Places I’ll Remember . . .
I’m not very good at being sad. Today is one of the saddest days of my life. I’ve been weeping all day, and I’m not one of those women whom the camera loves when they weep. My throat gets thick, so clogged with emotion that I can’t talk clearly, and my eyes get all red and swollen. My cheeks get all blotchy. I hate it, my eyes are leaking, and my nose is running. I think I’ve got it all stopped, and it all starts up again.
Most of the house is packed, the kitchen cupboards cleared out and all the goods not going with us distributed. I weep as I pack my bags. I weep as I take out the garbage. I weep as I load one last load of wash into the washer.
“What is it in particular?” AdventureMan asks me, as I weep, yet again, as I start to write this entry.
“It’s the end of an era,” I choke out, and the tears start rolling once again in spite of all my efforts not to succumb.
“We’ve lived our lives as nomads ever since we met,” I continue.
“It isn’t like we want to live in Doha forever, Doha is changing, too, old friends are leaving.”
“It isn’t like I love packing up and starting over in a new place.”
“I shouldn’t have scheduled to leave on a Friday after church,” I philosophized, but it’s too late now. The waterworks started in church and have turned on and off with ever fresh goodbye.
I steeled myself to smile cheerily at my oldest friends, knowing we’ll meet up again – a wedding, a retirement, a gathering of old hands. But small things defeated me. The friends who switched their normal place in church and sat beside us. The communion hymn “Lord of the Dance” sung as a duet. One of our friends provided our very very favorite meal for lunch. The priest blessing my travels and sending me on with the prayers of the people. The difficult ceremony of saying goodbye to the people we love in a place which has nurtured us, spiritually and socially.
And one young woman painted a watercolor for us of our new grandson.
It is a stunning watercolor, I can hardly wait to have it framed. There is something very special in it – I have a friend who knits, but is constantly telling us how badly she knits. She knit a blanket for the grandson, and it was COLD in Pensacola, and that blanket was used over and over again. The blanket is in the lower left corner of the watercolor. 🙂
It’s going to be a long trip to our new life. We are going to a happy place – sunshine, but not so much heat. Humidity and lightning, but also four seasons and seafood. Our son, his wife, our grandson. All these are happy things. Our new house, a new life, closer to our families. All good things.
I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to my Palestinian friend, like my sister, and she shared all her children with me through these years of friendship. Saying goodbye to her was horrible. We know we may never see one another again. Her daughters assure me they will help us correspond; they will help her use modern technology to stay in touch. 🙂 I don’t know when I will ever see her again . . . and it breaks my heart. I guess I kind of thought she would come visit me. “No,” she said sadly, “no, I will never have the right papers to visit you.” Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how devastating are the restrictions on her life. And I’m just a friend. She hasn’t seen her own father, in Palestine, for years. Sometimes they can meet up in Egypt. . .
I’m not the first expat to leave here. One good friend left Doha last summer, she led the way. We all know that leaving the nomadic life is charting new territory. We’ve had a lot of fun, we’ve loved (most of) the expat experience. We know it’s time. It’s just the inner twenty-five year old is not ready.
AdventureMan’s company keeps saying “when you’ve had a break . . . ” and AdventureMan laughs and says “I’m not taking a break, I am RETIRING!” His company is savvy; they know that three months down the road the domestic life may get a bit old for these high testosterone kind of guys and they will invite him back for a special project or two. He promises me, if it is Doha or Kuwait, I can come with him. Even just a week or two, to see old friends . . . I’ll take it!
Thanks be to God, for creating us, and for giving us this wonderful life we were created to live. Thanks be to God for all these great adventures, for the exotic, the sights and smells and sounds, and for the eyes to see and the ears to hear. Thanks be to God for the generous spirited friends called to his life, who have shared the path with us. And thanks be to God for this outlet, this blog, where I can share the good, the bad and the ugly with friends from all countries who have ever lived as strangers in a strange land (even when that ‘strange’ land is the USA, LOL!) Thank YOU, friends.
Babies Love to Dance!
Now here is a study I love! Scientists studied babies movements to music and discovered – babies love rhythm, and love to move to the rhythm! Get those babies dancing!
