It Rains in Qatar - and the Desert Blooms

Rain in Doha

A dramatic change to the weather has seen thunder and rain in the capital city, with thick grey clouds spreading across Doha's normally clear blue skies.

This is good news for a country which has just a few centimetres of water a year, and comes shortly after the Emir joined in the annual prayers for rain.

Desert Flowers

The desert, after a dry winter last year, should also start to bloom.



Which is handy, as our latest article, The Desert Blooms, is now ready. We were going to bring it out on the tenth, but with the rain hitting we have brought forward the release a few days.

In the article Frances Gillespie, author of Discovering Qatar, takes a walk in the desert after a rain, exploring the animals, plants and lizards that live there.

The article is accompanied by vivid pictures of Qatar's desert flowers by David Gillespie.

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Christmas Dinner in Qatar: Price Comparision

Image by Pete4Ducks

It may seem a little presumptious to start talking about Christmas Dinner at the start of Eid Al Adha, but it might be a good idea to book early - The Four Seasons was already booked up when we rang. (On the other hand, they were the only ones who were booked up!)

The idea of this is basically for a price comparison. We were hoping to be able to go for a beat the credit crunch sort of post. However, the prices are a long way from those of the days of Qatar Christmas past.

My friend can remember when xmas dinner in the Marriot about six years back set him back a mere 80 riyals. As you can see from the prices below, this has now multiplied several times, although the Marriot, along with the Sheraton, does still offer good value compared to the other hotels.

Anyway, we have compared seven major Doha hotels below. We haven't managed to get through to the Movenpick yet, the Four Seasons is booked up, Rydges is not sure if they are even going to be up and the long standing Oasis has now finally been demolished. If you know of any more good places for Xmas lunch, let us know and we will add them in here!

Intercontinental Hotel: 974-4844444

Christmas Eve Dinner: QAR: 224
Christmas Brunch: QAR 320

La Cigale: +974 428 8888

Xmas Eve Buffet: QAR235
Xmas Special Buffet: QAR 275

Marriot

Xmas buffet dinner: 24th December 7pm - 11pm
QAR 190 per person + QAR70 service charge

Christmas Dinner at the Gallery 25th + 26th December
QAR210 Per person + 17.5 % service charge

Mercure: +974 4462222

Xmas Day. Set menu at La Villa.
QAR350/person

Ramada: +974 4281428

Xmas Day Dinner at the French Restaurant and the Steak House
QAR280 + 70 service charge

The Ritz Carlton: 484-8000

La Mere 560/person
Lagoon 320/person
Porcini 560/person

Ritz Carlton Sharq Village and Spa: +974 4256666

Ritz Carlton will be having a Christmas Eve dinner only.
Al Dana restaurant: Set Menu (5 course) QAR600 including one glass of champagne.

Sheraton: (974) 4854444

Christmas Eve:
Xmas Pasta Buffet: QAR 190
Ak Shaheen - four course menu: QAR 280
Al Hubara main lobby restaurant buffet: QAR220

Xmas Dinner:
Al Hubara Xmas Dinner Buffet QAR220

Also see:

Doha Hotel Reviews | Christmas in Qatar | Japanese Xmas Gifts

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The Islamic Museum: First Visit

Today I finally got to see the inside of the Doha Islamic Museum - and was seriously impressed. While I appreciate the exterior of the Museum and the interplay of the shadows on its complex geometric blocks, it doesn't really take my breath away.

The interior, on the other hand, is breathtaking, and must be a photographer's dream. As you enter, the atrium opens up high above you, with lines everywhere merging into each other, while a huge window offers a superb view of the Doha skyline.



We chose to limit our visit, viewing a selection of the artefacts rather than trying to take in everything in one go. We have the luxury of being able to make return visits!

Interactive Media

After entering the building, grab yourself an interactive media player. (You'll need to submit your id until you return it.) Along with an audio introduction, there are numbers to go with around 30 of the exhibits - when you enter these numbers you can hear the story behind it.

