I'm back in Doha after two weeks visiting my family in Oxfordshire.

Realizatons made on this trip:

• babies are cute
  
• childbirth is not cute, but anyone who has gone through it has my undying respect and awe [Edit: gone through it on the birthing side, that is. Obviously we've all been through childbirth on the being-birthed side.]
  
• I desperately desire to live in a city that is not just walkable but walking-centric, like English towns with a medieval city center tend to be
  
• Britain is full of these brown, fibrous upright cylinders with little green wavy bits at the top; Doha should look into acquiring some:
  

The original plan had been to go hike the Ridgeway Trail for a week, but for various health reasons I had to scrap that plan. In the end I managed a 1.5-day, 29-mile hike from my sister's house in Abingdon down the Thames Path for a day, and then east on the Ridgeway following a prehistoric earthwork called Grim's Ditch (pictured above). It covered some really beautiful scenery, and hiking is always good for my overall serenity. I wish I could do more of it.

Pictures of the trip are here.

And in case anyone is jealous of my jet-setting ways, I also spent three days in bed with a migraine and a new medical condition that you don't want to hear about. I like to travel, but my body sure does not. Dear roboticist friends: please to make me a cyborg body to transfer my brain into, for I am royally sick of this one, kthxbye.

If you ever go to Dubai, enjoy lovely Jumeirah Beach. But don't have sex there.

If you must have sex there, don't have sex with someone you're not married to.

If you must have sex with someone you're not married to there, then when the police officer kindly lets you off with a warning, for God's sake STOP HAVING SEX.

Or if you can't do that, then at least when the police officer comes back to arrest you, don't throw a shoe at him and call him a "f****** Muslim ****" (Times of India).

This has been a public service announcement from qatar.livejournal.com. Thank you for your attention.

Acceptable activities on Jumeirah Beach include sunbathing, wading, building sandcastles, and NOT HAVING SEX.

My nephew was born yesterday! I got to England at just the right time; they induced labor just before I got to the hospital.

Witnessing childbirth is a little unnerving but mostly just hugely fascinating. I still can't believe that I just saw a tiny little person entering the world for the very first time! Like whoa.

Real-life newborns don't look like newborns on TV. They're extremely purple, and their heads are way, way more conical than I ever imagined. Also, babies aren't like puppies or kittens; they can open their eyes right away! That was pretty cool.

Picture album here.


Aunt Marjorie, Cousin Dr. Evil Rayna, Grandma Kathleen and Mum Mary with Sproglet

Well, the book of verses was actually an Agatha Christie and a Kurt Vonnegut, the bough was the Intercontinental Hotel and the jug of wine was a nice bottle of brut, but we got the loaf of bread right....

This last weekend was Justin's and my ninth wedding anniversary, which we celebrated by doing something uncharacteristic: we (by which I mean Justin, who indeed surprised me with the entire venture) splurged on a fancy hotel for the weekend so we could get away and spoil ourselves for a bit.

Still Life with Television (OK, not the best framing)	Comfy Marj is Comfy

In the midst of our hectic and entirely disjoint summer travel itineraries, it was pretty amazing just to spend 48 hours together. All things considered, I married a pretty nifty guy.

In other news, my new MacBook Pro arrived, and the requisite amounts of ZOMG NEW LAPTOP SQUEE ensued. It is now named Agamemnon, suggested by my coworker Hope since I recently disclosed that I think it's the awesomest name ever and am saddened it really, really wouldn't work for a baby name.

Tomorrow: off to England, where my sister is about to bring forth a child (who I now hope is not going to be named Agamemnon).

As you know, my beloved laptop daal has met an untimely end.

It was named not only after the tasty lentil dish, but after my favorite Dilbert cartoon:



daal's replacement, a shiny new MacBook Pro, has just arrived in Doha.

What shall I name it??

While talking to a friend after the annual Qatar recruitment lunch in Pittsburgh a couple weeks ago, I found myself waxing lyrical about the joys of going to CVS when I'm back in Pittsburgh. (West Coast readers: CVS ≈ Long's Drugs.) My friend laughed and said that they should have said THAT in the recruitment talk: Qatar is wonderful, but you will be reduced to wandering around drug stores in awe and wonderment when you visit the States.

Sadly, it's true. You can buy almost anything you want in Qatar, but there are random items you just have to stock up on on trips back home.

Since people on the verge of moving to Qatar often email me and ask what they should pack, I figured I'd share the the list of things I stocked up on this month.

