Al Gharrafa Interchange - Exit to Al Ain

War and Priest

2011-11-03T15:54:00.015+03:00

In the time I've taken off this blog (nearly two years, bar a snow-dazzled Xmas special from Germany), my cousin Peter Fiennes has researched and written a whole book, his first. It's called To War With God, and it's rather good. Here he is at the launch on 27 September in the crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields, which I was privileged to attend (Angela had to stay in the UAE for work, but had visited family in Wales a month before).

The backstory is fascinating: in the way of most war veterans, our grandad Monty Guilford (Brad to Peter and my other cousin Toby) didn't say much about his time as an army chaplain at the Western Front. We sort of knew that he had sat up all night with a condemned deserter, and that he may have lost his faith, but the details were missing. (He did go on to a career as a loved and respected country parson.) But nearly a hundred years on, Peter's son Alex needed info for a school project on the First World War, which led to an attic search and the discovery of a forgotten trove: this old suitcase full of WWI memorabilia, including Monty's diaries.

The book demanded to be written, and Peter (long-term editor and director of the Time Out Guides) did Grandad proud. Read it to see how, and to learn a bit more about the Great War than we did from the estimable Blackadder IV.

And the launch (held at St Martin's because Monty ran a youth club in the crypt straight after the war, at the invitation of the charismatic Rev. Dick Sheppard) was a special occasion because for the first time in decades, us three cousins (Toby all the way from NZ) and our aunt Biddy (third daughter after my mother Ruth and Toby and Peter's mother Jacq) all got together. I'm kicking myself that in the intense atmosphere of the gathering (crowded with long-lost relatives and friends to catch up with) I forgot to get the group photo.

So these must make do:

(L to R above) Biddy, Peter, Toby, Peter's wife Anna; and (below) me, Peter, his daughter Natalie (sorry, Alex got missed out altogether, but younger daughter Esme stars further down the page).

I am fated to visit the UK at Indian-Summer-time - it was even hotter than when we were in Wales in Sept 2009, a record 29.7deg! in London, ideal for frequent walks on the nearby Commons (Wandsworth and Clapham) with Bonnie the dog.

Then to Hove for a few precious days with Biddy, my flu only partly to blame for hardly managing to keep up with this indefatigable octogenarian favourite aunt at such things as cryptic crosswords and going for more walks on the beautiful South Downs, only minutes away and panoramically viewable from my window.

Here we are on an old Roman road (Hove and the Channel in the background)

leading to popular (very on a day like this) National Trust beauty spot The Devil's Dyke, from where you can gaze across most of Sussex.

Those magical English summers are what memory conjures up from my time in Cambridge in the 80s, so reliving that feeling, however briefly, was hard to top. But I did manage to squeeze in some more treats in my three remaining days back in London. Failing to spot any handy gig by a suitable music legend, Peter and I instead made a beeline for the South Bank, taking in a tour of the Globe Theatre - just missed the end of the play season by a week, Hamlet or Dr Faustus would have been nice (perhaps next year, with Angela accompanying?), but it was superb just to be there (looking a bit Falstaffian) even if it was full of scaffolding and we didn't see backstage.

Then on to the Tate Modern - again, it was between major exhibitions and we only had time to see a few rooms (some fine photography) but I can report that it is indeed Very Big and Full of Art. I can't wait to be slightly less overwhelmed by the (comparatively boutique) revamped Auckland City Gallery.

And, by good fortune I did spot that the Barbican was hosting, on my last night, a performance by the legendary Merce Cunningham Dance Company on their farewell tour before disbanding (MC having died last year). Those who know what a fan of John Cage and the flavour of the New York avant garde I am will appreciate that this was a serendipitous lightning strike - and it turned out to be affordable, so off Peter and I trotted. Not disappointed - such purity of movement seldom seen, scores by Cage and Eno too. So cool to have caught it.

And there was one more amazing and faith-in-humanity-boosting tale, a real antidote to seeing the odd boarded-up shop in the local high street from the previous month's mass mayhem: while I was at Biddy's, Misty the much-adored kitten absconded from Peter and Anna's house. The family put Missing Kitten posters all over the neighbourhood and doorknocked comprehensively, but several days later, any news was still gloomily lacking. Then - result? - someone phoned to say he had seen a circular delivery man picking a kitten up and taking it away in his van. Instantly the house became an operations room, with calls to the Borough council, leaflet delivery companies, and more visits to homes in the street in question.

And - result! - all these good people took the quest on board, pulled strings, and did indeed call back; the cat-rescuer was identified and ordered to interrupt his rounds and scoot back home and return the prodigal - who did indeed turn out to be Misty. Who was of course quite unruffled, but appeared happy to be home.

So let's hear it for The Neighbourhood, true English (of numerous nationalities) pet-lovers all. The Tories' Big Society fantasy may not be how to run a country, yet the pull-together spirit of the Somme and the Blitz can still be found in the leafy streets of south London.

Snow, really

2010-12-19T16:29:00.004+03:00

I might not have blogged it, but life in the desert seems to have been getting a bit samey. Not that we haven't had some interesting times since early this year - some overdue posts are in the pipe. Oh; you hadn't noticed the lack of. Tell me you had...

But first, time to escape the balmy Gulf winter (17deg at night, just right for comfortable barbies up on the roof; 25 daytime, ideal for even me to put in some time on the mountain bike I have finally bought) and head for the honest refreshing chill of a UK Christmas. No kidding, it all looked like this,

so here we are (2 days so far), waiting out the near-total closure of Britain. Where better than the Crowne Plaza in historic Wiesbaden (Frankfurt 32km), courtesy of Gulf Air, a snowball's throw from the Christmas Festival in the Marktplatz.

Ornate carousels, many more exquisite seasonal nicknack stalls than you've ever shaken a stick at,

which we may have to go back and raid,

and state-of-art gluhwein.

So, before this laptop runs out of power, and in case we don't make it to Wales in time, here's a Jolly Merry Xmas from her

and from me.

Much more to come, in the new year or, inshallah, even sooner.

Hope you all have good one wherever you are.

A person's fortune in the first is always the most profound, and sometimes even people's heart forever into the insulation.

2010-02-02T19:46:00.012+03:00

Hullo from Kerala, we finally made it here - "Hero Honda, Dhak Dhak, Go!"

I was going to title this post with this instantly obsessive slogan, but the above (a comment in chinese characters left on the previous post by an unknown whose profile links to Slag: identity theft on top of home invasion is a bit off - please desist) captures the variegated je ne sais quoi of the last month even better, somehow.

Some have suggested making these posts smaller - hard for me, with the usual backlog of pix to commentarise, but the constraints of a full hard disk and using the WiFi at Cafe Del Mar on the cliff at Varkala will help, this time at least. Soon we will be back home with nothing but Al Ain routine for 5 months and I will address editing down the photo file and making good on new year resolutions to develop new communication habits, even social sites perhaps.

Meanwhile here are some quickly-selected fotos from the shortlist I have had room to download from the cameras, covering some highlights of a whirlwind month. Some of these episodes are sure to be expanded on later.

The flight to NZ on the A380 wasn't really that much less cramped than on the older airliners we were used to, but totally worth it for a week of catching up, especially with Rua and Jill at Ed and Rachel's house and finally getting the long-wished-for shot of all four grandkids at once

and their parents.

And of course Catrin and Nathan's wedding in Nelson

where we just about took over the splendid Monaco hotel

with appropriate celebrations.

Then all too soon we were back in the UAE, with side trips to the vast Dubai Mall (featuring wall-to-wall aquarium,

an equally stunning and vast - 200 shops - Gold Souq,

a 3-storey promise of more shopping Meccas

and sneaky views of the newest-and-tallest wonder, the Burj Khalifa. Even though the "At the Top" observation deck is only on the 125th of 180 floors, we will no doubt soon scrape up the $50 to book a trip up and, report further.

Surely no less impressive is the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, where we went the very next day.

Ange and Joss donned the obligatory abayas,

we took off our shoes with 1000 others

and boggled

at the grandeur

and the detail.

A salutary contrast with our first look at India - a day in the hurlyburly of downtown Chennai

- not least, a crash course in the essential use of the motor horn

and the real meaning of poverty.

Chennai Central station was an education too (not to mention the train - 3-tier overnight sleeper, but at least it was aircond).
.

Not that the heat has abated any since arriving in Varkala, but hey, we're at the beach!

Surf swims every day,

tons of clifftop tourist shopping (and tourists of the more laid-back variety)

and basic facilities, but superbe hospitality francaise (and local cuisine) at La Maison de Varkala, one minute's walk back from the cliff.

And cruisy evenings under the thatch

with a well-known blogger (and his lovely lady, who escaped this lot of photos but will yet be seen).

Barns and Emily have looked after us really well, including making us honoured guests at a sumptuous wedding feast and ceremony with their landlord's family - a quite special experience.

q Later that day our tuk-tuk driver took us on an hour's ride

to Kollam to witness a colourful (and deafening) elephant festival - again, not to be missed.

Then a few quiet days enjoying the atmosphere and not getting used to the heat, then on sunday we are off on the also not-to-be-missed backwaters houseboat trip. Then the train back to Chennai and home to Al Ain. So bye for now from us and the elephant dancers.

What?! oh yeah, Merry Mixmas and all

2009-12-17T21:44:00.011+03:00

Two months or more have escaped without a blog post from here to shatter the peace. As well as laziness I could blame being quite busy with the two part time jobs (data entry and helping with apartment admin) plus houseboy duties, and/or the unreliable and slow datacards that are still our only internet access at Green Stripe. Neither of these alone would totally preclude patching together a quick weekly bulletin, and that is what I shall try to do from now on, new year resolution and all that (along with having another go at developing a moderate-to-minmal twitterhabit, or possibly even faceachebook though I couldn't really guarantee the latter).

But really, it was probably inevitable to step back for a while sooner or later, as life here threatened to become routine and unremarkable. But really, it isn't, and we don't intend to let that happen, but as I may have already remarked, this is the first time since arriving in Doha in February that we have approached feeling a bit settled here, so it was nice to have a breather. Not that we haven't been busy, to be sure.

And things will feel even more settled if we can finally get the long-promised (inshallah) reliable internet connection. We are told there is in fact cabling down our street, and only the building connection is missing, so the offer of a satellite link (which won't necessarily be any more reliable) may not be the way to go. It would be bad enough if it was just the apartments that were suffering, but most of the teacher/advisors living here have faulty or no internet access at their schools for various reasons, and need something that works or they can't do their job - with a scattered and constantly conferring workforce and much of the learning program net-based, it's essential.

Typically, I gave up trying to upload photos to this blog after many failed attempts, but decided to have one more go in time for a Christmas post. Surprisingly, I managed to upload a swag over about 2 days (but missed the Xmas deadline); then just as I was going to crank out this text to accompany them, I couldn't access the Blogger site at all for two days, along with Gmail chat and Skype, although Gmail itself and Google news etc still loaded perfectly. Other times, things open OK but are then uselessly slow; and so on. I suspect Etisalat is blocking some popular sites on a rotating schedule because they haven't got enough capacity.

Yesterday, having lost patience with fruitless customer service inquiries, some residents made a formal complaint, and today a surveyor visited to check out what is required to sort out the connection. Watching and waiting...

Meanwhile, in response to the deafeningly silent chorus of concerned and impatient readers, here for anyone with a laptop and/or smartphone/datacard with them on holiday (it's not a holiday here of course) is a catch-up jumble of things seen and done, without too many more words from me. It doesn't include our November Eid weekend trip to Ras al Khaimah (which produced enough pix for its own post); the Great Green Stripe Xmas Banquet in the courtyard on Friday night, which was enjoyed by all (except poor Ange who had a tummy bug which appears to be coming right just in time for flying to NZ on new year's eve); or lots more as yet unphotographed pearls of Al Ain and its attractions.

You asked for pictures of dunes. Didn't you? This is typical just a few kms from our place:

Here's a rare one without pylons. We have more if you want, and should add to the collection when we make the recommended trip to the more remote quarters.

Here's a typical farmhouse,

and adjacent worker's accommodation.

The Marital Restaurant is nearby - not sure if it's serving couples only, or anybody at all.

Just up the road, this palatial structure is arising - farmhouse? restaurant? or maybe a new entrance gate to the
Sheikh's camel raceway which is somewhere hereabouts.

Jebel Hafeet keeps an eye on it all.

All the way up the mountain road are these signs; on our fourth or fifth trek up there I took my eyes off the road long enough to realise it's writing, not waiting, that they are threatening people about.

At the summit there were these ladies hard at work with marker pens (the rockface is covered with graffiti, which is not all that common around town)...

But not to be outdone, this is just across the wadi from us - must get a translation some time.

We haven't done too many touristy things, but we did make it to Al Ain's world-class zoo on a busy Saturday. Well, it's definitely more impressive than Doha's both in scope and quality, though many animals still pace up and down in their moderately spacious enclosures. You can marvel at local fauna

or exotic

or be marvelled at.

It's mutual.

You don't have to go to Dubai to ride a camel, but when we were there for the day a few weeks ago, brave Ange did.

This was at the Sheikh's Centre for Cultural Understanding, which was otherwise closed on a Friday, but a degree of understanding was definitely reached.

We also visited Jumeirah Beach (on which sex and photos are prohibited, but this is taken from the promenade, eh). For those who need to orient themselves, the famous Burj Al Arab can just be seen on the horizon where the sun is shining on the water. Unmistakable on the skyline and of greater interest surely is the Burj Dubai, world's tallest building, 160 stories, nearly 1km tall, opening in February. How will they top this?

Not necessarily by building more Palms. There are now three of these island paradises, plus The World. Having been reassured by the announcement from Nakheel Construction (a branch of debt-ridden Dubai World) during the recent repayments crisis that the idea that it's sinking into the sea is just gossip (but you can't help having a few biblical thoughts), we casually drove around the original, Palm Jumeirah (which is in fact near Jumeirah Beach Residence where I got heroically and nocturnally lost in September, all of 20km down the coast from Jumeirah Beach, i.e another horizon further beyond Burj Al Arab). There are posh marina villas on the fronds, but they are gated and out of bounds. This is the main trunk, with bulk apartments and a Trump Tower somewhere invisible in the background, and a monorail track on the left which leads to

Atlantis. This super-hotel on the outer ring of the reclamation, reached via a tunnel, has been open one year. All you really need to know is that valet parking is AED160. We passed.

We then got lost in remarkably similar fashion to my September adventure, but managed to happen upon Ibn Battuta mall, which has plenty of free parking, and a magnificent mosaic dome crowned as it were by the inevitable Starbucks.

We were still hellbent on riding the new Metro, so before plunging in to shop, we took a bus to the end of the line a few kms away and queued for some time to buy a ticket. Unfortunately by the time we got on a (driverless) train it was nearly dark, and it soon filled up with Friday night party goers, so it became a somewhat boring commute to the far end (35minutes one way) with little to see but glimpses of the city lights among the reflections of standing passengers, and endless car showrooms (at least it's elevated most of the way, only a tunnel under the Creek). So no photos of that.

Eventually back to the mall. Ibn Battuta was a fabled Arabian explorer in the mould of Marco Polo, and the mall redeems itself by featuring an extensive and fascinating display about his travels and discoveries scientific and geographic. The mall is divided into themed courts each for the various countries he visited - a worthy variation on the samesame shopping trek. The shops were ok too, but best for me was the guy near the foodhall with the best scam: for 10 dirhams a generous pottle of fresh off the cob (not tinned) corn kernels with your chosen combo of flavours. I was a goner.

Then it was time to stagger back to the car and get reliably lost again trying to find the way out of town, but this time I had Angela the direction-finder with me so no panic. We'll have a proper go at Dubai again soon, perhaps over a whole weekend.

Back in Al Ain, things are more modest and funky. Here's a port-a-mosque which is among the site sheds at a mosque a few blocks from here which is being renovated.

Grandeur can be found in the endless variations on the suburban villa and notably its street frontages. You gotta have a standout fence and gateway. A selection of the more notable needs its own blog post some time, but for now a spoiler or two:

Variations on wall and gateway lighting are part of the fun; this guy, 2 or 3 kms from here, wins with not one but two gateways featuring these big brass lanterns.

And just around the corner is a modest sized plot of land compared to some (probably about an acre), but there are some hefty houses going up on it inside what is surely The Best Fence in Al Ain (or the entire UAE?). (Note real palm tree for comparison purposes.)

Many of our crew groan and sigh with apparent nausea every time they pass by this kitsch monument (which is often, as it's on our direct route to town), but I say: applaud and enjoy the monumental chutzpah it took to go through with such a bold statement; ponder upon its siginificance. If I find a better one you will be first to know.

Biggest news is: about 3 weeks ago, it happened! Rain in Al Ain. (No kneejerk lines about mainly plains or drains please.) Clouds gathered, adding some welcome drama to dawns and sunsets

and it poured on and off for two days, filling the wadis briefly, but somehow I missed getting a shot of that, sorry.

Suddenly it was just like home, though in some ways not. Streets and roundabouts were feet deep in places - the vestigial stormwater system gets clogged with sand and can't cope). Drivers tend to freak out at the sight of a puddle and skirt round it on the other side, or if forced, traverse it at a slow crawl, but a few like to hoon through and splash the pedestrians.

All too soon it was over and the only reminders were a brief Al Ainbow (gotcha!)

and high tide marks of water bottles (!) in the wadis.

There's nearly always a bit of water in the ford near our place - from a big stormwater pipe that empties into the wadi a bit further up, probably runoff from irrigation at the nearby orchards and sports fields. Nice for the occasional grazing camel herd and flocks of water birds.

Generally the prospect for Green Stripe wadi-walkers is a bit arid; there are miles of paved pathways (paving stone makers have been among the main beneficiaries of the Gulf economic miracle) in the approx square km of supposed parkland between us and the watercourse, but some serious planting of lawns and trees is needed to make it all worthwhile. What trees there are at the edges are of course irrigated like every bit of public greenery here.

This is looking back towards our apartments which can be seen to the right of the litter bin.

And here's another view from the far side of the wadi; Green Stripe is behind the bush towards the centre.

This is our home uo close, in all its verdant splendour. The stripes are indeed the same green as the fence details, as well as the bannisters and other features. With luck, the newly planted palm trees will soon show some rain-induced growth (Salaam the gardener waters them daily too) and we will have another shade of green to bask in, inshallah.

