[statement expressing surprise and bemusement at the stringency of Israeli security here]

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Rah, rah Doh-ha ha

Applying for my business visa at the San Francisco consulate, not realising that the 'long way' to Shanghai was going to be THIS long












Update: waited until half six in the evening but got up the courage to face the heat and go outside; at this point it was a mere 45 degrees (111F), which was down from 49 (120F). Decked out in clothing completely unsuited to the climate, I made my way along Musheireb for a few blocks and then turned around, a journey that took all of half an hour but left me glistening and begging the front desk for a bottle of water.

Doha is funny—it’s much like other Islamic cities in its architectural motifs, the wares sold in it shops, and its bright, gaudy signs, but without that charming sense of timelessness and organic decay. It’s weirdly clean, with paved streets and well-maintained roundabouts, and instead of that tawny golden colour, the buildings are best described as off-white (or kind of the colour of a white oxford shirt that needs to be thrown in the wash because it’s been worn in hot weather a few too many times). The mosques, with their clean lines, are clearly quite new—and look almost sterile in their spotlessness. They actually look a bit like play-mosques, as though they were made out of Play-Doh (plasticine) for a child.

One thing you won’t see on the streets of Doha? Women. I saw exactly three on my foray—two that looked to be friends on a shopping trip, decked out in elaborately decorated burqas, and one, holding her husband’s hand, covered in black from head to toe save for her eyes. Even though it had killed me to do it, I had put on my blazer over my shirtsleeves and was immensely glad I did; I don’t care to imagine the commotion a blonde-haired, blue-eyed and bare-armed foreign girl would have caused. I also wore my sunglasses despite it being dusky outside, as it made it much easier to avoid making eye contact with Doha’s male population—which is interpreted as sexual forwardness. Finally, I forced myself to sort of grimace the whole time, as a smile also happens to be interpreted as sexual forwardness (much like in Eastern Europe, where I hear that it’s also seen to be a sign of psychosis…only the Slavs would be of the mindset that, if you appear happy, you must be going crazy). Needless to say, I didn’t approach any strangers and ask them to take a picture of grinning and waving in front of a minaret.

I arrived back covered in a thin film of sweat and feeling as though I had been slow-cooked, and so as not to stink up the plane tonight, jumped into the shower. Now, in most of the world, hot running water is considered a luxury, and you only get a certain amount before it runs out. Here, in order to get some cold water on your hair or skin, you have to catch it right as soon as you turn on the shower or tap, because after about seven seconds, everything that comes out could cook a chicken. The water temperature available to you now ranges from hot to scalding. When you envision water tanks sitting out in the 49 degree sun, it makes sense…kind of.

When I got back I also tried to take a look at qatarsucks.com (just for kicks and giggles), on which someone has posted a list called ‘Ten Things I Hate About Qatar’. It seems that the government has blocked access to qatarsucks.com, which I found out thanks to this hilarious/frightening notice. I don’t enjoy my internet shenanigans being censored and I don’t think that there’s anything particularly dangerous on qatarsucks.com, but I can understand why the government *ahem* resents the site, considering as it’s devoted to hating the nation. It’s also nothing compared to the Great Firewall of China, which should be fun to contend with for the next few months. Hopefully the flat uses proxies or VPN or onion routing (I use these words like I know what they mean, but in reality all I know is that they let you access facebook).






Is this meant to be geared towards children or something???










Oh, and it’s ‘not recommended’ to drink out of the tap. Although I think Qatar is so unsuitable to life forms as to be inhospitable to even parasites, I’m not taking any chances.

D'oh-ha

Greetings from beautiful Doha, Qatar, where I’ve been put up in the luxurious Doha Palace Hotel for the next while. The Palace’s amenities include an extremely firm bed twice as wide as it is long, a humble Turkish coffeeshop with free but Pleistocene-era wifi, a battered Qatari pride-themed tissue box, and a minibar (unplugged). To QA’s credit, they did pay for it, along with three meals, transport, and the entry visa.


