Safely in Doha
Yes, my friends, we are safely in Doha, with the normal out-of-touch sort of things that happen when you move. For some reason, and partly it’s because I am a technology dunce, unless things are clearly spelled out in the instruction booklets, I could never figure out how to include the plus sign in phone numbers, and without them, things don’t seem to be working. I still have my Kuwait phone, but I all my messages fail, and the only ones I am getting are from advertisers.
Just after I wrote the last entry, a team of FOUR customer service – or maybe three and some slightly more elevated personages – a guy in a suit with a radio – came to get me in the lounge; they were taking me to see my cat. The lounge – God bless them abundantly – came up with a plate of salmon for Pete, and with my escort, we went down to immigration.
This is the really funny part – and it’s all technicalities, but my residence visa has been cancelled, and I have been stamped out of the country, so I cannot go to Lost and Found where Pete is being held pending our flight, the immigration police are very clear about that, but since he is just baggage, they can send someone to bring Pete to me.
Surrounded by my escort, and now also by four or five immigration policemen, they bring Pete to me, and I get to give him a little scratch under the chin and collar, he gets to hear my voice. He is not terrified, but he is healthily intimidated by all the unknown persons and noises – and he is alert, so alert. He is not hungry. His pupils are dilated. I only keep him for about three minutes when I send him back; I am holding up about ten people at this point, all of whom dropped their duties so that I could comfort my cat.
When it came time for my flight, I asked the lounge to call Lost and Found and find out when the cat would be loaded, and the answer was – he was just being loaded now. I checked again at the gate, and they were prepared. Everyone apologized profusely, and explained that the pilot on the first flight just could not take a chance; the ventilation in the pressurized cargo compartment was not working and he didn’t want to put Pete at any risk. God bless him. I don’t mind the inconvenience; I honor his carefulness. Sometimes what appears to be an inconvenience is really a protection; the blessing I had this time was to know and understand that this, truly, was a blessing.
But I also needed to tell you about it, or you might have the wrong impression. It was not an airplane annoyance. It was a conscientious pilot. Thanks be to God.
Pete was carted separately to and from the plane, and hand carried to me in arrivals. LOL, I had no other baggage, just Pete! I got through the screening quickly, AdventureMan had schmoozed his way into arrivals and was there with the importation paperwork, and we were out of the airport in a flash, and in our villa a mere ten minutes later.
Another LOL, by the way, at all of you who like the name Qatteri Cat better than Pete! Honestly, one reason I don’t unveil is that as long as I am Intlxpatr, married to AdventureMan, I am so much more interesting than the very ordinary person that I really am!
Pete will always be the Qatteri Cat, because he was found, as a small, tiny, hungry kitten, wandering on the Doha Corniche by a family who had to give him up when he was around 5 months. I loved him the minute I saw him, but he only had eyes for AdventureMan. And poor AdventureMan, he was so worried about Pete he was in a nervous tizz when we arrived, he had been so afraid something would go wrong.
Seeing the two of them reunite in Doha was a beautiful sight. Pete’s food and cat litter were all set up, and he has a whole new environment to explore.
Even When You Do Everything “Right” . . .
The most amazing things can happen.
“Just bad joss” says my inner Chinese guru, as I sit for another seven hours in the lounge, waiting for a flight on which I am assured, my cat will also fly.
“Woooo HOOO!” we whopped and hollered and danced around our house with Qatteri Cat when we were told that YES, the flight we had booked had a compressurized baggage compartment, necessary for transporting a cat.
QC was a great sport this morning when I wouldn’t give him any fresh water or food – it’s just a short flight to Doha; he can survive without food and water for this short time. He wasn’t such a great sport about going into his cat cage – that usually means going to the vet, and he struggles and moans loudly, so loudly we were afraid he was going to wake the neighbors.
He quiets down on the drive to the airport. He can hear AdventureMan and I talking quietly, and he is calm. He is calm as we go through the long check in process. We like to travel light; this time we are burdened with bags and bags – one bag just for QC’s food, bowls, blanket, cat litter and babies. AdventureMan has to pay excess baggage, and, of course, cat passage.
