Passing Time

I am sat in my classroom with a cup of tea whilst writing this. In about half an hour the boys have an awards assembly and then we hand out their reports. They finish at lunchtime, I finish at lunchtime. And then, for some reason which totally defeats me I have to come into school tomorrow morning from 7:30 to 12:00 noon to do... what? I have done everything I have to do, my work here is finished and I am just waiting to leave. I've had my final payment, I've cleared from the school, I just have to pass the time.

I think I might spend the morning playing Scrabble on Facebook.

The Whole of the Ball

The law clearly states that the whole of the ball must cross the whole of the line.


Clearly it didn't!

Not that the non-goal is an excuse - we didn't have a great World Cup, did we. It might have made a difference if we had got it to 2 - 2, but who knows.

Sepp Blatter, now you really will have to bring in goal line technology - your gamble failed.

By the way, I hope ESPN won't mind too much but i nicked the photo from them - this is the url of the original:

http://a.espncdn.com/photo/2010/0627/soc_a_nongoal_288.jpg

And yes, OK, I admit it, I might havePhotoshopped it a bit!

Getting Ready to Go

Mrs. Istanbilly leaves Qatar tomorrow for the last time. She is off to Skopelos for the summer. She has been a busy bee today - she is not only packing her bags, but packing the household effects up ready for shipping to Istanbul. She is doing that because I am so unreliable (her word not mine) that I can't be trusted to do a proper job of it!

Anyway, what I can do is show you a couple of pix of the where we are going to live when we get to Istanbul:

Above is the front view of our house, it is a nice place, brand new, two bedrooms, not overly big, but big enough for us. This is the side of the house:





We have two balconies - one looks over the tennis courts which are in the process of being built and this is the view from the other:





I have to say that this is a view that I can happily live with - at the moment I have a view of the villas on the opposite side of the street about 15 metres away! And if they weren't there I would have a view of Qatar which, for the most part, is brown!





This is the pool which is shared by about 10 or so houses. Provided there aren't too many kids that could be quite pleasant!

I think we have found ourselves quite a nice place to live and it is only a couple of kilometres from the school. In fact, we can see the school from the balcony, but it is difficult to spot in the photo above as the walls of the school are green and it blends in with the scenery.

The next two weeks are going to be pretty drab with Mrs. I not around, but I will be joining her in Skopelos soon. I leave Qatar on the 2nd of July, spend that night in Athens and will arrive in Skopelos at about 2 in the afternoon of the 3rd of July. I am looking forward to the holiday but I am looking forward to getting started in Istanbul as well.

Roll on the 2nd of July!

A World Cup oddity

Here I am in a country which broadcasts virtually every English Premier League match, complete with English commentary, live and yet I am left in World Cup limboland!

It ain't on the tele! Apparently I can pay 80 USD to Al Jazeera and get the World Cup complete with Arabic commentary but the channel for which I buy the top of the range bouquet (or perhaps bucket) doesn't have it, with commentary in any language!

Ah well, I guess none of the teams from the Gulf managed to get through, eh?! And doesn't it show!

And before you advise me to go to the local pub to watch it, Al Khor doesn't have any local pubs... come to think of it it doesn't have any pubs at all - local or otherwise! The nearest bar is in a 5 star hotel about 60 kilometres away.

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Another photo from Istanbul

The place we were staying in was an apartment that had been rented for someone else who, for one reason or another, felt unable to use the apartment. As apartments go it was pretty impractical and we will certainly not be living there when we get to Istanbul. But the views ...

Istanbul

So, I promised you some photos of our trip to Istanbul. Now you have to understand that this was not a tourist trip - so no Blue mosque or Haji Sophia or Topkapi Palace. This was strictly business.

We were staying in a little apartment in a suburb called Kirecburnu, which is really more of a village than a suburb. Anyway, this was the view that we had to put up with:

Back in the Sand

Well, my two week visit to my new school is over and I am now back in Qatar for the remainder of the school year. I have got exams to write and I will have to mark them once my kids have done them, but other than that I have to get ready to leave Qatar for good on the 2nd of July.

First step is getting a police clearance - just so that my new school will have it in writing that I have been a good boy during my time here. Then Mrs I and I have to get our Qatari residence visas cancelled. Our flights are all paid for, so the only other thing to sort out is the bank account - not the easiest of jobs! But I am sure we will manage.

The biggest job is sorting Baggins out (you remember Baggins, the cat who is worth more than I am). We have booked him into kennels for the summer and we hope to be able to take fly him out to Istanbul shortly after the 1st of August.

Mrs I leaves on or about the 19th of June for Skopelos and I will be following her two weeks later on the 2nd of July. We will have just about a month in our island home and then we are off to Istanbul on the 1st of August.

We have rented a lovely little house there and I will put some pix up as soon as I get the time to download them from my camera.