If they find rhythm and music more engaging, sing to them!
They Got Rhythm, Study of Babies Finds
Lauren Frayer
Contributor
AOL News
(March 16) — Babies innately respond to rhythm more than speech, according to a new study that found dancing comes naturally to infants.
Researchers in Britain and Finland tested the responses of 120 babies ages 5 months to 2 years and found that infants are much more physically responsive to music than to speech and find it more engaging.
In the experiment, which was recorded on video, babies were perched on their mother’s or father’s lap while psychologists played a recording of music. The babies moved their heads, arms, legs and bodies in time to the beat of various different genres of music.
“Our research suggests that it is the beat rather than other features of the music, such as the melody, that produces the response in infants,” one of the study’s authors, psychologist Marcel Zentner of the University of York in England, said in statement.
In order not to influence the baby’s movements, the parent wore headphones to block out the sound of the music and was asked to stay still during the experiment.
The recordings included classical music, rhythmic beats and also speech. They also hired professional ballet dancers to analyze the babies’ movements and determine how well-coordinated they were with the music. All of the babies responded more to the music than to speech.
The findings suggest humans may be born with a predisposition to move rhythmically in response to music.
“It remains to be understood why humans have developed this particular predisposition,” Zentner said. “One possibility is that it was a target of natural selection for music or that it has evolved for some other function that just happens to be relevant for music processing.”
Zentner and Tuomas Eerola of Finland’s University of Jyvasklya also found that the more the babies’ movements were synchronized to the music, the more they smiled.
The study appears in the March 15 issue of the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Polite Reminder
Don’t you love this sign? It is so polite! Asking people not to smoke, even though it is outside, and – LOL – even though this restaurant encourages shisha smokers!
One Last Time at The Majliss
Lucky me, AdventureMan shares my love of this fine restaurant. We meet up with a set of long-time friends and enjoy an evening of hilarity and good food. We had the mezze, yes, including the Majliss’s fabulous muhammara, made with ground walnuts and sweet red peppers and pomegranate juice, and then – the grilled shrimp and hammour. I don’t think anyone does it better:
The moment of hilarity? AdventureMan stands up and says he needs to go wash his hands. His friend stands up and says “I’ll go with you!” The joke? AdventureMan usually pays the bill while he is ‘washing his hands’ but we have been friends long enough for this man to have caught on to his trick.
Early Morning Souk Al Waqif
One set of packers coming mid-morning, so AdventureMan is staying home, and offers to take me out to breakfast. I’m a cheap date – take me to the Beirut. I love this place.
As we get to the camel lot, we see they are being fed and dressed – a parade?
These guys look sharp. They have a lot of pride in what they are doing. And they have a dashing uniform. He told us they are a part of the Emiri Diwan.
On to the Beirut, and one of my reasons for loving these breakfasts – the souk cops, on their horses. The horses are beautiful, and well controlled. The cops are friendly and patient with all the tourists, and with us ‘locals’ too, when we ask them to pose with our Flat Stanleys. 🙂
It’s a real treat for AdventureMan to have a morning when he can sit outside with me and enjoy his favorite kind of breakfast:
We walked through the souks, and found that by 9:30, it is beginning to get HOT.
Tawash Restaurant
We didn’t end up at the Brussels. As we walked into the souks, we smelled a whiff of grilling meat and decided we wanted Arabic food while we could get it. We walked up and down and decided this was the night to eat at the Tawash.
The Tawash is gorgeous. Somebody put a lot of thought into it. You can eat outside, along the walkway, or outside on the balcony, or outside on the upstairs terrace. Or you can eat inside, in a private dining room, or in a large dining room that can be separated by tent-like hangings that drop down between tables. It is beautifully thought through.
We chose the balcony – we wanted to be outside, but I don’t like to eat right out on the street, with people walking by and oogling my food.
