shimweasel

strontium 90, removed from milk

Posted by Mark Sun, 03 Dec 2006 11:27:11 GMT

I have emerged, blinking and squinting, from 4 of the weirdest months of my life. The ceremony is over, obviously, and suddenly I have time to stop and take stock.

The event itself went ahead in total chaos. The weather on the night was the worst that I’ve seen it here: torrential rain, howling wind, and lightning.
Large parts of the show were cut, especially flying sequences: if you were watching the storm sequence and wondering why not much was going on, there ought to have been about 8 boats descending from the heavens and disgorging pearl divers. It looked terrific in rehearsal, and I’m desperately sad that it didn’t go out, but in the show, all we had was the Seeker trying to look fascinated for five minutes.

Done and dusted now, of course. I made an entirely unnecessary visa run to Bahrain yesterday - apparently my work visa is still good, and they wouldn’t give me a tourist visa, so there’s a day wasted in airports. Still, I made friends with the barman, had a bacon sandwich, and chatted to the stiltwalker who’s been circling the flask for the last three or four weeks. (I wasn’t sure it was her - people look quite different in gold lycra and silly hats.)

Taking stock of it all:

It’s dumb to take a job where the contract states they can work you as hard as they like without overtime. I won’t work 16 hour days again except for my own company or for overtime rates.
Embedded programming is fun and different and not nearly as difficult as I expected.
Being part of the show crew was fun, but endless rehearsals and hours of standby are not for me. I’m running away from the circus to join an IT support unit.

I have an interview for Georgetown on Monday. If that goes well, I may be in Doha for a bit longer.

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Game Day

Posted by Mark Fri, 01 Dec 2006 11:31:18 GMT

Everything I’ve worked on for the past four months comes down to today.
I’m so nervous I can barely talk - we had more rain last night, I think, and it’s entirely possible that the neon tubes could turn into another impromptu fireworks display. We had a good rehearsal of City of the Future last night, but we haven’t run through the whole show with all the elements yet, which does scare me just a smidge.

For good or ill, it’ll be all over in 16 hours. 2pm Saturday on SBS, for those of you watching at home.

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reliably antisocial

Posted by Mark Mon, 13 Nov 2006 04:00:34 GMT

I was just let off work an hour and a half early. What did I do with this bonanza of unexpected spare time? Did I hit the rugby club, take a sixpack and a deck of cards next door, or talk to another living soul?

No. I took my shisha, a sixpack, and my xbox, and ignored the rest of the world for 3 hours. And it was glorious, dammit.

Work continues in fits and starts at the stadium. We don’t have an overwhelming amount to do, but it has to be done when nobody’s using the stadium or the equipment, which constrains us a little.

(Comment-fixing coming soon. Hold your horses, Bean.)

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and so it begins

Posted by Mark Wed, 08 Nov 2006 21:48:15 GMT

Tomorrow, I start work at 11am, to finish at 11pm.
This will continue without weekends until the 21st of December, apparently.
It’s possible I may be even slacker about updating this blog than I am at the moment (on a puny 10 hour day, with a day off every week!)

Please, continue to mail me to tell me about how much fun you’re all having. I need the reassurance that the real world is still out there…

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the long-awaited Ramadan tent pictures

Posted by Mark Sat, 21 Oct 2006 18:31:37 GMT

or picture, should I say - all the others seem to have gone MIA.

The dancer on stage is a whirling dervish. I was under the impression that it was a more solemn, religious, rite: this guy was almost a Vegas performer. Regardless, it was certainly a spectacular act, and the food was amazing - I practically rolled out the door.

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filthy, sweaty, loving it

Posted by Mark Thu, 19 Oct 2006 00:04:20 GMT

i’ve learnt to climb. The last few days have been all about clambering over set pieces, working out which cable to plug into where.
Not much actual strapping: Basheer & company are too good at that for me to bother even trying any more.

I’m off to another Ramadan tent tomorrow night - let’s see if I manage to find the last pics before I go to the next one.

(still sick, manfully ignoring my death-rattles.)

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not dead

Posted by Mark Tue, 17 Oct 2006 22:17:27 GMT

life is somewhat frantic lately. I’ve moved from being an expert doing difficult things to a newbie doing chumpy things: I’m in charge of a gang of electricians now, but my role is more or less an interpreter. Stephen tells me what he wants done, and I point the Indian electricians at the problem - the last three times I tried to actually do some work, Basheer looked at me with a funny grin, then undid all my work and redid it competently.

This rapidly becomes demoralising.

Still, Basheer is a major league gun, and I don’t take too much offence.

Today was mostly spent outside, clambering all over a set piece. I drank about 5 litres and sweated 10 - working outside in Qatar is a whole other experience. I’m also the least graceful climber they’ve ever seen, I think: while they jump and skip over the structure, I laboriously find my three points of contact. I’m always happy to provide entertainment.

