Raining in Doha

After almost four months of dusty and humid -- but mostly cloudless -- weather, we got three straight days of rain this past week, complete with awesome lighting and thunder. Photos reblogged from Jakob [1] [2].


Driving to work. There isn't much at all in the way of drainage in this city. A little rain goes a long way toward throwing off everyone's morning commute.


One of the many "Think" campaign signs on campus, looking a little more subdued yesterday.

To Oman, yalla

Break starts tomorrow for the dual holidays of Eid al-Adha and Turkey Day USA. Since we're all going to be spread across the Middle East this Thursday, we went ahead and celebrated Thanksgiving last weekend instead (some photos courtesy of Susan).

Tonight, I'm packing and cleaning up again. Travel plans for the next 5 days: Oman.


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"We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident"

Last night, we took a midnight drive into the desert for a chance to catch the Leonids at their peak intensity. It wasn't altogether without its hiccups -- the air smelled kind of weird, I got sand in my clothes and hair, I had too much catch-up work to ever justify staying up so late, and try as we did, we almost but never totally escaped all light pollution around the horizon.

Not that any of it mattered -- it hardly seems to, whenever something like the night sky makes you feel really infinitesimally small in the universe. It's a crazy thing to think about: these meteor showers are just space dust and debris, little remnants of a comet trail dating back to 1400s. For over five centuries, this whole stream of rocks has been whirling around the sun, left behind at a time when the printing press on Earth was the technological bombshell of its day. Back then, Copernicus wasn't even born yet, much less Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and everyone else who made it possible to even predict these showers from year to year, and here I am teaching to premeds, in mere weeks, what took them entire lifetimes to accomplish. Every shooting star in the sky was a piece of cosmic litter that had been sitting in our solar system for generations upon generations, through every terrible and amazing thing we've done in a species in all that time, only to burn up this very year in the fragile atmosphere of our tiny planet.

It boggles the mind. Anyway, hopefully someone else also looked up for a night and wished for something nice.

I don't have a coffee problem -- why, who told you that?

Turkish coffee is my new addiction relaxing beverage of choice. It's nothing super special or exotic -- just normal coffee beans ground extra fine and prepared a certain way -- but I'd never tried it until coming here. Ever since getting a Turkish coffee pot over the first Eid break, I've been making a cup or four to wake myself up every weekend, getting better and better at it with each pass (not that it's hard, but I just had no idea what I was doing when I started).

My trusty and somewhat overpriced coffee pot, courtesy of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.

The pot is filled with enough cold water for the desired amount of coffee. This one can make about 6 cups: a cup of Turkish coffee is conventionally about the size (and strength) of an espresso shot.

The coffee grounds get thrown in on top of the water, about a heaping teaspoonful for each cup to be made. Coffee beans for Turkish coffee are all but ground down to a powder. The idea is to boil them directly in the water, instead of letting them sit in a filter. I don't stir them in, I just let them dissolve into the water on their own. The coffee I use also has some cardamom in it.

Then I heat the water, but as slowly as possible. On this setting, it takes about 20-30 minutes to bring the pot to a boil.

I add a couple teaspoons of sugar, again without stirring.

Eventually the coffee comes to a boil. The pot comes off the stove right when it boils and then sits for a bit while the dregs settle. Then -- pour, drink, and leave the leftover grounds at the bottom of the coffee cup. On days when there's enough time, this stuff beats out machine-brewed coffee by far.

WTA Tour in Doha

A couple nights ago, a group of us went -- along with a couple buses of students from Education City -- to watch Day 2 of the WTA Tour Championships in Doha. 8+ hours spent at the Khalifa Tennis Complex seeing:

• Caroline Wozniacki v. Victoria Azarenka
• Jelena Jankovic v. Dinara Safina
• Serena Williams v. Venus Williams

The last match went on past midnight (and we had to be up at 6am the next morning), but it was completely worth it.

No one's too old for alphabet soup

From dinner yesterday.

Veggie soup and ginger tea:

Pasta salad, bread, and strawberries too. We put together a tasty little feast:

The only way to eat alphabet pasta:

Enjoying the dessert end of the table:

Ramadan kareem, and the end of (dis?)orientation week

Classes begin on Sunday (Aug 23). And, as it so happens, Ramadan starts Saturday (Aug 22), which is technically now at the time of this posting. In Qatar, the traditional observance of fasting during daylight hours entails no eating or drinking from roughly 5am to 6pm. By law, that standard applies also to all non-Muslims, at least when we're in public.