1. Books! I always end up buying half a dozen or so. On this trip I bought:
   • a guidebook to Hong Kong (guidebooks are oddly hard to find in Qatar)
   • Thich Nhat Hanh's The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching (ditto books on religion)
   • a collection of short stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (probably too obscure to be available in Qatar)
   • Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle (probably available in Qatar, but books are expensive here so what the heck)
2. Running shorts. (Qatar does have some sports stores, but women's running shorts are hard to come across -- as are any women's sports clothes in larger than size 6.)
   
   
3. Board games. (The basics are available in Qatar -- Scrabble, Taboo, Trivial Pursuit -- but they're expensive, and they're usually the British versions.
   
   
4. Toiletries from CVS, store of wonderment. This time what I needed was:
   • Tom's of Maine toothpaste and non-antiperspirant deodorant (Qatar has all the normal mainstream brands -- Crest and Sensodyne, Old Spice and Lady Speed Stick -- but not hippy natural brands)
     
   • Travel-size bottles of contact lens solution & sunscreen (Qatar has these things, but not in the less-than-3-ounce sizes necessary to take them in your carry-on to the US or UK)
     
   • Random over-the-counter medicines that aren't available in Qatar, e.g. Pyridium, cold medicine. (Lots of OTC meds are available in Qatar, and quite a few prescription meds are available OTC, like birth control pills and even antidepressants. However, some things just ain't here, so if there's something you use on a regular basis, you may better off bringing a supply.)
     
   • Tampons. 'Nuff said.
     
   • I often also grab some 99¢ nail polish or cheap sunglasses or cheap nickel-free earrings. In Qatar it's easy to get MAC nail polish, Gucci sunglasses and gold jewelry, but it's hard to find the crap I like to buy.

Qatar dwellers, what do you stock up on?

Last night's dream, put into words but otherwise unembellished. Blogging about dreams is unforgivable, I know, but this one had a pretty awesome plot.

---

I had finally defeated the evil mage, after enduring many tests of strength and bravery, infiltrating the enemy’s castle, and learning the secret of how to penetrate the mage’s inner sanctum from an elderly scholar I had rescued from a diabolical curse.

Now the scholar and I stood victorious on the flagstone plaza outside the castle. Below us, the vast plains were thronged with the magical denizens of the realm celebrating the demise of their cruel overlord: centaurs and pixies, talking animals of all varieties, even sentient trees, for in this land nothing was insensate.

As banners waved in the breeze and a band of animals in military regalia played a trumpet fanfare, a mongoose official wearing a red satin sash proclaimed the scholar and me the new king and queen of the land. An entire forest’s worth of shrubs stood in formation before us, each clasping a single, fragile purple blossom, and as the trumpets played they processed forward to give me their flowers, one by one.

But the scholar and I were preoccupied; our defeated enemy lay in chains in his own dungeon, but we had not yet determined how to prevent him from doing further harm. We planned to banish him to an uninhabited realm, but lacked the magical knowledge to do so.

Anxious and frustrated, the scholar could take no more of the jubilant parades. His voice, sharp with frustration, rang out across the plains: “We need some quiet, and time to think! You must act like non-magical animals and plants, so we can work.”

The moment he gave this order, our obedient subjects complied. The band dropped their trumpets. The mongoose vicegerent meekly dropped to all four paws and padded away. The shrubs froze in place, each still holding a branch out toward me; their purple flowers fluttered in the breeze.

The plains fell silent.

We stared out at our realm. Copses of trees stood rooted to the ground in unlikely configurations, as though planted by an eccentric tree farmer. Around their roots scurried thousands of animals, silent, unthinking. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

“Never mind,” the scholar called out. “Be yourselves again. I was wrong.”

But our subjects had complied with his orders precisely. He told them to act like insensate creatures, and insensate creatures do not understand English. In accordance with his first command, they had become deaf and dumb to human language, and there was now no way to convey to them the message that they should stop pretending to be less than they were.

We had robbed the land of magic; we had robbed the creatures of their consciousness. No, we had done worse than that. We had not removed our subjects’ intelligence, but had rendered them unable to use it. Thousands of conscious souls were trapped in small, furred bodies and immobile, unbending trees, unable to speak, unable to think. Having banished the evil mage, we had wrought an evil worse than he had ever dreamed.

I woke up crying.

A new sponsorship law has been kicking around for some months. Apparently, this week the Advisory Council sent the draft back to committee for some changes.

