Travelling with Gershom

Much, much dust in the wind around Doha these days. There have been high winds blowing from the interior of the country for the last couple of days, and this has kicked up a lot of sand and dust, and it is expected to continue for three more days. You can feel the grit in your mouth when you walk outside, and even inside. As I write this at my desk near the front door of my villa, I can see dusty trails on the floor where the wind has found it way in through the gaps in the door frame. Temperatures are down too. At 7:30 this morning it was 14 degrees (that's Celsius), pretty cool for this time of year. Coupled with a sand storm, well that's pretty miserable. Misery is, of course, a relative thing. When my daughter Stephanie and her friends bundle up for this weather they put on a hoodie or a windbreaker. Getting ready to drive to work requires windshield washer, and clearing a path to the car means hard work: Looks like I'll have to break out the broom in a day or two...

Actually, it's 1 for 14.5 million...dollars...for the license plate 1 in the UAE. Abu Dhabi businessman Saeed Abdul Ghaffar Khouri, seen at the auction in the photo to the left, was apparently prepared to pay almost twice that amount to possess the plate. While the special number plate auction raised a significant amount of money was raised for the establishment of a rehabilitation centre for the victims of traffic accidents ($24.4 million), it still seems wrong somehow. Not the fundraising, but the willingness to spend so much on a license plate. Maybe it's just me. But I am certainly as materialistic as anybody else (sadly), and I could something better to spend the money on, and still support a good cause. How about Product (Red) for example, where the seller gives a portion of the proceeds to charitable work in Africa, at no extra cost to the buyer? My iPod Shuffle cost the same as the shuffles in other colours that do not bear the Product (Red) logo, yet Apple made a donat