This is where I am right now.

























This is where it feels like I am right now.

















Qatar itself is hot in the way that living on the surface of the sun would be hot, with the added benefit of the salty stickiness from the Persian Gulf. To give you a better idea, the pilot announced that it was 34 degrees (which I think is around 95F, though I never get this right) when we landed in the middle of the night. This is the sort of place where it’s too hot to actually go outside in the daytime, and if you don’t have air conditioning, you’re essentially dead. Even though it’s five in the morning right now, all of Doha is humming—because of all the a/c units struggling and wheezing away.

Don’t get me wrong, I love heat. And humidity. All winter long I dream of running around outside in a bikini and feeling the sun on my skin, and one of my favourite things to do is cook myself in the Bay Club’s steam room for longer than is advisable. The thing is that I stepped on the plane in Manchester, where it was about 15 degrees and raining, and I was dressed accordingly, ie jeans, blazer, boots. My flip flops and sundresses are in the checked bags, which are having a fun day out in some Doha airport storage area…so I have been reduced to watching Jazeera News in my underwear; thankfully I am travelling solo. Even if I did have my hot weather clothes, there’s no way that I could wear them outside without seriously offending passersby. Or getting a horrific sunburn—the first rays are out and they already look intense. I may have met my match. We’ll see tomorrow (actually ‘today’)—if I can bear putting on my clothes, I will make my way to a souq and buy everyone souvenirs of one of the planet’s least attractive destinations.

A few odds and ends:

-I suppose one of the big Doha attractions is the corniche, for which one sees signs that say ‘Al Corniche’. I like this. At first I thought, ‘It seems sort of cute’, and then immediately felt ashamed for being a patronising imperialist Western pig. Edward Said would be proud of himself.
-Very conveniently Qatar uses the same plugs and voltage as the UK. Win!
-Is it safe to drink the water here? I feel a bit squawky asking that, but it’s not like I had any reason to expect to have to know. I get the feeling that everyone just drinks bottled water here and there’s a problem with plastic bottles piling up, probably because everything else about the place is so unsustainable.
-There is an item on the hotel restaurant’s menu called ‘homos salad’. This is probably just an alternative spelling of hummus/hommus/houmos, but it did have me confused and a bit alarmed for a second. My favourite item on the menu, though, is something called Mutter Mushroom.

Edit: you now have the pleasure of seeing for yourself what a dump Qatar is! I've managed to upload some photos of this garden spot.


This stunning view was from my hotel room at dawn.




Rampant construction and indescribable heat: two things distinctly Qatari.


I did like this ziggurat, I'll admit.






I suppose there are some nice bits, but doesn't this mosque look a bit...fake to you?




I don't mean to hate on Qatar or the Gulf, but my God, when it's 49 degrees outside, wouldn't you be feeling a bit negative too? Anyway, I'm just glad to be here on the lucky 8th floor in Shanghai.

An auspicious start, or How I Ended Up In a Frying Pan on the Persian Gulf

'The internship' period has technically gone on for a few days now, so I've been writing things down until I had solid internet access. This is from the 12th:

As to how my internship is shaping up so far, I’ll give you a hint: that first title is the tiniest bit sarcastic. My flight to Doha with Qatar Airways, yes, ‘the world’s five-star airline’, is already two and a half hours behind schedule; considering that I had all of eighty minutes to make my connection once I got to Doha, I can safely assume that I will be in that oh-so-scenic little Gulf state for a little longer than I expected. I should add that there is only one Doha-Shanghai flight per day.

