Playing the long game

So, a work blog eh, riveting I’m sure, I’ve had to re-write this a couple of times, and I’ve decided to make it a two part special! This first part is a long rant about previous jobs and why the NHS is in the parlous state it’s in. The next one will be about my work in Qatar. So here goes:

In my first blog I said that I’m a health strategist and no-one knows what that means. I’ll elaborate slightly: healthcare is incredibly complex; any change involves thousands of staff and tens of thousands of patients. Healthcare is changing all the time, new research and equipment is constantly evolving how services are being provided, the management structure of the NHS is complex, but the NHS employs fewer managers than any equivalently sized organizations. This, the Daily Mail readers out there would say, is correct. And maybe it is.

The problem is, if the council gets the rubbish collection wrong, or if Vodafone disconnects your account, no-one dies, if the NHS gets it wrong, people die. So every decision is subject to significant scrutiny, rightly again. But at the top of that pile are politicians: ignorant, ill-informed and lumbering around trying to make headlines and leave a legacy, and it is politicians who create bureaucracy, not managers. Because they ask questions, often ignorant ill-informed questions, and then when they misinterpret the answer or the media exerts some pressure, their response is to establish some kind of additional oversight, and with it comes paperwork.

Let me give an example: an MP gets visited by a constituent, the constituent tells them they’ve been waiting almost a year and a half for a knee surgery and they’re upset. The constituent does not tell the MP that they missed a couple of appointments or that they then went on holiday and had to reschedule, or that they had the flu and had to have the surgery rearranged. So all the MP hears is the NHS is keeping poor old Mrs Wilkins waiting, it can’t be the fault of the Doctors, who are embattled heroes struggling against all odds, so it must be the managers’ fault, prioritizing targets over patient safety and feelings. The MP asks a question in parliament, “why has my constituent had to wait almost two years for surgery, it’s a disgrace, this government has introduced more bureaucracy than ever, people are suffering etc. etc.” the government, via the Department of Health has to answer this question, so a few policy people at the Department of Health (DH) will check out the constituency, and identify the relevant regional authority, then an urgent parliamentary question will be sent to that authority, ‘what is the average wait time for knee operations’, the regional authority communications team will talk to their colleagues in performance, who will pull data from an online system and review it, they will talk to colleagues in strategy asking if there’s anything going on at the hospital in question (is a new ward being built, and old one renovated etc.) and they will contact the commissioners and the hospital to get the very latest data and the latest situation report. Dozens of people, literally dozens of people, will be rushing around working to produce a couple of pages of information to support an answer to a question that really didn’t need to be asked. That’s bureaucracy, and it comes from the top.

All of this is meant to set the context for what a healthcare strategist does: we try and change the system, for various reasons, generally safety (killing fewer people), sometimes quality (making fewer mistakes, making good outcomes better), often money. The problem is, no matter how much people moan and carp about the NHS, if you try and change it you get instant and massive backlash, why are you changing the service I love, and will save my life, I will die if I can’t get to the nearest hospital, all emotive arguments, none fact-based. I bet if you tried to close Mid-Staffs, or that maternity unit in Cumbria, there’d be a save my hospital campaign formed within minutes.

But you can’t manage a 100 billion pound service, employing a million people, where thousands of life or death decisions are made daily, based on emotions, or nostalgia, you need to base them on facts. So when we recommend downgrading (or ‘closing’ in the emotive speak) a hospitals A&E, we guarantee that that decision is based on a painstakingly thorough evidence-based review, we guarantee it won’t kill more people, guarantee, full stop.

And you need to trust us, because we know more than you do about the service, we know your local hospital is close, but we also know it’s not safe, and it’s expensive, and it’s going to continue to get more dangerous and more expensive. The NHS consults on big decisions, the consultation process is always called a sham, in truth, it quite often is, because normally there aren’t multiple solutions to a problem, if there are three hospitals trying to stay open without enough people to treat (you need a good throughput of patients to keep clinicians skilled up) then you need to close one, or maybe two of them, the facts and figures will indicate which one should be closed, based on quality, patient throughput and yes, money.  All of this data is published alongside every consultation, all of it, and they’ll be the odd mistake, and the odd assumption that might be too optimistic or pessimistic, but it’s rare the debate is sophisticated enough to get into the details, it’s hard to talk facts when someone’s screaming at you that you’re trying to kill their baby!

An example that I’ve heard which I think is great (although potentially apocryphal) is of small hospital in the middle of nowhere, the hospital was too small to support an A&E (again you need a huge amount of back-up services and a high throughput of patients to support a good A&E), but it had a popular and well-respected 24/7 urgent care service. The problem was, this service was called an A&E, it had a big A&E sign on the door, when someone in the centre found this out, they instructed that it had to be changed, as it was misleading. The signage was duly changed (to urgent care centre or something similar) the service did not change one iota, but within hours a local campaign group had been formed to ‘save our A&E’

Resources are finite, to ignore them is stupid. If you want to argue that the NHS in general should have more money, then fine, but that’s a different debate (and one well worth having), you never close a service just because of money (not even the most indebted hospital in the NHS) you close a service because you can save more lives, and more money, by doing so.

