Time

It has been a while since my last entry into the Blog. I must say that things are really starting to come together for us here in Doha. The furniture is arriving, the new car is in our driveway, and we ate our first home cooked meal since we started this adventure a few short weeks ago.

I know it has only been a few weeks, but it really feels like we have been away for much longer. There are so many things happening all at once and time seems to be flying by. Little J is already starting her third week of work (I am still looking for something).

“Time” here in Doha does feel different. I am not talking about the “time of day”, but just the concept of “time”. I am being introduced to the concept of “tomorrow” everyday. What I mean by this is that everything will happen tomorrow even if you know it will happen two weeks from now. Whoever introduced English to the Middle East should have inserted some meaning behind the words…

Another one of my favorites so far is the Qatari 10 minutes. This could mean 5 minutes, it could mean 20 minutes, or it could (wait for it) mean tomorrow! I am finding that I have used this a couple times already to help combat the sporadic furniture deliveries that say they will be there in the evening and then show up unannounced at 12:00pm. So when I come to meet them at the house, I tell them 10 minutes even though I know it will take me 20 minutes or more (traffic depending) to get back to the house. Little games to keep myself amused whilst I wait.

Don’t get me wrong; the people here are very nice and very accommodating so long as you follow the rules of Qatar. This funny thing, ‘cause all you can do is laugh, is that time has no meaning here. I am sure if you didn’t call people on it, we would still be waiting for “tomorrow”.