Saturday, March 15, 2008

the one that got away...

I had it!! I had the best possible picture to describe Doha, and I let it slip through my fingers! I was coming back from the grocery store yesterday when I pulled up behind a slow moving Toyota truck. The truck was running a little slow because it was carrying THREE FULL SIZE CAMELS in the pickup!! Quickly, I pulled my camera out of the console to take a picture, but the batteries were dead! Dammit!! I'm gonna carry some in my car at all times...

Not much really going on right now. Spring break is next week, and most people are taking the week to travel overseas. I can't just yet, since my vacation time isn't active until May. Large groups of people are traveling to Egypt, Jordan, Oman, and India... and it's killing me that I can't go yet. So instead of traveling to far off lands, I'll be tearing apart my labs and taking stock of all my chemicals. But soon... very soon...

I just came back from buying some houseplants in the nursery district. Nearby they opened the first actual Catholic church in Qatar. Its a huge building, but doesn't look like your everday St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio sunday school. It was purposely made to try and blend into its surroundings. There are no signs, crosses, or bells visible... since publicly advertising any religion other than Islam is against the law. Some of the more conservative clerics have publicly stated that having a catholic church in an islamic country is blasphemous. One even said that his people would die before "bells chime over Doha." So... does he mean church bells, or any bells?? The embassy came out with an alert to all Western ex-pats to use caution when attending the church, and to be cautious in shopping malls and sporting arenas. Thankfully, a royal family member read a message at the christening from Emir His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani (the big guy here) saying, "it is a message of the merciful and it is a message to people to accept the good features of every religion for one’s own betterment and also for the improvement of relations between communities and people of different cultures." No worries...

I'm waiting to get my official TAMUQ bowling league shirt. I sent an email asking for a nickname to be stitched on the shirt. A lot of you gave me team names, but I only needed a personal nickname. An aside... three different people came up with "Camel Toes"... don't think that one will play well with this audience. Some were excellent, some were vulgar... I went for a combination of the two. My bowling league nickname... "Kielbasa."

later...

ben

2 comments:

Boro Girl~slinky~ said...

I really liked camel toe, but kielbasa is also perfect. You had to know you were going to get some crazy answers to a crazy question from this family.

I sent out Haley's artwork to you. It cost 27.00 to send the cheapest way possible, they could not guarantee that you would get it. If you can sell it and make a bunch of money off of it, please do so, otherwise we will not be able to afford to send you anything else ever again.

Shelton got orders from the military to go to Warrior Training in Oklahoma/New Mexico for 7 weeks starting in April. Not a good thing, because I bet you can guess what comes after training????

I have another new odd job. I am writing an entertainment column and taking pictures for the local newspaper. The column is called Pelican Pleasure Page and Haley is the creative person coming up with how to dress the Pelican logo every 2 weeks. Darryl does all of the design. They called me a columnist in the newspaper when they advertised the new edition to the paper. So Cool

Later, Bye Sandi

Anonymous said...

Hey Ben! It's your 2cnd(?) cousin Nevyn, you know, Joellen's oldest, saying hi! It's so cool that you're in the mideast! When I first heard, I was studying the mideast in my cultural stduies class, and my teacher wanted to know how you got such a cool job. I was hoping to get in touch, but Grandma kept forgetting to get your e-mail address from your mom.
I'm totally going to favorite your blog, it's really funny. I wish I could have seen the camels in the pickup truck!