So my most recent role in the NHS was working on this issue, there are two resources that are usually fixed in the NHS: money and people. The NHS has a legal obligation to break even, this is just sensible. Hospitals get reimbursed based on how much work they do, there is a very detailed tariff for almost every procedure, this takes into account both the physical cost of the procedure, but also the more general costs, i.e. cleaning, electricity, reception, portering.) The hospital’s job is to operate as efficiently as possible, both clinically and financially. Hospitals estimate how much activity and therefore how much income they will get in a year, and then try and work out how to deliver that activity as efficiently as possible. They can be more efficient in many ways: are their operating theatres in use all of the time, and are procedures being done quickly, are patients staying too long in hospital beds after, or before surgery, is the staff mix right: are senior doctors doing complex, senior things and junior doctors doing basic things, is their building physically arranged or designed to be efficient, to save people time, the list goes on. But what you end up with are some hospitals that are more expensive to run than others, either through bad management, a lack of focus on these issues, an unruly clinical body (who refuse to see that they could be more efficient) or bad contracts (PFI being a prime example). There’s also just something about being a nice place to work, if a hospital has a bad reputation, and unpleasant facilities, then they’ll probably have a high vacancy rate, meaning they need lots of expensive temps and locums (greater regulation of this market would give massive dividends to the public purse, but I think most of the big NHS temp agencies are owned by senior politicians or party donors, so don’t expect a spotlight to be shined on this rip-off).

All in all, some hospitals spend more than they get, sometimes millions more. Is this a reason to close a hospital, on its own? No, but the problem with hospitals that are losing money, is that with the losses, tends to come other problems, the hospital can’t invest in new facilities or staff, or the latest bit of equipment, maintenance might start to fall behind, and all of this means fewer staff want to work there, so the cycle repeats and gets worse each year. Board members, directors and senior doctors will start looking for jobs elsewhere, where they can make decisions on the future, rather than desperately struggling to stay afloat. Eventually, this all starts to have an impact on clinical safety, and that’s when you need to start making changes.

I also said that staff was a fixed asset, you can’t suddenly go out and get a load more doctors, and as I said at the top, the NHS is constantly evolving in technology and procedure, there’s now an almost overwhelming amount of evidence that having 24/7 senior doctor presence saves lives, London is leading the charge in this, and reports have shown that the death rates outside of normal working hours (evenings and weekends) in London are significantly higher than during the week, generally because the more senior doctors get first dibs about when they want to work, and they like being home in the evenings and weekends with their families. So new policies are being developed to mandate that this 24/7 cover is present in all hospitals. The problem is, there aren’t enough senior doctors to do this in every hospital in the country. London again is a prime example, there are over 30 hospitals in the capital, and there are just not enough senior doctors to go around.

The choice then is, let hospitals continue to operate as they currently do, knowing full well that they are killing and maiming people unnecessarily, or do you try and ‘rationalise’ services, i.e., start closing some, to make the rest better. Now, almost everyone would agree with this principle, everyone wants a big, shiny, well staffed hospital. The problem comes not with the theory, but with the practice.  The process is relatively simple, you take a region of London, it has maybe seven hospitals, but it only has enough senior doctors to keep five open safely (in reality you review every service in every hospital, to work out exactly what could stay where, so you might be able to support six A&Es, but only five intensive care units). This is the first bit of work, and it normally causes chaos, but because the argument is clinical, and not linked to a specific hospital or service, you can normally proceed without politicians and the public getting too riled. So you now know that you can only keep five A&Es, with all the ancillary services they require, so you look at capacity, and travel times, if I close hospital X, then 25% of those patients would have to go to hospital Y, but hospital Y is too small etc. and you work out which combination of closures means that all patients are still within a safe distance (30 minute drive in a blue light ambulance is the London standard)  and that there are enough beds/theatres/etc in the remaining hospitals to treat everyone. Then, finally, you look at the money, closing hospital X costs this much and saves this much, offset by the investment required to expand hospital Y. All this comes together to give you a decision to be consulted upon, as I said, it’s normally such a massively complex web of interdependencies, that there is only one real solution, anything else is a bastardization, normally based on politics (we can’t possibly close hospital Y, it’s in the prime ministers constituency) so you develop a back-up option, that would generally cost more, or have more clinical risk, but be more politically palatable.

And that is how a service reconfiguration happens, and that’s one of the things a strategist does.