From what we're told, this is actually the first time that the start of the school year has coincided with the start of Ramadan at WCMC-Q. This is going to be particularly demanding on the students. Students' classes are scheduled between 8am and 4pm, and then many of the Qatari students, when they break their fast at the end of the day, have family commitments which run late into the night. As a result, the vast majority will be working, learning, and studying through the day without food, drink, or much sleep, and it's going to be tough for them to start out the year this way. It'll be a challenging balancing act for the TAs as well, between being understanding and respectful of our students' situation and making sure they keep up with the class as it moves forward.

At the moment, though, the premeds have just finished their week of orientation. This means, aside from my getting enough free food to keep me fed for most of the week, that I also got to say hi to a lot of first-year students as well as a few second-years, and it's been great meeting them. As usual, I'm near hopeless when it comes to remembering (and pronouncing) everyone's names, but with a lot of repetition, I'm making really slow progress on that front. Actually, I won't initially be seeing much of the first-years, since the fall physics course (electricity & magnetism) is for the second-years. Overall, though, the students seem really bright and driven, and I'm definitely looking forward to teaching -- very soon.

Weekends defined, Learning to drive, and Traveling outside of Doha

Weekends

In the last post, I mentioned that it was the weekend, but what I neglected to mention was that in Qatar, the weekend is different than it is in most Western countries by one day. Since Friday is the Muslim day of prayer, the weekend here falls on Friday and Saturday, and thus by extension, the normal workweek runs from Sunday through Thursday. So the phrase, "this past weekend," henceforth, can be legitimately used in this blog starting the Sunday of any given week.

Driving practice

Anyway, this past weekend, most of us took the time to get accustomed to our cars and did a pretty fair bit of exploring. Friday morning was the test run for our new cars -- I share a car with my apartment-mates Jeff and Adam -- and so we all got some practice navigating the city and its many roundabouts. Actually, I was hugely anxious at first about getting behind the wheel, but I've been getting the hang of it a lot more quickly than I expected. Driving around Doha could well be a subject for another post entirely, but for now, suffice to say that every pass through a roundabout is accompanied by much honking and a rush of pure adrenaline. This is one of those cities where lanes and turn signals are apparently vastly overrated. Think NYC traffic but with circular intersections. That's approximately how it is here.

Venturing out of Doha

Come Saturday, we all took our cars and headed out to explore some more of the country, driving north from Doha toward the town of Al Khor. In hindsight, we probably should've come a different day, and we probably will later in the year. As it is, we're currently in the middle of the hottest week of the year: the highs are about 105-110 F and it's humid enough to fog my glasses when I step out of an A/C-ed car. At this latitude and at this time of year, the sunlight is powerful enough to force most people to stay indoors during the midday hours. Including us. When we got to Al Khor, it was pretty empty outside, so we quickly took shelter and got lunch at a self-described Indian/Arabian/Chinese/BBQ restaurant. As hungry as I was, there was a definitely lot more food than I could finish, but altogether I don't think we spent more than 15 riyals each (less than 5 USD). That's one of the best things I'm discovering about living here: it's fairly easy to eat well without burning a hole in your pocket. Which is nice, because other things I'm on the hunt for, like books, tend to be somewhat on the pricey side.

From Al Khor, we drove northwest toward Al Zubarah, an old fortress, the last stop of the day. The fort itself was a bit underwhelming, but it was a worthwhile trip just to be able to explore some more of the country. I leave you with these pictures in lieu of the thousands more words I could type.

Looking out at the beach in Al Khor:

Peter, one of the TAs in our group, picked up a huge cardboard box to shield himself from the blistering sun. I caved and joined him, as did a couple others, not too much later:

Enjoying a tasty biryani lunch:

Driving through miles of mostly empty desert to reach Al Zubara:

Al Zubarah fort -- the flag on top of the rectangular tower is the flag of Qatar:

The Qatari flag, up close:

Yep, it's pretty lonely out there:

Climbing down the tower:

The inside of the fort:

The apartment:

The weekend is finally upon us, which means I now have a little free time to attempt some updates, starting with apartment photos an update. Most of us (us being the TAs) are living in the new ASAS Towers. Like I said before, they're very nice, and WCMC-Q has been quite generous in getting us settled in. We're living three people to an apartment, each with our own room -- this is mine:


Bathrooms:


A balcony, which is where the panorama photo in the last post was taken:


The common area:


The kitchen: