October Ends

Well we have made it to the end of another month in one piece and still with our sanity intact. It is only 4 ½ weeks until the Asian Games start, and therefore only 4 ½ weeks of work at AJA until holidays start.

Also more importantly our blog is finally up to date with nothing really to be backdated. Kerry has her Residency and ID Card… I still have to go through the medicals and fingerprinting process being a dependant (I actually think my medical may be later this week). We haven’t posted anything about the experience yet as we were waiting until we both had braved the ordeal, but Kerry does have a rather special page in her passport, while mine is still out there in the system somewhere.

Driving is getting better, and with only the one accident (plus a number of near misses) I think it is going as well as can be expected. Hey we haven’t written off a rental yet, so things must be going ok! As I said before, the roads are getting even worse at the moment as things are put into top gear to complete everything prior to December 1… I think this is the calm before the storm as I can’t see it improving until after the games are over.

There is a steady influx of people into Doha to fill the various holes in the workforce for the games. A Syrian and 2 Egyptian guys came up and had a chat when we were at the souqs the other night… some of the many new arrivals walking around with their Doha Games ID’s hanging around their necks. Funny that we are more local than others now!

The weather is cooling down as we draw near the winter months… it is only reaching the low-mid 30’s now! But it is actually nice and mild in the evenings, and the air-conditioning is actually being turned off some nights. It isn’t too far away when we will be able to have them off all the time… looking forward to the peace and quiet!

Job-hunting for me continues. I have submitted my resume quite a bit to both agencies and employers… but with the positions advertised worldwide there apparently can be up to a three month wait until they finalise the selection (sometimes longer for teaching positions starting the next academic year). It will be interesting to see if I can pick up something before the games… fingers crossed. Wont be much fun if I have to work through December while K & A are on holidays!

There are a few things we have noticed about Doha and Qatar in general… while it is developing, it also seems a little held back by years of tradition. Cheap labour is in abundance from various places in the sub-continent and SE Asia, so when you have cheap labour there are certain things that become entrenched in society. The expat workforce is employed by nationals and therefore there is something owed to all nationals or something… people from India, Nepal, etc do certain things and are employed in particular positions… people from SE Asia are employed in other positions. Westerners are employed in various other positions and seem to fill the gap between the lowly paid expat workforce and Arab nationals who don’t have the skills to fill the available jobs.

But… gaps still remain.

The banks are a perfect example, where they all look the part. The owners have seen pictures of banks and know what they should look like, from the layout to the type of furniture right down to the wood grained walls in the mangers office. But there is still something missing when you can go to one branch and talk to 4 different people and get 4 completely different answers… hierarchical and bureaucratic structure reigns supreme here. I guess that is all part of “developing”.

Similar to this is the general lack of authenticity in much you see on a daily basis. Some of this is blamed on the western influence and while I would agree with this to a point, the fact is in relative terms there isn’t that many westerners here so it stems from further a field than this (i.e. international education and media consumption). It is far more correct to look at the influence and being “the expat influence” as much of what we see isn’t western or Arabic. The fact is that it is the kids who all want to walk around with mobile phones and iPods, and drive around in any number of prestige European cars or be driven around in oversized American SUVs. It is a melting pot of a country as all are to an extent, but I feel The Gulf is at the crossroads of the world and given that, needs to make a concerted effort to hold on to tradition and culture.

Well with 20 months to go, we shall just have to wait and see what vision materialises (or unravels) before our eyes.

Here is some useless trivia… did you know that somewhere between 12-25% of the worlds cranes are in Dubai! They think that 1/3rd of the world’s high-rise cranes are there.

Oh and also one other piece of trivia to end the month. Sports City Tower is not going to open until April 2007 and is going to have a swimming pool suspended off the side of the hotel about 100 meters from the ground (or something like that). It was only the façade that is to be completed prior to the games and the bit at the top for the flame.