Well this was a shocker! Qtel not only goes and filters google images and ‘Age restricted’ videos on youtube, but they now block based on keywords (They force the strict safe search!)
I wanted to watch a review of the ‘Nude’ case for the iPhone 4 and got this lovely message.
*sighs*
Click to enlarge
It’s time to bust a few myths. I’m so sick and tired of expats assuming that qataris are all rich clones.
Few things I always hear, “oh but Qataris get so many benefits”, or “qataris have super high salaries”.
Where do people get these facts? Did they just see a couple of Al Fardans or Al Thanis and assume that we are all of the same economical background?
40% of Qataris can be considered to be in extreme debt. This means that 80%+ goes towards repaying loans. Why don they have loans? 1) because they try to keep up the image of being as rich as the 5% of the actually rich population. Or 2) they don’t really have the salaries that expats think.
Graduates start off with a salary of 15k depending on the job. Those without a degree have salaries as low as 5k.
15k sounds pretty good right? Well then you haven’t lived in Qatar. Half your salary goes straight to accommodation, a huge amount to support family, another huge amount to bills (qtel comes to mind as a wallet sucker) and the list goes on.
Oh but what about the land? Free utilities? The salary you get from the government? You get the land after you graduate and get a degree. You are placed on a waiting list. You can’t choose where the land is. You can’t build and sell the property because its not yours until they say it is, yep the government can take it away.
Utilities? I get free water and electricity (capped) once I get married. If I’m single then no. How much do I save? Nothing because I’m not married yet and pay bills, but once I do, I’ll save 300 qr.
Free salary???? Are people insane? No Qatari gets a free salary, unless they’re from the royal family or something. We have a pensions system though just like the UK or US.
What about the education system, its so cheap for qataris! When I was in UK my tuition cost 10k and i’m talking pounds! British students paid 1,300. Countries took care of their citizens. I got that.
What about the almost free medical system? Guess what! Mexico has a better health care system than the US and medicine is dirt cheap too!
Let’s put this all together now.
Ok I graduated and got a job. Let’s say that its 18k a month. I live in my family’s house to save some cash. I decide to get married finally. I go to my love’s family and I’m asked where I’m going to house her. Oh… Um well Ill get an apartment. It’s not the norm but lets say they agree. I put her in a fully furnished apartment in ZigZag which costs 8k. Alright got 10k left. Now I have to give my wife her monthly salary. It’s 2k. Ok got 8k left. Now it’s time to pay bills. Phone, Internet, petrol, installments for a car, and a bit here and there. Let’s assume it’s 4k. Ok I have 4k left to cover groceries, home insurance, some entertainment, general shopping, etc…
Do you see where I’m going here? In this scenario, life is pretty ok isn’t it? But have I demonstrated that I’m a rich Qatari? It’s all relative. (I’m still quite a lucky person in life to be born a Qatari of course. Something I definitely appreciate).
Seems to me that people should be going back to their awesome democratic countries and demand more from their governments than getting all anal about how ‘great’ a Qataris life is.
So at the end of the day, separate fact from fiction. I’m off to bed under my silk sheets. Oh need to brush my teeth with my diamond encrusted toothbrush first.
Night night.
Oh Apple why do you do this to me? Where’s the company that inspired us all to ‘Think Different’. If an Apple employee ever reads this, shrugs, and says “Yeah right”; it’ll be a true tragedy.
So I had ordered some iPads from the US store to be sent back home to me here in Doha. Most stores don’t send internationally, so Aramex’s Shop&Ship’s service comes in handy. For those that don’t know Aramex, it’s basically the Arabian FedEx, but more importantly, it’s our link to the West’s fantastic world of shopping.
What Shop&Ship gives you is a US and UK address so that you can order stuff online, send it to your new address and they’ll forward it off to you.
Sadly though! After ordering everything for the Apple store, I just received an email telling me that they don’t ship to P.O.Boxes OR Forwarders. They also told me that I had a day to change the address or the order would be cancelled. What’s more, they’re enforcing a ‘two per person’ policy.
*sighs* why oh why.
