A WEEKEND MORNING

Isn’t it always great not to set your alarm for the weekend morning? Not that I will sleep in for hours and hours, but still. On this Friday morning of my second weekend in Qatar I linger in bed and switch on the television with my remote control without slipping out of the sheets, a luxury.  I look for my favourite news station, Aljazeera, whose buildings I’ve already passed several times on my way to work. There’s a short TV documentary about the lack of electricity in Gaza showing some children doing homework by candlelight or gas lamps and a group of neighbours sitting outside around a campfire during their daily 8-hour outage. What a difference with the abundance of power here in Doha! Although….hmmm… When I get up I seem to have trouble yet again with the internet. The technicians of my hotel suites have already dropped by three times over the last four days to fix my connection, but today I manage on my own after a few fights with my router, so that fortunately I can check emails. Afterwards it is high time to slip into my bathing suit – leave the bikini alone as it is far too revealing for local standards – and take the elevator up to the rooftop swimming pool. Today it is windy so that the water seems to have cooled a bit, but it is warm enough to do my daily laps for a quarter of an hour. The Filipino supervisor is keen to chat with me for a couple of minutes. Over the past ten days I’ve talked with so many people who are in the service industry that they could almost represent the entire United Nations. Apart from loads of Filipinos, Indians, Sri Lankans and Pakistanis, I’ve met people from Nepal, Bangladesh, Kenya, Bosnia, Romania, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan (where are the Latin Americans?). I must’ve had exchanges with more people from Myanmar here in Doha than ever in all my previous life, no matter how many international students and immigrant have passed through my classes. The Arabs I’ve been served by are from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Tunisia and Morocco, but NOT Qatar. Qataris have only walked by me indifferently in shopping malls or driven past me on the major roads while overtaking recklessly in their expensive cars. No doubt during the rest of my weekend I will encounter a rich mix of cultures and nationalities again – I’m ready for it.