posted Sep 14, 2008 12:56 AM by Jonathan Benn
We've gotten a few very good Ramadan-related questions from Marie-Hélène:
Has Elena Been Encouraged to Wear a Head Scarf?
We were a little concerned about whether or not Elena should wear a head scarf when we went to a Souq (a.k.a. Bazaar) during Ramadan. In the end, Elena decided not to wear one. It turned out to not be a big deal. There were many women (including arabs) not wearing head scarves, and Elena didn't attract any undue attention. In general, however, Elena has been dressing even more conservatively during
this month as a general show of respect to Qatari customs.
Was There Lunch Served in the Cafeteria on the First Day of Ramadan?
As a matter of fact, yes. Because the cafeteria is a seperate building and not a place where people fasting are expected to go, it's ok for food to be served there during the day. The point is for people fasting to not be tormented by seeing people eating and drinking all around them. Eating and drinking can still take place during the day, it just has to remain discreet.
What Happens If You Eat in Public--Can You Go to Jail?
Yes. During Ramadan, if people get upset that you're dressed inappropriately or if you're
seen eating/drinking/smoking in public during the day then they can call the
police. At the least this will result in embarrassment and the police
taking note of your crime. It could result in arrest and deportation.
--Jonathan
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posted Aug 13, 2008 9:08 PM by Jonathan Benn
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updated Aug 13, 2008 9:22 PM
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At the time of this writing: no. I've seen a few camels up close (see picture). They smell strangely and are pretty weird-looking too. Do you want to ride one of those things?
If you look at the picture carefully, you'll see that they're muzzled to prevent them from spitting at people. It's not so obvious from this picture, but their feet are big flat plates the size of your head.
Contrary to what you might imagine, camels are not the vehicle of choice in this country. No, that honour goes to the Land Rover.
Apparently the fun time to be had from camels around here is the camel races. In the past they used to use children as jockeys, but today they use the aforementioned Land Rover to drive the camels to higher speeds.
--Jonathan
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posted Aug 13, 2008 8:54 PM by Jonathan Benn
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updated Aug 30, 2008 11:48 PM
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This is a very good question, since nobody likes getting a phone call at 3 AM. :-)
As this meeting planner website shows, at the time of this writing there's a 7-hour time difference between Montreal and Doha (the capital city of Qatar). Without Daylight Savings Time (DST), there's an 8-hour time difference! The same website shows the scenario for today's date in December.
The time difference makes business calls especially difficult, because there are only about 2 hours per day of business-hours compatibility (1 hour outside of DST!). Plus, in Qatar the weekend is Friday and Saturday, not Saturday and Sunday as it is in Montreal. Believe me when I say that it took months for me to get used to this. So this leaves only four compatible business days: Monday through Thursday.
--Jonathan
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posted Aug 1, 2008 9:42 PM by Jonathan Benn
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updated Aug 2, 2008 8:49 AM
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This is a question we've received from several people in different forms.
Yes, Qatar is a desert. In fact, most of it is a rocky desert with just a bit of dust and sand on top of a hard rock foundation. In the Southern part of Qatar you get more sand and you'll actually see sand dunes. Desert grasses somehow manage to survive here and there throughout the barren land. The only animals of note are insects, sheep, camels, cats and migratory birds.
With all the above being true, there is still a lot of water here. Why?
- There is a lot of energy here (oil and gas) to power desalinization plants to provide us with ample fresh water for drinking (with filtration), washing, swimming and irrigation. Any plants you see in photos besides desert grasses are alive due to irrigation.
- Qatar is a small peninsula that juts out into the Arab Gulf (a.k.a. the Persian Gulf). Hence, it is almost entirely surrounded by sea water. There are many beaches all around the peninsula, plus some sandy islands not far offshore.
- During the Summer the winds sometimes shift to blow in from the Gulf instead of blowing in from the Saudi Arabian desert. Consequently, it gets humid like a jungle in the desert and in the evening you will see fog, and in the morning you will see dew and even mud!