Editor’s note: Strategists also write long blogs about the health system. Congratulations if you made it this far. Pat yourself on the back, go for a walk and stretch your legs, get some fresh air. Part two is coming up!

Shock and Awe

Busy couple of weeks: I’ll try and do a quick run through.

My last blog was about how excited I was we were having our first visitor come over. And exciting it was, our mystery guest, let us call him Bob for convenience’s sake, arrived on time I had spend a good hour driving around the desert in circles, as all the road sign’s here point to the new airport, which is not yet open, and our satnav isn’t particularly up to date, so I had an exciting impromptu tour of the construction site, and the outskirts of Doha. Within five minutes of picking him up we were very nearly in a car crash, a local tradition, and then I got to watch the shock and awe on his face as he saw eleven consecutive cars do a u-turn.

We did what you do in Doha: eat. There was also some beach involved (although we found a rather muddy one) and some general lounging in the sun. oh, and Dune bashing, which is preposterous! Otherwise haven’t had much on, no concerts, although we’re going to see Richard Strauss’ Metamorphoses next week, but sadly the symphony’s season is coming to an end, they’re off for July and August, presumably returning to wherever in Russia they all came from 😉 and will return with the new musical director at the helm in September. So we’ll have a social gap to fill, a man cannot survive on Martini Mondays alone!

I did go to the cinema to see Start Trek (OMG it is AWESOME) which wasn’t anywhere near as horrible an experience as I’d been led to expect (I’d heard people just loudly chat way throughout and make/receive phone calls etc. but saw none of that). Wifey demurred to attend, calling me a nerd/dork/geek, in fact I believe she asked why anyone would go and see a star trek movie, strangely my response “BECAUSE IT IS AWESOME” did not seem to convince her. But then, she is pretty much a lost cause, she’s never even seen Star Wars! We’ll do another test with the Great Gatsby, and then take it from there.

Work has continued to be manic, we have our annual conference/event next week which is sucking up a lot of time, I thought I might do a more work orientated blog next time for anyone who’s interested in what I’m up to, of course I have to walk a fine line so as to not get fired!

Last weekend we did manage to find a beach, although a chunkier off-roader was required than our mighty steed (a new, but basic, Tuscon), fortunately we were taken by people with the most ubiquitous car out here the Toyota Landcruiser, who also knew the way to the beach, and could handle the mountaineering. We got to stop and feed camels carrots en route, which was interesting, Camels are very funny looking beasties, and they’re also clearly not very good at eating carrots, they spent quite a lot of time trying to arrange them in their mouths and then kind of swallowed them whole. When we made it to the beach it was a picture perfect scene, blue green transparent sea, fiercely blue sky, white sand and no-one else in sight. We had a Barbie, went swimming and generally had an amazing day. It was hot, but with a nice breeze it was manageable. It’s definitely getting warmer here, averaging just under 40 this week, so plans are being hatched for breakfast BBQs on the beach!

Idyllic Beach

Qatar Camels

A Little Pepper

Another blog, already? Yes, that’s right!

I’m just too excited not to share my inane drivel! Next weekend we will be having our first visitor to stay! Fortunately the last two Time Outs have featured “70 things to do with visitors in Doha” and “101 things to do in Qatar”. Admittedly most of the activities are either going to the desert, going to a restaurant, or going to a spa, but that’s ok, I don’t mind those things!

So we’re having a think about things to do, bearing in mind it’s getting pretty warm here now (it’s 39 degrees as I type) so that somewhat limits options. Planning for others does rather focus the mind on what one can do out here. There’s swimming and hanging out and strolling along the Corniche of course. Then there’s brunch, an absolute mainstay on the social scene (can’t remember if I blogged about our brunch: it’s obscene! A four hour all you can eat, all you drink buffet, at the best 5-star hotel restaurants in Doha. I was extremely ‘tired and disorientated’ at the last one, but still stuffed my face, although I didn’t go for three rounds of the foie gras, which they fry in front of you to order, unlike certain colleagues! We had to follow brunch with a four hour snooze, so full were we!)

 And what else, dune bashing is a popular activity, so that seems like a good option, and an excuse to do the desert, we’ll be going with a tour guide though, rather than risk destroying our rental car! There’s also Katara, although I’m not sure there’s anything on that weekend. Still always worth a mosey though. As hoped wifey said yesterday’s concert was “better than most of the others” not ringing praise, but progress [Editor’s Note: Wifey didn’t fall asleep = win]. Eagle eyed readers might note that two days ago I said that concert was ‘tonight’ oops! We might have made a couple of trips to Katara in the last two days! Anyhoo, the concert was pretty good, light and melodic, although I wasn’t a huge fan of the lead violinist, didn’t think she nailed it, still a good night altogether, it would be great if we could get someone like international superstar violinist Thomas Gould over here!

