Momos are Nepali dumplings
What will I miss most about Qatar? Probably the momos. No joke. If you don’t know what a momo is, I highly suggest that in the time of quarantine, you find your local Nepali spot, or if you’re in a pinch, check your Indian options, and order the momos.
People continue to ask: When do you leave?
It’s still June 1st. It remains difficult to move the flight because of how we booked it. We’ve tried. We’ve looked into it. Alas: we’re 24 days out and we're mentally resigned to being here for 24 more days.
Here’s the outline for today’s post.
Short updates about our the last week in Qatar
Maybe an anecdote or two
Some news stories as I get back into the spirit of sharing news
Probably a video
“I should have packed and shipped myself”
We took our own advice and decided to ship another three boxes totaling about 60kg back to the states. I am not sure how people would ever ship things internationally if they didn’t have DHL discounts offering them 70% off. (Thanks Qatar Foundation!) The packages arrived in four days again and my guy Shams at DHL Qatar really helped us out. Most of our apartment is now empty save for the things that we are going to load into the suitcases.
We successfully sold the couch, though I guess we could debate the use of the word “successfully” in that sentence as we took a sizable loss on the couch selling it at about a 75% discounted rate. Then again, we sat on it nearly every day for a year and it was covered in spit up and red wine stains (fun fact that my wife will be sure to dispute as soon as she reads this: you can get a red wine stain out of a couch using a white wine. Seems crazy, but it worked!).
A guy named Jaffar came with two movers. They took the apart the couch in about ten minutes and hauled it away. I threw in two chairs to sweeten the pot, and he bought an iron while he was here. We decided to move the couch for a cheaper price as we feared losing the security deposit if we just left a big couch in the apartment that wasn’t part of the furnishings. Rather eat the cost of the couch than lose the returned Security deposit.
Below you can see a Before:During:After view of our living room.
We were sad to see it go, but hey, we had a good run. Last photo is the first time I sat on it at Ikea.
“What about housing? You were worried about housing.”
Good point reader, I was worried about housing. At the time of publishing last week, I had a pretty good idea where we were going to be, but nothing was finalized. We had talked to a very nice AirBnB host named Debbie in Saint Paul who had a nice furnished place, but ultimately, we found an unfurnished apartment in Minneapolis, closer to my brother, and as they say in real estate: SORRY DEBBIE.
Just kidding. That is not what they say. They say: Location, Location, Location.
So our location, at least for June and July is a 2-bedroom apartment in Minneapolis near a park.
We are currently in the process of trying to outfit the apartment with enough stuff to make it livable but not so much that if we move to, say, Kansas City, we have to hire a moving truck or contact Shams and see if DHL can help. We are in the market for a couch, a bed, and some lights. We don’t need towels because the second wedding anniversary is the Cotton anniversary and we bought each other bathrobes and towels.
Happy Anniversary, Leen. We may not have anything to sit on, but at least we won’t be damp after we shower!
What about jobs? Have you heard that this is not an ideal time to look for work?
A friend of mine asked me about the job hunt the other day and this is what I told him: If Ziprecruiter is to be believed: the only jobs out there are for truck drivers! So maybe I’ll get my CDL and start hauling. I looked into how to become a plumber in the twin cities the other day; a guy named Paul the Plumber wrote a nice blog about it. Yesterday I applied to four schools, two content and social media positions and... still holding out for a callback on the wine label company in Kansas City. I talked with a friend from high school the other day; he works for Zendesk. Told him I’d do anything just shy of 7th grade teaching and cold calling.
I ran the truck driving idea by someone else today and they said: Truck driver? You don’t want that. It’s all: getting fat, smoking cigs and getting blow jobs in truck stop bathrooms. Besides, that jobs going to be automated soon anyway.
So what I am telling you, people, is that I am still unemployed but looking, though prospects aren’t great.
We remain optimistic, though, it would be silly to pretend to be anything other than slightly worried about our prospects!
I’m still trying to sell my car here in Qatar.
A handsome friend of mine who means well but might have the best ideas about what to do with cars in Qatar suggested that if we can’t sell it, I drive it in to a ditch and smash up all the windows and leave it as a warning to other expats about the dangers of driving in Qatar.
This is Ibrahim.
He was a student of mine during my time in Qatar. He loved League of Legends, demanding people to open the lights, wearing his uniform, saying “what this?” and refusing to attend prayer on time.
The Dumps!
“I would say that it’s really important to normalize this. You need to know that this is what happens to couples under stress.”
