Amazing women in Qatar - and Robert Kennedy College dissertation

You men out there might want to skip this post because I'm going to spend some time talking about the amazing and inspirational women I have met whilst I have been in Qatar. 

The reason I have been prompted to spend time thinking about this is because I am nearing the point of deciding on the subject of my Master's Degree dissertation research and I am very interested in the topic of how Qatari women leaders are making great strides here in the country, nationally and internationally. I would very much like to leave a legacy behind me that is of use to some of the younger women I have had the pleasure of meeting through my work and social activities in encouraging them to keep battling away at the barriers and obstacles they face to progress in their careers.

I have had several women batting for me as I have progressed through my own career who deserve a mention - my Mum, who is a tower of strength, still learning at 87 and supportive of whatever I do; my daughter who has her own degree, thriving career and has encouraged me all the way in new endeavours including working overseas at a very mature age; my good friend Judy, who was a staunch supporter when I began my serious studies at the age of 35 and kept telling me I could do it and would not let me give up; my many colleagues at NIACE who were a wonderful resource and support through the six years I was there - I learnt so much from them.

Now I am learning again from a new group of friends and colleagues who continue to stagger me with their hospitality, friendship, support and courage to come to a strange country, often following their husbands and uprooting their children, looking for work but taking it all in their stride. I have met more women in eighteen months, from so many different nationalities, cultural backgrounds, business sectors than I met in an entire lifetime in the UK. Add to this, my new friends and colleagues, also female, from the RKC Master's course, also from international backgrounds, and the circle expands again - Maria - Brigita - Sandrine - Marcela - Ines - Sarah - I could go on and on.

Back to Qatar - as part of my work, I have met many young Qatari women who are trying to progress in their careers. Many of them are working in the public sector - ie the Ministries, as this is considered a safe option for them. Many more are attempting the entrepreneurship route - this is being well supported by many women's organisations at the moment and a lot of public and private resource is going into their networks, training, encouraging them to branch out and overcome the bureacracy of setting up a business here.There are many barriers to doing so, not least the need for finance, sponsorship, premises and approval of their family, husband, father etc.

There are many fantastic Qatari women with wonderful ideas - in the world of fashion, industry, sport and many more sectors.For the first time ever, they have sent girls to the London 2012 Olympics. They are making a name for themselves on the Arab Business Women's List 2012. Our own ictQATAR Secretary General, Dr Hessa Al Jabar, is no 30.

They have a fantastic role model in Sheikha Moza Bint Nassar, the wife of the Emir of Qatar - she is seen frequently in the world press and has become something of a fashion icon, in much the same way as Princess Diana did in the UK. However, she is more than that - she believes strongly in the leadership role of Qatari women and wastes no opportunity to promote it. She has been the inspiration for many I have spoken to.

One of the barriers the young Qatari women here face is that they have qualifications but not experience. If they are lucky enough to be allowed by their families to study abroad and gain degrees, they come back to jobs where they are in senior positions without the experience they need. This is where ex-patriates have a value to help and support them. This is called Qatarization but sadly, the numbers do not stack up - the current population of 1.7m only includes 30-40% Qataris and not all of these are in the workforce. The rest of the workforce comprises ex-patriates and the largest majority of these are low skilled migrant workers. It will be a long time before the Qataris are in sufficient numbers to reduce their dependency on foreign workers.

Neverthless it is a privilege to work with the Qatari women here. They are proud, intelligent, confident and determined to succeed.

Eid Al Fitr holiday in Sri Lanka

Following the Ramadan holy month, all Government employees are lucky enough to get a paid holiday of at least seven days from work, which starts immediately after the end of Ramadan and fasting has stopped. However, because the exact first day of EID cannot be predicted until the moon has been sighted, we are not given our actual holiday dates in advance. Therefore we dare not book a long break.

We risked booking a short break to Sri Lanka, guessing at the most likely days I would be off work.We decided to travel to Galle in the south of the island, having flown to the main capital of Colombo and we were collected from the airport by our host, Widushan, the owner of the Lace Rock Beach Cabanas, where we were staying at Ahangama.

Our journey from the airport was a long one, as we had arrived during rush hour and the traffic in Colombo was dreadful, and there is no bypass around the city. A new expressway connects the outskirts of Colombo and Galle but it took us nearly two hours to get to it because of the heavy traffic. Colin, who is already a nervous passenger, was beginning to realise that the traffic in Qatar was light compared to the behaviour of the buses, Tuc Tucs, motor cycles, lorries and cars on the streets of Sri Lanka. There are no rules or sense to the behaviours, just horn blowing and then go for it. The buses seemed to rule the road.

