What a busy day !

It starts with a taxi ride to the campus.  The driver is from Egypt and also does 4-wheel drive dune buggy adventures for the same company.  Quite an exciting trip considering that Doha has very few traffic lights and virtually all of the intersections are “turnabouts”.  Two or three lane circles with people darting in and out.  The driver put some really quiet music on when we started out, almost enough to put me back to sleep.  While he was driving I pulled out my iPhone (which has been turned into a iPod to avoid international data charges) plugged in his MP3 to tape cassette converter and hit him up with some Lady Gaga while we rolled.  He laughed nearly all the way - CMU professor playing Gaga !

I got to campus (see the front door picture above) and went in and started orientation.  Met with 10 different people to discuss everything from Banking Services, Emergency and Crisis Planning (!), to use of the library.  I got my office assigned and the IT guys hooked me up with printer drivers etc.  Now I think I have most of the tools to do my job.

I also discovered that my shipment of iClickers for my Modern Biology class came in and so I can start using them tomorrow.  Unfortunately, only half of my textbooks for the class came in. There are 14 books and 27 students and 8 on the waitlist to get into the class.  The library is going to do some emergency scanning of the first few chapters so I can put them on Blackboard.  The rest of the books are likely (see the word likely) going to come in sometime (see the word sometime) next week.  We’ll see...

I got a rental car delivered to campus and the day ended with me driving back to the residence apartments.  Fortunately I had two colleagues who live in the same residence to ride shotgun and navigator.  We made it but it was harrowing.  Tomorrow, I drive into work with one of them and then home by myself.  It’s going to be quite an experience.  Speaking of residence, check out the building I’ve been put up in.  You’ll need to go to the real estate web site and click on the Al Seal Residence Apartments.  <http://www.alsheraarealestate.webege.com/>.  It’s way too nice, in a very good way !