Exhibits

Ancient Quran

There were several exhibits that caught my eye on this first trip. One was an ancient Quran - thought to have been written only a few years after the death of Mohammed.
The survival of the manuscript was due to the nature of its parchment - vellum, made of animal skin scaped clean.

The Quran was not compiled until after the death of Mohammed, and this Quran must have been one of the first - perhaps compiled from the recitations of the Mohammed's followers. To be in the presence of such history felt awesome.

Christian Calligraphy

Another fascinating piece was a painting of the Virgin Mary with a young baby Jesus. This may seem like a strange exhibit for an Islamic Musuem, until you read the calligraphy: There is No God but God: the first part of the Muslim profession of faith. The painter had been a Christian, albeit one strongly influenced by Islamic calligraphy.

In adding the calligraphy, he expresses a core belief of both religions - that there is only one God.

The Book of Secrets

The third one which really intrigued me was the Book of Secrets - about the Results of Thoughts. This gives the lie to our belief that mechanical genius is a recent thing, with writer, Andluscian engineer Al-Muradi, describing more than 30 machines of ancient times, from war machines to water clocks. Much of the 11th century book has been decoded by a team of scientists, and an interactive digital version of the book is available for browsers. The book itself will be on exhibit until February 2009.



Also see:

The Book of Secrets: DecodingTheHeavens.com

Opening Hours

The Museum will be closed on the first day of Eid and Xmas.

Sunday: 10.30 - 17.30
Monday: 10.30 - 17.30
Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday: 10.30 - 17.30
Thursday: 10.30 - 17.30
Friday: 14:00 - 20:00
Saturday: 10:30 - 17:30


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Looking for work??

Blossom 25 is asking for staff on our Jobs forum.

Are you looking for an instant job? Well, join us! We are in urgent need of young and active females (preferrably Filipina but not a requirement).
JOB TITLE: RECREATION RECEPTIONIST (Gym)
JOB DESCRIPTION: > Welcoming guests entering the facility
> Answer guests' inquiry -- walk-in and phone questions
> Data Encoding
> Monitoring the facilty from time-to-time

For more information check out the post here: Urgent: Recreation Staff

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Reading in Qatar

or What ever happened to the National Library of Qatar?

Being a book lover (when I had time to read books before starting this blog and website!), I went looking for the National Library of Qatar as soon as I arrived in the country - now several years ago.

It shouldn't have been hard - the library was marked clearly on the map. Yet, no matter how many times I trundled up and down the Corniche, I could not locate the building.

It turned out that the makers of the map, rather optimistically, had marked it on the map before it was built. And it never got built, which is a shame because, as the picture below shows, it would have been splendid.

My assumption is that with the rush to get ready for the Asian Games, as well as the building of other major projects such as the Islamic Museum, the building just got left behind.

It's also worth pointing out that not many Arabs in Qatar read a great deal, apart from newspapers, magazines and the Quran.

When I trundled down to the original and still standing National Library, itself housed in a pleasant old building, there have been few browsers other than myself.

And the lack of readers in the Qatar National Museum even made a news story: 300,ooo Books Go Begging for Readers.

Image Source: Qatar Living

One reason for (or result of?) this lack of readership could be the lack of (non-religious) reading material in the Arab world.

Kalima Translation, an organisation dedicated to encouraging the translation of Arabic books, points out that:

• more books are translated in Spain than have been in the Arab world for the last thousand years
• only one book per million Arabs is translated into Arabic every year

Meanwhile the Arab Human Development Report states:

"The Number of Books Published in the Arab World does not exceed 1.1% of production."

It is worth remembering that this was not always the case. Once the Arab World, which now spends 0.2% of Gross National Product of research and design, lead the modern world in the field of knowledge.

It was Arabs who brought the basics of the modern numeral system to Europe, came made great advances in the fields of medicine. They even treated the mentally ill with music therapy.

According to Rediscovering Arab Science:

In mathematics, astronomy, medicine, optics, cartography, evolutionary theory, physics and chemistry, medieval Arab and Muslim scientists, scholars, doctors and mapmakers were centuries ahead of Europe.

