Beirut Breakfast
One of the first things that happened when I came back to Doha was my friends took me to breakfast at the Beirut. When they invited me, I was puzzled. The Beirut, as I remember it, was a place on Shara Kharaba (Electricity Street) where you drove up and guys in baseball caps came to your car and your ordered and they brought the food.
My friends are conservative, and fully covered, abaya and niqab. I could not imagine them sitting in an all-men kind of place.
But no, they took me to the NEW Beirut, down in the Souq al Waqif, and oh, what a treat! Everything, all the good foods they always had at the Beirut, only now you could sit at a table and eat! There is a family area upstairs (with a very nice restroom, by the way) and downstairs all the bachelors eat (meaning any male without a female with him) and then there is outside seating which is great when you are meeting up with western friends.
Today I was meeting up with one of my very best friends, a souk buddy, who enjoys just roaming and experiencing as I do. Actually, she had an agenda, and that will be the next blog entry, but we have been friends for a long time. Partners in crime. We egg each other on.
Most of the time we would order felafel (little balls of cooked ground chickpeas – garbanzos – and parsley, deep fried – sort of like hush puppies) and fool – beans, and hummous, with oil or yoghurt or meat. I would see guys eating bowls of stuff, though, like cereal bowls, only it wasn’t cereal, it looked maybe like oatmeal. We asked what it was, and they said it is like breakfast chickpeas and hummos with fried bread – fattoush – with yoghurt over it. So it sort of is like oatmeal, only it isn’t oatmeal. It is called Fatta.
Oh. My. Friends.
All my years in this part of the world, and I didn’t know about Fatta. Instead of forcing myself to eat oatmeal, I could have been eating Fatta.
This is SO delicious. So delicious that I beg you, if it is horrifyingly fattening, please don’t tell me. It has beans, and the fried flatbread, and toasted pine nuts, and slivered almonds, all covered with a coat of yoghurt and a drizzle of really tasty olive oil. It is so unbelievably delicious; if it were equivalent of oatmeal, this is what I would eat every day for breakfast for the rest of my life, it is so good.
But I have the bad feeling that anything so delicious is probably not so good for me. I have the feeling that it is called Fatta because it will make me big and fatta if I continue to eat it and enjoy it as I did today. Oh YUMMMMMMM.
Oh! Didn’t It Rain!
I love it that this YouTube version of Mahalia Jackson’s rendition of “Oh Didn’t It Rain!” starts out with photos in Wadi Rum in Jordan, a couple peeks at Petra, and as the camera backs off, the effects of wind and rain on the topography of the Wadi Rum area. We camped there for three nights, lo, these many years ago, going on camelback into the deeper parts of the canyon. It was unforgettable.
My trip back into Doha last night was unforgettable.
In what is usually the most mundane of flights, we found ourselves bumping up and down with lightning striking all around us, from about the halfway point all the way into Doha. I’ve never had a lot of faith in the aerodynamics that keeps airplanes up in the air, and seeing flashes of lightning all around me was a genuinely religious experience, LOL.
(From article on lightning strikes plane in Japan: According to a Scientific American article about lightning strikes and aircraft, its is “estimated that on average, each airplane in the U.S. commercial fleet is struck lightly by lightning more than once each year”. However, the article notes that the last crash directly attributed to a lightning strike occurred back in 1967 when the fuel tank exploded.)
At the airport, all the baggage handlers actually had on rain-gear, and on the way home, there were deep pools where drains have clogged. And, as AdventureMan said, when you live at sea level, just where is the water going to drain?
I am so thankful to be home. Home for the next scant three weeks, anyway, as I pack up all those boxes once again for what we think will be (one of) our last moves. Sorting, giving away, “can I live without this if I leave it behind?” “Will I regret it forever if I leave this behind?” “Is there someone who could give this a good home?”
I have two great avenues of disposal; my own church, where incoming church personnel can make use of household goods and not have to buy everything new, and my housekeeper’s church, where they cherish anything they get.
To Kuwait: Happy Liberation and Independence Days Celebrations
Wishing all my Kuwait friends all the blessings of liberty, and independence.