- There are still an average of 7 days of rain per year... it's not a lot, but it's more than nothing.
Please keep those questions coming!
--Jonathan
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posted Aug 1, 2008 9:07 PM by Jonathan Benn
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updated Aug 2, 2008 5:41 AM
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Here's a question from Marie-Hélène: how is the food in grocery store? Is the variety more similar to what
you find in Europe, Montreal, the US, or totally different?
Answer: Hi Marie! That's an excellent question! What I've noticed so far from my handful of trips around the world is that every place's supermarkets offer a different variety of food. In the U.S. I tend to see huge ice cream and frozen food sections with relatively meager fresh produce. In France you have tons of really inexpensive wine, cheese and bread. In Spain you'll see pork legs hanging off the walls, lots of olive oil and canned foods and the best fresh fruit and vegetables I've ever tasted. In Belgium you'll see an incredible variety of chocolate and beer. Montreal seems to focus on Italian, German and French food influences. Taiwan offers a lot of Japanese and Chinese food and has the totally awesome sports drink Pocari Sweat.
This brings me to my point: Qatar's supermarkets hold quite different things from all of these other places. For one, there's no porc anywhere. All of the food here is Halal. Needless to say, there is no alcohol anywhere except at the one store available only to non-Muslim expatriots. Secondly, you'll see a lot of food coming from other parts of the Middle East. Saudi Arabia seems to be a very big influence with packaged goods ranging from toilet paper to frozen meat balls. Olives from Lebanon. Cheese from Syria. Fresh meat seems to be mostly chicken, lamb, beef and goat. In general, foods that are not Middle-Eastern are usually European, Indian or Chinese. There is very little North American food here, just a few of the huge American brands (e.g. Kleenex, Coke and thankfully, Old El Paso).
Things that are not expensive here are anything that you can ship by boat without it going bad. It's typically 30% to 50% of the cost you'd expect in Montreal for things like toilet paper, toothpaste, fresh meat, etc. Chickens and their eggs are one of the few things that are raised locally and they're plentiful and dirt cheap. Things that go bad quickly like fresh fruit and vegetables are perhaps twice as expensive as in Montreal, and it's very difficult sometimes to find good ones. We mostly see cucumber, zucchini, eggplant, cherries, mint, figs, dates, tomatoes, carrots and cabbage. In general, Indian and Middle-Eastern foods are the cheapest, with European foods being affordable and anything from North America being very expensive (particularly in comparison with the other foods).
There, I think that's pretty much everything I can reasonably say about supermarkets in one sitting! :p
--Jonathan |
posted Jul 12, 2008 10:20 AM by Jonathan Benn
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updated Aug 1, 2008 9:38 PM
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The quick answer to this one is that we don't have one. In fact, there aren't any mailing addresses in the entire country of Qatar, as far as I know. Instead, there is a central Post Office in every major city, and that Post Office has numbered PO Boxes that you can rent. If you're wondering how we receive junk mail, we still get fliers delivered to our door and there is a lot of text message spam here.
Unfortunately, post cards and letters are pretty inconvenient here... try writing us a nice email instead or phone us! :-)
Update 2008-Aug-02: If you must mail something to us, we now know our company's P.O. Box and you can send us something there if you put it in a box or a simple white envelope (i.e. something that looks professional). Just email or call us and we'll give you the address.
--Jonathan
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posted May 28, 2008 7:13 PM by Sean Boyce
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updated Aug 1, 2008 9:34 PM by Jonathan Benn
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Does Qatar Have a National Firewall a la China/Brasil?
Hi Sean. As far as I know, yes. However, it's not very restrictive. Thus far I haven't had any trouble going to any of the websites I like going to. Probably, the firewall curtails going to pornographic or terrorist-related websites.
