I wanted to give you all a reminder on something fun we’re partnering with Luminescence events to put together. You’ve probably already seen all the tweets, posts, listings, and all that fun stuff, but since we’re getting so close to the event, it’s about time that we brought this back to the top of people’s minds.

There’s a lot of serious stuff in the world, so when Luminescence events told us they had this great idea, we had to be a part of it. It’s a chance for all of us to feel youthful again AND break a world record while we’re at it! It’s an attempt to break the world record for the largest game of Hide & Seek and it’s at Katara too! Isn’t that great? So come on down, and join us! Shout outs go to all the sponsors and partners including Katara, Qatar Red Crescent, and Stenden!

Hide & Seek Twitter
Hide & Seek Facebook
Event Listing on ILQ 

It’s not really difficult to explain why I do what I do. I Love Qatar was always meant to be a vehicle to help show people that Qataris care. It’s easy to get a Qatari to love Qatar, so I wanted to get expats to love Qatar. The strategy is quite simple. 1) Support the local community and help charities. 2) Build a reputation based on giving the people a voice. 3) Show people what your true purpose is. (In this case, it’s to make Qatar a better place).

One of the biggest signs of respect in our culture is to kiss someone on their head. I’d kiss my grand parents or my parents for example. I’d also kiss the Emir on his head. I genuinly feel like he cares about his people. More than that, he cares about the future of the Middle East. He’s taken a lot of burden on his shoulders by trying to promote peace in the region. Qatar helped Lebanon. Darfur. Libya. The list goes on. So as a good citizen, no scratch that, as a greatful citizen, shouldn’t it be everyone’s duty to help lift the boulder of responsibility off of his shoulders? Shouldn’t we at least try to remove some of that pressure by helping to make Qatar the best country that it can be?

Some people know it and some people don’t, but ILQ uses profit generated to give back to the community. Loads of people from ILQ’s community group together to support causes like the Animal Welfare Society, Think Pink, Wear Something Yellow, Beat the Heat, World Environment Day, and the list goes on. That in itself is something to be proud of.

With everything that I do, I want to make my parents proud, I want to make my future children proud, and of course I want to make the Emir proud.

I’m seeing more and more young Qataris stand up and try to help shape Qatari their own way. Whether they’re focusing on charitable causes, focusing on entrepreneurship, or even focusing on helping other fellow Qataris be all that they can be.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m probably not going to change the world, so I’ll give making Qatar a better place a go.

I guess I should have posted this a while ago but I’m currently away for a bit of a vacation. Chilaxing in Japan at the moment. So far I’ve been to Osaka’s Universal Studios for the New Year count down, Gifu for snowboarding and now I’m hanging out in Nagoya. In a few days I’m going to be heading off to Tokyo!

I’ve decided to try out Vlogging and hopefully you’ll like it! If you do, I’ll keep going! Oh and don’t forget to visit the ILQ YouTube channel as well as Facebook page. The team and I have added some great stuff!

Oh! Almost forgot, yes the rumors are true the Intercontinental, Alive and ILQ are partnering up to bring over James Blunt on February!
There’s loads more to share but I need to cut it short!

Ma3asalama!

This great video was but together by Abdulla Al Ansari. This comes at a great time (around National Day). These students put together this great look at how Qatar has changed (for better or worse).
Visit his site at http://www.qatarthefuture.com

Qatar is building on celebrations year on year. There are a number of huge milestones and events that have lead up to this as well. Look at the launch of the Museum of Islamic Art, The Media Expo, Qatar Media Freedom Center, the involvement in Philipines resolutions, advancement in Human Rights, the launch of other huge developments for example, winning the World Cup, and the list goes on. Qatar’s definitely in the spotlight and Doha will continue to shine bright as long as changes keep happening.

So whether you’re Qatari, American, British, Indian, Philipino, Japanese, Chinese or any other nationality, and let’s face it, Qatar is a melting pot of diversity, please celebrate National Day with us! Let happiness run through you like a rush of energy. Here’s a thought to make you smile. Think of each firework that goes off on December 18 as the sound of the country’s heartbeat.

One common question I’m asked is how is it that Qatar changed National Day’s date? It never changed. They’re thinking of Independence day, which is on the 3rd of September. Here’s some more info on National day (from QatarNationalDay.qa)

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 toward ever higher heights.

National Day, also known as Founder’s Day, celebrates the rise of Sheikh Jassem as the father and founder of the State of Qatar. And yet this holiday is a mere two years old: it was founded in 2007 to give people an occasion to honour the history and identity of their country, and to commemorate those who have worked and continue to work to make Qatar a great nation.

The 18th of December is a special day – a day of unity for the people of Qatar. We want you to be a part of it!

Have you checked it out yet? No? Then check it out habayeb (that’s multiple of habeebee). http://www.youtube.com/iluvqatar

Since launching it, it’s reached almost 230,000 views, but the really cool thing is that we’re getting some awesome community submissions! I really do want to see more vloggers, animators, comedy, anything really, on YouTube. Here are a few of the latest submissions:

Follow Maryam Al Naemi on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MBA_AlN3aimiFollow FilmForChange on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/filmforchange
Follow Alex on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/alexklimHave a great Qatari related video you want to share with everyone? Let us know! Just send an email to contact -at- iloveqatar.net

For the past three years (well this is the third year) we’ve put together a very special National Day event site. It started in the end of 2008 (when we officially started working on iLoveQatar) and then we got the support from Vodafone to turn the experience into something prettier. I didn’t want to simply give people an events listing page and figured that with all the traffic going to the site (last year we had around 20,000 unique visitors in around 10 days) we should be doing something helpful!

