(I’ve gone ahead and used copy from my last post because a lot is still relevant from last week).

Everyone is talking about now discussing the stronger Qatar Quake that happened. Now it’s more of a sway than a Quake. Over at QSTP the feeling was quite smooth; this time it was like the table was gyrating in a circular motion (I’m thinking hoolahoops). Since it was the second time, I immediate knew it was… STOP!  tremor time (just a quick MC Hammer hat tip there). Everyone started to evacuate quickly. Good response time. This time there were additional rules, like not standing underneath any structures that could collapse. (nice!)

After evacuating the building, I got onto the Tweet machine to see who else felt it. Some thought they were dreaming, some felt nothing and thought it was a joke, and most people were surprised. (Yes, the same responses as last time).  Not many jokes about it this time. Either people were having a ‘oh no, this is actually a thing now’ moment OR they spent all their good jokes on the last tremor. People felt it in Bin Mahmoud, Westbay, Education City area, Old Salata, Airport Road, The Pearl, and other areas.

So what’s the deal? We didn’t really have an earthquake, it was just the aftershock from an Earthquake in Iran Pakistan border. Reports say that their earthquake was  7.8 in magnititude (last one was 6.4 in magnitude). It was felt in UAE and Bahrain too.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/16/earthquake-hits-iran-pakistan-border

So what happened in Qatar? I was actually happy to see so many people tweeting pics of buildings that were evacuated.
A few that did a great job taking this seriously were QSTP, Ministry of Defence, Qatar Airways, some buildings in the Pearl (yes only some took it seriously.), Al Mana Towers, ictQatar, and The Pearl itself restricted access into the location for a while.

I actually asked people to take note of whether or not their building did anything. You’ll know if you can trust them now or not. You’ll also know that you should put in a complaint to get the management to take things seriously.

It was a different feeling for different people. Some felt nothing, some said that it was quite extreme. Personally, I think that for most people that live here in Qatar and haven’t experienced an earthquake, their reactions might be slightly exaggerated. Having said that, if you were in higher floors in buildings, then you would have felt it much more than others (wider range of motion, albeit slower). That’s physics!

Let’s look at this from a positive perspective. Luckily, since this was a tiny little motion, perhaps it was a good thing. Perhaps this will show off the low quality buildings and highlight the ones that were constructed very well?
According to a friend working on Westbay projects, the towers all comply with Quake Code regulations. That’s a comfort.

Someone kindly tweeted a link to Earthquake Safety Measures. Thanks @neethatx.

Now, people said that it was a shock (no pun intended), since it was the first time ever that this happened. That’s not true.

In 1998 there was quite a shake up which caused a few pot holes to form.

On the 20th of July 2010 the Metreology department confirmed there was a slight tremor, but it was in the north east of the country and not many people felt it. Source

On the 18th of January 2011, there was a post on iCNN stating that a slight quake (most probably another aftershock) occured for 20 seconds. Source It was later confirmed that it was due to a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in Pakistan that caused the aftershock. Source

On the 9th of April 2012 there was an earthquake that hit Southern Iran and tremors were felt across Doha. Source.

So there you have it everyone. Stay calm when it happens, check out the quick guide of what to do above, make sure to tweet AFTER you’ve exited the building, and stay safe

Update: Another tremor felt in Doha on 16 April 2013. See here.

Everyone is talking about the Qatar Quake. Now it’s more of a sway than a Quake. Over at QSTP the feeling was quite smooth. Like a boat gently rocking. First thought was that someone was shaking their leg and causing the table to shake. Got annoyed for a moment. Looked around and saw everyone looking outside and we were immediately evacuated.

Funny, even the earthquakes are chilled out in Qatar.

After evacuating the building, I got onto the Tweet machine to see who else felt it. Some thought they were dreaming, some felt nothing and thought it was a joke, and most people were surprised. ‘No No, it’s not an earthquake, Qatar’s just trying to show the world how to do a proper Harlem Shake”. People felt it in Bin Mahmoud, Westbay, Education City area, Old Salata, Airport Road, The Pearl, and other areas.

So what’s the deal? We didn’t really have an earthquake, it was just the aftershock from an Earthquake in Southern Iran. Reports say that their earthquake was anything from 5.4 – 6.4 in magnitude. It was felt in UAE and Bahrain too.
Source: http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=311834

So what happened in Qatar? I was actually happy to see so many people tweeting pics of buildings that were evacuated.
A few that did a great job taking this seriously were QSTP, Ministry of Defence, Qatar Airways, some buildings in the Pearl (yes only some took it seriously. Sabban Tower management for example did nothing according to a tweet shared with us), Al Mana Towers, ictQatar, and The Pearl itself restricted access into the location for a while.

