Malaysia or Bust

Get excited.  We are going to Malaysia!  Thursday night Jonathon and I hop on a flight to Kuala Lumpur.  It is an eight hour flight, but we are hoping to get some zzzzz on the plane and be ready for an adventure when we arrive.

 

We will spend a couple days in Kuala Lumpur (the cool kids call it KL) and some time on the island Langkawi.  Locations marked with star on the below map. 

 

Hopefully I will be able to update you guys during our trip, but I might be having too much fun to blog.

Spring Fling

Hello Friends,

Happy spring!  It doesn’t really feel like we entered a new season here.  The desert sand didn’t change colors.  The sand is still brown.  I’ll post if that changes.  The weather is getting warmer though.  The AC went out in the office for a day and a half this week.  It was so warm and uncomfortable in the office and I was so incredibly crabby because of it.  At least I wasn’t the sweatiest at the office, but I just kept thinking over and over, “I’m going to die this summer.”  Maybe a little dramatic, but I’m now officially terrified for the summer heat and humidity.

Qatar doesn't observe Daylight Saving Time, so the sun is starting to come up super early.  After my morning run the sun was really high even though it was only 8am.  The sun was higher than my photographer skills depict.

 

BREAKING NEWS: Cue the band please, we are producing oil people.  Thank heavens.

Some of our friends are moving back to Houston.  People are always coming and going here, so I better get used to it but I’m still sad to see our friends leave.  Most of the American’s that live in Qatar are roughly here for a three year rotation.  (I used the word roughly so I don’t jinx anything.)  The majority of the expats in our office are from Scotland or England.  They tend to stick around longer than the Americans for tax breaks.  Americans still pay taxes outside of the US.  We pay taxes to continue to be considered an American citizen.  In England and Scotland, you are only taxed on money earned in the country.  There are lots of people from the U.K. working in the Middle East, because they don’t have to pay taxes.

 March madness is continuing on without us.  I feel so left out.  Poor Jonathon only watches 10 minutes of basketball while eating his breakfast before work.  My boss claims that watching basketball isn’t a reason to skip work.  He also thinks that cricket and rugby are superior sports.  People’s morals are messed up here.  Messed up.

I realized after last weeks post that we haven't discussed the glamorous topic of toilets in the Middle East.  So here we go, at least for the women.  It is a little like being on a game show.  "What's behind door number two?"  When you go into a public restroom (think the mall or grocery stores) and open a stall door you will see one of two options.  There will be a toilet or a hole in the ground.

 

Most public buildings have both options, so if you open the stall door and don't like what you see then you can try the next stall.  You might have also noticed the hose with the shower head in the photos.  Some people use this instead of toilet paper.  Most bathrooms will have a hose and toilet paper.  That is all about that topic for now.

I hope you are all enjoying spring so far.  We are soaking up the nice weather before the heat rolls in.

 

Old Balls

The American School of Doha sponsored a softball tournament this weekend.  The school's girls JV and varsity softball teams played as well as the varsity boys baseball team.  That means that we spent our weekend being beat by 9th graders.  Jonathon hit a double and when he got to 2nd base, the 2nd baseman said, "Good hit sir."  Nothing like feeling old for three straight days in a row.

This is big news people.  Doha has been talking about Ikea coming to town since we moved here six months ago.  It just opened and you better believe we found time between softball games to stuff our faces with Swedish meat balls and meat Shawarma.  Amazing.



We might have purchased a few items too.  That store is tricky.  I challenge you to enter Ikea and not spend a cent.  Impossible.  When we have children we will be visiting Ikea daily to drop them off for some free daycare.  Parents of the year right here.

Don't give up on us yet.  We are working on getting more exciting in the coming weeks.

Jokes and Shiny Metal

Last week was a short post because I did some Insanity video workouts with Jonathon and my arms were too sore to type.  That is also why there weren’t any pictures of me.  If my arms were too sore to type, then you better believe I wasn’t brushing my hair.  You should be thankful that you didn’t have to see me in person.

