doha daily 4/17/06

Happy Easter! Things over here were pretty calm as far as Easter and Christianity were concerned. Some of the hotels put on Easter Brunch. Traffic was slightly lighter than normal. Tristan still went to school, Thierry still went to work :)

I performed the Cardinal of all NO-NO’s here in Doha…I lost my phone. I am pretty sure it was at the beach, but the point is, I lost it and 4 months worth of phone numbers, misc birthdays, calendar items. The cell phone is one’s lifeline out here. LUCKILY, I saved two numbers on speed dial on our home phone and am now in the process of re-building my link to the outer world. The thing with the prepaid phone cards out here, which are HUGELY popular I may add, ANYONE with a passport can obtain a sim card and then you just go and buy a phone to put it in, which range from 300QR’s ($82) to 1800QR’s ($494). There are no, “Sign a one-yr contract with AT&T and get this fancy cell phone for only $50 more,” deals. Here, when you run out of minutes, you just buy another HALA card to recharge your account. The nice thing was, in losing my phone, I was able to go to the Qtel office and for 50QR’s replace my sim card and all of the minutes I had had when I lost it.

The other day, Tristan and I met Jennifer and Markus over at the beach across from the Lagoon near the Ritz-Carlton to go “Blokarting.” (sand sailing on three-wheel carts) The wind was GREAT and it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the next day, Thierry’s day off, we took him over to try it out, but there was no wind. No wind, no blokarts – but it is a sport I know he will enjoy and here there is plenty of sand (and normally wind) for him to try it some other time.

All of the friends I have been hanging around with are now starting to talk about summer vacations, as the city virtually empties out due to the heat. Most of us will be gone from mid-July to middle of September. The temperature here lately has been 33+ (92F) degrees with low humidity and low winds. I understand there will be 50C (122F) days here July and August.

Happy Birthday, JM! (You too, Becky!)

See you! (tristan is going through a "jello phase...")