I actually asked people to take note of whether or not their building did anything. You’ll know if you can trust them now or not. You’ll also know that you should put in a complaint to get the management to take things seriously.

It was a different feeling for different people. Some felt nothing, some said that it was quite extreme. Personally, I think that for most people that live here in Qatar and haven’t experienced an earthquake, their reactions might be slightly exaggerated. Having said that, if you were in higher floors in buildings, then you would have felt it much more than others (wider range of motion, albeit slower). That’s physics!

Let’s look at this from a positive perspective. Luckily, since this was a tiny little motion, perhaps it was a good thing. Perhaps this will show off the low quality buildings and highlight the ones that were constructed very well?
According to a friend working on Westbay projects, the towers all comply with Quake Code regulations. That’s a comfort.

Someone kindly tweeted a link to Earthquake Safety Measures. Thanks @neethatx.

Now, people said that it was a shock (no pun intended), since it was the first time ever that this happened. That’s not true.

In 1998 there was quite a shake up which caused a few pot holes to form.

On the 20th of July 2010 the Metreology department confirmed there was a slight tremor, but it was in the north east of the country and not many people felt it. Source

On the 18th of January 2011, there was a post on iCNN stating that a slight quake (most probably another aftershock) occured for 20 seconds. Source It was later confirmed that it was due to a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in Pakistan that caused the aftershock. Source

So there you have it everyone. Stay calm when it happens, check out the quick guide of what to do above, make sure to tweet AFTER you’ve exited the building, and stay safe

Here’s an Qatari version of an Aesop Fable.

A Man and his son were once going with their Camel to the market at Souq Wagif. As they were walking along by its side a guy in a cruiser passed them and said: “You fools, you have a camel! What use is it if you don’t ride it?”
So the Man put the Boy on the Camel and they went on their way. But soon they passed a group of men sitting at a coffee shop, one of whom said: “See that lazy kid, he lets his father walk while he rides.”

So the Man ordered his Boy to get off, and got on himself. But they hadn’t gone far when they passed two women at a machboos stand, one of whom said to the other: “Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor little son trudge along.”

Well, the Man didn’t know what to do, but at last he took his Boy up before him on the Camel. By this time they had come to the town, and the passers-by began to jeer and point at them. The Man stopped and asked what they were scoffing at. The men said: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for overloading that poor camel of yours and your hulking son?”

The Man and Boy got off and tried to think what to do. They thought and they thought, till at last they cut down a pole, tied the Camel’s feet to it, and raised the pole and the camel to their shoulders. They went along amid the laughter of all who met them till they came to Market Bridge, when the Camel, getting one of his feet loose, kicked out and caused the Boy to drop his end of the pole. In the struggle the Camel fell over the bridge, and his fore-feet being tied together he was drowned.

“That will teach you,” said an old man who had followed them:

“Try to please all, and you will please none.”

Catch my monthly column in Qatar Happening magazine  

It’s December and everyone is either gearing up for the National Day festivities, planning for the holiday season, or excited to celebrate the new year. If you’re into fireworks and want to enjoy a time when everyone’s out in the streets with smiles from ear to ear, parades, fireworks, decorated cars (some beautiful and some that make you shudder), and more entertainment than you can handle, make sure to stick around here in Doha.

On 18 December 1878, Sheikh Jassem Bin Mohamed bin Thani succeeded his father as the ruler of Qatar. With that, Qatar became a country with a vision… a country that would find unity, grow rapidly, and reach towards extraordinary heights.  The people of Qatar have always been pushed to make their mark. Education is provided to all Qataris, the 2030 vision gives us a roadmap for our future, and role models like His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani lead by example.

I should really be focusing on the topic of National Day, but I’d like to talk about women. Oh yes. Women. Hard working. Sensitive.  Talented. Perhaps even driven by the fact they want to prove that they’re the future of Qatar.

It’s clear to me that a lot of women paid attention as Qatar grew. Thinking back to my experiences in the work place, I’ve seen women put in double the effort than many men do. They crave responsibilities, study harder, work harder, and take calculated risks. Even the best entrepreneur would envy their work ethic. Of course some would say that I’m generalizing, and I may well be, but remember that I can only talk about my experiences. Need some examples?

