I’m guessing that one of the things you’ve been wondering for a while is why there isn’t a detailed source for Cinema Timings / Schedule in Qatar? Well I wanted to ask you, besides the basics (like poster, dates, and times), what would you like an online cinema guide to include? Could it just be as simple as that? I’ll be sharing some sources soon so that you can get your Villaggio Cinema and City Center Cinema times.

I thought I’d make a list of tweeters to follow. Now this list is based on people’s tweets that I enjoy reading and I find useful. It’s important to follow people that you enjoy following and dont spam your feed with either garbage or repeat posts. I’m going to go ahead and divide them by category too.

People:

@expatcookie – Fun tweeter

@sknox40 – Fun tweeter

@qatarvisitor – Posts some great articles.

News:

@qatarnews - A news aggregator that collects news from many different sources on everything related to Qatar. Including The Pen, GT, Arabian Business, BBC, etc…

@dohanews – Not only does Dohanews post Qatar related news, but I enjoy reading interesting chit chat and its not all Press releases!

@peninsulaqatar – The Peninsula Newspaper’s twiter

Events:

@qatarevents – Your daily fix on events happening in Qatar

@qatarhappening - Qatar Happening magazine’s twitter feed. They cover a lot of dining events.

Qataris:

@hndqtr – Qatar’s first female Comedian

@nazqatar – Just enjoy reading his tweets from time to time

@osamaalassiry – A fellow Qatari geek

@iloveqatar – that’s me!

@nawafalthani – Always finding out some cool Qatar news from this guy

@roosnamla – A Qatari sports nut. He knows where the best sporting spots are

@ahmedalbaker – A Qatari movie producer that’s working on Qatar’s first 3D movie!

Misc:

@dohafilm – The Doha Film Institute’s twitter channel. DFI is the company responsible for the Tribeca Film Festival too.

@greatdohafind – The idea is that this person tweets ‘gems’ that he finds around Qatar.

Sorry if I’ve left you out. This is off the top of my head right now.

Want to get on the list? Leave a message in the comment section below!

Oh no he di’int. (Think of a woman named Laquisha saying that). I decided that since people seem to be under the impression that Qatari’s have a magical iPhone application that enables us to deport people with the touch of a button, then I might as well create a list of people that I wish I really could deport.

1) The guy in the right lane who decides to not just turn left at a round about, but also attempt a U-Turn. You know who you are Mr. crappy pick up truck or busted up Honda Civic.

2) The guy who says ‘next week’. You know the guy. He works in a small store, and when you walk in and ask if he’s got something, he says ‘Next week’, when he KNOWS he’s not getting them in next week. He just wants you to come by the store again. That’s like the equivelant of night clubs in the UK that build up a cue outside, even though nobody is inside!

3) Crappy customer care agents. Who promise to call you back soon and don’t. No I don’t mean they don’t call back soon. They never call back…. Never.

4) That guy who stares so hard that he either might have constipation OR thinks he’s superman and is trying to shoot lazer beams out of his eyes. Yeah Yeah, we live in a society where there is a 3/1 ratio of men to women, but common!! These dudes don’t just stare down women, they stare down everyone! I feel naked when they look at me

5) All those people who never smile or say thank you when you hold the door open for them. Although it was my life long dream to be a door opener, I never graduated from door opening school, so I never got the job… I open doors for free now. Well maybe not for free payment is a smile or thanks!

6) Lazy Traffic police. I think they didn’t get the memo. Traffic police aren’t supposed to CAUSE traffic. Why is that there’s always a super build up of traffic at a round about?

7) Roundabouts. While I’m dreaming. Let’s deport roundabouts. Bring over underpasses and bridges to keep traffic FLOWING.

Both insensitive and sensitive people when it comes to religion. Can’t handle people wearing a bikini at a beach? Don’t go to that beach. Think it’s funny that some people cover up a lot when they go to the beach? Then… *sighs*….

9) Guys with pointy shoes. You definately know who I’m talking about. They usually wear tight shirts, have greasy hair, and pointy shoes. Looking like you came straight out of Saturday Night Fever is NOT going to come back into fashion! Women like men that are clean and look fresh. Plus you might poke someone’s eye out with those shoes!

So who do YOU think should be deported?

You know, it’s quite sad that there are a lot of people who go and try to pass on that they’re scholars and educate people incorrectly. What gets to me even more is that these types of people don’t even bother to learn or have an open mind to understand.

To put things into context, Hadith is based on stories of the prophet and others where as ‘Aya’ is verse from the Quran. Only the Quran shows what is Haram (Taboo) and Halal (Good). Hadith shows what is Makrooh (not Haram but better if you stay away from it) and Mahboob (favoured). Now I’m no saint, but I’m always up for a good debate and I only discuss what I know.

You’ll see in the discussion below that this person things that he’s better than those born into Islam because he converted. I find myself reminded of Adolph Hitler.

Now read on below. The question is “Does a Muslim have to grow a beard?”