There’s the various Souk’s too, good for a wander around (going fabric shopping for my suits tonight!) and then there are the museums. The Museum of Islamic Art is a stunning building, but I’m not sure it’s collection matches the surroundings? Beautiful as they may be, there are only so many isometricly patterned tiles one can look at! We might make it out to the Museum of Modern Islamic Art on Saturday, which I’m quite excited about! I know the collections meant to be amongst the best in the world but…

Our visitor also asked what he can bring over that we can’t get here, will survive the trip and won’t get him arrested. Sadly at the moment I can only think of things that fail the third test! We can get almost everything from Carrefour, although thus far cream is proving a surprising hurdle (damn French, why do you find the concept of cream so hard to understand!?) with M&S providing a few truly British essentials (oat crackers!) so, what can our guest bring with him? Well, how about some of the British weather?

 Speaking of cars (what?) Wifey and I are now agreed that a car is an essential part of Doha living, which moves us onto stage two of the plan, persuading her that a Porsche is an essential part of Doha living. Impossible, outrageous, absurd, obscene I hear you say! Well, true! But, apparently Qatar owns a stake in Porsche (is there anything they don’t own a stake in?) so there are loads of them on the market over here, the prices for a 5 year old second hand one are significantly cheaper than in the UK, and it will only cost ten quid to fill them up! Insurance here is also cheap, although it’s not easy to get older cars insured. More importantly how and where else are we ever going to be able to afford one? The cloud that’s lurking in the middle of this silver lining? Well, we’re not talking about a 911, or a GT, or an RS of indeed any other sexy piece, we’re talking about a Cayenne, S or turbo of course, but still, a 4WD Porsche, obscene! [Editor’s Note: Wifey still awaiting full business case]

Polka-dot Polka

I sat down in a frenzy of creativity at the end of last week and crafted two blogs posts, the first jauntily describing the experience of driving in Qatar, ending in a query about the cost of petrol (seven pounds to fill a tank) here compared to the UK. This naturally, even seamlessly, led to the second post, which was a vocal, throaty, rant about tax and spending in the UK, ending in turn in my solution to the global debt crisis.

On reflection I’ve decided that I would rather spend the afternoon snapping myself with the elastic in my boxers than re-read and edit up those blogs, so I thought I’d spare y’all said pain to and just do another standard my week in Doha kinda ting. So, it’s been a quiet week, we went to the beach on the weekend, which was a real adventure, it involved our first off-roading (shhh! Don’t tell the rental company)we packed a picnic, and (eventually) found an isolated beach that would have been perfect, where it not for the fact that almost every square metre of the beach was covered in litter, plastic bags, bottles, paper, just crap everywhere, it was gross and depressing. I have no idea how people can litter, do they not turn up at the beach they’ve trashed the previous week and think it’s gross, how can people be so selfish, short-sighted and irresponsible…

Sorry end of rant, anyhoo, wifey found a free ‘family beach’ nearby, which had facilities and sunshades, which was nice. But by the time we got there and unpacked a warm wind had picked up, sounds nice right? Wrong! By warm I mean 35 degrees, and by breeze I mean gale. It was like having a picnic with 30 hairdryers pointed at you on full blast. We ate and then went for a brief walk in the sea (Wifey hates water so swimming’s not an option, and we would have had to walk for ten minutes until it got deep enough to swim anyway) and then we went home.

Tonight we’re off to see a concert from the chamber music series of the philharmonic: pearls of romantic music, here’s the lineup:

Borowski: Adoration

Tchaikovsky: Memory of a Dear Place (Souvenir d’un lieu cher), Op.42

Brahms: Scherzo

Wagner: Albumblatt (arranged Wilhelmj)

Gershwin: Fantasy on Themes from Porgy and Bess (arranged Frolov)

Schumann: Piano Quartet in E Flat Major Op.47

I’m hoping that wifey will enjoy this one, some approachable and recognizable tunes. should be good!

My main goal for this week (actually a goal from last week I failed to achieve) is to go to the material souk, and buy some fabric. Not exciting you say? Well, this is but phase one of the master plan of getting some bespoke suits made. You have to buy the fabric in one souk, but then take it to tailors in another one. If the first one’s a success then I’ll defo get a few more! The key question is, how outrageous do I go on the lining? Apparently it’s a mark of success if all of one’s suites are lined in the same fabric. I’m thinking blue with orange polka-dots…or maybe vice versa!

Rantasia

Regular readers (hi mum!) will know that whilst there’s not a huge amount of culture going on in Doha, they do what they can. Many of our outings here thus far, much to wifey’s disappointment, have been to see the pretty rich array of classical music performances available here. The Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra is genuinely impressive, I’m sure it’s full of highly-paid guns for hire, but nevertheless, they get the job done, and there seems to be at least a concert (or a quartet etc.) every week. Which can’t be easy.