And in lieu of Xmas cheer, here's a pic of the revellers at our first rooftop barbecue, which went off some time in November. We do have a good community here, and are really starting to feel sort of at home.

Let's get this posted before the internet falls over again - anyway I have a bit more data entry I should be getting on with before last minute shopping and packing etc ready for 1015am Thurs ETD from Dubai for Ak. We will be in NZ from New Years Day until Friday 8 Jan, mostly in Nelson for Catrin's wedding so it's a matter of luck if we get to see many people, but we'll try. Otherwise look forward to renewed attempts at regular communication in the new year.

Meanwhile Happy New Years (islamic, 14 Dec I think, year 1453 I think, and gregorian) from all of us to all of you.

Neath the Swansea sun

2009-10-21T07:31:00.017+03:00

Welcome to Green Stripe (or officially Shuaibah District 31, Community 1, Street 21, Building 17) - our (and 13 other Cog staff's) new home since a week ago, and most of the reason for no blog posts for so long.

This is because I have been occupied full time helping David Ryan, the indefatigable and amazingly unflappable Cognition go-to guy in Al Ain, to get the apartments ready. This was urgent as the building was behind schedule and there was a queue of people waiting to move in, either from less-salubrious accommodation like the Pool (e.g. us), or various hotels where they had been put up at great expense, since arriving up to six weeks ago. I've been doing stuff like drilling holes to put up curtain rails (with no working aircond for the first week, when it was still really hot), and buying and distributing numerous chattels - it's amazing how much expense and labour goes into setting up a place like this. Not least among the benefits is that I have lost most of the half stone or more I put on in four days on our trip to Wales (see below).

More photos soon - since this one of Block A (ours) the carports have arrived and holes have been dug around most of the perimeter for palm trees, whose arrival should transform the place. We are the front top left of eight apartments, and there are six more apartments in Block B across the courtyard. There is tons more room than at the old Pool apartments, no swimming pool though (no great loss - I did have one brief swim, and would just like it known that it wasn't me who peed in it), nor a bidet (as one of the teachers said, we'll cope), but the shower doesn't make puddles in the bathroom doorway, and the bath is a proper size. The built-in aircond is a bit noisy though (ours has stopped working in the loungeroom, hopingly the only teething trouble we have, and not a panic situtation now that the temperature is down to about 35 in the day and 25 at night); I do almost miss the cosy galley-size kitchen and the funky cracks in the walls at the old place.

We are about 3km from the Pool, on the other side of Twam St (still just as far - 15km - from the town centre but handy for one of Ange's two schools) in a new economy-size (6km x 2km) suburb of mainly economy-size villas in various stages of construction. From our kitchen window we look across the street and a fenced-in pipeline to the beginnings of a landscaped park on the banks of the wadi. Though there is as usual no visible water in the wadi, there is green grass growing along our bit of it (I have spotted a dragonfly, and neighbours out for a walk heard frogs even!), probably due to irrigation outflow from the Palm Sports resort (= the Rugby Club) and the adjoining extensive grounds of the Sheikh's palace on the opposite bank. To complete the picture there are also power pylons growing along the wadi. Apartments on the other side of the building have a view of Jebel Hafeet (until the other two blocks get built at the back of the compound, but no sign of that yet), but we only have to go up to the nicely uncluttered roof (a communal barbecue may be bought soon) to gaze at it if we wish. There appear to be no camels in the immediate neighbourhood, just a rooster who crows all day.

Anyway, we appear to be quite settled at last - first time really since arriving in Doha in February - among a friendly community of Cognition colleagues, and have been going mad buying nice things to tart up the nest; Ange had a ball in Ikea on a recent visit to Abu Dhabi. We have even finally got a subscription to Showtime TV (can see NZ Rugby etc) and an account to deliver drinking water bottles, including a cool cooler/hot water dispenser. Always wanted one of those.

It was still Ramadan last time I blogged - here's a pic Ange got of needy workers being dispensed alms food outside a central Al Ain mosque. The season of fasting and charity is just a memory now, and we are back to such normality as exists here, with the shops closing at 10pm instead of 1.30 in the morning.

The end of Ramadan brings the Eid long weekend, and although it didn't turn out as hoped that the Sheikh would announce a change of date so that it would take in two weekends, we grabbed the chance of a four day raid on Swansea to catch up with Angela's relatives, especially her dad Bob who we hadn't seen for three years since he returned to Wales from NZ, as well as her brother Marc and family who I had never met.

Pausing only for the race-to-the-death-and-back-with-only-one-teabreak mission to rescue passports (as described in previous post), we hopped on Emirates once again at 3.45pm and by 7.30 (GMT) found ourselves trapped in ye good olde Gatwick foreign passport queue (having both neglected to renew our UK documents). It wouldn't have been so bad having to stand in the sweltering heat (really, we picked a late September heatwave) for 45 minutes, swapping "Welcome to Britain" pleasantries with more or less patient Indian and South African fellow arrivals, if we hadn't had to watch a twice-as-big UK/EU passports queue go through first, while no stamp-wielders could be found for us, apparently.

Never mind, Marc and son Gareth were still faithfully waiting for us, having driven four hours from Swansea, and by 2 a.m. we gladly fell into bed at the boutique Glyn Clydach hotel, idyllically set among woods not a mile from Marc's house in Skewen on the outskirts of Neath.

No rest for the prodigals though - despite intended sleep-ins, we were up at sparrowproverbial to make the most of our limited time, to be greeted by this enchanting view from our room, and by a proper Welsh (can't say English now can we boyo, but it was the same) brekkie, with proper bacon.

Then a brisk walk (not enough to work off much of the breakfast) along picture-postcard lanes to Marc and Yvonne's.

As I said before, Bob's looking good

and Marc (sorry no photo of Yvonne) and extended family were cheery hosts.

I met a vast number of jolly charming cousins and friends and was made to feel one of the family from the start, with only a gentle but constant smattering of perplexity over whether I counted as a kiwi or an Englishman, and what was I actually saying in my indefinable accent. The only one missing was sadly Bryn the dog, who passed away aged 14 the day before we arrived.

As already reported, I made it to two rugby games - Ospreys v Leinster, featuring Jerry Collins getting sent off (among other unpopular reffing decisions) and a general shaking of heads at the state of things, but a jolly rousing occasion anyway; and more pleasingly, Skewen (in black and yellow, with Ange's other nephew David usefully coming off the bench for most of the second half) walking all over I forget who (but they were big old boyos to be sure).

A highlight was getting to meet Ange's beloved ex-mother-in-law Brenda, just turned 90 and bright as a button after recovering from some nasty health problems in the last year or so, and overjoyed to have a surprise visit.

We met up with Ange's ex, David Penharwood, who took the three of us on a very pleasant all day tour of Swansea and some of its more picturesque environs. This is the view from the point at Mumbles back along the bay to the city;

here's the newly-developed marina;

David's old school;

and a reminder that Britain and the Gulf are not so far apart any more.

Other highlights were visits to Neath and Swansea markets (I got some spare keys cut - in Wales you don't need a police letter of authority for that...) and a proper-size Marks & Sparks; a full-on Saturday night barbecue at Marc and Yvonne's, a family dinner at our hotel; the hot dry weather; and much catching up far into the night. Sleep was in short supply, but the eating never stopped it seemed.

But the best highlight was the walk from hotel to house - as well as the road, we had the choice of a woodland path that could have been a hundred miles from suburbia

complete with friendly stick-chasing dog.

The nearby scarp of The Drum beckoned, but there may need to be a lot more fitness walking before we tackle it.

The best of the blackberry season was past, but a few good ones were left.

I was hooked, will be back for a longer look soon for sure.

But all too soon, etc...; driving back to Gatwick for 10 a.m. takeoff meant a 3 a.m. start for Marc, Gareth and us on Tuesday, pausing only for one more bacon and eggs feed at a motorway caff, and a jar of Harrods marmalade from duty free (all gone now). Advisory: front row seats, chosen for the spacious kneeroom, have (at least on Emirates 777s) fixed armrests, and are narrow and unsuitable for XXL bums. We survived.

With the 3 hour time lag, and the pre-arranged pickup of Ange's colleague Alison who had been to Paris (at Dubai terminal one, which is having a metro station built above it and therefore, due to restricted parking and access, necessitates an endless insane traffic merry-go-round and a crowded wait outside the doors in the heat) we finally saw the friendly lights of Jebel Hafeet at about 1.30 a.m.

With luck in the next week or so I'll get a few more pix sorted for an overdue Al Ain travelogue of sorts; meanwhile here's a somewhat short vid (I didn't realise the camera was on video setting, then the battery died) of the junior twister that was right there about to cross the road and blow some Indian workers' hats off as I drove up Twam St the other day.

We have seen several of these - not sure if it's a seasonal thing, but they are fun to watch. Other alternatives to shopping-mall entertainment coming up are the much-hyped Abu Dhabi F1 GP, which we will have to watch live on Arabic TV as it's all booked out, and NZ v Pakistan 20-20, which might be a fun day out - if there's time in between our own nesting activities and sorting out other residents' missing microwaves and wineglasses etc, and the odd rooftop party.

Stairway to Heaven

2009-09-15T13:25:00.018+03:00

We've just been for a lightning 4-day raid on the UK, taking advantage of the post-Ramadan long weekend Eid holiday. What with the planned trip back to NZ in January for Catrin and Nathan's wedding, we really wanted to squeeze in a visit to Swansea (Neath to be precise, or Castell-Nedd as the bilingual signs say) to catch up with Angela's family, particularly her dad Bob who we hadn't seen for three years since he made the move from NZ back to Wales. He's looking good.

More about the trip later, but we can report the weather was hot, the setting idyllic (here's the view from our hotel room)

and we seemed to spend more time eating than sleeping - I passed the faggots-and-peas Stage One Honorary Welshman test, I think; I may even have just scraped through Stage Two by going to two rugby matches - even got caught on TV with Ange's brother Marc, shaking our heads at the dismal fortunes of the Ospreys (they can only improve, boyo).

The lack of sleep got off to a splendid start for me on Wednesday night with a last-minute dash to the uncharted wilderness of Dubai to rescue Ange's passport (and our neighbour Alison's), which had to have their newly-gained work permits processed into them before we could fly, and which process had of course taken longer than expected. As our ETD was 3pm Thursday, and the passports were at the Cognition office in Abu Dhabi, we couldn't risk any delay in getting Ange's delivered to Al Ain on Thurs morning, so off I rushed at 7.30pm, mapless but armed with directions, to a rendezvous with Sheryl the office manager who had kindly arranged to take them home to Dubai.

You may have gathered from past posts that Doha is a crazy place, and even Al Ain is quite good for getting lost in. Be assured, they are both hick towns. Dubai is, well, cosmic. They say don't bother with your GPS there because the roads keep changing. The new Metro may help a bit. It's debatable whether a map would have been much help to this stray waif in the dark, but whatever, after a five-hour saga of missed turnings, scores of extra kilometres and blind faith in my direction-finding duck (see Michael Leunig's The Adventures of Vasco Pyjama), i.e keeping the Burj al Arab in view at all possible times, not to mention a slowly dying cellphone, I did make it to the Starbucks at Jumeira Beach Residence (which is not a compound with villas as I imagined, but a whole suburb of closely-packed 50-storey apartment towers), met up with the ever-patient Sheryl and retrieved the passports.

Then after a further hour or more of aimless nose-following (despite Sheryl's best map-drawing-on-envelope efforts), I serendipitously got lost in the opposite direction onto the same bypass that I had got lost onto on the way in, so I finally knew vaguely where I was and could retrace my circuitous route to the Al Ain road (the actual trip from Al Ain to the outskirts of Dubai is a bit over an hour). So you may have the merest inkling of my joy at 2am, on coming over the last row of dunes, to see in the distance (must have been an unusually un-hazy night) the sparkling and unmistakable Lights Of Home, i.e the Jebel Hafeet road.

The days are indeed getting less hazy now, and yet another pilgrimage up the 15km 3-lane summit road is likely to be rewarded with clearer views, maybe even as far as the further reaches of Al Ain. Likewise, it should be worth going up on our roof at different times of day to capture the various moods of the mountain. We will get to that sooner or later, but meanwhile here is a bunch of pictures taken on our several trips up there in earlier weeks (I wondered whether it would spoil the experience for you when you get around to visiting us, but nothing can really capture that mountain air, so here goes), but starting with one from the roof at noon today, quite the clearest I have seen it.

You are looking at the second highest mountain in the UAE (approx 4000ft), and the most visible of Al Ain's many tourist attractions.

Here it is from the other side, taken from the Truck Road that comes out of Oman and cuts through the north of the mountain as it skirts the town heading for Abu Dhabi. The massif is elongated approx north-south, so we are looking at the east side, alongside which we drove on our way to the Omani border for the recently-reported border run.

(Don't forget: you can click for bigger on any of these pictures. NB: DoubleTake is a nifty panorama-stitching program which I can only afford as shareware until our finances recover from the Wales trip, so meanwhile you get their logo on the stitched pix, but no worries, it's well worth the plug.)

Here's a detail shot showing the spectacular bare strata that characterise the landforms (note also bucolic camels and Toyota); building the summit road wouldn't have given rise to much soul-searching about destroying any vegetation.

The Truck road is quite a convenient traffic-avoiding long-cut from our place to Bawadi Mall, which itself is several km out of town on the way to the Mezyad border post. Behind the mall are the extensive new souqs and livestock markets I may previously have mentioned. A week or two ago we headed out to the mall with a newly-arrived friend, and were checking out the camels; they were friendly and curious as ever, but you could see they knew something was up.

Minutes later the dusk seemed to have come early, and next thing, this is all the view we had of the mountain.

Dust squalls whipped through the markets and lightning flashed every few seconds (sorry, no pix of that, it''s not that easy to catch)

but we made it out of there and into the mall with just a bit of sand in our teeth.

It was in fact a real proper thunderstorm by the time it got to central Al Ain, as we discovered when we drove back there later: fences, tree branches and billboards blown down, and big puddles on the roundabouts (they don't bother with stormwater drains here as it all evaporates within hours) - it even made the papers. But trust us eh: it rained here, and we got stuck in a shopping mall and missed it.

Enough about the weather, back to the mountain. Here's a glimpse or two of the celebrated road. This marvel of engineering (climbs approx 4000ft in about 10km, you work out the gradient for me; and something like 70 corners) holds no fears for the trusty Tiida, which even fully loaded happily hums its way up with overdrive cancelled, secure in the knowledge that a Nissan (latest GT-R of course) holds the hillclimb record at around 3 minutes and a bit for 9km. Not to mention Top Gear doing a magazine feature on it with 3 (three) Bugatti Veyrons (never by halves in the Gulf eh). But you don't really want to rush it with a car full of passengers, and in fact with a constant grade, 3 lanes all the way and hardly any really tight hairpins, it's not really the ultimate driver's treat you might dream of (could be well worth the climb to bike down again though, for those so motivated).

Better focus on the scenery then: when you get to the top, the view is breathtaking. Yes, its a never-by-halves-in-the-Gulf car park, 400m by 150m (a maths teacher and I worked out there must be about a million pavers).

You can see they bulldozed quite a lot of the summit to make it.

You also get a good view of the Sheikh's summer palace

from which he in turn can survey his demesne.

You can share the lordly vista by visiting the nearby Hotel Grand Mercure

though to be honest, in summer the air isn't all that much cooler than down below, and the prospect is mainly heat haze. This is the Truck Road again, looking down towards where the foto of the mountain was taken from.

Straight down, you can see evidence of water under the desert (the dots are trees).

There's plenty of water at Green Mubazzarah, a hot (!) springs resort nestling at the foot of the mountain. Grassy slopes are irrigated to an almost fluorescent intensity of, indeed, green (shown here only at a distance to protect your eyes); you can hire a chalet and take the waters, or a mini-train ride.

The best views are from the numerous handy car parks dotted all the way up and down the road.

In summer, Al Ain is at best only a smudge on the horizon, although it's only about 5km away as the crow flies. Note how rocky ridges (also jebel) extend right into the outskirts (will get some fotos soon). This is looking pretty much at the centre of town, but it's not that obvious, is it.

This panorama covers most of the city (really, it's there on the horizon), looking north.

I even managed to enhance this one enough to point out our place. That's Twam St curving away, so we're on the right of it, beyond the line of red dunes. OK?

Of course the spectacularity is doubled at night - Green Mubazzarah again, centre of pic.

See: there is a town out there.

Back up at the summit cafeteria (ice creams, coffees, burgers and heaps of fun kiddie rides), a resident cat takes time out from rubbish bin duty to hunt a lizard. Not bad camouflage, actually.

But day or night, he's not going to cause much worry to the crows that cruise the thermals over Jebel Hafeet.

Who needs the World's Tallest Building when we have this on our doorstep, and not a chance of getting lost finding it?

Border Rundown

2009-09-10T16:23:00.012+03:00

Here's a longish that-and-this post to catch up with all our doings over the last two or three months, for those who are keen to have the gaps filled in. It's hard to believe we have been here six weeks already, but there we were on the last day of August, in the Cognition minibus headed for the Omani border.

A UAE visitor's visa lasts a month, and must then be renewed by a quick flit across the border to get a new entry stamp. This process can be repeated month after month until you gain resident status - some people are for unknown reasons still doing border runs after a year, while others have got their residency within a month.

Although it still takes up half a day, the process is made more convenient in Al Ain by having the border nice and handy - it bisects Jebel Hafeet mountain then curls round through the middle of town before heading north. There are two border posts near the city centre, but to avoid the queues we travel 15km along the flank of the mountain to Mezyad, where the UAE exit booths turn out to be manned only by some maintenance men and we have to go in search of an official. After half an hour in a cool waiting room watching Ramadan TV, we are all exit-stamped and head across no man's land to the very welcoming architecture of the Omani post, where we pick up numerous tourist brochures; then having collected entry visa stamps, we head back to the UAE and are directed to a building marked "Eye Scan".

There, after official dismay and expat confusion, it becomes clear we have mistaken the Omani intructions and missed going to their exit counter to get the required stamp, so David our hard-working driver/chaperone goes back with all our passports while we wait, watch more Arabic TV, read about the tourist attractions of Oman (really not to be missed - beaches and green mountains, looks a bit like the NZ of the Arabian peninsula) and cross our fingers. Nearly an hour later it's all fixed, and after one more backtrack (the vehicle insurance hadn't been stamped by the guy whose job it was to wield the stamp), we're back in the, back in the UAEE (remastered Beatles tribute there folks).