 

 

 

 

Work = Crazy.  Our platform is currently in a planned shutdown.  Facilities need to take shutdowns to complete maintenance, but that means we aren’t making any oil.  We want to complete the maintenance as quickly as possible so we can start producing oil again.  That really means that work is crazy busy.  You can expect more grammatical errors and typos than normal for the next couple of posts.  Sleep is lacking.

 

Before shutdown craziness, we enjoyed some Chris Tucker’s humor. It was interesting to observe what jokes were funny to different nationalities.  Chris did some jokes about dating and being broke that didn’t get many laughs from the Qataris.  (In Qatar, typically your family picks your husband/wife.)  But, apparently cop jokes are universal.

 

Trouble

 

We also visited the immigration department to get our magical e-gate passes.  These passes allow us to bypass the normal immigration process when exiting and entering Qatar.  Now, we just get our fingerprints scanned by a shiny machine instead of speaking to real people.  Three cheers for less time spent in lines.  Getting the passes was interested.  I pretty much got my fingerprints scanned and then was told to sit in the ladies waiting section while Jonathon filled out the paperwork and paid.  I actually got in trouble for waiting in line with Jonathon and was redirected to the ladies waiting section until all business was final.  Trouble maker right here.

 

 

 

 

I got to unwind with a run in the park this weekend, which lead me to discovering some spaceship restrooms.  After you used the bathroom it automatically cleaned itself.  I need one of these at my house.  Jealous.

That's all for now folks.

Office Supply Artwork

No last minute trips to Europe this week, so here is my weak attempt to entertain you.  I know I get excited easily, but I was pretty impressed with the latest artwork at the mall.  It is made from sticky notes.



 

Shake It Up

We didn’t want to be too predictable, so this week we shook it up and even keep ourselves guessing.  I made my first trip offshore and spent the night at our platform.  It took about 25 minutes by helicopter to reach the platform. 

 

 Source: offshore-technology.com    

Around 4pm on Wednesday, Jonathon learned that he was headed to Brussels, Belgium on the 2am flight for work.  He enjoyed the cold weather for a few minutes, but then his fingers froze and he wasn’t as jealous of our friends in all the glorious snow storms.  He endured the cold and went sightseeing so he could provide these amazing photos for your viewing pleasure.

 

  
 
 

 

 He came back with waffles and chocolate.  My husband is a smart man and knows how to keep me happy.  Who knows what next week will hold for us, but we are looking forward to the possibilities.  We hope you have a great week too.      

Abu Dhabi

Happy belated birthday to Jonna!  We celebrated in your honor all week long.  We hope you had a fun filled birthday.

Last Tuesday, Feb 12^th was a holiday in Qatar.  It was Sport’s Day; a day to promote being active (and decrease obesity).  I support any holiday where we get the day off of work.  We celebrated by sleeping in and going to the beach.  In order to at least say we did something active, we played volleyball, Frisbee, and nerf football (American football, the kind we are too often reminder by the Europeans that you actually play with your hands not your feet).

This past weekend we had a grand time in Abu Dhabi.  Abu Dhabi is located in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and is only a 35 minute plane ride away.  The UAE is a country made up of seven emirates each governed by a different emir.  Think of it as seven different states each having a different governor.  Abu Dhabi and Dubai (where we traveled to in December) are two of the seven emirates.  The two towns are only 80 miles away from Dubai.

(Look who learned to use a photo editor.  This is a real blog now!)  We really enjoyed our time in Abu Dhabi.  We were uber tourists and went on the Big Bus Tour.  It was a great overview of what Abu Dhabi has to offer.

The Emirates Palace Hotel is a seven star hotel and cost about $3 Billion to build.

 

 

 

Chris, these are the building from the article you sent Jonathon. 

We toured the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque main prayer room.  This Grand Mosque is the largest mosque outside of Saudi Arabia.  It can hold 40,000 people.  There is a time block in the morning between prayer times when non-Muslims are able to visit.  We had to remove our shoes and I wore Harry Potter’s invisible cloak.    

 

 

 

 

 

Kelsy Potter

Now that we feel settled, we have the travel bug.  We are looking forward to many grand adventures over the next few years.  We are planning our first large trip to Malaysia in April.