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.