So we started promoting Qatari talent. In 2009 we promoted Rayana, an amazingly talented singer. A small girl with a big voice. In 2010 we promoted Moh’d Kamal, Qatar’s first Qatari stand up comedian. This year we’re promoting a bunch of Qatari cartoonists, each with their own style! So far we’ve got @fatoomworld @wse7en @iba7r and @mana_qtr . Many of them contribute to www.qartoon.org

So if you’re looking for some quick info on what National Day is all about, a great events guide, and want to check out some great Qatari talent, then check out www.qatarnationalday.qa (yep we’ll be using that domain from now on so bookmark it!). Oh and guess what? You’ve got a chance to also win 10,000 QR from Vodafone! Head on over to the National Day and click on the competition tab to find out more

See also:

A day to be proud of

Qatar National Day 2010 is coming!

I had to share this.. Al Sadd is doing so well! As many may know, Al Sadd won the AFC Champions League. That’s kind of a big deal. They won it in time to get in the latest editions of football video games like FIFA 2011 and Winning Eleven! Check this picture out.

Anyway, Al Sadd recently won 2-1 over Tunisia’s Esperance at the Club World Cup today to set up a dream semi-final against European kings Barcelona. That’s awesome! It’s Al Sadd vs Qatar Foundation’s Barca.

Barca take on Al Sadd on December 15 in Yokohama with the final of the seven-team tournament at the same venue three days later.

Al Sadd Sports Club Profile:

The past
One of the oldest football clubs in Qatar, Al Sadd is the only team from the small Gulf nation to have won the AFC Champions League, a feat it first achieved in 1989 when the competition was known as the Asian Club Championship. The Doha-based giants have a local pedigree to match, with over 30 domestic titles to their name.

The present
Some 22 years after their first continental triumph, Al Sadd made a dramatic return to the top of Asian football when they were crowned 2011 AFC Champions League victors courtesy of a skilfully selected blend of experienced veterans and talented youngsters.

So whether you know the team or not, I hope you can show some support!

 Update: We lost against them in the match in Japan, but we’re all still proud that a small team could get so far

This isn’t really a topic that’s of super importance. It’s not like there aren’t better things to talk about, but I just wanted to share my views on the new license plates.

The reason we’re told that the plates have changed is because of an agreement that the GCC had to unify the look of the plates. Sadly, I don’t really see that because the only thing that’s similar is that they’re now in English. The overall design varies greatly from GCC country to country.

Now let’s get the first thing out of the way. Yes I know that the number system that the west uses is actually Arabic and that us Arabs decided to shift over to using Hindi numerals. I still don’t understand why we did that, but that’s the way it goes. You could argue that shifting over our license plate numbers back to the original numbering system is our way of claiming back what’s rightfully ours in a passive agressive sort of way, but trust me, you’d be thinking too much.

Back to the topic, here’s a quick image of how the licnese plates in Qatar have evolved. Check out www.worldlicenseplates.com for more.

In 1983, the license plates were actually quite similar to the ones in Bahrain.

Then we changed them in 1997 to what we all became accustomed to. It was quite special because the plate looked organized and used Arabic (Hindi) numbers.

On our facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/iloveqtr) we asked “Which GCC country do you think has the best looking car license plates?” to our 18,000+ page on Nov 9. We actually didn’t know the plates were going to change. What a coincidence! It was a 50-50 split between people voting for Qatar and UAE. Click here to see a dubai plate

Qatar then changed the new plates to look like this:

It kind of makes me feel uncomfortable… It’s like an inverted Qatari flag, the numbers are not centered, there’s a tiny hologram on the side (why… were people making fake plates or something?), and ‘Qatar’ is written in two styles.

I feel like it’s not organized anymore. It’s also sad that we don’t have the Arabic (hindi) numerals, it was a way of possibly educating a predominantly expat population. It probably wasn’t that easy to put together a design (perhaps one of the readers can show us how it’s done ), but I feel like UAE’s one now look’s much nicer

What do you guys think of the new plates?

 

One of the most popular sections of iLoveQatar.net is our events listings and we’ve been growing! In fact, we’ve listed over 1,000 events to date! That means that since the site started, we’ve listed enough events to keep you occupied every single day! You can visit our event section here: http://iloveqatar.net/forum/list.php?27 (btw you can post your own events there) and soon the link will change to www.iloveqatar.net/events

We then decided to launch a twitter channel called @Qatarevents which has been keeping everyone on twitter in the know. We’ve got thousands of visitors too!

Next up was a monthly newsletter. Some of you might know it by now. It’s called ‘The Buzz’. We figured that some people might want a monthly dose of what’s going on, articles, hot topics, and fun stuff rather than daily info. (I recommend signing up to it of course, I think it’s pretty cool.)

Now although people visit our ILQ facebook page for an awesome community, we thought that some people may JUST want an events feed on Facebook too, so we just recently launched Qatar Events on Facebook.

So we took a breather, took a sip of our gahwa (that’s Arabic for coffee btw), looked around the room and then felt like we hadn’t done enough. So we started working on the new events section. We wanted it to look simple, be easy to search, and easy to submit events too. So we came up with this! (See the two screenshots). We like it, and we’re sure you’ll like it too. It’s going to go live VERY soon and what’s better is that you can sign in with Twitter and Facebook if you want to leave a comment or ‘favourite’ your events.

It’s great to know that our hard work was appreciated because we’ve now got a regular spot every Thursday at 6pm with @FinnertyLaura on her show. Tune in and you’ll hear about the upcoming events for the weekend and the next 7 days.  You’ll be able to hear either myself Khalifa (a.k.a Mr. Q), Bassam, or Zhan!

It’s easier than ever to tune into QF Radio. Got an iPhone? Download their app here. On a computer? Visit their site here for a live stream. In your car, then tune into 93.7 FM

Anyway! If you’ve got an event, please do share it with us by emailing events@iloveqatar.net