Anyway, so I posted on twitter and facebook that I needed a US address and luckily I had 9 people offer to help out. (Thanks everyone!) but the point is, I’m almost tempted to just cancel my order and give up on Apple…
*twiddles thumbs*
Edit: Want an iPad shipped to Qatar or anywhere?! Visit www.shipmypad.com and grab an iPad. (It’s around 1,000 QR cheaper than most shops in Qatar.
Yesterday was an usual day. While driving from the underpass that leads onto Rainbow roundabout, a car came speeding behind me (I was already going 87 and at the rate he was going I had decided to accelerate to move to the right).
I hit 100 and he was still coming up behind me. By now I could see it was some tiny hatch-back. He got so close to me (bumper to bumper) that I breaked to get him to back off. When he did, I moved over to the right hand lane and looked into his car.
He was a police man. In fact, he looked like a traffic police man. ‘Oh reeeeeeaally?’ I thought. So I opened my window and he did too (we were both driving around 60 now and talking).
‘What do you think you’re doing putting my life at risk?’
‘What?’ he says.
‘Why are you speeding! It’s dangerous.’, I scream back.
‘YOU were speeding’, he replies. It’s obvious he’s trying to cover himself now.
‘Only to avoid being rammed into by you!’
He grins and by then I take it he’s just another idiot on the road, (except sadly he’s also shaming his uniform), so I raise the window and he shoots off.
*sighs*
update: just to be clear, this road was an 80km road and the person coming up behind me had just passed a camera.
You know, sometimes I just don’t understand why there isn’t much thought or heart that goes into projects, especially multi-million dollar projects. Let’s look at the Zig Zag tower. I own 4 apartments in this project. Why did I invest? For a few reasons. I loved the design. It’s a unique building (the world’s tallest leaning residential structure), the views were beautiful, and the location was perfect (close to westbay and the pearl, but out of the way of traffic). Sadly it seems as though that’s the only reason to like it.
We’re now in 2010 and I’m still waiting on it to be finished. I’m going to list a few things that piss me off.
1) The garbage chute room is disgusting. I had to complain directly to Dar because some workers kept using it as a toilet and pissing on the floor! Why the hell would they piss on the floor?! It was cleaned but its filthy again and to be honest, even if it was clean, it still looks ugly. (Cement floor, peeling walls, dents in the metal chute).
2) The underground parking looks like a war zone! There are leaks all over the place, it’s dirty, there’s garbage on the floors, cracks all over, holes in the floor, the parking spaces are cramped, and three out of the four entrances are STILL closed….
3) They made us PAY for a parking spot. Does that make sense? The government should have FORCED them to give us one. The parking spots were 50,000 QR, it’s not like someone would own a place (or even rent) and not have a car in Qatar.
4) I’m still waiting for them to finish fixing issues with one of the apartments.
5) The building gym is smaller than my living room. The equipment is old and useless. It’s not a gym, more like a locker room!
6) I’m tired of smelling the neighbours food through the vents.
7) The quality of fixtures and tiles is poor. The marble floor is made of the cheapest marble money can buy.
The hallways look like a 20 year old hospital’s hallway.
9) The damn fire alarms go off 2 times a day for no reason! (Dar says “There’s an apartment with 12 indians living in it and they cook with fire”) What?! It’s against the law to have so many people in there and I DOUBT they’re cooking 24 hours a day!
10) Two to three elevators are always down for maintanence. TWO of them had a sign saying “Down for maintanence due to water leakage on electricity” FOR TWO MONTHS NOW! (It’s also scary that there’s water leaking into the electricity of the elevator.
11) The elevators were advertised as ‘high speed elevators’. They ‘were’ fast… now it looks like they’ve turned down the speed because it’s sooooo slow….
I ended up renovating my apartments so that they’d be at the level I had expected them to be.
Now there’s a few things to talk about besides what I mentioned.
1) Shouldn’t the government get involved to make sure this project is perfect? Why you may ask? Well if this is the first major residential project, if it’s a peice of crap, then won’t investors lose confidence in the quality of other projects?
