German Festival

The German embassy is holding a five week long German-Arab culture festival.

The festival actually started a couple of days ago, but we have only just heard about it now!

The festival features music, architectural exhibitions, photography and much more.

For more information on the festival check out their website, Hiwaruna.

Our 2008 Predictions - Two True Already!

I came across an old post today - 10 predictions for Qatar's future.

And two have come true already. They are:

5. The real estate bubble will pop. People always say a bubble is not going to pop, and it always pops. There will be another bubble a few years later.

6. Inflation will decrease - in the short term. However, this will be associated with recession, which may be milder than the rest of the world due to Qatar's oil and gas reserves. After a while inflation will rise again, and after five years an apple will cost one hundred million riyals.

Well, we will have to wait to see what happens to the apples, but the rest seems to have happened.

The post got picked up on Qatar Living, and a number of people came up with their own predictions, which included:

11. Roads in Industrial Area can be used for F1 Racing :)

12. No more Exit Permits.
13. Motorist are well educated of Road Ethics and Zero Road rage cases.

I particularly liked this one:

23. There will be Country wide refrigeration during summer.

You can find all the predictions here (on this blog) and here (on Qatar Living). Which do you think will come true?

16 Tips to Help You Win Telephone Interviews

Telephone interviews can be tricky.

Although you may feel relaxed, research shows that the informal settings and distractions of home can lead to really bad interviews.

One friend of mine, wrongly assuming that an interview wasn't serious because it was on the telephone, actually remembers hearing the interviewers laugh in the background because his answers were so bad.

You also have to connect with your employer - without the advantage of eye contact and body language.

In our latest article on the website Mariam Nonha deals with all these issues and more.

Check out 16 Tips to Help You Master Telephone Interviews for the full article.


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Food Mission Impossible

As old timers will tell you until you start to sleep, Qatar is becoming more and more expensive.

It is now impossible to imagine having even a fish and chips on anything less than a Sheikh's salary.

That's why we were suprised when Shabina Khatri accepted our challenge to find ten places in Qatar where you can eat for less than QAR 15.

Putting her weight on the line, Shabina rose to the challenge, and find them she did - although judge for yourselves whether she cheated with one of our own favourites, Thai Snack...

The article, which is accompanied by great photos, covers loads of places where you can both have a good meal and stay within your budget, and is especially handy when you are a bit broke. (We should really be putting this out towards the end of the month, not the start!)

Check out Cheap Eats in Doha for the full article.

Also lots of thanks to Omar Chatriwala for the great images of the naurah and the roasting chicken.

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Qatar Population Increase Only Good For Business

When I first arrived in Qatar I could never dream that the population of Qatar would reach over one and a half million.

Yet according to the Gulf Times it now stands at 1.67 million, a 3% increase over the previous month.

Looking back at our old blog posts, I can see that I reported that the population of Qatar had been estimated at 400,000 in 2004.

When I joined this blog, I remember working with another writer to estimate that at the then current rate of growth Qatar would overtake the world's population in about 100 years.

Good for Business - and Websites

Back then no-one really read us - I remember being very pleased when we had 30 people visit the blog in one day.

Now we get 500 people to the blog - and often well over 3000 visitors and 6000 page views on the website - on a daily basis.

A major part of the reason for our success, and the success of Qatar Living, has been the phenomonal growth of Qatar.

More people means more readers for our posts, and more customers for businesses and shops.

It's also great for job seekers all over the world - there is at least one place which is still hiring!

Bad for Everyone Else

I also remember being able to drive to work in ten minutes.

And having a wage which is worth, in real terms, probably twice what it is today.

Meanwhile, the rapid growth in population is a logistical nightmare for hospitals and services.

Huge money is being poured into Hamed Hospital, and my son's life was saved by some first rate doctors in the children's hospital.

But it can't be easy dealing with a quadrupling of the population...

What about Qataris?

People in the UK feel threatened by immigration, although the influx is a fraction of that in Qatar.

Qataris could not be blamed for feeling swamped by the massive amount of people coming into the country.

As a result, tensions can and do arise - although despite some evident racism (not just from Qataris!), to the country's credit I have never seen anything approaching the British Nationalist Party party in the UK.

Yet.

Qatar Jobs

Qatar Job Search

We've recently launched a new website called Qatar Job Search, which enables job seekers to search thousands of Qatar vacancies.

The site utilises a custom google search index to search numerous sites which list Qatar jobs.

Sites indexed include local jobs sites such as All Qatar Jobs, websites with a jobs classifieds section such as Qatar Living and large jobs websites such as Bayt.com.

