Uneventful Events

Saturday Morning Scene - Proof of Uneventful-ness

I wish I had some new adventure to report, but I have to admit that I had quite an uneventful weekend. Should I really have something exciting to share because I am 8000 miles from home? While I feel obligated to regale everyone with tales of my daring-do, truthfully, I spent all day Friday with this:

Pile of Knitting

 Pile of Knitting, View 2

Yup, Friday involved much coffee, tea and television. Eventually, that pile of yarn should take the shape of a giant shawl.

Sadly, no Souq for me last weekend. Instead, Friday evening I treated myself to dinner and shopped for this week's groceries. I discovered some yummy salads and dips in the deli. Saturday, after my swim, I clawed my way through some sections for the new chapter, knit, and then wrote some more. This week looks heavy on navigating bureaucracy, more writing and probably more knitting. This week will also mark four weeks since I first arrived in Qatar. Though the newness has worn off somewhat, I have settled in quite nicely, and anticipate more adventures soon.

Within the next four to six weeks, the weather should cool down enough to make outside activities bearable. By November, Katara, the cultural center in Doha, will begin its "winter" programming, and enjoying the outdoor cafes at the Souq will prove far more pleasant. I had truly believed that a decade in southeast Texas would have adequately prepared me for the heat in Qatar. How wrong I was. Already, though, the heat index has dropped from an average of over 120 degrees to about 105 degrees, going from "I just walked into one of Andrew Carnegie's steel furnaces" to "eh, it's a little warm out". How quickly one's perspective can change!

XO,
JZog

The JZog Music Project

I need your help. I need new music for my iPod to help drive this dissertation and to listen to while I work in my shared office on campus. Please post your favorite motivating tunes in the comments!

XO,
JZog

I'm Official - ish!

Though still only holding the lowly title of Graduate Assistant, it somehow feels grand:

TAMU-Q Liberal Arts Program

Sometime soon the page will also include my photo. But, for now, I think this one should do:

JZog in True Form

Mid-sentence or mid-laugh? Who knows?!? Doesn't everyone who knows me have a picture like this? I also realized that I am wearing the same thing in this photo as in my "About Me" image, even though this was taken in Corpus Christi and the other, in Aruba. I do love my beaches, and my beachwear, apparently . . . 

Also, with a visit to the US Embassy yesterday, I took one more step towards obtaining my residency permit, or, colloquially, my RP, which will give me (temporary) resident status in Qatar and allow me to travel in and out of the country freely. Way before I left the States, in May, in fact, I had to request an FBI clearance in order to enter Qatar. Upon arrival I made an appointment with the US Embassy to have this clearance notarized in order for the Qatari government to continue processing my RP. I would post a photo of the embassy, but one cannot take cell phones, cameras, usb drives, music players, or really anything beyond your paperwork and money, into the embassy. After parking, I first entered a trailer outside of the embassy compound, took a number from a broken ticket machine and then sat and waited for said number to appear on a screen at the end of the room. Once the correct number flashed, in my case after about twenty minutes, I then exited the trailer and approached the window as directed by a security guard. With confirmation of my appointment I entered a "cage" in which another security guard used a metal detecting wand to assure that I did not have any disallowed materials. She then pointed me towards another trailer - still outside the embassy itself, though inside the walls of the compound - where I surrendered my photo identification in exchange for a visitor's badge, passed through a metal detector and out the door where I walked about a quarter of a mile to the embassy. Songbirds, the first I have heard in Qatar, and some sort of saccharine-smelling blooms lined the pathway. Had the heat index dipped below 120 degrees that day, the scene would have perhaps proven appealing. At the entrance to the embassy I again surrendered my paltry belongings so that I could pass through yet another metal detector and into another waiting room where I secured another number that I waited to post on another screen so that I could tell the person at one window what service I needed (though I had noted that in my appointment registration), pay a different person at a different window, have my basic information filled out on paperwork at the first window and have my documents notarized at yet another, different window, with another, different person. This entire event took only a tad over an hour, but I felt exhausted following it, nonetheless.

This move has required much paperwork and many run-arounds such as this, though TAMU-Q has a system in place to help us navigate the bureaucracy much more smoothly than if we had to complete the process on our own. Only the medical exam and fingerprinting remain, and I should complete these two pieces within the next couple of weeks. Now, if only I could move so quickly through the bureaucracy of the Office of Graduate Studies . . . Ha! 

I have nothing new and exciting scheduled for my weekend. This past week I made significant progress on my next chapter, which I hope to have prepared to submit by the end of the next week. I think that means that tonight and tomorrow I have bought myself some time to relax, drink some tea, curl up on the couch and watch vapid movies while knitting. If only I had a puppy to lie on my feet . . .

Happy weekend, everyone!

XO,
JZog

Subliminal Bacon

Yesterday I made the 15 minute trek from my apartment to the grocery store. Not too far under normal circumstances, even in 100 degree weather. But the heat must have affected me something awful because when I arrived at the mall, I somehow translated a travel advertisement that directed me to "Get a Piece of the Action" into "Get a Slice of Bacon". I had encountered some sort of evil Qatari mirage offering me a porky treat (maybe with some eggs and toast, too) only to have myself disabused of my notion that I could find a slice of crispy goodness once I attempted to take a nibble from the false oasis. At second glance, the giant ad had nothing on it for me to confuse with bacon - a sailing boat tears through glassy blue water with a Western-looking couple smiling blandly at one another as the wind whips through their hair. No one's hair looks like that when on a boat. Or when they eat bacon. Especially since I usually eat bacon at breakfast, my hair looks like a lion's mane. Rawr. Also, no one only eats one slice of bacon. I should have known then that my brain had played a terrible trick on my taste buds.