I don’t think it’s betraying any confidences to tell you that life under quarantine has been stressful here. Add in a seven month old and weather too hot to even go outside for walks around the block and you could say that Leen and I have definitely been pushed to our limits here in the last few weeks. For example, I just learned that there was a word for a car that was used but a special type of used that is called “Certified Pre-owned.” I thought this was just marketing ploy to spice up the used car market. So when I was looking for cars, Leen told me she wanted a certified pre-owned car, and I was like: all used cars are pre-owned. But I said it in a way that was so smarmy and condescending, like Earth to Leen. Fast forward to last night when I learned that Leen and I wanted the same thing but she wanted a very specific type of thing that I had not been searching for up to that moment. My bad! Didn’t know that existed. I am a life long learner, and very willing to apologize when wrong. Sorry Leen. I was wrong. If you, like us, have found yourself, frustrated by your partner at times, take a read of this interview with famed therapist and podcast host who offers some suggestions on ways to cope, communicate and couple during corentine.
“Relax and watch a movie. Cook some food! Just don’t go to the stores, because that’s dangerous to everyone. Order in! But don’t. Stay home. Move to the country. And stay in the city. If you get sick, go to the hospital. But don’t get too sick, because you wouldn’t want to be going to one of those hospitals now! They’re full of sick people!”
2. A long long time ago, when I read books other than histories of the Ottoman empire and books about a police chief named Bruno who lives in the Perigord, I used to read memoirs. One of the most memorable of those memoirs was A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. The author went on to do create the literary journal “McSweeney’s” and write some fiction. Last week he penned an opinion column in the Times titled Flattening the Truth on Coronavirus which addressed a lot of the conflicting information out there in the world.
I felt that this text did a good job of capturing how I am feeling every time I open the newspaper (app). Have you guys read about Covid-toes? What about the fact that smokers are less likely to get sick? Or how about that kids are basically weapons of mass destruction when it comes to passing this thing along? Eggers addresses it all in this piece that reads like a Q & A.
Thanks to the reader submission for this one. I always appreciate people finding dump content for me.
I think you’ll enjoy it. Read it here
“Other cultures may love the bidet, but Americans have long been loath to give their butts a good wash after pooping.”
3. As we progress from the apartment search (check) to the house search (pending jobs), we routinely debate the merits of a good house and a bad house. I spoke with a realtor, nay, friend, Clark the other day about houses in the Twin Cities, so that we could begin to familiarize ourselves with the market. As we sift through Redfin listings and secret property portals, we explore other people’s homes to try and figure out how we could make the space for us. I was reading a thing about celebrities during Quarantine that said the only rule of all these Zoom sessions into their houses is: Never let a fan see your bathroom. I assume most of you don’t really care about my bathroom either, but I feel that I need to be the Paul Revere of Bidets. For my international and non-historical familiar audience, Paul Revere was the guy who alerted the Americans that were coming.
One if by land, two if by sea.
Well let’s talk about number two for a minute.
The word bidet comes from Old French to Trot which then has some connection to ponies. What I am saying is that you’re supposed to straddle the bidet like you were riding a pony. Bidets are ubiquitous in homes around the world and Leen and I have 2.5* of them in our house in Qatar. None of the houses we have looked at in America have one, let alone even a half. I am here to tell you, dear reader, that we should all demand that the Paul the Plumbers of the world get to work installing more bidets in America’s homes. Did you know that if not for pirates, we would be on the metric system? This is similar to that because if not for American GIs visiting whorehouses in Paris during WWII and seeing bidets in the rooms thus creating an indelible link between bidets and the unsavory business of prostitution, we likely wouldn’t be such prudes about washing our butts in the US of A. “Yeah sure, I’ll pay her for sex, but I am grossed out by the fact that she uses water to clean her privates afterwards!” As the french say, Oy Vay.
I am here to tell you that if you are a homeowner looking to add value, pop in a bidet. If you don’t believe me about the value, and you’re more into the economics, Mental Floss went that route, while the Atlantic went more for the history. Read em both.
Get a bidet.
Ask yourself this: if you step in dog poop, what’s a more effective method of getting the poop off your shoe? Paper towel or a hose?
*the half bidet is a hand-held sprayer, sometimes called the Bum Gun, or Butt Blaster. I prefer it to the bidet, especially in our current home because the bidet blocks access to opening the door fully in the bathrooms. The official name is a Shattaf and you can get them on Amazon.
That’s all I have for you this week. Here’s hoping next time we talk, I have sold the car and found a job!
