Jolly well forgot to bring the doc for my camera so I can’t post anymore pics today, will have to do it next time. It’s a long hot walk to the internet café and it’s only going to get hotter!

It’s Friday and I have finished my 2 week of work in Doha. The work load is slowly starting to come on and we are getting used to the way things are done around here, slowly and with signatures from all the top notches. Not possible to do anything without the right signature but you have to go to one person who takes it to the next and so on, it takes ages to get anything done. Bec and I are working on the training for the supervisors and the volunteers that will be running the resident centres at the athletes village. There will be over 100 people that we’ll need to train so it’s going to be exciting.

Work is pretty sweet but it’s freezing in the air conditioning, it’s actually not nice most of the time and we have to rug up to go to work while its 45 degrees outside, quite strange brining a jumper to work. They have tea boys who come around throughout the day and make you tea, coffee, frappes and hibiscus tea. They remember what you like too and so by 7:40am I’m at my desk (usually on hotmail for the fist 30 mins so write to me!) and I have a nice cup of tea. There’s also our own little star bucks in the building next door so we are pretty spoiled, although it’s user pays. They also have bank desks, tour and travel agents, rent a car places and anything else we might need so it’s pretty easy to get organised. I thought we would take a while to get everything we needed but they basically have done it all for us.

At the moment we are waiting to get our residents permit. Once we have that we are able to rent a car, get a house and most importantly get our alcohol license! It’s pretty much a dry country but we are lucky that the Qatari people understand the importance of a cold beer on a hot day. So although they don’t usually engage in it themselves they are happy for us to drink in bars and buy alcohol, the amount of which is calculated by a percentage of your wage, but only from 1 shop in the whole country!! And it’s just as well as im not sure how exciting the football would have been otherwise. I have to admit that I have been supporting the Australians in their plight to get into the next round of the world cup, which I can report after a 2-2 draw with Croatia they have. I’m also afraid to admit that as of now I do believe that I have sung their national anthem far more times than I have recited my own. Damn Aussies!!

Quite a funny story…. The fist time a group of us went to the supermarket and went through different aisles to pay I was the only one to come out with two free mugs! So happy was I and how jealous everyone was of my sparkly new Carrefore (name of the supermarket) mugs. The next time we went to the supermarket and went through different aisles again I was handed a ‘free item’ this time a chocolate bar. However when I later examined my receipt I discovered chocolate bar .50 derhams! Robbed. The truth in this case was that the worth of their half dollar is very little so when the bill comes to say QR10.50 they either round it down to 10 or add something to make it 11. Oh well the chocolate bar was really nice, would have paid more for it ;)