From the Gate, I can see him carefully loaded on the plane. AdventureMan and I take our seats, the plane fills, we are beginning to breathe easy . . .
And then . . .
Everything changes.
The customer service rep is in front of us; the gates are closing, Qatteri Cat is being offloaded because the compartment is NOT pressurized – or something. The story shifts. AdventureMan talks with the CSR, he talks with the captain – in Arabic – and nothing works. They say they will fly QC to us on the later flight.
QC has had nothing to eat or drink. Now, he has to remain confined in his cage for seven more hours, no food, no water, on the chance he will make it on the plane later in the day. No. I tell AdventureMan “You go ahead, I will stay here with QC to make sure he gets on the later flight.” AdventureMan likes that idea. He will get the cat litter set up and meet us at the plane.
No, they will not allow the Qatteri Cat in the lounge with me, no matter how nice I am, no matter how concerned I am, even when I get a little angry, no, he has to wait in Lost and Found. That just breaks my heart.
They are being as nice and helpful as they can be – considering they screwed up, right up to the last minute we thought everything was OK and it wasn’t. We don’t even know what the real reason is, but meanwhile, I am sitting here steamed in the lounge – no, the A/C is working overtime, I am just royally annoyed that we did so much forward planning, and all for naught, AAARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!
I feel so sorry for the Qatteri Cat (whose real name is Pete, by the way.)
This is the same airlines – a really good airline – that lost my bag for three days last year when I flew to Doha, during a time when I had a whole weekend full of social things, and I had to wear my same clothes to all the things – I didn’t even have time to go to the stores and buy anything, I just had to buy what I could in the hotel gift shop.
It makes me wonder if I just have bad karma on this airline? I don’t want to complain too much, because what if it were a protection? What if some other airline might have transported Pete without thinking about pressurization and what if he had been badly hurt, or died or something? There’s a part of me that knows this might have been a good thing, it’s just hard to see it now. It’s hard to see clearly when you are feeling angry.
One good thing in all this is that AdventureMan gets to handle all those bags and get the cat litter set up and cat food out and then come pick up the Pete and me when we arrive.
There he goes:
Bye, AdventureMan. See you in Doha, Insh’allah . . .
Don’t Mess with Seniors!
A while back, one of my commenters said she had read a book with an “old” couple just like AdventureMan and me.
“Old??” we looked at each other in horror!
“Old people with a son getting married” is I think what she said, so that makes just about every person over 45 “old.”
We will have our revenge. Time flows only in one direction – but the older you get, the farther away “old” looks.
My 85 year old mother visits friends, now and then, who live in retirement homes, from modest to posh.
“What do you think, Mom?” we ask, knowing how lonely she is without Dad and wishing she had more companions around her to do things.
She sighs.
“They are all so OLD!” she says. “I don’t want to be surrounded by all old people!”
And she is right. She lives on her own, she cooks her own meals, cleans her own home, with only a little help from a cleaning lady and her family. She keeps herself in good shape. She is far from “old.”
I found this in today’s news on AOL – some young idiots thought they had an easy target. They thought wrong.
Two would-be carjackers learned the hard way not to mess with this grandfather. Ted Mazetier, 84, stopped to help two men with a broken-down car in Tacoma, Wash., April 22 but ended up fighting them off when they attacked and demanded his keys. Mazetier kicked one in the groin and the other in the stomach. The two were later arrested, KOMOnews.com reported.
Selling My Car
I have a darling little car, I bought it in Doha six years ago. Aye, there’s the rub. While the company agreed to ship the car for us, Qatar won’t accept a car older than 5 years old. My sweet car has less than 40K km on it, has been lovingly maintained, and I totally love it – I was outraged at Qatar. But being outraged at a bureaucracy is a loser’s game, it isn’t going to change, the rules aren’t going to be excepted for me. So I had to sell the car.
I looked up the blue book price, and I knew my car was better than that, but these are hard times for selling a used car. I just put it out word-of-mouth, and within a week, I had my buyer.
She came. She sat in the car. She said “I will take it.”
I said “but you haven’t even driven it!”
She said “I can look at you, and look at this car, and I know it is a good car.”
We talked about a price. We agreed to a price a little higher than the blue book price, a little lower than I wanted. We were both happy.
