So last month I decided to bite the bullet and buy myself a car. For those of you who havent visited an arab/indian style country you may not know that driving is like wakey races, whoever has the biggest car rules, and nobody knows how to use roundabouts! So as you might have guessed starting to drive here was a little daunting.
It was a little hard to decide what to get here as there was so much choice in my price range as driving is really cheap here (just to annoy all of you its around 20p a litre ha ha ha) and cars are very cheap as well. I couldn't decide whether to go for a small sporty car that could fly around in and out of traffic or to get a big car that i could just cruise in and people would have to get out of my way! So here you are my new car!
Its a Ford F150 pick up and its huge!
So as you can see i decided to go for the big cruisy option instead of the racy one! and it has worked out great, as its pretty much the biggest car out here so getting pushed around isnt really an option, and all the smaller cars tend to look out for you and stay out the way which makes driving easier! only problem is when i come home now everything will seem tiny!
So its been quite a while since i have posted so i am going to have to catch up on everything that has happened over the last few months.
Doha hosted its first ever car show during January, which of was in the exhibition centre just next to work so only seemed sensible that i should go and have a look. It had a range of activities from off road driving and formula 1 simulating to drifting. Anyway I am sure that all you really want to see is the pictures so here they are.
Masaratti.
Really amazing Alfa concept.
Bugatti Veron.
Porsche race car.
Audi's new roadster!
Aston Martin Rapide.
Nissan Skyline GTR.
Toyota Concept.
Jeep Wrangler with a BBQ.
Replica Formula 1 car.
Subaru Drifting.
The show seemed to go down quite well with the Arabs and workers, but it didn't really have the wow factor of going to one of these shows in the UK as here on the way to work each day I probably see at least 2 Porsche's, a Ferrari, loads of Range rover sports and many other super/hyper and just ridiculously expensive cars. It was nice however to see them up close and not at 70mph flying past you!
The 18th of December in Qatar is national day, a day devoted to celebrating the country and the Amir. During the build up to the big day there have been bands playing in the Souq and just general partying. The culture here seems to be to ride around on your car and generally make loads of noise, however during the days before it is illegal to ride outside your car or on roof or anything like that so the police were having a field day handing out fines! It also makes getting anywhere near impossible with traffic grinding to a halt and police closing down all the roads. However it is the most amazing event of the year, so far… On national day itself there is a massive parade in the morning which Penny, Simon and me headed down to here follows the adventures of national day!
National Day
As we left the flat and wondered down to the corniche the traffic was at a standstill and the parade was already underway, getting closer and closer we could hear the music the cheers, of what must have been well over 100,000 people. The amount of love they have for their country is amazing and tops Scotland by miles in fact I bet it would top most of the world. The first thing we came across was a mass camel parade, which seemed to last forever!
How many camels
So many.... Too many
Attack Dogs
And Attack Horses!
Really cool police officer
Penny watching the world go by
How amazing are their Dish Dashes!
It took us ages to fight our way to somewhere that we could actually see the parade and even then we were struggling to see what was really going on! There was amazing fly overs by jets at what seemed like tree height and then a massive jumbo flew over with Qatar printed on the bottom.
Planes
The parade ended with the Amir driving down the corniche and waving out the car window at all the people standing by, the cheers at this point were on the side of totally ridiculous, and the security around him was at the same level!The ISF which are the second most serious cops in Qatar were leading the way with there really obvious bright red cars followed closely by the CID (the big bad cops) in there swish black mercs, and then there in the middle the Amir! At this point Simon was going crazy with excitement and swore that the Amir had looked and waved at him and only him! So much so that there was some crazy dancing on the way back from the parade!
The Amir
ISF BMW
ISF Patrol (Sweeet)
Simons Crazy Dancing
The day ends with what must be the most amazing fireworks display I have ever seen only spoiled by a building in the way from our flat. These fireworks literally blew Sydney bridge, Edinburgh castle and any others off the face of the earth and were a sight to be seen! If you ever get a chance to spend some time in Qatar over the 18th of December do it! Its not my video so sorry its maybe not showing them the best, Blogger doesnt like my video!
So a few weeks ago now James came to visit and spend some time making himself look like a local again. (more on that to follow) So seeing as me and Henry had not been to the desert yet we decided that it would be a fun experience for all of us to have. Qatar International Adventures here we come! Getting picked up from the flat we spent roughly 40 mins driving south from Doha towards the Saudi border. Our driver Imad had some goo chat on the way telling us about how he had only flipped one car which then turned in to two but one only went upside down! Sweet ha ha.
