Life, the Universe, and Everything, or Day 42 in Doha

Only a select few are going to understand the title for today, but I'm going to keep it anyway.

Besides obsessing over the number 42, today was Education City Family Day! As I've mentioned before, I love how of the campuses are interconnected, and so took full advantage of that.

First lunch and dessert were at Texas A&M (and catered by Sharq, a very fancy hotel in Doha), while saying hi to all the A&M exchange students, Abdalla, and Surahji. Second dessert was at CMU, while saying hi to a group of CS professors and all the Student Affairs staff. Snack time was out on the Green Spine, while saying hi to the student representatives at each university.

Since each school is pretty small, the likelihood of knowing someone whose picture is on some sort of advertising material increases. So my new favorite picture to take is the one where the person is posing with their own picture. (Remember Mathew?) I was taking a picture of Omer, and Abdalla one-upped him by finding two pictures of himself on advertising brochures.

Also out on the Green Spine were a group of Qatari musicians. They pulled in a few of the students and staff to dance some sort of slow line dance (similar to the sword dance, but without the weapons) while horns and drums were playing.



After the excitement (and deliciousness) of Family Day, I was asked by Varun to star in my own commercial! Well, my voice (and that of another guy) is going to be hear on the Qatar Foundation Radio advertising the Education City Quiz Challenge. (I remembered the website from the commercial.) We attempted some looseness with some improvisation, but let's just say it was funny listening to our gaffs right after we created them.

After the excitement (and silliness) of recording a commercial, I visited my CS buddies up in the Robotics Lab. They were just so full of life... or would have been, had they been a bit less stressed about the fact that the weekend was almost over.

A few hours of procrastinating later, I found myself in the apartment of the one and only Daedri. She is proud of her Jamaican heritage and made me some delicious jerk chicken to prove it. The chicken was a bit spicy, but so moist it just fell apart without a knife. Hats off to Daedri making (an almost midnight) dinner!

Then it was back to university, where I managed run into the exact same people that I saw this morning. In addition, I also checked out the architecture students' space. It looks pretty comfy for them being there 16 hours a day. They are even working their little "non-majors" pretty tough. It's a nice, warm, international feeling of always having work to do.