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.