Our Patrol
We drove to Sealine a large beach resort on the edge of the desert and lowered the pressure in the tires, instantly we were in the dunes, driving at what seemed like flat out around, up and down massive banks of sand! The only thing we could do was smile as Imad launched this patrol down a near vertical wall of sand the sand flowing over the bonnet of the car. As we continued to drive down towards Saudi the desert flattened off and the speed instantly doubled we got to the border and looked out over the inland sea and into Saudi.
James and Henry by a desert fjord.
Henry jumping into Saudi
Lawrence takes a stroll!
So as we left the Saudi border we headed back for a BBQ and evening relaxing by the sea in the QIA camp. We just happened to spend the whole evening there on our own, it was amazing to have this whole place all to ourselves although playing volley ball with 3 people proved challenging. We played about on the sand boards (snowboards) and got ok on them before we starting trying silly things. Henry decided he would try and ride a board through the human sized gap in the tents, which after several attempts and a few near misses he eventually slid through only to come flying off! The food was excellent and the chat for the rest of the evening only got better and better. Sunset over the desert was the most amazing experience of it just dropping out the sky in just a few minutes. The best thing about the whole trip was driving through the desert in the pitch black, just the headlights and the moon lighting the way forwards! Amazing.
Sunset in the desert
Me sand boarding
The QIA camp.
And as promised James looking like a Local
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Hello, sorry it has been so long since I last updated, I will do a more thorough update as soon as I can but for now I will give you a brief outline of what has happened in the last month. (Sorry for all the mistakes I'm doing this on my phone)
So where to start, I've been exceptionally busy over the last few weeks with stuff going on all the time, our work programme has been busy, with second eid smack bang in the middle giving us a little rest (still had a group of 16 every day). Both the yachts have been out the water scrapped, sanded, primed, anti fouled and back in again! One within the space of a week!
At the beginning of the month James came out to visit for a week which was really cool, and I had two days off which was great and meant I could do fun stuff like go down to the desert! Which I will post about later (with pictures) don't think I need to say but it was great!
We went out to a hotel called the W which has dj's plying every friday and most weeks guest dj's, so the last one I went to was cafe del mar, and they had this guy dressed in a 18th century french aristocrat outfit playing the music at night with sunglasses on very odd. But some good music non the less. Bek one of the other instructors was there as his friend is the house dj, and was way better than the other guy just cause he played the crowd and knew what they wanted. But was quite a good night anyway.
So ill leave it there for now and update with pictures later.
So its been ages since I last posted so be prepared for a couple of big posts!
Its been a busy couple of weeks, school sailing has started with at least 20+ kids in every group. Its quite a shock to the system seeing that many new faces in a week, compared to east lothian where you would see that many in a year! So with the schools started its full speed here for the next 8 weeks at least. but I wont bore you with work at the moment, more of that later (or earlier depending on if your reading my posts in the correct order!)
So my last two days off have been pretty boring to be honest with you, I've been so tired that all I have really done is sleep and take on ridiculous amounts of liquid, which obviously doesn't make for a good post! However my last day off was slightly different! The Intercon (hotel the centre is based at) plays host to beach parties throughout the year, and the most recent one was Teisto (he is a DJ). What a night, as it was a beach party at a hotel, (expensive) we had a few drinks in the house first and then a ridiculous taxi journey down to the hotel. There were easily 3000+ people on our tiny little bit of beach, most of whom spent all there time in the bar area to stay cool! Which meant getting a drink was pretty hard! It was a really really good night out and well worth the money! Plus managed to get back to the flat successfully so my drunken sat-nav must be working really well! (or possibly the fact that i do the trip once a day! .....shhhhh)
Tiesto
In other news my flatmate and our new Yachtmaster henry arrived last Friday, so that meant another big ish night out in a row, again to the rugby club! turned out to be another good night which was cool, and again my internal sat-nav worked a treat! so that's 2 days out of 2 wooohooo!
Ladies racing
We went down to the Souq again a few nights ago to try out some of the other food places and decided to try this little Chinese restaurant down a back ally. It was a really warm night (and they had football on a massive screen) outside so we decided we would sit inside. The place was the size of china no joke was absolutely huge. Once we had our meal we went for a short (15 minute) walk around the restaurant, but it was probably the best Chinese I've ever had. Although to be that size we all reckon that there must have been some major dodgy dealings going on in there! Anyway I will try and get the next post up later, or possibly 2mro.
