Qatar-isms

Three separate reasons have led to my posting another blog update after 6 months of absence, first I have just gone through my camera and I think some of these require sharing, secondly my other half has posted her first blog thingy and I feel I must make an attempt to keep up with her. And last but most important, I am procrastinating my homework. Using the "Force Method" to analyze indeterminate beams and structures is hardly the most riveting thing I have attempted to do today.

So here are just some snapshots of life in Qatar, not so much the glitzy, glamor travel-channel ones you may have seen or heard about. Funny, ironic or just interesting these are some things I just had to stop and photograph.

 At the gas station telling you which way is out.

 Bumper sticker where the "T" fell off at the beginning (these are very popular over here but we haven't figured out where to buy them).

 I just thought this was an awesome truck and for some reason enjoyed the fact that someone in a thobe was driving it, (at the Lulu's of course).

 The papers reported the next day that the remainder of this building collapsed, I just happened to snap this photo while driving past. Also I'm guessing the level sensor has been disabled on the excavator...

 Believe it or not this is a rain cloud. It poured massive amounts of water and I just stood out in it and got soaked, it was the first time it had rained in 8 months. I never thought I could miss rain.

 If you look closely you can see that this is the "Iranian Cultural Center" for some reason I think this is funny. I guess my little American brain imagines people sitting around holding seminars on the culture of theocratic hate and villainy... or something.

 Sheep on a two wheel dolly. My pun loving wife wondered if the sheep was a clone of Scottish origin.

Rental cars, nothin special right.

 I love this, pronounce the "R" when you say it, phonetically it works... kind of.

The latest edition, insert your own comment.

Whatever the Weather

 

Part of the adventure of living in another country is dealing with the weather.  "Winter" in Doha hasn't exactly been what we thought Winter in the Middle East would be like.  This morning it was 9 degrees Celsius (42 degrees Fahrenheit) when I left for work, and I felt like I was going to freeze to death.  But, beyond the "cold" (I put it in quotes because, well, I didn't want our counterparts in Italy or Indiana to go "pssssssh, cold?!"), a few weeks ago the fog came creeping off of the Persian Gulf like a prop in a horror film. 

I wish the photos I took of it creeping in had come out better but alas, you're left with a before and after shot.  It really was an entire wall of fog.  Seeping through the towers in downtown like someone was pouring out molasses on a cold day.  It was incredible.  The photo above, as I mentioned, is a before and after.  The one on the right is my usual view from the 41st floor of the Tornado Tower.  Pretty nice, right?  It was terrifying being above the fog.  Usually there's a slight hum coming up from the city below but with that mass of grey semi-precipitation moving in on us the quiet was practically palpable.

In addition to experiencing the crazy weather, experiencing driving in the crazy weather is just as much of an adventure.  And by adventure I mean suicide mission.  People over here already drive like they're texting while blindfolded but when there's fog, or rain, or an errant cloud all of a sudden it's like their blindfolds have been dipped in LSD and it's seeped into their brain via osmosis.  People were swerving across lanes, parking in the median and waiting out the fog, driving at 1/3 the speed limit, and there were hundreds more people than usual on the road (don't ask me why).  If both of my hands hadn't been glued to the steering wheel I would have taken photos of two of the accidents that happened.  One was a car, with a tiny pick-up that had t-boned it, that had t-boned another car.  It was like mangled train cars.

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I'd like to say thank you for joining me on this momentous "Emily's First Post on Adventuring" occasion.  The Mister and I decided that if we both keep up with this thing maybe we'll write more than once every six months.  I'm also keeping up with this and this though so... this could be a difficult process. :)

A Video Blog (Downtown Doha. West Bay)

Summer

Seems to be cooling off towards the end of the week...

Camping Where the Desert Meets the Ocean, Part 1

Three whole weeks have passed since we went on this camping trip and I cannot believe that neither one of us has made any effort to chronicle the weekend’s events until this point.

Anyway, bright and early at the crack of 12:30 in the afternoon, we set off in our caravan of SUVs with some fellow compound neighbors for adventure on what I like to call the West Coast (I am still humored by the fact that we can drive coast to coast in 1.5 hours).  An hour and a half later we arrived at the small town of Zekreet, and this is when we left the asphalt and was only the beginning. For an additional hour we drove off road through the desert, the terrain was mostly rocky and only sometimes sandy, the truck took a real beating from all the bumps, lucky she is a rental I guess. After driving just long enough for my internal organs to develop an understanding of how a martini shaker feels, we came to a stop and the leader of the convoy got out of his vehicle to explain how we were all going to get down the rather sheer section of rock ahead of us. Having grown up a city boy driving a little two-seater sports car for the last nine years, I had never been introduced to the exciting world of locking hubs and tires lifting off the ground due to a poor center of gravity, so, now I know how cool it is. So in spite of the bumping, jostling, climbing and the goofy ear to ear grin that Emily was making fun of me for, we arrived safely. 

This is how it looked. 

