My apartment

Welcome to my second posting, everyone! And as the title says, this is going to be about my new apartment. The building I live in was recently given the name of "La Palace 5" and I can attest that it deserves that title :-) The floors have marble tiles on them, the furniture is quite comfortable and the owner really is trying to make the place into something worthy of living in.

To start with, here's what it looks like as you come into my apartment, #204:

This is the dining/living room. To me, it looks like something from a hotel room, but the longer I live here, the more I'll make it my own!

Here are two closer views of the living room. For those who know the TV I had in Montreal, take a good look at what I have now, which also has satellite cable:

As you come into my new home, on the left is the kitchen:

The kitchen is actually large enough to have a small table and chair set, but I prefer the more formal set in the open living area - closer to the flat screen TV ;-)

This is how small the washing machine/dryer combo is:

The drum can hold a bedsheet, a shirt and maybe a couple of pairs of underwear and that's about all! The washer takes about an hour, but the dryer can take up to two hours to get things nearly dry. The longest cycle is the cool down, which lasts forever and can't be skipped if you use the dryer function!

And on the right side when you enter my place, there's the powder room:

I haven't had the chance to make it more welcoming, but I did turn off the bidet water hose function on the side as I've been told by others who've lived here for awhile that the water tank feeding the hose can explode, gushing water all over the place!

There's a hallway leading to the main bathroom, guest bedroom and mistress bedroom. The main bathroom looks like this:

As you can see, there's an actual bidet in the main bathroom, and I've also turned off the water supply to that, just in case! I'm really paranoid about finding a foot of water everywhere in my place when I get home from work...

And this is the bathtub. Can you spot what's missing for the shower?

Maybe it's hard to tell with the door on the right, but there's no shower curtain! It's very hard to find a shower rod that fits this space, as it needs to form an L-shape. There are holes in the walls where another tenant has attached a rod, so it CAN be done. It's just a question of me finding the right shower rod on one of my many shopping trips!

And then there's the guest bedroom. Right now I use it more as a place to hang the laundry and store all the empty boxes from the small appliances I've bought, but if anyone comes to visit, I promise the room will be much nicer than this:

And here's the mistress bedroom. I've made it more personal mostly by casting my jewelry all over the top of the vanity. It actually has a stool! This bedroom is actually much smaller than the guest bedroom, but I prefer that because it's cosier.

And finally, just to prove to you that this is where I'm living, here's me this morning, doing a household chore:

And that's it from me for today. I hope you enjoyed this look at my new home. I will eventually take some photos of the outside area around my apartment building, but for the moment, it's just too hot and humid!! The forecast has been the same every day since I got here: sunny, hot and humid, with a temperature of 43 or 44 degrees celsius, with a humidex of about 50 degrees celsius. So you'll forgive me for not going out into the sunshine just to take photos ;-)

My first days in Doha

Hi there!
I know I promised to start this blog as soon as I could, and this is the time. I've been here for a week now and got a laptop on the weekend, so now I'm good to go.

The flights from Halifax to Doha took forever, it seemed. The flights were great, except for the one from London to Doha when I large family with several young children were seated right in front of me. All was well until near the end of 6.5 hours of the flight, when the kids got antsy and bored... only their cute Cockney accents saved me from doing some disciplining - the parents and cousins seemed oblivious to the noise.

All my luggage (even the one I paid extra to take along) made it all the way with me, which was a miracle. But I knew I wasn't in Canada anymore when my glasses fogged up as I walked from the plane to the bus taking us to the airport terminal. 

The first two days I spent in the Movenpick Hotel, which was heavenly. This was the view from my room window:

It's Ramadan right now, so these tents are set up where people gather to celebrate after sundown, when they break their fast. Apparently the college's HR people are trying to arrange for us to attend one of these celebrations soon. You can see the Corniche in the background, along with the harbour area.

And this is what I saw in one of the corners of my hotel room:

It's to show Muslims which direction Mecca is in! And as it's Ramadan now, it's illegal for anyone to eat, drink or smoke in public from sunup to sundown because devout Muslims fast during that time and we have to be respectful of their observances. So we all have to be very careful about finding a private place to take a sip of water or eat. At the university, they're providing us with an enclosed area where we can't be seen having coffee and lunch during the fasting hours. And Doha is very quiet now compared to what it's usually like... which is chaos on the roads, apparently! Once the Eid holiday is over, I'll get to see the real Doha.


What I have seen during the day is usually filtered through the heat haze. So everything looks like this:

This is the view from my hotel window, looking towards the centre of the city. According to what I've been told, most of these very tall buildings were built only in the past five years. When the college was originially set up here in 2001, there were only a few buildings higher than three storeys.


And that's where I'll end my first blog entry. I hope you enjoyed it and I'll let you know when my next entry is ready for viewing :-)