Stuck in Traffic on Musheirib
With all the re-routing off Al Rayyan as we convert to the Heart of Doha, I found myself inching along Al Musheirib this week, along with the noon-time crowd. When there is nothing else to do – take some photos. We drive right by every day, but do we look?
Many of these spots will disappear.
Boutiques? (!)
And here is one of my favorites – see it, just over the street sign? Cheep and Best?
Halloween Baby
You won’t hear all mother-in-laws say things like this, but you’ll hear me say it, and often – we are so lucky. Our son chose a wife who is a true companion, and whose style suits our own, sometimes so much it is scary.
They are expecting a baby – and she is beginning to be “great with child”. She wrote us this morning that she won a Halloween costume contest. We knew they were toying with the concept, but the reality is hilarious. Alien!
Saturday mornings can be depressing for us, as AdventureMan heads back to his job. Not so this morning – we were dying laughing!
Halloween and Extreme Pumpkins
All it took was one Google: pumpkins carved
It took me to Extreme Pumpkins.com, and it will give you minutes of helpless laughter. People are SO creative!
Yesterday I bought a pumpkin, not the traditional American sugar pumpkin with it’s thin skin, but a thick, ribbed Indian squash, and when I took it, the clerk said “You want the WHOLE thing??”
It’s not that big. But normally, people buying this kind of squash here buy it in pieces, not as an entire (carvable 🙂 ) pumpkin.
This is not my pumpkin; it is another from Extreme Pumpkins.com I am making cat pumpkins this year. 🙂
Women: Unsung Heroes Awards
Wooo HOOOO, Doha! Don’t you love it? Unsung Hero awards for WOMEN, and what women!
This is from today’s Gulf Times
Three women to receive ‘Unsung Hero’ awards
The 21st Century Leaders Foundation will honour three women at their inaugural awards ceremony on Friday at Grand Hyatt Doha.
Qataris Eman Ahmed al-Obaidli and Sara Mohamed al-Shamlan, and Palestinian Helen Shehadeh will be the first recipients of the Unsung Hero Award.
The Doha 21st Century Leaders Awards was established this year to mark the humanitarian and environmental achievements of individuals who have made a serious commitment and a significant impact to their chosen cause.
Eman, a retired elementary school teacher, has spent the past seven years engaging the people of Qatar in becoming more aware of children with physical disabilities.
Eman has also raised significant awareness within Qatar for Caudal Regression Syndrome, a rare spinal disorder that affects her son Ghanim.
With her son as a constant source of inspiration and with a strong belief in his independence, Eman has founded Ghanim’s Wheelchair Foundation which has donated hundreds of wheelchairs to other special needs societies in the Gulf.
She also started Ghanim’s Sport Club in 2008 to allow both physically disabled and able-bodied children to join in activities as varied as karate, skateboarding and basketball.
In the future, Eman’s vision for Qatar’s community includes independent accessibility for wheelchairs and integrated sport clubs.
The second Unsung Hero award goes to 16-year-old Sara, a student from Qatar Academy, who harnessed her passion of photography to raise awareness of some of the poorer expatriate Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi children in Qatar.
Initially started for a community service project for school, she documented a number of young children in the Abu Hamour area of Doha and went on to sell the prints in her father’s jewellery shop and at a jewellery exhibition. Sara quickly raised a huge sum that was used to provide the children with a proper education and basic necessities such as shoes and toys.
Daughter of well-known Qatari businessman Mohamed Marzooq al-Shamlan, managing director of Marzooq Al Shamlan & Sons, Sara considers her father a major catalyst for her way of thinking. Sara’s work is supported by the Qatar Charity.
The third recipient of the Unsung Hero award is Helen Shehadeh, a Palestinian woman who at the age of 75 is actively continuing to teach blind students.
At the age of two, Helen herself lost her eyesight overnight as a result of a diphtheria epidemic. In 1981, Helen founded the Al Shurooq School for the Blind which aimed to provide blind and visually impaired children with an appropriate education and equal opportunity, while rehabilitating and integrating them into the local community.
