Do The Desert Shuffle.

It's Thursday again, and nearly two whole weeks have slipped into oblivion forever , joining the other two thousand weeks that went before it, never to be seen again. That's nearly fourteen thousand days; 328,000 hours; twenty million minutes; 1.2 billion seconds. And the clock never stops ticking over and over. Strange how we are so obsessed with time. We record it and monitor it and agonise over it, but we never know the exact time that it's going to end.

Too heavy. I'll move away from the psuedo-philosophical ramblings for now.

I'm getting used to it now: the routine, that is. I am getting up at 6am without feeling too tired, showering and dressing in 15 minutes, grabbing a banana and a cereal bar and heading out to Ras Laffan for the hour and however long it might take me, depending on traffic and camel deployments. (See what I mean about time? It rules our lives.) My mp3 player is keeping me sane on these long drives. I put it on shuffle -> all tracks and it works well most of the time, only impelling me to hit skip when it chooses to play a section of an audio book I downloaded or some test music loaded by some whizz at the factory. My music tastes are eclectic, so I can listen to a real variety of stuff, from Abba to Radiohead via AC/DC and The Smiths.

My going "home" routine is becoming familiar, and I've learned to time it just right to avoid the worst traffic leaving Ras Laffan and still drive in daylight for most of the journey, as the night can fall so quickly in this part of the world. The average temperature is rising every day, but it is still reasonably comfortable. That said, the weather has been very hazy and dusty for the last few days. The sky has adopted a milky quality, and objects appear gradually from the haze as you approach them. The flames atop the large flare-stacks appear to float in mid air, like torches on an invisible dungeon wall, until you get close.

When I get "home", I either head for the gym or try in vain to connect to the internet. I've been in the apartment for a week now, and they still haven't connected me. It is a minor irritation, but on bad days it seems just another annoyance on top of the others, accumulating to make me lose perspective and send me over the edge. So far, I've been able to keep the negative thoughts to a minimum, and keep reminding myself of what the mission here is, and that I will be home in three short weeks for my first break.

Last night was a big test of my resolve. I decided that I would find a supermarket and buy some proper food to cook instead of eating out or concocting more batchelor/student meals out of tins and packets, but I ended up caught in a horrible traffic jam on C Ring Road, and gave up the search. I found a way out of the jam eventually and got back to the flat at 7.30pm, hitting the gym straight away, before cooking myself some noodles and chicken sausages. Processed foods are generally the work of the devil; tempting yet evil. The worst thing is that I can cook quite well when I want to. I'm just using the excuses of time (again) and lack of proper cooking facilities (half the kitchen implements are either missing or broken). It's not like I need to do Heston Blummenthal-style laboratory gourmet with liquid nitrogen and a JCB, I just need to make something quick but fresh. I will definitely go to Carrefour or somewhere like that tomorrow and address the situation. This latest health kick I'm trying will only work if I do it with full commitment. I need some variety, because the daily offering at work of cold rice and chicken can wear one down after a bit. It's free, so I can't really complain. OK, I will a bit.

After eating my food I had a hot bath to soothe my aching muscles. The three sessions I've done this week have been hard work but rewarding. I was planning on an early night, maybe turning in at 9.30 or 10.00pm to get a good night's sleep and early start, but I'd forgotten about the Martians in the pit below my window. They were hammering away at whatever dreadful creation (most likely formwork) until gone 10pm, and I was convinced they were going to go indefatigably through the night, keeping me awake with the constant metallic pounding. I watched a bit of TV, then went to bed, and listened to my mp3 player for half an hour to drown it out, and when I pulled my earphones out, the hammering had stopped. Phew. So at least I got a decent sleep.

Back to today, then, and I'm looking forward to a barbeque tonight. A colleague has invited a few of us round to his apartment complex after work tonight for a little soiree. They have an area on the roof that can be used for parties and the like, so it could be quite pleasant. I'm going to be good and maybe have one or two beers and limit the troughing as much as possible; I don't want to undo my good work this week.

Then tomorrow is Friday: the day off. I might go to another football match. I think there's cup semi-finals at the same stadium I went to last week, and the final is the following weekend at the Khalifa stadium, which I think is the big new one they used for the Asian games. If I get to go to one, I'll write about it on here.

TTFN.