The Gold Standard

So after talking to Sheri, and falling back asleep, I headed downstairs to enjoy the one obvious benefit to a final weekend in Doha - the pool! I had a chicken schwarma at the cabana (like an Arabic chicken burrito without the spice) and managed to find a well lit beach chair to relax in. The breeze and a few dips in the pool helped counteract the rising temperatures, and the condensation on my water bottle indicated that the humidity is heading up as well - a bad combination. More noticeable than speedos or bikinis today was the high percentage of back hair - it's becoming an unfortunate trend here... even younger guys my age who are in decent shape have a tremendous amount of chest/back hair - just add it to the list of cultural adjustments. Lets just say that my grandfather would have done well for himself poolside if he had ever visited Doha. Thank goodness my chair was facing away from the main pool area with a nice view of the back hairless skyline of downtown Doha.

After the sun and heat did their job I took a quick nap and logged onto You Tube to watch some episodes of Conan O'Brien - and found that there was no shortage of hilarious skits from his recent stint in San Fransisco. Highly recommend you search You Tube for Conan's tour of Intel, LucasFilms, and a local Vineyard - for those who have ever worked in cubicles or been on a wine tasty tour these skits will hit close to home. I was laughing out loud - I can't wait for Conan to take over for Jay LEENO (for all my CloneHigh fans out there).

My friend Dave gave me a call after returning from the site, where he went to work after arriving on a 6:00am flight this morning! We setup some dinner plans, which conveniently started a few minutes after the local replay of the Ottawa / Buffalo Stanley Cup game - although I'm much more interested in the Detroit / Anaheim match up this evening.

Compared to relaxing poolside, driving down to the old souq area for dinner was a complete 180. Dave had heard of this local restaurant that we found shortly after turning down an alleyway/side street. Much to our surprise we were fortunate enough to have a car that could fit in the parallel parking spot just out front - which NEVER happens in Doha... you're lucky to be able to see your destination from the parking spot you find. We walk up to the blue awning that read "Tarzan" with some Arabic scribblings and some photos of the various delicacies. That's actually quite common to have picture menus for middle eastern or Indian food here. We walk through the door and nearly run into the back wall - there were 3 small tables with 2 chairs at each, a window AC unit above the door that was working overtime in the early evening heat, and a counter that looked directly into the kitchen. We may have been the only Americans to eat at this place since the last Gulf War, but being together gave us enough confidence to sit down at the open table and pretend like we knew what to do. We discovered that the menu was limited - Kebabs... and they were out of chicken, so you could choose beef, lamb, or liver (of something). I opted for 3 beef kebabs, and ordered a Pepsi, since the alternative was a water jug on the table and some stainless cups (didn't feel like ordering a side of Montezuma's Revenge with the meal!). When the kebab came out it was still on the metal skewer, and the skewer was still VERY hot, so it was a bit of a hand dance to get the meat off of the spit using the bread. The meat was quite tasty and the entire meal for both of us including drinks was 17 Riyals... or about $4.50, so all told it was a great experience. Bonus: you smell like a camp fire the rest of the night. Note: most sodas here have English on one side and Arabic on the other - and they use the pull tabs that were quite popular in the states back in the 60's and 70's. I learned from watching others that the experience pull tab user doesn't fully remove the tab, but inserts the straw into a partially opened tab, or so the young Qatari's were doing at the table next to us...

After dinner we walked across the street to the "Gold Souqs" that are separated from the traditional souqs I mentioned in the last blog. The "Gold Souqs" are probably a grouping of 60 jewelry stores with necklaces that would make Mr. T proud displayed in the front window. As the name implies the focus here is Gold, not Diamonds like most American jewelers. We checked a few shops out to get a feel for the pricing. Much to our surprise the prices were closer to Jared the Galleria of Jewelry than to Walmart. We were hoping to score some nice pieces for our ladies back home, but were rudely reminded that you get what you pay for. The items that were in our original price range (~$20) were poorly made and probably non-precious metals... and the items we found appealing were often $300+. Now that price might be discounted, but you have to understand that there's a risk that you aren't even buying legitimate stuff... so we did some looking around, got a feel for what prices we could negotiate, and saved the purchasing for later in the weekend / if at all. I'm sure all the guys out there can understand how tough it is to pick out jewelry for a lady - never get it right. Easier, albeit less meaningful, to just give them a budget and let THEM pick it out... and that's probably the technique I should apply to the Gold Souqs of Doha.

On the way back to the hotel we drove past the sports stadium which was in a state of total chaos - there is a big name track & field competition being held in Doha this weekend... the newspaper said that Shawn Crawford and Dwight Phillips (good name) would be representing the US at the event - and were favored to win their events. This probably only means something to Russell, which was enough reason to drop the names. Would have liked to attend but we were pretty exhausted and didn't want to fight the traffic or crowds to have a look... after a long week I think it was best to call it a night.

Shelley's Statement (new book new quotes - Church History In Plain Language): "After two decades of teaching first year seminarians, I have concluded that college graduates entering the ministry and an engineer or salesman who reads five books a year are members of the same reading public. For my purposes here, both are layman."