Happy Saturday Everyone!
For today’s blog entry I thought a “life update” would be good – we have been here for over three months now – can you believe it? I can’t. I still feel like I learn something new every day. It has been the most wonderful and the hardest three months of our personal and professional lives. In this update I plan to share it all – the good, the bad and the ugly (so to speak).
Let’s start with settling in…
Big C did get his Family Visit Visa in the end and after the formalities of the medical and the fingerprints, he received the coveted and essential “ID Card”. The worries of him having to leave the country every three months, etc are over.
The villa has turned into an absolute nightmare. The drive to work is awful and the longer we live in the villa we realize how badly it is falling apart. The water pressure doesn’t work properly. Of the three bathrooms – one toilet doesn’t work and one has this horrible stench that neither drain cleaning products, bleach tabs or high strength cleaner can fix. The paint is falling off the ceiling and onto to our stuff. The yard is a dirty, dusty desert wasteland. We go through one can of ant killer per week as the house is infested with ants – and – apparently small mites (in the kitchen, on the counters!) and based on a hole in my new Banana Republic sweater, quite possible moths as well.
When I found the almost microscopic mites on my cutting board one day – I lost it. I cleaned and sprayed every surface and let me assure you – we already keep that kitchen because of the ants. It is swept daily and mopped every other day with highly concentrated water & floor cleaner. So the mites were a serious setback but as we have learned, they can be common in Doha in older houses. The sealant/grout has separate from the counter seams so likely some food & water has gone down the cracks and is “helping” our ant and mite issue.
We don’t have TV or ADSL internet so we are paying a fortune for mobile broadband internet. But, we have Blackberries now and the connectivity with the world has made us both feel better.
Friends/Food/Fun
We have managed to keep ourselves busy since the film festival ended and are back into the swing of meeting new people and also spending time with our friends F&R. I went to the “After Work Networking” event with QPWN and also attended a “book swap”. Both occasions I met some really lovely new people We organized a night out at the Intercontinental hotel – dinner at a seedy (but decent food) Mexican restaurant and then dancing to the 80s&90s disco on the beach (complete with super cheesy cover band!). Again, friends of friends of friends came and we had a good group – felt almost normal that night.
Big C is enjoying his weekly golf (he even wins a few riyals here and there) and really enjoying his scuba course. He has finished the theory class and passed the exam (yay!) and is now on his way to completing his five open water dives before he is certified. He is actually out doing two of the dives today…first two open water dives (not in a pool) ever. I am anxious to hear how he is.
We are enjoying trying new food – last night we went to a vegetarian Indian restaurant recommended by two (Indian) co-workers. We were the only non-Indian people in there – and the food was great! A slight language barrier somehow resulted in us getting served our first course in the restaurant and our second course was delivered to us “to-go” but that just added to the fun! I think my new favourite Indian dish is Masala Dosa.
I have also enjoyed experimenting with some new recipes of late – trying to alter our cooking style to align with the types of local ingredients. Good lettuce of any sort is hard to find and even harder to keep, so I have tried two rice salad recipes and one quinoa salad recipe – all three have proved to be yummy! Tonight we are doing greek marinated chicken skewers with homemade cucumber sauce so we will see how that turns out!
Job Hunting & Work
Still no permanent job for C, and his job hunting effort has slowed between the two week position with the film festival and another temporary role helping out a guy who is starting a business here in Qatar. There are about three new “leads” on jobs, but this is the second round of “leads” and the first four failed to materialize into anything, so we are trying to be only cautiously optimistic about these new ones. The hope is that he will have something by Christmas time.
Work for me has been the hardest three months of my professional career. I was asked yesterday if, looking back, would I do this again? I have to admit, my answer was “I don’t know”. Work has been an incredible challenge. On Thursday of last week I sat down with my Manager and my Team Lead to share my insights from “three months”. This is a typical thing to do I guess. While I kept my insights focused mainly on areas where I thought I could help the Contracts team , I did ask my two bosses if they would now give me three months to show them what I can do. I gave the affiliate three months to learn and now I would like to be given the flexibility to do my job for a few months. What I was really asking was for my manager to stop micromanaging me and for my team lead to realize that my skills are beyond cutting and pasting and administrative duties. Somehow the meeting took a tragic turn from there and turned into an hour and half of their “constructive criticisms” for me. Now, because of when my manager arrived and the vacation that my team lead took when I arrived, they have actually only worked with me for two months. Neither one of them has ever asked anything about me – my experience, what I did in the affiliate in Canada, education, etc. So I was quite surprised they had passed judgement so soon with so little information.
