A Sad Farewell

Back in Doha after a visit to the U.S.A., where I participated in a lobbying effort in Washington before heading to New England to pack up some things at my parents, who are on the verge of retiring and selling the house they have lived in for the past 20 odd years. All of that went according to plan, but unplanned was the sad yet somehow fortunately timed demise of the second of two cats I left in their care when I left the USA 13 years ago.

Although they were litter-mates, Spike and Spud had very different personalities, and although my ex-girlfriend and I named them before we had a real sense of their characters, time proved both of them to be appropriately named. Spud was the gentle, affectionate smaller one, whereas as Spike was the independent, assertive one that dictated the terms of his relationship with his owners from the very beginning. Not long after bringing him home from the shelter, we learned that failing to rise promptly at six and immediately tend to his empty food dish was to risk having him tunnel his way under the covers until he found an adequately sensitive area of flesh to nibble on until you understood that whether you fed him or not, you weren't going to get any more sleep.

Spike in healthier, happier days

Spud died a few years ago after developing a carcinoma in reaction to a feline leukemia shot, but Spike carried on, despite his significantly overweight 10 kg bulk. In December, my mother emailed me let me know that his health was deteriorating, but after a few weeks he rallied and regained his energy and appetite. Then, as I walking up 24th Street in Washington last week, on my way back from a day of meetings on the Hill to my hotel in the west end, my mother called to tell me he had taken a sudden turn for the worse, that the vet had drained 90 ml of bloody fluid from his lungs, and that he might expire any day.

I arrived a few days later to find Spike sitting on a towel in his favourite spot, where one of the overhead spotlights in the living room created a warm spot on the floor. His breathing was laboured, and he uncharacteristically was refusing all food. He rarely moved over the next few days, his legs unsteady and clearly exhausted by moving just a few meters. Occaisionally he would drink water, but rarely took any food. But gently stroking his ears or his back still elicited a gentle purring. A couple of days later he emitted a pained yowl, something he would do with increasing frequency until Thursday, when he began complaining almost constantly. He stopped purring in response to my attentions. He was so weak that he was unable to make the trip to his litter box and urinated on the floor. Finally we made the decision to have him put to sleep early Friday morning. Thursday night I spent sleeping on the sofa next to him, stroking him and calming him when his yowling let me know he was suffering.

Saying good-bye, 25 April 2008

I got up early on Friday and finished digging the grave my Dad had started for him the day before, next to the spot where he had laid Spud to rest some years previously. Then it was time. I snapped a few last photos of the two of us, wrapped him in a towel and carried him to the car. Immediately he found reserves of strength, scratching my arm deeply and crying out loudly and repeatedly. As my mother drove towards the vet's clinic, I pleaded with him to calm down and not make it harder on me. Just then my mobile rang; it was my ex-girlfriend, calling to check on him. As I updated her, he cried out again, then emitted a gasp, and was limp. I was grateful that he seemed to be finally resigning himself. I stayed on the phone with my ex- until we pulled into the car park and it occurred to me that he had already expired. It was obvious this was the case as soon as we brought him in and laid him on cold steel examination table. He had collapsed in such a natural position, with his forepaws on my arm and his head resting in the crook of my elbow it felt like he did when he was young, when his trust in me led him to sprawl limply and languidly across my lap. The vet came in and checked for a heartbeat, expressed his condolences and remarked on what a good cat he had been. So Spike died the way he lived – in his own time and on his own terms. We took his still-warm body home and laid it in the grave we had dug with two of his cat blankets. My mother stroked his head in farewell and then left me alone to cover him over and spread a blanket of pine needles back over the bare spot of earth. I am mourning him still, but so, so grateful for the 15 years he brightened my life with his unpredictable antics and unique personality.

BlognDog
Doha
26 April 2008

We May be Americans, but We Ain't Stupid...

At least not us Democrats. Okay, at least not most of us Democrats. ALL RIGHT, at least not ALL of us Democrats!

Unbelievable what Hilary has just posted on her campaign web site. Yes, I know that things like re-electing George Bush (yes, he did have to cheat, but only a little) and believing that the "surge" was a "success" have led to some rather cynical views about the intelligence of the American electorate, but it is nonetheless shocking to read things like the proposal for bringing the USA out of its deepening, self-inflicted economic crisis that Hilary has just posted on her campaign web-site.