 

Last week we went to see the final performance conducted by their outgoing Musical Director, Michalis Economou, who has a very impressive CV, it was a sold out show, by far the busiest classical event we’ve been to, sometimes the crowd is about 40, huddling together in the grand, but slightly odd Opera house at Katara (slightly odd because there’s no orchestra pit, so I have no idea how they’d actually perform an opera there.)

 

In the summer Han-Na Chang will join the QPO as Musical Director, a very interesting choice, she’s 30, a superstar cellist, but has only been conducting for a few years. Given the musical chops of her predecessor, it’s a remarkably brave choice for conservative Qatar, and an interesting insight into the cultural ambition of the country. The dynamism that’s so viscerally present in other sectors of the country is present here too. I’d be surprised if there were more than a handful of members of the orchestra over 40, they’re young, mobile, international and out to earn their salt. This isn’t yet reflected in the programmes, the musical choices are safe (even pedestrian) but I’m not sure how long that continue for, Qatar might become a kind of hotbed for new compositions, this country loves nothing more than a world first. Dubai can have Justin Beiber, give Doha the next classical composer ingénue and I’ll be happy. (yes, it’s sad I can’t name one. Whatever happened to Samuel Hogarth?)

 

Qatar’s the richest country in the world, and interestingly, possibly uniquely in this part of the world, the leadership is taking a three-pronged approach to make their people happy: culture, sport and health. (some might say education is third on that list, but I do health, so I’ll stick to that!) recent events in the region have shown that no matter how absolute the rule, leaders still govern at the sufferance of the people. Qatar wants, and seems to have, a very happy people. The billions spent on the world cup seem bizarre through a western lens, but they make perfect sense for a country with a long term plan. It wasn’t it’s people fat and happy, but also healthy, a tough combo! So why not host the world’s biggest sporting event, why not inspire a generation. Money’s not an issue, but a goal, something to (literally) build towards is invaluable. The infrastructure improvements that go along with the world cup benefit the entire country. And who’s to say there isn’t an Olympics a decade or so further down the track?

 

Culturally, the investments are equally staggering. I’d love to see an international comparison of how much most countries spend on sport vs culture. I’m sure Qatar would be up there with the best. The facilities here are stunning, the museums and arena are world class. They just need to find things to fill them with. I think Qatar’s probably spend more on acquiring art in the last five years than any other country in the world. The annual acquisition budget is (according to Wikipedia) $250 million a year. And they might have spent ten times that over the last decade on modern art alone. I’m not saying that the museums and concert halls are packed, they’re palpably not, but when the locals move on from their obsession with flashy cars and football, there’ll be an awful lot there waiting for them.

 

What separates Qatar from the UK is a plan, a vision. Not something written down (although they do have that too) but a well honed strategy, that the entire royal family seems to buy into, to turn Qatar into something much more than the sum of its parts. The UK’s approach to pretty much anything is piecemeal, haphazard, short-termist. And always slightly negative. No one would deny the staggering success of the London Olympics, but more shocking was the incredible negative griping that immediately proceeded it, and the shock of a nation that suddenly remembered it could do something well. I put the blame firmly at the feet of UK’s political classes. They don’t give a…fig…about anything other than getting elected, keeping their own power and authority, there is no national vision, no goal, no aspiration. Just a five year cycle of pandering and disappointment. Surely it’s only a matter of time before they too become victims of a populace who’ve suffered enough?

 

Classical music, art, sport and politics all in one blog…sorry!

Top ten 2

My top “learnings” from Qatar continued…

6: Driving is like riding a bike – once you’ve learned you never forget. I haven’t sat behind the wheel of an automobile for 12 years. I had a license and a car for a couple of years (passed my test first time, natch) and then rather shamefully lost my license (it was two in the morning, I’d stopped drinking at five in the afternoon, unfortunately I was still 1 pint over the limit). And haven’t driven since. Who needs a car in London? Judging from the traffic: a lot of people, but I never really missed it. So, fastforward to Doha, I’m wheeling all over town and have yet to have a crash, I’m still going easy on the parking, but think that’s going okay too. Wifey is of course a twitching, flinching, occasionally screaming, bundle of nerves next to me whenever I drive, but I’m putting that more on her than on me!

7: I love Linen. Let me go further: I love dressing like an Englishman abroad. Billowing beige linen trousers, subdued stripy linen shirt, deck shoes: living the dream! I’ve not yet had an opportunity to wear a hat, but my god I’m looking forward to that day! (PS: I also love linen in sheet terms: never by anything less than 500 thread count sheets, why scrimp on something that’s going to be in close personal contact with you at least eight hours a night!)

