The Schellenbergs.com

The family got in at 7:30 last night…

We used the Al Maha service, a meet and greet at the airport, turns out it was a colossal waste of money and arguably time. Both jen and kara said the flights were good, with the exception of the final 90 minutes, when the kids had been cooped up for 18 hours, and they were ready to run around.  When jen and Kara landed, all the passengers board a bus, this al maha service was supposed to skip that step. they were supposed to be ushered into a waiting car, adn wisked away to a nice lounge… Not so much. I think the one good thing that the service did was the imigration, but even that was a bit silly, the Qatari imigration is as  efficient as any I’ve sen, and we didn’t have any special requirements. Bah, lesson learnt.

They landed at 7:30, and we drove into our driveway at 9:10, everyone loved the work I did on the house, and the boys loved their transformers. Rosie went ballistic… she was running around, bringing us all her toys showing us them… it was cool. We unpacked our stuff(or at least put a serious dent in it) and crashed at about 11…

It’s nice to have everyone home.

Ohh… I was lucky. I went to family food centre yesterday. Doing my shopping. nothing fancy, except for the Alberta peaches that were on sale… So I got some… so yummy… they were fresh(reasonably) in season and, well, I never knew tey grew peached in alberta… anyways, I bought 6… brought them home, they were awesome.

I took one into work today. noticed a small hole in the bottom… in hopes of cutting out what ever part I might be sharing with whatever might be in there, I sliced it in half. Mohamed, they guy with the knife and I opened up the peach to find a few dozen tiny little worms in there, happy as… well, happy as I would have been if I was eating it…

I tossed that one in the garbage, satisfied thatt he canadian worms were feasting like a king on my peach…

all my other peaches seem fine, but I am gonna cut them open as I eat them… just to be sure. You never can tell with those canadians, just what’s inside…

Oh, and canada, stop exporting worms in the produce… it’s bad for publicity.

I had an appointment with the dentist this past thursday…  I got stellar ratings on my hygiene, but that is only 1/2 of what’s cool about the dentist in Doha. In canada, when you go in for a cleaning, they de-scale your teeth, floss, polish and all that stuff… here, it’s the same, with the exception of the sandblasting… Yah… not actually sand(they have enough, but its bad for marketing) it’s sodium bicarbonate… baking soda… they mix it with water and blow it at your teeth… I think it might be a marketing ploy for orthodontic work… See, I have a sizable gap in my front teeth… Sizable enough so I regularly floss with nylon rope, and when he was blasting away at my beaver like incisors, he blew a hole into my tongue.. no blood, but it stung…. 

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So it’s been a while since I’ve updated this site… I have been working hard at the house, getting stuff ready for the family to come back… I think they’ll like it. well. I hope they do.<grin> Work is going well, I am working with a bunch of independent teams, seeing how we can best leverage the resources that QF has already purchased… It’s a cool role… Rosie was happy to see me when I picked her up.  Her leg has been acting up and she is struggling on our walks towards the end… Umm… see why I havn’t written a lot recently?  I did find a new shwarma place… it’s really good. they stick all kinds of stuff in there… all for ht ebargain basement price of 5 riyal… tell you what, come on over, and I’ll buy…

I’ve had an issue with my AC since moving in… In January, when it was 7 outside, it was that it was too cold. Apparently that’s normal though, cause generally, herein the middle east being cold isn’t the issue… Generally that is…

No, I have been dealing with the far more frequent issue of being too warm. All this week, I have been calling maintenance to see if they can figure out what the issue is with my AC. and every day, they tell me Ice is building up in the AC unit.  Once it was cause the filters were dirty, once it was cause the fresh air regulator thingy was set too high. I’ve heard all kinds of issues… Last night, it was the ice issue again.. So I am talking to the guy, and there are huge blocks of ice forming in the system, Like 4 feet by 3 feet by one inch thick… Big blocks of ice…  so anyway. I says to the guy, You knwo I’ve had the same issue every day this week. and every day the guy who comes(always someone different they say Humm… well, it’s fixed now. Not this guy. I ask him to come inside and check the thermostats… maybe I am a moron and don’t know how to work it…

Nope, those all look ok, well, while he is inside, he checks the ceiling… first floor, everythign kosher. He looks at me expectantly(Can I go now?) I ask him to check out the upstairs… so up we go…

See, Daniel and Thomas’ room is great. Kara’s room is great. It’s just our room that stinks. so up he hops… bla bla bla hammer I hear. his partner gives him a  hammer… bang… nothing.

so he climbs down.  checks another [delicate mechanical device} with the hammer... nothing. this happens 4 times. the last one though...we got a different sound...

he is out in the hall way, climbs up and says his bla bla bla hammer speil. Bang, woosh, my ears pop and rosie's dog-fur-dust bunnies actually move on the floor. He says he thinks that he got it...

yah, I'd say so.

Interesting postscript to this story, He was fiddling around with the thermostats so much, and never reset them back to normal... When I got up this morning, it was 17.5 in my bedroom... Now all I gotta do is something about the condensation falling from my ceiling..

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Jen and I spent a few days up in Haliburton with Nancy, Pat , Len, Gloria and the rest of the crew… Daniel and Thomas spent an inordinate amount of time fishing with his brand new fishing rod and lure. Thomas loved playing and running around. On one fishing trip, daniel and thomas were using worms and lures Jen said it was a day where you throw it in, and pull it out, fish after fish was caught. We practise a catch and release type of fishing… Thomas was using his Micky mouse fishing rod… little 2 fot thing. He was happily playing around with the pretend fish(a 3 inch rubber fish) on it(and a hook) when that little rod started to scream… Thomas started to reel it in, but the weight and the fight of the fish was too much for the little rod. Jen helped thomas crank it in, still no luck. In the end, Nancy had to grab the line, and drag the fish into the boat. Thomas had caught a 4 foot shark! ok, it was about an 8 inch bass… but it was cool… and he was so proud of himself.  We brought it home, and nancy filleted it… but that is another story.
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I arrived in Canada on the 4^th. Got off the plane at Pearson, and immediately noticed something that I hadn’t known I was missing, the smell of growth and clean air. Doah is nice, but it is easy to take for granted the stuff like natural trees, grasses and the hustle and bustle of a busy city. Doha, 50 years ago was a tiny city, it is struggling with it’s growth, Toronto has been around for 200 years. I wonder if people from Frankfurt feel the same way towards Toronto as I feel towards Doha… Humm…

The colours. There are colours everywhere in Canada, and natural colours. Now, given, I was there in the summer, and it was a very wet summer, so it really isn’t a fair comparison, but still, it was nice to see. Then there are the friends, all the people and family that you miss and think about often, all waiting for your return.

When I returned to Doha, I came home alone. I was thinking that I may have made a mistake when I was on the return flight. Leaving all the memories and that lifestyle to come back to the desert… As I flew over Doha with it’s little gated compounds, and it’s roads that stretch off to the middle of nowhere, I was reminded that it is a little city that is growing so rapidly, and being a part of that growth is exciting. It was great to go home, but it’s also great to be back.