It was a very good year...

For today's post, I'll relate an anecdote from my workplace.

My co-worker, whom I shall refer to as 'S', was looking at the annual ALA conference dates. ALA stands for the American Library Association, and their huge annual conference is in Anaheim, California, in June. So S was checking the dates, as she wants to attend ALA. However, in referring to her calendar, she kept seeing that the dates on the screen didn't match up with the calendar. Frustrated, she called me over to see if I could decipher what the ALA folk were trying to say. One American understanding the code-speak of other Americans, I suppose. So anyway, I'm also trying to make heads and tails of the dates. I, too, see how the days of the week don't correspond with what's on the calendar at all.

Strictly by chance, I see the year printed on the calendar. It's 2007. S had been relying on the January 2007 calendar to tell her what day it was. And not just for one day, but for the last two weeks of January she was back at work.

There must have been some 2007 calendars in the drawer which went unused, and the administrative assistant probably didn't think to check the year before giving S the calendar.

S calls our assistant, who is also S, and they're having a good laugh on the phone. Less than an hour later, a 2008 calendar is brought by our support staff, and arrives with a post-it note stating "With love, S"

I guess 2007 was so good that S decided to stay there for a while longer. (^^)

Formula One Racing and No Road Closures

We got this announcement from Qatar Foundation yesterday, and it made a few members of the Delib staff laugh. Gates 1 and 2, incidentally, are the main gates from which we enter/exit Education City. Most people also coincidentally finish work between these times. Quite a few places close roads during Formula car races. Quite a few, though, apparently does not include Doha.

What I find even funnier is if they wouldn't have warned us so people didn't even notice the difference in traffic.

Dear All,

It has just come to my attention that a formula car race will finish between Gates 1 and 2 east bound on the Dukhan Highway (Al Luqta) today. There was a traffic warning in the newspaper to be cautious of fast moving cars involved in the race. It appears the road will not be closed however caution should be used. It is not clear how this will impact gates 1A, 1, and 2, but there may be some temporary delays between 1530 and 1430 Hrs.

IATUL 2008

My latest excitement is that I get to go to Auckland, New Zealand for a conference in April. As part of my job, I get one education leave a year to go to a conference. The one exception is that typically things which are happening in the Gulf Region don't count toward your education leave. We had a Millennium (http://www.iii.com) conference in December in Doha, which was good to attend. (Millennium is one example of an integrated library system.) Then in April (I better check the dates...) we will have a Special Libraries Association (SLA) Gulf Chapter meeting here, which I am eligible to attend.

But anyway, the conference is the IATUL (International Association of Technological University Libraries) meeting. It looks like it will have good information on digital discovery, and building information depositories for particular user groups.

WCMC-Q is unique in that it is an American institution whose primary user group originates in the Middle East. Although our linguistic focus is English (in fact, the official language of Education City is English), a vast majority of our student population speaks Arabic as its first language. In thinking about our obligation to provide physician and consumer-level health information to the Doha/GCC community, it is imperative to remember that not everyone speaks or reads English at a high level. Thus, I feel that a long-term focus should be expanding our consumer health information to include languages other than English.

So I plan to take some holiday time after the conference to enjoy New Zealand. I'm currently deciding where to go. It's actually quite far to go to Auckland from here. I am probably going to fly with Emirates. In that case, I will fly to Dubai (1 hour), and then from Dubai to Auckland. You make at least one stop during this part. The timetables have listed Bangkok, Singapore, and Melbourne, depending on which flight you take. Even so, the total time is roughly 20 hours to Auckland. It's a good thing I'm in business class, but the travel will still be pretty hard.

Mobile Phone Salesman

This is extremely cool...

Doha floods

We are having floods in Doha. I wish I were kidding. Last Friday the long-awaited rain came, and it's hardly stopped raining since. The rain ranges from drizzle to out-and-out downpours. As the storm drains aren't really set up to take water to begin with, and aren't cleaned out, they get clogged with sand.

They're saying we could see a nighttime low of 6 celsius tomorrow night.

If it freezes here, I don't even want to get on the roads... things are already crazy enough, and to add in people who don't know how to drive in adverse weather...

Cold Snap

It's really cold here now. I wore a wool sweater to work today, and was glad to have it. The dust actually came into my house.

Scuba Junkie

I just got back from a 2-week holiday in Malaysia, where I spent 10 days diving off the Eastern Borneo coast. Pulau Sipadan is the most famous of all the islands on this map, although the others have also earned a reverent tone when being spoken.

I dived with Scuba Junkie, which was really great. Cheap diving and lots of fun.

Then I spent 2 days in Kuala Lumpur (KL) enjoying bookshops and Ikea. I wanted to get more stuff at Ikea, but I was limited on luggage. The thing with having your own dive kit is you find it occupies most of your luggage allowance. So it goes.

Sipadan was, well, surreal. Fish everywhere you looked. These huge schools of fish I had never seen before in big schools. And we're talking literally hundreds of fish. Longfin Bannerfish, batfish, chevron barracuda, and so on. The barracuda school was extremely cool to see. I learned that barracuda like current, so when there isn't any existing current they make their own by swimming in a cyclone-fashion. Which is what they were doing, both times I saw them.

There were many white-tip sharks to see too. I did see one leopard shark, which was cool. Hammerheads are also in residence, although I wasn't lucky enough to see them. Unfortunately, the day after I did my last Sipadan dive, the hammerheads were out. So it goes.

We also saw a countless number of turtles, both green and hawksbill. It may sound silly, but by the third or fourth day of diving Sipadan, when you're asked what you saw, you can answer 'oh, the usual. Turtles, sharks, fish, etc.'

Sipadan is described as one large dive site, and this is true. They have marked spots as dive spots for logging purposes, but you really can't go wrong. You merely go to a dropoff and splash.

In late December, the water temps were roughly 28-29C, with vis. of at least 20m. I wore bathing suit (shorts) with two rash vests (short and long sleeve) and was fine. Others wore 3mil shorties and were fine. A couple of people were in full suit. It all depends on what your cold tolerance is. I did wear a full suit a few days when it rained. On these days, I noticed the cold more, especially with the thermocline created in the first 3 or 4 meters due to no sun. But on sunny days, when I could get warm, bathing suit was fine.

Mabul and Kapalai are muck diving for micro life. Truthfully, visibility was similar to around Doha (8 meters or less), but with the addition of cool stuff. Highlights of what I saw include green morays, white-eye morays, cuttlefish (that was a first), frogfish (grey, yellow, and leafy), lionfish (various types), nudibranchs, and a spider crab. Bottom composition on both sites is sand with artificial reefs. However, at Mabul, there is Froggy's Reef, which is quite fun.

Sibuan and Mantabuan are similar in being coral beds. I actually enjoyed these two dive days immensely, as I like to be above coral looking down rather than vertical. You can see life similar to Sipadan, minus the sharks. There was all kinds of cool macrolife to view. Here I saw more eels, nudibranchs, etc.

The highlight of my trip was Mantabuan. It was here I saw my first frogfish. But the frogfish was actually swimming in open water. It was the coolest thing in the world. You could see the frogfish opening its mouth, and the jets behind its fins pushing the water out to propel itself. Then the frogfish settled on the bottom, and it was moving along, almost like a frog. It was 'hopping' on its forward fins. This frogfish wasnt' even shocked by 6 or 7 divers gathered, watching it.

I got back to Doha on December 29th, and went to work on the 30th. I was lucky, though, as we only had 2 days before our New Year's holiday. Then two more days of work. Then two days off for the weekend.

I don't know what I will do this week, with having to work 5 consecutive days.