I Said "Yes"

Feeling a little fluffy Friday, I drove to the barber.  I chose the Ferrarri Saloon, because my head is like that race car (sleek! fast! hot! needs constant care!) and what better place to get a haircut than a drinking establishment?

Oh, right: Ferrari Salon.

My man didn't speak much English, and I didn't speak any of whatever he's speaking (Ferrarish, maybe?) but I made it clear that I needed a haircut.  At any rate, that I wanted a haircut.

Now, Laura usually cuts my hair, and she does a fine job.  But, you know, being able to mow a townhouse lawn doesn't exactly make one a master gardener, if you get my drift, and Ferrari dude was good!  He didn't just run the mower back and forth.  He held the clipper in one hand and a blade in the other, moving both like Edward Scissorhands.  I swear he cut each individual hair, one by one.

Scissorhands now points to my 2 week beard stubble, as in "Let me perform my magic on that, too!"

I said "Yes".

I'm feeling great, my head is even sleeker, fast, hotter than before, so I'm going to keep saying yes to whatever he asks.....

This is usually not a good idea.

But, so, the facial began.  I haven't had a facial before, certainly not one given by a guy speaking Ferrarish, so I didn't know what to expect.

I got various potions and lotions that tingled, or stung, or stunk, or abraded, or sometimes all.  First I think he began with the "asbestos and arsenic" paste (reenacted above).

Then he used a blowtorch to dry it, as if I were the creme he would brulee.

Ok, at this point I'm thinking that he may be doing all this for the amusement of the other six guys in the Saloon, none of whom are either are cutting or being cut.  I'm suspecting he charged admission:

"Come on, come all, see how I can afflict the foreigner, who will still thank me and pay me!"

More potions, more lotions:

I was beginning to feel like a cheeseburger.

A cheeseburger to go, for that matter, after he put my head in the bag.

A steamed cheeseburger, even.  Ferrari dude would stick a hose under the bag, fill it with steam to the point that my eyes were beginning to poached like eggs....

Is that laughter I hear from the audience?

Some of his ministrations struck me as unusual.  But what did I know? I had said yes.

I was becoming more and more suspicious.  My eyes were also beginning to swell shut.

Every so often, he would spritz my face without warning: water-boarding lite.


Two hours later I paid Ferrari dude as much, almost, as Sirish makes in a week.

Was it worth it?  Well: My skin was Oprah-smooth, and remains so, mainly, after a couple days.

Sometimes it's good to say Yes.  The guys applauding the show thought so.

My Morning Mosques

This morning I pointed my Civic in the direction of the National Mosque.  My plan?  No real plan, if by plan you imagine that I had any idea of what I was really going to do.  I figured I'd just start at the National, then wander home, turning in the direction of any mosque I saw....

The National Mosque looks lonely to me.  It has a great view of the city, and a large parking lot.  This morning I was the only car there.  I mean, I wasn't the car itself, although I do consider myself pretty much a Civic kind of guy.  The place was deserted.

If it were crowded, and if I was a VIP, then I did discover the Stairway to Heaven:

Mosques are fairly easy to see because they're common and the feature they have in common is their minaret.  Wait a minute.  Perhaps mosques don't all have minarets, although it seems that all minarets have mosques.  So I followed the trail of the minarets.

Most are small, and they're often tucked into commercial areas.

I wished I had a mosquetect in the car to explain the different styles.

Choices: I could make either the minaret vertical or the building vertical, but not both.  Ahh, perspective does shape reality.

All these pictures were taken with a cheap point-and-shoot Kodak.  It was SO bright out I never could see the display screen, so I more-or-less-point-and-shot.

I did edit each picture to chop out the extraneous.  I don't take such care editing my blog.

Can I tell you a secret?

This probably makes me a bad Facebook friend, but it bugs me when a person downloads every picture from their chip, no matter how ill-focused, redundant, redundant, or redundant.  Edit, folks!

The previous sentence should read "ill-focused or redundant".  But now I've added yet more extraneous words....

So now I'll let the pictures speak.

Tomorrow: My smooth skin, and other tales from the neighborhood.

People Like You Make Me Sick

My carefully crafted, and artfully illustrated, blog on this topic just got vaporized.

I blame human error.

Mine.

I'll try again tomorrow, dammit.

Get Out of My Head, and Into My Car

No, not Dreams, as Billy Ocean would have it, even though that is one great old school video....