Click read more please… Read the rest of this entry »

I wanted to write this blog post in honor of Grahame Maher, CEO of Vodafone Qatar. I find that the best way to get my emotions out is by blogging it. Sadly he passed away last night by suffering from a corniary and stroke at the same time. Now this guy was healthier than I was. He ran marathons, went on tour de france style bike rides, and he was an amazingly positive person. So why did this happen? In Qatari, we don’t question why. We accept that this was written by God. It’s in his plan and with every action there’s some good reason. Grahame has left a legacy. Every single person in Vodafone feels for him.

Walking around the Vodafone halls you see people hugging, red eyes trying to focus on monitors, and people talking about what he did for them. Individually.

Grahame has been one of those that was a driving force behind what what me and the team at (iloveqatar) ILQ do. I wrote a post about my Grandmother as a reason for why ILQ exists. Well Grahame is another person who picked me up from when I had lost all hope in trying to change Qatar and gave me that extra push.

He spoke to me before he passed away. He said, “I’m so proud of you and Bassam (Al Ibrahim, my partner) and everything you are doing with iLoveQatar. Don’t let anyone stop you.” I wont. It’s a public promise now.

What’s he done? This is the guy that helped sponsor and support ILQ when we needed to support the community. When the Qatar volunteers society needed water, he gave them 8,000 bottles of water; when ILQ needed support with the small groups of people wanting to join different sporting events, he helped fund the entry fees; When we needed a booth to put up at the different fun events he made sure that was sorted; well, he basically managed to send ripples through society and help people. Even if they didn’t really know who did it.

The irony of it all was just yesterday we had a comedy festival. He was so excited to go, and had arranged for Vodafone support in under a week. Perhaps that was his gift to the people. A chance to get people from ALL nationalities under one roof. No boundaries. All laughing together. One final smile from Grahame.

So what can we do to respect him? Remember him as a guy who brought a lot of happiness to the people around him. Remember him as the guy who lead competition in the country. Remember him as the guy who helped connect you to friends and family. Remember him as visionary. or my favourite, remember him as just some guy who cared enough to make a world of difference to all the people of Qatar.

I’ve got some great news to share with everyone. MTV and Nickelodeon are ILQ’s new partners and supports. I got to know them in London after working on a number of different projects and meeting up with a few British people who wanted to help take ILQ’s vision to the next level! So we invited them over here to take a look at the developing nation that we call Qatar and to show them what we’ve been up to.

Besides being fantastic, positive and energetic people, they love what ILQ has been doing and support us all the way! So a very big thank you to these two networks and inshallah we’ll be able to bring some very fun and exciting stuff to Qatar.

Who’s excited?

Hey there all,

After a little bit of an issue someone had with ILQ, I just want to make things VERY clear. iLoveQatar.net cannot be bought and ILQ is an independent company that has one goal. To make Qatar a better place. A group of us simply want to bring back the old way of doing business in the country. With honor and trust. It’s all about partnership and helping each other achieve our own goals.

Now ILQ partners up with and takes sponsorship from ANY company in Qatar that wants to help ILQ make Qatar a better place. What are some of the things we do?

Well through our volunteers group (run by an awesome guy named Speed), where we partnered up with and joined hands with Qatar Living, RedBull, Sigma Paints, Barangay BQ, Vodafone, and others, we drove around Qatar on a hot Saturday morning and passed out bottles of cold water and caps to labourers in the streets! It was our way of showing appreciation to the people who break their backs to build Qatar!

With whatever ILQ can afford (yes we don’t have a huge budget despite the brand becoming popular and well known) we sponsor events and groups like Think Pink (breast cancer awareness campaign), Wear Something Yellow (anti-racism campaign), QAWS, Dogs in Doha, QPCA, and Doha Mums to name a few.

Is it all charity? No it’s not. We want Qatar to be a fun place, where all the people in Qatar can enjoy life here in their own way! So we sponsored and supported events like Tiesto, David Guetta, Montel Jordan, The Red Carpet, Glow, The Peppermint Experience, and even a national day event!

When we’re not doing something entertaining. We’re doing something for the community. We arrange social gatherings. Two of the big ones are ‘The Souq Seekers’ and ‘The Pearl Divers. This is to help people make friends get to know each other and for those that are new to the country, have a group of people that can make them feel comfortable.

Sometimes we’ll be approached by small groups of people that need some help so that they can enjoy life a bit more here. A group of  women needed sponsorship so that they could enter into the Expat Women’s Volleyball tournament and needed uniforms, ILQ was there and continuing the trend of supporting sports a group of young guys wanted to enter the Expat Basketball Tournament, ILQ was there to help them out as well!

Now the community is doing stuff for itself too! A great guy who’s alias is HPT on the forums started a FREE Tennis group (check out the forums for more), another forum member named TimeBandit started a Photographic society, another forum member named FlipFloper does designs and artwork for people, and the list goes on and on (I’m sorry that I can’t list all the wonderful people that are helping to make ILQ what it is today actually!!!)

We also pass out goodie bags at social gatherings. We can’t afford a lot but if it’ll make people happy and spread ILQ and its vision, we do our best to have some stuff ready. So what do you get in an ILQ goodie bag that we pass out at events? The bags were paid for by Dr. Hassan’s medical center so one side says ILQ and the other Dr. Hassan’s medical center, you get a bumper sticker that has the Vodafone speechmark and the ILQ logo (VF paid for that), you get some ILQ heat hearts and squishy balls (we paid for that), you get a speaker dock from Barzan Digital, and the list goes on.