Well we’ve got an obvious example like Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Al Missned. An icon. Making a difference in Qatar AND the world when it comes to Education, humanitarian efforts and mixing that up with fashion trends of course. The message I take away from everything that she’s done is: life’s about leaving behind an enviable legacy of positive change.

Then there’s Aysha Al Mudhehki (and her team of course) that have done a fantastic job with Injaz. Did you know that in 5 years, they’ve reached 5,000 students by bringing together businesses, corporate volunteers, and educators to inspire young people to succeed? She then worked with Shareefa Fadhel to launch the Roudha, a women’s cener for entrepreneurship and innovation.

We also have Buthaina Al Ansari who was ranked 19th on the list of 100 most powerful Arab Women for 2012. She made a big impact for Qatarization at Al Rayan Investment AND founded Qatariat, a company that specializes in helping Qatari women advance in the workforce.

I’ve got to also mention, Maha Al Essa, who’s started her own design agency called 974 Design. An agency that, in my opinion, could compete with some of the biggest ones out there. I’d also like to add that she was my first direct report when I was on the online team at Vodafone. She went from someone with no experience, head first, into a new challenge and came out a star. I’m proud of that.

Many also know, Razan Suliman, who created Bylens Photography as a small startup that’s now turned into the biggest local stock photography company in the country.

I should also mention Ashlee Stratt from the Qatar Happening team who really has to be admired for her patience (especially when she’s following up with me on my articles; sorry!) especially since she’s an editor with a million deadlines!

I then see others like Layla Dorani (who has a fantastic start up idea by the way called RAW ME), Shabina Khatri (the female side of the masterminds behind Doha News), Shaikha Al Mudahka and her team (who are putting together the future generation of designers in Qatar with Dress to Impress), and my list goes on.  Yes not all of the people I’ve mentioned are Qataris, but they’re women. Women in Qatar. Women who are making a difference in Qatar.

I wouldn’t be able to list all of the amazing women who are making an impact (and I apologize to anyone who feels left out), but trust me when I say that I admire all your efforts. When I attended and spoke at the Women Leading Change event (organized by Rachel Petero and her team), I was awed. Oh and I promise that when I was speaking on stage, I was shivering because it was cold, not because there were so many strong women staring at me.

Did you know that the majority of top students and graduates are female?

Did you know that they’re better at multi-tasking? I pride myself on being able to focus. You know what’s better than focus? Being able to focus on everything. and STILL getting it all done.

Did you know that there is a steady rise of female managers and executives?

These ladies are stepping it up and I’m worried that many of us guys are going to be left in the dark, especially since they are that figurative light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to Qatar’s future.

Inshallah my daughters, when I have children one day, can be half the women that these amazing people are.

So what do you say ladies? Care to make my prediction come true? We’re still in 2012 and I think I’ve only just seen the beginning. 2013; The year of women in Qatar.

Thoughts?

That’s nice of Marhaba Magazine, they were very complimentary. If I was a blusher, I would have blushed

You can read it here: The elusive Mr Q from iLoveQatar

In case you missed it a few days ago, here’s Qatar’s first iPhone 5 unboxing video

So great (or disappointing depending in your perspective) news for the weekend. Villaggio mall is open (or is opening).

@fzaghmout and @queensara33 tipped us that the mall was open. Now I was skeptical. Last time mall management told us that it was opening, they didn’t. I learned that they were always hopeful rather than realistic.

ILQ’s friends, @dohanews, posted that the mall was open after hearing from Villaggio, however I needed a bit more than the managements word. The expression #burnmeonce comes to mind. Havent been to DohaNews? Check them out, they’re awesome.

So asked on twitter and @hamishfs confirmed that he was in the mall itself but very few stores were open.

On our Facebook pages, we were told that people weren’t allowed in because of fired drills and civil defense testing not finished. So people were told to exit.

Extra thanks to @azmiodeh and @haniarif for getting back to me.

Update: now I’m told that people are allowed in. Who’s going to take the first smiley pic in the mall and send it over? :p

Update2: The fire victims families have issued a public letter, read it here.

So I thought of this around 2 years ago but I finally decided to share this concept. I should probably patent it, but oh well, I can’t keep this great idea a secret from the world. (Note: If you’re a major company and want to take this idea, I’m easy to please!).

