Sports City at Night

We went up to Sports City again tonight as they have traditional Asian music playing across two stages between 6-9pm, not to mention all the people and bright lights. We strolled around for a little while and watched some Indonesian musicians and then headed to the other stage to watch some drummers from Malaysia doing their thing. All very impressive… although there is only so many summersaults someone can do over a drum before it drags on a little. Sat and had a coffee and watched Ashur watching and saying hello to anyone and soaking in all the lights!

The most important part of the evening was after trying to get tickets to something, somehow Kerry managed to walk away with tickets to the closing ceremony! Not sure about this since we were told a few days ago that it was sold out… apparently not! We may not be going to see any of the sporting events but I think going to at least one of the ceremonies will make up for it all!

Rain continues (on and off)

Well it has now officially become the wettest December in 42 years! So much for deserts being dry I say! Admittedly “wettest” translates into about 25-30 mm of rain, but it seems much wetter as most of it just lies around until the sun appears once again to start the evaporation process… puddles and potholes are appearing (and getting bigger) and really not going anywhere… but everything is green (and a bit slushy)!

Asian Games Tickets

We tried to get tickets to a few things over the past couple of days, but everytime we come up with somehting we think would be worth going to, it seems sold out. It seems either everything has sold out because of the low ticket prices (most are QAR 5 or 10), or there is something not quite right with the computer system between the Internet sales, the kiosks, and the outlets... anyway we are going to try again!

Rentals Cars

We received an email from our rental car company today letting us know that they hadn’t taken the payments from the credit card for the last 3 months. This technically means that we had only paid 2 weeks worth of rental for 3 ½ months! Apparently they like to have personal approval each monthly payment and hadn’t got through to us on the phone or something along those lines.

So anyway after a quick phone call and some directions we headed off to the industrial area to fix up the payments. I just thought it was funny that the company would let one of their cars be out there on the roads, while letting the payment lapse for three months. They are going to come over in a few days to replace the car so they can take care of the little dent from our accident and give the car it’s first full service… we have driven 5000 klms since we arrived!

The Sports City Doha

We decided to get into the spirit of everything at the moment and head up to Sports City to soak in some of the Games atmosphere and more than anything, just to have a look around… After walking around the fence to get to the entrance which included us going through metal detectors and everything else passing through xray machines we entered what is a a huge complex! With the Khalifa Stadium, Aspire Complex and basketball stadium spread out throughout the place… as well as the tower, womans club and a very funky looking mosque, it took a fair bit of walking to get around. Sore feet, but all well worth the look and all very impressive!

KandA outside Khalifa Stadium

Aspire - The undercover stadium not really looking as impressive as it really is!

The basketball stadium with some locals wandering one way as we wander the other

MandA tower gazing!

Apart from the sporting venues there was another group of exhibitions set up by the museums authority at the Woman’s Club. In various rooms within the building there was “Dawn of Photography” (which had some very funky and old cameras, photography, and a huge stereoscopic viewer that you sit up and look at some rather old Middle Eastern images). Also there was a display from the Qatar Weaponry Museum, “Weapons to Sports” which traced the history of sports such as fencing and archery etc (also another beautiful “bargain” book). There was also the Philatelic & Numismatic Exhibition (stamps and coins galore), Asian Visual Art Exhibition, Asia in Photography Exhibition and the Architecture Through Photography Exhibition. Finally, if all that hadn’t kept you occupied for a while, outside the building was a display of sand sculptures.

Sand looking very well sculptured

Food World

Food World, which seems an appropriate name for a store that sells food, is our “bread shop”. It has become known as the bread shop because it is the nearest place that sells Bateel Bakery white bread… soft and squishy white bread without the overdose of sugar that much of the white bread here seems to consist of. The actual sweet white bread here is called Milk Bread. I am not sure as to the relationship between milk and sugar, but I can assure you it does exist. Food World is the usual medium sized food store with bits and pieces of everything ranging from food to perfumes, and the upstairs is currently going through renovations and clothes through to whitegoods are appearing. It is just up on Salwa Road, and really is only just around the corner. Also in the small row of stores is a bookshop, pharmacy and TATA truck and bus “store”. For those that don’t know, Tata buses are big scary Indian vehicles that are very chunky and solid, and many are driven in a bit of a scary manner… we call them potato buses!

Across the road is Al Jazira petrol station… another one of those translations that are evident here. You get used to seeing Al Jazeera written, but of course all the translations from Arabic to English are phonetic so there is normally at least a couple of spellings floating around… and no, that isn’t a ghost making its way across the road… just another local taking his life into his own hands crossing Salwa Rd!

On the way home snapped this photo of Sports City… the Asian Games in full swing! The little street lights in the foreground at the bottom of the picture is our compound.