Other award recipients on the night include film stars Josh Hartnett and Sir Ben Kingsley and film-makers Danny Boyle and Christian Colson.
Women recognized for making a difference. . . Ahhhhhh. . . . it is a red letter day. 😀
The Social Contract
Without accountability, does the social contract exist?
Wikipedia on the Social Contract:
Social contract describes a broad class of theories that try to explain the ways in which people form states and/or maintain social order. The notion of the social contract implies that the people give up some rights to a government or other authority in order to receive or maintain social order through the rule of law. It can also be thought of as an agreement by the governed on a set of rules by which they are governed.
Social contract theory formed a central pillar in the historically important notion that legitimate state authority must be derived from the consent of the governed. The starting point for most of these theories is a heuristic examination of the human condition absent from any structured social order, usually termed the “state of nature”. In this condition, an individual’s actions are bound only by his or her personal power, constrained by conscience. From this common starting point, the various proponents of social contract theory attempt to explain, in different ways, why it is in an individual’s rational self-interest to voluntarily give up the freedom one has in the state of nature in order to obtain the benefits of political order.
He’s on the Roads Again
This also from today’s Gulf Times. This 25 year old was convicted of killing an Asian driver, due to his reckless driving, and the court fined him the equivalent of $1370. He also had to pay the family of the man he killed about $41,000. Oh. Wait. He “and his insurance company” will pay the fine.
And they didn’t take his driver’s license away, they suspended it. Oh. His jail sentence is also suspended.
Do you think because his license is suspended, that he isn’t driving?
What do you think he has learned about the value of a human life?
What do you think he has learned about equality before the law?
What do you think he has learned about accountability?
Do you believe he will be a better driver now that he has learned the consequences of reckless driving?
You will note that I did not use the tags “Doha” or “Qatar” on this post. That is because these are not situations unique to Qatar, unique to the Gulf countries, unique to the Middle East . . . in every country, including my own, there are pockets where justice depends on who is on trial. I would venture a guess that no country is exempt, that it is always a question of degree. So the question for us, as parent,s is how do we raise children who respect the value of life? Who respect the law? Who see themselves as equal to every other person before God and before the law?
Jail term suspended
A Doha appeals court has suspended the three-month imprisonment given by a lower court to a local motorist for reckless driving that caused the death of an Asian driver on June 27, 2007.
According to sources, the fatal accident took place in Shahaniya soon after midnight, “when the accused swerved left suddenly, for unknown reasons, colliding with a pickup driven by the deceased in the opposite direction.”
According to the court papers, there was no median separating the two lanes that ran in the opposite directions and the pickup was damaged in the crash.
The Qatari motorist was 25 at the time of the incident.
The appeals court ordered him to pay, jointly with the insurance company, QR150,000 as blood money to the family of the Bangladeshi victim (32).
The Doha court of first instance ordered to cancel the driving licence of the convict, but the upper court suspended it. A fine of QR5000 was upheld.
Health Services Providers Closed in Doha
Also from today’s Gulf Times . . . . It would be nice if we knew what those institutions were, so we could avoid them in the future, and what the specific complaints were.
For example, it doesn’t bother me for men and women to be in the same waiting room, like when my husband was really sick and needed a procedure done, he really needed me by his side. It would have been agony to have to wait in separate rooms, and, in fact, I have never seen separate waiting rooms in the modern Doha facilities I have visited, except for the hospital where they process all the people trying to obtain residence visas.
But I really want to know who is carrying expired or adulterated medications in their pharmacies, and who is using unauthorized or unqualified medical personnel! Please! In the interest of public safety, name the names.
22 health institutions shut for flouting rules
The Medical Licensing department at the Supreme Council of Health closed down a total of 22 health institutions, which did not comply with the health standards and rules, between November 2008 and September 2009, the department’s report states.
According to the report, which was the first published by the department, the health institutions include private clinics, medical centres, herbs selling outlets, dental clinics and eye-glasses shops.
