School broke up last week and reflecting back on the term that the boys have had here, they have done well. Leo got 3 A's in his end of year exams, despite only being at school for a term. The other subjects were a bit of a mixed bag, but I'm proud of how he has done. Robbie has been made a prefect for the new school year, so we are all very proud of that.
The temperatures here continue to climb, with it getting to the mid 40s or higher every day now. Yesterday I noticed the outside temperature gauge in my car indicated 50 (faint groan). Apparently it gets worse in August September because it gets humid as well... There really is a mass exodus of everyone at this time of the year. Most of Robbie's and Leo's school friends will be disappearing for the summer, and many of my new friends here have either gone or will be going. People either go back to their home country or have summer holiday homes in Europe or cooler parts of the Middle East. There are a few people around still and we are attacking the question of summer activities with gusto. We have made a list of activities and have promised each other that we will do some kind of physical activity every day, keep up our Arabic and Be Positive! So far, three days in it is going OK. We have been to Jungle Zone, a fun park at one of the malls, started building a flotilla of models, and been swimming as well as the inevitable electronic game time.
And we look forward to our visit to the UK in August. The things we are most looking forward to are being able to be outside a lot and be comfortable, and seeing green.
Ian is working hard as usual. Garrick is well and we are looking forward to catching up with him at the end of the year.
My thoughts have been turning towards work and I have been sowing some seeds, which hopefully will start taking root in September. I have realised that not very much happens fast here and finding a job that will be challenging/in my field/use my skills may take some time. Starting a business from scratch here is a protracted business. So I've decided to look for interim work as well to keep me occupied and stop me from Going Mad From Boredom. I'll keep you posted.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Monday, June 18, 2007
Arabic lessons
This is a picture of the boys with Hala. Hala is the most beautiful person and a committed and passionate teacher. She comes every week to our house to teach us classical Arabic. If you learn classical Arabic you can be understood anywhere in the middle east. Hala is from Lebanon and teaches at one of the universities here during the day, and teaches Arabic lessons at night. Tonight was our last lesson for a month or two, while Hala goes away for a summer holiday.So far we are learning spoken conversational Arabic. We are wrestling with masculine and feminine nouns and verbs, past present and future tenses, and trying to get some vocabulary under our belts. It's a different language to learn as both the beginnings and ends of words change depending on which tense you are using, and whether you are talking to a male or female or group of people. You have to think about language and words in a different way. When Hala comes back we will start to learn to read and write in Arabic. That will be good because in English it is spelt totally phonetically and the spelling is liable to change without warning. An example of this is a district we live close to - Al Waab. It can be spelt Al Waab one minute and Al Waeb the next. I have had to loosen up with my spelling when it comes to Arabic written in our alphabet.
We have lots of favourite Arabic words. "Yemkin" means maybe. "Portokalee" is the colour orange. "Mishmash" means apricot. I could go on and on. It's great fun learning Arabic and I practice it every opportunity I can on poor unsuspecting Arabic-speakers I come across.
The boys will both learn Arabic formally next year at school.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Park House concert
Robbie's school concert at Park House English School happened yesterday evening. Robbie was chosen to be part of his class's item, which was "America" from West Side Story. The class has been doing an ancient history unit, studying the 1960s. Robbie had lots of fun, and so did we watching.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Studio shots of new cars
Here are some studio shots of the Skateboard of Happiness and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. My cousin asked me why we feel compelled to give everything a name. I'm not really sure, I think there are so many new things happening all the time, it humanises things and makes everything our own. And gives me a wee grin as my sense of humour is tickled.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
And a business confidence survey for the Gulf
Most Gulf businessmen see ’07 profit over 5pc: Survey Sunday, June 10, 2007
Web posted at: 6/10/2007 0:25:22
Source ::: Reuters
"DUBAI • More than half of business people in the Gulf Arab region polled by HSBC expect profits to grow by more than 5 per cent in 2007, the bank said yesterday.
HSBC said 57 per cent of 1,063 business people from the six Gulf countries said profit growth would exceed five per cent, down slightly from 59 per cent of respondents in the first quarter.
HSBC, which conducted the business confidence survey with polling company YouGov Siraj, said 52 per cent of the respondents were planning to increase investment in their businesses in 2007 and 55 per cent said they will hire more staff in the next 12 months.
HSBC’s Gulf business confidence index eased to 99 from 100 in the first quarter, with Qatar, at 114, reporting the strongest growth in confidence and Kuwait, at 95, the weakest.
A score greater than 100 indicates a positive shift in confidence and below 100 a negative shift.