So some people might think that Vodafone and ILQ are pretty close. Well it’s simple, they’ve always been there to support and sponsor the stuff we do around Qatar! If Qtel or Virgin for example wanted to help us we’d gladly work with them as well. In fact, we WANT to work with them.

So what’s the relationship with Vodafone? Well, they bought ads on the website. they paid for our booth, they paid for co-branded stickers, they paid for micro-sites whenever we had a fun idea like www.ramadan-mubarak.com and that sort of stuff.
Who are some of the other advertisers and partners? Global DJs, Starlink, Qatar Airways, Olympic Committee, ICTQatar, Lava, Urban Stars, LoveSac, Barzan Digital, King Koil, Arte Legno, and Dr. Hassan’s Medical center to name a few.

Dr. Hassan’s medical center wanted to spread health awareness amongst children so they gave us some coloring books which we distributed to kids (along with ILQ beach balls) when we supported the Pakistan Women’s Eid Bazaar.

We also tried to build a fantastic, friendly, online community that not only helps each other, but supports each other. Are you an expat and need information about the country that you’re planning on moving to or have just moved to? Well ILQ’s got a pretty nice and light guide too!

So who else wants to partner with us? Well we’re very excited that MTV and Nickelodeon support our vision. They’ve flown out to Qatar to not only see if they can help Qatar and the region develop but to also support our vision believe it or not! We’re VERY VERY proud of that.

So moral of the story? ILQ is loyal to Qatar and it’s various communities. If you are from a company that cares as much as we do, then please hold our hands. We need all the help we can get. Supporting us can be in the form of helping us with events and charitable causes, it can be in the form of placing an advert on the site (because we use the revenue generated off of ads to keep going), or you could even donate some cobranded goodies

So who’s in? or is ILQ a stupid idea? Am I just fighting a losing battle…..

I thought I’d a start a new thing where I bring all the online bloggers, posters, tweeters, and tubers in Qatar together under one roof. I haven’t figured out a name for this yet so if you’ve got an idea for a catchy name, post in the comments below.

So I’ve been seeing loads of tweets about this guy who has a Cheetah and decided to do a bit of digging around to see what I could find.

@shivasingh first tweeted: Dudes got a cheetah in his car!! #WTF #awesome and shared this picture. http://twitpic.com/2vefh5

I assumed it was probably just some Bedouinne guy who decided that he wanted his own cheetah. Maybe he wanted to take a nude self portrait of himself sitting on a bear skin carpet in front of the fireplace while stroking a cheetah, I really don’t know.

Then @rachelannmorris tweets a couple of photos of her own a week later. http://twitpic.com/2x8sxf and http://twitpic.com/2x8xfh

So is this just some stuffed cheetah and some guy’s ingenious method of getting people’s attention and then offering them massages? If so, that person has taking viral marketing to a whole new level.

Turns out though that there are loads of people with Cheetahs!

One tourist(?) and ‘Elite cyclist’ who races for Team Garmin, named Steven Cozza was visiting Qatar way back in February and blogged:

“Its just been one great adventure already. Just five minutes after leaving the hotel parking lot, I sensed something was looking at me. I turned to my left and there, sticking its head out of an SUV like a dog, was a full-grown cheetah. I was so excited because a cheetah is my favorite animal and here it was, just inches from my face. I was so bummed I didn’t have my camera.” A cheetah Drive by

On youtube, anasthvega, posted a video of one at a petrol station in some guys patrol. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaupWVsLgsk

On the 17th of July, the Peninsula posts this Cool Ride for Big Cat. Cheetah’s aren’t riding in cars anymore, they’re now on freaking jetboats! I don’t know why but I’m now thinking of a Saturday Night Live song called “I’m on a boat”

Now I have a few obvious questions…. 1) Do they bite? 2) Where can I get one?!

Well…. the Gulf Times posts that there are people breeding cheetahs since they’re becoming popular pets! Gulf-Time’s article via ILQ So I guess it means that you CAN go out and buy one… hmm…

In all seriousness though, this can’t be safe or legal right (in Qatar of course, as we’re aware that CITES says they’re endangered)?

I’ll leave you guys with a photo that Jasmir123 posted on Photobucket. Thundercats Go!

A couple of people asked me about this so I thought that it would be useful to share. Living in one of the hottest places in the world, rain is precious. It rains an average of twice a year and when it does the most beautiful desert flowers bloom out of nowhere.

To encourage rain, people pray Rain Prayers, Salat Al Istisqa. So where does it come from? Basically it came during a time when the Muslims were restless and decided to share the fact that they didn’t understand why it didn’t rain for them and that they were suffering through drout with the Prophet. So in simple terms, the Prophet explains that people haven’t been faithful enough to God and that if they want rain, they have to pray. So he does two rakat. (That’s the process of prayer whereby you kneel) and then some clouds formed and it rained.

The more people that pray for rain at the same time, the more likely it will be to rain as I understand.

So there you have it.