What they said hurt. It hurt a lot. It wrecked my weekend but after two days of thinking about it, I have realized a few things. The first is that I knew I wasn’t settling in to work as well as I had hoped. I thought it would be easier and it hasn’t been. So deep down I know I need to “adjust” how I am coping and settling in. I was (and still am) shocked at the state of my department. The second thing I realized is that yes, constructive (and it wasn’t delivered constructively) criticisms do hurt. Especially when they are given and not related to any work examples. It is hard not to take that personally. But I must try to not take their comments personally and instead take them for what they are. Therefore, I must work to improve – regardless of how I feel.
The comments weren’t job specific – I would have preferred things like – you need to work on negotiations or you need to work on your understanding of clauses, etc.
No, these comments about me. As a person at work.
Truthfully, the comments from my manager weren’t as bad. They were at least related to examples and therefore I have a clearer idea of where I need to work on things. Definitely the “advice” that followed them was incredibly patronizing, but what can you do?
However, I have suspected for a while that my team lead has found my arrival “unsettling” and the comments from him were offside and I believed delivered to make himself look good in front of the boss. He wasn’t able to give an example and some of the comments were so ridiculous that it took a lot of effort not to laugh or retaliate. But, regardless of what I think of the person who delivered the comments, I must respect that the comments were made and work towards improvement.
It hurts to be criticized but I must be professional about them and I must use this opportunity to grow and improve.
Overall Update?
I guess this turned out to be a long blog post. How do I summarize? Well, right now I am 50/50.
Half of me really likes Doha and Qatar – the weather is great, there are some very interesting things to do and we are meeting some really amazing people.
The other half of me is starting to really dislike my job and I am deadly homesick. I miss my friends and family so much these days. I also wish C had a job as I think he would be happier then.
BUT – we must be resilient and we shall prevail. We only get one shot at life and it would have been very easy to stay at home and go about life as it was. But we didn’t make that choice. We chose this adventure and I know that we will make the most of it.
For today’s blog entry I thought a “life update” would be good – we have been here for over three months now – can you believe it? I can’t. I still feel like I learn something new every day. It has been the most wonderful and the hardest three months of our personal and professional lives. In this update I plan to share it all – the good, the bad and the ugly (so to speak).
Let’s start with settling in…
Big C did get his Family Visit Visa in the end and after the formalities of the medical and the fingerprints, he received the coveted and essential “ID Card”. The worries of him having to leave the country every three months, etc are over.
The villa has turned into an absolute nightmare. The drive to work is awful and the longer we live in the villa we realize how badly it is falling apart. The water pressure doesn’t work properly. Of the three bathrooms – one toilet doesn’t work and one has this horrible stench that neither drain cleaning products, bleach tabs or high strength cleaner can fix. The paint is falling off the ceiling and onto to our stuff. The yard is a dirty, dusty desert wasteland. We go through one can of ant killer per week as the house is infested with ants – and – apparently small mites (in the kitchen, on the counters!) and based on a hole in my new Banana Republic sweater, quite possible moths as well.
When I found the almost microscopic mites on my cutting board one day – I lost it. I cleaned and sprayed every surface and let me assure you – we already keep that kitchen because of the ants. It is swept daily and mopped every other day with highly concentrated water & floor cleaner. So the mites were a serious setback but as we have learned, they can be common in Doha in older houses. The sealant/grout has separate from the counter seams so likely some food & water has gone down the cracks and is “helping” our ant and mite issue.
We don’t have TV or ADSL internet so we are paying a fortune for mobile broadband internet. But, we have Blackberries now and the connectivity with the world has made us both feel better.
Friends/Food/Fun
We have managed to keep ourselves busy since the film festival ended and are back into the swing of meeting new people and also spending time with our friends F&R. I went to the “After Work Networking” event with QPWN and also attended a “book swap”. Both occasions I met some really lovely new people We organized a night out at the Intercontinental hotel – dinner at a seedy (but decent food) Mexican restaurant and then dancing to the 80s&90s disco on the beach (complete with super cheesy cover band!). Again, friends of friends of friends came and we had a good group – felt almost normal that night.