I always remember February in Kuwait as being one of the nicest months of the year – so how is it this year? My friends in Doha tell me they are having a heat wave!
Warming Up in Pensacola
This guy hurts my eyes. I remember reading a book called Almost French, an Australian woman married a French guy, and one morning as she was about to run down to the boulangerie in her sweats, her French boyfriend had a very pained expression on his face and said “Please! Please put on something else! You don’t want to hurt people’s eyes!”
Pensacola is warming. No matter how much Pensacola warms, I think a shirt would be a good idea.
Perfectly Beautiful Doha Skyline
Every now and then, the perfect night comes along. We weren’t the only ones out taking photos – it was that kind of night.
Wolf Moon Over Doha
Like a PEARL in the newly opened exhibit, the Wolf Moon illuminates the Museum of Islamic Art
From AOL News, where you can read the rest of the article)
(Jan. 29) – Tonight’s full moon will be the biggest and brightest full moon of the year. It offers anyone with clear skies an opportunity to identify easy-to-see features on the moon.
This being the first full moon of 2010, it is also known as the wolf moon, a moniker dating back to Native American culture and the notion that hungry wolves howled at the full moon on cold winter nights. Each month brings another full moon name.
But why will this moon be bigger than others? Here’s how the moon works:
The moon is, on average, 238,855 miles from Earth. The moon’s orbit around Earth – which causes it to go through all its phases once every 29.5 days – is not a perfect circle, but rather an ellipse. One side of the orbit is 31,070 miles closer than the other.
So in each orbit, the moon reaches this closest point to us, called perigee. Once or twice a year, perigee coincides with a full moon, as it will tonight, making the moon bigger and brighter than any other full moons during the year.
Tonight it will be about 14 percent wider and 30 percent brighter than lesser full moons of the year, according to Spaceweather.com.
As a bonus, Mars will be just to the left of the moon tonight. Look for the reddish, starlike object.
The weather is perfect. Go out tonight and enjoy this fabulous, bright moon.
A Breath of Winter
I am a happy camper.
AdventureMan’s teeth are chattering and he is rummaging through his drawers in search of long johns and his fleece jacket, the Qatteri Cat is nestled as close to me as he can get and there is a slight chill in the air (remember, I am an Alaska girl 🙂 so it doesn’t feel that cold to me!)
Yesterday, I even wore long sleeves, first time since December, when we had a couple chilly days. January in Doha – until yesterday – was more like March in Doha, with warm nights and warmer days. I appreciate the freshness of a little coolness.
The Snowflake Man
From a wonderful website on Parenting, iMom, full of ideas, comes this lovely video on a man who photographed snowflakes:
Snowflake Man from Family First on Vimeo.
With thanks to my wonderful daughter-in-law, EnviroGirl, for the reference. 🙂
Doha: The Best Time of the Year
We have the windows open and the A/C off, well, most of the time. Some times it gets humid, and we have to turn the AC on to keep our carpets and textiles from molding. Aarrgh!
Yesterday dawned a crisp 60+°F, clear, sunny, the birds are singing and I have errands to do but . . . it’s also a great day for taking photos. I decide maybe I can do both, but I give the photos a priority and get myself down to the Corniche.
There is also a part of me that wanted to see if I COULD drive on the Corniche; it has been on-again-off-again as people prepare for the grand parade at – oh yes, 0800 Friday morning.
0800 Friday morning? No one in Qatar is up at 0800 on Friday morning. You are going to START a parade at 0800 on Friday morning? Like soldiers will have to be up early? Pilots flying those cool fast little planes – up before dawn? This is Qatar – no one is up at 0800 on a Friday morning!
The weather is gorgeous and the photos take themselves. There has been so much building on the Corniche and over in the West Bay Business district:
Off in the distance, glimmering like Shangri-La, are the buildings going up on The Pearl:
And look at the minaret on the new National Mosque! It’s as tall as many of the taller buildings! Do you think they will have an elevator? Will the muezzins be able to call out the call to prayer after climbing 37 stories?
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