The launch of my internship, so to speak, has so far proceeded as such:

-I had a lovely sleep on a plush white downy bed and then had a long soak in the bath, emerging relaxed, well-rested and eager to arrive in Shanghai.
-I arrived at the Qatar Airways desk, where they actually weighed my hand luggage and told me there was no way they would allow it onto the flight. What kind of airline weighs hand luggage?? (nb: I am fully aware that this whole thing was my fault; I plead young and stupid.) Anyway, the excess baggage charges were going to be about 300 pounds.
-I cried (kind of). I can do this on command and though I’m not terribly proud of it, it has indeed allowed me to weasel my way out of about 150 quid worth of overweight charges before.
-The guy behind the desk relented about halfway and told me to get rid of five kilos (instead of eight), which I promptly did, much to the amusement of the massive Indian family surrounding me. I’m not very good at throwing things out, even clothes that I’ve had for the past seven years, so maybe it was good for me. At any rate, my wardrobe has been streamlined.
-I pelted through security and duty free with the briefest of stops to squirt some Chanel Chance on my wrists (I really can’t help it), screeched to a halt at the gate and filed onto the plane with everyone else. I’m pretty sure that most everyone is connecting to somewhere that is NOT Qatar—it’s hard to imagine why there would be enough people that wanted to go to Doha to fill an entire plane. Perhaps that a bit harsh, but most everyone says it’s an armpit.
-The pilot told us that the plane was being towed back because of a ‘fuel tank malfunction’. As fuel tanks are the things that seem to explode a lot, I figured this was for the best.
-The pilot told us with a few nervous laughs that we would have to disembark, because they actually had to replace the faulty fuel tank with a working one. The last time we heard from him, he said it would be ‘at least an hour’. This means it will probably be about four hours.
-I went back to duty free to try on some lip gloss and then got myself some juice at WH Smith. Absentmindedly I stuck my Boots card into the machine; the girl behind the counter told me, ‘That’s a Boots card. This is W-Haytche Smif’. Feeling stupid, I took my card back; as I looked down to take a five pound note from my wallet, I gestured towards the total on the till and asked, ‘What’s that, again?’ Referring to the cost of the juice, of course. The girl looked at the fiver in my hand and informed me, ‘That’s five pound’. Thank you for that.

I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting an actual resident of Qatar—not a Qatari but rather a native Mancunian. This inexplicably cowboy hat-wearing guy was kind enough to confirm that the Qatari sand thing was true—that is, Qatar is so unsuitable for living that even the sand is useless, as in you can’t make concrete out of it, so the country actually has to import sand from Saudi Arabia. It’s apparently not even sand, just baked dirt. My new chum also confirmed that it’s a ****hole crawling with fast food restaurants and people with more money than sense…kind of like Dubai, but with less in the way of entertainment. Indeed, when I read through the QA Oryx magazine, it included a friendly welcome from the Emir of Qatar in which His Highness claimed that his state was ‘fairly liberal’ because it permits Westerners to drink alcohol…in hotels only (by the way, don’t even think about bringing your own booze into the country). The Emir did abolish child slavery and the Orwellian Ministry of Information, though, so he sounds like a decent fellow. Relatively.

Some other fun facts about Qatar:

-It’s only three hours ahead of Britain and two in the summer! It seems like the difference should be greater, considering that Doha is far away from pretty much everything apart from Yemen.
-Its national animal is the gazelle-like oryx, which is probably the only thing that’s actually suited to living in Qatar. Homo sapiens, not so much.
-I’m sure there are other things.

Qatari musings aside, I am SO excited to (eventually) get to Shanghai! The Chinese government has poured ten times the money into the city for the 2010 World Expo as it did for the Olympics in Beijing, and apparently the whole place looks gorgeous and is packed with people from all over the world. Hopefully I’ll get to take a look at some of the podiums during my time off—as great as it would be to see the Chinese or Saudi Arabian ones, the queues are about six hours long, so I’m keen to see the smaller, more obscure countries’. I’m sure Belarus has put together something spectacular, or at least funny. And of course I can’t wait to meet my colleagues and flatmates, stuff myself with the famous local dumplings, explore the old neighbourhoods and soak up some of that lovely humidity.