Steff and nonsense

Finally made it to the Doha nightclub that I've been hearing so much about. People who'd been once have told me they'd never go near it again, and others saying that it was sleezy and horrible, and one lass had even had her hair licked!
I thought it was going to be the darkest, dingiest place I'd ever seen, with sticky carpets and a smell that would make grown men cry, but I couldn't have been more wrong. It was a large, white, brightly lit building, a bit like dancing in the huge Kew Gardens Greenhouse, but without so many plants.
I think I caught it on a subdued night, as it was bizzare rather than repulsive, and I couldn't help feeling cheated as I left - I didn't see any hair-licking at all!

This isn't what I bargained for...it's cloudy, cold and wet!
Call yourself a desert.
Obviously my idea of being cold has now changed somewhat. I know England's seeing top temperatures of about 10 degrees, and you're calling it mild, but I don't live there anymore. I put up with a tonne of sand creeping into every nook and cranny, I don't expect that sand to get wet.
I will be keeping a very close eye on the weather this year, and if there too many more days like this, I'll be having words.

If you're feeling nostalgic and miss older technology, then you should come here. Cassettes are alive! They're still sold, they're still listened to - it's brilliant...except I threw all my tapes away years ago.
If you hire a car, it'll have a cassette player, even if you buy a new car it'll come with a cassette player. The weird thing is that it'll also come with a fire extinguisher. How reassuring.

We did it - Al Jazeera English is on air.
We went live at 12z yesterday, which was 3pm our time. As you can imagine, things were quite stressful before in the run up, but it all went really well. I did myself proud - and by that I mean I didn't fall over or drop my clicker.
We went out for a few drinks afterwards, but drinking here is quite difficult. I don't mean the actual consumption of alcohol is a problem, more that the hangovers are particularly hairy. I'm going to have to find a new pass-time.

I nearly have my residence visa!
Ok, ok, I'm exaggerating, but we're definitely on the right track.
Last week I was taken for a chest x-ray and had about a pint of blood taken. Today I went on an exciting expedition to the Criminal Investigations Department to have my fingerprints taken.
Until recently the fingerprints were done with ink, and it all got very messy. Now though, they've updated the process, it's now computerised and takes 4 times as long. Still, I jumped the queue as I was a girl (that's what I like to hear), then onto part II, having my blood group investigated.
Off I went to a hospital and the nurse jabbed my finger with a pin. She tried to get 8 drops of blood onto a glass slide. Unfortunately it turns out that I have no blood left after they took so much last week so she tried crushing my finger. When that didn't work, she ended up sort of 'milking it'.
Now, with an aching finger, no blood, but not covered in ink, I just wait for my residence permit to turn up. Once I get that I can do things like...erm...well, I can carry around a lovely card saying 'Residence'.
And at the general speed that things happen around here, I should get that form in about March. 2009.

I hear it's freezing in England...nice and toasty here! In fact, I think I'll go to the beach tomorrow. In one of the hotels there's a bar in the swimming pool, so I need to check that out.
Tomorrow is also likely to be the day I get terribly lost; my hire car turned up today. The driving here is absolutely terrifying, everyone drives like mad things. Also it doesn't help that the Asian Games are about to start, so there's lot of building going on and they keep closing the roads. After they finally finish digging up one section of road, it'll reopen for about 5 minutes before they realise they forgot a pipe or something, then they'll dig it up again.
The other fun caused by the Asian Games is the backlog of cargo at the port and the airport. They just can't cope with the amount of stuff that's turning up. So in the 3 weeks that my belongings have been in transit, they've made it all the way to...Wembley.
At this rate they'll turn up here just in time for the end of my contract, ready for me to send them all the way back again.