2) Doesn’t the owner of the project care? If MY name was on it, I’d like people to know they can trust me; I’d like people to know that MY projects were all about quality.
3) Does the company that owns the project REALLY need to cut corners? I feel like the tower is already 10 years old!
I can go on and on… I’ll save my breath for later…
I’ll end this with saying that Zig means ‘to poo’ in Arabic. Zag means ‘Poo’ed’ in arabic. I’ll leave you to think of another word for Zig Zag.
Well I’m back! I wonder how many people missed my posts!
I have to admit that HongKong wasn’t as great as people made it out to be. I had a number of issues; a few of which were poor service and rudeness in shops. (I met some wonderful people too of course).
I had passed by Macau as well and stayed at the Wynn and to make a long story short, the lock in my room didn’t work, they had to fix the lock, the lock’s problem turned out to be bigger than they thought, I had to change my room, the room I was changed to was smaller, the lights stopped working at night, the ‘Tree of propserity” (which is one of the reasons I booked the Wynn), was down for maintanence, staff in the hotel were amazingly rude, and all I got at first was an apology and a bowl of fruit (two apples, an orange, a banana, and a guava….).
I told them that an apology means nothing and that I was going to write a letter to the management in US. After going out and coming back in, service was tremendously great… I was upgraded to an apartment suite, and even the managers carried my bags…. I was grateful… but still….
Having been upgraded on the final night pissed me off since all I got to enjoy was… well nothing much really since I went straight to bed.
HOWEVER, I have to say that the best hotel I’ve ever stayed in in my life is called The Mira. It’s amazing. Staff are fantastic and the design is gorgeous. It’s like the W Hotel, but it’s more stylish and you feel more personal. The staff go out of their way to make you feel at home. I wish we had a Mira in Qatar.
Anyway, going back go to Hong Kong. I had wanted to view some great fireworks and enjoy the new years, but sadly Hong Kong isn’t the place to go for new years. They don’t really have that much going on despite what some sites say. I’ve had first had experience (and so did a few others last year), and it’s nothing special. There are three places that have anything going on 1) The Harbour 2) TImes Square, and 3) Some park I forgot the name of.
The place to see fireworks is the harbour, so I went there to check it out. So I went ‘two hours’ in advance to get a good spot and the roads were already packed. As I was trying to pass through a mall entrance, staff stopped me and told me that I needed tickets… I asked how much and he told me $1,500. What?! No way! Then he told me they were sold out. “Screw that” I thought, and I decided to take another route. I asked a police man (from the many police there creating blockades) what was going to happen. He mentioned there would be a fireworks show that goes on for 4 minutes…..
Wait… 4 minutes… $1,500 dollars for 4 minutes. When I asked if I could go through, he said no because people have to pay. I was disappointed that it seemed that new years in HK was only for those willing to throw away money. New Years should be for everyone to rejoice…
“Screw that”, I thought again, I’m going to find another view since I don’t need to be so close to see the fireworks. Nope…. I was wrong.. Police had blocked every area where people could get a view of the fireworks. The streets were packed and full. It was an amazing sight. However many of them were very angry and I was worried for a moment there would be some sort of rebellion.
My lesson? HK is the last place to go for a New Year in Asia… 
All in all though, I had a good time.
So what’s new? Somewhere on the exponentially growing world wide web, a site has pissed off someone. Also not suprising, there’s a rude post on QatarLiving.
I first saw this on the front page of The Peninsula:
“Disparaging remarks about National Day celebrations on a popular local website have upset many in the local community, says a young national.
Some remarks against the festivities and the people of Qatar as well as Asian expatriates were in bad taste and smack of racism, said Mohamed Al Jufairi, a civil engineer.
“We are quite upset and writing to some major corporations which advertise on this website to withdraw their patronage,” he told this newspaper in a brief interview yesterday.”