We arrived at our destination quite late and in the dark and went straight to bed - we had been travelling for quite a while. We got up the next morning to the most fantastic view - our cabana was about fifty yards from the beach and the sea. The surf was up and the waves were crashing but a very relaxing sight.

We spent a quiet first day with a couple of short local trips to Galle, where we visited the old fort, a local turtle farm and a walk down to a nearby beach. Galle is a very pretty tourist town with some typical tourist restaurants, tea shops and souvenirs to purchase. The currency was very strange, with about two hundred Rupees to an English Pound, which made it very difficult to calculate.

Our hosts at the cabana were very hospitable and could not do enough for us - Siri the houseboy seemed to take a liking to Colin and they had a pact that he would bring him an hourly beer - this was accomplished even though they did not have a common language.

We had a couple of bouts of Monsoon rain, one in the night and we woke that morning to find the rain coming in under the door and pools of water on the bedroom floor. However, an hour later the sun was out and everything had dried up.

On another day, we had two exciting trips to a Government funded spice and herbal garden and a tea plantation. The tea plantation was fantastic - they cultivated eleven or more different varieties of black tea, rubber, had a shop and also gave you the chance to have a cup of tea in the owner's plantation house. This was just as you would expect a rain forest to be like - damp and steamy but very well maintained.

 

Our accommodation was clean and simple but very basic - the only downside being the ants in the bathroom which we seemed unable to cure. Our hosts were a lovely family and we had the pleasure of being invited to their home for a family meal to celebrate the daughter's birthday. It was an honour to be a part of seeing a real Sri Lankan family's home life.

 

Before long our five days were up and we had the long journey back to the airport in Colombo. We will definitely go back to Sri Lanka again - there is a lot more to see in the north of the country.

 

Robert Kennedy College - post residency thoughts

A few thoughts on post-residency gloom, now that I am back at week after a glorious week in Zurich with new friends and colleagues.

We worked hard and played hard and were very fortunate to be based in the amazing venue of the Old Smith's Guild in the heart of the city center, close to the Niederhof shops and many cafes and restaurants, all of which we took full advantage of during our breaks and after we finished for the day. Needless to say, we conducted our daily debriefing sessions in the cafe by the river, aptly named the Rathaus cafe, as it was just next door and a stone's throw from our venue. We engaged in lively discussion about the day's learning, washed down by an odd glass of wine or beer and basked in the evening sunshine.

You may have seen the photos posted by many of us on the Facebook page for the group but just in case not, you can see one below of the amazing scenery and our lively group at the cafe.

We all benefited from the expertise and knowledge of our tutors for the week, a mixture from both YSJ and RKC, but led by George and Irene. We added to that, our own blend of international experience which appeared to be very wide ranging and everyone was generous with their contributions to the discussions.

I for one, am sure that it will be of great benefit to me when I come to start my dissertation module in the next few months.

Robert Kennedy College - residency continues

We are settling into the pace of the residency and gelling as a group and I am certainly beginning to realise how valuable the experience is, both as a learning tool for completing the MALIC course and gaining the qualification, but also refreshing my research skills.

Additionally and probably very high at the top of the list of pluses from the week, the opportunity to make new friends and colleagues from the group here and finally meet our tutors face to face - all of whom have only been a very small picture on the forums to date.

We have worked hard each day so far but enjoyed some great evenings relaxing at the end of each day, choosing a different venue from amongst the many fascinating places in Zurich city center. I personally have fallen in love with Zurich and have enjoyed the opportunity to practice some of my A Level German.

A lot of thought has gone into the planning of the agenda for the residency but we have appreciated the opportunity to add to this and a prompt response has been made when we have raised any issues or concerns. For example, some of us have experienced issues with library access etc and I found it extremely useful today to have the journals demonstrated - this will be vital for our dissertation literature reviews.

We are all looking forward to the dinner tomorrow night and in particular the after dinner speech!

Robert Kennedy College - first day of the Zurich residency

Well here we are - I'm writing this a day late at the request of all my new friends - I hope I can call you all that! We had a great first day yesterday and really enjoyed our get together and meeting some of the tutors face to face after only having online encounters to date.

