PS: Carolyn here. James forgot to mention that during our visit to the wonderful Museum, Doha experienced it's first rainfall of the season. It was lovely! Only about three rainfalls a season here. And we acquired a spiffy umbrella from the Musem, complete with its logo and Arabic designs. Big enough for the golf course. A practical souvenir. CPM

Museum of Islamic Arts

The last week has been an eventful one. The Fall semester finished at the College, and I was able to get my exams marked and marks submitted by the end of the week. With small classes this doesn't take long! Carolyn has been coming to the college and we managed to get on to the tennis courts a couple of times. She is a good instructor and I'm hoping that with her help I can get to be a good enough player to play some games with others as well. On Sunday we actually did play with another couple, Don and Linda, at the Ramada courts.
On Saturday we went to the beautiful newly opened Museum of Islamic Arts with my friend Chas. What a remarkable ediface, and inside it is as stunning as out. The displays are fantastic with all sorts of precious relics of the past, gold, silver, pottery, porcelains, carpets, and much much more. In fact, we only visited two of the three levels. There is just too much to see on one visit. We plan to go back again next week as the College is closed for 'Eid' break. Then the next week I have to go back in for four days, before we break again for the Christmas-New Years holiday. Carolyn and I are planning a trip to Spain over Christmas, and then to Italy for the New Years week. Should be fun. I'll post some pics when we get back.

photos

I had trouble sending photos with my last blog. I'll try again. One pic is of Serena and Venus Williams getting ready to play a match against each other. (Venus won and went on to win the championship), the next is of two Dhows in the harbour. The one closest is the one we went on. Lastly is a picture of my 'pearl' in front of the large pearl on the Corniche. Doha used to be a pearl diving centre, but pollution and climate changes have changed all that.

Well it's been awhile since I last posted a message. Hope I haven't lost all of my readers. Lots has happened in the last month, the most important is the arrival in Doha of my darling wife, Carolyn. She arrived on Nov. 3 and before she could get over her jet lag, I had her out shopping for things for the apartment. Then on her first weekend here, we attended the Sony Ericsson women's tennis championship where we watched Venus Williams three times on route to her victory. The tennis facility here is wonderful; something like the Rogers centre in Toronto, but closer and more intimate. On the evening of the semi-final, the stands weren't all that full and we were able to move down into the courtside seats. Those seats would have cost over a hundred dollars in Canada and we paid the lofty price of 20 Qatari Rials...just over $6.00 CAD. The next weekend Carolyn and I walked along the seafront, Al Corniche, took a ride in a Dhow, a ancient form of boat, and then spent several hours in the Souks. We were tired getting home that eveneing, but it was worth it. School is going well, and we will finish teaching for this semester next Thursday, with exams during the next week. On December 18, Carolyn and I will fly to Spain to spend the Christmas week, and then go Tuscany in Italy for the New Year's week. We're pretty excited about the trip.

holidays

This past week has been the Eid holidays. At the end of Ramadan there are three days of Eid, which are holidays for most people in Qatar. The College shuts down for the whole week since it knows that students will not attend for the other two days anyway. My friend Chas and I had talked about going to Egypt for the week, but we just talked for too long and by the time we decided to go, the flights were all booked that would have got us there in time for a scheduled tour, so we stayed in Doha. I'm disappointed as it may be the only time I have to go there. I had a lot of computer problems this past week, as I picked up a very bad type of virus that took over my computer. It masqueraded as a virus checker; it just popped up when I wasn't at my computer, and started to do a fake virus check. Then when I tried to stop the process, I couldn't even shut down the machine. I had to wipe the hard drive completely. Fortunately there is a guy here who has start up software, so I was able to get it going again. I had backed up all my files onto an external hard drive so I didn't lose any pictures or other documents, but it was extremely frustrating. If you see something like Security Antivirus 2008, don't click on it, Just shut down immediately. To top it off, Q-Tel, the service provider here has been messed up most of the week as well. I guess everyone was on holidays. It's been a fairly relaxing week however, and on Thursday, a number of us hired a small bus to take us to Sealine Resort, which is about an hour south of Doha, on the Gulf. It's a pretty nice place and has a beautiful beach, pools, camel rides, Seadoos, ATVs etc. The Seadoos were just too expensive, but I did go for a short camel ride. Tomorrow it's back to work, and the next holiday won't be until the beginning of December. I am waiting very impatiently for Carolyn to arrive on Nov 3. She has her itinerary, and all the documents have been sent off, so now she just has to shut down the house in Goderich. I wish all back in Canada a great Thanksgiving weekend.

