Back in Traffic; How Do You Alphabetize / File?
So today I became, once again, a legal driver in Qatar, five months to the day from my arrival. Yep, for those of you who never have the joy of trying to maneuver through the complexity of getting a license in a foreign country – you have NO idea. NO idea. There are people who try and try to get a license and never do.
We are really lucky. We have some very good people who help us get things done. Somehow, it’s my turn to be lucky today.
When I showed up at the office, however, one of the HR girls told me “Oh! Flana is not here today! You will have to come back.”
You all know how nice I am. I smiled at her and said “my husband told me to be here today to get my driver’s license. Someone is going to help me.” Smile again, big smile.
Sure enough, someone is going to help me, and it is someone who I like, someone who has helped me before and who is always calm and patient and knows how to persist pleasantly until he gets what he wants from the bureaucrats. In fact, I admire him, because people end up liking to help him. He is low key. He takes me to the driver’s station, where, because of my advanced age (DO NOT ASK) I have to have an eye test. This leads me to wonder. Doesn’t everyone have to have an eye test?
Then I wait, in the special ladies’ majlis:
I had to wait quite a long time, but I was comfortable, and while I was waiting, I read all the driving safety signs they had up along the ceiling. They were all in English and Arabic, and they were great thoughts, but too many words. Like if you are reading that many words: If you are driving too fast you may not get home alive (that is not a real one, but that was the gist of most of them) so I was creating a new driving safety campaign called the equal campaign:
Speed + Texting = (shows a vehicle turned on its side and all smashed
Speed + Weaving = Two or three crunched vehicles
Texting + Driving = QR (enormous fine)
Something simple to read, graphically simple, something you can glance at and get the meaning.
When I got my driver’s license, I was really happy, except for one tiny little thing – it’s kind of my name but not exactly my name. It’s an easy mistake to make, names can be complicated, but . . . it isn’t my name on my license. It’s my face, it’s my information – it isn’t my name. For half a heartbeat, I consider saying something and then Wisdom kicks in and I zip my lip.
So then, driving home in traffic, I got to thinking about names and how we file things, alphabetically, and even Europeans sometimes file us wrong, which has led us to first class seats because airlines can’t find us, etc. It isn’t always such a bad thing.
Then I started wondering about how Arab speaking people file. Like do you have half the files in the “A” drawer, like Al So-and-So and Al Somebody Else, and how do the sun and moon words affect the filing, like Ar Rayyan, or Ath Thalaka, or As Shams, etc. Once you have filed someone, the goal is to be able to retrieve that information? How does alphabetization work in Arabic? How are things filed?
So being stuck in traffic might not be so bad if someone answers my question and I learn something. 🙂
Stuck in Traffic on Musheirib
With all the re-routing off Al Rayyan as we convert to the Heart of Doha, I found myself inching along Al Musheirib this week, along with the noon-time crowd. When there is nothing else to do – take some photos. We drive right by every day, but do we look?
Many of these spots will disappear.
Boutiques? (!)
And here is one of my favorites – see it, just over the street sign? Cheep and Best?
The More Things Change
“. . . When we first came to Doha,” I laughed to my friend, “the first thing my husband warned me was never never to get behind a truck carrying concrete blocks. They weren’t tied down, and now and then a bump or a lumpy corner would send concrete blocks all over the roads. They don’t do that any more. They have rules now.”
Spoken too soon.
The very next week, I saw three trucks in a row, laden with concrete bricks, moving slowly down B-ring; one red, one white, one blue. I got stuck, first behind one, then behind the second.
No one was endangered as I took these photos. Traffic was at a standstill.
Halloween and Extreme Pumpkins
All it took was one Google: pumpkins carved
It took me to Extreme Pumpkins.com, and it will give you minutes of helpless laughter. People are SO creative!
Yesterday I bought a pumpkin, not the traditional American sugar pumpkin with it’s thin skin, but a thick, ribbed Indian squash, and when I took it, the clerk said “You want the WHOLE thing??”