“We have seen a strong similarity in outlook between Q1 and Q2, indicating that business in the Gulf is in good shape and will continue to prosper,” Keith Bradley, regional head of commercial banking for HSBC Middle East, said in a statement.
Inflation was seen as the most significant risk, with 49 per cent of businesses reporting it as a threat. Real estate costs were cited by 47 per cent of respondents as having a negative impact on their business. "
Web posted at: 6/10/2007 0:25:22
Source ::: Reuters
"DUBAI • More than half of business people in the Gulf Arab region polled by HSBC expect profits to grow by more than 5 per cent in 2007, the bank said yesterday.
HSBC said 57 per cent of 1,063 business people from the six Gulf countries said profit growth would exceed five per cent, down slightly from 59 per cent of respondents in the first quarter.
HSBC, which conducted the business confidence survey with polling company YouGov Siraj, said 52 per cent of the respondents were planning to increase investment in their businesses in 2007 and 55 per cent said they will hire more staff in the next 12 months.
HSBC’s Gulf business confidence index eased to 99 from 100 in the first quarter, with Qatar, at 114, reporting the strongest growth in confidence and Kuwait, at 95, the weakest.
A score greater than 100 indicates a positive shift in confidence and below 100 a negative shift.
“We have seen a strong similarity in outlook between Q1 and Q2, indicating that business in the Gulf is in good shape and will continue to prosper,” Keith Bradley, regional head of commercial banking for HSBC Middle East, said in a statement.
Inflation was seen as the most significant risk, with 49 per cent of businesses reporting it as a threat. Real estate costs were cited by 47 per cent of respondents as having a negative impact on their business. "
A nasty act on hapless labourers
From "The Peninsula" on-line's letters to the editor:
"Commuters driving along the road opposite the City Center witnessed a horrible incident on Thursday at around 8pm. The passenger of a white sports car that was being driven recklessly in between cars, rolled down his window and threw a can of soda and leftover food at the faces of labourers sitting on the pavement waiting for the bus. The driver of the white vehicle, along with his friend, both of whom are of Middle Eastern origin, laughed as they rolled up their window, and as they proceeded to dart in and out of traffic, other drivers who managed to see their degrading act began to shout and beep their horns at them, expressing their disgust at what they had witnessed. The Asian worker that was hit in the face, when asked if this was the first time he was the victim of such foolish and insensitive behaviour, told The Peninsula, “We are used to being treated inhumanely, whilst sitting here on the pavement waiting for our bus service to take us back to the camp. Many of us have had food, half empty soda cans, and other items thrown at us from cars. Especially during the evening when it seems that the youth is out looking for entertainment and use us as their target.”-Adeil A, Doha"
"Commuters driving along the road opposite the City Center witnessed a horrible incident on Thursday at around 8pm. The passenger of a white sports car that was being driven recklessly in between cars, rolled down his window and threw a can of soda and leftover food at the faces of labourers sitting on the pavement waiting for the bus. The driver of the white vehicle, along with his friend, both of whom are of Middle Eastern origin, laughed as they rolled up their window, and as they proceeded to dart in and out of traffic, other drivers who managed to see their degrading act began to shout and beep their horns at them, expressing their disgust at what they had witnessed. The Asian worker that was hit in the face, when asked if this was the first time he was the victim of such foolish and insensitive behaviour, told The Peninsula, “We are used to being treated inhumanely, whilst sitting here on the pavement waiting for our bus service to take us back to the camp. Many of us have had food, half empty soda cans, and other items thrown at us from cars. Especially during the evening when it seems that the youth is out looking for entertainment and use us as their target.”-Adeil A, Doha"
Saturday, June 9, 2007
The great hops forward
The weather has been a bit cooler this week because of a huge cyclone that hit Oman just down the coast. Thankfully there wasn't the terrible weather here that they experienced, just a drop in temperature over the last couple of days from early to mid forties to the late thirties.
There have been a couple of major leaps (or maybe hops) forward this week for the Hendrikse Lauchland Mercers. Firstly we have new cars - yahoo. It costs NZ$35 more per week to buy brand new cars than to rent as we have been doing. My car is a sensible 7-seater people-mover 4 wheel drive Hyundai Santa Fe. Colour: sand (if you ask me); champagne colour if you asked Ian. It is wonderful and I feel very grand sailing along in her. I can now eyeball the Toyota Landcruiser rocket drivers all around me. This eyeballing technique makes for a much easier time on the road, surprisingly enough. A technique that hasn't worked in the new car has unfortunately been my backing technique....I put a scratch on the back bumper on the First Day, which Ian has taken undue delight in telling everyone about.
