Jason’s Travelogue

The plan thus far-

12/1  Fly out of Doha, Qatar

12/2-4  University of Southern California

12/5  Western University

12/6 – 12/10 DAVIS!!

12/11  Stony Brook  University

12/12  Univ. of Pennsylvania

12/13 – 12/20 ITHACA!!

12/21 – 1/13 DAVIS!!

1/8 – UC San Francisco

Hopefully my patience will pay off and I will get a few more interviews before I have to go back to Doha. I wish I could be traveling the world, but that’ll have to wait till summer.

So the past few weeks have gone by without much fuss or problems. I’m in a set schedule once again, efficient in my work…. and that means more time for comics!

Follow the flow chart, fellow graduates! Where are YOU in the great jungle that is life?

When I get lost in life, I read this

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I was prepared to have little to nothing to do in my free time here. How did I know?

Ever person I’ve met seems to love to tell me that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to do in Doha.. that I will most likely be very very bored.

However, knowing this tidbit of information and maintaining a go-get-em mindset, I’ve managed to rope myself a new hobby- scubadiving.

As of this day, I am certified PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) Open Water Diver. A beginner, true, but on my webbed feet way to deeper and further depths and cooler sea life (I want to see a shark and a giant turtle. Preferrably together, and even better, fighting a duel to the death for supremacy). Not a cheap hobby, I’ve had to dip into my Qatari piggy- well not piggy, that would be haram (forbidden)- bank.

My instructor is a husband-wife duo, John and Patty Sellhorn, who work for Rasgas in a northwestern town of Al Khor. I am also in the Al Khor Dive Club, one of the few who live in Doha. They are quite the pair of characters- extremely friendly, extremely jovial, and extremely tanned with cool (matching) dragon tattoos. Working with them has been a pleasure. I also have two other classmates- Ralitza, a Bulgarian instructor of English and an amateur food critic and Zoey, a South African high school student with an American accent despite never having set foot in the States.. Having scuba buddies made carpools much more funner.

So I have no cool pictures of myself diving, but I will soon in the future. I can now go out on weekends and join various clubs, mostly the Al Khor crew, to go beach/boat diving. Which is extremely exhausting, and I usually sleep for the rest of the day, but also extremely exciting. I see lots of fish (including these cool blue angelfish that love bananas, right out of my hand! Pictures someday…)

Doha ain’t bad, folks.

Three of us decided to dress up for October 30th.

After some discussion, we had agreed on a Super Mario theme earlier in the week. A number of ideas ran through my head- Luigi? Mushroom? Toad? The big flying bullet?

Then it him me. Why not be original? Google searches had netted me images of countless Marios and Princess Peaches, but few objects from the game. I decided to be the golden Question Mark Box that Mario apparently headbutts? (I thought he just hit it with his fist) and gets goodies from.

Getting a cardboard box was indeed a hassle- like everything else in Qatar, I was given the roundaround by  eight different people at the mall. In the storeroom of Carrefour, I managed to corner an employee and he was forced to grudgingly hand over a box as I pointed at the countless stacks of boxes right behind him- he couldn’t even try to deny that any such empty boxes existed! I grabbed some orange spray paint, colored markers, string, and scratch paper to create, lo and behold, a Question Mark box that I wore over my shoulders.

Atsuko came as Super Mario, Becca came as the classic SNES controller, and I was the Q-Box. I had made little shelves in my box to hold candy, a cardboard mushroom, star, feather, candy for the kids, and speakers that blasted out my Super Mario songs I found on the net. We held a little skit for the second-years after their physics lecture… I hooked up the room mic and played the theme songs, as Becca “controlled” Atsuko by pressing buttons. When I was headbutted, I threw goodies into the air- when I threw a star, I hit the Starman song, and Atsuko ran around the room, knocking people over (okay, she didn’t really hit anyone). A great success. We celebrated the said success by eating candy and taking a walk outside- Super Mario, the SNES controller, and the Question Mark Box.