Nins' Travelog

Gear up for the National Day

The first time I moved to Qatar, in 2005 I learnt that the country’s celebrate has a one day holiday for it’s Independence day on the 3 of September. However, the odd thing was that there was no celebration at all, no festive atmosphere at all, either approaching that day or on that particular day. Even certain banks are still doing their business.

Suddenly, two years ago, they moved the day, to the 18^th of December; the funny thing was they announce it only a week before September 3^rd. As usual nothing happens during the day itself.

This year, while I was not expecting anything, Qatar had something different. A few days before the D day, they started building tents and gear up with a lot of Qatar flags along almost every main road and small road. Finally I got a notification on my mobile to come and celebrate their “National Day” parade along the Corniche.

School boys with their teacher

and school girs are parading

the parade are not only about school children but also the “animal” brigade…

the "white" horsemen

"the dark horse"men

the camel brigade as part of the oldtime military force

the camel show....

the k-9 brigade

Well, not all are animal force, there are also the real military force:

the army

and off course the most cheered brigade: the girls….

the girls in the Qatar army

When the Eid al Adha marks the end of the Hajj (the annual prilgrimage to Mecca), Muslims communities throughout the world celebrate the holiday of Festival of Sacrifice (Eid al Adha).

The idea is for Muslims to remember the trial and triumph of Prophet Abraham (or Ibrahim as the Muslim name) of his complete obedience to the will of God. During this celebration, Muslims commemorate by themselves slaughtering an animal such as sheep, camel or goat. The meat of the sacrificed animal were distributed among families, friends and most importantly is among the poor.

Thus approaching the D-Day, people start buying livestock to then slaughter it on the Eid-al-Adha day. This is what happened in Qatar, as only a day left for Eid al-Adha, prices of sacrificial animals have risen sharply. Prospective buyers are thronging the livestock market where sheep, goats, camels and cows, from as far afield as Syria and Yemen, are on sale.

This is what happen in the market place that sells livestock in Qatar:

While the government-owned livestock company Mawashi has issued a fixed price list for sheep and cows from different countries, buyers were Continue reading

Before the match

I am not a big football fan, and I watched a live football match only once in my life, in Senayan Stadium (one of the biggest in the world that can hold a maximum of 125,000 people) more than 20 years ago. As I mentioned in my previous blog, Qatar with a mission to put the country on the map and bid for the 2022 World Cup, this time they are having an International Football match at the Khalifa Sport Stadium which is probably the biggest stadium in the Middle East and which holds 50,000 people.

They chose a friendly game between Brazil and England. Why should they choose Brazil?  Well to my humble view, it’s because the team is currently rank No. 1 in the world, and part of Qatar’s pride is to invite the best team in the world to Qatar, even though I bet there are not many Brazilian living and working in Qatar, but still a lot of local Brazilian football fans.

They chose England team to play against Brazil, which is currently No. 8 in the world football ranking. To me this would be a one sided match as England team is not supposed to be as good as the Brazilian team, but they are here anyway, and I think there are a lot of reasons:

• A lot of Englishman working in the Middle East in various industries and as per my experience on several visits to England, they are a very big and rather fanatic football enthusiasts.
• The English Premier League is big in the Middle East. To subscribe to the channel that has privileges to air live of this league is more expensive than normal family channel.

Keith, who is English and a true supporter for the England football team is keen to watch this match. I went along as this was my first experience to watch an international football match, and I bet not everyone can have the chance to watch this kind of match which is why the football freaks from the neighbouring countries also cam to Doha for this event.

The atmosphere around the stadium was really great. A bit of Qatar cultural propaganda was shown as well as information about the participating countries and the best scene for me is to see the fans who behaved very silly, just for a bit of a laugh.

To describe the difference between Bahrain and Qatar is difficult as both are part of the GCC, and they all competing to be a recognized countries in the world. But one thing I like about Qatar to me is the Tennis. As this is my sport, I enjoy the tournament and the entertainments it gave all the time I live in Qatar. There’s no such thing in Bahrain.

Less than a month after I came back to Doha, it held the year’s end of season Women Tennis Championship. With US $ 1,550,000 price money to take home for the winner out of top 8 players. This is the second year Doha held this tournament and I missed it last year, as I had just moved to Bahrain.

Nonetheless, right after I arrived in Doha, the first thing I did was to buy the ticket for this WTA End of Season Championship. The used to be free entertainment of top quality tennis in Doha, is not free anymore.  I have to rush to the ticket booth to ‘buy’ for it, I plan to buy a season ticket, which is quite cheap, for a QR 300.- we don’t have to fight for our seats and the best bit is it’s for the whole tournament. I have to agree that was considerable cheap compare to paying ticket to go to Wimbledon for instance.

Never mind that, when I tried to buy the ticket for this championship; it was almost sold out, I could not get any ticket to a nice position, all that was left was for free seating (no allocated seats anymore) and it was in an up high position on the extra stand that Doha had just built especially for this tournament. I wonder why this tournament is popular in Doha, the Women Tennis Championship. As I thought in this part of the world men are not supposed to see girls who is showing off the curve of their body, bare arms and legs and not to mention their knickers that from time to time flashing out to public during the match.

Even though this is “only” Doha, a not so much tennis enthusiast, but we manage to have a bit of a celebration, i.e. how they present the trophy as if it comes from the sky, as well as Tracy Austin as the champion’s interviewer were also came from the US.

For me, the best part of the game was to watch the Ladies Doubles Championship. The thrill of playing fast tennis with so much power, the grunt of each player as they try to deliver the ball across the net as quick, as fast as possible but yet still control it.  And in between there’s the public entertainment. From the tennis fans…. A group of Spanish performance who happens to be in town came to support their athletes, who eventually won the championship.