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

Qatar:

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!!

It’s actually a very serious question. First I’m going to explain the events that unfolded and it’ll be up to you to decide whether you would want to boycott Saqr or not.

I should mention that I have ALWAYS had such a great experience at Saqr. I found them to have reasonable prices and I was always able to find what I was looking for. (With some of their branches though, I found the staff to be unattentive.) I also truly did want to support a shop like Saqr. It was a great Qatari alternative to Virgin. These guys sell DVDs, BluRay, games, hardware, iPods, Blackberries, accessories, also some awesome limited edition stuff, AND quite a few branches around Qatar! Actually… before continuing, I’m 100% sure that if the owner of Saqr new of what was going on, he’d fire the upper management in a heart-beat.

So I entered into a Saqr branch 5 days ago to buy a Wii. I really wanted to use Wii Fit Plus but they had a US version of the game and my old Wii was a UK version. I spotted nicely bundled Wiis at various prices. So I ask the man why the Wii’s cost different. “This one is Korean and that one is US”, he says. Alright… so what’s the ‘difference’…. Nothing sir, just that one is from Korea, but they are all multi-region. Multi-region?! I thought, that’s fantastic. He warned me that they didn’t give out any warranty so I asked him to test out a UK and US game for me, and he did. “Can I update the Wii?” I asked. “Of course sir!”. I left with a game, some DVDs and smile.

When I got home, I played with it for a couple of days. After a hard-day’s work, playing a game for a bit helps me stop thinking about how I’m going to try and make Qatar a better place and stress involved with it. I decided that I wanted to access the Wii shop to see if there was something to buy online. “Update needed” the Wii commanded. Alrighty… I update it… the system blinks… the system restarts… the system greets me with a message… “Yay!-no wait…not yay…”. Error 303: Unauthorized Device.

Without a second thought, I go back to Saqr and meet some fresh new staff (the staff that were there last time weren’t on this night’s shift). Now the first guy I deal with is fantastic! He checks it out, asks a few trouble shooting questions, and then tries to comfort me and tells me that he needs to make a call to management. Next is the woman behind the register. She doesn’t look so happy. I ask her what’s going on and she explains that someone stole a couple of games and now the management are going to take the cost out of all of the staff’s pay.

I know right? How can they do that to their staff? It’s not like THEY stole it. We chat for a bit and we go back to the subject of the Wii, apparantly we have to wait for management because there was no warranty. “I know it doesn’t mean much, but the sign does say that”. “The sign doesn’t trump the law which states I have 14 days to return faulty goods, and it doesn’t excuse Saqr from selling me an illegal system, plus I didn’t use ANYTHING from the box except the Wii.”. She smiles in acknowledgement. I understand that she has to give it a go.

So I stand around for another 30 minutes while one by one, a different staff member gets on the phone. They’re all very nervous now because if they take back the Wii and because it’s faulty, THEY have to pay for it! I felt bad… I was on the verge of just buying another one, but why should I have to pay 1,000 QR out of my pocket right? Then I try to console them. I explain that they should report this to the Ministry of Labour. “They won’t do anything”, the woman says, “we’ve tried and nobody cares. Plus I can’t lose this job.”.

It really is a tough one, but what happens next really angers me. The manager on the phone tells the salesman that if he can RESELL the faulty Wii, he won’t need to pay for it… What?! The management wanted them to repackage it and sell it to someone who didn’t know better! Wouldn’t that person just come back to the store and ask for another one as well? They’re just delaying the inevitable. The guy’s eyes start to water and he says “Excuse me sir” and runs to the back office. This guy probably makes 1,500QR and they’re going to try and dock him 1,000QR for taking the unit back; what’s even MORE crazy is he wasn’t the one who sold it to me! He comes back and tries to sort everything out for me and brings me a nice new Wii. “Don’t worry sir, if they take it out of my salary, I’ll try to fix it and I’ll have something to play with!”, he tries to muster up a smile. I’m kind of in shock… Is this all an act… ?

So I suggest not telling the management anything in the future if that’s the way they act. “I can’t do that sir. It’s not right.”. I couldn’t believe it. There are three great employees in front of me, none wanting to do something illegal. They all want to do the right thing and they’re not appreciated…. So I gave them my business card and tell them that if they ever need any legal help, just to give me a call and leave.

I left the shop feeling sad and wasted one and a half hours. If this was in the UK or in Japan, it wouldn’t have been a problem. I’d be in and out. In this case,  Saqr sold an ILLEGAL Wii, docked their own employees for it and then wanted to resell it. Now… what would YOU do?

I hope that the owner of Saqr reads this one day. I really do want to support that place.

I’m very disappointed people… I work almost from the morning ’til night almost every day. It’s been very tiring -_-; However the day started with an awesome text message from my cousin. “Tekken 6 is out now! They released it early in Qatar before the rest of the world.”.