It’s not that big. But normally, people buying this kind of squash here buy it in pieces, not as an entire (carvable 🙂 ) pumpkin.
This is not my pumpkin; it is another from Extreme Pumpkins.com I am making cat pumpkins this year. 🙂
Where to Start a Difficult Conversation?
“Mom,” my son started out, “I have some bad news.”
My heart sank. They are expecting a baby in late January. Please Lord, let this baby be OK.
He starts into a long story, which has to do with an old friend who lost a job, who is staying with them temporarily, who has been very helpful, and on and on and on; I live in a family where nuances are important, and details help understand the conclusions, but it is hard to hold your breath that long!
Then he gets to the point. While he and his wife were at work, the friend was in the house recovering from jet-lag and it started raining hard. His friend thought he heard drips in the attic, and upon exploration, they discovered a small leak in the roof. He will call the contractor we work with, but he wanted me to know.
Bad news?
“Son!” I said, laughing, “when you start a sentence with ‘I have bad news,’ it needs to be followed immediately with ‘I am OK, my wife is OK and the baby is OK’ so I don’t have a heart attack!”
We both laughed. He said “yeh, I thought about that about halfway through the explanation, but I didn’t want to break the train of thought.”
When you have bad news, get it out on the table. Start with “I have bad news, (fill in the blank.)” Then go into the background, and the proposed solutions. My son did everything right, except for the part about I was scared for him and his wife and the baby.
On the other hand, after all that build-up, I was so happy that it seemed like such a small problem, compared to the possibilities.
My husband tells a joke, the point of which is to build up gently to bad news. Not to start with “the cat is dead” but to start with “the cat was on the roof . . . ” The day came when I had to call him with some very bad news, and because I am wired to laugh in the face of the worst things that can happen (it is a sort of hysterical reaction, I have to work hard to control myself at funerals and weddings, I cry at weddings and want to laugh at funerals. The big things are just too overwhelming for me so I react inappropriately. Our family joke is that “inappropriate” is the grown-up word for “stupid”) I had a very hard time not starting off with “the cat was on the roof,” which would have been totally inappropriate but I was overwhelmed, knew I needed to let him know immediately, and you think when you get to be a grown-up you will have all the answers, but we don’t. We really don’t. Like you, we do the best we can.
What I really like was that when our son gave us the bad news, he also had a proposal for how to handle it. Wooo HOOO.
Then he told us they are planning their Halloween costumes. First, because his wife is now very visibly pregnant, they were looking for a cheap doll to take apart and glue some appendages coming out of her little basketball-tummy, but now they are looking for tentacles, a la “Alien”. LLLLOOOOLLLLL! I thought it would be the perfect occasion to wear her wedding dress, our son could wear a tuxedo and the friend could go as the angry-Papa, carrying a shotgun. Yes, we are a little weird in our family, but we have a great time.
Women: Unsung Heroes Awards
Wooo HOOOO, Doha! Don’t you love it? Unsung Hero awards for WOMEN, and what women!
This is from today’s Gulf Times
Three women to receive ‘Unsung Hero’ awards
The 21st Century Leaders Foundation will honour three women at their inaugural awards ceremony on Friday at Grand Hyatt Doha.
Qataris Eman Ahmed al-Obaidli and Sara Mohamed al-Shamlan, and Palestinian Helen Shehadeh will be the first recipients of the Unsung Hero Award.
The Doha 21st Century Leaders Awards was established this year to mark the humanitarian and environmental achievements of individuals who have made a serious commitment and a significant impact to their chosen cause.
Eman, a retired elementary school teacher, has spent the past seven years engaging the people of Qatar in becoming more aware of children with physical disabilities.
Eman has also raised significant awareness within Qatar for Caudal Regression Syndrome, a rare spinal disorder that affects her son Ghanim.
With her son as a constant source of inspiration and with a strong belief in his independence, Eman has founded Ghanim’s Wheelchair Foundation which has donated hundreds of wheelchairs to other special needs societies in the Gulf.