Amongst other key economic milestones the USA has achieved under Bush are:

• for the first time in any nation at any time in the history of human civilisation, having a society in which more than 1% of the population is behind bars
• the emergence of a two-tier society is indicated by a growing divergence in average life expectancy between rich and poor
  
• nearly a third of Americans now live at or near the poverty line
  
• most recently of course, there is the laissez-faire economic policy-driven liquidity crisis , which has directly bankrupted millions of Americans and indirectly led thousands to suicide and other acts of despair
  

Bush, of course, deserves much of blame, but we all know a half-wit like him could not have achieved such a total state of failure on his own. Bush's co-conspirators are well known, but instead of hunting them down and sending them to prison, Hilary proposes that Bush should immediately "appoint an Emergency Working Group on Foreclosures" and that this working group should consist of the very people who got us into this mess in the first place, "eminent leaders like Alan Greenspan, Paul Volcker, and Bob Rubin".

Sure, Hilary, and then we'll ask ExxonMobil to solve the global warming problem, and have a Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice task force to figure out how to end the war in Iraq. And to think nearly half of registered Democrats think she should be President.

BlognDog
Doha
25 March 2008

A Historic Easter in Doha

Last Saturday, I attended consecration ceremonies at the new Our Lady of the Rosary Church here in Doha. Any consecration is of course a special occaision, but this was the first church of any denomination to be built in Qatar in more than 1400 years.

Most states in the Gulf region have had hostile attitudes towards religions other than Islam for some time. In response to diplomatic pressures and the economic realities of needing to rely on an expatriate work-force, most have been gradually loosening these restrictions. Dubai has several large churches, and the Catholic and other churches have been operating more or less freely in Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman for some time now. The two Wahabi states, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the State of Qatar, have been the slowest to liberalise. Saudi Arabia continues to forbid the practice of any religion other than Islam, and priests who serve in the active underground church community there are subject to detention, torture and expulsion. As it is has in so many other areas, Qatar has dealt with the issue by trying to have it both ways. Churches have been formally banned, but buildings such as the shed-like structure I have been going to every Sunday for the past few months for Mass are ignored, with the understanding that the church does nothing to draw attention to them. Now the Emir has decided to take a step forward, and he has made a gift of land to several congregations so that real churches can be built here for the first time since the arrival of Islam in the 7th century (which of course in the Islamic calendar is the 1st century). My own Catholic church was the first, but it is to be followed by Anglican, Coptic and Orthodox churches, and an Indian church to be shared by 11 different Indian denominations.

This does not, however, mean the end of Qatar's tradition of ambivalence on this and other issues. As is the case elsewhere in the region, no overtly religious symbols – such as crosses – are permitted on the exterior, as are bells and steeples. Additionally, the land the Emir so generously gifted is a half hour drive outside of Doha, in the middle of flat, stony desert area it shares with petroleum storage tanks and power substations. You can see the church on the horizon in the photo below.
Although the church is finished, the road leading to it and the car park are not. The last 500 meters of the drive there was over rough, stony ground that was harder to drive on than the off-road desert tracks I've been cruising around on the weekends. The "car park" was just an area of field that some half-hearted effort had been made to remove the larger boulders from.

If all these things are not enough to discourage attendance, it has been reported that muslim extremist web-sites have made threats against the new church, if warnings provided by the American, British and Australian embassies are to be believed. (The Brits and the Australians have subsequently removed their warnings pertaining to the church).

All of this aside, it was a beautiful, if long (four hours) ceremony. I was exceptionally fortunate in getting a place to sit – thousands stood through the entire thing, including 2000 who were only able to watch it outside on giant video screens. I stood for the first half-hour or so, but one of the features of the ceremony – the "parade of nations," in which representatives from the 70-odd nationalities represented amongst the parishoners entered the church behind their national flags – resulted in the organisers reserving more seats than needed near the front, and once that part of the ceremony was over I was able to take one of the reserved seats for myself.

