The horror of the wrinkle cream incident has been counteracted by a work contact saying he thought I was 21. Whether he did really think this or actually it was a strange flirting compliment / insult is not clear and I haven't decided what this means his opinion of my professional demeanor is - does he think I have just left school? Does he not realise it took eight years to be qualified to choose marble colours? But he said it, and I might just go and tell Little Miss Beauty Serum. I'm definitely going to drop mention of 'my husband' into more conversations at work.
Last week I went to a worker 'breakfast' that was actually at 5pm because they work night shifts, which involved 120 male construction workers, 3 male project engineers, 5 male contractors, 1 male catering supervisor plus me in a room eating sandwiches. What with a Security guy saying he 'loved giving his business cards to beautiful ladies' and another guy taking at least twice as long as necessary to consider the plan of his office with me, being the only woman on the project is starting to chafe a little at times, but is improved when senior Qatari managers (who I have never met) give me boxes of cakes and leather diaries.
However, I must remember that my life is always better than that of others here. The 'tea boy' (a Nepali man in his late twenties who makes coffee and hot chocolate as well as tea) was asking today whether I know of any spare jobs at weekends because he doesn't earn enough money. He gets around 800 riyals a month (approx $220 or £150) and spends his weekends sleeping and watching TV because he can't afford to do anything else. I don't have a job to give him, though paying him to entertain the cats has crossed my mind.
Speaking of which, the cats pushed our printer/scanner off the table and it no longer works so added to the cost of two jumpers (eaten), one table (may have been small children) and lost sleep (priceless), things are adding up.
The weather here is (and sorry to be annoying) amazing at the moment as long as you ignore the minor sandstorm blips. It's mid-20s during the days and over the weekend was almost perfect despite dire warnings from the Qatar Meteorological Department. They do seem to be the Qatari equivalent of Michael Fish. We went to Wakra which is a costal village (town really) just south of Doha. We'd heard about people going there and had visions of a sandy beach packed out with workers on their day off. At first all we could find was an enormous pile of sand. Like seriously ENORMOUS, about 20 metres high, with a bulldozer zooming along the top. Then we found some police investigating a crash on a dirt track between two cars. Then we drove off-road past the industrial works and decaying buildings, and found a long deserted beach mostly rocky with the sandy part used as a road by Land Cruisers zooming past. We drove along for a while before the way was stopped by a mysteriously placed wall covered in graffiti (something of a rarity in inner Doha) advertising email addresses and websites. Nearby was a blacked-out car with a pair of shoes outside which perhaps contained some people getting up to no good, probably perturbed by me pulling out my camera.
We stopped a bit away from the pimp-mobile to admire the clear blue sky, wade out in the shallows in totally inappropriate footwear and appreciate the flock of large birds hanging out just off the coast. They looked like flamingoes (pink-ish with bright pink wings when they opened) but my mother-in-law assures us that flamingoes are fresh-water birds so perhaps not; more likely pelicans, Mr A assures me (what does he know?). Either way they were beautiful and a rare fauna spotting in Qatar watched while eating our picnic, sitting in the boot of our car.
On a lighter note, what the hell is happening in Britain? When I move away Girls Aloud are a faintly amusing bunch of racist WAGS and now I hear Cheryl Cole is climbing Kilimanjaro for Comic Relief (thanks to daily Facebook updates from G). And Great Britain won the women's bobsleigh world championships? Cripes.
Short and sweet,
See you soon,
Ms A xx
P.S. There is a little box on the right of the screen of which, in theory, you can type your email address in to and get an automatic email when I post a new blog entry should you be interested. Let's see how this goes.
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