Qatar, more than most, realises the value of knowlege and education - they have, after all, built Education City, and invited prestigious American Universitities to set up campuses there, as well as setting up the Qatar Science and Technology Park.

Yet enter a 'bookshop' and chances are all you will see is stationery.

Reading, it seems, is still a rarity.

Who knows if a new National Library could have revived readership in Qatar? And who knows if it ever will?

Also see: Qatar Books | Books, Bookstores and Libraries in Qatar

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Business not as usual...

Business are being turfed out of the Sheraton Hotel and members of its sports club are moaning this week as the hotel is cleared for the United Nations conference on development.

However, there is plenty on for residents - if they can navigate round the frequently closed roads, which are regularly cleared for passing dignities.

They also need to watch out for police who aren't always the brightest of the bunch - I saw one nearly get knocked over after steppiong into the middle of the road with his colleague, without looking, to have a quick conference.

At least residents in Qatar are used to roads being closed without warning, whether to allow VIPS to escape the usual traffic snarl or at the whim of workmen who rarely think of warning signs at the top of a closed off road.

On the positive side, in addition to the ongoing events at the Pearl, The Islamic Museum will finally be open for residents today. We plan to go along in a few days when things have quitenend down a bit.

Later on this month (14th and 17th December) we are also hoping to check out a photo exhibition of Qatar's history taking place at the Qatar Expedition Center, and during Eid Al Adha you can watch Spiderman scale La Cigale. (We said before that this wouldn't prove much of a challenge to a man who has attempted some of the tallest buildings in the world - but after a second glance La Cigale doesn't seem to offer a climber much to hold onto!)

In the meantime, you may want to browse through the pictures of the Islamic Museum which is being held close to the Sheraton Hotel. You may think you have seen enough images of the Islamic Museum, but some of the photographs are simply superb. (You can also see a number of them on flickr!)

Who knows - you might even run into Mugabe, who is here to complain about Western sanctions as usual. I have one friend from Zimbabwe who would certainly welcome the chance...

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Famous Visitors

It seems that Qatar is gaining more and more recognition, with a string of celebrities visiting the country. In addition to a lot of local royalty, the opening of the Islamic Museum also saw De Niro, who will be returning with a duplicate of the Tribeca Film Festival next November.

World Leaders are arriving for a major UN conference - including one Qatar probably won't be boasting about: Robert Mugabe. They will be rather more pleased that the top two tennis players in the world, Federer and Nadal, will be coming here in 2009 to battle out the Qatar Open. In fact, it is perhaps a mark of how much attention that Qatar - and the Islamic Museum - is getting at the moment that hardly anyone noticed the four famous visitors below.

Original Image By Amar

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Change in the Weather

We stepped out as usual this morning, planning to head to the Corniche for our usual Friday morning picnic - only to stop in surprise.

Instead of the usual sunshine we found an overcast sky already spotting rain.

We headed down to the Rumeila Park hoping to take shelter in the trees if it poured.



Despite or because of the gloomy skies everyone was enjoying the park.

"Lovely weather," said a couple of passerbys. In a country where there are only a few millimetres of rain a year, residents look forward to a bit of drizzle just as the Brits look forward to their few rare days of sunshine.


Certainly this young girl was having a whale of time, scooting along the pathways of Al Bidda park with the Doha skyline the background...


Also see: Qatar Weather | Desert Cold | Qatar Rain | Doha Fog


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Qatar Tribune Online - How Does it Rate?

The Qatar Tribune has finally launched its website:


The website, while not exactly cutting edge design, is more attractive than either the Gulf Times or the Peninsula. The Gulf Times' unattractive new design looks a mess on Firefox, while the Peninsula seems stuck in the 90's, and also has problems with Firefox.

Web Standards

The website looks clean. Unfortunately, it is breaking current web standards. (So does Qatar Visitor, actually - we'll be addressing those in our redesign next year!)

For example, the pictures have no alternative text - meaning search engines can not identify the pictures and that the image will confuse text browers.