This must have been about 90 minutes into the 4-hour long consecration ceremony

The highlight of the ceremony was the depositing of the "relics" of Saint Padre Pio da Pietrelcina, a Capuchin monk who died in 1968 after spontaneously developing cruxifiction-type bleeding wounds on his hands and feet, into a reliquary built into the church's altar. None of the official material on the church or the ceremony have been terribly explicit about the nature of these relics. All that I can say is that when the presiding Bishop held the relics aloft and announced that he was about to place them in the altar, I couldn't really see anything, although I was sitting fairly close. Whatever parts they were, I think it's safe to say that the Vatican sent the better bits, such as his skull or femur, off to some other, more important church.

A happy and blessed Easter to all.

BlognDog
Doha
23 March 2008

Coincidence?

As Hillary's campaign failed to falter on schedule on 4th March, I have been deprived (temporarily, of course) of my rightful opportunity to gloat over her loss. So Nomadicity therefore has nothing to add to the discussion over the Democratic race.

We have, however, observed something about the Republicans that is so readily apparent to us it is baffling that no other commentators that we are aware of have picked up on it. Unlike the other candidate's spouses – who have been highly visible – John McCain's wife, Cindy, never caught our attention until photos of her dutifully standing by her man were splashed across front pages following rumours of an affair between John and a 40-something lobbyist.

Cindy McCain

Am I the only one to notice that she and Laura Bush both look like escapees from the set of the Stepford Wives? Is this a coincidence, or is it officially mandated policy of the Republican Party that all first ladies must conform to this standard?

Laura Bush

I'm not trying to be a conspiracy-monger -- but have a look at Paula Prentiss from the original 1975 Stepford Wives film and judge for yourself.

Paula Prentiss

I'm taking a welcome break from the stifling morality of Doha, spending some time in the anti-Doha, Prague, where pork, alcohol and provocatively dressed women are found in abundance. My former regular Prague hang-out, Square, has been converted to what the manager proudly described to me a few minutes ago as "the first Starbucks in Central Europe." I was further informed that Poland is next on their list, but as yet still no plans for Sweden. Not that I feel deprived.

BlognDog
Prague
6 March 2008

Souk on This

After many months here in Doha, I am finally managing to find some things to see and do here besides complaining about the lack of things to see and do. One recent find was Doha's old souk. It's no competitor with Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, but amongst Doha's sterile forest of glass-façaded skyscrapers, I discovered Souk Wafiq, one of the few surviving fragments of old Doha. It's old character has not been destroyed by updating its shops and facilities to serve contemporary needs, but neither has its vibrancy been choked by well-intentioned but misguided attempts at "preservation", thus avoiding an artifical, Disney-esque result. Pavements, lighting, and ventilation have been upgraded; historical elements have been preserved, and its clear that obviously incongruous shops (such as computer retailers) have been kept out, but otherwise it's an ongoing commercial enterprise, with merchants selling spices, supplies, desert and maritime gear, jewelry, clothing, antiques, artwork, furniture and carpets. So often living in the Middle East imparts a sense of despair that Arab society is incapable of basic competency, but every so often something like Al Jazeera broadcasting or the Doha souk comes along to provide a bit of hope. Following are a few shots I took whilst wandering around on a quiet Saturday afternoon.







In addition to the souk itself, there are a few blocks of traditional homes around the souk area that have been carefully preserved, and even a traditional mud-plastered fortified tower (that no doubt once represented the bulk of Qatar's defence expenditure) has been retained.

And if you're worn out by a day of haggling and carrying around your purchases, at the end of the souk a cluster of cafés and restaurants – Turkish, Moroccan, Egyptian and Lebanese – stand ready to serve up a meal in traditional surroundings.

BlognDog
Doha
16 February 2008

London Crack Whores

One of the few diversions I have in Doha's immorality-free environment is spending a few hours at the hotel's fitness centre, vainly trying to burn off the extra kilos I've piled on in the course of pursuing my only other diversion, namely, stuffing my face at the hotel's breakfast, lunch and dinner buffets.

The fitness centre -- or "spa" as they refer to it -- here at the Four Seasons is definitely the most lavish facility I've ever graced with my grotty work-out outfits and flabby physique. The whole place positively reeks of luxury from the moment you are greeted at the reception by the appropriately fit-looking staff. There are a number of water features, starting with a vertical cascade down ridged ceramic panels at the entrance, which creates a soothing, mountain stream kind of sound. Moving past the reception area, another oval fountain lined with river stones stands in front of an incredible backlit golden agate panel.

