Out of the sand

It’s my last night in Doha. Tomorrow morning I’m leaving the desert. Mission completed. I’m flying back home, with Qatar Airways.

According to themselves, Qatar Airways is one of the world’s leading air lines. They’re not bad. I enjoyed flying with them. They had very cute stewardesses. It’s kind of strange, the young and sweet girls working in the cabin of the airplane, with short skirts and plenty of makeup. Once they get out in the street after work, they put their niqabs and hijabs on. God is great, but don’t worry above 30.000 feet.

I had a very pleasant stay at InterContinental Hotel, right by the beach, and with a nice view to the Persian Gulf. I must admit I liked this country. Qatar is a desert country. Doha, the capital, is apparently expanding rapidly into the desert. There are cranes and construction work everywhere.


There is no fresh surface water in the entire country. I don’t know where they get the water from, possibly drilling for ground water or desalting sea water. But they have plenty of oil and gas, which has made Qatar one of the richest countries in the world, and with the largest consumption of gasoline, and emission of carbon dioxide per capita.

The population is kind of special. 1.5 million people live in Qatar, but only 300.000 are citizens. The rest is cheap labor from other Asian countries (India, Pilippines, Indonesia, …). The Qatarians don’t treat their workers very well. Salaries are low, and unions is illegal. No good; shame on you.


Qatar is a liberal country, by Islamic standards at least. Women are allowed to drive, and foreigners can practice their own religion (or lack of religion). In Doha, there’s even a Catholic Church. Also, Doha is the hometown of Al Jazeera, the “Arabian CNN”.

In 2022, Qatar is hosting the Soccer World Cup. Nobody understands how this came about, but everything is possible for the gang that rules international football (I still mean soccer).

Maybe I’m coming back to the desert sand in 2022, but tomorrow I’m going home to the snow.

(I took the picture at the top last night. The low building, a little bit to the left, is my hotel. The other pictures were shot during my stay. I was amazed by the falconer and his bird. It was so calm and quiet as long as the cap covered it’s eyes.)

Swallowing a camel

This week I’m at this big conference in Doha. It was even bigger than expected, more than 5000 people from all over the world. It’s very different to the conferences I usually attend; less science and more politics.

Yesterday was the opening ceremony; speeches by highnesses and excellences, music by the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, and then a nice dinner. I was impressed by the kitchen crew. It’s not easy to cook for 5000 people (unless you know how to do the 5-bread-and-2-fish trick, which has been demonstrated only once, as far as I know).

Lots of hot shots are here; secretaries of state, CEOs of major oil companies, highnesses and excellences. Today I was listening to a talk with the Energy commissioner of the European Union; lots of political bla bla bla. I didn’t get anything out of it that I didn’t know already.

This is not the pond I’m used to swim in. Here, I’m a very small fish in a big pond.

My talk was today, this afternoon, in one of the technical sessions. I had a slow and easy morning, and arrived at the conference center right before noon. First, I went to my company’s stand, and begged them to give me a tie (and I got one). Luckily, the color goes quite well with my black shirt.

I started to look for the speaker’s room, to upload my presentation to the computer system, and to prepare for my talk.

The conference center is HUGE, and I couldn’t find my way, so I asked one of the 800 students who work as volunteers at this conference. She was a female student from the university in Doha, dressed in a niqab, covering everything but her eyes.

She was helpful and polite, but I must admit it felt kind of strange to talk to a person showing nothing but her eyes. It’s the first time I’ve been talking to a muslim woman dressed like this. I have no idea if she was smiling or grumpy or annoyed.

I gave my talk in the main theatre. Even with 100 in the audience, it looks almost empty. I wasn’t quite sure how to start. Normally, I start with “Ladies and Gentlemen. Good afternoon”. But what if there were highnesses or excellences in the audience? I didn’t want an insulted and pissed excellency running after me. So, I started with the class-neutral “Good afternoon to all of you”. The rest was straight forward; I’ve done it many times before.

Tonight there was an “Arabian Nights” party, down on the beach of Doha. There were lots interesting dishes to taste (but no beer), and of course I had to swallow a camel. Well, I didn’t eat the whole camel, just a small piece of it, fried on the grill.

The camel tasted very much like pork, but don’t tell the muslims because then they don’t want to eat it anymore.

(I took the picture above in the conference center today. The huge spider is a very nice piece of art, made from bronze. The young lady in the lower right corner happened to pass by when I shot the picture. I can tell you that she had very pretty eyes. That’s all I know about her.)

Propaganda

I have a flight tomorrow morning at 6am. Terrible; I have to get up at 4.

I'm going to Qatar. Very interesting; it's my first visit to the Arab world (except a day on the beach in Tunis, which doesn't really count).

I'm going to a pretty big conference. It's not the first time. I've been to many conferences before, in Europe and America.

However, this time is special. BigOil (that's my company) has a stand in the exhibition hall, and then the propaganda department gets involved. They want BigOil to appear better and prettier than HugeOil and MonsterOil and DirtyOil and HorrorOil.

Some days ago I got a mail with various information, including this: Dresscode is black suit, white shirt and tie.

What the Hell; I never wear a tie, and I only have black shirts.

It's only the guys who work in finance and law who wear suit and tie at work. I'm working with technical stuff and science. We always dress like vagabonds.

So what should I do? I need to run to some store to buy a couple of white shirt. If they want me to wear a tie, they should give me one.

My presentation is next Tuesday. I have plenty of time to get properly dressed >:)

(I downloaded the picture above from the Internet. It's the famous national-romantic painting by Tiedemann and Gude. That's the way they want us to appear, I guess)