The other car is Ian's. This is Hyundai coupe - colour vivid blue. Ian calls the car the Bluebird of Happiness, which has been quickly changed by me to the Skateboard of Happiness because it is so low it feels just like we are riding on a skateboard. The boys fit in the back ok. Here are the boys doing a car inspection.
It is a zippy wee thing. Lots of fun to drive. No scratches on it.
The other event has been the purchase of the TV. It is up on the wall of the lounge. It is big. Ian chose. You can watch two different channels in the house at once; there is a second outlet for another TV in the room next to the lounge. This room will be the MTV room. The installation was done over a couple of hours by some very cheerful technicians - one exuberant Syrian ("from Old Damascus") and a quiet Indian guy. It seems geekiness transcends race and continent. We have 6 trillion channels to choose from. Our Syrian technician took us through an exhaustive selection of them but lingered on the BBC Food channel ("this channel is too much perfect").
Ian took the opportunity while the TV guys were on the roof to shinny up the ladder and take some photos of the compound and surrounds, so here is a bird's eye view of our little dusty corner of Doha.
This photo looks down the street along one of the rows of villas Just Like Ours. You can see the Skateboard of Happiness below. Across the road is a little playhouse in front of our neighbour's house, which we call the Committee Room. At dusk every night a collection of small girls gather in and around it like sparrows. They do a lot of running and screaming and occasionally you can see them riding their bikes wearing little dress- up high heels. The bikes are all pink. 
This photo looks in the same direction as the previous photo but from the other side of the house, over the outer perimeter wall of Al Faisaliya Compound. You can see twin minarets of one of the mosques close to us, and the flat expanse of dusty stony land behind us. It has just been levelled off ready to build on.
This photo looks in the opposite direction towards the old part of the city, the sea and the airport. The digger has been resident outside the boy's bedrooms for a couple of weeks now, digging drains. There is no reticulated water supply where we are yet - all the water is trucked in to tanks in our compound...for a 210- house compound it must be a huge amount of water.
There have been a couple of major leaps (or maybe hops) forward this week for the Hendrikse Lauchland Mercers. Firstly we have new cars - yahoo. It costs NZ$35 more per week to buy brand new cars than to rent as we have been doing. My car is a sensible 7-seater people-mover 4 wheel drive Hyundai Santa Fe. Colour: sand (if you ask me); champagne colour if you asked Ian. It is wonderful and I feel very grand sailing along in her. I can now eyeball the Toyota Landcruiser rocket drivers all around me. This eyeballing technique makes for a much easier time on the road, surprisingly enough. A technique that hasn't worked in the new car has unfortunately been my backing technique....I put a scratch on the back bumper on the First Day, which Ian has taken undue delight in telling everyone about.
The other car is Ian's. This is Hyundai coupe - colour vivid blue. Ian calls the car the Bluebird of Happiness, which has been quickly changed by me to the Skateboard of Happiness because it is so low it feels just like we are riding on a skateboard. The boys fit in the back ok. Here are the boys doing a car inspection.It is a zippy wee thing. Lots of fun to drive. No scratches on it.
The other event has been the purchase of the TV. It is up on the wall of the lounge. It is big. Ian chose. You can watch two different channels in the house at once; there is a second outlet for another TV in the room next to the lounge. This room will be the MTV room. The installation was done over a couple of hours by some very cheerful technicians - one exuberant Syrian ("from Old Damascus") and a quiet Indian guy. It seems geekiness transcends race and continent. We have 6 trillion channels to choose from. Our Syrian technician took us through an exhaustive selection of them but lingered on the BBC Food channel ("this channel is too much perfect").
Ian took the opportunity while the TV guys were on the roof to shinny up the ladder and take some photos of the compound and surrounds, so here is a bird's eye view of our little dusty corner of Doha.
This photo looks across the road over our neighbours place towards the Khalifa Stadium. This, and the tower next to it was built for the recent Asia Games which were held in Doha last December. The tower was where the flame was burning for the duration of the games.
This photo looks down the street along one of the rows of villas Just Like Ours. You can see the Skateboard of Happiness below. Across the road is a little playhouse in front of our neighbour's house, which we call the Committee Room. At dusk every night a collection of small girls gather in and around it like sparrows. They do a lot of running and screaming and occasionally you can see them riding their bikes wearing little dress- up high heels. The bikes are all pink. A couple of weeks ago an anonymous letter was left for Robbie by one of the girls.
Quote: "Dear Robbeiy, I love you so much I want to kiss you on the lips. From Britny Spiers xxx ooo". On the other side of the paper there were a lot of red lovehearts, three little pink lipstick kiss marks, "I love you" and a clue, "I live in America". It took the boys quite a while to work out which six year old had written the letter.
