Attention Mitch and James Baby: Activate your minds!

OK, the concept of lost in translation has been done before, and I'm no Bill Murray, but sometimes I feel like I'm on a movie set similar to the one Bill dealt with in Lost in Translation, and while frustrating at times, it makes for great comedy.

Since so many people in Qatar are expatriates and English is the lingua franca here, many take it upon themselves to Anglicize their names. Unfortunately, this turns Pythonesque at times. During the last week, Michelle and I were stopped at the gate to Education City housing. Normal enough. Michelle's asked to show ID. Fine. Then I lean over and look at the name tag of the security guard, and I see "James Baby." I have no idea what this man's name could have originally been, or for that matter how many degrees of separation from it James Baby could possibly be, but he seems quite comfortable in his uniform (epaulets even!) and his bright shiny nametag. Who am I (other than a native English speaker) to argue.

Last night, we stopped by the aptly named Take Away arabic fast food restaurant for a late dinner, and Michelle regaled me with horror stories about the surly service rendered by the girl at the counter. I was quite sure Michelle said "girl." As I was about to run in and order, I asked Michelle what the gal's name was. The reply: "Mitch." So... I walk in and there's Mitch, all 5 feet of her, a pretty normal-looking young Asian woman. I'm pretty sure she had never been a he; no strong jaw or cheekbones, etc. But there she is with another bright metal tag that says "Mitch." All the guys working there, unfortunately, don't seem to appreciate the joke - they just call her "Mitch" like it's quite normal. I guess it is.

Sometimes, the English skills seem to be put on display for my benefit. Our maintenance crew consists of a couple Egyptians who have no English at all (when asking if the smoke alarm worked, I was treated to a minute long pantomine of someone sleeping, smoke rising from the stove, and waking up from the loud noise, as if I had just asked what that thing was for). Most of the time I walk away (or they go spinning back out of the house) without having the slightest idea of what the hell we were just talking about.

Sometimes I'm given a special treat and "specialists" are called in, who come in Tasmanian-devil-like, waving hands, and arguing with each other, until they all decide to continue the argument outside, without any apparent progress on the given issue. When the A/C in a guest bedroom was not working, though, a "higher up" who knew just enough English to be dangerous started haranguing the Sri Lankan workers and calling a subcontractor on his cel to complain. He made it a point to tell the workers that he was an engineer (dubious at best) and they didn't know what they were doing (less dubious). Finally, he yells into the phone "send me Rafeer, these guys are Ramadan and their brains are not activated!"

You can imagine my shock. Here I had been this past week operating on the assumption that Ramadan was the month of fasting, not a person or people. Silly Mike. Nor was I aware through any of my cultural research that, like air conditioners apparently, these Ramadan need to have their brains activated. No wonder nothing's been getting done lately. I thought it was because people were fasting from sunup to sundown. Apparently I have a lot to learn.

Greetings from "sunny" Qatar

If you go out to wunderground.com or weather.com, you might be fooled into thinking that it's actually sunny here. Well, it actually is sunny, just not on the ground. Michelle has mentioned before that you'll often see something in the forecast that you don't in Oregon (or anywhere in the states, as far as I know, at least since the 1930's) and that would be "widespread dust." So my tender eyes have been spared the glaring September sun for my first two days here. Temperatures are still about 105 or so in the day. Coupled with jetlag, that means Mike moves very slowly.

Everyone else here has other reasons for moving slowly - namely Ramadan. Many businesses' "Ramadan Timings" (they seem to love gerunds here) call for about a few hours sometime during the morning or early afternoon (10am -noon is a favorite), than open back up at around 8pm and stay open til midnight. Nor is anyone supposed to be seen even sipping water during the day. So I'm guessing productivity is a bit lower than usual - and of course Ramadan is falling in late summer this year too. Anyway, the South Asian construction workers don't seem to care - you can see them lunching out of their homepacked stainless containers anytime of day. I couldn't imagine trying to do physical labor in this heat and NOT eating and drinking.

As for Doha, you can literally see a city and country being built before your eyes. Actually city planning, though, follows a pattern of selecting a couple (or couple hundred) empty acres (it's all empty anyway) somewhere and building a development. Things like utilities and roads can be dealt with later. It's kind of like connecting the dots. They're not so much into the street sign either, and seem to like naming things after landmarks. So, the two roundabouts closest to our flat are the Slope Roundabout (it isn't quite flat) and the Burger King Roundabout (for obvious reasons). Some are named after the more or less spotty public art found in the middle (the Oryx Roundabout, etc.) and others after local businesses (Decoration Roundabout, named after a home decor store - God forbid it goes out of business, you may as well throw out your maps). Very exotic and alluring, no?

It's also an interesting mix of Third and First World. In a mall you can buy (gaudy) TV trays worth hundreds, or you can run into a little take-out restaurant where you can pick up two shawarma sandwiches (sliced roasted chicken with a garlic mayo lettuce, tomatoes, pickled veggies, and optional hot sauce, in a pita - I'm seeing lots of these in my future here;) and two drinks (e.g. fresh mango juice:) for four bucks.

So far, it all seems quite surreal. Moroccco and Egypt had hundreds to thousands of years of settled history, architecture and culture and a certain continuity. But here, just a few generations ago, they were bedouin or pearl divers, and now some 250,000 of their descendents are sitting on 15% of the world's natural gas (by some estimates). The West Bay, where most of the modern skyscrapers are, looks absolutely like something out of a sci-fi movie when seen from the Corniche/promenade on the other side of the bay, especially on a night with widespread dust and a very blurry moon.

I'm sure in a year this will all be quite mundane. I think.