Basically take a tablet device with two layers. One is a typical LCD/OLED/Color display. The second layer is e-ink with a transparent background. When you want to use your iPad (for example) as a normal tablet device, the e-ink layer would be switched off and since it’s transparent, it would look like you’re using a normal iPad. When it’s time to read a book, the LCD would switch off and the e-ink layer would switch on giving you that nice ‘paper’ looking screen.

This would make reading better, save a great deal on battery, reduce eye-strain, and potential to use the LCD backlight as a backlight for the e-ink screen for night reading.

Anyway, just something that’s always been in my mind.

A collegue shared an interesting fact with me today. Qatar’s exact Pantone is 222c. I decided that I wanted to find the exact shade and dived online.

Officially known in the color world as Qatar Red (not Maroon!), it’s quite a hard color to print.

It took me a whole hour to replicate the exact shade of 222c (since versions on the web were inaccurate, photoshop’s color profiles kept messing with shades, etc..).

For those interested. Best thing to do is shift to ‘LAB’ instead of RGB, keep it at 8bit, and then go through the swatch (and make a few adjustments using the color picker.)

I also put together the HEX code and RGB corresponding code in case someone wants to match it themselves

Here you go!

Qatar’s a new country. You probably already knew that, but I wanted to put things into perspective for everyone. Only 25 years ago, there wasn’t much in Qatar. Some guide books even went as far as calling Doha the most boring city in the world. There weren’t many shopping areas to go to, everything was much more… flat, and there weren’t any traffic problems either.

The education system was lacking, not many people wanted to come visit Qatar (if they knew where the country was), and the internet was probably a few years behind neighbouring countries (you know that I love my precious internet).

That’s not to say that things we’re terrible; not at all. Communities were more tight nit, families visited each other much more often, people were much more humble, and everything wasn’t as fast paced; you could say that of any developing country.

This is a picture of the old Souq.

Here’s a photo of the corniche area probably 12 years ago

Here’s Westbay around 7-8 years ago

Qatar’s used to be a pearl-fishing country up until the 1940′s when large oil and gas fields were discovered. To date, many still think of Qatar as an oil-rich nation, but a majority of the country’s wealth comes from Liquified Natural Gas. It was only in 1971 that Qatar declared independence, 1999 that women were allowed to vote, and 2005 that our constitution went into effect. Next year, in 2013, we’re going to have our first national legislative elections. I’m not exaggerating when I say that you’re in Qatar at a great time. You’re witnessing a huge change in Qatar and a dramatic re-birth in the Middle East.

People seem to forget that Qatar is quite a young country. Although we’ve got skyscrapers, world renowned universities, and the extremely popular Al Jazeera; Qatar is still a developing nation.

Society, people’s mentalities, and the physical landscape is changing. It’s like having a culture shock in your own country. That’s why a lot of Qataris wonder how this change is going to affect our culture and traditions. I often talk about how great it is that there are so many different nationalities here in Qatar. It reminds me of the story of the ancient cross-roads between the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. Different people with their own ideologies, educational background, and opinions all coming together and sharing. It’s a great opportunity for Qataris to learn and take on a new perspective. With that though, there are obviously those that are worried about the ‘negative’ influence on a small population. I put the word negative between quotation marks because it’s all a matter of personal opinion of course. To some, it could be something as simple as the youth adopting more westernized fashion for example.

Just as Qataris may have some concerns, there’s a great number of fantastic projects to look forward to. The opening of the New Doha International Airport, Katara, Lusail City, the completion of The Pearl, Msheireb project, the state of the art Industrial Zone, the development of Wakra and Al Khor, the Space City Project, Energy City Project, and Education City are a few of the amazing developments I could think of off the top of my mind.

Besides the great projects, there are also some fantastic focuses on culture, art, entertainment, sport, and education. Let’s think about this for a second. We’re going from hardly anything to working towards having everything with a majority of the development happening in the past 10 years! That’s astonishing don’t you think?

The great thing is that we’ve got the national vision 2030. If you haven’t read it, please do. Here’s a link to it. It’s like a roadmap to what the country is striving to turn into. It’s shaped around 4 pillars; Human Development, focusing on education, healthcare and justice; Social Development, which ensures social care and protection, being actively involved in the region, and contributing towards international peace; Economic Development, which explores reasonable exploitation of oil and gas, economic diversification, and encouraging SMEs; and Environmental Development, where there is a focus on protecting and promoting a greener nation.

I’m looking forward to seeing what that the next 5 years (yep I’m confident a lot will change in 5) will have in store for us. I find myself thinking of that famous quote, “you can’t fight progress’.