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.