We started with hummus and baba ghannoush, served with hot hot bread:
And then we had two great dishes, a traditional Kepsa (mensaf in Jordan) which is rice cooked with delicious spices and, in this case, chicken:
And a shrimp dish, the shrimp marinated in yoghurt, then fried, accompanied by fried vegetables, sort of like tempura – the batter was very light:
And we finished with strong, grainy coffee:
If you have special guests in town for only one night, this would be a great place to take them. It is a beautiful building, it has character and charm, the food is very good, the service is attentive without being intrusive, and it has a kind of magic, a uniqueness that sets it apart from the chains of restaurants also in the souks. If the weather allows you to sit outside – do so. Part of the charm for us was the great parade of humanity passing by as we conversed and ate. It’s an altogether lovely restaurant.
Clean Carpets
If you are parking in the parking lot on the upside of the long restaurant street, near the Beirut, near Dhow roundabout, and you look at the souks, there is a whole area down on the left that is being developed. There is a large interior souk with abayas and scarves, for example, and a man with the model tents that they will make for you.
There was also, recently, a man cleaning a carpet. I was fascinated. We have carpets. They need cleaning. I have seen carpets cleaned at car washed, and hung on racks to dry. It does not seem to me that people wash these carpets with enormous care, they just wash the carpets.
I would rather like to wash some of our carpets. This man gave me an idea how to do it – gentle detergent in a bucket, a gentle brush, like a dishwashing brush – and the carpet is flat on the ground. I can do this!
Irish Jokes for St. Patrick’s Day
Thanks to an e-mail friend with the BEST jokes!
Gotta Love the Irish
Paddy was driving down the street in a sweat because he had an important meeting and couldn’t find a parking place. Looking up to heaven he said, “Lord take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I will go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of me life and give up me Irish Whiskey!”
Miraculously, a parking place appeared.
Paddy looked up again and said, “Never mind, I found one.”
+ + + +
Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and asks the first man he meets, “Do you want to go to heaven?”
The man said, “I do, Father.”
The priest said, “Then stand over there against the wall.”
Then the priest asked the second man, “Do you want to go to heaven?”
“Certainly, Father,” the man replied.
“Then stand over there against the wall,” said the priest.
Then Father Murphy walked up to O’Toole and asked, “Do you want to go to heaven?”
O’Toole said, “No, I don’t Father.”
The priest said, “I don’t believe this.. You mean to tell me that when you die you don’t want to go to heaven?”
O’Toole said, “Oh, when I die , yes. I thought you were getting a group together to go right now.”
+ + + +
Paddy was in New York .
He was patiently waiting and watching the traffic cop on a busy street crossing. The cop stopped the flow of traffic and shouted, “Okay, pedestrians. ” Then he’d allow the traffic to pass.
He’d done this several times, and Paddy still stood on the sidewalk.
After the cop had shouted, “Pedestrians! ” for the tenth time, Paddy went over to him and said, “Is it not about time ye let the Catholics across?”
+ + + +
Gallagher opened the morning newspaper and was dumbfounded to read in the obituary column that he had died. He quickly phoned his best friend, Finney.
“Did you see the paper?” asked Gallagher. “They say I died!!”
“Yes, I saw it!” replied Finney. “Where are ye callin’ from?”
+ + +
An Irish priest is driving down to New York and gets stopped for speeding in Connecticut . The state trooper smells alcohol on the priest’s breath and then sees an empty wine bottle on the floor of the car.
He says, “Sir, have you been drinking?”
“Just water,” says the priest.
The trooper says, “Then why do I smell wine?”
The priest looks at the bottle and says, “Good Lord! He’s done it again!”
+ + + +
Walking into the bar, Mike said to Charlie the bartender, “Pour me a stiff one – just had another fight with the little woman.”
“Oh yeah?” said Charlie , “And how did this one end?”
“When it was over,” Mike replied, “She came to me on her hands and knees.”
“Really,” said Charles, “Now that’s a switch! What did she say?”
She said, “Come out from under the bed, you little chicken.”
+ + + +
Patton staggered home very late after another evening with his drinking buddy, Paddy. He took off his shoes to avoid waking his wife, Kathleen.
He tiptoed as quietly as he could toward the stairs leading to their upstairs bedroom, but misjudged the bottom step. As he caught himself by grabbing the banister, his body swung around and he landed heavily on his rump. A whiskey bottle in each back pocket broke and made the landing especially painful.
