On Fitness and Beer

Well, I have been in Doha for almost two weeks now and have happily settled into a fairly productive and, hopefully, sustainable schedule.  My days look something like this: Wake up with the sun, sometime between 5:30 and 6am; catch KZog on FaceTime before he crashes for the night; head upstairs for a swim or stay put and practice my yoga; make breakfast; then, either I head to campus to work all day, or I stay in the apartment and work all day. Usually by 6pm, my eyes have completely glazed over and I zone out with some knitting or by watching an American movie with Arabic subtitles, typically something released around 2005 that I normally would never have sat through. (Yesterday, I numbed my brain with Catch and Release, a perfectly average Jennifer Garner vehicle. Benefit: it did have Timothy Olyphant, who I really like in Justified.) Sometimes I head over to a mall to walk around for a bit.

As at home, my fitness routine has proven essential to maintaining a sense of normalcy. Because of the oppressive heat - today we will entertain temperatures around 108 degrees with a heat index over 111 - all my physical activity must happen indoors. Luckily, my building has an acceptable swimming pool. It is not really a lap pool, but I make it work. Besides, I have yet to see anyone else use the pool, and I enjoy some lovely views while swimming on the 29th floor:

"Club 29" Pool at Dareen Tower

Glass Wall of Pool Area at Dareen Tower

View of Downtown Doha from "Club 29"

Another View of Downtown Doha from "Club 29"

Unlike at home, I do not unwind at the end of the day with a frosty adult beverage, which while not an essential to normalcy, I have to admit I miss more than a little.

Beer (and whiskey and wine) exists here, but its accessibility remains limited, especially without a car. In order to purchase alcohol from the one, count 'em, one, liquor distributor here (Qatar Distribution Company, or QDC), you must obtain a letter from your employer stating your salary. Once you take this letter to one of QDC's two branches in Doha, they determine how much alcohol you may purchase based on how much money you make. Can't have all the expats spending their tripled salaries on booze, can we? Snark aside, I did not pursue this because 1. Despite my much improved salary, I am still a graduate student. They'd probably let me buy one beer a month; and 2. I don't have a car, which would make trips to QDC kind of a pain. Restaurants in the hotels do serve alcohol, though at a price that makes beer in NYC look cheap. A friend here told me that three cocktails once set him back nearly $100. 

Thank goodness I enjoyed one last boozy treat before I embarked on this journey. . . 

 Nothing Finer

So Texan of me, I know. Moral of the story: between my swimming and yoga routine and utter lack of beer, I should achieve physical fitness nirvana after a year here (as long as I don't eat too much bread with my hummus . . .)!

Slainte!

XO,

JZog