Just the right person, the right color, the right personal and political history. There is a very deep significance in his rising to power. What that is exactly I don’t know but feel. Something BIG is about to happen.
I went to Doha Airport waiting for my flight and stayed at an airport cafe while I was waiting. I heard a gentleman (Egyptian from accent) who was waring traditional clothing associated with Ariabian Gulf Nationals. He was talking to an Indian salesman about lights. What I gathered, because his conversation was so loud and forceful, was that he could not stop talking about anything. The Indian gentleman was so polite getting almost no words in edgewise. This guy was talking as if he was the most important person in the Airport, like a Sheihk or something. Of All of my 24 years here I never heard such a person. He had convinced the salesman that he was an important person. Everybody else around was only annoyed. Especially me!
My thoughts were that I was glad not to be captivated by such an individual and that I had these experiences in my life. I am also talkative but this man beat all imagination.
It was my luck. I was able to get a really good seat because one of the Arabian Air staff recognized me from my frequent trips and gave me the front row isle seat so that I could debark quickly. In comes Mr. Important. For those of you who might not gather the signifance of this here is a small lesson.
National dress is a way to distinguish oneself from the guest workers. In each Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) they have a different way to dress. Although for the casual observer it is all equal, for the informed they are totally different. Sometimes other nationalities (arab) but not GCC try to dress in the same way. It is not normally acceptable by locals that someone should dress in their national dress, however, they do not protest too much if somebody (arab) has lived many years in their country. Anyway, how would they know if somebody lived many year in their country?
Arrived on the airplane this BIG MOUTH shouted at me that I was in his seat. The stewerdess told him that he was mistaken and that his seat was on the other side. At any rate we were in a NO FRILL BUDGET airlines. There is NO FIRST OR BUSINESS CLASS. They sell seats towards the front for a slight premium. I got mine for free because the agent liked me. Maybe he paid something like 100 riyals (20 dollars) for his priviledge.
I didn’t react negatively but I just checked my stub in case I made a mistake. The gal who seated me told me quickly that I was OK and that he had made a mistake. Of course he did not apologize as he was so proud. I was the only white guy on the airplane but did not show such a differentiated position. I was like anybody on the plane.
Underway, up and away.. this guy again started his wall to wall talking. Only this time he was talking about religion. Nobody in almost any advanced country would take up this topic on a crouwded public flight. He was talking about all of the virtues of being Muslim.
Now I have many Muslim friends who would never venture to say what this guy said. He was talking about being able to marry as many wifes even if they were of another religion. His talk was more on bragging than on the merits of the reasons that invoved the scriptues in the Khoran. He was trying to convince the Indian who was probably a Hindu that if he was Muslim he could have many women. It was slightly discusting.
I know that all of my friends here in the GCC would never engage in such trivial discussions and to make people belive that there is a sexual advantage for the believers.
To the contrary I find that all of my Muslim friends here in the GCC are of the highest standards that match any standard anywhere in the world when it comes to family values. Some may think that women don’t have rights. This is not true… sometimes they have more rights then men do.
You are where you have lived? If this is true then I am always a transient. One of my first homes was a trolly station in Portland Oregon. Evergreen Station. I lived there with my sister Daphne and new born Baby brother Laird.
My sister has the most complete memories of the home/station. She remembered the oil soaked wood plank floors that required using blankets on the floor so as not to soil your clothing.
I remember the basic layout of the building and the main features… old but stable. There was a gully in the back of the house and the trolly ran right in front of the house. It was more or less that year I must have been 3 years old that they stopped the trolly service. I saw the Wizard of Oz for the first time and was spooked. My sister insured me that the flying monkeys would not come through the windows to steal me. I wasn’t so sure!
Only in the Middle East can you find so many magic things. This bus passed me at lightening speed. I caught a glimpse of magic so I caught up and took this snap. The sorry thing is that they were all boys. Can you imagine you are working for a company and your friend asks, “Oh yeah, where do you work”, “Uh gee… magic maids”…low wisper…”building maintenance”… high volume.
The first ACE in the United States of America with Jets was Arab… think about it….
We as Americans are tuti fruit….
Who would have guessed that this filthy truck was a delivery truck for water that somebody should drink. I thought it was hilarious that such a manager of a bottled drinking water company would allow such a negative image to exist in his/her company.
The main reason I noticed this truck was because he cut me off. I never used this water and I don’t think I ever will. I can only imagine how clean their factory is!
Who would have guessed that this filthy truck was a delivery truck for water that somebody should drink. I thought it was hilarious that such a manager of a bottled drinking water company would allow such a negative image to exist in his/her company.
The main reason I noticed this truck was because he cut me off. I never used this water and I don’t think I ever will. I can only imagine how clean their factory is!
Vote (here) for who you think will become The President of The United States…
Automatic text correction can cause you to loose people, literally, in the mis-translation. Recently I sent to one VIP in Qatar information on some apartments he was interested in. I sent him the following text.
“I am sending you dwgs…”
I wasn’t looking and my iphone corrected my misspelling dwgs to dogs.
“I am sending you dogs…”
Nevertheless the VIP was very upset because he was Muslim and it was during Ramadan… I haven’t heard from him since..
I’ve been trying to render several images from my sketchup model of a car show room on my old lap top. It is so slow. I was looking for a faster way to use a possible free rendering farm (they don’t exist). I did find many rendering farms that offer some free time. When I saw how complicated they were to use and scary (because they wanted to many details and had nasty looking contracts that looked like future trouble.)
Wouldn’t it be great if we could use distributed processing to take advantage of other peoples connected time!