Managing not to yell, Patton sprung up, pulled down his pants, and looked in the hall mirror to see that his butt cheeks were cut and bleeding. He managed to quietly find a full box of Band-Aids and began putting a Band-Aid as best he could on each place he saw blood.
He then hid the now almost empty Band-Aid box and shuffled and stumbled his way to bed.
In the morning, Patton woke up with searing pain in both his head and butt and Kathleen staring at him from across the room.
She said, “You were drunk again last night weren’t you?”
Patton said, “Why you say such a mean thing?”
“Well,” Kathleen said, “it could be the open front door, it could be the broken glass at the bottom of the stairs, it could be the drops of blood trailing through the house, it could be your bloodshot eyes, but mostly …… it’s all those Band-Aids stuck on the hall mirror.
No! No! Proposed Traffic Law Change is a Step Backwards!
You see it all the time, at the roundabouts. Those fellows – it’s always guys – in the hot cars, the Porche, the Cayenne, I don’t even know all the names. The light turns red; they don’t care. They see a gap, they go.
I would love a look at the statistics. I would love to see who is getting all the fines for jumping the red lights. I bet 90% are all the same nationality.
And now they want to LOWER the fine for running the red light???
Just when Qatar has proudly announced that traffic deaths are falling dramatically with the ENFORCEMENT of the new, stricter laws?
No! No! A moderation of this fine is a step backward! Please, please, don’t do it!
Lower fine proposed for running a red light
The Advisory Council seeks a review of the traffic law
By Nour Abuzant
Staff Reporter
The Advisory Council has proposed a review of the traffic law with a stress on reducing the current fine of QR6,000 for jumping the red signal, a member of the council said yesterday.
According to him, the draft proposal recommended a significant cut in the fine and suggested that the penalty be structured around a more practical model based on the circumstances of the violation and the number of times a motorist committed the same offence.
Senior officials of the Traffic Department had defended the stringent rules which came into force in October 2007, saying they had been issued to combat the mounting number of traffic accidents which claimed scores of lives on the country’s roads.
Advisory Council member Mohamed al-Hajery, who was one of the 20 citizens felicitated by the Traffic Department for their clean traffic record yesterday, told reporters on the sidelines of the ceremony that the House preferred a more pragmatic approach to the issue.
The awarding ceremony was part of Qatar’s celebration of the GCC Traffic Week, currently being held under the slogan “Beware of Other’s Faults”.
“The tendency of my fellow members is to take into consideration the number of previous traffic violations and the circumstances involving the jumping of the red-light,” al-Hajery said.
“You cannot treat someone who jumped the signal after a minute the light turned red and after a fraction of a second it turned red from orange,” he said.
“I think that the appropriate fine for a driver who jumped the red light without a criminal intention is QR1,500 – QR2,000.”
Al-Hajery stressed that his pleading for a more lenient treatment did not mean he was promoting traffic violations. “Anyone who deliberately jumps the signal should be treated like a potential killer and no mercy should be shown to him.”
He said he was in favour of treating each case of jumping the red light individually.
The Advisory Council members had on February 19, 2008, refused to ratify the 2007 law, arguing that “ it did not strike a balance between the crime and the punishment”.
In late July 2008, the Advisory Council members gave the law a “test period” that ended in October 2008, to check the effectiveness of the law.
The law had introduced for the first time a negative points system that might lead to the suspension or cancellation of driving licences.
The Advisory Council member said that he was personally against the system. He explained: “Sometimes, the (negative) points are registered in the driver’s account and sometimes against the owner of the vehicle. In some cases, your son drives the car and you sustain the points. It is an ineffective system and should be re-examined.”
However, Traffic Department director Brigadier Saad al-Kharji on Sunday said he was not aware of any intention to reduce, at least for the time being, the current fines.
“Anybody who respects the traffic regulations has nothing to fear,” he said arguing that after two and half years of its implementation, the law had “proved effective in reducing the number of casualties, if we take into consideration the increasing number of vehicles in the country”.
He said: “Our target is to save lives on Qatar’s roads and there is no fine that can equal the life of a human being. It is not true that our aim was just to collect money.”
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