Since then Angela has received her pink slip conferring residency and has done another border run to get it properly stamped, and can now sponsor me for the same. Then it's just a matter of going for our UAE driving licences and we will be pretty much installed here.

Doha seems a distant dusty mirage now. I said I would do a Leaving Doha post with lots of pix of the bits we had so far missed out showing you: in the end of course, there just wasn't time to run around getting all the last minute photos I wanted, what with the performances of Last Tango in Little Doha being delayed until a week before we were due to leave, and having to pack up all our stuff to be stored pending shipment to here (or to NZ if the Al Ain contract should fall through).

Then there was the last-minute social round, including formal Cognition end-of-contract dinners (the whole Doha crew at the Hilton, very nice buffet thanks, and a specially nice evening at the Ramada with the E-Schoolbag a.k.a. Digital Oasis team), and evenings with Angela's school colleagues, and my fellow Last Tango cast member Jack Rigg, his wife Mary and friends - these people will be among our treasured memories of Doha.

With the sands of time drawing all to rapidly to a close (the Peter Sellers line fits Doha well), we never made it back to Souq Waqif for one last harees (chicken porridge) and kerosine juice. But we did treat ourselves on the second to last day to the fabled buffet lunch at the Sharq Resort. If you can find your way in through the maze of roadworks for the new airport motorway, you find yourself in another world, somewhat different to the high-rise swank of the other posh Doha hotels. The Sharq is only three stories at most, covering a vast acreage of splendid poolside pavilions

more Arabian in decor than the other palaces,
and with its own beach looking across the corniche to West Bay.

The buffet was possibly a soupcon finer than the Hilton's, thanks.

So will our lasting impression of Doha be the view of construction sites from an elegant atrium

the faux forts of Education City

or the real ones like this at Al Rayyan (on the back road home from the Family Food Centre supermarket, where you could get Vegemite)?

Or the ubiquitous majlis marquees like this one next to Gharrafa sports stadium (they won the local football championship, you know)

with their rows of dust-cover protected armchairs?

Or the multicoloured chickens for sale in the souqs (never did find out why),

or the even cuter thowb-clad small boys out at night with their families?

Perhaps the road to Messaieed, with full 50-metre-interval streetlighting marking its 25km four-lane route back to Al Wakra (with very likely an Indian or two, with shopping bags, trudging along miles from nowhere even late at night), will have to do as a farewell image.

Packing up and dispatching the amassed stuff was a mission and a half, from sourcing with difficulty suitable large cartons, through realising what a lot we had amassed in five months, to fitting it all into neat packages. We had arrived in Doha in February with, apart from our checked suitcases (not to mention seven, yes 7, carry-on bags) just one large suitcase sent by air cargo. In June we stored in Doha for forwarding three 50x50x60cm cartons plus two smaller ones, as well as the original suitcase, a total of 183kg. On our last day I ended up heaving all this downstairs by myself in the 45deg June heat and shoehorning it into the trusty Tiida (a fine little car) for transport to the Villa for storage. If you are congenitally incapable of travelling light, accept the fact and go for it, I guess.

The hoard did include large items in the general category of wedding gifts which we promised we would buy ourselves with the generous Doha Koha fund, which guests contributed to rather than giving presents which we would have to have put into storage in NZ immediately after the wedding. Seemed a good idea at the time, but of course it was merely postponing the logistical challenge. But we did get some nice things including a lovely handwoven Kashmiri carpet, a Mikasa glass bowl and a set of very decorative china storage jars (both bargains from Villeroy and Boch in Doha City Centre Mall), a sewing machine and a coffee maker (half price with the sewing machine), and three choice approx 1:14 scale rough-but-accurate (you know, the patinated look) tin models (H-Van ute, Ami 6, and 2CV with ski rack), plus numerous small items and of course, too many clothes (not mine).

Anyway, a big thank you to all friends and relatives who contributed - you have helped us establish a more homely home here in the desert. Last week the consignment arrived at Abu Dhabi airport and we went down to collect it - a much quicker and tidier experience than picking up the one case in Doha back in February. There we had to run the gauntlet of a seething corridor full of shouting porters and agents touting for our business, pay over several hundred riyals to various more or less official hands, and wait for hours. In Abu Dhabi it was fast, by the book, courteous and cheaper. We got it home at 10.30pm and then just had to get the 183kg UP the stairs in the heat - totally shagged out after that, but now we are recovered and have all our things again to nest with.

So with all that safely stored at the Villa, and after the inevitable struggle to cram the remainder into our flight luggage, it was off to the airport for a 3.45am takeoff, then a 5-hour wait in the impossibly huge Emirates terminal at Dubai (entertainment was provided by Paul's Cafe who refused to serve the special that was advertised on cards at every table, because it wasn't 9am yet; and having been awake for 24 hours already with the prospect of a 20-hour trip, we took the opportunity of complaining to the manager with alacrity).

But Mason's (and Hollie's) radar wasn't wrong, suddenly there we were, back in the sweaty 12 deg humidity of NZ,

rushing around catching up with friends,

offspring

and grand-offspring,

as well as familiar landmarks and all that stuff.
Not to mention timing it just right for the Ak Film Fest (I managed to get to about 12 including several pearlers and no real disappointments - will add them to the bucket list when I remember). A time for driving the XM (borrowed back from Ed in champion condition) as much as possible, and spending up large on a new supply of books to see us through the next few months (and strain the generous 30kg Emirates baggage allowance), unaware that Abu Dhabi and Al Ain have much better bookshops than Doha; but money well spent anyway.

Sadly we couldn't fulfil plans to zoom around the country and see more people (didn't even get to Hamilton or a whole lot of Auckland people, let alone Rua and Jill and Millie and Alex in Dunedin - we miss you guys and will just have to make sure to make it down there next time). Some time had to be spent in Auckland tying up nagging loose ends, but the blame belongs largely to the strange parallel world of Gulf teaching contracts. We left Doha knowing that Ange would not be returning to the ill-fated Digital Oasis project (which was eventually canned anyway) but that she had a new job offer in Abu Dhabi, which couldn't however be confirmed until some time in July. This dragged on, while we waited for news, until late in the month (through no fault of Cognition's) at which point, under the rules for non-residents, we needed to leave NZ in order to have a week in hand to fly back for Catrin's wedding in Nelson in January. After some anxious emails the call finally came (with half a week's notice) that we would be flying out on 30 August.

Sometimes it's best when goodbyes aren't too drawn out - suddenly, after a few hugs and tears, we were back in the weird parallel universe of airports and long flights. Once again the good old cramped A340 with the iffy entertainment screens (good programmes though, and there's always the iPod and the noise-cancelling phones to fall back on). We may get to try the A380 for the wedding trip, even perhaps 19 hours nonstop Dubai-Ak. This time we didn't have the last-straw endless transfer trek through Dubai Emirates terminal but instead were able to go straight to Arrivals and the baggage claim. This is just a corner of that vast hall, pleasantly empty at 6am.

The terminal (this is Emirates only, other airlines share two other terminals) is a cigar-shaped building about a mile long (really) with maybe fifty planes parked along both sides. Apparently it isn't big enough - if you arrive from Auckland or Doha you are likely to taxi endlessly past the whole edifice and on for another ten minutes to park at a cargo shed on the far side of the airport, then ride a straphanger bus back to the terminal. Further reports on the enormities of Dubai will appear when we eventually get up the courage for a proper visit. After all, they do have the tallest building, the biggest shopping mall, and a brand-new Metro train (come on Auckland, you can do it). Then we will at last be able to give some sort of meaningful answer to all you Kiwis who ask "What was it like in Dubai?" (which Doha is not the same place as; but then be honest, I didn't have a clue where Qatar really was until we were about to hit the place a few months ago).

The tennis elbow I gave myself helping the nice lady taxi driver get the luggage into the Previa has just about faded away now. Our instructions were to get a taxi to Al Jimi Mall and meet David there. We didn't even realise that Al Jimi was in Al Ain rather than Abu Dhabi until we made inquiries. So! we were indeed headed to the oasis city, which everyone assured us was a really nice place to live. The two hour taxi trip was made more entertaining by the meter reminding the driver in a reproachful voice "You are speeding; please slow down" every time she edged past 120; which she responded to, along with the speed cameras at about 10km intervals along the motorway, by settling into a rhythm of speeding up and slowing down every half km or so - not particularly restful. The scenery most of the way looked much like this to our tired eyes.

But soon enough here we were. Al Jimi! Surely a good sign! If Hendrix were to stand up next to Jebel Hafeet, would he chop it down with the edge of his hand? (ref: Voodoo Chile if you are puzzled as to what I'm on about.)

Not the biggest mall in Al Ain, as the guidebook says, but it's the nearest thing we have to a local, and don't you love the twin towers

and the art camel?

We were a bit early, but then David arrived and rescued us and our heap of luggage, and ferried us to our new home in The Pool Apartments, a 20 minute drive that mostly looked like this. In fact, to the new resident, Al Ain continues to look confusingly like this in a thousand variations for about the first month. Now we have a car we have just about got our bearings and only get lost about once a week.

I was going to round this off with the saga of our first few weeks here. The first week is easily dealt with: it was hot as, the bedroom aircond didn't work, Ange had a proper dose of flu from the second day, the internet wouldn't go, we had no TV (we were able to access TV and internet in a neighbouring apartment which some Cognition people had vacated because the aircond didn't work at all, so that was only bearable for a sauna-like half hour at a time), we had no car and were short of money for supplies or a taxi to town (and would have got lost anyway), there were hardly any Cog people around (most arrived a week or two later than us), there were no Doha personal effects to nest with, and we were trying not to notice the cracks in the walls. We couldn't help feeling lost and abandoned.

The rest had better be another post - I'll do my best to get it done before we fly off to UK next Thurs 17th for a week (it's the Eid post-Ramadan holiday) to see Ange's father and brother and family.

I could try to get away with a bunch of date puns about that, but I won't.

Wadi You Know

2009-09-03T10:45:00.011+03:00

In Doha we lived in Madinat Khalifa South - a.k.a. District 34. Here we live in 34th Street. So far, so spooky. Well, there are numerous 34th Streets, most districts of Al Ain seem to run to a 34th. Ours is the one in Al Khalidiyya (Com 3), which is part of Al Agabiyya (Dist 30). All this info is helpfully included on the street signs. Not that the average cab driver will find it all that helpful - you need to be ready to give running navigation instructions. The average Emirati or Qatari (descended, of course, from a people who were master navigators of the trackless desert), just knows how to get to where he needs to go, without recourse to a mental map cluttered with numbers and names. Last week I helped Ange's friend and ex-colleague Una, recently arrived from NZ to work for an Emirati school, to collect her personal effects cargo from a freight depot in town. We spent a hit-and-miss half hour looking for the place, finally happened upon it, and later asked the proprietor what was the name of the street. He scratched his head, then said "I have been in this shop 25 years and I still don't know!"

Houses in Al Ain do have numbers (just like Doha), but there appears to be little danger of a postman service magically starting up any year soon. I also had a mini-adventure trying to post a letter to NZ - not quite the epic that posting a parcel in Doha turned into, but quite enough on a hot morning thank you. It involved the queueing-by-ticket system - yes! just to post a letter! - in the city's one and only Post Office, being in disarray due to a lack of power for the ticket machine, and also for the Eftpos, which therefore necessitated backtracking to find a mastercard-friendly ATM. All this in Ramadan, so no recourse to the water bottle in public (although it should be noted that the trekking involved was made much easier by Al Ain town centre's superior pedestrian-friendliness, just like Abu Dhabi, with adequate sidewalks, reliable pedestrian crossing lights, and even underpasses - Doha take note). Eventually the letter was dispatched at an agreed 11 Dirhams, despite erratic readings on the scales (variously 11, 17 and 47 Dirhams, though the weight read zero grams each time...).

So if you want directions to our place (surprise visitors always welcome), and you have your direction-finding duck with you, they are as follows: after the long tree-lined drive from Abu Dhabi (2 hours) or towards Abu Dhabi from Al Ain centre (20 minutes), you should come to Twam St, which you should follow for several blocks (i.e. roundabouts) until you cross a bridge over the wadi. There are, by my count (from the map - I haven't laboriously visited them all yet, but it would make a good familiarisation exercise, so watch out for the coming blog post), between 25 and 31 main-road bridges over dry wadis scattered around this town, most of them stylishly decorated to rival the roundabouts and underpasses. Water in the wadis is reputed to be maybe a once or twice a decade treat, which I hope to stay long enough to see. Meanwhile they all look something like this (our local one you have just crossed over).

I think the camera was on the wrong setting, but it does give an idea of the washed-out (!) colours in the noonday heat. At dusk it looks a bit more inviting, you can almost hear the eels and kingfishers splashing about if you stare at the picture with eyes half-closed, no?

There's a nice curry restaurant on the bank - you can relax under the date palms wihle waiting for your takeaways, like me and our neighbour Joss, who introduced us to it and lots of other useful local knowledge. To keep you cool they have big fans which have a clever water misting device attached.

Anyway, you make a left at the next roundabout (before you get to the dunes)

and you find yourself in a district of moderately grandiose villas, many still under construction

or stalled unfinished.

These are by no means the grandest houses in Al Ain (more photos to come as we discover the standout examples) but are I believe the sort of thing the government has just announced plans to provide (free, including land) 17,000 more of (here and in Abu Dhabi) to Emirati nationals who apply for them. Four bedrooms, expandable to seven if required.

There's a biggish mosque

and a few shops, including tailor, hair saloon, takeaways, and a proper supermarket, plus a solitary Indian corner shop, all about 1km from our place.

I test-walked it the second day we were here, stupidly forgetting to replace my jandals with shoes. The burning of the soles of my feet didn't really become undeniable until I was more than halfway there, so nothing for it but to hobble on. I only got rid of the blisters last week. Anyway, got a car now so no worries. This is one of the blameworthy streets.

So you've hung a right at the mosque, found 34th, and the red umbrellas and green massif (only apartment building around here, at about 70 apartments it dwarfs even the biggest neighbouring villas, but not half as splendid) of the Alfilah Building (known to Cognition as The Pool Apartments, or Colditz to the more cynical among us - I don't necessarily share the sentiment) finally heave into view.

The cardboard sign hanging up says "NO STOB".

Angela and our neighbour Sue (also ex-Doha Gharrafa) welcome you to the airy (rather warm) halls within.

See, there really is a pool. Confession: we've put off trying it out, first because it needed cleaning, but now that has been seen to, our current excuse is we're waiting for the weather (and the water) to cool down a bit. Will brave it soon, just so I can post a report from poolside).

The interior of our apartment also shall remain cloaked in mystery for now, at least until we get our stuff from Doha (any day now we hope - was taken to freight agent there last Sunday) and jolly it up a bit. The space is nothing special, but for me it's totally liveable (less to clean than some of the more unnecessarily-spacious alternatives we have visited). We will try to decorate sensitively with due regard for the cracks in the walls, which none of the neighbouring apartments I have visited can match for length, breadth or convolutions (the building is reportedly one year old).

Meanwhile, until they can receive the attention they deserve (from decorator, photographer, plasterer or mason, insha'allah), here are some nice views out our loungeroom window (faces approx eastwards). Yep, we do have (on not-too-hazy days at least) a reasonable view if you crane your head, of about half of Jebel Hafeet, second highest mountain in the UAE at 4000ft, one of Al Ain's proudest tourist attractions, only about 10km from here and definitely deserving of its own blog post - watch out for it. Also note that unlike the foregoing photos, I have accidentally managed to include quite a lot of the greenery for which Al Ain is justly renowned. This oversight will be further remedied in future posts.

The mountain is truly a sight at night when the summit road (3 lanes and streetlit for all of its 15km) really stands out (actually taken from a sand dune vantage point 5 minutes walk from here).

And if you crane the other way, there are the camels (already seen in wide angle at the top of this page).

There are lots of camels in and around the town - best viewed at the extensive livestock souqs to be found behind the posh Bawadi Mall just a few km out of town towards the mountain - also another post in the making.

Meanwhile, it's ma'asalaama from me and her.

Take Me to the Wadi

2009-08-25T10:46:00.010+03:00

Water, water.

Well, it has been quite hot here.

One gains respect for the devout who have just embarked on a summer Ramadan. Not only is it more of a burden in the 45+deg heat to observe the dawn-to-dusk ban on liquid refreshment and food (let alone sex, gossip, slander and cursing, any of which can render the fast ineffectual), but of course the days are an hour or two longer than when the movable month-long festival falls in winter. Then there are the 14 Common Mistakes that the website of Dubai's Department of Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities reminds muslims to beware of during the holy month. These include watching too many popular Ramadan TV programmes; falling asleep all day; breaking the fast with a cigarette; spending too long in the shops; for women, wearing too much perfume and making too many excuses to get out of religious observance, whether menstruation or pressure of kitchen duties; and indeed, overdoing the preparation of lavish Iftar feasts.

The after-dusk Iftar get-togethers might appear to the casual expat eye to be at least as much what Ramadan is about, as are fasting and devotions. Hotels and restaurants compete to advertise the most sumptuous experience, at many hundred dirhams a head, and you could jump to the conclusion that it's more like a month of night-time parties; but we presume this wouldn't be a daily indulgence for the average family. There is an equal emphasis on charity, with leftovers being saved for distribution to the needy.

Us infidels only have to remember not to scull that can of coke in view of the faithful, after the long hot trudge across the car park from the cool of the shopping mall, but just hang on until we get home. No food shops are open until sundown, but the hypermarts carry on with normal hours, all-day chanting of the Q'ran on the PA, lots of Blessed Ramadan Special Offers, and the proviso that one should be patient with the shop assistant who may be dehydrated and a bit out to lunch (in his/her dreams perhaps).

I never felt hotter and sweatier than in the few hours trekking the pavements and malls of Abu Dhabi on our first two brief visits so far. Two weeks ago I took a minivan ride with Angela and other Cognition staff down to the capital, where they spent the day cloistered in Le Royal Meridien hotel for their induction conference, and I hit the streets armed with guidebook and water bottle. Judging that the 1km walk to Fotouh al Khair mall, which has a Marks & Spencer, was survivable as well as worthwhile (for the several other recommended malls and souqs on the way), I strode off in vaguely the right direction.