Big C is enjoying his weekly golf (he even wins a few riyals here and there) and really enjoying his scuba course. He has finished the theory class and passed the exam (yay!) and is now on his way to completing his five open water dives before he is certified. He is actually out doing two of the dives today…first two open water dives (not in a pool) ever. I am anxious to hear how he is.
We are enjoying trying new food – last night we went to a vegetarian Indian restaurant recommended by two (Indian) co-workers. We were the only non-Indian people in there – and the food was great! A slight language barrier somehow resulted in us getting served our first course in the restaurant and our second course was delivered to us “to-go” but that just added to the fun! I think my new favourite Indian dish is Masala Dosa.
I have also enjoyed experimenting with some new recipes of late – trying to alter our cooking style to align with the types of local ingredients. Good lettuce of any sort is hard to find and even harder to keep, so I have tried two rice salad recipes and one quinoa salad recipe – all three have proved to be yummy! Tonight we are doing greek marinated chicken skewers with homemade cucumber sauce so we will see how that turns out!
Job Hunting & Work
Still no permanent job for C, and his job hunting effort has slowed between the two week position with the film festival and another temporary role helping out a guy who is starting a business here in Qatar. There are about three new “leads” on jobs, but this is the second round of “leads” and the first four failed to materialize into anything, so we are trying to be only cautiously optimistic about these new ones. The hope is that he will have something by Christmas time.
Work for me has been the hardest three months of my professional career. I was asked yesterday if, looking back, would I do this again? I have to admit, my answer was “I don’t know”. Work has been an incredible challenge. On Thursday of last week I sat down with my Manager and my Team Lead to share my insights from “three months”. This is a typical thing to do I guess. While I kept my insights focused mainly on areas where I thought I could help the Contracts team , I did ask my two bosses if they would now give me three months to show them what I can do. I gave the affiliate three months to learn and now I would like to be given the flexibility to do my job for a few months. What I was really asking was for my manager to stop micromanaging me and for my team lead to realize that my skills are beyond cutting and pasting and administrative duties. Somehow the meeting took a tragic turn from there and turned into an hour and half of their “constructive criticisms” for me. Now, because of when my manager arrived and the vacation that my team lead took when I arrived, they have actually only worked with me for two months. Neither one of them has ever asked anything about me – my experience, what I did in the affiliate in Canada, education, etc. So I was quite surprised they had passed judgement so soon with so little information.
What they said hurt. It hurt a lot. It wrecked my weekend but after two days of thinking about it, I have realized a few things. The first is that I knew I wasn’t settling in to work as well as I had hoped. I thought it would be easier and it hasn’t been. So deep down I know I need to “adjust” how I am coping and settling in. I was (and still am) shocked at the state of my department. The second thing I realized is that yes, constructive (and it wasn’t delivered constructively) criticisms do hurt. Especially when they are given and not related to any work examples. It is hard not to take that personally. But I must try to not take their comments personally and instead take them for what they are. Therefore, I must work to improve – regardless of how I feel.
The comments weren’t job specific – I would have preferred things like – you need to work on negotiations or you need to work on your understanding of clauses, etc.
No, these comments about me. As a person at work.
Truthfully, the comments from my manager weren’t as bad. They were at least related to examples and therefore I have a clearer idea of where I need to work on things. Definitely the “advice” that followed them was incredibly patronizing, but what can you do?
However, I have suspected for a while that my team lead has found my arrival “unsettling” and the comments from him were offside and I believed delivered to make himself look good in front of the boss. He wasn’t able to give an example and some of the comments were so ridiculous that it took a lot of effort not to laugh or retaliate. But, regardless of what I think of the person who delivered the comments, I must respect that the comments were made and work towards improvement.
It hurts to be criticized but I must be professional about them and I must use this opportunity to grow and improve.
Overall Update?
I guess this turned out to be a long blog post. How do I summarize? Well, right now I am 50/50.
Half of me really likes Doha and Qatar – the weather is great, there are some very interesting things to do and we are meeting some really amazing people.