She paid me in cash.
When we went to transfer title – this is Kuwait – the administrative section was closed! It wasn’t supposed to be closed! The area was full of Kuwaitis, Jordanians, people like us, wanting to transfer title. Fortunately, the woman knew another administration place nearby, so we went there, and after the normal finagling, the title transferred and all was completed.
We really wanted this woman to have the car. It has so many good years left on it, and this is a good woman.
AdventureMan laughs at how quietly all the decisions were made, all the negotiations done. The day after we sold the car, we got an SMS from the buyer saying how happy she was, and asking God to bless us richly. We feel already blessed, having sold the car to a fine woman.
Shutting Down
Yes, I’ve been busy. Yes, it involves movers, and bureaucracy, and parties, and the normal getting-ready-for-summer activities.
But the reason I’m not blogging a lot is that I’ve been shutting down, emotionally.
Here is a truth about me. I handle bad situations by shutting down. If I feel too much, I just get overwhelmed and don’t function. When I was packing boxes – and sighing – I could only pack a couple boxes and I would have to go lie down. It wasn’t physical so much as emotionally draining, packing up a life. I can’t really even begin to think about starting up a new one; I just need to get through finishing up this one.
So I just pack away all my grief with my household goods. Honestly, it works for me. I probably appear cold and unfeeling. The unfeeling part is true – I can make myself not feel, or at least postpone the feeling part. It gets me through the tough parts. I think it helps me survive. You go on automatic pilot. You go through the motions. You are only half there.
For me, the hardest part is being around people. Keeping all the feelings shut away is hard work! It’s exhausting! Or maybe it’s the scorching heat, but I come home and cannot stay awake, I have to take a nap. I wake up feeling better. I read late into the night – late for me. It’s OK, when I count up the nap sleeping with my night sleeping, I am getting enough sleep.
I have a very few good friends who know exactly where I am emotionally, and they shield me. We talk as if life were not going to change drastically, and for us, it won’t, there will still be the e-mails and visits. When I make a good friend, she/he is a friend for life. They don’t ask too much of me right now, but they are there to protect me when I need it. They are getting me through the tough times, and these are tough times.
When I get to Doha, I will start feeling again. I will allow the grief to seep in slowly, I will cry a little when no one is around to see, and slowly, slowly, as I grieve, I will also be engaging in a new life – slowly, slowly.
The Qatteri Cat is going through the same thing. He has built himself a little hidey-hole back in my old project room / Little Diamond’s room. He crawls into a pile of pillows and comforter until he is invisible, safe, warm, and sleeps. When he is awake, it is too depressing for him – his territory has changed so dramatically, none of the old reliable places are there.
So we comfort one another.
What Would You Take?
As I say farewell to all my current earthly possessions (I say current, because an entire other life has been in storage for the last 11 years, with all my European collection, early Tunis, early Amman, early Damascus – looking forward to retiring is kind of like heaven, I will be re-united with old friends, some of whom I’ve even forgotten. 🙂 ) which will be packed for the move to Doha, AdventureMan and I have a few things which we always take with us.
Of course, our first concern is the Qatteri Cat. He walks around crying as his environment changes daily, pieces disappear, rooms are re-arranged. He will go on the plane with us.
AdventureMan has a quilt, which takes almost one entire suitcase all by itself. His clothes, of course, his computers, and his camera equipment. He has already taken a suitcase full of my hobby gear down to Qatar, and it is waiting for me in his new office.
I will have my computer and Airport, my favorite clothes, my favorite shoes, my favorite jewelry, my small cameras – and my earring tree.
I think being mildly obsessive/compulsive doesn’t hurt me. I like order. Moving to a new place, being able to unpack my earring tree and place my earrings in careful order (stones together, gold together, pearls together, dangles together, etc.) gives me a small illusion of control over my environment.
I found this earring tree at the annual Street Fair at the University of Washington about 15 years ago – there were many larger, more glorious ones, and this one was on the sales table. It is made of oak, swivels on its base, is very finely made and has served me well all these years. It doesn’t even take up that much room in the suitcase, it is so flat.