The Driving

An excerpt from my drive home:

Driving home from work yesterday I was merging onto a six lane road, I had two people cut in front of the vehicle in front of me forcing him to merge into the middle of the three lanes and as I did not feel like patiently waiting while for the lackadaisical driver of the Camry in front of to get up to speed I merged into the far left passing lane to get around him. As I am smiling to myself and listening to the Detroit muscle growl it's way past the pitiful four-bangers, I happen to look into the rear view mirror and see the poor driver of the Camry (now also in the far right lane) getting mercilessly flashed with the high beams of a Toyota Landcruiser. The frightened driver of the Camry instantly understanding his mistake at entering the “Landcruisers Only”, lane moves back to the middle lane as quickly as possible. Seeing all of this transpire in my rearview I imagine this to be a very important Qatari who has many important places to go, so as soon as I am able I also merge back into the center lane, thus avoiding the highbeam wrath of the Lancruiser.

After speeding by me and not half a mile later, the driver of the Landcruiser is forced to stop at the stoplight that everyone else is at. At the light the center lane of cars is shorter than the left lane and so I am able to move closer to the light and thus pass the very important driver of the Lancruiser. Upon doing so I cannot resist a look to the left to catch a glimpse of how important this driver must be (and possibly see some burka clad woman giving birth or something…) As I am finally able to see the driver of the vehicle I am not able to resist the urge to literally laugh out loud, sitting at the stoplight I cannot help but howl with laughter at the ludicrousness of the whole situation. The driver of the Landcruiser is just some little sixteen year old Arab boy, someone gave him the keys to a brand new Landcruiser and told him that he was super special. With their actions his parents have shown him, “don’t worry if you wreck it, daddy has three more and don’t worry if you kill someone in an accident, they will most likely be Pakistani and we won’t have to pay the family very much.”

I love Qatar, something new and exciting every day,

I just had to laugh…

The First Month

Just over a month has passed and after all of my whining and complaining about inactivity, I am now seemingly too busy to post any updates, that and the fact that I do not have the internet at home yet and also the fact that the computer that I brought over had a very rapid demise when I plugged it into the 220 plug without switching the current switch on the PC power supply. So, I am still waiting on a replacement power supply and the internet to be installed... Until then...

It has actually already been a month, where to start.

It is hard to describe the feeling of excitement and intrigue one gets when they are in a strange and unknown place. I have been working mostly ten sometimes eleven hour shifts since I have been here, sometimes working a six day workweek. This leaves me not a lot of time to go out and explore the area but I have been managing to get enough excitement in thus far.

Worth Mentioning:

 - The Souqs -

Although largely commercialized by the Qataris as one of their few tourist attractions, the Souqs, in particular Souq Wakif is still very interesting and there are many different local fare restaurants of which I have not nearly tried enough of. In some of the adjacent Souqs, (read market/bazaar/etc.) which are not as touristified I was able to get myself completely lost one day and managed to find enough interesting things to look at to keep me occupied for over three hours of walking around. More investigative exploring will be required though.

- The Wholesale Market/Nurseries -

Two weekends ago I decided to take my tourist map of Doha and try to find my way to the wholesale market. I had the whole Saturday off and I wanted to find out what the little icons on the map actually were. After spending an hour or so driving less than ten miles, I found the market. Although I had a bit more trouble tracking down the nurseries I was finally able to find them and several vegetable plants. To my ever thrifty excitement one tomatoes plant in a little four inch pot was only one riyal (approx. 25 cents), I bought several different things. It was kind of funny though because my largest expenses were the pots and the potting soil (the simple dirt was by far the most expensive). Enough about my green thumb excitement...

- Races/and the Entertainment of the Masses -

Let me begin by saying, there is not a whole lot to do in Doha. As far as I have been able to tell there are primarily three main things to do in Doha, (besides working and sleeping of course), The first and most popular among the local population is shopping, shopping and more shopping... strike one. The second most popular thing to do in Doha is eat. I think this is partially by default as there are not a lot of other entertainment options and though there are more ethnic varieties of food than you could ever hope to try, most places are rather on the expensive side... so strike two. The third and most supported and subsidized by the government is sports. Every kind of sport you can think of is represented in some way in Doha, it is a matter of national pride that they participate in every form of sport on some kind of national level. Anyone who pays attention to soccer knows about the 2022 World Cup in Doha, but what many people do not know is that Doha held the world championship competition of pingpong (the month before I got here sadly). The opening race of the Motorcycle Grand Prix was held last weekend which I proudly attended along with maybe two thousand other people which I am guessing is the lowest turnout the MotoGP will have during its circuit. During the woman's tennis championships several months ago they sold tickets for 25 riyal (a little over $5) and no one showed up so they went out on the streets and started giving away tickets so the video cameras wouldn't show the embarrassingly empty seats.

I am sure that as time goes on and I am here longer I will develop a better understanding of the Arab culture and what motivates their actions, until then I will continue my uneducated peerings into their culture and chuckle at some of the things they do.

Until next time, the view from my rooftop oasis...

ps. I never thought it would be possible for a nation of people to drive more aggressively than the Italians... I now stand corrected.