Most of the water bottle later, the goal was almost in sight, but I hadn't allowed for the inadvertent detour around the maze of construction sites which will one day be the rebuilt Central Market. I couldn't seem to find my way into what I think was the nearby New Souq either, but the remainder of the water just got me safely to the cool of Marks & Sparks (where Ange's beloved custard creams were in stock, so the journey wasn't wasted). It's a smallish mall, no food court as such, but after a juice or two from the M&S fridge and a half hour slump on the seating in the quiet atrium I was ready to face the return trip.

Though the shopping was disappointing (being a Monday afternoon, many shops were closed; the Liwa Centre was just one store, the Home Centre; and there was no sign of the recommended second hand bookshop in the rather tatty Hamdan Centre), at least the mall-hopping kept my boiler from busting (it still took me an hour in the cool foyer lounge of the hotel to stop sweating); meanwhile I did get a few acceptable cityscape photos on the way.

It's different from Doha - you get a sense, which is reinforced as you get to know more of this leading state of the UAE, that things are less frenetic and more settled here. There are normal sidewalks for a start, with more zebra crossings (that's not to say the average driver takes any more notice of them than his Qatari cousin) and even some underpasses.

Instead of the two-headed Doha layout of the old City Centre with its maze of somewhat crumbly, mainly low-rise buildings, and the separate craneforest eldorado of West Bay, it's more homogeneous.

High-rise offices (with lots more being built) mix it with apartment blocks posh and not so posh.

In keeping with Abu Dhabi's green image (a reported billion trees planted to date must offset the unthinkable Gulf-standard carbon footprint at least a bit), there are more and better-maintained parks

making life a bit nicer for the rubbish-bin cats.

Just like Doha there are the trademark decorated roundabouts - this central strip has cannon, coffee pot, oud (incense) cup and I'm not sure what the cone thing is.

(But you have to go to Al Ain to see this art form taken to the limit. The plethora of roundabout art up here where we live was bound to inspire someone to this labour of love - saving me the trouble, thanks BSS & BRN - which makes as good an introduction as any to the Garden City I guess. Feast at your leisure).

Meanwhile, back in Abu Dhabi: a week later, recovered from the heat stroke and sore feet, I was back for another go. Ange and her colleagues are in the bizarre position of having no kids to teach until October due to Ramadan and the Eid holiday that follows it, but instead are required to spend a month doing PD (for NZers not up with education lore, that's not Preventive or Periodic Detention, but Professional Development). By the end of it there will surely be no better-prepared group of teachers anywhere. Sessions are held at various schools and staff residences, and last week they got together in Le Royal Meridien again. This time we stayed overnight at a vast and nearly empty Cognition apartment in a slightly upmarket building a few kms from the scene of last week's trek. Here's the view of more apartment blocks from the bedroom window:

and two views out the front. People are living in at least half of the house with the partly collapsed roof; the vacant lot was a school which was demolished (perhaps to be rebuilt?).

The buildings on the skyline are where I was the previous week. You begin to realise: Abu Dhabi is (a) quite big, and (b) in many ways, just another city, though it still has big dreams and the means to realise them.

Having sussed the nearby bus route (buses are 1 dirham anywhere in the city), I made a bee line for the universally recommended Marina Mall which is on an island off the Corniche along with the Heritage Village which I didn't get to. Marina Mall is on the big side, features a 100m tower which you can only go up if you want to eat in the posh restaurant, a small artificial snow slope under development, and a crazy fountain which reputedly aspires to demonstrate what rain looks and sounds like. Computerised rhythmic rain, that is - fascinating in the mindless way of such things. I'll get a video of it next visit. Meanwhile here we're looking out the back of the mall at some of the marina developments on the island, and further on to the waters of the Gulf.

Even though it's a light airy tent of a building, the humidity that day was a juggernaut that the aircond couldn't cope with - even the locals I spoke to complained about it. After two or three hours of sweaty window shopping (watching our pennies at this early stage) I was glad to escape to the honest blazing heat of the bus stop, and after three unwanted #5 buses, at last the cool of the #9 back to the apartment.

The next day I intended to take a look at the intriguing exhibitions in the art galleries in the Emirates Palace, reputedly the most expensive hotel ever built (whatever that means), but the day got taken up sorting out a rental car, with eventual success (after several taxi rides at wildly differing prices - always go with the cheap guys, the drivers are marginally more likely to have some idea how to get there, let alone how to drive).

There's plenty more of the big city to explore on on future forays: more big inescapable shopping malls, souqs when we can find them, galleries, museums (they are building a Guggenheim among many other Doha-rivalling projects like the Performing Arts Centre), and the tour of the Grand Mosque is a must. And then there's Dubai to get to grips with (they say don't bother to turn on your GPS as the roads are all dug up just like Doha, just enjoy getting utterly lost).

But for now it was into our new Tiida (just like the old one) and homewards along the 150 tree-lined km to the hills and oases and dry wadis and beautiful red sand dunes of Al Ain, which after a slightly iffy start we were beginning to decide we rather like living in, but that's another blog post.

Qatar Rising; and A Productive Neeting at the Sheraton

2009-06-23T16:25:00.017+03:00

Does this land (a few km south of Al Ruwais, at the northern tip of Qatar) look restless to you, heaving and straining to crowd out the cloudless but dusty sky?

I found out (re-reading Lonely Planet) that Qatar is not only the flattest, but indeed also literally one of the most upwardly mobile. According to the venerable guidebook (which however has a few other things a bit wrong, e.g. that major banks will readily cash traveller's cheques), the whole peninsula has risen 2 metres over the last 400 years. Actually due to tectonics, no doubt, but yer can't help wondering what will happen as they get all the gas out over the next 200. Or will the bubble burst? (etc etc, stop me). Meanwhile, it's handy if you want to reclaim some more coastal real estate, less so if you want a stable water table.

I was privileged to spend most of last weekend at the Sheraton in the role of Gordon, the irascible director and chairman of the mainly fictitious Little Doha Amateur Dramatic Society, wrapping up a very enjoyable short season of David Tristram's "Last Tango in Little Grimley (Doha)" for Doha Players. Due to the wet nature of the catering arrangements (lasagna, salads, dessert and a bar, plus the 45-minute show, QR175 thank you) and the (very) mildly risque content, it was officially a members-only function - no advertising, no door sales and no under-21's, on pain of heavy penalties if these conditions were not strictly adhered to (recent new regulations), so it was announced on the direction board in the foyer as "Al Maha Room: The Doha Players: Neeting". We had near-full houses, which allowed the production to break even, and all had a good time judging by the laughter. I did, anyway, and will treasure the experience as a highlight of my stay here.

Here's me, Helen Swan as Margaret, Sharon Cole as Joyce and Jack Rigg as Bernard bemoaning the dire state of the LDADS and cooking up a salacious and seat-filling last-ever production:

and disastrously (and hilariously for our audience, thanks more to the expert character turns supplied by my fellow cast members than my sub-Basil Fawlty incoherence) rehearsing it.

Thanks to our very relaxed director Sarah Jenkins for the photos, and to Doha Players for finding room for my flash-in-the-pan appearance. (For those who don't know, Angela has a new job lined up and it looks like we will be moving to Abu Dhabi in the UAE after the holidays, though yet to be confirmed, so Sarah will have to find a new, improved Gordon for the planned sequels.)

A Sheraton official told me a bit about the history of this esteemed edifice. It was in fact the very first of the pleasure palaces to spring up here, back in the early 80s, when West Bay was all dirt roads and greater Doha was about ten times smaller than now - as he said, "Someone had a vision - or too much money." The saga included the original concrete structure sinking 2 metres, and being replaced by a lighter and obviously (still looks OK after 30 years) more stable steel-framed one following a change of contractors.

Rumours I have heard include that construction has had to halt, due supposedly to subsidence, on more than one tower among the dozens currently rising in West Bay, a stone's throw from the Sheraton, and elsewhere in town; and that there were, at least until recently, plans for 200(!) of these 30 or 50 (or more) storey palaces of commerce to go up in the area (I estimate there are about 5o at present, completed or being built). Far from me be it to accord these whispers (just like the constant cross-undercurrents of knowledge that none of these towers has anything like full occupancy, and Qatar is next after Dubai to be dragged into the world economic maelstrom never mind the gas, or alternatively that they are all fully booked and Nothing Can Go Wrong) any evaluation further than 3-monkeys wisdom.

But it will be interesting to come back every 6 months or so (insh'allah) and gauge the rate of completion of projects. You can't really quite watch the growth happening before your eyes (like I have said, infrastructure seems to progress in fits and starts, and usually behind schedule just like anywhere), but neither can you see it grinding to a halt just yet. I hope we can keep returning to see it all keep on mushrooming according to the Plan - a few more well-maintained parks, The Pearl abuzz with full occupancy, the fabulous institutional edifices of Education City completed, the ambitious metro transport system in operation; even February 22nd St and the Al Rayyan flyover finished and functional would be nice.

On my tiki-tour up north (see below) I counted about 20 flyover/interchanges at various stages of incompleteness in the first 5okm of highway. The highway itself is a bit like a South Island braided river: dual carriageway nearly all the 100 or so km to the terminus at Al Ruwais, but the carriageways sort of meander - often taking a wide sweep around another junction under construction, or swopping duty with each other or a service lane to the side while surface reconstruction happens. So you sometimes find yourself travelling between the endless orange and white plastic barriers (like cranes, there must be more of these per square km here than anywhere) on a road with arrows marked on the pavement in the opposite direction, or in conflicting directions over a few km, which tends to sharpen the driver's attention.

Grinding is the word (or one of them), as far as the stormwater (I think) excavations that bedevilled our street for about a month up to a week or two ago. They were excavating abut 3 metres down, into bedrock, with a giant jackhammer mounted on a large digger (plus half a dozen guys with pick and shovel of course) inching up the street towards us at about half a metre a day, in half hour bursts with only five minutes' respite to clear the spoil, from sometimes as early as 6am and often until 6pm, even on Fridays and Saturdays. Here on the first floor it was a steadily growing un-ignorable background nuisance, but for the poor unfortunates on the ground floor it was enough to render them incapable of humour by the second week. The last 20 metres of the trench is still there, half full of green water and suspended telecoms conduits. Nothing unusual there; "Deep Excavation" is one of the most common signs you see on and among the ubiquitous roadside barriers.

We saw another intriguing hole in the ground one Friday morning on a reconnoitre of a Family Park a few blocks from here. There were guards on the gate, but we, two ladies and a gent of indeterminate age but with no family attached, were happily waved through into the large empty car park. Well, it was morning, when the mosques should be full; we should have returned in the afternoon to check if it was full of cavorting families, but we got caught up in the mass hysteria of the Trade Fair (another story, suffice to say a heaving mass of people, jewellery, perfumes, middle eastern couture, carpets, spicy sweets, etc etc, under the two-acre roof of the Expo Centre; not to mention the craziest car park mayhem yet seen - I preferred the more relaxed "Deplomatic Bazar" held two weeks earlier in half of the same hall, where many countries mainly from Africa and Asia showed their wares and cultures).

Anyway, we had a nice walk in the already baking heat around the two acres or so of well-tended lawns and flowering borders, looked at the extensive (empty) paddling pool with its two arched bridges too steep to walk across, the baking concrete amphitheatre with its circular flat concrete floor (ideal for skating except for a foot-wide drain across the middle) and the deserted half-pipe. Then we found a locked and fenced off area with a large, deep cave in the middle, with concrete steps disappearing down into the earth. Two security guards were having a quiet picnic under the trees nearby, and we were informed in halting Indonesian English that there are others like this around Doha, but no, he didn't really know if the fencing-off was for safety or to protect an archaeological site, or what. By this time the heat was really getting to us, but the cafeteria was nowhere near open yet, so we couldn't try the advertised "machine juice" and ended up instead at the Grand Hyatt (very, but somehow less opulent than the more compact but ever-stunning interior of the Sheraton), with its casually displayed Konigsegg supercar out the front, for a rather more expensive, but almost worth it, coffee.

That trip up north was one the completist in me just had to make, so with our 30 June ETD looming up, a week or two ago I grabbed water bottle, Pink Floyd CDs (why not), camera and Tiida and headed off up the main north road, which after all starts right outside our front door at the esteemed Al Gharrafa interchange. (To elaborate on the comment above about 22 Feb St: if you are heading south over the flyover towards central Doha, you are now on 22 Feb, but only for 200 metres; you can see the completed dual carriageway beyond the barriers, all the way to the curving, not yet tarsealed Al Rayyan flyover in the distance, which will replace a six-branched roundabout, but here the road stops for now and you have to fight a tangle of uncontrolled traffic heading to and from a bumpy single-lane bypass connecting the north road to our suburb and No-Rules Intersection (it's actually preferable to braving the Gharrafa roundabout, once you have gained enough confidence at the local art of pushing in). But the overhead direction signs on the motorway still tell you that the closed road is the way to Doha, Al Wakra and places between and beyond. You just have to know...)

I already described the road north, which apart from the constant detours is pretty much straight (and mainly devoid of traffic once you get past the Al Khor turnoff, but you still need to watch the mirror for occasional speedsters) all the way to Al Ruwais; the scenery is mainly just as you saw in the heading photo, with construction camps (rows of single barracks, each room with its airconditioner), half-built flyovers and occasional walled plantations or market gardens for variety. I wanted to press on and cover the western return route before the day got too late, and was digging "Interstellar Overdrive" and "Shine on You Crazy Diamond", in the context of the landscape, too much to bother with many photo stops, so there aren't too many to bore you with. The one up top of the page really is typical of a lot of the countryside.

Here's the fishing port of Al Ruwais, with a guy wading out to his boat (not the sunken one);

and here it is, the very northern tip of the country, looking west towards Bahrain (which will be connected to Qatar by the world's longest - 40km - causeway within a few years).

And here's another of my little vids, expanding on the three photos.

In Al Ruwais township, among the sprouting but mainly unoccupied smattering of condominiums and villas I followed a little boy towing a bike wheel behind his bike all over the road accompanied by a cat, found the shops all shut but managed to get camera batteries (and a free chewing gum bonus from the smiling Indian shopkeeper) at a grocery further down the road; and admired the huge fort-like building under construction half a km out of town (sports stadium? - it has a floodlight mast).

The return route via Al Zubara (Qatar's main port in centuries past, not a lot to see now) is on a wide straight utterly empty (two utes and an empty bus in 50 km) two-laner as in the top photo. Highlights were: getting confused at a t-junction not shown on my out-of-date map, but put back on the right road by some friendly Indians in a ute; and traversing half a km of thick tyre marks 30km from nowhere (a long way to go to do burnouts, bro). Back on the main highway I had a duel all the way back (50 km) to Doha with a dude towing a float with two slightly perturbed-looking horses at varying speeds between 60 and 140 km/h, never mind the potholes.

So next week we are off back to the known (NZ) and back into the unknown (awaiting final word on the year to come). Ange is coping with unabated challenges in the last week of school, I am packing our stuff ready to put into storage ready to be trucked to Abu Dhabi, or flown back to NZ if the contract isn't finally confirmed. There are dinner dates most evenings (Ange went to an Egyptian colleague's 8-year-old's birthday party last week, we are to be hosted by an Indian teacher and family on Friday), and we must get down to the souqs one more time to buy a few more presents for people back home (but have to watch riyals and dirhams until we know what's happening). Tonight we went to Cognition's end-of-contract knees-up at the Intercontinental - sumptuous catering, but atmosphere of uncertainty as hardly anyone has a signed contract for next year yet.

I have enjoyed getting into doing this blog, I know it's been a bit of a travelogue at times; I would have liked to find myself engaging with the locals a bit more and opening a window on the human side of Qatar; but considering my cautious and shy nature, I'm not too dissatisfied with what has been thrown together on these pages while I learned to make sense of the process, and we got acclimatised to a hugely different environment from that at home, while cocooned in a building full of kiwis. Now I've got a taste for the medium, I won't just let the blog fade away - coming up: "Al Gharaffa Interchange - Exit to Abu Dhabi" (or Pakuranga, as the case may be), or some such adjustment. Might even have another go at regular social netfacetwitting too, despite earlier recoilings.

Tomorrow I will take the last chance to get out and about and take a few more pix of cityscapes I had been intending to, and chuck some of them on line in a final gallery of Doha impressions fer yer edification along with some choice final comments and comparisons with faraway but rapidly approaching NZ. If there's time, that is...Will do it when we get back home if not (if there's time; there may be a shortage, as family, tax and other considerations may require us to be away again before the end of July - if we are indeed coming back to the Gulf, as expected, but not to be known until mid-month).

Meanwhile, to sign off, here is a crucial message from City Centre mall car park:

To be sure, I have seen cars shoehorned into some pretty inadequate places here. It's good to know the aesthetics of parking are not being overlooked in Qatar's ongoing quest for a tidy society.

Stop Press! Wedding photos just to hand!

2009-06-17T21:42:00.003+03:00

Hopingly no apology is required for not having posted to this blog for a week or three, given that you may still be trying to find time to peruse the three or four posts that came along in a caravan like Link buses (for non-Aucklanders, these are supposed to run every 10 minutes, but Auckland traffic knows better than to allow that).

But I have been keeping busy (by my standards anyway). Apart from learning lines and rehearsing (much fun with a very welcoming team) for the Doha Players production I was initially stunned 2 months ago to find myself cast in (further report when it's all over next week), I have been finally getting around to compiling the definitive photo album of our wedding nearly 6 months ago. Having received the last of the collections from the dozen or so greatly esteemed guest-photographers more than a month ago, it was time to get on with it.

This entailed firstly sorting through nearly 700 photos and putting them in some sort of order; about 180 made the cut, which is a lot to look at, but they are all excellent shots that deserve to be there, and cover just about all the good things that made the afternoon special for us and I hope everyone there.