If you knew that life, being what it is, is all about the unexpected, and if you knew you might never see most of your worldly goods again, what would you take with you? (Photos welcome :-), send to Intlxpatr@aol.com.)
Family Suitcase Culture
Yesterday was one of those “deja-vu all over again” kinds of days as AdventureMan and I hit a store and bought suitcases. We will take extra baggage with us to Doha, to carry us over until our shipment arrives, and had been tizzying a little over just how best to do it. I remembered down in the souks they have cheap rolling suitcases, that, even if you just use one time before they break, are worth the price.
Then our good friend mentioned – just in time – that Carrefour was having a sale on luggage, and it was a truly incredible price, like three pieces for KD5.500. We went, we checked, we found the bags – marked at $80. with K-Mart tags. We each bought one set.
As we were pulling them out, I started laughing – we didn’t get such a hot deal. The tag said 6 pieces for $80. so that would mean the 3 pieces we got were worth – full price – about $40. We paid about $20 – so it was as if we bought suitcases at K-Mart for half price.
Suitcases – buying suitcases – are a part of our family culture. I can’t count the number of times my sisters and I have been someplace and we’ve made a run to TJMaxx to pick up another suitcase to carry unexpected purchases. We’ve always had loads of bags, when a friend visits and needs an extra bag going home, they are welcome to take one of ours. We had some friends, long ago, visiting from Moscow, and they took a bag with them to fill with fresh vegetables, something they had been craving in February in Soviet era Moscow. The bag came back the next year, filled with a beautiful Russian samovar they brought as a guest gift, and then the bag returned with them, once again, filled with fresh vegetables.
Some of my favorite suitcases have been great buys – but where are they now? I know a couple are in our storage locker, with collected linens and finds from faraway places. One of my husband’s best bags is in a closet in Pensacola, where we left it in case we needed it some time in the future. Slowly but surely, our collection of baggage has diminished.
Thus, the trip to Carrefour. AdventureMan groaned, hitting Carrefour around 4:30, as the teeming hoards arrived. To our amazement, a car left just where we needed parking. We were in Carrefour, found the bags prominently displayed, quickly decided they would do just fine since we only need them for one trip, and out again in under 30 minutes – how amazing is that? As it turned out, they were instantly useful as AdventureMan cleared some things from his office; the empty suitcase was soon filled.
It’s amazing what comfort 4 – 6 extra cubic feet of packing space can bring. 🙂
(I found the wonderful suitcase photo on Sister’s Choice, a delightful blog.
Alexander McCall Smith: Tea Time for the Traditionally Built
This brand new book in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series could not have come at a better time for me. Sorting through, giving away, selling my car – it all takes a toll. It’s a little like dying, this moving. I know I will be “resurrected” in another life, but in the meanwhile, I have so much grief, and I just stuff it away and keep going. These books are my carrots; they are my reward at the end of the day.
I have a stack of books and I am going through them like a locomotive – just chugging along.
Mma Precious Ramotswe and her totally different world in Botswana sweep me away totally. I love the sweetness of the way she thinks, her love for her country, and her tolerance. In Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, several things are going on at once, not the least of which is that she, also, must part with her dearly loved little white van, which has gone as far as it can go, and can go no further. The engine cannot be revived, not even one more time, by her dear husband, mechanic J.L.B. Matekoni.
Just in time, just when they need a new customer, comes Mr. Molofololo, the owner and manager of the Kalahari Swoopers, who hires Mma Ramotswe to find the traitor who is causing the Swoopers to lose their games.
Last, but not least, Mma Makutsi’s fiancee (she is the Assistant Detective now, remember?) Phuti Radiphuti, is being assaulted by Makutsi’s old rival from the secretarial school, Violet Sephotho, who is looking for a rich husband, and would love to steal Grace’s fiancee away, for all the worst reasons. How can plain Grace, with her big glasses and her unfortunate complexion, compete with the glamorous and seductive Violet? Can Phuti resist her wiles?
When I reached the last ten pages of the book, none of these crises had been resolved, and I thought “Oh no! How can the book end with all these loose ends out there?” but in a deft drawing together, McCall vanquishes the devils, finds simple solutions, and leaves us with Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi having tea together at the President Hotel.
