Reflections on Doha

I came to Doha, the capital of Qatar, on a training project on September 1, 2007. Originally I was scheduled to be here only till December, but the project was extended twice and it ends only this week. Overall it has been a great experience. Here are a few highlights:

• Doha is generally hot, dry and dusty. It’s the desert; what did you expect?

• Because Doha is hot and dry for most of the year, there is no heating in buildings, and not much by way of insulation. Consequently, during the few weeks of “winter”, apartments become bitterly cold. Stores do a roaring business (sorry, accidental humour) in space heaters.

• Although it hot, dry and dusty, it doesn’t mean that there is no greenery at all. There are patches of grass, trees and flowers where some people have worked very hard (and others have spent a lot of money).

• Whatever rain Doha gets is in the winter. And when the rain falls, it falls heavily.

• Having said all this, Doha has very pleasant weather for about six months (Oct – Dec; Feb – Apr) in the year. That’s not a bad average.

• When I first landed in Chicago (in ’93), the friend who picked me up from O’Hare told me that there are two seasons in the Windy City: winter…and “Under Construction”. By his definition, there is only one season in Doha: the city is permanently under construction.

• Qatar is a small country. It takes an hour to travel from the east coast to the west coast, and not a whole lot longer to travel from north to south. When the highway construction is completed, the travel time will be even less.

• The first impression I had of Doha when I got here was that it was McAllen, Laredo or any of the small cities along the Rio Grande river in Texas…on steroids. The same dusty environment, the same shades of brown everywhere, the same relatively new and broad roads…and the same excess of gas-guzzling 4x4s. The only difference is that there are more SUVs than pickups here compared to South Texas.

• Petrol/gasoline here is about $0.75 per gallon. (That still doesn’t excuse the number of SUVs here.)

• Bottled water is about $1.00 per gallon.

• Milk is about $5.00 per gallon.

• Almost all the food is imported, much of it from Saudi Arabia. A lot of the processed food comes from the UAE.

• The most useless way of specifying your location: “I’m next to the mosque.” Which mosque? They’re on every block.

• Driving can be a major hassle here during rush hours. Still, even with the traffic snarls, it rarely seems to take more than 30 minutes to get to a destination.

• Most of the locals here drive like they are drunk. They are not drunk. So what’s their excuse?!

• The two major foreign ethnic groups here are the Indians (which I did not find surprising) and Filipino (which I did find surprising).

• Under the right circumstances, I wouldn’t mind getting a full-time job here. Doha has been kind to me.