Then, having sort of made friends with Blogger over the last few months, I had to get to grips with the peculiarities of Flickr. I agree with those who recommended it, that it does a nice job of presenting one's prized images to the world. But it would have been nice to have known in advance (like, before I had written numbered captions for them all) that they will appear in reverse order to that in which they were uploaded; and that this is because it behaves like a blog and presents the latest photo first (even if it's just the last one of an album, therefore the latest to be uploaded); and, that consequently the only way to edit the order is to rewrite the time of uploading (in reverse order to their number sequence, just to make it confusing) for each image. OK enough if you have uploaded just a few photos like any sensible person (well, I would just have put them on this blog instead, wouldn't I); but trust me to want to kick off with a monster album (well, that's why I went to Flickr, as supposedly better able to handle the bulk). Not to mention one or two other glitches, all of which I think I have now sussed, no thanks to Flickr's so-called Help page.

But enough moaning, here they are, all re-timed and looking good I think. A worthwhile lesson, and time well spent, I am sure you will all agree when viewing the results by clicking here.

Acknowledgement must be made to all the abovementioned faithful snappers (in no particular order): Mark Yates, Gerri Judkins, Rachel Clarke, Bec McGarry, Laura Campbell, Una Booth, Peter Lee, Pratima Soma, Yvonne Stephen, Joan Earl, Christof Colpi. I will trust that by generously providing us with the photo files, you have all indicated that you have no objection to your work being published this way. Further, my apologies for not being able to instantly credit each individual shot to the particular photographer, though this could be sorted out given (quite a lot) more time.

It seems like only yesterday/so long ago...

Right, start press up again.

Direct to you

2009-05-27T14:22:00.003+03:00

I got around to exploring Blogger settings and found the function which allows me to send each new post to selected email addresses - only a maximum of ten, however. So if this pops up in your mailbox, do please consider yourself a specially-favoured distributor of my deathless ramblings, and forward it on to anyone who may be interested. I know the blog is essentially a vanity-publishing medium, but it's nice to think there is a readership out there; hard to gauge with the minimal feedback I get. If on the other hand you are reading this without having received an email, it is probably because I know you already check it out regularly via RSS feed or similar, so you in turn can rest assured that I hold your ongoing readership in special esteem.

Towns and Dunes

2009-05-26T11:19:00.001+03:00

It's not that Doha is all solid residential buildup, with the occasional green park, such as we are used to seeing in temperate-zone cities. The desert is part of this town. Even a middle class neighbourhood like this one (typical of Madinat Khalifa North, just across the highway from our apartments, and of most of the city) has open spaces like this, just dust between the perimeter roads.

There is plenty of evidence of a greening program of sorts, with many public areas and roadsides in the process of being landscaped. You see them at various stages, from the lush lawns and flower beds of the Corniche (now the hot weather is here I wouldn't dismiss the idea of taking the job of watering them all day long with handheld hose - even for Indian labourer's wages - better than digging up the roads for sure), to half planted, to laid out but bare except for the irrigation tubing (they have that too, in for-Africa quantities - there is half an acre of black spaghetti lying in the otherwise empty V-shaped beds of the intersection borders opposite our front door, with nothing to do but soak up the UV rays).

And a lot of Doha looks like this: acres of idle land, awaiting maybe the greening, but more likely the construction of more same-same apartment complexes like the ones in the background.

Or like this: there are similar mini-deserts by the dozen quite close in to the city centre, sometimes with tent encampments. They may be earmarked for new commercial or public infrastructure projects, or another road interchange, having been cleared of old unwanted buildings; or equally likely, are just part of the piecemeal development pattern, just not built on yet. Travel another two or three kms outwards and more open space is visible, to the point where you think you have left town; then two roundabouts later, you are back in the thick of urban landscape which doesn't let up all the way back to the city centre. It's Tardis plus Looking-Glass - start off in the opposite direction and you just may find yourself where you were looking to end up; but turn off the main road and there are far too many streets to fit (like the souqs).

Sooner or later you need to really get out into the desert proper for a look. On this initial shortish stay, we may not get time to do the standard experiences, e.g. dune bashing in a 4wd (for hardy thrillseekers only, we are told) or a guided overnight camp (more suitable for gentle aesthetes like us maybe, but with scorpions if you're lucky). But with a car on tap, a tiki-tour of the hinterland demands to be undertaken before it gets way too hot. As already noted, there isn't a huge amount of Qatar to be explored - horizontally it's about 160km by 70km, vertically a dizzy 100metres at most. But the guidebooks recommend some interesting historical sites for a visit, and the roads are there to be driven on, eh.

So one Friday morning, Angela and Nancy and I set off northwards to look for various forts and check out the fishing port of Al Khor, one of Doha's larger satellite towns, a mere 40km away. We took the alternative seaward main road rather than Highway 1 which starts at Al Gharrafa overpass; the latter is full of trucks (although fewer on a Friday) and treacherously potholed. Highway 1A is in fact a superb and empty four-lane motorway, with copious signage which can still leave the novice left-hand-drive traveller confused as to which slip road to take (in the hope of finding one of those forts - must be around here somewhere, is that it over there? - no, that's a power substation...), and consequently heading back to town on occasions.

However, we did manage to stumble upon the sleepy coastal town of Simaisma, half way to Al Khor. It hasn't got much of a beach,

but people can be seen wading the shallows (possibly harvesting kaimoana?)

and there is a fishing pier

with associated friendly fishermen

though local youth were also on hand to break the monotony if required, with Friday-afternoon recreational activities

and associated soundtrack (silencers optional).

Onward to Al Khor, which turns out to be pretty much a mini-Doha (just no skyscrapers). We found roundabouts and dual carriageways galore, the usual jumble of shops in the main street, a posh resort compound, a mini-corniche, and a road leading to a massive residential project. There is also a businesslike fishing port with rows of pretty dhows

and stacks of lobster traps.

It was only right to check out the local produce; the Pearl of Beirut is recommended in Lonely Planet, and there were actually some diners there already. It advertises itself as providing many different national cuisines (if you like a curry you'll have plenty of choice) but the grilled hamour (popular local fish) with salad was a tasty bargain.

Then a brief circuit of the town revealed some unusual architectural detail, such as we haven't seen in Doha.
This guy has brought the Villagio mall ambience outdoors and out of town, a welcome relief from the universal muted-sand-dune tones nearly all houses are painted;

and this one has managed to greatly extend the possibilities of decorative masonry

with tasteful water feature

and a built-in majlis too.

Remember, it's Friday afternoon: back in downtown Al Khor, the subcontinental bachelors are starting to gather in the streets

so we hightailed outta there and headed west, hoping to find the popular Town Gardens, which people said were worth a visit. Ten km out of town, we had sort of given up - then there was the turnoff.

Al Khor Public Gardens are indeed worth the trip. It's a park, folks; several hectares of neatly landscaped and moderately-well-cared-for greenery out in the middle of the desert, and for once Indians are allowed in at the same time as families. These guys were celebrating something, with a ghetto blaster playing their sort of music, and the man in white leading the dancing. We wanted to join in, but the disapproving gaze of an elderly Arab gentleman chaperoning three respectably abaya-clad teenage girls (who for their part thought it was gigglingly funny) reminded us that ladies don't dance in public here. Probably. Sometimes it's hard to gauge the appropriate degree of respect for tradition, or whether in fact the more liberal side of Qatar's multicultural experiment is applicable. Here, probably not.

The Gardens are very popular; people come from all over for a picnic in the shady surroundings (it's well for the blase kiwi expat to remember that though it may be a bit dry and tatty by home standards, this really is a green oasis amid the endless sandy rubble, and for a local, something really special). These friendly Jordanians turned out to be neighbours of ours from Madinat Khalifa South; we had a good chinwag about life in Qatar

and admired their babies, while another group of Indians played cricket in the background.

Then, "Please excuse, it is time to pray", and out came their mats and one of them led the chanting; and it was time for our tea, so we said ma'a al salaama and made our way back to the car, past this family making full use of the trampoline

while their menfolk gathered elsewhere for men's business.

We hit the road home via Highway 1 this time, where giant potholes threatened to destroy the front suspension as we wove our way through deviations past half-built flyovers, and the usual speedsters came flashing and beeping through. We never found any forts - we should have been looking off highway 1, not 1A, but it was too late in the day by then.

Later in the week I set off alone (with water bottle) on my planned expedition to find the Roof of Qatar - possibly called Al Jaouw al Ramli at 103metres altitude, somewhere towards the Saudi border (according to the few spot heights on my unreliable 2002 map). First stop Al Wakra, where Angela teaches, a semi-industrial town only 20km south of Doha, somewhat bigger than Al Khor, and also featuring a fishing port as well as a desalination plant, a half-finished Heritage Village, and its best-kept secret, a pleasantly swimmable beach.

These attractions could wait for another day when we could explore the town together, and I pressed on to Messaieed, another 20km south and a major centre of heavy industry. Finding only security gates and trucking depots in two circuits of the place (there is a town centre hidden somewhere, but the omens are not good that it would be in any way interesting), I continued southwards, following signs to "Beach" (which eventually turned out to be the exclusive Sealine Resort at the end of the road - also to be saved up for another day when we can treat ourselves to the facilities).

A further 10km of trucks and roadworks out of Messaieed towards the resort, this is the stirring sight that heaves into view round the shoulder of a sand dune. This is the heart of the petroleum processing industry, with intallations and complexes all the way to the horizon on one side of the road, and more of those monster flame-off towers presiding like Sauron over the no-nonsense scene.

On the other side it's wall-to-wall desert. The Qatari desert is mainly not your classic Lawrence-of-Arabia dune panorama, just flat and rubbly, but in this corner of the country there is a good crop of sandy rollers. Trudging up this 50metre high one near the resort was quite enough in my semi-unfit state (i.e. somewhat less fit than un-), but worth it for the view to the coast. In the foreground, as you can see, is a typical venue for 4wd mayhem - the dune cuts away at 45 degrees or steeper to the hard flat below, handy for tumbling vehicles to come to rest after overcooking a slalom, or simply having a head-on smash, as can be seen on YouTube.

Looking landwards, the other half of the dune-bashing industry is visible: echelons of tent-based quad bike hire operators (I counted 17 side by side along about 2km of the road), each with 20 or more rides neatly lined up awaiting the weekend or a tour operator.

You can see some of them in this video, which also gives some idea of the diversity of the landscape.

Onward ever higher! - this entailed striking out westward along the truck route connecting Mesaieed to the main road between Doha and both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. And I mean trucks: a solid queue of the buggers at 50kph in both directions for 30km of mainly single carriageway (you soon learn to take your chances and make the most of any gap in the no-overtaking lines).

At last the main highway - all eight lanes of it, all the way to the border, and of course hardly a truck in sight. I got quite excited when I saw this, an actual hill (sorry, outcrop then, all right?). But hardly qualifying as the sort of Height I was looking for.

With all the time spent following dunes and ascending queues of trucks, there wasn't time to get close to Al Jaow Al Ramli or whatever it's called, but I suspect we can just see it 20km away, between the power lines in this suitably enhanced photo. Good enough for me anyway.

The road skirts the coast as you near the border, but you can't get to the beach. Reading the signs on the way back, I realised that there is a whole new road, to Dukhan on the west coast, that doesn't feature at all on my map, so I checked it out. Sorry, no photos, chaps: it's a pristine and completely empty 50km of four-laner through 100% Qatar Petroleum territory, with drilling rigs, pipelines, more flame towers and other installations every few km, and frequent monster hoardings reminding the traveller to obey detailed regulations including in big letters, Photography and Videography Prohibited. OK then, not worth the risk.

The QP monopoly extends even to Dukhan township - you can't get in without permission from a resident. They say it has a nice beach and a peculiar golf course (20 holes, sand-and-0il surface - bring your own tee-off mat) but they will have to wait until we know somebody. The final leg back to Doha is on a newly-upgraded four-lane road that takes us past the camel racing track and the Sheikh's museum, and suddenly we are back in civilisation.

The top end of the country still awaits exploration - can it be any different? There are apparently some good accessible beaches north of Dukhan - maybe we will make it, but probably not now it's really hot. We did make it back to Al Wakra a week or two later for an afternoon in the sun and sea breeze. The dhow wharf is more picturesque than Al Khor.

There are some rather pretty ones set up for cruising rather than fishing;

All of them feature a reminder of why it's called the poop deck (is that true?).

Then we headed for the almost deserted beach - just a few local families, wives braving the water in full abaya and hijab while the men just wore shorts.

It's knee deep, clean, pleasantly warm, and with the desalination plant just round the corner, really buoyant - just don't get any up your nose. Come on in everyone!

Two Museums

2009-05-24T12:49:00.000+03:00

Qatar's rush towards the future is not entirely at the expense of ignoring its heritage. It might be hard to spot much history on the daily mad dash round town, stampeding from one roundabout or half-finished flyover to the next with all the Mercedes, Chevs and assorted SUVs; it's true that everywhere you look, flash new buildings (many also half-finished) are already coated with the dust from old ones being torn down to make way for more.

But a sense of history remains in lovingly re-created sites like Souq Waqif (a sort of interactive museum in its own way), and in preserved buildings like the old Emiri palace, built in 1901, which houses the Qatar National Museum. This is currently closed for restoration, but there are plenty more museums in Doha which are open for business and recommended to tourists. The nearest to us is the Weaponry Museum a few blocks away from the apartments, near the Al Ali souq (the one with all the tailors), for which you need to make an appointment to visit and obtain a letter of authority from the Department of Museums (and maybe have a particular interest in weaponry) - but we really ought to get around to it.

However, we have managed to visit the two most famous ones: the stunning new Museum of Islamic Art on the Corniche, opened only last November (see below), and the celebrated private museum of Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim al Thani, 30km out on the Dukhan road, not far from the camel racing track. This also requires an appointment (and then to convince the guy on the gate that you are genuine), but we were lucky to be invited on the spur of the moment one Saturday morning to join our neighbours Paula and Peter who had already sorted out the formalities. We hurriedly dressed up nice and jumped in the car, were at the gate by 10am, and were waved through with minimum fuss, unlike the carload of Indian guys in front of us - we assume they forgot to make an appointment.

The estate is about half a km off the highway. We drive in past a building with a large fenced yard full of iconic vehicles like Manila jeepneys and highly decorated Pakistani trucks, then an artificial lake with a dhow moored in the middle, and round to the front door where the manager comes out to meet us. This picture is actually another front door of another building (which you see half of here), but it looks similar. The main building is similarly fortress-like, and even bigger - at least 150 metres long.

The Sheikh's son, Sheikh Mohammed, isn't at the door when we arrive, but soon arrives in the first hall we are taken into; we are introduced and he then proceeds to give us the full guided tour, a very knowledgable and genial young host, rightly proud of his father's achievement in assembling and housing this vast and astonishing collection, and eager to provide as much background detail as we could absorb.

It's a work in progress, with more buildings to be finished and hundreds of display cases to be filled.

What is already on display occupies hundreds of metres of halls, galleries and courtyards, too much to take in in a morning (they close at 12 noon). Room after room is opened for us, then locked up after we have had a good browse and are ushered on to the next treat. Long before closing time rolls round, we are promising to make a return visit. It's all lovingly and professionally mounted, though this is obviously also a work in progress, as some items are yet to be labelled. But the majority are already identified for the visitor, with much attention to detail and frequent explanations of the item's history. There are more carpets (and more dazzling ones) than you will see in all the souqs,

a weaponry collection which must rival that of the specialist museum - hundreds of swords and daggers to make any student of combat weep for joy

and many rare and ancient firearms.

There's a whole climate-controlled room devoted to manuscripts

and too many treasures and artifacts to begin to list, from gold, silver and brassware

to pottery and glass of all descriptions,

not to mention bicycles (one's made of bamboo), fascinating photos of old Doha, dioramas of desert lifestyles, tableaux of traditional Qatari household effects, photo records of Iraqi dervishes with bone spears through their cheeks etc (someone had quite a fascination with this phenomemon), carriages, religious relics, coffee pots and favourite falcons. Stuff from all corners of the near and middle east, from Egypt and Turkey to Iran and India (lots of Indian treasures).

This is just one end of one of several galleries of spectacular and exquisite furniture

while in the central courtyard, scenes of traditional life are taking shape.

In another corner you can enter a tent furnished in traditional Bedouin style, just as earlier generations of local people would have lived in.

Another hall full of carpets. Magic.

Then there's the much-publicised classic car collection. The Sheikh owns over 100 historic vehicles, but most are currently not on display, awaiting completion of their own building. This isn't it, but it's big enough to house the lot, even with the dry dock at one end holding a dozen or more dhows and other water craft. What we can see is a diverse range of 20 or so veteran, and 40s and 5os, American wheels, from early Model T Fords and electric cars, to tough wartime Dodge 6-wheeler trucks (Chrysler Corp did well in Qatar it seems) to a sparkling 59 Cadillac. I suspect none of Sheikh Faisal's friends or relatives (which would likely have meant pretty much anyone in Qatar in the 50s) was allowed to throw away their old car. Obviously this section alone demands another visit when completed.

All too soon it's time to go, but we have seen so much. There's houseroom for a bit of classic kitsch too. In this display in the costume hall, alongside a black feather fan and a little hexagonal wickerwork box of unknown purpose, we find a metal Wizard of Oz memento plaque: "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any more." We really must try to schedule that revisit before we finally leave this Oz-like land.

While some well-worthwhile determination and organising is required to find and enter Sheikh Faisal's magic kingdom, the Museum of Islamic Art is by contrast, along with the rest of the Corniche, Souq Waqif and The Pearl, one of the default must-see attractions that new arrivals in Doha are breathlessly escorted to by earlier-established expats; and deservedly so.

This is the corollary to the indfatigable Sheikh's grand but utilitarian buildings and kitchen-sink collection. Here is a showcase for the world to flock to and see the cream of more than a millenium's worth of art treasures and artifacts, displayed in state of the art conditions in a building that is a work of art itself, a new architectural icon to rival the likes of Sydney Opera House, but with infinite subtlety and none of the look-at-me shock value. A jewel in the oeuvre of the venerable I.M.Pei, this is an edifice in every sense of the word, a real Museum with big echoing spaces and a sculptural presence of its own. It's all about the collection, but it's all about the building too.

It bewitches your camera; no doubt there are better pictures to be had (various coffee table tomes can be found in the museum shop for up to QR500), but here for free is our little gallery of homage, as snapped on a stroll from the nearby dhow pier on the Corniche up the avenue and into the spacious halls.

It's all free; cameras are fine inside.

The collection occupies two of the four floors, in cool, dimly lit, connected galleries arranged in an octagon around the atrium. Even if you opt not to pick up a commentary earphone, there is a wealth of information to read. Again. it'll take more than one visit to get around it all.