This book is a great way to end the day with a smile on your face. 🙂 I bought this book for $21 in a bookstore, but Amazon has it for $14.37 plus shipping. I don’t buy a lot of hardcover books, but this one was worth every penny.
Susan Wittig Albert: Nightshade
In her ongoing China Bayles mystery series, China and her husband investigate the death of China’s father, with some amazing outcomes.
These are not heavy reading. This series features a burned-out criminal defense lawyer, who, sick of the slime and the jockying for power and position, cashes in her retirement plans and buys a shop in the small fictional town of Pecan Springs, Texas, where she opens an herbal shop, Thyme and Seasons, which sells live potted herbs, but also herbal wreaths, herbal soaps, herbal bath bombs, herbal teas, herbal shampoos, etc – and shares space with a new age shop called The Crystal Cave, a tea shop called Thyme for Tea, a catering company called Party Thyme and a personal chef service called Thymely Gourmet. She and her girlfriends have a lot of fun.
And, somehow, even in this idyllic life, mysteries seek out China, and she is often involved in crime-solving outside of her normal business. This time, her brother – the brother she never knew she had, the brother her father had with his secretary while China was growing up, wondering where her father was all the time – is murdered, in what appears to be a hit-and-run accident, but is no accident at all. Her brother was trying to get China involved with finding out how and why their father died – another apparent accident, which was no accident. When China isn’t interested (she is still very angry with her dad for what she perceives as a betrayal of her and her mother), her brother hires China’s husband as a private detective to examine the evidence. Then – her brother is killed. China gets involved.
It’s great escape reading, but you often end up learning something, too. China is an idealist, fighting crime and corruption, and God knows, there is enough of that, all the world around, to keep a legion of fictional crime fighters busy.
“After I grew up and joined the Houston legal fraternity, I began to understand what was common knowledge in that gossip-driven oil company town: Robert Bayles and his partner Ted Stone had built their legal practice on dubious oil and energy deals, questionable land transactions, and political dirty work. Their clients included polluters, looters and influence peddlers. Both Ted Stone and my father were frequent guests of the Suite 8F crowd, the group of influential conservatives who met on the eighth floor of Houston’s Lamar Hotel and collectively decided who was going to run for what political office, at the state level and beyond. To ensure that their picks – LBJ had been one of them – made it to the winner’s circle, Suite 8F slipped wads of campaign cash into the necessary pockets. Their contributions decided which politicians moved into positions of power and influence.
Just as important, their money brought them preferential treatment when the bidding opened on lucrative government contracts for dams, ships and shipyards, oil pipelines, military bases at home and abroad, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The Lamar Hotel was demolished in 1983 to make room for a skyscraper, but the political influence of 8F lingers like a foul odor, a dirty fog. It’s the subject of books, of doctoral dissertations, of documentaries. It’s common knowledge.”
Reading Albert is a great escape. Even knowing that sweet little Pecan Springs is a microcosm of the rest of the world, not untouched by human frailty, it is a sweet place with a culture all its own. China’s life, surrounded by her loving husband, her stepson, all their pets, their friends, the places they eat, it’s all comfortable, an herbal scented different world.
Dean Koontz: The Face
Dean Koontz writes a lot of books with children in them, usually children in very vulnerable positions, abandoned, neglected, or at the mercy of a cruel adult, or at best, a negligent adult. Adults do play positive roles in his books, but the positive adult is usually damaged in some way – maybe a history of alcoholism, a history of broken relationships – in short, a lot like most of us. Real people, who make mistakes along the way, and try to learn something from them.
I like Dean Koontz. It makes me sad to say that this is just another great escape. Young boy, lost in his famous father’s huge mansion, beautiful-model mother who spawned him and then walked away, like a cat leaves her kittens – it’s a sad, lonely life for a child.
There is the usual creepy, badly twisted bad guy.
There is a good guy in pain, mourning his dead wife, and a ghost who intervenes in human affairs. There are deus ex machina aplenty, and a couple page-turner moments where you don’t want to stop reading, not yet!
It was not a bad book, but if I weren’t so desperate for escape reading, I would not have wasted a minute on this book.
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