Miscellanea

Yesterday I received my first four-digit electricity bill ever. Well, it was "only" $475 in U.S. currency, but considering the price per kilowatt hour is a third that of Pennsylvania, that's a bizarrely large bill. In fact, they claim we are using 12 times as much electricity per month than we use in the hottest months in Pittsburgh. Taken in conjunction with the weird power outages we had most of last month, I think there is something seriously wrong with our apartment building's electrical system!

Also, I forgot to link to one of my favorite newspaper articles from the freak rainstorm: Warning against getting drenched. Forget modern science: apparently here in Qatar colds are caused not by viruses but by playing in the rain.

Finally, am I the only one who didn't know Yasser Arafat was bald? One more benefit to wearing traditional head coverings, I guess.

Reading list update

I just updated my reading list again. I forgot to add the two books on Islam I read last month, which were really pretty terrible so please don't follow up on them. Then the Qur'an, of course, which has eaten up most of my reading time for the last month. And yesterday I read Michael Cunningham's The Hours, which I very much enjoyed. How on earth would you turn that book into a movie?