We've tweaked the code to try and ensure it returns only jobs in Qatar, that the most recent jobs are weighted first and that posts older than one month are not indexed.

So please check it out - we'd love to hear any feedback!

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Who to follow on Twitter, Qatar?

I follow about 70 or so people on Twitter, but I have been cutting quite a few people out recently as not much of what they have to say applies to Qatar. Either that, or they are only there to try and sell something. Or they are boring.

(I know Twitter says "What are you doing?" but truth is, unless you are doing something really, really exciting, I just don't want to know.)

Basically, I have worked out there is one person I have to follow to find everything of any possible interest in Qatar, and that is DohaNews.

I don't know how she does it, but every interesting news item, blog post and forum discussion is covered on her feed, while all the boring stuff is cut out.

And it's all done with a sense of humour.

One recent exchange went:

dohanews Education City's upcoming million-volume library project will 're-empower books,' cover 2 football field lengths (awesome) http://u.nu/83qn3

IvanGiesbrecht @dohanews Great news about the library. But who will read all these books? 6 days ago from TweetDeck

dohanews @IvanGiesbrecht Not to read, silly. To sit there and look pretty :) 6 days ago from web

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100% Ownership for IT Companies in Qatar

We are very impressed with the most recent change in Qatar's foreign ownership laws, which now allows 100% foreign ownership of Information and Technology companies.

Of course, you would still have to cough up QAR200,000 for a company here, and rent an office, but then Qatar is looking for serious investors in the country.

This is one of three sectors which have been thrown open to full foreign ownership - the other sectors being distribution services and consultative and technical work services. These join a number of existing areas where this is already allowed.

Giving up 51% of your business, even with a revenue sharing agreeement which allows you to keep the bulk of the profits, puts off some investors, and it's a smart move to remove this obligation from areas of the economy which could do with a boost - or which could boost other industries in Qatar.

We also suspect that ICT Qatar, a fairly forward thinking organisation which seems faster on its feet than some Qatar beaurocracy, may be behind the move to encourage IT investment.

You can read the original article in the Peninsula. You can also read David Chaddock's article on How to Set Up a Business in Qatar.

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Behind the Ghutra

Marjorie in Qatar has an excellent post today on the discrimination faced by men in Qatar.

Many of us Westerners are apalled by the subjegation of men in Qatar (only the other day I saw an angry Qatari woman berate her obviously intimidated husband in public), and it is great that finally an expat woman has the courage to speak out about it.

As Marjorie writes:

Since it would be preposterous to believe any person would choose to wear an item of clothing that I personally don't wear, I am led to the self-evident conclusion that the men of the Gulf region are being forced to wear the ghutra by their oppressive female overlords.

Check out the full post here: Behind the Ghutra

Villagio Cinema

While everyone cultured went to see Amelia, my wife and I went off to check out the new cinema at Villagio.

A few people complained that the entrance to the cinema and the foam seats looked cheap and tacky. I can't say I particularly noticed that, although it didn't look anything special.

To be honest, I don't care. This is an IMAX 3D cinema, and I wanted to see a 3D film, not gaze at cinema architecture.

We went to see "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs". Given the title, it's not the sort of film I would usually choose (sounds too cultured, though as it turned out it wasn't), but was the only 3D option available.

The 3d effects were just awesome. At the start of the film you are sailing through clouds before you sudddenly dive and race towards the ground. That's pretty impressive in 3D - in fact, everyone in the cinema gasped.

At times, I was also struck by how realistic, apart from the actual characters, the sets were.

And at the end, the water in the film seems to lap out of the screen and up over the seats.

The film was also good - imaginative, funny and touching. I'll have to make more effort in future not to judge books by their covers...

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Vodafone Scores a Point

I think a lot of us have been surprised by how well Qtel has responded to competition.

From a fairly lackadaisical organisation, (one friend in Qtel remembers going to seminars to teach employees the meaning of competition, and described the employees as bewildered at the concept), Qtel have become much more aggressive at marketing.

One huge advantage they have got is a captive market.

After years of dominating the market, most customers have Qtel accounts - meaning that Qtel can and does bombard them with text marketing, whereas Vodafone has to go all out to reach the same people.

Nevertheless, Vodafone has scored a point today.

On twitter and elsewhere users are pointing out that while Qtel has texted users telling them to use up their free minutes by Sunday, Vodafone have just extended their mobile phone promotion till December, giving Red and Freedom users 300MB of free internet usage.

Qatar Book Competition

Our latest competition is a really easy one to enter. All you have to do is visit our book competition page, and choose the book you would most like to read. If you get picked in our prize draw you'll win the book!

Check out our Qatar Book Competition for details.