Headlines for the Web

Will the papers writers and editors make any compensations to the web? As This Boring Headline is Written for Google explains, writing headlines for readers and for writers are too different things.

Above, for example, we have written Qatar Tribune Online - How Does it Rate? rather than How Does The New Qatar Tribune Website Rate? The most important keywords - Qatar and Tribune - are placed at the beginning of the headline to make it easy for Google to identify the topic.

Early headlines are not great: Five Steps to N-free World is not going to make it easy for search engines to identify the topic. Nuclear Free World in Five Steps would have been better!

Writing for the Web

Web users are in a hurry. It is also harder to take in information from the screen than from papers.

That's why web paragraphs are short.

The long, paragraph free blocks of text on the front page do not bode well for today's impatient web reader.

Navigation

Navigation could be better. I would say that both the Gulf Times and The Peninsula, with their sidebar navigation menus, have a superior navigation.

There are too few stories on the front page, and too much information for each story. It is easier to click through to a story than it is to turn a page - and harder to flick through a website looking for things of interest.

And there is no search box - many internet users are still not aware of the site search function on Google, and so will not be able to find what they want.

Conclusion

The Tribune is a new company in a declining industry trying to make headway against more established papers. This was an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage against two newspapers which haven't got great websites.

What the Peninsula and The Gulf times have got, however, is an established presence and thousands of backlinks. With a poor navigation system, The Tribune will struggle to compete.

Qatar Newspapers: Which is the Best?

Qatar Writers - Free Service

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Spiderman to Scale La Cigale

This has just popped into my inbox - Spiderman is to scale La Cigale! Not the comic book character, of course, but the famous Frenchman, Alain Robert. Although La Cigale shouldn't present too much of a problem for a man who has climbed the Eiffel Towers, it should be a sight worth seeing.

The climb, which will take place at seven o'clock on the 6th and 7th of December at 7.00 pm, will be viewable to everyone from the main parking lot (which is where, La Cigale tells me, you will get the best view), and there will be no fees to watch.

You may also want to check out his Spiderman's website, Spiderman.

Click on the image for the full size flyer.

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La Cigale: A Review

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Qatar Visitor on Forbes

One of our website images - on Forbes. Credited to us in very small writing.

You can read the article here: The World's Best Malls.

Also see Qatar Shopping.

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The Financial Crisis in Qatar

Financial Crisis? What Financial Crisis?

Hold UT was asking about the financial crisis on our forum today (see Finance-Crisis in Qatar), to which my wife, looking over my shoulder, said:

Financial crisis? Do we have a financial crisis in Qatar?

I am not reporting this to boast or gloat - I don't think we are perfectly secure in Qatar, although I'd rather be here than in the UK right now - but the majority of people are not feeling the crisis yet.

This is not the case in real estate, which despite office vacancy rates of just 1% has been experiencing property prices drops of up to fifty percent.

This is likely to continue: on a single page Qatar Today is reporting a 40% drop in demand for property - and a predicted 150% increase in office space!

Nor, with the price of oil falling to around $50 a barrel, does everyone believe the almost daily reassurance in the papers here.

No Credit Crunch for the Qatar Government

On the positive side we have a government who has a huge reserve of cash - and it is not afraid to use it.

It is pouring billions into the country's infrastructure, and according to one businessman I spoke to planned projects over the next few years are likely to mean an increase in the expat population rather than a decrease.

Natural Gas: Qatar's Saviour?

It's also worth remembering that Qatar is not wholly dependent on its shrinking oil reserves, and future revenue is likely to come from Natural Gas.

Natural Gas is still just coming on line, and the country that will turn America into the largest Natural Gas importer in the world is still producing at a fraction of its potential.

Furthermore, Natural Gas is often sold via long term contracts, meaning that the income provided is likely to be more stable than petrodollars.

So my main worry is real estate - and the huge borrowings companies that will have been made to finance their frenetic building.

But the average person on the street, like my wife, is barely aware of it. Hopefully, they'll stay that way.

Also see: Doing Business in Qatar | Job Vacancies in Qatar

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