8: I am getting old. I stated physically deteriorating from about the age of 29 onwards, it’s been a slow but steady decline since. But it’s not just that: for some bizarre reason, there was a BBoy dance competition in the mall last night, pumping beats, betracksuited yoof spinning and jerking across the stage, and all manner of bizarre hairdo’s being rocked. I’m sure once I would have thought it cool, now, I just thought it silly, and that they should get jobs. I’ve also written a few angry letters recently. I am old!

9: I might not die in the heat out here. It was a significant risk: it’s meant to be 50 degrees for two solid months here, all day, and all night. Death might be sweet release. But now we have a vehicle, and a (kinda) air-conditioned basement in which to park said vehicle, I will likely never have to be outside for more than 30 seconds at a time, I might just survive after all! (the effect on my waistline and ergo long-term survival of this lifestyle is another thing entirely!)

10: I don’t think I’m ever going to stop playing video games. Despite being a grumpy old letterwritting man, I still like nothing more than flopping on the sofa and playing games for hours on end. Surely if I was going to grow out of this phase it would have happened by now, I don’t think it ever will, so I’m just going to embrace it!

Smash.

And just because I love you: I’m going to give you a bonus one: it’s just really surprisingly easy to move countries, nothing intimidating or scary about it at all, I highly recommend it!

More soon. We have an exciting week ahead planned: martini Monday tomorrow, diner party on Tuesday, Souk to try and buy cloth for a suit that I want to get made on Wednesday, question mark Thursday, and a drive out to the desert on the weekend! Did I mention we are LTD?

(that’s Living the Dream for those not in the know)

Top 10

I feel like every blog starts off with an apology for the delay in blogging! I’m going to stop apologizing and just let it be… it felt like a busy week last week, although not entirely sure why. Highlight of the week was probably finally getting to go to see something at the amazing amphitheatre at Katara. It’s a pretty spectacular venue. The show was a slightly random dance act that (I think) took us through the history of Anatolia. It was good fun, if slightly…esoteric!

Highlight number two was getting a car! You’ll have read from wifey’s blog, and indeed, anywhere else that mentions driving in Doha, that some of the driving habits out here are pretty…esoteric! Now, I haven’t driven in twelve years (who needs a car in London?) so it’s all quite exciting for me. Random lane changes, no one indicating and scant regard for speed limits are all commonplace here, but I think I find it less disturbing than some, as I’m not used to driving in a different way (for example, the fact that they’re on the wrong side of the road also doesn’t faze me!) as I said to wifey: I’m a better driver than 80% of the other people out there, admittedly that’s just not saying much. I’ve pulled-off my first honk at the guy in front for being slow off the lights (mandatory Qatari behavior!) my first U-turn (a recent article accurately described Qatar’s roads as an intricate one way system connected by roundabouts) and my first entirely random, unindicated lane change. Now I just need to get my first crash out the way and all will be well!

Enough about my shenanigans though, I’ve been here for ten weeks now (20% of a year!) it feels like longer, but also everything still feels shiny and new! Anyhoo, to mark my ten week anniversary, I thought I’d do a top ten of things I’ve learnt.

1: I love my wife. We hadn’t lived together before getting married and moving over here, so it’s been a real journey! She’s been putting up with all of my terrible behavior with a reasonable amount of patience, and might have even accepted the fact that I’m genetically incapable of closing cupboards; similarly I’m merrily glossing over her many foibles. It must be love!

2: I like work, and I’m quite good at it. I’ve never exactly lacked confidence, but it’s quite gratifying to be able to move well outside my comfort zone, pick-up a new job and be told that I’m “like part of the furniture” two weeks in! I’m receiving a good amount of positive feedback, and I’m enjoying what I’m doing, which is nice.

3: Qatar isn’t all that dry. In more ways than one, firstly, it’s rained about six times since I’ve been here, that might sounds like sweet relief to those in the UK, but it’s a bit odd for us desert dwellers! Admittedly, you could happily stand outside in the rain and onto really get cold or wet, but hey. Similarly, as a peninsular, Qatar is surrounded by water, Doha’s on the coast, and there are fountains everywhere. When it gets seriously hot here, it’s a humid heat. On the other front, it’s not really a problem getting hold of booze…which is nice!

4: I miss people, but not London. Kinda anyway, I certainly am missing people, I’ve never been great in staying in touch, but I’m trying at least! I think I might nominate one day a week as comms day and write out to everyone I know, at least try and get into a routine. Re. London, there are certainly things I miss: walking around London is one of the greatest pleasures on earth, headphones in, in non-touristy areas, just soaking in all the different views, cultures and history is awesome, Doha will never have that. I also miss the restaurants, food out here’s pretty good, but it can’t compare with the range and quality on offer in London. London feels more buzzy and creative than Doha, but this place just has a general craziness about it that’s pretty exciting.