The draft would allow residents to bring their relatives into the country, which currently is only possible for high-paid residents; the Advisory Council says they should only be allowed to bring a few relatives (spouses and children). The draft would let workers keep their own passports; the Advisory Council is "apprehensi[ve]."

It's nice to at least hear what's on the table.

One of the main topics of this conference I'm attending is whether the spread of English as a global language is good (yay intercultural communication!) or bad (boo Anglo-American hegemony!).

As I suspect is typical wherever Anglo-American academics gather to criticize Anglo-American hegemony, there has been a fair bit of capitalism-bashing going on. The opening plenary speaker extensively quoted Marx in his talk on whether English is a panacea or a pandemic. The final speaker of the day wondered whether English can ever be culturally neutral, or whether it is too tied to the failing capitalist international regime.

I'm not normally one to sing the praises of rampant unchecked capitalism, but giving a speech on the failure of capitalism in the middle of Hong Kong struck me as a little humorous.

Plan A: Take metro to Lantau Island, then cable car to monastery.
Reason for failure: Cable cars are being serviced.

Plan B: OK, take ferry to Lantau, bus to monastery.
Reason for failure: After an hour-long ferry ride, we discovered bus service had been suspended.

Plan C: Take taxi to monastery.
Reason for failure: There has been a landslide on the road, and thus the monastery, giant Buddha statue, and interactive multimedia Buddha experience are cut off from the world.

Plan D: Well, since we're in Lantau, we might as well check out that fishing village.
Reason for failure: Also on other side of landslide.

Plan E: So much for Lantau. Let's back to Hong Kong Island and check out this cool-sounding museum.
Reason for failure: Museum closed Tuesdays.

Plan F: OK, let's head up to Kowloon, check out the park and then hit the museums.
Reason for failure: Got too ill to walk to park.

Plan G: Well, there's still the museums...
Reason for failure: Historical museum also closed Tuesdays. Art museum under heavy renovation, most exhibits closed.

Plan H: Screw this, it's 3:30, let's just head back to the hotel.

End result: Over seven hours out on the town, two art exhibits viewed.
Best moment of the day: Asking the server at the mall food court to hold the octopus on my order.

Got to Hong Kong this afternoon. Three coworkers and I are presenting at a conference here this week; one of them (Ben) and I flew in today, and the other two (Dudley & Hope) arrive tomorrow.

We went for a walk along the harbor and ended up at Belcher Bay Park. Every few feet there were signs telling us not to smoke, not to have dogs, not to spit (with great illustrations), not to skateboard, not to make very much noise, and not to step on, or attack, snakes. Also there were signs we could not identify, but whose rather abstract graphics we interpreted as "no yokes" and "no kimonos."

On the plane ride here I started reading a collection of Ryunosuke Akutagawa stories, with an introduction by Haruki Murakami. Murakami says something about Akutagawa's Japan that made me think a lot of Qatar:

Only one generation had gone by since the end of that age [of samurai], hardly enough time to reshape people's inner landscapes. Superficial aspects such as new systems remained untouched: sensibility, values, archetypal mental images. In fact, the Meiji government openly promoted a policy supporting precisely such a bifurcation, as represented by the slogan "Japanese spirit, Western technology." They wanted to incorporate the technological progressiveness and efficiency of Western systems, but they also wanted the people to remain good, submissive Confucianists.

Living in a culture that is trying to combine the best of Western progressiveness with a Muslim, Arab spirit, it's really fascinating for me to get a glimpse into one of the Asian cultures that has been through this paradoxical process already.

Police officers physically barred workers from entering souqs and the Corniche on Friday, citing that it was "family day." Normally Doha maintains the polite fiction that "family day" at a mall means that no single men are allowed, but one policeman interviewed was more forthright: "Every Friday we come here to stop the labourers accessing this area. No Nepalese are allowed." An editorial by a white dude confirmed that single white men magically count as families.

Links from Peaceful Muslimah, who is charitable enough to see these articles as a good sign, in that the media is at least broaching the topic.

Two days ago I was at a conference in Pittsburgh. Tomorrow I'll be at a conference in Hong Kong. Due to airlines' esoteric round-trip pricing, I am in the process of flying from Pittsburgh to Hong Kong... through Doha. That is, if I'm subtracting correctly in my jet-lagged state, 22.5 hours of flight time in just over two days. I'm traveling halfway around the world: 12 time zones, 194 degrees longitude.

I am tired.