We are very lucky to be doing our residency in a fantastic old building in the middle of the historic part of Zurich, rather than the Technopark, which just by co-incidence happens to be very close to all the cool bars and restaurants for when we finish for the day and need to have our debriefing session.

Bert is our official photographer so I will put up some pictures as well.

More later!

Robert Kennedy College - wise words

Mid term assignment feedback has just been received and very timely indeed - much appreciated by all of us I'm sure. This is probably the last entry for this part of the blog, but I may continue to comment on my learning experience since it has been useful reflection for me.

However, back to the "wise words" since the object is to learn from the online experience, feedback in the past for mid term assignments has been in the form of a summary provided with comments positive and negative about the different parts.

This time, it came in the form of track changes and this made it particularly useful to identify where improvements needed to be made for the final submission. Additionally, a helpful podcast has been provided with some overall comments and suggestions which are a timely reminder of what we should be taking note of in addition to the module handbooks and the feedback, some of which is routine but important. When we are working online, it is a great change to hear your tutor's voice and feel part of the actual group.

I feel hopeful that this will make a great difference to all of us.

Robert Kennedy College - lesson learned - I should have known better!

A warning to everyone - I of all people should have known better and I'm sure my e-learning colleagues will find this amusing!

Two days ago, my laptop crashed (or at least I thought it had) - it would not boot up, no screen display - nothing. I realised that although I had been religiously backing up my files once a week onto an external hard drive, this does not allow me to view or access my files, only restore them to another laptop or computer. Big mistake on my part, not understanding the difference.

Fortunately, I have a Dropbox account but I had not been using this to keep a separate copy of all my documents, only my photos.

I discovered after a bit of trial and error that it was the power cable at fault, the battery still worked and the screen was ok. Therefore, thankfully, I was able to get my files back, but the few hours inbetween when I was worried about losing the files, which included all my MALIC documents, does not bear thinking about. First thing I did was copy everything to my Dropbox account and then create a work folder on the external hard driver and do the same. I now have them in two places and will update them regularly.

I won't be caught out a second time, but I wonder how many of you out there have been making the same mistake - please do a backup, especially of your mid term. Our tutor in MOD013 did warn us about keeping a copy but I failed to take note.

Robert Kennedy College - timing dilemmas

This is going to be a busy couple of months - most people slow down over the summer, especially in the educational world but not MALIC students.

I have three priorities over the next two months - my current module ends on 19 August and we have a month to submit the final assignment by 19 September. However, the next module I haved signed up for commences on 10 September, which is also the same week as the residency in Zurich begins.

This means that I will have to have the final assignment completed and submitted before I leave for Zurich, 1-2 weeks before the deadline, be thinking about signing into the new module, to make sure I am registered as starting it and to prepare for the residency with any pre-reading.

All this on top of a full time job. I think it will be very time consuming and I also need to be considering the reading list for the new module, in case I am missing any of the texts. Plus, I will need to give careful consideration to possible topics for my dissertation, since I hope that I will have the opportunity to discuss this with our tutors at the residency - this will mean some time for research on top of everything else.

Well here goes. Wish me luck.

Driving me crazy in Qatar

Finally, having been here a little over sixteen months now, I feel qualified to comment on the truly hair-raising experience of driving here in Qatar - I exaggerate not. Having gained my Qatari driving licence, which was only a matter of waiting for my residence permit and then visiting yet another official institution with a queuing system, with photos etc, I duly decided to rent a car for three months. This is fairly standard practice for ex-pats and you usually end up with a Toyota Corolla - this being the cheapest and most reliable vehicle they have.

The first week is the worst, and you definitely need a passenger to help you. It's not just the fact that you are driving on the right hand side of the road. It's more because all the roads are three lane highways and the motorists here will pass you on both sides without any warning, so you need an extra pair of eyes as well as all the mirrors to look out for this happening.

The other phenomenon is that they do not believe in using their indicators when turning off, pulling out in front of you, will often cross three lanes in front of you without any warning and then turn off and if you wait any longer than ten seconds at a junction or roundabout, then the horn comes into play.

Forget the normal stopping distance when driving - if you leave a space longer than a car's length in front of you, someone will fill it. The most common and frightening practice I have seen is tailgating which happens all the time, when a local in a Land Cruiser wants to get past in the fast lane or the inside lane and you are in the way.

The best day for a new driver to practise is Friday, which is the start of the weekend and Friday prayers, so the roads are very quiet. See the picture below which is their main highway to the north of the country - this was taken on a Friday morning - we were the only car on the road.

