Serbians and Serena

Unfortunately we haven’t been to any unconventional animal races since I last wrote, or acquired any new animals. The kittens continue to grow (absurdly quickly) and cause chaos. They climbed up our curtains TO THE CEILING.Curtains which we do not own and will have to give back.

What we have been doing for the past two weeks is working and eating. Mr A had a Very Very Important Visitor passing through, was busier than he has ever been in his entire life, and I suspect has some sort of permanent brain malfunction due to having a mobile glued to his head 24 hours a day. He appears to no longer listen to anything I say, and tells me the same stories three days in a row. The visit went well, and he has been told he probably won’t have to organise anything so complicated for the next ten years. We’ll see… Meanwhile, he got to travel in motorcade at over 100km/h, straight through roundabouts and traffic lights, which appears to have been the highlight of his entire professional life. I’m just pleased we don’t get woken up in the middle of the night by people in London who don’t understand time differences.

We did go to watch tennis last week to admire how long Venus William’s limbs are, and to realise that every other woman ranked in the top 10 (apart from Serena) is either Russian or Serbian. Serena got injured so pulled out during the tournament, but came out to the court in some extremely ugly tracksuit bottoms to apologise to us, her fans. Ivanovic also withdrew due to a ‘virus’ but she wasn’t going to make it through to the quarter finals anyway and Mr A thinks she’s a ‘spoilt brat’ which seems harsh for someone who’s probably done nothing but play tennis since she was 4.

Between the games they played extremely loud music to the assorted crowd, which hadn’t necessarily been checked for cultural sensitivity. In a country where drinking in public is illegal and you can be arrested for snogging on the Corniche, the Arctic Monkeys were happily singing about sex tips and some woman had had too much red wine. On the way out, we caught the closing minutes of the entertainment show near the burger bar, which appeared to involve a semi-naked woman (in a sheer gold catsuit) writhing around an oiled man, to loud rousing music. Most of the male spectators had conveniently chosen this moment to purchase their burgers.

Now Mr A has gone off to South Africa for ‘training’. This means he gets to hang out with our friend Chris, visit townships, drink beer outside, look at trees, witness proper rain and learn about computer systems. I am eating quiche for one and wondering what we do with our time? I went to bed at 9.30pm last night for the first time in years. What do we normally do in the evenings at home? (I already know the answer to that. We watch West Wing, drink wine and talk about work). The lack of a husband leads me to wonder what I’m going to do over the next few days. I’m thinking sunbathing, shopping and Jane Austen DVDs.

Meanwhile our year anniversary of arriving in Qatar has led me to ponder the pecularities of this country. I have been spending a lot of time working with a large local company and working from their HQ, where everyone has an individual office and even the Document Controller has a man who stands nearby ready to do his photocopying for him. Where it’s not physically possible to make yourself a cup of tea – you have to phone a waiter who brings you a lukewarm cup of brown liquid with powdered milk in it. And where you have to wait 10 minutes every time you want to move floors because there aren’t enough lifts.

I am further mystified by why a significant proportion of all drivers in Qatar have their headlights on full beam all the time. Or how places decide what music to play? Loads of restaurants have hideous bands playing way too loud – Croatian crooners looking as though they’ve already died, Filipino men with their Casio keyboards, Ukrainian women wearing inappropriate clothes. The common theme is that none of these people are native English speakers, but all sing English songs. Badly. Yet they were playing Hot Chip and the Ting Tings last time I went to the supermarket, and a sunglasses shop had the 4 Non Blondes blaring out this evening. The only time we hear Arabic music is if we listen to Arabic radio stations in the car, which we have to because the English language radio station is beyond dire. And why Virgin Megastore doesn’t sell any of the CDs you want, but does have lots of dreadful R+B and plenty of Hezbollah DVDs? And why does every hotel have security scanners at the entrances which beep when you walk through them but no-one cares?

I am hoping that by the time Mr A returns from his African trip I will have persuaded someone to finish repairing our ceiling, where a leaking pipe meant water was dripping onto our furniture for a couple of weeks without us noticing. This will involve some nice men not coming to the flat when we arranged and taking at least twice as long as they said they would to paint something white. When I say I have to leave to go to work, they will look utterly surprised, ‘you WORK, madam?’, and then carry on taking forever. It seems builders are the same the world over. Wish me luck.

(I leave you with some photos of the growing kittens, just because I can’t resist)