You need to take your time to acclimatise to the ambience and get a true feel for many of the pieces - some leap out at you with stunning colour and intricate design, some are more subtle.

As with Sheikh Faisal's, this is just the merest sampling.

It's not all small stuff; there's a fully-armoured horse and rider

and a really big carpet.

Back out in the light of the atrium, you feel the need for a coffee; currently this has to be obtained from a temperamental vending machine in a side gallery, but with all the cafe chains operating in every shopping mall and souq in Doha, with their expensively printed menus and polite serving staff, I'm sure there's one being lined up to run a suitably tasteful franchise here. There is already a posh restaurant upstairs.

You may want to check out or even buy some of the exclusive and expensive books, prints, fabrics, china and other merchandise in the museum shop; or for free you can relax and reflect in a courtyard out the side, where hundreds of fountains play, and the ever-present West Bay towers of commerce are framed by unadorned archways.

We went back to the museum on Saturday night a week ago, for another of the free entertainments we are fortunate to be able to enjoy in Qatar. This was the second-ever performance (watch out for it to come to an outdoor venue in your city soon?) 0f Identity of the Soul - an impressive five-screen, big-sound filmic presentation of the poetry of Henrik Ibsen and recently-deceased Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, quite powerfully (the thunder made us jump!) examining themes of revenge and injustice, without in-your-face preaching. There was an Arabic version the night before, voiced by Darwish; the English reading was by Vanessa Redgrave; it was worth the effort alone to see her bring to the screens her formidable acting talent and the dignity of age.

Angela managed to sneak into one of the front-row armchairs reserved for VIPs, who however didn't turn up (for a free show it was shamefully under-attended - the old trap of inadequate publicity perhaps; I heard about it via the Doha Players' very informative online noticeboard). She said it was fine, but I preferred to sit a few rows back where I could take in the wide-angle screens without aggravating the crick in my neck (still goes click unnervingly sometimes, I will take good advice and insist on no neck massage thank you, if I end up at a local barber saloon again).

The choice of the museum grounds late at night was ideal; the building is beautifully lit, but didn't intrude on the film show.

If you don't quite focus, it comes on a bit like a sand dune, doesn't it.

Cultured Pearl

2009-05-19T16:56:00.000+03:00

At major roundabouts all over town, these giant hoardings dominate the scene, their framework demurely covered by sacking like a lady's hijab.

Frontside of many of them are 20-foot tall ladies covered not by the hijab but instead by glittering carnival masks, the better to bestow their come-hither smiles on us.

They are of course advertising Doha's answer to other Gulf residential mega-developments: The Pearl, a 400 hectare reclamation on one of the old pearl-diving sites just north of the city. Dubai has its fantasyland Palm and World havens for the truly affluent; at The Pearl you just have to be above-averagely well-heeled. (If you're interested, one-bedroom apartments are being advertised starting at about NZ$1.2 million). And there's room for lots of you - 50,000 residents when it's finished. You can get all the details from the horse's mouth; but as the first of many promenades and arcades are already open for viewing, we (like most expats) just had to go and have a look. These are our impressions.

After crossing the causeway the first thing you come to is The Oyster, a dome structure housing the biggest architectural/landscape model you are likely to see, with every villa, high-rise, boulevard and marina miniaturised in loving detail. It must have been fun to construct.

If you get there early enough you might be lucky to get directed into a nice shady parking level of one of the buildings - ironically this happened to us on the coldest day we have had here (like, 20 deg with a few spits of rain on the breeze); but normally you drive through a courtyard, past the Ferrari dealer,

over an ornate but half-finished bridge, and park in the hot sun on one of the central islands, not yet built upon.

then there's a free tuk-tuk ride back to civilisation.

Doha may well have more cranes per square km than anywhere else in the world; The Pearl would appear to have more cranes per square km than anywhere else in Doha.

It's Construction City, widescreen.

Time for a walk along the promenade - about 1 km of the lagoon shoreline from the causeway to the southside lagoon entrance is open, quite enough on a hot day.

But no worries, numerous cafes and one or two posh resataurants are also open to cater for your thirst (at posh prices).

And there are plenty of shady galleries,

cloisters and colonnades,

and lofty vaulted halls.

It's all beautifully finished; Islamic architectural details abound,

indoors and out.

Ambient sound is part of the experience - the green thing in front of the palm tree is an outdoor Bose speaker; there are one or two in every flower bed, at ten-metre intervals all along the walk and across its 20 0r 30 metre width. Not sure if this is just for show during the marketing phase, or if it will be a universal feature around the entire estate; but do the sums and it would seem the sound system in this corner alone is worth millions. It does do the job in a gently persuasive manner worthy of the brand; and someone has programmed a reasonably hip selection of tracks to get you in the mood.

The visuals are something else; just on the subliminal side of blatant (or vice versa).

Does meeting these eager faces and in-your-face taglines at every corner really persuade the masses to come and buy?

Let's spell it out just to make sure.

The local shopkeepers will be hoping it works a treat. There are about 50 top label boutiques already open just in this little corner of The Pearl, doing a roaring starve but looking ever so swish. The crowds will surely come, it's not much further than Villagio for most people, quite handy to pop down for a Giorgio Armani shirt,

a Hermes tea set,

a Stella McCartney handbag

or an upgrade of the pleasure boat lease.

And there's a handy directory (Rolls Royce hasn't opened yet, but we can be patient).

To get some perspective I climbed this tower, which may or may not be part of a mosque yet to be dedicated (no tall buildings are finished enough yet to allow visitors up top for penthouse views, but any day now I'm sure).

The platform under the roof of the tower is inaccessible without climbing over a metre-wide concrete wall, but the top of the stairs was an ideal spot for a quick 360 dgree video.

I've thrown this one in as well, despite the first half requiring viewers to injure their necks - your novice director didn't realise that videos can't be done in portrait format or rotated - apologies for that, but it does give a better view from halfway down the stairs. The second half is from the end of the open part of the boardwalk, a quarter of the way round the lagoon.

Meanwhile work quietly goes on around you. The project is a bit behind time, but nobody seems too hurried.

This guy's full time job is to dust the miles of railings.

And from the end of the promenade you can look back over the bay to the CBD towers, where corporate types no doubt look equally fondly across to their mushrooming investment.

As this worker waiting for transport back to his bedspace doubtless agrees, it's got all the makings of a beautiful life.

It may not actually have the crashing surf beach featured in the promotional video, but The Pearl seems to have just about everything else an aspiring Gulf Riviera dweller might want. The scale of the thing is truly impressive to a Kiwi hick, though by Doha's galloping standards it's probably just a taste. Build it and they will come, eh.

Castles Made of Sand

2009-05-14T20:27:00.045+03:00

Architecture in Doha (as in other famous Arab cities like Dubai) has come along way from the likes of this majlis tent. But despite all the grandly comfortable, airconditioned bricks and mortar all around, men still like to gather under canvas for a chat and a spot of TV (if you peer into the shadows you can just make out the row of armchairs. Many houses and some of the top hotels feature an outdoor majlis, and you can often see sizeable tent camps (with rows of chairs) set up on vacant land around the city, often just over the road from the venue for a wedding - the women celebrate in the ballroom, the men gather outside.

We haven't yet taken the free guided tour of the Fanar Centre for Islamic Culture - we might learn more about such customs when we get around to doing so. The iconic building, just a dicey one-block walk from Souq Waqif (via one of the rare lights-controlled pedestrian crossings, which when you do find them, turn out for some reason to have a push button on one side of the road only; in this case it's not our side) has a sort of magnetism.

It looks even better at night.

Likewise the nearby Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a distinctly local kind of dignity. It's a good example of the more sober but not staid official architecture to be seen here -

unlike some other recent additions to the Corniche panorama. This one has a vaguely menacing presence, with its interpretation of the vogue for overhang, verging on the extreme from some angles.

But it too improves at night; even with the purple stripes failing to show up in the photo, you can see that the light show alleviates the looming monolithic look.

It's a worthy reflection of the riot of styles displayed by its grander cousins across the water in West Bay.

Come back in six months or a year and this panorama (next four photos) of the north end of the Corniche will have changed markedly as more and more towers rise to fill the gaps.

Currently in the approx square mile of the CBD there are roughly equal numbers (maybe 50 each) of finished buildings of an average 30-odd storeys, those nearing full height, and sites with completed groundwork and construction under way (including the hundred-storey Doha Tower with its podium half a km long - will Qatar eventually knock up an edifice to rival the coming Dubai Tower in that city, which will be the tallest in the world at nearly one km high?); no doubt there are as many projects again on the drawing board, ready to pounce on the remaining prime real estate.

Green glass is popular.

Gold and pearls are always in fashion.

This is currently the tallest.

But the Sheraton, one of the first to be built, standing in splendid isolation across the road, in its lush gardens overlooking the bay, on the point at the tip of the Corniche, gets the award for swankiest -

once you get inside and realise that this arresting pyramidal edifice is most spectacular from within its towering atrium

which houses cafes, upmarket shops and even a small majlis where you are served a complimentary Arabic coffee.

Not to be denied, however, is City Centre mall which has its own, rather busier, grandeur.

This is the inside of that glassed front entrance. looking down from the top of four floors.

It's hard to photo the size of the place, but here we are looking from near the middle towards the western end 250 metres away.

Plenty of room to lean on the balustrade and watch the ice skating.

A video gives some idea of it - this starts pointing approx southwest and ends approx southeast.

By contrast, our local Landmark mall is long and low -

still several hundred metres to walk from Marks and Spencer (expensive treats in the food section and lots of rather British apparel; BHS is next door) to the Carrefour hypermart at the other end, but only one level

(not including the faux mezzanine, which is occupied only by one or two cafes where it's nice to sit with an iced coffee and enjoy the view of Qatari children and their parents towing Spongebob balloons).

Actually the malls all cater very well for kids, with extensive families-only fun fairs and of course foodhalls that could be anywhere in the world apart from the addition of a few more middle eastern food outlets. Villagio, out by the Aspire Zone sports stadiums, has a really big ice rink right next to the extensive eating area,

and you can even take a gondola ride.

The pretend-Venetian theme is maybe to acclimatise people to the imminent opening of the The Pearl, the vast Italianate residential development just north of the city (see forthcoming blog post) in the hope they will flock to buy up its expensive accommodation.

The Villagio balconies too are faux, but you might forget the sky isn't real until you see a helium balloon stuck there.

The long, gently curving alleys do lend a graceful ambience to the place.

Villagio is the one to visit on Friday or Saturday night, if you can get a park...(please bear with the wall-to-wall shopping malls - here, even more than other countries, this is what we do when we go out). It's a real night out with its restaurants, exquisite decor shops, Virgin Megastore and the Luxury Wing which is about as far in atmosphere from Souq Waqif as you could get.

Here you can browse in every designer boutique imaginable

without having to make the trek out to The Pearl (which is open for the curious during the daytime, and already has boulevards of top label shops awaiting the masses).

You can select from a sumptuous range of Mercedes-Benz merchandise

or just go for the Spyker supercar (QR1.2m in presentation case),

opt for a real Louis Vuitton bag or Cartier watch instead of the QR200 "bandit copy" that took your fancy in the souqs, or admire a YSL swanndri with stylish asymmetric buttons for QR40k. Really.

That's enough luxury, so we drag ourselves away, wallets intact for next week's rediscovery of the souqs, with just a quick backward glance at the Spyker

and the world' s biggest shopping trolley out front of the more prosaic Hyatt mall across the road (yes, there's another mall right beside Villagio - I said they were serious about shopping here)

and emerge into the Aspire Zone. The tower was reportedly the media centre for the 2006 Asian games, and now awaits redevelopmnent as a hotel. That's apparently a swimming pool poking out a bit less than halfway up (about 20 storeys). It would be nice to be able to ascend to the top for a spectacular view of greater Doha - this may be happening soon, as a first-floor covered walkway from Villagio (100 metres away) is in the final stages of construction.

Across the road is the stadium, all ready for the Olympics (Qatar has a bid in for 2024 I think).

Apart from any aesthetic or other merits, it's a very useful landmark for keeping your bearings when trying not to get lost in the endless suburbs and highways on the west side of town.

No gallery of notable Doha architecture would be complete without the 40-storey Lagoon Plaza apartments, otherwise known (surprisingly) as the ZigZag buildings. People tell me they wouldn't want to live in them for some reason, but I would rather enjoy it if I could afford it, I think.

Also the Convention Centre which fronts the new Education City complex mushrooming on the edge of town a few km from our place must get a look in. That's right kids, a building that looks like a tree. You may go figure if you wish.

And of course the lovely Museum of Islamic Art, which also deserves its own separate blog post.

I hope you liked this layman's sampling of Doha buildings, neither particularly well-researched nor over the top in awe and shock. There's lots more to catch the eye, which we may yet get around to picturing for you - or don't hesitate to come and see for yerselves - our door is open.

And lots more to come - why not keep going until all Qatar's 11,427 square km are covered...? (This is not actually 8km of shops but a mixed commercial development, as the made clear later in the comments thread).

Meanwhile what better way to finish than by peeking in the front door of The Villa (a large and well-appointed standalone house rented by Angela's employers for staff on short visits to stay in). Not sure if it's typical, but the stairway to heaven is what immediately dominates your attention. You can see it has been lovingly installed in what would othewise have been quite a grand foyer, leaving about a foot of room each side to squeeze past on your way to the rest of the house.

There must be some sort of lesson here...

Watch out for blog posts on The Pearl, the museum and trips out of town coming up very soon.

Pearler

2009-04-29T13:38:00.029+03:00

Anzac Day in Doha. We had thought we should turn out for the dawn parade organised by kiwi and aussie expats, but after another week of 5am starts, sleep got the better of us. Sorry, we promise to try to be more patriotic next year. As it did turn out, we were fortunate to catch a local celebration of a history no less revered.

There were other half-formed plans for the day: having visited the camel racing track (at Al Shehaniyah, 40km west along the Dukhan road that continues on from Khalifa St) twice in the previous two weeks, at times we were unreliably informed there would be some racing to see, we were still sort of keen to make it to the final of the Emir's Cup event, which was definitely today according to two out of three sources.

Both previous visits involved numerous phone calls to various numbers either from the guidebooks, or suggested by the people at those numbers, with conflicting and inconclusive results; and an eventual resolve to just get on out there and see what's happening. This in turn involved rounding up various apartment dwellers who had expressed an interest in going, but either slept in or got roped into other weekend expeditions. The result was arriving like typical expats too late in the day, as far as we could tell, for any racing that might have been on - a few teams training was all there was to be seen.

On the first trip we were able to drive right inside the track and around the dusty road that follows the inner fence of the approx 5km circuit, on which owners follow their steeds in 4wheel drives during races, operating the robot jockeys by radio.

Until a few years ago young boys were used as jockeys, but the Emir has now outlawed this dangerous exploitation and instead there are the robots with mechanical whips like these.

So, having hooned around the track egging on imaginary favourites, and passed a jolly half hour with the friendly camel wranglers, we left for greener pastures as the last few gallopers headed back to the corral past the empty grandstand.

On the second occasion there were security guards on the gate to the inside track area, who had no clear word as to whether there would be any more racing that day ("Come back Monday 6am" - yeah right). A frightfully English family was determinedly enjoying a jolly picnic in the (once again otherwise completely empty) grandstand, a lone beast sprinted down the home straight and into the holding yard to be deftly caught by a handler, and in the carpark by the winning post, a hundred or more brand new Land Cruisers - the prizes - waited in rows. We couldn't quite manage Monday 6am, but it's in the 'get up early next year' file alongside the Anzac thing.

Meanwhile, what could be more enticing for an aimless Anzac afternoon than spot of powerboat grand prix?

We battled the traffic, found ourselves a spot among the limos in the Sheraton car park, and trekked down to the corniche and right into the nice shady free grandstand (with esky of free iced water bottles parked in every aisle) and a perfect view of all the action on most of the approx 12km course around Doha bay. A dozen totally insane boats, twenty-one laps of pure noise in the heat of the afternoon, choppers doing low passes filming the race, you couldn't help getting caught up - especially with the likes of kiwi throttleman Peter "Muddy" McGrath of the Maritimo Australia team to barrack for (they came nowhere though).

This is Qatar 96, which came in second,

behind Fazza from Dubai. This was only round one of the world powerboat championship, so there is unfinished business out there on the water.

After a brief and very civilised winners' presentation (no champagne spraying here!),

that appeared to be it. We wandered back past the bouncy castles and team transports and into the other, historical, side of the Qatar Marine Festival. Up till very recently, Qataris eked out a subsistence as fishermen and pearl divers. With the advent of petrochemical revenues in the 50s and of cheap cultured pearls a decade or two later, everything changed. But many of the old pearl divers are still around, and here were a couple of them, showing us how it used to be. Nancy, Angela and Morag got themselves ringside seats.

I'm sorry I didn't get the old guy's name, but by the end of the captivating session he was a friend of us all.

See here the net bag (al deyeen), hung round the diver's neck to collect the oysters;

the tortoiseshell nose clip (al fetam);

and the stone weight (al kher), released by the diver when he achieved the required depth.

Maybe this one...

Meanwhile, his mate alongside kept on weaving his net;

and over beyond the nearby carpet square something else was happening. A group of men gathered, a drumbeat started up

and dudes ran around setting up mikes and a length of rope.

Then a procession wound its way onto the carpet

and the song-and-dance began. That's the singer standing at right holding the mike.

It went on for a good ten minutes, sometimes sitting, sometimes soloing, obviously telling a story. This is just one chapter (watch for the guy leaping near the end):

We asked the old pearl diver what it was all about. Yes, in the video above they are paddling the boat. There were tears in his eyes.

He got up for a closer look, stood lost on thought for a while, then got out the smallest digital camera I ever saw and was snapping away with the rest of us.

Then he was back on the mat again showing the kids his trade,

while the West Bay towers looked on like curious giants.

This guy and his mates offered us Arabian coffee and conversation,

and the sun set on what Nancy rightly called a serendipitous day,

which however wasn't quite over yet - we wandered back to the Sheraton and inside its stunning pyramidal atrium for shopping and more coffee, then high tailed it down to the gold souqs to order some bling, but that has to be another story, eh.

