The end of sponsorship...?

"Qatar to ease business rules: sponsorship-free regime likely," announced the Gulf Times today, in an article which unfortunately does not appear to be available on its website. (Since this post was published the article has now appeared!)

Could this be the end of Qatar’s ridiculous sponsorship rules?

Just in case there are any non-residents reading, your sponsor is like your owner. Without your sponsor’s permission, you can’t leave the country, take a driving test, open a bank account or purchase alcohol in one of the country’s two off-licences. Obviously, such a transgression of liberty is very off-putting to many of the professionals who Qatar needs to progress its ambitious development plans.

The beginning of the end (we hope) came with the setting up of the Qatar Financial Centre. This was the first Qatari Institution which could recruit expatriates without the need for sponsorship.

Today it appears that the Government is keen to relax rules further. ' "We are trying to create a business environment of international level," ' said Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor al-Thani, first deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, before admitting that 'local business was used to certain style of doing business'.

What is not clear is whether this relaxing of sponsorship will apply to all areas of work, or just business, and to all races and nationalities (political correctness has yet to reach Qatar) or just Gulf Arabs and Westerners.


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The Singing Sandunes: directions

Head out of town along Salwa Road. About eight miles after the large roundabout by the industrial area, you’ll come to a Mobil Petrol station. Go past the station and do a U Turn. Drive back along the road, past the army camp, and take the right turning onto the road to Messaieed. Drive along the road, past two roundabouts. Turn left at the first junction after the roundabout. Follow the new road – be careful as there are some vicious speed bumps. You’ll cross a pipe line, and come to a t-junction - go straight ahead here. As you drive along (it's not very far) you’ll be able to see the dunes – leave your car by the side of the road if you have a sedan, or drive over the rough ground if you have a 4 wheel drive.

Click on map below for full image.


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Dunestock 2007

Dunestock, the annual musical festival, will be held on 9th March this year. The event will start at 12.00 p.m. and finish at 12.00 am - the event will once again be held at the singing sand dunes on the Salwa-Messaieed road.

In addition to live music, enhanced by the natural amphitheatre effect of the singing sand dunes, there will be bouncy castles, face painting and food stalls. All money raised will go the the Doha Players rebuilding fund.

Also see:

The Dunestock website for more information.

The singing sand dunes: directions

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Messaieed Industrial city

(also known as Umm Saieed and Musay-id)
Population: 12,674 (2004 census)

If you're a tourist you'll probably only see Messaieed as you drive through on the way to Sea Line resort or Khor Al Edaid (the inland sea) or to Umm Saieed beach. Your impressions will be of refineries spouting flame and massive housing constructions: the place is obviously going to expand dramatically.

Despite its small population, the present importance of this "city" cannot be underestimated: commodities imported and exported through its port account for about 60% of the country's GDP. The place itself cannot be mistaken for what it is: a town devoted to manufacture and industry.

Messaieed was established on the salt flats or Sabkhah of Qatar's coast in 1949. It intitially functioned as a tanker terminal by Qatar petroleum, and was Qatar's first deep sea port. Today its port sees about a 1000 ships a year passing through. Currently, Messaieed is expanding at an astronomical rate, and there seems to be many more buildings under construction than are currently built.

Go past Messaieed city and you'll find towering sand dunes on either side of the road. These prove an irresistible lure for dune bashing land cruisers. This is a dangerous sport, and on Fridays and on public holidays you'll find ambulances waiting by the side of the road, ready to pick up the dead and injured.

Near Sealine the Al-Afjah heritage village is currently being constructed on the site of the Old-Afjah village, and both Khor Al-Deid (the Inland Sea) is not too far away and the singing sand dunes are not too far away.

Facilities:

There's not a great deal to do in Messaieed. Nevertheless, it's less than an hour from Doha, and the following facilities are available:

Golf club - 18 hole golf course, tennis court, garden for children, swimming pool billiards room + banquet hall. Hosts several competitions including the Qp challenge trophy.
Contact: Tel: +974 4771 740

Al Shaheen recreational centre (junior staff) - swimming pool, tennis court, playground, gym + garden for children. Contact: Tel +974 4770848

Shopping - There's a shopping area in the City Centre which caters for all essentials and includes quite a number of restaurants. There's also a mall like building, which is mostly empty at the moment but will no doubt shortly be filled.



Recreational park - immaculately maintained park with gardens, shaded picnic areas, shaded sand area for children, children play area with slides and swings and a small skateboard park.

Messaieed medical centre - clinic with comprehensive services including dental health, antenatal care and a well women clinic.

Messaieed nursery school - English speaking nursery school following British curriculum.

Tel: +974 4760292

You'll also find a large mosque, Q-post, Q-tel and several banks including HSBC.

Messaieed industrial city website

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The Qatar Moto Grand Prix

Following on from the World Superbike Championships held last Saturday, The Qatar Moto Grand Prix will take place at Losail International Racing Circuit in March.

Free practice will be held on the 8th March, with further free practice and qualifying on the 9th March. Warm-ups will be held from 7.45 -8.45 on the 10th March, with races starting at 12.00.

The Qatar Moto Grand Prix has been running since 2005. Last year the winner was Valentino Rosso, who, with seven world championships to his name, is often considered to be the greatest competition rider of all time.

Also see:

Superbike racing at Losail International circuit

Losail racing track and directions

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Superbike racing

Saturday 24th February saw round 1 of the Superbike World Championships take place at Losail Racing Track.

Listen to the sounds of the superbikes.

Although Corser set the best time in practice, the first race was won by new-comer to superbike racing Biaggi, with Brit Toseland coming second and Corser coming in a distant ninth. The second race was won by Brit Toseland with Biaggi coming a close second and Corser third. Reigning world champion Troy Bayliss had a disappointing day coming fifth and sixth consecutively.


