Thought Clouds
The Digital Bender

This is a quickie... I live in Qatar. It is quite the diverse place here. Today I made my way into a mosque I never prayed in before. Turns out 99% of all the people who prayed there were Pakistani or Indian. After prayer finished, one man stood up and said something in his own language which was probably Urdu. He looked poor, like most of the people around me. I assumed he was telling everyone he was having a hard time setteling a debt or paying his rent as sometimes is the case. I looked at the Imam hoping he would explain to me what the man said, but he was busy with his after praye doaa' and tasbeeh. A man next to me was looking at me and smiling, he could clearly make out that I was puzzled. He tried to explain to me saying in Arabic "Hatha fi Jawlah, Jawlah ... Jawlah". But I had no idea what he meant. These words don't really mean much unless you understand what he means by Jawlah which really means a "round". Another man explained to me he is asking ...

I just have to write about this. I was reminded yesterday while in a meeting of a fact of my daily work routine that I found especially interesting. And that is that I work in a widely diversified environment. The aforementioned meeting was between four of us. My self a Jordanian, one South African, one German and one English man, all working on a project who's team is just as diverse. The project is run in a division run by a Singaporean. The program manager is Qatari. The project owner is Greek but lived in Austria and married to a German (who's sun by the way speaks 5 languages fluently). The project team contains two Nigerian/English guys, a Syrian/Iraqi/English, a Lebanese, an Australian, an Irish, an Indian and three English guys one of which speaks English so posh that you think the Queen is about to walk through the door. When preparing for this project back in December 06, I remember a lunch we had. One Russian who lived in Brazil. The afore mentioned Greek/Austrian. O...