District 34 Streetscape

2009-04-16T21:08:00.015+03:00

Here's a quickly-thrown-together gallery of scenes and storefronts taken on a quiet sunny afternoon in Madinat Khalifa South, our Doha District 34 neighbourhood; scenes we have become used to being part of on daily walks round the corner for fresh supplies of milk or fruit for a good price, without the pressures of a trip to the mall.

This is Zaid bin Wahb St from our corner.

Al Muhannadi Chickens is the first shop you come to.

Still haven't been in to choose a bird to be woken from its siesta and meet its fate...dunno if they sell eggs too.

A few doors along is the takeway shop - as earlier reported, they are indeed tasty, and I can't say it wasn't some leftovers from our fridge that caused me suffering...

This is the other side of what is really our local main shopping street, Thabit bin Qais.

Which includes a ladies' tailor, a greengrocer, a butchery, an Arab bakery, three small grocery shops more like a NZ dairy (there are another dozen or more others scattered around the surrounding streets), and the Madinat Khalifa International Communications Centre. A shop markets itself by its good name here.

This is sort of MK South CBD central - the corner of Thabit bin Qais looking down Fidaa St where all the building and electrical supplies stores are, with the mosque out of shot behind us, the streetcorner rubbish bin not wanting to be left out (we have one on our corner of course; I'm getting to know some of its cats but they aren't about to trust me just yet).

And this is looking back down TbQ St.

Just around the corner is this useful supplier. I presume the readymades are garments.

This barber (all the hairdressers, mens or ladies, are called saloons) isn't the one I got my haircut at. There are at least ten more in the vicinity, as well as several more in Souk Al Ali beyond Gharrafa junction, and I just went for the nearest to the apartment in case it became necessary to creep back home hiding a shameful basin-cut or unasked-for shave. In fact, the excellent service was I'm sure the equal of that provided by any other local establishment: a full 45 minutes for QR25, including scalp and neck massage (crack! ouch) and super-pernickety trimming, and no jokey banter - it's a serious business (and not much English spoken anyway).

Further afield (i.e. four or five streets away) a greater variety of traders vie for your commerce; this is just one of a legion of Trading and Contracting (or similar) Companies large and mostly small to be found all over Doha. I guess you know you need one when you need one.

The New Book Shop looks to have seen better days.

Beware the flying fists of sanitaryware!

Here you can see the Corner Butchery which isn't on the corner.

The New Pluto is marginally larger than the little grocery shops, but does resemble a supermarket in that it stocks more brands of otherwise identical tinned goods than them.

It's just a few doors from No-Rules Intersection (which I posted a video of earlier, not realising that it was indeed located just a few blocks from us). Here it is, captured in a rare moment with no traffic.

From here we can walk straight home up Al Tadamun St, past another fine eating establishment and yet another grocery (many here are called Cold Stores),

and another view of Thabit bin Qais.

Close to home is an apparent family empire (Darko Trading and Construction, and Darko Al Modern Grocery)

and a corner of old Doha which may be awaiting redevelopment, or may decide not to wait for the wrecker's ball.

And here we are back home near our shiny new apartment, as the workers return for the afternoon shift.

I hope you enjoyed this little tour of the 'hood, intended to give a flavour of everyday reality here; though to truly reflect that, I want to go back later in the day and snap a few smiling (mainly Indian) faces. It ain't all souqs and and supermodern development projects, though there's plenty more of that to report on in weeks to come. To appreciate this place you have to breathe a bit of desert air looking for the camel racetrack and get your feet dusty getting lost in the backstreets, as well as joining the traffic ratrace and enjoying the world-class museums, magnificent stadiums, designer boutiques, and more or less expensive restaurants. I still find both sides of Qatar equally fascinating.

We promise to continue our untiring (well, sometimes quite tiring) efforts to experience all of this and more on your behalf and share some of the fascination.

Que and Kerosine at Souq Waqif

2009-04-13T14:12:00.020+03:00

It's Friday night - come with us and half of Doha to hang out at the souqs (the other half are at the shopping malls).

Still hunting for that bargain desk? This is the time to check out the second hand furniture markets, a few blocks uptown from the main souq district, if you can find your way there. When you haven't yet compiled your mental map of Doha landmarks and their relative positions, it's easy to lose your way in the maze of similar-looking and similarly-named streets.

But here we are, having somehow found a parking place nearby. Normally quiet most days of the week, tonight the alleys of traders' shops are jammed with bargain hunters, almost jumping on the back of the trucks bringing more stuff.

Every few minutes an eager indian guy will buttonhole you offering carrier services to get your furniture back to your apartment - well worthwhile striking a deal if you have bought something, but if not it can all be a bit much after a while. Time to leave the chaos and maybe come back on a weekday morning, and find a trader ready to do a deal on a quiet day. Most traders specialise to some degree - if you want a good price on a fridge and chandelier package, here's the guy to go to.

On the way back to the car the dozens of furniture shops lining the streets of this district offer distractions - but today we'll save our money and resist the tempting offer on this throne and other wares the shopmen just know we want.

As dusk gathers we do battle with the traffic again in time to queue up and steal a spot in the souqs parking area (though there is usually space to spare on one of the empty lots within five minutes' walk).

While it's still light, let's take a ten minute walk (take care crossing Ali bin Abdullah St) to the souqs beyond - there's more in these few blocks than you can possibly check out in a day or an evening, so every visit can turn up a new set of previously-unseen shops and maybe the elusive goodies you are after.

Here, there are crowds of Indian workers looking for some Friday night action, but Friday night is Family Night and they are barred from the Corniche, Souq Waqif and many other public areas, moved on insistently by lone policemen shouting and waving batons. So with nowhere else to go, they congregate in the streets.

It's all very polite and good-natured, of course, though we did see two guys fighting once. This shopkeeper wasn't best pleased about people sitting on his doorstep and affecting trade, but I'm sure the piece of 4x2 was only for effect.

Just a normal laid-back night out in town hanging out with your mates and getting moved on repeatedly.

One building the hapless Indians do seem to be allowed into is Souq al Najada, which houses a square of aisles each about 100metres long, with dozens of shops specialising mainly in mobile phones and services, with variations on computers and other consumer electronics, including of course the ubiquitous watches.

Here they can spend a happy evening five-deep at the counter, assessing the relative merits of the latest mobile technology, which is of course the number one requirement for life in Doha at least as much as elsewhere.

Other essential technology has its place in neighbouring souqs, among the endless alleys of fabric shops, where the choice of materials is endless and dazzling and bold, but realistic bargaining will always get you a better deal.

But sooner or later you'll probably need to return to the treasure chest to rub the lamp again; no problem.

We choose to enter Souq Waqif via the arcade of art galleries, relatively free of crowds even on a Friday night.

They're all out the door down the far end, enjoying an alfresco coffee and perhaps a sheesha pipe (you choose the flavour from a menu, a waiter brings the pipe and tops up the glowing coals, the mouthpiece as well as the water in the pipe is shared by all...) on the expansive concourse of the souq proper. Waqif is said to mean 'the standing souq' - historically it was the only market here, and traders and customers alike would stand all day in the hot sun rather than sitting down, such was the hectic pace of business; times have changed, with most people happy to sit all night, though the pace of commerce in Qatar hasn't slowed.

There's still plenty of shopping to be done if you're keen - more here than anywhere else. Waqif is a bit of a Tardis - there really doesn't seem to be enough room within the rambling perimeter of the beautifully re-created traditional buildings for all the uncountable and unmapppable alleys and corridors, jampacked with jostling little storefronts. You can search in vain over several visits for the shop where you bought that coffee pot, only to stumble on it the next time, after giving up.

Everything is here (except perhaps furniture, and electronics en masse); there are more fabric shops if Africa still has any remaining supply problem (though some very nice African goods are on sale too); one corner has dozens of sellers of spices and beans and bags of rice;

and there are several alleys devoted to birds and other pets (we saw a cage of the famous multicoloured dyed baby chickens only once, notably just before Easter, although that festival isn't celebrated here).

There's plenty of cheap rubbish no different to what you can find in markets and $2 shops the world over, but also some Aladdin's caves of second-hand treasure.

Pleasingly, there isn't a huge Qatar souvenir industry, though it may be starting to appear - if you look twice, there are rather more ornamental camels than you can shake a stick at, some rather silly and some very nice. For a price you can buy a charming plaster model of a notable or typical Qatar building in a display case, or a handmade musical instrument, or for not too much, a national flag or scarf.

You can watch this guy make a multicoloured bangle to your design while you wait. There's jewellery, fine rugs, hardware of all descriptions (including the biggest cooking pans you ever saw), and in the next door building, falcons, which in the hunting season can change hands for hundreds of thousands of riyals.

Having bought all you want or run out of credit card, you can engage not this guy (the donkey is for kids to ride on only), but a smiling man with a wheelbarrow lined with sacks, to transport your loot back to the car (sorry no pix, will slot one in later).

Shopping is of course thirsty work, and refreshment is long overdue. We could go upmarket (the restaurant this leads to is equally splendid);

but more irresistible is settling down at a table next to where the musicians are warming up, in full view of the spiral magnificence of the Fanar Islamic Cultural Centre, and enjoying the family atmosphere of a balmy Friday night right in the middle of Doha.

It pays to arrive earlyish to be sure of a table not too close to the PA system, and because it may take a while for one of the few waiters to get to you and return with your order. But the food (kebabs, chickpeas etc) is cheap and tasty (take our word for it);

Not to mention the juices.

We weren't game to try the lavaud kerosine, but were brave enough to inquire and were informed it's avocado. As for Que, it's the juice of a smallish fruit with brown fur and green flesh. Yeah right, no worries. But Limon (served minted in the local style) is a reliably refreshing favourite, and I liked my Fruit Collection (stripey).

At last after much tuning up, the band (six drummers, several oud players, a singer and a flautist) start to play. Despite the modern amplification, it sounds very traditional. We don't know what the songs are about, could well be the failed date crop or the unfaithful camel, or equally likely the inconstancy of petrochemical shares. Each number builds up to a chorus underscored by high-speed clapping from several of the players, and gets a big round of applause from the audience, some seated mixed like us at the tables, others in separate areas for men and women, one each side of the stage.

If we didn't have a home to go to, we would rather like to be able to stay at the exclusive and beautiful Hotel Souq Waqif just around the corner.

But we do have a home and are tired, so with a last ponder over the sheesha pipes for sale (don't even think of trying to bring one home to NZ in your luggage) , we head for the car, leaving the good citizens and a few expats and tourists with more stamina to party on. It's chaos in the car park as even more people are arriving, and out on the roads the driving is even hairier than usual.

But, Insh'allah, we'll probably be back next week for more fun and bargains, if not before.

A Post-Modern Day in West Bay

2009-04-10T11:30:00.021+03:00

Prologue: A visit to our local branch of Qatar General Postal Corporation, situated handily in the previously described souq just across the interchange (I think it's actually called Souq Al Ali, according to several of the shop signs).

The branch comprises a PO Box lobby (the guidebooks reveal that the fee is the same whatever the size of the box, and you can't choose - you get the next one, big or small) and a clean modern shop, empty except for a sign in Arabic listing PO Box prices (I didn't pursue the detail), and a glassed-in counter. I asked the younger of the two smiling Qatari men (in immaculate thowbs as ever) if he could tell me the rates for postage to NZ; he looked a bit nonplussed. "English?" I prompted. He laughed a knowing laugh and pointed to his senior, who when he got off the phone turned out to have at least three words of English. Eventually the rates book was produced and thumbed through at great length, punctuated by reassuring exchanges: "Newzea-land-ah?" "Yes, I am New Zealander!" "Ah, Newzea-land-ah!" At last the page was found and he showed me the relevant entry - for The Netherlands. However, NZ being 3 lines further down the page I was able to ascertain that parcel postage is QR86 for the first kg and QR43 for each extra kg.

O-kay...off to search for the lightest possible birthday presents so as to make the most of the self-imposed 1kg limit.
Of course these proved elusive (why is it always that once the parcel is posted, the markets are suddenly full of the perfect presents you couldn't find), but not as hard to find as any suitable posting bag, box or wrapping material such as festoon the shelves of NZ Post shops. Certainly none to be seen in any QGP branch offices, nor in any book- or stationery shops I was able to find, or in the hypermarts. No, said the experienced expats, you have to go to the General Post Office.

This deceptively modest-looking at first glance, but actually quite massive building is one of the major landmarks your driver will point out to you on first arriving here, quite sensibly as it is very distinctive (sort of a pyramid with tiers of one-story-high arches along each side like rows of upturned half-pipes - there it is in the background of the picture; I don't know anything about the leaopard-skin luggage tractor...) and occupies a whole block at a focal point in Doha's maze of dual carriageways - on one side is the seafront sweep of the Corniche, on the other the craneforest of West Bay CBD, and the adjacent roundabout hapens to be where Khalifa St (the main road by our front door) leads to.

So once the makeshift selection of gifts had been lovingly bought and it was already high time to get posting (given the generally agreed two-week estimated delivery time), a visit to the edifice was dictated. It was our first day with our new leased car and Angela happened to have a meeting in an adjacent building (the green one in the centre of the next photo), so she dropped me off - after we worked out how to park in the recommended nearby open site (see the cars beyond the fence and the palm trees). You drive aroung the block twice, scanning the foot-high kerb for a sign of a crossing, rather than risk damaging trims and tyres on your brand new vehicle, as yet unmarked by Doha traffic, and finally spot a steepish makeshift asphalt ramp from a busy turn lane (beeeeep!!!) to a narrow gap between two trees, deeply potholed of course. Safely parked, off she went, not very late for the meeting, leaving me to storm the citadel of Post on foot.

The guidebooks advise that you have to enter through the car park, but this being Doha, there appears to be scant provision and no direction for pedestrians. Said car park is four storeys and occupies a hundred metres between the road and the building. I didn't find a lift, but walking down an alley to one side, happened upon a stairway, requiring only the traverse of a half-made landscape garden bed to access. This eventually brought me to the top floor of the car park, where I paused for breath and took the above picture. And there in the distance was the main entrance.

Once inside, a complete circuit of the main floor (there are four more above) afforded an appreciation of the reassuringly cool, shady, slightly musty bureaucratic ambience, common I suspect to GPOs the world over, but no enlightenment as to where one might post a parcel, let alone purchase suitable materials. I found the Customer Service counter (right down the back) and was directed by the lady officer who did have some English (having of course first asked the other, who didn't) to a room marked Parcel Collection. Yes, I had seen it already, but you too would have assumed it referred to people collecting parcels that had arrived for them, eh.

The friendly young african guy confirmed that they could sort out all my requirements and took me to a different counter three doors away. He produced a large posting box - in hindsight, the next smaller size would probably have done the job, but I'll think more clearly if there is a next time - and a customs label which I filled out while he copiously and irrevocably taped the box shut (with presents inside). Then he weighed it: with the box, well over 2kg! So I paid and ran; it was worth it for the experience, I insist. At least it reached its destination well within the two weeks...

Duty discharged, I was free to get on with my plan for the rest of the day before meeting Ange in the afternoon at City Centre shopping mall several blocks away. This was to make the most of being on foot in West Bay and shoot a comprehensive photo essay of the showcase of state-of-art high rise architecture, mostly still under construction. I headed down to the Corniche, with a passing nod to Asian Games mascot Orry the Oryx faithfully standing guard half a km away, and braving the roundabout traffic, stepped out along a somewhat deserted thoroughfare, though initially this didn't surprise on a Sunday morning.

This is the banking district, and Qatar National Bank looks to have bagged the prime spot, but so far it's just huge credit cards on a constructon fence.

Onwards down the avenue (seen below on a sunnier, busier day a few weeks ago), camera at the ready, with a cheery hullo for the occasional young guys of uncertain ethnicity casually lounging on the lawns and garden parapets (there are always unoccupied young men, usually from the Subcontinent, and usually polite and casually well-dressed, strolling about the landscape here. Then I noticed the third one I had passed 100 metres back, tidily dressed in black jeans and polo shirt, was following me - well, walking the same way - no, definitely following, and waving me to stop. Er, better find out what it's about, this is a safe country and here we are in broad daylight...

"Sorry, you must not take pictures, sir." No further explanation, no offered I.D. badge. I asked why? "One week time is OK, today no pictures sir." Well OK, I guess, if you say so. I replaced the lens cap but didn't put the camera away, and walked on, soon arriving at one of the light-controlled pedestrian crossings which are dotted occasionally along the Corniche and very few other places in the city. Notably, there is a pedestrian push button on the side away from the seafront, but none on the opposite side - apparently you are meant to reach the promenade but then not leave it again.

Thinking to enjoy the sea air and maybe take some pictures there, I went to push the button and instantly the guy in green overalls standing nearby came over and said "Sorry sir, I cannot let you go over there." Again I asked why, then a thought occurred: "Is there an official party on the way?" (it's an everyday occurrence here: somewhere in Doha, notably at our own Gharrafa roundabout which is en route to the Emir's palace, or around the Corniche where the Diwan, i.e. parliament, and major venues like the Museum of Islamic Art are situated, the red Land Cruisers of the Emir's Guard will appear and stop the traffic for a while until a cavalcade rolls through). "Yes, sir." So I put the camera away and made sure I had this second plainclothesman's permisssion to continue along to the next roundabout where I could head for the safety of City Centre mall, leaving the Corniche to the privileged and protected few.

It might have been possible to cut and run there and then, through one of the many undeveloped areas (as shown above) between the skyscrapers and construction sites, but previous experience has revealed too many dead ends or undesired changes of direction; so having gained the all clear, I stuck to the beaten track (well, the wide untrodden grass berm - never expect a sidewalk to continue when you want it to), reached the junction and found myself in the middle of a building project anyway. At least it was one with well-trodden pathways and no courteous but insistent young dudes barring the way, and there was the mall visible only a few blocks away.

City Centre-Doha is likely not the biggest shopping mall in the world, but it does have a certain grandeur, and at about half a kilometre long internally (yep, just had to step it out) is certainly too big to do justice to in the remainder of this post. That's the rear view above - the four-storey glassed atrium entrance, the skating rink and the hypermart so big you can't see one end from the other will all have to wait until I manage to get some good photos (the first time I tried, not long after we got here, the camera turned out to have flat batteries and no memory card). As it was, I needed a coffee, and avoiding the three Starbuckses, sat down in one of the many high-class cafes (always with table service) with a latte (no sign of a flat white anywhere here) and the Qatar Tribune. "Arab League Summit starts today at Sheraton Conference Centre" (which is right there on the West Bay end of the Corniche, eh). Duh, right, saw it the day before on al-Jazeera, didn't I.