5: I love bureaucracy. So fine, this isn’t exactly a recent discovery, I’ve always been a fan, but being here has reinforced the value of structure, guidelines, templates, processes and systems. No doubt many parts of the UK has gone too far, but that’s always based on political whims and legislation. We don’t have a formal way of codifying political whims out here, and legislation is pretty light, so there’s very little of the faffy kind of paperwork necessary to satisfy ignorant and scared politicians, but there’s also a lack of some of the necessary checks and balances that help you get stuff done, in the right order, to deliver a sensible outcome.

I’ll leave you hanging there, the rest of the list soon!

1.4 Degrees of Separation.

Wifey had to admit that it is now officially ‘warm’ in Qatar. I think this was prompted by the fact that when we flew into Doha a week ago at 0540 in the morning, the pilot informed us it was 26 degrees. Apparently the mercury (do they still use mercury, I suspect not) has peaked at 38 degrees, but since most of us spend our days shivering in our icy cold offices, I’ve probably not been out in higher than 35 degrees…which is warm. When a breeze is blowing all is right with the world (ignoring all the dust from the building sites that gets whipped around), we’ve had some sprinkles of rain too though and a couple of days of deeply unpleasant humidity, all of this is a harbinger of things to come, 50 degrees and 100% humidity for two months…woo!

We went around Katara on the weekend, probably for our most successful cultural visit yet: there was an amateur art fair on, featuring several local artists, probably about 20 stalls in all, some pretty rubbish, but some really good (with price tags to match). As we were there we also decided to go and check out the recently extended Martin Parr photography exhibit, not really my kind of thing, but wifey loves her photography, we then accidentally moseyed into two exhibit’s by Qatari artists, both pretty good, in a somewhat same-y and gritty manner, and then spotted that Sothebys were having some kind of regional art event too, with some very expensive and also very high quality items on offer, my personal favourite was estimated at 2-3 million dollars (not sure why prices were dollars?). whilst you could probably go and see all this kind of thing in London I never really did, and it would be rare to find so many different things all in the same place.

Then came the highlight of the day, mooching back to the cab rank we saw a stage and heard some wailing (ie traditional music) and also several hundred Qataris. Seeing so many together is quite rare, and a sight to behold, a colleague of mine insists the collective noun for thobes, the all white traditional male Qatari outfit is a ‘Brilliance of Thobes’. As far as we could tell, they were waiting for the prize giving ceremony for the annual fishing and pearl diving competition. Out to see we could just make out a smudge of dhow. We mooched off after a bit and grabbed a drink, and then noticed that the smudge was much clearer, the fleet was heading our way! After about ten minutes, 20 odd fishing vessels were clustered around the beach involved in some rather complicated mooring exercises. The sailors were greeted like heroes, despite the fact that a Qatari man told us that the competition used to last two months, rather than the four days it went on for this time.

After much excitement the actual prize giving started, which was rather dull, so we wandered off. All in although a pretty awesome day (wifey’s kicking herself that she decided to leave her camera at home!) oh, and the 1.4 degrees of separation: the galleries in Katara were all set to precisely 21.4 degrees… I turned the AC in our bedroom down to 20 degrees last night, despite wifey complaining of the cold, when she reads this there may be separation!

N to Zealand

I’m back, spent last night uploading Doha photos to the book of face, will try and get Kiwiland ones up tonight but promise nothing. Memory sufficiently lubricated by a couple of martinis (with one on the go) let’s keep this thing rolling:

N is for Nearby: so New Zealand is a long way aways from anything, it was 24 hours away from Doha, which is confusing since it seems to be 24 hours from the UK, and Doha is 8 hours from the UK, but anyhoo, once you’re in NZ, that’s it, the Land of Oz is the closest place, but that’s a good three hours…

O is for Awesome: apparently… this is a kiwi thing, I don’t get it, but this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaIZF8uUTtk

P is for Paihia: for some reason I have a blind spot for pronouncing this (relatively simple) place name! Anyhoo, it’s a beautiful seaside resort kind of place, we went parasailing, saw dolphins and went through a hole in a rock (Kiwi’s are obsessed with holes in rocks, true fact!)

Q is for Quiet: London is always noisy, although my last place in the burbs was amazingly quiet, Doha too is also noisy, perhaps even more so, it doesn’t have the buses or constant traffic, but it does have the 24/7 construction. New Zealand is quiet, beautifully so. So much so that we got woken up most mornings by a Tui (weird native birds that make very, very strange noises)

R is for Real Ale: fine, so it’s not exactly real ale, but I couldn’t work out how to fit beer in! I was generally very impressed by beer in NZ, lots of local microbreweries, and most bars carried lagers, pilsners, IPAs, golden ale, even the odd porter, having been generally horrified by the beer situation in Australia, this was very impressive!

S is for Sheepworld: OMG sheepworld y’all for reals! LOL! It was amazing.