This wall was created from thinly sliced pieces of back-lit, translucent golden agate

Here's another view showing the small fountain in front. My simple camera phone snaps don't do it justice.

It all is very effective. The stunning visual effects, combined with the soothing sound of gurgling water, the relaxing new age ambient music and the scent of the aromatherapy oils in the air do combine to quickly put you in mellow, relaxed frame of mind. Downstairs – where you find the changing rooms, plunge pools, thalossotherapy baths, massage rooms, sauna, steam room, ice room, Swiss showers, and other facilities – there are some additional water features. In the massage area is huge bubbling baptismal font looking thing, and surrounding the main reception area (where they assign you your locker key and offer you a refreshing glass of honey lemonade after your massage or workout to restore your body's electrolyte balance) is an artificial stream that makes a pleasant babbling-brook type sound as it passes over the white river stones that line its bed. Until recently, you could actually hear that sound, but over Christmas, they installed tempered glass panels over the water channels, so that you no longer really hear it. And since the water condenses on the inside of the glass, you don't really see it either.

Here's a view of the glass-covered water channels that line the walls of the reception area the passage leading to the pool and thalossotherapy areas

A detail showing the glass covers that have been installed over the water channels

Many of you are probably wondering why they installed these panels, since the designer's objective is obvious – create a striking visual feature and the soothing, natural sound of rushing water. Those of you who are not baffled by this probably, like me, saw some of the recent news coverage concerning the numerous injuries that have been sustained by visitors to London's Tate Modern Gallery, which has recently installed a new work titled "Shibboleth" by Colombian artist Doris Salcedo in the museum's Turbine Hall. The work basically consists of a giant crack in the floor, which Salcedo says symbolises "racial hatred and division in society". I think that she secretly has meant it to symbolise the huge gap that separates most people from intelligence and awareness, since numerous art lovers have managed to hurt themselves by tripping on or falling into this crack in the floor since the piece was opened to the public this past October.

View of "Shibboleth" in the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall

Just contemplate this for a minute. These are people who have taken time out of their busy lives expressly for the purpose of going to the Tate Modern for one reason -- so that they can look at a crack in the floor. Yet there is no escaping the conclusion that if people are managing to hurt themsleves on this exhibit, it can mean only one thing – they weren't looking. But what else can you do in the Turbine Hall besides look at this exhibit? It's not as if museum officials allow or encourage visitors to, for example, bring their ironing or reorganise their recipe collections whilst they are in the hall. Like the Four Seasons, Tate Modern officials considered covering Shibboleth with perspex panels. So without bothering to ask for confirmation of my suspicions from the staff at the Four Seasons spa, I think its safe to conclude that some moron has managed to hurt themselves on this water feature, and the Four Seasons lawyers have decreed that rather than banishing this idiot to the specially designated area that has been created for such morons on an island in the Bering Sea, the spa should instead totally ruin the inspired vision of the designer by completely neutralising the whole concept with some silly glass panels. It's a frustrating state of affairs, but it does go a long way towards explaining Bush's re-election in 2004.