This photo looks in the same direction as the previous photo but from the other side of the house, over the outer perimeter wall of Al Faisaliya Compound. You can see twin minarets of one of the mosques close to us, and the flat expanse of dusty stony land behind us. It has just been levelled off ready to build on. 
This photo looks in the opposite direction towards the old part of the city, the sea and the airport. The digger has been resident outside the boy's bedrooms for a couple of weeks now, digging drains. There is no reticulated water supply where we are yet - all the water is trucked in to tanks in our compound...for a 210- house compound it must be a huge amount of water.Monday, June 4, 2007
The swearing jar
I regret to say we are having to institute a new swearing jar in Doha. I don't know why but I thought that moving to another country, especially such a pure country as this, might have a positive influence on the amount of bad words coming out of our mouths. We were very good for a time but gradually I have noticed some regrettable language creeping back in. The boys are now able to say bad words in English, Afrikaans and Arabic. They say the new bad words with great relish. And sometimes repeatedly. However the boys are not the catalyst for the new swearing jar.
We were driving along the Valley of Death this morning when the traffic slowed down and then stopped. Gridlock again at the uncontrolled intersection near the school. A bus up one bumper, a big four wheel drive in front - no chance to change lanes. A new lane formed in the middle of the road with a slow but steady stream of cars flowing past me in the direction of the school, as the time ticked by towards lateness. My zen calm started to evaporate away.
All of a sudden a car crept up on the outside of our car- one wheel precariously on the tarmac a mere three inches away from us, the other on the wasteland next to the road as it started to nose in front of us. I'm afraid to say it was all too much for me, and as the traffic started to inch its way forward I stuck like glue to the car in front, trying to keep him from nosing his way in. I also said some very bad words in front of the boys, to the effect of, "you stupid man, can't you see that I have to get my kids to school too, and anyway I was here first!"
I noticed a movement inside the car, and when I focused I saw Robbie waving cheerfully at this car. This was too much. I enquired with words in the same vein to the effect of, "Robbie, what on earth do you think you are doing?!"
"Mum", he said, "that's my friend Ibrahim in the car next to us".
"Well, you tell your friend Ibrahim that I don't think much of his @#%&# Dad's driving"
"Mum, shall I use all those words when I tell him we don't like his Dad's driving?"
We were relaying this story to Ian this evening. Robbie suggested and we all agreed that the amount of language was unnecessary and that the swearing jar should be reinstituted. Ian has seized control as the sole arbiter of what is a swear word and what is borderline bad language but not worthy of a fine. The boys are happy as "bum" has been declared a non-swearword, unlike the happy days in New Zealand when I was the sole arbiter. They are not so happy about certain noisy bodily functions being defined as swearing - that will take some new discipline. Leo's idea is that the person who swears the least during the week should receive the proceeds of the swearing jar.
I'm just off to my wallet to empty it into the jar after today's efforts.
We were driving along the Valley of Death this morning when the traffic slowed down and then stopped. Gridlock again at the uncontrolled intersection near the school. A bus up one bumper, a big four wheel drive in front - no chance to change lanes. A new lane formed in the middle of the road with a slow but steady stream of cars flowing past me in the direction of the school, as the time ticked by towards lateness. My zen calm started to evaporate away.
All of a sudden a car crept up on the outside of our car- one wheel precariously on the tarmac a mere three inches away from us, the other on the wasteland next to the road as it started to nose in front of us. I'm afraid to say it was all too much for me, and as the traffic started to inch its way forward I stuck like glue to the car in front, trying to keep him from nosing his way in. I also said some very bad words in front of the boys, to the effect of, "you stupid man, can't you see that I have to get my kids to school too, and anyway I was here first!"
I noticed a movement inside the car, and when I focused I saw Robbie waving cheerfully at this car. This was too much. I enquired with words in the same vein to the effect of, "Robbie, what on earth do you think you are doing?!"
"Mum", he said, "that's my friend Ibrahim in the car next to us".
"Well, you tell your friend Ibrahim that I don't think much of his @#%&# Dad's driving"
"Mum, shall I use all those words when I tell him we don't like his Dad's driving?"
We were relaying this story to Ian this evening. Robbie suggested and we all agreed that the amount of language was unnecessary and that the swearing jar should be reinstituted. Ian has seized control as the sole arbiter of what is a swear word and what is borderline bad language but not worthy of a fine. The boys are happy as "bum" has been declared a non-swearword, unlike the happy days in New Zealand when I was the sole arbiter. They are not so happy about certain noisy bodily functions being defined as swearing - that will take some new discipline. Leo's idea is that the person who swears the least during the week should receive the proceeds of the swearing jar.