pics of Doha

Here are some pics that show 1) abit of the golf course, 2) the Ramadan tent at the INtercontinental hotel, 3) the pool at the Intercontinental 4) friends at the Old Souk

Ramadan in Doha

Well, I've finally made it back on my blog after returning to Qatar. I flew in on Aug 18. Classes started about a week later, and are now in full swing. I have two classes, both introductory Chemistry, one designed for students in the Academic program, and one for students taking health sciences. The courses are fairly similar however, and the prep for one overlaps the prep for the other. My work load is not heavy, and the college campus is great, so that aspect of life here couln't be much better. However, it has been terribly hot (+40C most days) and humid since I returned, and it is not pleasant to be outside for long. I did go golfing a couple of weeks ago, but it was too hot to enjoy.
Almost the whole month of September is the Moslem holy month of Ramadan. During Ramadan, Moslems are supposed to refrain from taking anything by mouth including food, water, and cigarettes from sun-up until sunset, and attend prayers several times a day. As a consequence the college cafeterias are closed. Non-Moslems have special lounge areas set aside, and we are allowed to have lunch in there, but are not supposed to have anything in our offices. The nationals fast all day, and then in the evening there are special feasts. Many of the large hotels put up special tents and put on feasts. Some friends and I attended one of these. The food was incredible, and there was a magic show, a live band, a whirling dirvish, and some other entertainments. It was a bit expensive, but worth the experience. I will try to send some pictures in a future post.

end of classes

Well, Thursday marked the end of classes at cna-q and after I mark final exams on Sunday I'll have most of my work finished for the intersession. The time is going quickly now, but I am still anxious to get home of course, since my marriage to Carolyn comes soon after that (July 5). I'll have some course work to do to get ready for classes next August, but nothing too pressing. I expect I'll have time to get to the gym and pool at the college a few times in the next couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to seeing some of you when I get back to Canada. Of course I'll take a trip up to Parry Sound to see my folks, but I doubt that I'll put my boat in the water as there just isn't time to get out in it. Carolyn and I leave for a two week trip to the west coast on July 23, and after that I'll have to be thinking about packing for Qatar again as I must be back here on Aug. 18. I've included a picture of a neat Thai restaurant that is within walking distance of my apartment, and a couple of pictures of my office (nice office, pretty bare and functional)

Pics from Doha

It's the weekend again. Yesterday, Friday, which is the first day of the weekend here, I attended a concert of the Doha Symphony/Doha Singers. The music was wonderful, and I think I would like to join the Doha Singers next fall when I return. They had an interesting program of everthing from Palestrina to Steven Foster. It was very enjoyable. This morning, Chas and I caught a cab over to the Sheraton Doha where we had a great breakfast and then wandered around the hotel taking pictures. Even made it up to the penthouse restaurant and took pics up there. It is a little hard to see from the photos, but the place is build like a hollow pyramid, and the restaurants are in the centre, looking up about fifteen floors to the top. All very posh, a bit too expensive to come very often, but a great place to visit. Then we walked to the City Centre taking photos along the way. It was getting terribly hot by this time (mid forties, C)so we were glad to get to the mall. We wandered around there for a couple of hours, picked up the tailor made shirts we had ordered a couple of weeks ago, and finally caught a cab back to the apartment. All-in-all it has been a great day.

walk by the ocean

It's been awhile since my last posting. School is going very well. The campus is so nice, and my class is small. I have my own office now, although it is isolated from the other chemistry teachers. Still nice to have my own space. Living in the city is not really my cup of tea. It seems there is very little opportunity to get away from the concrete sidwalks, and the noise and smells of traffic. This morning, though, I took a long walk along the 'Corniche' which is a beautiful seafront walk. It's about 5 km long, and by the time I finished I was not feeling so well, with the sun and heat. A big glass of juice and some food helped to fix that up. I caught a cab to get back to the apartment. The views of the new towers being built in the city centre area are quite remarkeable. I've included a picture of the beautiful garden area just outside of my classroom, and a couple pics from my walk this morning. It is incredible the amount of construction there is in Doha, and these three new towers are just a sample. I counted over sixteen construction cranes in the small city centre area.

settling in

Well it's just over two weeks since I've been in Doha. I am settling into my apartment and have had one week of classes. I have only one class of chemistry which amounts to four 2-hour lectures per week and two 2-hour labs. Not a bad workload!!! And to top it off, the labs are prepared, run, and marked by a lab tech. I'm just there for support. The campus is very nice as I indicated, but the city dirty. That's because there is so much dust in the air almost all the time. First it is a desert city, and secondly there is so much construction going on in the city, and there is a lot of dust from that source. It really is amazing to see the amount of construction. It seems that about 50% of the city is being built. There are about 16 very tall buildings or skyscrapers being build in the downtown section alone. And the buildings aren't just plain tall boxes, but have unique designs and features. Amazing. I haven't had a chance to get good pictures of them yet but will post some when I get them. I have made friends with a number of guys in the apartment building and we often go walking to the stores, or for coffee, or just sightseeing. That is the nice thing about my apartment. It is in the centre of the city, whereas some of the instructors are staying in walled compounds out near the edges and can't just walk to a store or shop. All in all, I'm having a great experience so far. The pics are of my apartment building, and my living room.