BlognDog
Doha
25 January 2008

Benvenuto La Macchina

There is a logical explanation (or if you prefer, a lame excuse) for the subdued level of activity at Nomadicity over the past few weeks. Since mid-October most of my free time has been occupied with the complicated task of migrating from the Windows world over to the Mac platform. Yes, I know that Apple has an optimisticly worded web page that explains how simple it all is. In technical terms, they are big fat liars. The complexity was not entirely unexpected – I originally moved from the PC to the Mac environment shortly after Macs were first introduced in 1984. From that time, I was a big advocate of the platform, but when I moved to Poland in 1997, Mac support in the country was limited and my company gave me a Windows™ laptop for free (Resistence is futile! Lower your shields and prepare to be assimilated!). In those pre-WiFi, pre-magsafe days I was living in a flat with a phone jack on one side of the room and a power point on the other. So I had a choice – have a phone line snaking across the floor towards the power point, or have a power cord snaking across the floor towards the phone jack. One day the inevitable happened – I tripped over the cord and my mac laptop came crashing to the tile floor, breaking the LCD panel. So from that point on, I've been resigned to being a part of the global Windows®™© empire, patiently enduring an endless series of hangs, crashes, freezes, blue screens of death, viruses, trojans, spam, malware, adware, spyware, obtuse error messages, the cheerfully obnoxious Office®™ "assistant", and "wizards" more evil than anything JK Rowling ever dreamed up. After losing my job in 2002 and going freelance, I no longer had a company IT manager standing between me and a Mac, so when it came time to buy a new laptop in 2004 I came within a panther's whisker of doing so. But my business partner, who was hoping to maximise the discount we could get by buying several Dell machines together, planted doubts about system and platform incompatibilities in my mind, and in the end I chickened out. I almost did so again this time to – I actually prepared an order for a high-spec Fujitsu-Siemens machine with built-in HSDPSA from a local supplier in Stockholm earlier this year, but this time I had the good fortune to be working with several consultants who were Mac users and found that most of my compatibility concerns were unfounded. Printing on an office LAN, file and folder sharing, and even connecting to an Exchange®℠™®© server all apparently work reasonably well. This was also about the time all the Windows©®™®℠ Vista℠®©™® horror stories began to appear in the media. So, this past October I took the plunge.

It was a pretty deep plunge at that, at just over 40 thousand Swedish crowns for a MacBook Pro, software, extended warranty, etc. I must say that the initial impression did not disappoint in the least – judging from the packaging alone, Apple clearly deserves much of the hype it generates. The attention to detail and concern for æsthetics were obvious the instant I had the elegant black box in my hands. Inside, under a thoughtfully designed and implausibly attractive protective foam panel that precisely balanced the competing needs for protection, bulk, and weight, sat the laptop itself, and underneath, nestling in a sort of little niche that presented and protected it in the way that some holy object might be housed in the temple built to display it, was a elegant little box holding the OS DVD and the instruction manual, with the words "Tutto Mac" emblazoned in a confident, yet unassertive, 24 point dark gray sans-serif font. I thought the Italian was an attempt by some left-coast designer to try to nudge up Apple's cool factor another notch or two, no doubt after being inspired by Starbuck's belief that using the Italian words for coffee with milk somehow makes their drinks cooler. A glance inside the manual, however, revealed that, in fact, the entire manual was in Italian, and I soon learned that it had been delivered with an Italian keyboard as well. Hence, I decided to christen my new machine "La MACchina".

The patient, delicate and time-consuming effort I've gone through over the past few weeks to move everything over to the new environment and get it all working properly has reminded me why "macchina" is a feminine noun in Italian. I'm still fussing with getting the synching with my Palm device and telephones working properly. At various points, I had addresses but not calendars synching, then one phone but not the other, then both phones but not the Palm, then massive duplication of entries, then losing all the entries, then restoring the entries, and finally, as of yesterday, getting the calendars but not the addresses synching. Still some more fussing around to do, I am sure, but am getting close, and now I've finally managed to get Apple to replace the Italian keyboard with a Swedish one, as I originally ordered. I also ordered an English OS, but it arrived in Swedish, and that apparently I am stuck with.

Despite the pain, it's good to be back. Apple has come a long ways since I last used their OS under System 7, at a time when computers were simple enough that I knew what every last file in the System Folder was there for. Systems 8 and 9 have come and gone, and now System X has gone through several feline permutations – Jaguar, Panther, Tiger and now Leopard. Hopefully, they'll name the next one "Tabby".

Speaking of cats, the big news from the USA this week was the escape of a 4-year old, 150 kilo Siberian tiger named "Tatiana" who killed one and injured two at the San Francisco zoo. The police shot her to death, despite the fact that her species has been driven to the brink of extinction by humans, so she wasn't exactly unjustified in scoring a point or two for her own team. But I suppose if I were facing a member of the most powerful feline species in the world, moving towards me with fresh blood dripping from its claws and fangs, I would probably also reach for my police revolver if I had one handy. But I would probably do something else first, without taking the time to locate the nearest litter box to do it in. So if you have cats, it may not be a good idea to be watching the evening news with them in the room if the tiger attack story comes up – they might get ideas. Odds are you are a bit tastier than that dried, re-processed meat flavoured cereal you've been feeding them all these years anyway.

BlognDog
Stockholm
28 December 2007