Looking on Twitter, I’d estimate that I’d had around 70% against QL and 30% for QL. I jumped onto a couple of other sites to see what people had to say. Global Voices wrote a great article on this http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/12/21/qatar-critiques-bristle-calls-to-shut-down-popular-online-forum/
What’s my opinion on this? My opinion varies. With QL it’s a love/hate relationship. I’m 100% for freedom of speech and tolerance. Having said that, people should be educated enough to share their opinions in a proper manner to encourage debate. I’m usually on their forums trying to provide a different perspective on things, and I can honestly say that there are many threads which infuriate me; I won’t go into detail as that’s not the purpose.
The thread itself made it seem like Qataris were animals on National day and I agree with a lot of other people’s retorts. In Brazil you have topless celebrations, in Spain you have that Bull race and tomato fight, in San Francisco you have MardiGras, and the list goes on! National Day in Qatar is a day where people let go and had fun; Qatar doesn’t have very many celebrations for everyone (don’t forget we only got National Day 2 years ago!). Yes it’s true that there were some people taking it to the extremes and I also didn’t like the fact that I saw some children hanging off the edge of a cruiser at high speeds, but to make it seem like all Qataris were like that is wrong.
QL, like ILQ, is the gateway to Qatar for many expats, so as ‘ambassadors’, (I think that word is suitable), the way we go about conveying a message is important.
“I hate you”. <— that’s an example of flame bait
“I disagree with what you’ve said because I think that ….” <— That encourage debate.
A lot of people have said “Look, the thread is deleted now”. I’m sorry but personally, I think that it’s a bit too late. You can’t delete a thread just because it’s now getting negative attention. You either stick by what you’ve done, or you should have moderated it ages ago.
So what’s my wish? That QL gets proper moderation and works with other sites to help support alternative views. It’s not about ‘who’s site is bigger’ or ‘who causes the most controversy’, it’s about creating a network of views. What users need to remember is that people are free, they’re free to bookmark a million sites related to Qatar, and it’s up to people to know when to use proper judgement.
I just wanted to talk about something which doesn’t make sense to me. Qatar’s making some great strides towards getting rid of monopolies and improving the country through competition. One ‘exclusivity’ doesn’t make sense to me; QMedia. I’m not sure why they have the exclusivity / monopoly, I assume its because they were the first and only and there weren’t others that were keen on entering into such a business.
JCDecaux’s website says
q.media Decaux, a joint venture between JCDecaux and Qatar’s media market leader q.media, enjoys the exclusivity for the entire outdoor advertising network in Doha. q.media Decaux also manages exclusively the advertising on a fleet of 1,450 buses and 800 taxis in this capital city.
How can one company that has exclusivity to outdoor marketing possibly be good for businesses? I remember just being excited at the fact that I wanted to bring some new display technology to Qatar and just try and take advertising to the next level. I loved what I saw in Tokyo and Shanghai. When I went to the authorities, they simply said that I wasn’t allowed to start that business because QMedia had the only rights… I don’t get it… the country is encouraging it’s youth to try and start businesses but when they actually have an interest, we’re shown that we can’t do anything because of a monopoly. It’s sad… I wonder when this next hurdle will be passed in the progression of Qatar.
Here’s something interesting. I never really paid attention to this because I’ve never had to switch the feature off. Qtel forces google’s ‘safesearch’ feature to be switched on so that it’s always stuck on ‘On’ or ‘Strict’.
Whether you go into your preferences and switch it of or not, it’s always stuck on strict.
Guess Qtel didn’t want people using Google Images for the wrong reason and looking at tiny thumbnails of the wrong thing. *rolls eyes*
On a side note, ictQatar, the countries regulator has said that they have nothing to do with censorship. In fact if we look deeper into legislation, censorship goes again legislation and online media freedom.
One of the things I hate about Qtel’s ADSL is the fact that they give you the most crappiest router in the world. When I first saw it I was pretty happy at the fact that it matched my Apple stuff. White and grey. Nice.
Sadly, it’s just a pretty face! It keeps disconnecting and reconnecting whenever it feels like it. NO, it’s not limited to my router. The office router had the same issue (was fine after I replaced it with a Netgear), my father’s has the same problem, my cousin has the same problem. I love my 8mb connection, but what’s the use of a great a connection when you keep getting kicked off of it!
QTEL GIVE US BETTER ROUTERS!!
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