call anywhere in the states for 2.5 cents a minute.

You can now call us but please remember there is an 8 hour time difference (9 hours during daylight savings). So if it is 12:00 pm in Texas it will be 8:00 pm in Doha. I’ll put a clock on our website with the local time as soon as I figure out how to configure the time zones.

Our new phone number is: 210 757 4603. You will be charged just as if you were calling San Antonio. We really look forward to talking to everybody a lot more then we have been.

Beast or Bust

In other news the beast had to get its first checkup yesterday. It kept on dying on me in the middle of traffic. Not a good sign. So the mechanic came out yesterday, looked at the engine, pointed at the carburetor and said it would take him a day and would cost that much. I’m anticipating QR200 (200 Riyals) which is roughly $55.

I was cussing and kicking it on the way in and wondering why I bought it. Then during lunch Kara called and asked if I wanted to sell it because a friend’s husband will pay whatever I did for it. By this time I had already called my mechanic friend. So when I get the beast back I’ll drive it some more and try to make a decision. I don’t know why I want to keep it so bad. I almost feel like I’m obligated to stick it out with the stupid thing and that I shouldn’t take the comfortable way out just because it was giving me some problems.

Close to the same time I got forwarded an email about a ’97 Honda Civic that was for sale. Nice, safe and reliable. Booo, I want the noisy ugly truck that gives me a heart attack when it dies in a roundabout. Decisions. Well that’s life in Doha.

Talking to the Man

Well I am presenting my SMS app to Dr. Pierce Cantrell this morning. For those outside the TAMU IT loop this guy is the man when it comes to IT. He came to Doha to see how the operation was running and to fill some time they want me to give a dog and pony show about my little SMS app. One thing about speaking to the Associate Provost For Information Technology is it’s hard to B.S. him when something doesn’t work right or act like I know what I’m talking about when I don’t.

Everwood in Doha

2004-10-03T07:53:00.000+03:00

TV selection for the English speaker in this part of the world is somewhat limited and can be described as vanilla at best. It’s hard to complain, I don’t remember too many Arabic stations in College Station. Well luckily we live in the age of the Internet where my generation has developed the motto of all information, should always be available, should always be free and you better not try any of that dial-up 56kbs crap on me. So instead of watching three year old soaps I’ve downloaded my favorite TV shows via bit torrent.

Not that Everwood and cough Gilmore Girls cough are up for any Emmys but they were Kara’s and my favorite shows when we only got FOX and TBN in Bryan. Whenever I watch them it reminds me of our first few months of marriage when we were living off a $100 for groceries for two weeks and taking walks through the nicer neighborhoods for our entertainment. It’s the same way when you hear a song that reminds you of a certain time in your life. For some reason Marcy’s Playground Sex and Candy always reminds me of the summer I graduated from high school when I was running as a courier for an engineering firm.

So as one of my coping mechanisms for living so far from what I’m used to I download TV Shows and listen to my hometown radio station over the Internet. If the pattern is the same as when I joined the Corps I’ll eventually rely on things like this less and less. I’ll just download Everwood to see if Efrem will end up with the girl or not.