T is for Television: watched a bit of kiwi TV, although mostly it was old UK shows, they get Emerdale out there, and are about to start the sixth season of Heartbeat! Kiwis go on about their amazing ads and how crap UK TV is in comparison, I’m not sold.

U is for Urban Sprawl: Auckland is apparently the second largest city in the world, not bad for somewhere with a population not much over a million people. The city council seem to have megalomaniac tendencies and have absorbed surrounding regions to a crazy extent; you can drive in unspoiled country side for an hour and still be in the city! Nice place though.

V is for Victory: we got to see the mighty, mighty Auckland Blues crush the puny Highlanders. I waved a flag. It was a pretty mediocre game of rugby, but I did get to go to Eden Park. Atmos would have been much better if they’d only opened 2 grandstands or just had lower tiers.  

W is for Whitianga: the Paihia of the Coromandel, another nice seaside resort, east of Auckland, this time got to see a fur seal, and an amazing school of snapper in the marine reserve. Also another hole in a rock (woo!) very pretty countryside and more chilled than the busier Paihia.  

X is for Xena: yeah so I struggled for an ‘X’… but Xena was, until the epic midget sagas were filmed there, probably one of the country’s most famous exports. Don’t turn your back on this important part of your history kiwis!

Y is for Yeah, nah: this is how Kiwis say ‘no’, everyone there says it , the antonym: ‘nah, yeah’ also exists.

Z is for Zoo: who doesn’t love a good Zoo experience, no one, that’s who! We shouldn’t feel like we’re only allowed to go to zoos with kids in tow, I encourage everyone to go to their nearest zoo ASAP. It’s a great day out, probably way more fun without kids, and you get to see all the kewl animals! Also, as I’ve previously mentioned we went to New Zealand to go to a wedding, the wedding was in the Zoo, and therefore was Awesome! Did I mention I got to see an actual Kiwi, at a wedding! AWESOME!

 

And I’m done. Now I must rest…and finish this martini. Laters y’all

 

A is for… New Zealand

I’ve had an excuse for the recent delay in activity, at 0600 this morning (Qatar time) Wifey and I returned from two weeks in her native New Zealand. We left at 1435 on Friday afternoon New Zealand time, it was a long trip, with five hours at the distinctly unimpressive Perth airport, and we’re now both knackered and trying to stay awake.

So I thought, whilst the memory’s still fresh, I’d try and sum up the trip, and New Zealand, in a quick A – Z:

A is for Awesome – the trip was great, fun and relaxing and the country and people are just generally pretty awesome.

B is for Beautiful – the countryside is just incredible, we only went to the north island, but the scenery is picture perfect, mountains and water everywhere, there’s a big drought at the mo, but there were still green pristine forests everywhere.

C is for Chatty – the kiwi’s love to talk, they’re a chatty bunch, obviously coming from London, you barely acknowledge, let alone talk to strangers, the kiwi’s just chat away to anywhere, a little bit scary, but I coped.

D is for Drought: the weather was amazing, we only had two mornings of rain in two weeks, and it’s autumn over there. Unfortunately wifey’s folks live in the middle of nowhere, so they’re on tank (rain) water, we weren’t sure they could handle two extra people’s water demands for two weeks, they still had three foot left though when we flew off.

E is for Expensive – Kiwiland is pretty dear, a pint of heinaken cost ten dollars seventy, which is over five quid, in an ordinary bar. We spent a lot over there, not sure how either. The weakness of the pound (even though we baby don’t actually use it!) didn’t help.

F is for Food – all in all pretty good, not a huge amount of variety in menus though, burgers, pork belly, eggs benedict and a few salads were ubiquitous.

G is for Grandma – wifey’s grandmother known by all (and I mean all) as Nanna, is a superstar, 93 years young, feisty and all round great fun. Everyone needs a little Nanna in their lives!

H is for Home – I’m not sure about wifey, but coming back to Doha was surreal, I felt more at home in two weeks in NZ than in two months at Doha, this place still feels like a dream.

I is for Idiom – you can’t help but love the kiwi vernacular, I spent most of the trip trying to be “kiwi-as” keep an eye on facebook for the photos!

J is for Jandals – “Japanese Sandals” that’s flip-flops for the brits, or thongs for the aussies. Everyone where’s them, everywhere, all the time, they’re kiwi-as bro.

K is for Kiwi – obviously it’s the iconic symbol of New Zealand, but one of my highlights of the trip was actually getting to see one of the fluffy little blighters! Only for a few seconds, and in the dark (obviously) but it was still pretty awesome.

L is for L&P – AKA Lemon and Paeroa a kiwi classic which tastes remarkably like lemonade.

M is for Maori – not a language I’ll be learning anytime soon! The place names are just baffling!

That’s probably enough for now, the rest to follow soon…