January 2, 2010
1835 Doha
Greetings Dave Henning and other readers,
The new year has started off with a blur of activity. It seems I barely closed my eyes and now it’s January 2nd and I’m in Doha, Qatar, waiting for a plane. Yesterday is still recent enough to seem fresh and tangible, but also feels a world away from this place. The culture shift began as soon as I stepped onto the plane at Dulles.
Qatar Airways is not a bad carrier. The plane was big and clean, the seats were comfortable enough, and each had a video screen with lots and lots of movies. My movie selection included “Julie and Julia” (of which I made it through 20 minutes before deciding to go back to sleep), “The Time Traveler’s Wife” (of which I fell asleep after about 45 minutes and remained that way for 7 hours), and “The Prestige” (which I saw and enjoyed from beginning to end). But the movies and seats were not the problem. The staff was a small problem.
My ticket was initially booked with an aisle seat for DC to Qatar. I asked the travel agent to change that to a window (I don’t like being bumped in the aisle), and he said he did. When I checked in, however, they had me squarely in the middle of a three-across, center-of-the-plane row, and that wasn’t going to work for a 12.5-hour flight. I asked the guy at check-in for a window, but he said the only window seat didn’t have audio and I wouldn’t want that. I said I most certainly did want it. He gave it to me. So imagine my surprise when I get on the plane and someone else has Seat 22A – my seat! Our boarding passes matched, so I asked the flight attendant to look into it and he came back from conferring and said I was being move to a middle seat somewhere else, and the guy who was currently in the seat was being moved to another window seat two rows up. In the meantime, as we were sorting out why no one then got the original window seat (which the flight attendants were adamant no one would have), another flight attendant came up and made two other passengers move seats for no apparent reason, moving one girl from an aisle to the middle so that a disagreeable Middle Eastern woman could sit in the aisle. As I was disagreeably moving to my new middle seat, the woman in the aisle next to me asked if I wanted to switch seats, which seemed odd and self-sacrificing of her, but she explained she and her husband both had aisle seats (they book that way to preserve options), and if I switched with her I would get an aisle. That seemed very nice of her, so we did it, and everything was fine. Very agreeable people, those two.
I will say, of the airline food, very good! I had vegetable biryani, some sort of Middle Eastern salad, and a bread salad that was soaked in yogurt or cheese sauce.
Anyhoo, I made it off Qatar Airways Flight 52, and now I’m sitting in the airport in Doha, waiting to board Qatar Airways Flight 136 to Kuwait. That flight is only an hour and twenty minutes, so it will be a reading-only commute. Once there, in the very, very familiar Kuwait International Airport, my bags hopefully arrive (they don’t always), and I will hitchhike, drive or Yellow Cab it over to the airport Crown Plaza hotel for a night of quiet reflection on why I chose to disrupt my life in quite such a dramatic fashion.
Already I miss everyone. It was a very nice sendoff with the assistance packing, the stopover in Alexandria for pizza, hummus, and rum cake, and the airport delivery crew with its warm goodbye (despite Ivan’s initial bad attitude) and farewell toast in the Dulles Harry’s Tap Room. I wish I could’ve seen everybody longer, but then I guess I would’ve missed the flight. Eh… Six of one, half a dozen of the other…
For now, this airport is bright and bustling. Lots of Brits and other international types are milling about. Brits always seem very fashionable and appropriate in airports. It must be reminiscent of colonial times. When I’m over here I always feel like a glaring, standout American. I guess I should’ve shaved. Oh well, no time. So busy.
I hope you all have a wonderful start to 2010 (minus my absence, of course), and stay warm. Talk to you again as soon as I have an Internet connection, which is also when I’ll send this, so it will be a double-header.
I miss you!
Love,
Tim