Roundabouts are quite an experience - they usually have traffic lights on them, but not many people take any notice of the red stop light. There are no traffic cameras on the roundabouts, so unless there is a traffic cop, they get away with it.  However, lane discipline is non existent and you need eyes in the back of your head. I have learnt to watch for the "body language" of the cars here and predict what they are going to do, then hang back and let them get on with it. That way, you usually avoid being part of the daily accidents which occur on the roundabouts.

All accidents have to be reported to the police or you cannot get your car repaired. If you have an accident with a local, it is without doubt, going to be your fault.

There is a very high percentage of four wheel drive cars here - probably about 80% and most of those are white, silver or grey - very occasionally you might see a coloured car but not very often. Most car parks are a sea of white! We have now bought a second hand 4x4, and it is definitely much safer - size matters here and the bigger the 4x4 the safer you are on the roads. Generally, as a rule of thumb, everyone gives way to Land Cruisers, usually because they have Qataris driving them and they are bigger than you.

Driving to work on a Sunday morning, the first day of the week for me, at 6.45 am, the traffic is busy at the traffic lights as we all wait our turn. You learn to dread the lights going to red, because you are in for at least a five minute wait then. No-one jumps the lights because it is a 6,000 QR fine (£1,000) and there are cameras on each set. This picture was at the lights near work, one morning when we had just had some heavy rain - just like a morning going to work in England.

Robert Kennedy College - it's done!

Finally, with four days to go before the deadline, I have completed the mid term assignment for this module and am about to upload it. It is hard to believe the sense of relief that this brings when it has gone off into cyberspace and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it at that point. It will either be good enough or it won't and we await our feedback with a mix of dread and anticipation.

I have taken a completely different approach to this assignment. I mentioned in an earlier post that my assignment structure had been criticised, and in particular, with reference to the literature review. I have tried to analyse this feedback and attempt to resolve what I am doing wrong. I hope that this assignment's feedback will acknowledge this. However, one difficulty is that because different tutors mark each module, I'm not sure whether this will help, since the feedback has been different on both final assignments so far. Only time will tell.

Again, I am hoping that the residency will help, since we will have an opportunity to discuss any concerns we have face to face. Although the online experience is great and very well constructed, there are occasions when only face to face discussion will help. This is why I am a firm supporter of blended learning and why full e-learning courses are so very difficult to deliver successfully.

Robert Kennedy College - it's that time again

It's that time again, when we have to start drafting our mid-term assignment for the current module. I have been reading, reading and doing more reading - getting to grips with the essential texts and some of the other books around the subject of my current module.

This is very time consuming but to be expected at this level of study. However, not easy when you're working full time as well. We are halfway through the units of this module and have to submit a 3,000 word draft of our final assignment which essentially covers most if not all of the elements of our final assignment. It is an opportunity to take stock of how we are doing with the module content and begin thinking about our approach and arguments.

Module Tutors offer useful tips and hints for the assignment but until you begin putting pen to paper (metaphorically, since we are all using computers these days) it is not so easy. The practical parts of it I find much easier, such as the formatting.The referencing is not so easy, although there are clear guidelines, because it is very time consuming and cannot be done at the last minute. Building a bibliography takes time and I actually found this one of the most stressful activities, worrying about leaving something out.

My last two assignments were criticised because of their structure, yet I put a lot of effort into the layout and construction of the final assignments. It is clear that I still have a lot to learn and I think it will be useful to talk to our tutors at the residency about this, to see where I am going wrong.

Anyway, here goes again - hoping for a better result this time.

I have discovered a new trick with the pdf files and the Kindle. It you email the file to the Kindle, there is an App on the iPad, which allows you to merge with your Kindle, then download all the books to the iPad and read them on that. This means that you can then enlarge the pages and see the page numbers, which is not possible on the Kindle - a bit of a hindrance I found for notetaking.

Preparing for Ramadan again

This will be our second Ramadan in Doha and I hope that we will be better prepared this time than last year. We were hoping to spend part of it away this year but it has not worked out now that ictQATAR has changed the vacation rules for ex-patriates. We now have to take our annual leave in three blocks in line with Qatari employees as we are a Ministry and all government employees.

This means that we will be here for the whole of July and August, although we may be able to get away during the EID week. We usually get the whole week off.

Ramadan for government employees means that since the Muslims will be fasting, we will all be  working shorter hours. My working hours will be 8am to 1 pm - five hours in total. This might sound like a great deal but try fitting eight hours work into five hours to achieve the same results - it's not easy.