Scorned lover that I was, I needed to get out of my head, and stop the brooding.

Driving around looking, not thinking, was the tonic I needed.  Photo tour of Doha, here I come!  

It's easy to miss Doha unless you look.  The city is definitely designed to make mass protests hard, which would never happen here, as there is no reason for them, and I most certainly am not advocating them, and that's all I'll say about that.  Doha is criss-crossed with huge highways, that completely separate the smaller neighborhoods: no one is going to walk back and forth between them.

I don't know anything about the neighborhoods here, and you don't either, so I'm going to speak with authority and hope you don't notice.  But, first, I'm going to play that video again.  And turn it up.  

Much better.

As far as I can tell, there are three kinds of "neighborhoods" here.  There are the mansions, which are located wherever the owners damn well want to put them.  They seem to be scattered around, unlike in the US, where you don't really have a mansion unless your neighbors can look at yours and say "Mine's bigger" and you can look back and say "No, mine is".

The mansions are often right next to major roads, so maybe the owners DO want to be seen.  All right, all right, these are not the best mansion pictures, but it was early and I was just wandering around.  You want to do better?  Qatar Airways is awaiting your call.

The second kind of neighborhood is where the ex-pats live, and by ex-pats I mean well-paid foreigners like me.  We mainly live in apartment complexes which, like the mansions, are always behind fairly high walls.  You've seen my pictures of al Samrya, where I live, but if not then do yourself the favor and go back and read the post that contains the pictures. Damn, I couldn't even find that one, so good luck with that.  It does seem like the ratio of pictures-to-words has grown over time, so maybe I'm just getting lazy.  Anyway: I'll post some pictures of ex-pat life soon.

He's still a Pat, I know, but he won't always be.  Then, maybe he'll be an ex-Pat-pat.

Better, if P-Diddy played for the Patriots, and then retired to move here, he could be a P-diddy-Pat-pat.

The third kind of neighborhood houses everyone else, who I suppose are also ex-pats, except it's unlikely that they hang out at ex-pat hangouts, or if they do they are of the sort affordable to those making $350/month.

This is probably not such a place, but I liked the lone air conditioner.  And the lux palaces in the background.

Yeah, I should be writing more, and more eloquently, as you dear reader have come this far without a whole lot of payoff.  So I fear I leave you greatly disappointed, or perhaps I'm still just smarting from being jilted.  Anyway.  Enjoy the pictures. I'm going to go eat ice cream right out of the container.

Congrats! You've made it to the end.  Thanks, and good night.

Jilted

I loved her, and she loved me.  Sometimes I had ignored her, I regret, but this spring I had rededicated myself to her.  She seemed happy.  Life was good.

Imagine my shock when I opened the note from her last night that read:

I don't love you anymore.
Those endearing little actions of yours?  They annoy the shit out of me.
I can do better than you.  I'm out of here.
PS: You're a lousy kisser.

That's what it really felt like last night when I received my course evaluations for the spring semester.

I felt jilted, blindsided, gut-punched, without warning. My evaluations are usually pretty good.  I have had some bad ones, but those were generally well-deserved.  This spring, I worked exceptionally hard on my courses.  I was attentive and responsive to the students.  I was well-prepared and engaging.  I assessed the students' work in detail and quickly. I did an excellent job. Or so I thought.

My students concluded otherwise.  Sure, I got lots of love in the evaluations, but I'm the anti-Sarah Palin in viewing my audience, as I assume that my critics are right and that my fans are just being nice ("You're a pretty good kisser...").  Sarah and I may be alike in our thin skin, though, as try as I might to ignore my critics their words do hurt.

Some of the words were pretty harsh.  Now, I study politics, and I know harsh words are often used in commenting on public figures, especially on blogs allowing anonymous posts.  Like those blogs, my evaluations are done anonymously, on line, and that no doubt makes for harsher words than would be used face to face.  But, still.

Is it possible not to know that your love is about ready to walk through the door, and to believe that everything between you is good?  That's what this feels like.  Now, when I think about looking into the faces of my students during class, I wonder how many were thinking: When can I walk through that door?  Now, in thinking about my pleasant interactions throughout the semester, I wonder which students were thinking: I can't wait to be rid of you.

The worst part is the PS:  You're a lousy kisser.

If you were told that, and you thought you actually were sort of a pretty good kisser, then what do you do next?