The other half of me is starting to really dislike my job and I am deadly homesick. I miss my friends and family so much these days. I also wish C had a job as I think he would be happier then.
BUT – we must be resilient and we shall prevail. We only get one shot at life and it would have been very easy to stay at home and go about life as it was. But we didn’t make that choice. We chose this adventure and I know that we will make the most of it.
Hey Jen,
ReplyDeleteI'm so sorry things at work are shitty. My best guess is that us Canadian women can be quite loud, outgoing and some cultures even see us as pushy. I even felt that in the 5 days of meetings I had at headquarters. A couple of people even made the comment that I was loud. So, my guess is that can probably be intimidating to those not used out our strong Canadian girl personalities, and in return try to bring you down a bit to make themselves feel more powerful. You should almost take it as a compliment that you have that level of impact on someone. That being said, I can understand how it must have hurt. I hate critism, even in the most constructive way. I'm not sure what other advice to give other than focus on the great things that have been happening, and when you leave work, leave work. Not in our nature, but it might be time to punch the clock so to speak.
As for the bugs, we had the same thing when we lived in Mexico. It also grossed me out and a couple of times we even almost choked ourselves on the bug sprays, while the bugs ran around with big smiles on their faces. ha ha. Something that worked for us, is we put hangers on the wall and hung our bread, bananas, and had a hanging basket for our fruit.
On a final note, thank you for your honesty in these posts. I am truly reading them and Cory and I discuss every other day and the whole time we were in Paris what we would do if we were given the opportunity. The answer is still up in the air. Reading your posts, both the positive and negative, really give us a little more meat to our conversations.
On a side note: Cory said that if you get me a posting in Qatar, him and Big C could just golf together and let the women go to work. ha ha, that would be funny, the women go to work while the Big C's golf, do the groceries and ensure dinner is on the table. Not a bad idea. ;)
Take care and keep posting!
Erica
Hi Jen:
ReplyDeleteI stumbled onto your blog – reading Canadians in Qatar tweets – and felt a bit compelled to reply after reading your most recent post.
My husband and I spent three years here in 2005, returned to Canada for about two years, and about 4 months ago came back to Qatar. I can relate to some of your challenges. In my opinion, there is a bit of a life cycle associated with living in Qatar (and perhaps any foreign land). My husband and I joke that we can tell how long someone has been here by watching them. For the first month or two there is complete euphoria. The tax-free income, travel opportunities, overall diversity and bragging rights that come with saying you’re doing something that most only dream about results in a very distinctive perma-grin. You are determined to do and see everything.
Then the shock and distress set in. You struggle with the reality that your passport affords you benefits that many of Qatar’s other new residents can only dream about (namely disproportionally higher income), and the traffic, inability to walk anywhere, constant household maintenance issues and general personal and professional limitation become very evident, and at times overwhelming.
Then comes either anger or desperation. You find yourself freaking out if someone cuts in front of you at a queue, or even if you can’t find your favourite breakfast cereal - or have to pay $15 for it. You realise that stereotyping isn’t a negative thing, as you can save yourself a lot of time, effort and stress when you understand some of the standardizations. But then you feel guilty about doing it. You find yourself in an almost constant state of anger and/or depression as you start to romanticize things at home. ‘This would never happen in Canada,’ becomes a staple of everyday conversation. You start questioning if you’d made the biggest mistake of your life. This is usually the catalyst for your next decision - to move back home, or to embrace all the benefits of living here, and learn to accept the shortcoming.
Regarding ‘constructive criticism’ from your superior - I think your decision to not dwell is smart. A client once voiced his displeasure with me because I use a driver, vs. drive myself. I still don’t understand that comment. In my experience there is a lot of face-saving behaviour that happens here. Things are rarely what they seem, and people rarely say what they mean. You’ll drive yourself insane if you try to rationalise, or even understand, what someone really means.
All that said; try not to listen too much to what other people tell you – including my unsolicited advice! If you want to feel frustrated, feel frustrated. If you want to feel sorry for yourself, go ahead. Just try not to dwell – expat life can be difficult, but it can also be very rewarding. Bottom line, you can always go back if things don’t work out. And, you can always come back here if things in Canada don’t work out. You have choices and don’t let yourself feel trapped.
Kelly