I'm just off to my wallet to empty it into the jar after today's efforts.
Friday, June 1, 2007
Inside the villa
Our front door is glass with twirly wrought iron on the inside. The floors are all tiled inside and the ceilings are high (~ 10' stud) which keeps it nice and cool. There's a bathroom with washbasin and loo immediately inside the front door so that visitors can freshen up when they arrive - a common thing in the middle east.
This is the tidiest corner of the lounge. The couch on the opposite wall currently has Ian having a wee nap on it which makes it look very untidy. The blank wall above the chairs is going to have a TV above it the purchase of which, I have been told, is "none of my business"! Apparently buying TVs is only able to be done by the males of the family. Presumably so that a suitably large model can be bought without the annoying sound of me trying to talk sense into them.
This is the other end of our living area, waiting for a dining room table. The curtains were installed the other day by Zainah Curtains. Over several weeks I chose material, practised my fledgling arabic on the poor Syrian guys (Samr and Hassan) that manage the shop, managed to convince them that I didn't want beading or fringes or multiple swags of material or pelmets, just plain. They managed to sneak in the extremely ornate tiebacks which I now really love - that's the little arabic touch in the room.
This is looking down on Robbie and his friend Russell playing Need for Speed Underground 2 in my messy space under the stairs. One day it will be an office with a proper desk.
This is the top landing, looking down towards the middle landing of the stairs. The banisters are all wrought iron with little gold leaves at the end of each twirly bit. The chair is one we bought here - it's square with a hole in the middle, no it's not a commode.
Here's Leo in Ian's study which occupies the top landing. He's playing Age of Empires III. As you can see we are having an extremely cruisy day at home today.
Ian has woken up now.
I'll spare you the pictures of the posters on the boy's walls and the loo and bidet that Robbie took when I sent him off with the camera to take some photos of the house to put on our site but I can't resist putting a photo of our whiteboard in the kitchen with some of the Arabic we are learning every week with a wonderful Lebanese woman teacher called Hala.
This is our house
This is a picture of the villa that we live in. it's semi-detached, so you can see a wee bit of our next door neighbours house too. My trusty rental car is parked under the shade sail - sooner or later we will get our own - a lot of people rent cars long-term here.From The Gulf News newspaper a couple of days ago
This is directly quoted from a piece in the Gulf news a couple of days ago:
FOUR members of an Indian family had a providential escape when their car fell into an unbarricaded 11-foot deep pit in the New Salata area on Monday morning.The pit was dug as part of construction work being carried out by a contracting company. There was neither a sign board warning motorists or passersby nor a barricade net around the pit when the car with its occupants - a man, his wife and their two children - fell into it.Hearing the trapped family members’ cries for help some construction workers nearby rushed to the spot and with great difficulty pulled them out. All four occupants of the car sustained bruises on their bodies.The couple were on their way to drop their children at the school when the accident occurred. Police have registered a case.There are a number of similar pits in Al Hilal, Mamoura and New Salata areas as part of the ongoing construction activity there. On May 19, Gulf Times had reported that several such uncovered deep pits in Al Asiri in the Mamoura area could cause serious accidents. The report pointed out that each pit was wide enough to contain a saloon car.Earlier this month, two Indian expatriates were killed in two separate accidents in the Industrial Area and Al Wakra when the vehicles they were driving fell into uncovered deep roadside ditches.
FOUR members of an Indian family had a providential escape when their car fell into an unbarricaded 11-foot deep pit in the New Salata area on Monday morning.The pit was dug as part of construction work being carried out by a contracting company. There was neither a sign board warning motorists or passersby nor a barricade net around the pit when the car with its occupants - a man, his wife and their two children - fell into it.Hearing the trapped family members’ cries for help some construction workers nearby rushed to the spot and with great difficulty pulled them out. All four occupants of the car sustained bruises on their bodies.The couple were on their way to drop their children at the school when the accident occurred. Police have registered a case.There are a number of similar pits in Al Hilal, Mamoura and New Salata areas as part of the ongoing construction activity there. On May 19, Gulf Times had reported that several such uncovered deep pits in Al Asiri in the Mamoura area could cause serious accidents. The report pointed out that each pit was wide enough to contain a saloon car.Earlier this month, two Indian expatriates were killed in two separate accidents in the Industrial Area and Al Wakra when the vehicles they were driving fell into uncovered deep roadside ditches.
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