On the other hand, I really can't whine about going to Hong Kong. (It has an an immersive, multimedia Buddha attraction!) This will be the 10th country I've visited since moving to Qatar. I really, really love my life.

So the other day my laptop bag fell off the bench at the bus stop, and... well, we can all tell where this story is going, can't we. My trusty laptop, beloved companion of four years, is no more. Rest in peace, Don't Ask About the Laptop!

If we're lucky, he may be brought back from the dead by a brain transplant tomorrow. We shall see.

Last night I went to go see Jonathan Coulton perform, in keeping with my apparent policy to only ever go to geek band concerts. It was awfully fun. The audience just about collectively died laughing when he rickrolled us. Amazing.

I was surprised to enjoy the opening band, Paul and Storm, about as much as I enjoyed Jonathan Coulton. You have to love an opening band that sings a self-deprecating song about being the opening band and makes lolcat references in their patter. Also, I won a prize: one of their CDs, and a pirate bandana, and a glow-in-the-dark zombie finger puppet. And a cookie. (But I eated it.)

Sometimes, as an ex-pat, I kind of romanticize the U.S., and particularly American democracy. So I'm glad I read today's Tribune-Review over breakfast, to remind myself that I live in an ivory tower.

The first article I read quoted the webmaster of clintons4mccain.com as saying that she would never vote for Obama, because he has never conclusively proved that he isn't secretly a Muslim. The very next article alleged that Obama has -- are you ready for this? -- secret ties to the Communist party.

I then finished breakfast and left the paper behind, but I have to imagine that the next article would have uncovered the shocking truth that Obama is a secret Nazi.

Qatar is facing a crippling shortage of sand.

This has actually happened before; the country doesn't have sufficient facilities for processing sand for use in construction. But it's still a pretty funny thought: the last thing Qatar needs more of is SAND!

Qatar's Labor Law, as we all know, does not apply to domestic workers (maids, nannies, drivers, etc.). This is because servants are not traditionally viewed as laborers at all, but rather as "part of the family", which is actually completely accurate if the family in question involves singing mice and coaches made out of pumpkins. To date there are, in fact, no real laws governing what people can and can't do to their domestic help, besides the obvious ones of, you know, not murdering and raping them and stuff -- and, let's face it, Qatar doesn't have a great track record of enforcing those laws.

(I shouldn't be so cynical: not all families mistreat their servants. The real problem is that they can, and there are absolutely no consequences when they do.)

Yesterday Al Arab newspaper published a draft of the brand-spanking-new draft law that will inshallah cover domestic workers in the near future. I can't read it because it's in Arabic and not online, but The Peninsula says it puts forth such novel ideas as that maids should be paid every month and provided with health care when sick. Groundbreaking stuff! The Gulf Times adds that sponsors have to pay for the domestics' visas, and for airfare every other year for the domestics to visit home. Don't get too carried away there, Labor Ministry!

There was I expecting that, like, working hours would be limited to 16 per day, or something. Silly Marjorie.

Gyno-oncologists in today's Peninsula are recommending that all women protect themselves against cervical cancer by getting vaccinated.

Only halfway through does the article even say what the vaccination is actually against -- HPV, of course -- but then it just says vaguely that "women remain at risk of HPV infection and the related burden of disease throughout their lifetime" without telling the reader much about, say, how women get HPV. I suppose leaving that part vague is probably smart if they want lots of Qatari women to go get vaccinated, but I'm still amused that they can write such a long article about an STD without mentioning the S part.

In unrelated news, I got an official text message from the phone company today, telling me to go to the airport at 6 p.m. tomorrow if I want to welcome Sami Al Hajj back home. I guess this is likely to be an extremely big deal. Sami Al Hajj, in case he's less famous in the States than here, is the Al Jazeera journalist who's been held in Guantanamo for the last six and a half years.

I noticed while traveling through Eastern Europe that, despite the fact that Eastern European languages come from vastly different language families, they all call oranges something like "portokal." Then I moved to Arabic and learned that the word for orange is برتقال, "burtuqal."

Today I learned where all these words come from: Portugal!

The earlier word for orange is from the Sanskrit nāraṅgaḥ, which is where Persian gets nārang, Spanish gets naranja, Japanese gets orenji and we get orange. But these all referred to the bitter Indian orange. It was Portuguese traders who started bringing the sweet orange, Citrus sinensis, back from China. And thus all along their trading route -- Uzbekistan, Georgia, Persia, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy -- the new orange got named for the Portuguese who brought it.