Qatar Museum Exhibits – Sheraton & Palace

During the Games, Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) have set up a number of exhibitions around town to entertain and educate the masses. I think all the mini-exhibitions contain parts of greater collections that are normally housed in the Museum (which is currently closed for renovations), the Photographic Museum (which is currently under construction; and only just), the Museum of Islamic Arts (which looks finished but doesn’t open until next year), and some other places around town we have yet to discover. But to make things easier the nice people at QMA have nicely set up these exhibitions in central locations for us all.

Today we headed off to one of the conference halls at the Sheraton Hotel – Al Majlis Hall. In this one location we were treated to “Lost World Returns” (dinosaur bones and bits and pieces), “Mughal Jewellery Exhibition” (a nice collection of very old and impressive Indian bling) and the “Traditional Costumes Exhibition” (which I guess is self-explanatory).

A couple of things that we were more impressed with than anything else were the freebies. The first thing was all these exhibitions are free. As you walk in to each section you are handed a rather nicely produced soft cover book with lots of photos and explanations of the exhibition. Apart from that Ashur was given three bags of goodies as we wandered around… one QMA bag of goodies, another for the dinosaur exhibition, and then a final one, which had a very nicely boxed QMA branded coffee set (I think that one may have been meant for the parents). We also purchased a beautiful “Lost World Returns” book which only cost 50 QAR; apparently a special price during the games, which doesn’t really make sense since the exhibition is only on during the games… but very cheap regardless!

After that we headed off to Fahd Bin Ali Palace, just next to the beautiful mosque behind Emiri Diwan (the closest thing we have to a government house here). Here we were treated to some classic cars from one of the Sheiks private collections, the “Qatari Historical Photos Exhibition”, and “From Cordoba to Samarkand” (some key works from the Islamic Arts Museum). All very impressive and another no cost venue… although a bit light on the “freebies” this time around! Once again though we bought ourselves a beautiful book on the Islamic Artworks for a “games special” QAR 50!

As a side note, the wind when we were leaving the Palace was the coldest we have felt here… believe it or not it felt icy!

The Opening Ceremony

The 15th Asian Games began last night with a bang! Many bangs to be honest…

Friday was a yuck day… windy, overcast, and quite a bit of rain. Not the best conditions for the Opening Ceremony at all. We actually drove past the site earlier in the day and apart from everything being wet, there was of course still work going on. As the afternoon rolled into evening the weather continued being pretty horrible, but dry and warm at home we flicked through the numerous Al Jazeera Sports channels and found one that was doing the English language telecast.

It actually started… hhmmm… interestingly is the best way to describe it all. Orry’s riding around on bicycles and running around in the rain being chased by children. Very Sydney Olympics, minus the kangaroos… looked like “insert national animal mascot here” sort of thing. But after a little while of that and come the “official” start time, the rain finally stopped and the whole thing got under way with the sell-out crowd looking like they were having fun, albeit wet and wind blown. We couldn’t here it from home, but it was all very impressive and made us wish we were there. Although the sitting in the rain for a few hours before the ceremony got under way would have been no fun!

I am guessing that most of the world saw the flame being lit… the horse (which was bought and trained in Australia) nearly slid over just before it made it to the top, but obviously someone was looking down on the whole event. As a side note, the reason stated for using Australian horses was that Arabian horses are far too intelligent and stubborn to perform a feat such as running up the number of stairs and the ramp… also there are no hills high enough in Qatar to train them on (suppose that makes sense).

Once flames (both the one in the stadium and the other on the tower) were lit the fireworks started, which dragged just about everyone from the compound on to the street to watch… the normal firework-type “oohhhssss” & “aahhhsss” were heard in many languages!

Overall the ceremony was impressive… the best money can buy! Admittedly some of it didn’t seem to make sense but that was probably because the enormity of what was going on was better to see in person rather than on a little TV screen. I still like the guy’s furry hat with the lights in it… he looked like he was having fun – for anyone who saw the ceremony you would know what I mean!

Kitten becomes “Kitten”

Well it has taken a few months but the little kitten that was hanging around not long after we arrived has finally become “pet” friendly. She now spends most of her time around home and comes in for scratches. “Kitten” (appropriate name for at least a few more months) can be seen most evenings either snuggled up beside one of us on the couch having a nap and sitting on a lap having a pat. 'tis all rather cute!

Michael Got ID

It has taken many months but I finally became “legal” the other day and I am now in proud possession of a Qatari ID card and my passport. Yes, it has finally been returned to me with the addition of a full-page sheet stuck in there… apparently that page is actually my Residents Permit and quite impressive I must say! But it does say “Family Vis” which makes Kerry my sponsor. Rather generous of her to sponsor me I think, so I guess I better do some more cooking, cleaning and driving or she may just have me deported!