They were found violating the standards during surprise visits by medical licensing inspectors.
Among the violations listed against the institutions were employment of unlicensed general practitioners and persons banned from practising or blacklisted, shortage of medical staff, selling of drugs that contain internationally banned substances or drugs not registered with the government pharmacy department and improper collation of patients’ data.
While some centres were found operating without proper licences, some were said to be in possession of expired drugs.
The report added that a number of them failed to separate men and women in waiting rooms and that they lack proper hygiene.
Doha Tribeca Film Fest a Sellout!
From today’s Gulf Times comes word that the upcoming film fest is already totally sold out. They have some really good movies!
Film festival a sellout
By Peter Townson
The Doha Tribeca Film Festival (DTFF) box-office outlets have seen a lot of interest from filmgoers in Qatar, with many of the movies due to be screened over weekend already sold out.
Among the most popular films are Capitalism: a Love Story by Michael Moore, Team Qatar, No-one Knows About Persian Cats, the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man, and About Elly.
The festival’s ‘blue badge’ passes, which offer holders a discount and access to a number of the festival’s events, have been very popular, and almost all the tickets that have been sold so far have been bought by blue badge-holders.
However, with less than a week to go it seems that most films have more or less sold out, with only a few seats remaining for many of the screenings.
But for disappointed moviegoers unable to buy tickets for the shows they want to see, all is not lost. Organisers have told people to go to the venue of their preferred screenings around one hour before the scheduled time, and there is a chance that people will be admitted to the film depending on whether all the ticket-holders turn up.
One British resident, who managed to get tickets to the most of the films she wanted to see, said that she was particularly looking forward to watching A Serious Man and London River but said she was disappointed not to get the chance to attend either screening of No-one Knows About Persian Cats.
“It is fantastic to have the opportunity to see films like this here in Qatar,” she said, adding “I am really looking forward to seeing the types of films we don’t usually find at the cinemas here, including some of the Arab films as well.”
However, another filmgoer expressed her disappointment at not being able to get tickets for any of the films she wants to see.
“I was really excited about seeing some of these movies, but now I’m so disappointed as I couldn’t get any tickets I wanted,” said the Australian expatriate, adding “I just hope they have not all been given away to people who don’t even really want them.”
With some 3,000 guests expected to attend the screening of Mira Nair’s Amelia it would seem that the film-loving population has wholeheartedly embraced the opportunities the festival will bring to Qatar.
Where Great Decisions are Made
Today, on my way home from a marathon-fun day, even though it was full of errands, I got to thinking great thoughts – in my car. Some of my best ideas come when I am sitting in traffic, something about the enforced nothing-to-do frees up my unconscious to tackle things I don’t otherwise think about.
One of the things I was thinking about was what, when I studied it, was called The Decision Making Process. It’s something you study in Political Science, and, although I can’t say this for sure because I haven’t specialized in these other areas, I am betting you would also study the process in Business, in Economics, in Engineering . . . when you know the process by which decisions are made, so the theory goes, you can get better at predicting how the decision making will go, what people will decide.
Or so the theory goes. . .
My personal observation is that human beings are highly unpredictable, and sometimes will make an opposite decision, even an irrational decision, in order not to be so predictable. I hate to be so cynical, but I think we are not so rational as we like to think we are.
In my Kuwait life, I remember being at a not-so-important meeting, more just a gathering, but at one point, I saw four people – influential people – meeting off in a corner, very casually, probably no one else even noticed, but they were deciding an outcome of an election, I realized later that day. OOps – not THE Kuwait election, my friends, no no no, a much lesser election. But that was where the decision was really made. These four quiet people were people who had the respect of others, and once they decided, they quietly shared their opinion with others, who shared their opinion with others and on it went, until the deed was done.
I have seen decisions made in a swimming pool. I know decisions are made on golf courses. I was hired for one job once after attending a concert, and for another because I had a responsible position in my church (it had nothing to do with the job I was hired for, but the skills were transferable.) I was hired once because my hair and eyes matched another woman working in the front office, and the boss wanted a “matched pair.” (I didn’t know that until later.)