Update 2008-Aug-02: so far I've run into a firewall block once for when I wanted to download the video watching software Media Player Classic--I'm not sure why.
What's the Bandwidth Like?
Elena ordered the fastest Internet they have for our home. I tested the connection speed and if I recall correctly we have about 3 MB/s download and 150 KB/s upload. In layman's terms, that's a pretty fat pipe, but only in the receiving direction. It's a better connection than the Videotron Basic Internet we had at home.
Update 2008-Aug-02: in practice the upload speed is really about 30 KB/s and this limits the download speed to about 250 KB/s maximum. So the speed is good but nothing as spectacular as my early tests indicated.
Thanks, Sean! Keep the questions coming. :-)
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posted May 23, 2008 9:30 PM by Jonathan Benn
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updated May 24, 2008 5:09 AM
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So far it's been really hot. This week it's been particularly hot, with daytime highs over 40°C. If you go outside it feels like being in a convection oven. The air is hot, and there's this dry hot wind washing over you constantly. To give you a more absolute understanding, here's a silly story: every day on our drive to work, we pass a leaky water truck. The asphalt is so hot that water dripping off the truck explodes into steam the moment it touches the road.
I've attached some weather statistics to give you a good idea of what it's like all year around. It's very dry in Qatar (it's currently 26% humidity) most of the year because the wind blows in from the desert. However, the winds change direction in summer and come in from the sea and then the humidity goes up into the 80% range. Try to imagine 45°C with 80% humidity... Montrealers typically find it unbearable at 30°C with 80% humidity. I've been to Taiwan in summer (about 38°C with 95% humidity) and that was unbearable. You basically run from air conditioning to air conditioning. So I suppose that it will be even worse than unbearable here during summer.
On a tangentially related topic: in Qatar we have a new kinds of weather. In Montreal you have snow, sleet, rain, etc. Here, we have dust and haze. Dust is when high winds kick up lots of sand from the desert and you end up with a fine mist of tiny sand particles everywhere in the air. The whole sky ends up looking sand-coloured. Haze is the tiny reflections from the water droplets in the air--again, it reduces visibility and makes the sky look grey on the horizon instead of blue.
Finally, we get 7 days of rain per year here. There hasn't been any rain since I got here, yet, somehow desert grasses manage to survive here and there.
What kind of temperature ranges have you experienced there? Is there a big difference between day and night?
Let's see. Right now it's 7:30 AM in May and the temperature outside is 33°C. I don't think it's ever been less than 25°C at night since I got here in the beginning of May. Yesterday I was walking around in 40°C weather, in the shade, during midday.
The sun is strange here. It rises very early in the morning (4:45 AM) and sets very early (6:16 PM). If you have white skin like me and you go outside into the sun between about 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM you will get a sunburn within 15 minutes. However, go into the sun outside those hours and you don't even need suntan lotion.
Do you have air conditioning?
YES! People usually set the thermostat to 18°C. This is a good recipe for getting sick if you ask me. Elena and I set it in the 25-28 range, which is more comfortable than 40 but still not so large a difference that it shocks your system to go from air conditioning to the outside and vice versa.
Goodness knows how the desert people survived here before electricity and air conditioning were invented. Apparently the tents they used and the clothes they wore helped, but I imagine it must have been quite difficult during summer--even for people habituated to heat.
--Jonathan
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posted May 15, 2008 10:10 PM by Jonathan Benn
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updated May 15, 2008 10:21 PM
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Answer: Cell phones in Qatar are actually quite cheap! It seems to be about 1/3 the price here relative to Montreal. Elena and I hardly notice, though, because we both have cell phones paid for us by our company. In Doha city, the reception and call quality seem to be equally high as in Montreal. Outside of the city, calls sometimes fail to connect (particularly from our worksite, which is a 30 minute drive from the nearest town). Doha and Qatar are growing so quickly that it probably puts a lot of pressure on their telephone infrastructure...
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