I had no idea I would miss bacon so much.

In other completely bizarre news, I took a Zumba class today on campus. While under usual circumstances I would not take a "dance-fitness" class (I find it difficult to only think of dance as a means to fitness goals!), the likelihood of taking dance classes in the traditions to which I have grown accustomed remain slim to none.

I knew of Zumba from my years of teaching at YMCAs, and I think I even took a class once in College Station. Apparently, people really, and I mean REALLY, enjoy these classes.  Proponents of Zumba claim the classes combine elements of several Latin dances (broadly construed, I assure you) into a "fitness-party". They promote all manner of varieties of  Zumba, including Aqua, Zumbini ("for ages 0-3 and their caregivers") and Zumba Gold (for "older adults"). Our class of nine plus instructor shimmied and sweat our way through the hour-long class. Overall, I had fun shaking my groove thang, but, my inner dancer/dance teacher kept screaming at me over the organization and approach to the class.

Check it out: Double-tasseled cargo pants "that bring a touch of color contrast to the table (and the dance floor, of course)": 

http://www.zumba.com/en-US/store/US/product/ultimate-orbit-cargo-pants?color=Black

Zumba certainly delivers on high energy, but it seems to lack any instruction. Not once does the "instructor" break down anything. The entire class relies on following along. From what I can tell on the website, this is the method of Zumba and not the predilections of a particular instructor. I understand the argument that stopping to teach the steps would slow down the pace; however, there are ways to make sure that the class has a minimum level of competence before adding on another movement pattern. Maybe people taking the class do not actually care about learning how to move and, in fact, like to look around confusedly taking a couple of steps here and a couple of steps there while nearly running into the one person that has taken this class every week for the last six years and is now in teacher-training, so she has every single moment of the hour memorized?

I will return to class next week.  

XO,
JZog

Camels and Cameras

Friday evening I ventured out to the Souq again with my friend and colleague. We hope to keep this a regular, "Hurrah, we made it through this week, now let's do something fun" event. This time we experienced an entirely different section of the Souq, beginning with . . . Camels! The camels stay in an large outdoor pen, where the proprietors have tethered them in pairs. (Do they jump fences? I have not a clue. I do know that they may run at speeds up to 40 mph.) Somewhere around two dozen munched on their dinner of hay as we approached. None of them spat at us while we took photos. In fact they kind of hammed it up . . .  

We also discovered the "handicraft" section of the Souq, where many of the proprietors perform their craft in view of passersby, including glassworks, metalworking, leather goods and musical instruments. I purchased a lovely little candle holder made of metal and alabaster that mimics a traditional lantern:

Mini-Lantern

Just as we had decided to sit down and cool off with a lemon-mint (a tasty drink with orange blossom water, lemon, mint and sugar popular in Qatar), I heard drumbeats in the distance. Within a few moments about fifteen women in abbayah and hijab singing in Arabic and drumming paraded through the main vein of the Souq. Several men, most not in traditional dress, followed. Some of the women carried bolts of ornate fabric and other household goods. Many shoppers gathered to watch as they walked by and others joined, falling in at the end of the line. This wedding parade reminded me of the second lines in New Orleans, though without booze and crazy people throwing things at you. But, the expression and announcement of an important event remains the same. Does anyone else smell a comparative study?

JZog, you might wonder about now, why do I not see photos of camels or the wedding parade? Well, because I took those pictures with this:

 Olympus OM-10

Say hello to my Olympus OM-10, a 35mm film camera likely manufactured in the 1980s. I grew up using film cameras, though mostly point and shoots with auto focus instead of one with manual settings, and my Dad gave me one earlier this year to see if I might like to mess with them again. Truth is, even an entry-level camera like this takes better quality images than many digital cameras. Check out this picture of PeppeRoni taken with the Olympus:

PeppeRoni the Wonderpup

Colors tend to look richer and details, such as wet fur, turn out clearer with film. I still have much to learn about all the manual features, but I have done pretty well with focusing and the f-stop.

Clearly the primary drawback is that I do not instantaneously have photos to include with my blog posts. Many times when I go out I take both cameras, but that becomes quite a pain. The Olympus weighs at least three times a compact digital camera, and proves especially burdensome when I attach the longer multi-focal lens. This trip I only lugged the film camera. Unfortunately I have not found anywhere here that processes film, so I have no idea when I will manage to have these rolls of film developed. Maybe by next August I'll have a post dedicated to the 10 rolls of film I took in Doha. Who's up for that marathon? On the flip side, my poor, old, yet loyal digital camera has almost had it. After nearly ten years, way past its planned obsolescence I'm sure, my Nikon P-4 Coolpix has reached its last legs. Some days the photos turn out as only a blue haze, and it isn't the sand and humidity creating that illusion. I do have a plan for a new digital camera purchase, though, so soon I will have more (and hopefully better quality!) photos for the blog. In any event, I had an excuse to post a picture of my sweet puppy princess that I miss like crazy.

Also Go 'Cats and Whoop! (Though I strongly disapprove of Johnny Football's showboating shenanigans. Sheesh.)

XO,
JZog