Oh, for those keeping score: my tonsillitis is still intact, apparently. On some different meds now. They offered to rip them out at the hospital, but apparently the 1st of December is the first appointment I can get, which is the date of the opening ceremony - I suspect that I’ll be awake 20 hours a day round that time, so there doesn’t seem much chance of getting surgery recovery time. Till then, beer is my medication.

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tonsillitis. again.

Posted by Mark Wed, 04 Oct 2006 23:04:26 GMT

This is ridiculous. I post more about getting sick than I do about music or technology or girls or _anything_ that I actually like. I’ve got some illicit antibiotics and I’m seeing the doctor to get a medical certificate tomorrow.

I have some Ramadan tent photos and a heap of stuff to write about, but it’s hard to focus on anything that isn’t phlegm right now.

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Ramadan and other weirdnesses

Posted by Mark Thu, 28 Sep 2006 00:46:21 GMT

I hope you’re happy, Bean - I left a perfectly serviceable party to write this.

Anyway. It’s the beginning of Ramadan in Qatar at the moment. Ramadan starts at the beginning of the crescent moon in the ninth month of the year according to the Islamic calendar, rendering the dates more or less a matter of guesswork for Westerners.

Ramadan means a slew of restrictions. Muslims cannot eat or drink, even water, between dawn and dusk. Even for non-Muslims, eating in public is an offence. All the bars shut down, immodest clothing (ie, shorts or t-shirts) are forbidden, and you can’t buy food in daylight.

This all sounds a tad grim, but I’m enjoying it much more than I expected to, so far. While our canteen still operates, the food here is dismal enough that I don’t eat a lot during the day. The shops are empty, and as they’re staffed by Asians who are, by and large, not Muslims, there’s a strange sort of party atmosphere. The staff joke and laugh, and smile at you conspiratorially. The checkout chick even started flirting with me - I got a wink, which in this culture is equivalent to a leg-wrapping tackle-and-kiss.

The sole drawback so far is the crazy behaviour on the roads. Traffic is down, but I was almost taken out this morning by a Qatari who decided he couldn’t be bothered going all the way around the roundabout. I don’t look forward to riding in rush hour.

I’m hoping to go to a Ramadan tent at one of the hotels soon - apparently they’re pretty lavish affairs. I apologise for the lack of insight into Arabic culture, but they’re very hard people to get to know. One of the problems with having a culture which values hospitality highly is that people tend to be much more choosy as to who they consider friends.

Work continues on the opening ceremony. Some of my work will apparently be used in one of the major props - I can’t really talk about it, but it should be extremely cool.

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road to recovery

Posted by Mark Sun, 17 Sep 2006 13:08:03 GMT

I’m now at that magical state of ill health: sick enough that I can blow off work without a trace of guilt, but not so awful that I can’t tap out the occasional screed between naps and ascetic meals of bread and water. This is likely to be a bit of a mongrel of a post, as I couldn’t be bothered to separate tech from social from cultural - you’re just going to have to lump it.

As I mentioned, the code is done. The clever stuff I was hoping to do with automatic conversion of synchronous threads into asynchronous interrupt-driven code turned out to be more or less unnecessary: if we wanted to do a chase and a fade at the same time, or simultaneous chases on different channels, or if the timing needed to be more precise, it might be worth doing, but it seems that the straightforward one-thread-of-control model is going to be enough. Anyway, despite its simplicity, I’m rather proud of this system, both the Amida side and the Fat Controller, and all the things that I thought were just evidence of my obsessiveness turned out to be useful timesavers: one-click testing turns out to be very helpful for installing software on multiple Amidas as well as development. Thursday was consumed with learning how to solder, which was fascinating right up to the point that my iPod ran out of power. Still, I ought to be able to start fault-testing and repairing the Fat Controllers now, which should be interesting.

After an uncomfortable teething period (loose pedal, chain dropping off, etc), my bike seems to be behaving itself. It’s a one-speed mountain bike: I know how ridiculous that sounds, but in a country like Qatar, where you’re often coping with bad but flat roads, you don’t really need gears, and there’s enough dust and grit in the air that the thought of dealing with a cheap derailleur gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies. Invariably, I beat the bus in to work, and it’s amazing how much more independent you feel when you don’t always need to rely on other people for transport.

The shisha is also proving a hit. I’ve currently got lemon and coconut tobacco, although it seems to have gone walkabout… Matt Reason instructed me to find an affectation while I’m over here, and as growing a luxuriant beard and wearing a thobe seem to be out, the occasional indulgence in flavoured tobacco might be it.

Socially, things are looking up. I’ve been hanging out with the Georgetown uni people a lot more: I like the steelies a lot, but I can’t drink with them every night - they’d have to ship my liver home in Synrock. It’s also rather pleasant to be able to spend a night in, smoking the shisha, playing Password and listening to strange
people in monk’s costumes playing the recorder without feeling like a total nerd.

I have quite a few incredibly crappy pictures: I’m still relying on my cameraphone for the most part, which is grainier than muesli. Still, a few photos came out relatively unscathed: