'The internship' period has technically gone on for a few days now, so I've been writing things down until I had solid internet access. This is from the 12th:
As to how my internship is shaping up so far, I’ll give you a hint: that first title is the tiniest bit sarcastic. My flight to Doha with Qatar Airways, yes, ‘the world’s five-star airline’, is already two and a half hours behind schedule; considering that I had all of eighty minutes to make my connection once I got to Doha, I can safely assume that I will be in that oh-so-scenic little Gulf state for a little longer than I expected. I should add that there is only one Doha-Shanghai flight per day.
The launch of my internship, so to speak, has so far proceeded as such:
-I had a lovely sleep on a plush white downy bed and then had a long soak in the bath, emerging relaxed, well-rested and eager to arrive in Shanghai.
-I arrived at the Qatar Airways desk, where they actually weighed my hand luggage and told me there was no way they would allow it onto the flight. What kind of airline weighs hand luggage?? (nb: I am fully aware that this whole thing was my fault; I plead young and stupid.) Anyway, the excess baggage charges were going to be about 300 pounds.
-I cried (kind of). I can do this on command and though I’m not terribly proud of it, it has indeed allowed me to weasel my way out of about 150 quid worth of overweight charges before.
-The guy behind the desk relented about halfway and told me to get rid of five kilos (instead of eight), which I promptly did, much to the amusement of the massive Indian family surrounding me. I’m not very good at throwing things out, even clothes that I’ve had for the past seven years, so maybe it was good for me. At any rate, my wardrobe has been streamlined.
-I pelted through security and duty free with the briefest of stops to squirt some Chanel Chance on my wrists (I really can’t help it), screeched to a halt at the gate and filed onto the plane with everyone else. I’m pretty sure that most everyone is connecting to somewhere that is NOT Qatar—it’s hard to imagine why there would be enough people that wanted to go to Doha to fill an entire plane. Perhaps that a bit harsh, but most everyone says it’s an armpit.
-The pilot told us that the plane was being towed back because of a ‘fuel tank malfunction’. As fuel tanks are the things that seem to explode a lot, I figured this was for the best.
-The pilot told us with a few nervous laughs that we would have to disembark, because they actually had to replace the faulty fuel tank with a working one. The last time we heard from him, he said it would be ‘at least an hour’. This means it will probably be about four hours.
-I went back to duty free to try on some lip gloss and then got myself some juice at WH Smith. Absentmindedly I stuck my Boots card into the machine; the girl behind the counter told me, ‘That’s a Boots card. This is W-Haytche Smif’. Feeling stupid, I took my card back; as I looked down to take a five pound note from my wallet, I gestured towards the total on the till and asked, ‘What’s that, again?’ Referring to the cost of the juice, of course. The girl looked at the fiver in my hand and informed me, ‘That’s five pound’. Thank you for that.
I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting an actual resident of Qatar—not a Qatari but rather a native Mancunian. This inexplicably cowboy hat-wearing guy was kind enough to confirm that the Qatari sand thing was true—that is, Qatar is so unsuitable for living that even the sand is useless, as in you can’t make concrete out of it, so the country actually has to import sand from Saudi Arabia. It’s apparently not even sand, just baked dirt. My new chum also confirmed that it’s a ****hole crawling with fast food restaurants and people with more money than sense…kind of like Dubai, but with less in the way of entertainment. Indeed, when I read through the QA Oryx magazine, it included a friendly welcome from the Emir of Qatar in which His Highness claimed that his state was ‘fairly liberal’ because it permits Westerners to drink alcohol…in hotels only (by the way, don’t even think about bringing your own booze into the country). The Emir did abolish child slavery and the Orwellian Ministry of Information, though, so he sounds like a decent fellow. Relatively.
Some other fun facts about Qatar:
-It’s only three hours ahead of Britain and two in the summer! It seems like the difference should be greater, considering that Doha is far away from pretty much everything apart from Yemen.
-Its national animal is the gazelle-like oryx, which is probably the only thing that’s actually suited to living in Qatar. Homo sapiens, not so much.
-I’m sure there are other things.
Qatari musings aside, I am SO excited to (eventually) get to Shanghai! The Chinese government has poured ten times the money into the city for the 2010 World Expo as it did for the Olympics in Beijing, and apparently the whole place looks gorgeous and is packed with people from all over the world. Hopefully I’ll get to take a look at some of the podiums during my time off—as great as it would be to see the Chinese or Saudi Arabian ones, the queues are about six hours long, so I’m keen to see the smaller, more obscure countries’. I’m sure Belarus has put together something spectacular, or at least funny. And of course I can’t wait to meet my colleagues and flatmates, stuff myself with the famous local dumplings, explore the old neighbourhoods and soak up some of that lovely humidity.
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