Next issue is that there is no tea/coffee service and the cafe is not open and obviously we have to respect the no eating and drinking rules since most of our work colleagues are fasting. If we do want to indulge, then we must be very discreet about it. This I don't mind - we are of course in a Muslim country and should respect their customs.

Everything closes down during the day, shopping malls, tourist attractions etc and don't open up until the evening, after the fast is broken. There is a brief period during the day for some shops which open, but you cannot get a drink of any sort, even water. We did discover last year, that the British cafe stayed open and provided you used the side entrance, they kept the blinds down, you were able to get a meal there.

All the hotel restaurants and bars which sell alcohol are closed of course for the entire month of Ramadan, so drinking is restricted totally to at home. The plus is that the liquor allowance we have is tripled to enable those who cannot do without, to buy extra, to see them through the month. Last year, we badly miscalculated how much Guinness to buy for Colin and it ran out very early.

One of the nicer parts is the Iftar celebration which takes place each evening when the fast is broken. Many restaurants and hotels put on extremely fancy meals in highly decorated and themed locations. If you are lucky you get invitations to some of the special ones.

On the whole though, it's a very quiet time.

Robert Kennedy College - MA - the online learning experience

Not to bore you too much with my studies, but since I am working on them, I thought I would have a themed entry to the blog today for all my e-learning colleagues who might be reading this and be interested in how the online experience is working for me.

It is very interesting to be experiencing it as a learner for a change and not as a practitioner or someone advising how to develop such a platform. I have enquired with the College, as to which platform is being used and apparently it is a bespoke one developed specially for RBK. Nevertheless, it is simple and seems to work well, from a learner perspective.

The learner engages with video lectures, downloads corresponding powerpoint slides, which form the lecture notes. There are reading lists in Word format and then discussion forums which follow the units in each module. We are required to engage in the forums as part of the assessment, although it is not clear how this is monitored. It is possible to see how many posts each students has made, and if you are following the thread on a particular forum, you know who is contributing and who is not. As ever, there are certain students who are the most frequent contributors and the most verbose.

Finally, we have to submit a mid-term draft assignment and then the final assignment, both of which are uploaded in either Word or pdf format to the system. All fairly straightforward. So far, the only hitch has been library access and having to read the books only via that access. Luckily a kind soul has been able to download many of the essential texts in pdf format and put them in Dropbox for us. This has made life a lot easier because they can now be read on the iPad or Kindle.

Hope you find this interesting.

Blogging with Robert Kennedy College

Now that I am almost half way through my MA, having successfully completed the first two modules and shortly to submit my mid-term assignment for my third, I can almost begin to believe that I might be able to succeed at this.

It is way tougher than I would have thought, but since I am working full time and a lot older, it is not perhaps surprising that studying comes a lot harder now. I think it's also fair to say, that the distractions of nice weather, a lovely swimming pool versus reading text books after work, makes for a difficult choice.

Since I'm never been a quitter, I will struggle on and am looking forward to going to Zurich in September for the residency when I will meet my online colleagues for the first time, face to face.

Starting my MA with Robert Kennedy College - another new experience

A major decision last September to enrol on an online Masters degree with Robert Kennedy College and York University in Leading Innovation and Change. I debated long and hard about this, having become aware that in order to progress at ictQATAR, I would need a Masters degree. A new labour law had been instigated which meant that it was highly likely someone could be put in in post over me with no experience but a higher level qualification. It became clear that if I was to stay at the Ministry and wanted promotion, I would need this further course of study.

At my mature age, it has not been easy to start studying again, although technology has made things a lot easier than when I did my first degree in 2000. The course is entirely online, with a great online learning environment which has been created specially for the College and University delivering these courses.

The delivery includes video lectures, downloadable powerpoints from them, online forums and discussions with the other classmates and assignments are uploaded to the system.

So far, it has been enjoyable, hard work and very challenging. I have just started the third module and am awaiting my marks for the second!

Water after the long drought

Here I am again - life has been very busy for the last few months but I am back on the blogging trail again to continue the tales of life in Doha. I'll try and backtrack a little so be patient - I'll need to trawl my diary for the interesting bits - I promise there are some. Some major highlights have taken up a lot of my time: first of all Gillian and Mark's wedding and secondly starting an MA which has taken up all my spare time - more of these later but for now a picture of my beautiful daughter and new son-in-law.