She also started Ghanim’s Sport Club in 2008 to allow both physically disabled and able-bodied children to join in activities as varied as karate, skateboarding and basketball.
In the future, Eman’s vision for Qatar’s community includes independent accessibility for wheelchairs and integrated sport clubs.
The second Unsung Hero award goes to 16-year-old Sara, a student from Qatar Academy, who harnessed her passion of photography to raise awareness of some of the poorer expatriate Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi children in Qatar.
Initially started for a community service project for school, she documented a number of young children in the Abu Hamour area of Doha and went on to sell the prints in her father’s jewellery shop and at a jewellery exhibition. Sara quickly raised a huge sum that was used to provide the children with a proper education and basic necessities such as shoes and toys.
Daughter of well-known Qatari businessman Mohamed Marzooq al-Shamlan, managing director of Marzooq Al Shamlan & Sons, Sara considers her father a major catalyst for her way of thinking. Sara’s work is supported by the Qatar Charity.
The third recipient of the Unsung Hero award is Helen Shehadeh, a Palestinian woman who at the age of 75 is actively continuing to teach blind students.
At the age of two, Helen herself lost her eyesight overnight as a result of a diphtheria epidemic. In 1981, Helen founded the Al Shurooq School for the Blind which aimed to provide blind and visually impaired children with an appropriate education and equal opportunity, while rehabilitating and integrating them into the local community.
Other award recipients on the night include film stars Josh Hartnett and Sir Ben Kingsley and film-makers Danny Boyle and Christian Colson.
Women recognized for making a difference. . . Ahhhhhh. . . . it is a red letter day. 😀
The Social Contract
Without accountability, does the social contract exist?
Wikipedia on the Social Contract:
Social contract describes a broad class of theories that try to explain the ways in which people form states and/or maintain social order. The notion of the social contract implies that the people give up some rights to a government or other authority in order to receive or maintain social order through the rule of law. It can also be thought of as an agreement by the governed on a set of rules by which they are governed.
Social contract theory formed a central pillar in the historically important notion that legitimate state authority must be derived from the consent of the governed. The starting point for most of these theories is a heuristic examination of the human condition absent from any structured social order, usually termed the “state of nature”. In this condition, an individual’s actions are bound only by his or her personal power, constrained by conscience. From this common starting point, the various proponents of social contract theory attempt to explain, in different ways, why it is in an individual’s rational self-interest to voluntarily give up the freedom one has in the state of nature in order to obtain the benefits of political order.
He’s on the Roads Again
This also from today’s Gulf Times. This 25 year old was convicted of killing an Asian driver, due to his reckless driving, and the court fined him the equivalent of $1370. He also had to pay the family of the man he killed about $41,000. Oh. Wait. He “and his insurance company” will pay the fine.
And they didn’t take his driver’s license away, they suspended it. Oh. His jail sentence is also suspended.
Do you think because his license is suspended, that he isn’t driving?
What do you think he has learned about the value of a human life?
What do you think he has learned about equality before the law?
What do you think he has learned about accountability?
Do you believe he will be a better driver now that he has learned the consequences of reckless driving?
You will note that I did not use the tags “Doha” or “Qatar” on this post. That is because these are not situations unique to Qatar, unique to the Gulf countries, unique to the Middle East . . . in every country, including my own, there are pockets where justice depends on who is on trial. I would venture a guess that no country is exempt, that it is always a question of degree. So the question for us, as parent,s is how do we raise children who respect the value of life? Who respect the law? Who see themselves as equal to every other person before God and before the law?
Jail term suspended
A Doha appeals court has suspended the three-month imprisonment given by a lower court to a local motorist for reckless driving that caused the death of an Asian driver on June 27, 2007.
According to sources, the fatal accident took place in Shahaniya soon after midnight, “when the accused swerved left suddenly, for unknown reasons, colliding with a pickup driven by the deceased in the opposite direction.”