Like last year, Losail proved singularly inept in updating the score board, which remained unchanged throughout most of the race. A commentary would also have been welcome, but otherwise the races were well organised and exciting.


see a google map of the racetrack

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Ashgal festival

A giant inflated road sign announces the Ashgal Milestone 2007 exhibition alongside Orry, the (currently redundant) Asian Games Mascot. It's perhaps not the most exciting exhibition in the world. Doha has been laid out in a model as it will look in the future, but surrounding the model are diagrams of traffic installations. It is, after all, organised by Ashgal, the Qatar Public Works Authority.


The lighting, however, is beautiful, and the atmosphere warm. A wooden partition resembling a stone wall has been set up with sofas for guest to relax while being served dates and traditional Arabic coffee flavoured with cinnamon. Old pictures of Doha adorn the partition.



The exhibition is free, and will be open until 7th April.

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Aspire Tower

This futuristic structure was designed to resemble a torch during the Asian Games. During the Games it was indeed a torch, with a ten meter flame blazing at the top of it. Aspire Tower is located within Sports City, by Khalifa Stadium and close to Villagio shopping mall, and at 318 metres is currently the tallest building in Doha.

It also has a special video screen woven into a wire mesh and measuring over 1000 square metres. This wraps around the building and enabled the colourful night-time displays visible throughout the Asian Games.

Aspire Tower’s interior will not be finished until August 2007 and will contain a sports museum, a revolving restaurant, a five star hotel, a swimming pool and an observatory.

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Inflation

Inflation made the headlines again today in both the Peninsula and the Gulf Times after reaching almost 12% in 2006, compared to 8.8% the previous year. The main cause was, once again, rent increases. Expected wage increases of 20% in the next year are likely to aggravate the inflationary situation, yet despite this high inflation the government has yet to increase deposit rates. This table in Qatar Central Bank's website states that deposit rates are still below 6%. According to yesterday's Gulf Times wage increases are not sufficient: last year wages rose 15% compared to an increase in the cost of living of 24%.

In other news the Qatar Government's investment arm, Delta 2, is considering increasing its stake in Sainsbury as part of a "strategic investment".

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English language newspapers

There are currently three local English Language newspapers, and they’re actually not that bad. The Gulf Times is the longest running newspaper, and currently has the biggest circulation, but The Peninsula is rather more critical. The Qatar Tribune is the new kid on the block, and is still finding its feet: while international coverage is comprehensive, local news is scarce compared to the other papers. All the papers have a focus on news from the most common groups of expatriates.

The Khaleej Times is a regional newspaper, and doesn’t cover Qatar very well, being more focused on the UAE. Nevertheless, it’s actually a really good read, with gossip pages, analysis and more. If you don’t just want local news there’s a lot more to it than the other papers. American and British papers are available, although they are expensive and may be out of date.

While sometimes there is a rather strange turn of phrase in the local papers, they are generally well proof-read and actual grammatical errors are kept to a minimum. International news is taken from news agencies, but all the local papers have a team of journalists to cover local events. They do seem to have a habit of printing some press releases verbatim, without analysis or comment. Yet at the same time they have a reputation for being more vocal than the Arabic newspapers. With reports on strikes, living and working conditions for expats and maids and criticism of government institutions, these papers can give you a real feel of the country and its issues.

In addition, the Gulf Times and the Peninsula both have websites with the most recent news, although they are not fully functional and searching for old news stories is impossible. All the papers provide classifieds, which are a good source of second hand cars and other goods, but these are only available on the printed versions of the paper.

You can buy English language newspapers in most of the shops. Alternatively, just wait until you stop at some traffic lights and buy a paper off one of the poor souls there.

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Shopping developments: Vista, Apple and books

Vista has arrived in Qatar! Carrefour in Villagio was stocking Vista laptops this morning, with the most reasonable being a widescreen Compaq with vista basic, a gigabyte of ram, a centrina core duo chip and an 80 gigabyte hard drive for a very reasonable 3,100 riyals (US$850). There was also a display in City Centre by an Al Muntazah store called family.lan (contact number 4418938). Their cheapest offer was a desktop with windows vista at 2499 (US$700), although as with almost all desktops here it was Pentium 4 rather than windows duo.

Meanwhile Al Mana, Apple's official agent in Qatar, plans to open an Apple Centre. This will be located on the third floor, next to the Nokia shop overlooking the ice rink. It looks like some time before it will be completed, but when it is buying an apple computer may not be such a pipe dream for Qatar residents.

And it gets even better! At long last, City Centre has a bookshop. Nestling just round the corner from the forthcoming Apple Centre is a new book shop, called I-spy. It’s very well laid out, with armchairs to relax while you browse, and a children’s section with comfy cushions on the floor. Interestingly, we could not spot one single Arabic book.


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Qatar total open

The Qatar Total Open will be held at the Khalifa International Tennis and Squash stadium, starting on 26th February and lasting until 3rd March. This annual women's tennis match, which started in 2001 and last year had $600,000 in prize money, is a WTA tour event (tier II).Last year the singles tournament was won by Nadia Petrova, who beat the world number one in two straight sets 6-3 7-5. The doubles tournament was won by Daniela Hantuchuva and Ai Suguyama against Ting Li and Tiantian Sun 6-4, 6-4. This years match will feature many of the top female tennis players, including Justine Henin, currently rated world number 2, and Martina Hingis.



Map of area.

For more information see the Qatar Total Open's official website

Or contact:

Qatar Tennis Federation Tel +974 4409666/4409654 Fax +974 4832990
Email: qatartennis@qatartennis.org
Tournament Office Tel: +974 4409601/ 4409602 Fax: +974 4831972
Email: qtvisa@qatartennis.org

Also see: Qatar Tennis

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