Day 201

Last night at 9 pm the flight board told me that I was going to leave Qatar today, and like a fool, I believed the board. I got up at 6, did my morning thing, packed, dressed, turned in my bedding, and made it to the outgoing briefing at 0730. The bus left for the airport at about 0800. We got to the airport, de-bussed, and hung around the passengar terminal for about 15 minutes. Then, one of the LNO's, the marine one, started reading off names. I was one of the names he read. All of us whose names were called were told that our flight was cancelled and we had to return to the R&R center. So, we walked back to the bus and got comfortable. 5 minutes later we were told that we'd have to go back through customs and we had to get off of the bus and bring all of our gear. So, back off the bus and back to the terminal. But wait, we'd gone too far. We needed to go back one building and wait there. After about 5 minutes we were told that we didn't need to go through customs and that we needed to get back on the bus. As we were heading for the bus we were told that we in fact needed to go through customs. Rather than continud to be treated as taffy in a government pull, at this point we were all shuttled off to a holding tent where we sat for 15 minutes waiting on word. Turns out, we all had to go back through customs, which meant we had to walk around the customs building, to get to the front, and go through the metal detectors and have all of our stuff run through the x-ray machine. Then, back on the bus and back to here. I'll find out tonight at 9 when and if I have a flight. This is a very formal country; the dress of men and women and the behaviours they expect out of others. The monetary fine is larger for spitting on the sidewalk than it is to get caught driving 100 miles an hour over the posted speed limit. As such, any cursing inside the customs building is grounds for immediate deportation, to a country of their choosing. And since the customs officials are all from Pakistan, who knows where we would have ended up. (Black hole of Calcutta scare you just a little bit?) It was this alone which kept our sojourn through customs the quietest this group has been since our arrival. So, for lunch today I had a rare cheeseburger at Chili's and some ice cold lemonade. Now I'm just killing time until 2100 hours. For those of you keeping score, this is my Day 8, actually the 9th day, in Qatar. Not bad for a 4 day pass.