I was in a fog today.  Literally.  A dust fog.  The sun did not penetrate it, and it was tough to breath.  Driving was difficult.

Worth Waiting For!

You've been too busy to catch up on this blog; that's why I haven't written more.

I have been saving up, and now I'm ready to unleash the verbal torrent, but dinner calls.  Should I answer dinner and, if so, what should I tell it?

Coming soon:

Honor Killings


Wanna Get Lucky?


People Like You Make Me Sick


More About Sirish

Coming Clean

So: How much should I pay Sirish to clean apartment?

Not that my apartment really needs cleaning, because for a guy I'm pretty phastidious.  In case you are not as hip, or as black, as I am, I took the word "fastidious" and swapped out the f for the ph, which I hear is the way that urban youth roll, which shows only that I am neither hip nor black.  Like you.

I make my bed, even though no one is going to see it but me.  But one can hope.  (Kidding!) To give my bedroom the "lived in" look, I sometimes leave a pair of jeans artfully draped.  If you looked really close, or used the before-mentioned sniff test, you'd know that those sheets have just been washed, even though I realized that with four beds in my apartment I could just move around and sleep each night in a different one, giving each set of sheets the chance to smoke a cigarette and maybe get a drink before I came back again.

I wash my dishes promptly.  Promptly means "when I wash them".  Given how few dishes I have, it's not like I need to buy stock in Palmolive, although after clicking on this link I realize how much fun my life is lacking, if it lacks Palmolive.

Yeah, ok, my desk gets a bit sloppy, but I usually clean it when I'm avoiding an important project, or trying to remedy self-loathing, or pointlessly seeking control over the external world, or something, so a bit of mess is just fine with me.

This is all to say that I don't need Sirish to clean my apartment.  He asked me if he could clean it, though, saying he could use the money, and I do earn a ton more than he does.

I'm pretty egalitarian, and I'm uncomfortable with social distinctions.  I try not to suck up to those who might think they are higher on the food chain than me.  I don't think any tasks are beneath me.  Like Jimmy Carter, I carry my own luggage, although it really did look stupid for The President to be hauling a Samsonite.  I didn't say I was completely egalitarian.  But then again maybe Carter was just messing with us.  As you might remember, if you have been reading this blog, and if you have not I strongly encourage you to start from the beginning, because what you think it's easy to write like this?, at first I resisted having a Tea Boy bring me coffee, until I got over it.  My instinct is to be self reliant, and to clean my own apartment.

So, of course, I told Sirish:

Sure.

How much do you charge?

At this point, the economists among us -- if there are not any, you should recruit five or so, to get at least five if not more economic perspectives -- would probably assume that Sirish would ask for as much as he thought he could get, I would offer as little as I thought possible, and we would negotiate some mutually agreeable number.  Because there are lots of potential cleaners here, that price would be pretty low.

That's not at all the way it worked.  Sirish said "Pay me whatever you want."  Rather than thinking how hard I could screw the proletariat, and by that I mean my fellow human of integrity, I asked someone in my office "How much should I pay him?"

I was told: 50QR, plus cab fare for him to get home, for 2 hours of cleaning.

That's what I told him I would pay, and he accepted.

Perspective #1: That's about $6.75 an hour, you cheap ass douche bag.

Perspective #2: Sirish is paid about $1.75 an hour to serve coffee, and you are offering him 3.5 times as much, you munificent saint! Besides, really, I could clean the apartment in about 20 minutes, since it basically needed light dusting.

Later, I told one of my colleagues about our arrangement and he said "Mark, 50QR is a little light (you cheap ass douche bag). You should offer him 75QR."

The next day, I gave Sirish 25QR more, thanking him for his good work.

Here's where it gets interesting, so prepare to start getting interested.

Sirish says: "I clean for professors X and Y, and they pay me 100QR (you cheap ass douche bag)."

My inner egalitarian is now totally spinning, because not only did I underpay him, I underpaid him even when I tried to make up for underpaying him!

When I drove him to my place this past Thursday to clean -- yes, I drove him! And I opened doors for him when we walked to the car! -- I gave him 100QR to clean, another 25QR to make up for the first time, and cab fare.

I tell my colleague about this, glad that now I'm finally being a good, solid, generous, decent human.

My colleague says: "He told you that he's getting paid 100QR? No way.  He just pulled a fast one on you."