According to the court papers, there was no median separating the two lanes that ran in the opposite directions and the pickup was damaged in the crash.
The Qatari motorist was 25 at the time of the incident.
The appeals court ordered him to pay, jointly with the insurance company, QR150,000 as blood money to the family of the Bangladeshi victim (32).
The Doha court of first instance ordered to cancel the driving licence of the convict, but the upper court suspended it. A fine of QR5000 was upheld.
Health Services Providers Closed in Doha
Also from today’s Gulf Times . . . . It would be nice if we knew what those institutions were, so we could avoid them in the future, and what the specific complaints were.
For example, it doesn’t bother me for men and women to be in the same waiting room, like when my husband was really sick and needed a procedure done, he really needed me by his side. It would have been agony to have to wait in separate rooms, and, in fact, I have never seen separate waiting rooms in the modern Doha facilities I have visited, except for the hospital where they process all the people trying to obtain residence visas.
But I really want to know who is carrying expired or adulterated medications in their pharmacies, and who is using unauthorized or unqualified medical personnel! Please! In the interest of public safety, name the names.
22 health institutions shut for flouting rules
The Medical Licensing department at the Supreme Council of Health closed down a total of 22 health institutions, which did not comply with the health standards and rules, between November 2008 and September 2009, the department’s report states.
According to the report, which was the first published by the department, the health institutions include private clinics, medical centres, herbs selling outlets, dental clinics and eye-glasses shops.
They were found violating the standards during surprise visits by medical licensing inspectors.
Among the violations listed against the institutions were employment of unlicensed general practitioners and persons banned from practising or blacklisted, shortage of medical staff, selling of drugs that contain internationally banned substances or drugs not registered with the government pharmacy department and improper collation of patients’ data.
While some centres were found operating without proper licences, some were said to be in possession of expired drugs.
The report added that a number of them failed to separate men and women in waiting rooms and that they lack proper hygiene.
Doha Tribeca Film Fest a Sellout!
From today’s Gulf Times comes word that the upcoming film fest is already totally sold out. They have some really good movies!
Film festival a sellout
By Peter Townson
The Doha Tribeca Film Festival (DTFF) box-office outlets have seen a lot of interest from filmgoers in Qatar, with many of the movies due to be screened over weekend already sold out.
Among the most popular films are Capitalism: a Love Story by Michael Moore, Team Qatar, No-one Knows About Persian Cats, the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man, and About Elly.
The festival’s ‘blue badge’ passes, which offer holders a discount and access to a number of the festival’s events, have been very popular, and almost all the tickets that have been sold so far have been bought by blue badge-holders.
However, with less than a week to go it seems that most films have more or less sold out, with only a few seats remaining for many of the screenings.
But for disappointed moviegoers unable to buy tickets for the shows they want to see, all is not lost. Organisers have told people to go to the venue of their preferred screenings around one hour before the scheduled time, and there is a chance that people will be admitted to the film depending on whether all the ticket-holders turn up.
One British resident, who managed to get tickets to the most of the films she wanted to see, said that she was particularly looking forward to watching A Serious Man and London River but said she was disappointed not to get the chance to attend either screening of No-one Knows About Persian Cats.
“It is fantastic to have the opportunity to see films like this here in Qatar,” she said, adding “I am really looking forward to seeing the types of films we don’t usually find at the cinemas here, including some of the Arab films as well.”
However, another filmgoer expressed her disappointment at not being able to get tickets for any of the films she wants to see.
“I was really excited about seeing some of these movies, but now I’m so disappointed as I couldn’t get any tickets I wanted,” said the Australian expatriate, adding “I just hope they have not all been given away to people who don’t even really want them.”
With some 3,000 guests expected to attend the screening of Mira Nair’s Amelia it would seem that the film-loving population has wholeheartedly embraced the opportunities the festival will bring to Qatar.
Recent Comments
ExpatAlien on What Country am I Living … intlxpatr on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Michelle on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Cathy on No Grown-Ups in Charge intlxpatr on Waiting for Snow Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 