No way, I thought, Qatar… first…? I’m not complaining! So I rushed off to the store after work and bought it for 240 QR. Got home and was ready to play as my favourite Character Lei Wulong. My heart was torn out… they ruined the game… this is the SIXTH installment and they ruined it….

Now I’m a Street Fighter and Tekken Fan. When Tekken 5 came out they had already changed Lei’s moves a bit but I adapted easily, but with Tekken 6 they’ve near changed him into a completely different character. Circle, X then hold up used to do three triple acrobatic kicks in a row, now it’s Front, Circle, X, then keep tapping circle for example.

1) I don’t like the new menu
2) Most characters speeds have been changed (Lee is slower, Lei is slower, Bruce is faster, Gun Jack is TOO fast etc…)
3) Lei’s moves have changed! The essential buttons are no more… meaning I have to learn new combos
4) Theres a stupid new ‘Rage’ bar, that makes you stronger when you’re life is low meaning that a beginner can end up getting smashed, get rage, and then kill you…
5) Lei doesn’t kick people up high anymore for a combo unless you change your ground stance, which takes too long.
6) There are too many juggles
7) Seems like the only playable character is a Fat guy named Bob that moves faster than a ninja….
A stupid new character who’s head is a bomb, has jetpack wings, can shoot off her arms, and also eject a chainsaw…
9) The distance between characters is unmeasurable… you get hit even though the opponent doesn’t touch you ‘physically’….

I know I know, I usually talk about some important stuff… but this got to me… I hardly play games anymore but this was supposed to bring back memories

Here’s something funny (or perhaps not). I was driving from the Zig Zag off to work and there was this mini-van that was driving all over the place. No indicator. Going from the right lane to the left lane on the round-a-bout and back to the right (presumably because this person was either an idiot or did not have the ability to turn a steering wheel properly; those things are heavy!!).

It’s normal, we get people who don’t know how to drive everyday. (I wonder when the Police are going to start stopping people for using the slip lane or not indicating or not even staying in LANE correctly?) What got to me was that it was a Shafallah bus! On the side it said, ‘Special needs children’. For those who don’t know, Shafallah is one of the regions leading institutes for disabled or special needs children, it was set up by Sheikha Mozah and is definately something to be proud of. Seeing a driver not taking extra care in such a bus bothers me… I just had to post this… *sighs*

I’m on the phone right now.  Oh it’s alright I’m on hold again. I’ve been calling Qtel so that I can get them to sort out my Mobile Broadband.

Here’s a riddle, when is mobile broadband, not mobile broadband? Think about that one for a while. I waited on the phone for 15 minutes (my times are not exaggerated) until someone answered the phone. When I did get an answer, I explained that I was paying 400 QR for the unlimited package and had only downloaded around 6gb (in almost a month) and my internet speed was down to 800bytes (yes! 800 super fast bytes!). I was supposed to be getting 3g speeds 3.2mps. I wasn’t.

I couldn’t even stay connected to messenger without it disconnecting every few moments. I couldn’t even upload an image to change something on the website because it was taking so long.

So the guy tells me that he checked the system and everything is fine. What IS this ‘system’? QTel always talks about the ‘system’ like it’s some super omnipotent being…. “I don’t care what the system says, I’m telling you that it’s taking me 10 minutes to load up google.”. Alright sir, can you please check www.speedtest.qa ? (Qtel obviously thought ‘hey let’s set up a speedtest.net server and brand it). I did, it was telling me that my internet speed was 1mbit. NO FREAKING WAY. So I explain that it doesn’t make sense to test a server in Qatar, how many websites are in Qatar? Unless I’m going to be surfing Qtel.com.qa every day, it’s useless! I also found it strange that when I’m on the phone with the guy it gives me good speeds.

The guy explains that he can’t help me and that he’ll connect me to a technician. While on hold (for 10 minutes), I decide to re-run the speedtest. Guess what? 560ms ping and .08mpbs. Oh that’s more honest now. The phone is finally answered. It took me almost 10 minutes of repeating to explain to him that he’s reading me the manual for windows and that I was on a mac. Yep if you thought these guys were thinking, you’re wrong, they just flip to Chapter 9 “How to answer a question without knowing what’s going on.” and read it.

So the guy then tells me that I should try flipping to 2G. I don’t know how 2G is going to be faster than 3G but maybe he wants to test if it’s a 3G thing. Nope. Doesn’t work. So on minute 59 he tells me that today’s friday and that the network is being hammered. Wait what…? I ask him if every Friday was going to be like this and his response? “Was it like this last Friday”. I actually almost laughed a bit because his sarky response (I like sarcasm). “Alright, well I dont want to call back tomorrow and he says “it’s Saturday” and I call on Monday and he says “It’s September”.” So I ask the guy to put a note on the system so I don’t have to go over all of this again and again.

Problem? Solved? Nope. Just wasted an hour. Not like I have a life or anything right?

How long did my phone call last? 1 hour and 34 seconds.