Moving... and then Not Moving!

Kerry here! Surprise…Surprise! Believe it or not – but I’m here too…In fact, I’m the one with ALL the good ideas (hence we’re here). I came home from work on this day full of excitement at the prospect of moving to some ‘inner city’ apartments! I had it from a good source (Medhat Taha) who is the Arabic teacher/HOD of one of the schools who also came to Doha when we did…Medhat, Michael and I would chat together on the busses to and from the places mentioned in earlier posts as newcomers…Medhat would often ask me in the corridors at school ‘how is Michael going?’ – I think he had some type of soft spot for Michael and was concerned he’d get bored in the compound….or perhaps he was envious of Michaels ‘free time’ to explore at will?

Anyway, the lovely Medhat was telling me a very long story on the way home from school one day in his broken English – and the gist of that story was that there are vacant apartments in a building paid for by the school and those wishing to move there from the compound could do so (overnight basically) and be offered a car and driver as compensation….at least that’s what I understood – and I asked him repeatedly to explain that bit! The following day, an entourage from school left to view the apartment block, which is situated in an area of the city called Najma (pronounced Nashmaa).

Apparently, the new staff at AJA who were put up in serviced apartments were to move to these Najma apartments, but were not impressed by their unfinished state and size – they all refused blankly and wanted to move to the compound where we live. These staff who refused – had only seen the compound for one evening at Monique’s (my boss) villa and made their decision by the standards of her very large 3 bedroom villa, with large grassy front yard, polished wooden floors (paid for by them) and gorgeous Arabic furnishings…

The apartments were perfectly fine – in fact, if they were what we had been given when we arrived without comparison to any other living quarters – we would have been quite impressed! Each floor of the 12 (or so) storey apartment block has 3 units with different floor plans…One was definitely the best of the three. All appliances and furnishings were new and much more ‘tasteful’ and appealing than our daggy stuff. The apartments were small though….I almost said ‘yes’ to the move as we would have been smack bang in the centre (or close enough) of Doha….looking out over a shopping mall and busy streets….it would have been a great way to live and feel a real part of the place. At that stage – I was still in my high wuss factor with driving on the roads and the thought of getting out onto the main arterial road from there to get to work did my head in! There was never any mention of the ‘car or driver’ once we were all there to view the apartments, so I made the executive decision to stay at ‘home’ and give Ashur the extra space.

I did laugh when I saw the shoddy workmanship of the interiors of the apartments though. Considering these were ‘brand spanners’ and actually unfinished! Wall to wall carpets (in glorious blue swirl reminiscent of a bad 1960’s bachelor pad) in some rooms literally meant ‘wall to wall’…they kind of curled up over the corners of the wall and you could clearly see the jagged cut marks from a dodgy Stanley knife! The bathroom was interesting to say the least too…it was TINY. To get to the shower/bath required you to step over the toilet to dodge the stupidly big hand basin. The actual shower/bath (thing) was a moulded plastic thing set onto the tiled floor. It was raised in the centre – with no edges or sides…just moulded plastic flush with the floor…no curtaining could be fixed and there were no walls…just a large showerhead peering from above! I was trying to imagine how to use it with the other people curiously crammed into the bathroom. – and we decided that its just a matter of resting against the raised centre….? But we could be wrong – and most probably are!

In hindsight – now that I’m a much better seasoned road traveller – we would have liked living there! Instead though, we’ve bought a few more homely things – painted the door surround in our living room gold – to accentuate the gorgeous maroon and gold (made in China of course) Arabic curtains we have there….and are working on beautifying what we have.