Haven't seen a camel yet

Had a relatively uneventful flight last Tuesday/Wednesday. It was hard to say goodbye to Carolyn in London but I was glad she was there with me at the airport to help me with all my bags. We had a nice dinner at a place not too far from the airport, and then visited with Carolyn's aunt and uncle for a few minutes. After a short hop to Toront, and a short wait, I boarded for London UK around 10:00. The skies were clear but dark for most of the way down the St. Lawrence, but then got cloudy. I got a bit of sleep, but woke up when it got day light (about 3:00 AM, EDT) I was able to see a bit Ireland as we flew over, and a large bit of the coast of Wales. The English countryside looked marvelous from the air, so green. The most striking feature to me was that the fields were not laid out in nice straight lines and rectangles, but the fence lines ran every which way. That a big difference from southern Ontario for sure.
After a seven hour flight from Canada, the layover in Heathrow was for about 3 hours, and I just wandered the airport looking at the shops. I was tempted to buy some stuff, but would just have had to stow it in my carry on, so that wasn't really practical. Another almost seven hour flight took me to Doha, Qatar. (by the way, it's pronounced CAT-er by the nationals here) This time it was cloudy most of the way, but just as we were going over the Alps, the clouds opened up and I was able to get a picture through the window. I got in here just after Midnight local time on Thursday morning. I was met at the airport by a greeting service and fast-tracked through customs and immigration, so got into my hotel about 1:00. I was put up at the Marriot Hotel for two nights. Wow, what a nice place. I took some pictures of the pool area the next day.
In the morning I was taken to the College for some paper work, but they are just starting a weeks holidays, so some of the people that I need to see have gone until next week.
On Friday I got moved into my quarters which are not too far from downtown Doha and there are lots of interesting shops around. I had a chance to walk about with a couple of other guys who have been here for awhile, and got orientated a little. It's a confusing place to get around in. And the traffic is insane. There are few traffic lights, but many round-abouts. They might be good for low traffic times, but at rush hour it's just a dog-eat-dog mentality that prevails.
Anyway, I'm now here, getting settled in and have about a week to go before classes start.

The pics were take on the campus, and near the pool at the Marriot Hotel

Plans

Well things are progressing nicely and my flight is booked for April 15. I have a seven hour flight to London UK, three hour layover, and then another 7 hour flight to Doha Qatar. If one looks on a globe it is almost a straight line from Toronto through London and on to Qatar. Should be interesting. It is supposed to be very hot there in May and June, so I hope that I'll be able to cope after the Arctic!
Some other personal news: Carolyn and I are going to be married on July 5 in Goderich ON. We have decided that there is no point in waiting. After the wedding we will take a trip west to see our kids. Carolyn has two sons in Calgary, and I have my son Peter there, as well as Kristi (and husband Dave, and kids Kaelyn and Wesley) in Chilliwack BC, and my son Kevin in Prince George BC. It will be a quick trip, but we think it is really important for the two groups of kids to meet us. I am attaching a pic of Carolyn. She's a beautiful wonderful lady.

getting ready

Hi all. Well, finally the glitches have been worked out and I'm on my way to Qatar, about mid April. I was supposed to go in January, but there were some problems about my teaching credentials. You see, the College of the North Atlantic requres a B.Ed. for their instructional staff, but at the time I took my teacher training, they weren't granting B.Eds. guess that dates me!! After lots of phone calls and e-mails we finally got it sorted out, although at one point they said that they were withdrawing the offer of the job.
I haven't minded too much however, as I was able to spend most of my time with Carolyn, a woman that I had been corresponding with on line before I got back from the North. To make a long story short, she is a wonderful woman, good looking, talented, she can cook, and she laughs at my jokes. What more could I ask for? Our relationship has grown quite serious, and actually we are making plans to be together for the summer, and Carolyn will probably join me in Qatar next December.
I plan to post messages and pictures on this site about once a week so that I can keep in touch with my friends. I would welcome any commments or e-mails that you send me once I'm overseas. It could be a bit lonely. Ciao!