Enlightened and refreshed, I saw no reason not to revive my photographic plans for the day, and started with this moderately unsuccessful shot of the skyscraper with the three-storey mirror-glass sphere suspended between two halves of the building fifteen storeys up, seen through the glass dome of the mall's north atrium. Instantly three courteous but unsmiling suits walked up to me. "What is the photo you were taking, sir?" One does try to follow the guidelines here, avoiding taking pictures directly of people without permission, especially women; had I overstepped? Puzzled, I explained (your beautiful shopping centre, show the folks back home, no offence meant, etc). They remained concerned for several minutes of polite debate - because, as it transpired, security men had been removing cash from an ATM directly in shot just as I clicked the shutter. See them silhouetted there? Yeah, right. We parted friends ("You are my valuable customer, sir") but I was ready to pack in the photography for the day, and headed for the movies.

Excellent! there on the multiplex session board was the one I wanted to see what the fuss was all about, Watchmen, screening at 11.30am. As it was only 10.30 I window shopped for a while, then returned to the box office to find it gone from the board. I enquired: "Are you showing Watchmen today?" "Yes, sir, at 11.30." "Yes, I saw it on the board before, but now it's not there, why is that?" "It's a family session." "Can't I get a ticket?" "Sorry, it's full." "Not even a single? - I only want one." "Certainly, sir, no problem." She shows me the booking screen with just the two back rows taken, I buy a ticket and go in. There were only four people in the audience, no kids, nobody in the two back rows.

Watchmen is no way a family movie, a noisy, ultraviolent and controversial Hollywood version of the celebrated superhero graphic novel, full of improbable and somewhat incomprehensible science and metaphysics. It was just what I needed.

twitface

2009-04-07T11:18:00.006+03:00

It's funny how most of the time (despite having been labelled at times by my kids as an early adopter) I think I'm way behind the rest of the world at keeping up with the net side of life - happy to reply to the odd email and even surprise a friend or relative with the occasional unsolicited epistolary screed when something needs to be reported. Then stuff happens, as it sometimes does when least expected, that suggests I'm not the only one to have less than a full grasp of what's going on.

Let me confess, in case you assumed otherwise: getting to grips with a raft of new communication technologies is daunting to me. Having decided, now that I have time on me hands, that I need to use it once and for all to get a bit creative, and to try to catch up with what the kids are doing, I now find looking at the babble of messaging in all the various forums gives me a headache.

Once upon, we had the phone (expensive) and snail mail (slow) and telegrams for emergencies; my father was a veritable poet of the telex at work in the 60s and 70s, but refused to go near a computer until the day he died. Then we got the fax and thought we were mighty smart; then email conquered all, and still looks to me like a pretty good standard for when you want to say what you really mean. I have even got used to chat on various platforms, and wouldn't be without txting when the need for instant communication arises.

Now there's Fakebooc with its constant demand for your 10-second-attention-span, and join-this-and-that loopiness (though I suspect many users get happy with the instant homepage stuff but don't actually use the full facilities), Twitter which I haven't really got to speed with (and don't want it cluttering up my mobile all day); photo sharing sites like Flickr; Skype (jolly good for cheap phone calls), any number of ways to chat in realtime (Skype, Gmail etc) and tons more I don't even know about, each doing a different mix of stuff and adhered to by a different cross section of people.

In some ways I'm still stuck in the snail era, when correspondence meant shirking the dreaded thankyou letters following birthdays and christmas; and when I left the nest, never getting anywhere near emulating my mother's faithful regime of an aerogramme "home" to England every week whether there was news or not; let alone becoming a celebrated man of letters (beyond the sort Milligan characterised Secombe as: "He has three of mine he hasn't answered"). I'm not even a habitual E.T. - phoning home is not a second-nature daily ritual like it is to Angela's family, so I guess people know me by my mysterious silences.

But just when, galvanised by my own struggles to get a routine relationship going with the new world of correspondence and postings, and by one or two messages from contemporaries suffering similar diffficulties, I was starting to crystallise some thoughts on it all - look what this - who would have thought that seasoned and serious bloggers would admit to sharing my unease? Thanks Damian and Jolisa for putting it more amusingly than I might have.

Of course on the other hand there's always my favourite hardnewsblogger Russell Brown who unsurprisingly seems at ease dropping into twittermode when required, like for reporting instantly from Foo Camp. And let's hear it for Cheryl Brown (no relation I think) whose multifarious facebook postings add class to the medium (and legions of other maestros I have'nt yet spotted, no doubt). And not to forget my darling indispensible geek wife to whom all this and more (wikis!) is stock in trade. And Stephen Fry and John Cleese twittering away. And even some of the chitchat on my friends, old and new, put on facebook can be highly entertaining, when it isn't plain puzzling or disquieting (I'm persuading myself like it or not...let's just say in the end it's what you make of it).

It's certainly my intention to keep up emails to friends and family about some of our detailed doings, but they may be necessarily occasional (hopefully less so than recently, now the settling-in period is about over), as there are so many people to write to. The answer is of course to send the same email bulletin to everyone, with suitable changes for different groups; but the blog is obviously the best way to perform that function for descriptions of life here, carefully written and published once, for all interested parties; so that is what a lot of my energies are going into.

My sons who have grown up with the net of course (thanks in part to the the old early adopter - the thrill of bringing home and setting up that magic new 1984 cassette-tape Amstrad still tingles, and it turned out not to have been such a bad investment of scarce pennies after all, eh), expect me to know the ins and outs intuitively; they seem to put up with my frequent silences but may not realise it's due to timidity as much as can'tbebotheredness. If I can get my head round constructing a post (with photos and all) via the admittedly very user-friendly Blogger template, anyone can.

There are those who (like Damian's newsroom colleagues) have expressed misgivings about dealing with this here blog stuff. After my reassurances or dares, I hope you are reading this and realising that fear not, you don't have to interact at all, just hit the website and enjoy(?) my words and pictures, and tell others about it if you like. (Although comments are definitely welcome if anyone has time - just follow the on-screen instructions - and will hopefully reassure me I am on the right track to my intended purpose of describing this place entertainingly; or at least that someone is reading it.)

Later will try to put photo albums on probably Flickr. Also toying with Facebook and Twitter at various people's insistence, but can't quite get with the breathless triviality of most of what people put up. But am finding Skype very useful, either Skype-to-skye, or skype-to-phone for very cheap calls, or for chat, also gmail chat. All these communication channels were a conundrum at first, but you end up just responding to whoever pops up wherever, and keeping on blodging in hope of an audience

What I am sort of aiming for is to settle on a definitive selection of platforms to communicate on, even though this may not actually be possible given that (1) if you want to keep in touch with everyone you probably have to reply to them on whichever channel they have settled on using, and (2) the pace of chance won't let up, so by next year there will be a new different mindset/trend/craze sweeping us all along. In that vein, I've just finished reading a very good novel called Air by one of my favourite authors Geoff Ryman which tackles this whole conundrum from a highly original angle, takes a bit of getting into (and the ending is weird) but I recommend it (along with his other novels, Was and 253 - short titles but good ones).

The only thing seems to be to keeps all channels open and assume everyone else does the same and gets time to reply; and hope that we don't all drown in a sea of soundfacefriendtwitbites. At least I have got the blog somewhat under control, and will continue to focus on it, with photos that fit the stories (and probably also post a few photo albums somewhere else suitable). Hopefully it will gather a (small but select) following who will have fun posting comments, follow links to photo albums and other stuff, and provide a welcome feeling of it being a bit of a conversation.

But my son Ed is right when he says you mainly do this stuff for yourself, like an augmented diary that you are willing to share; on the other hand I note the backgrounder in the local paper the other day (sourced from the NY Times) about the facebk generation, where happy young users were quoted saying stuff like "We know we are all mini-celebrities and we love having an audience (however small) for 15 minutes or more through the social network sites…"; yeah, well...

Thanks for listening, I feel better now. Please do comment if you feel similarly, or that I need setting straight. Next (or when I can get a few more fotos done and uploaded), back to more interesting stuff about the neighbourhood and further afield.

P.S. If i could find the Guradian Tweekly on any newsstand here this might be funnier...

47 tailors

2009-03-17T08:56:00.025+03:00

The Gharrafa Immigraton Dept building (see it framed by the overpass at the start of this video) keeps watch over the traffic's endless courtly minuet on the roundabout.

Doesn't look too chaotic in this vid, but it was a quiet time of day (early afternoon after the shops have closed, and people have been to the mosque and gone home for an hour or two); and admittedly Immigration Roundabout, being grade-separated, can't claim to be the craziest in Doha, though attend closely and you will see a few jousts.

Anyway, enjoy the movie and try to imagine crossing the road laden with loot from the market - first the slip road from Al Luqta St to 22 February St (often empty but watch out for fast cars), then the two exit lanes from the roundabout (probably the trickiest bit, the drivers are going for it), over the wide median with its landscape paving and quaint street lamps, next the two lanes feeding the roundabout (10% of drivers will surprise you by waving you on, but don't expect the rest to do so even if you have stepped out into a stationary gap) and finally the slip road from 22 February to Khalifa. You soon develop a technique, but beware, stay sharp, it's rough out there.

After that it's only about 200 metres to home along the wide pavement by the zig-zag wall (but suddenly there's only a foot-wide footpath at the corner of the street so you need to look for turning cars) - that's our building second on the right (with the green tree).

Look beyond the steetlamp centre right in this picture, you can see one of two concrete staircases (there is a matching one on the near side). These lead down to a sort of viewing platform each. However, the top of the stairs is hard up against the inner ring fence you can see, so agility as well as daring and an overdeveloped sense of curiosity will be necessary for anyone to attempt to negotiate the stairs and take in the view of the underpass traffic and the colourful mosaics adorning the side walls. They need not fear asphyxiation, though - the paved area on our corner of the interchange is adorned with several noisy exhaust vents which appear to be part of a high-feficiency extraction ventilation system for the approx 100 metres of underpass beneath the roundabout, worthy of a fully-enclosed tunnel.

But back to the local souk - this is sort of the front view as you approach from the roundabout, with obligatory Al Ahli billboard keeping the mosque tower company. Once you are safely through the gap in the wall and onto the sandy astroturf berm, still keep a watch out for cars darting about the car park, or you may find yourself Experiencing Love again.

There are two or three alleys like this one, each with a typical Doha selection of trading establishments selling variations on the usual combination of watches of various degrees of blingness, shoes, perfumes and fabrics, with the occasional addition of a kaleidoscopic stack of cheap toys and ornaments. (The stocktaker in me wants to compute the total number of watches for sale in all of Doha - with maybe 100 in the window of each of the 20 or so of these boutiques, which of course equals the merest whiff of the total acreage on display in the endless kilometres of similar establishments, grand or lowly, to be found in the souks, malls and maze of streets of old Doha Central and the surrounding suburbs - well, it must surely be in the billions. I'm sure there's one for me, but will keep looking for a while yet, in the hope of scoring the ultimate diamond-encrusted wonder toy - will have to hone my bargaining skills).

The covered concourses are welcome relief from the heat of the day (all shops however humble are airconditoned). I inadvertently left the camera on Aperturte setting for the next pic, but bunged it in here anyway as the result does give a feeling of the merciless noonday sun (get a grip, it's not even summer yet, still only 25-30 deg, but then when summer comes you just don't go out in it, so this will do for now).

This is what it really looks like. On two sides of both car parks you see the rows of gents' tailoring establishments - that's right, I just couldn't help counting, 47 of them side by side, sweeping the dust off the tiled pavements outside their doors, or calling out a cheery greeting in the hope of getting you in for a chat and maybe a measure-up, which will provide the occasional commission to pay the rent, or even sewing away among the bolts of shirting and suit material. The consensus is that once you have solved the puzzle of which one to pick, you are almost certain to get a perfect fit for a very modest price.

As well as the 20 general traders, there are also several shoe shops, maybe ten ladies' tailors (one doesn't stop and stare, so not accurately counted), several fabric shops, three photography studios in a row, a stationer's, a post office (Arabic only, so finding out the cost of post to NZ - no, not the Netherlands - was fun), a shop selling CDs and DVDs of the Holy Q'ran only, a couple of decor galleries/chocolatiers/florists and an art shop, a babywear shop, a toy shop which demands further investigation, a furniture studio (awesome tables and wardrobes in the local style with studs hammered in all over, in patterns), several eating joints not to mention a KFC and a Yellow Cab Pizza, Bird World and Animal World, two or three of the ubiquitous and mysterious Trading and Contracting Companies (consisting of a gentleman behind an impressive desk, plus one or two equally plush leather settees) and an emigration consultant, and oops I forgot the pharmacy selling Lady Diana Breast Enlarging Cream among other more plausible remedies, but that's about it apart from the shoe and watch repairers (see below) and half a dozen barbers. No grocery shops, but there are a few nearby.

No worries, I don't need to cross the main road to get a haircut, there are at least ten more barbers in the back streets behind the apartments (photo gallery of some of the finer local shops coming soon). Again, it's just a matter of picking one with enough English so as to avoid getting a #1 cut or a shave, and who leaves your ears intact. Will have to tackle the problem soon, as witness this three week old photo of me and Angela's E-Schoolbag Program colleague (and our neighbour) Nancy Groh, on our first visit to the local market, with the shoe and watch repairers' alley in the background. These guys appear to have the business advantage of low or no rent, but one can't help asking: how do they actually make a living? I guess they made the judgement that anything is better than working six days a week with pick and shovel for QR600 a month like the majority of the vast labour force from the Subcontinent do. Or perhaps they sucked at that - those who can, dig, those who can't, repair shoes and watches?

The question can be applied equally to the tailors, or the whole Doha retail establishment, the general ethos being to group traders in a particular commodity or service together in one alley or street or district. So you want a desk? go to the furniture souk, which when you finally track it down, turns out to be surrounded by streets of furniture shops; a mobile phone? there is a whole building with nothing but comms specialists (and a street 20 minutes walk form here with at least 50 of them along with a few computer shops; jewellery? do not hesitate, the renowned Gold Souk awaits. There are even highly specialised subgroupings, e.g. three shops in a row selling nothing but chandeliers, or several offering intricate metal balustrades only, or even the only two bicycle dealers I have seen, opposite each other (you do see a few daredevils on bikes amid the traffic).

You see hardly any such third-world sights as this in the main souk area in the middle of town - can't speak about elsewhere until we get transport and can explore a bit more, but presumably other suburbs have their own colourful patches of street trade. It does add something to the general air of a work-in-progress toward a paved and sanitised metropolis.

Then there's this guy (he must have been at lunch, but had pinned up a notice giving his mobile number). Either he did something that caused him to be removed to 100 metres from his fellow stallholders; or he knows something they don't. When I get that fancy watch and it turns out to be a Casio rip-off and breaks down in the first week, I will have no problem deciding who to go to.

Are you Experienced?

2009-03-09T14:58:00.014+03:00

Mouse has been a bit anarchic again today, sometimes ignoring all clicks, then suddenly dragging and dropping things all by itself; it managed to post this post without any content while my back was turned, but we may now have reached an understanding (I brushed some crumbs off the tablecloth - will get that dam desk soon), so thanks for your (!) patience.

In fact, all sorts of things can make you a bit dizzy here - just looking at the buildings is enough for some people;

Or trying to cross the road - sometimes even the Indians just give up...

Although you'd be mad to even try here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD8SuZnHfho (I reckon there's an even worse one, known as "no-rules intersection", just few blocks from here - will get the video cam out one night).

But for me a week or two ago, and now Ange this weekend, it was the inevitable ills that beset hard-working new expat consultants (or in my case, houseboys without the sense to resist the charms of the Delicious Samoosa shop round the corner). Debilitated respectively by tummy bug and flu, and encouraged by colleagues and neighbours (and thanks to medical insurance), we were driven to discover the reality behind the ubiquitous banners and billboards, and Experience Love at Al Ahli hospital.

This is one of half a dozen new medical centres opening around Doha, and going by the look of the exterior of some of the others, may not even be the ritziest. Never mind, the interior of Al Ahli is an experience, and the Love isn't to be sneezed at neither. I was seen by a very personable lady Arab doctor who put me on an IV drip without ado; the nurse even brought me something to read when I asked (The American Journal of Cardiology, who could ask for a more sleep-inducing publication?); then sent home with the requisite antibiotics and electrolytes from the hospital pharmacy, (pausing only to hand in the prescribed IV fluid at the clinic counter to top up their supply, a logical system I suppose). Ange struck a rather busier time and had to wait two hours to be seen, and the queue at the pharmacy was a bit of a scrum, but the waiting room couches are very comfortable, and there are plenty of Arabic magazines to gaze at.

Meanwhile life goes on in the big hospital, literally all around you - a triangular five-storey atrium with ward corridors looking down, and on the ground floor all the information desks, registration counters, clinics, genteel waiting spaces and ivied fountains you might expect. Not to mention an upmarket cafe, a chocolatier where you could buy a presentation basket the size and shape of a small pram to celebrate the new arrival; and a gentleman in an immaculate thobe, bearing a silver tray and coffee pot to offer refreshment to any and all those reclining on the couches (though I was in no condition to accept).

Porters push hotel-style trolleys (the ones with an arched rack to hang things on) in and out of lifts; as we waited at the front entrance for the driver to come, another patient was being collected in the family Land Cruiser - in went several large suitcases, half a florist's daily output, the inevitable choccy basket, etc; but the porters had considerable difficulty shoehorning the gilt tea-trolley in on top. Insurance might not pay for all that (on top of the fees, which don't muck about) should we ever need to be admitted.

I was going to take some photos, though not sure if snapping away even in the grand atmoshere of the atrium is quite the done thing, but sensibly the camera batteries chose to die just then (didn't see a little shop anywhere on the premises where you could buy such supplies); sooner or later when we have transport, must include at least some exterior shots in the gallery of fine Doha buildings that is itching to be compiled.

Meanwhile, alternative accommodation is available if you're a space-minded gal:

and as you're all waiting to see if there was anything to experience, that'll be

for now.

Back to nursing duties, then (we are nearly better, thanks).