I know that at one time AdventureMan helped lay out a military base. He said they were in a truck, and as they drove along someone dropped big stones out the back to mark the boundaries. Don’t you love it?
Gulf women tell me that weddings are important; young women are often spotted by future mother-in-laws, so moms try to make sure that their daughters are well appointed for major weddings, major events where they may be on display . . . and then they ask around checking on character and personality and suitability. But I wonder on what basis those decisions are really made, deep down? Family alliances? Securing a future? Business connections? I know there are rare alliances based on true and lasting love; I wonder how often that happens?
I know there are matrixes, and even simple two-column + – lists by which people can rationally work out what to decide. What I am cynical about – after all the matrixes are filled out, after all the plusses and minuses are totaled – I think that the decision can go counter to rationality, because we are – if not irrational – then intuitive, we are people who make decisions with other than our conscious minds. I think our hearts get involved, and you KNOW that feelings/emotions get involved. Sometimes we have “a gut feeling”; sometimes we know something on an unconscious level that we don’t know on a conscious level. If we all acted in our own rational self interest, there would not be young drivers dying on our roads, people would not be irrationally exuberant about investments, young people would not fall in love with the wrong people and life would sure a lot more dull, wouldn’t it?
I am cynical even about decisions made at the highest levels, because even decisions made by boards and after studies – even these decisions are ultimately based by human beings, and sometimes on “hunches.”
So I am wondering if YOU have had similar experiences? Have you seen major decisions made irrationally?
All this because I was stuck in traffic . . . .
The Majliss in Doha
When we lived in Doha the last time, we often brought people to The Majliss. Most Americans had never been there, never knew it was there. It is off Al Sadd – if you are going from C Ring to D Ring, you turn right at the Kentucky Fried Chicken and stay on the slip road that goes in front of the stores. At the second possible right, you turn right, and you will see the Royal Tandoor on your left, and The Majliss on your right.
There two really great things about The Majliss. First, the food is really, really good. Second, they have a bunch of individual rooms where you can sit on the floor, majliss style, with cushions and a big, low table. Some rooms are small, some are large enough for maybe 12 – 14 people.
They also have booths, some that have curtains you can pull if you need privacy, like if you are a woman wearing niqab and you want to eat without people seeing your face. They also have booths without curtains, and a more open area where mostly just men eat.
There was a time when soldiers would come here from Iraq, and you could sort of check them out like library books to take out for dinner, or to the malls, or to your house. We often took them to the Majliss, and it always blew them away, it was such a great experience. The Majliss is also where we took our son and his wife when they first came to visit us in Doha. We have so many happy memories at The Majliss.
This time, it was our visiting Kuwait friends, and since we all know what it is like to sit in a Majliss, and we all have older knees and hips, we chose to sit in a booth. Here is what is cool – our Kuwait friends loved it as much as our American friends do.
This was our first time back at the Majliss since our return to Doha. We worried that it had changed, deteriorated, that the food would not be so good as we remembered. We had a happy surprise – it is the same, but even better. 🙂
I have to admit, one reason I love the Majliss is because they have Mohammara, made of walnuts and chilis and other good stuff. This one was really good, a little spicy!
And oh, the fresh, hot bread . . .
Now, I am embarrassed to tell you, when our main dinners came, I forgot to take photos until late . . . so this is where the delicious Majliss hammour used to be – my very particular and discerning Kuwaiti friend ate every bite!
And here is what is left of my Shrimp machboos, before we gobbled the rest of it all up:
And the kabob, just before it disappeared entirely!
We were all so full, we didn’t even have room to order the creme caramel, which always comes swimming in caramel, yummmm. We had Turkish coffee and rolled ourselves out the door – stuffed!
Prices are reasonable, it is a great place for good local food at reasonable prices – the Michelin red “R” in Doha.
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Early Voting in Florida
