Room with a view (Part 2)

 Finally managed to get away from my hotel this evening when I caught up with colleagues for a quick drink. We met up at the Raffles Hotel at a bar with a spectacular view of the Lusail area and the wider Doha conurbation. It really reminded me of Felix - a restaurant in the Peninsular Hotel in Hong Kong which we used to take visitors too  - it had terrific views back over Victoria Harbour and towards HK Island - with the neon lit skyline of Causeway Bay, Wanchai and Central much in evidence.

Whilst the view tonight was not quite as spectacular (although all the major landmarks were visible and  there was also quite a lot of water and a new Island being built), it was a pleasant change from being holed up in the hotel with only room service to look forward to!

The lights are on…..

 But having spent quite  a bit of time in admiring the huge tower blocks that dominate the sky-line in the area where I am staying, it strikes me that there must be a huge amount of living and office space to fill. The West Bay Area is only one of a number of areas for business although I guess it must be one of the biggest but although Qatar has very much been on the global stage may over the last few years - not least because of last year’s football World Cup, nevertheless it is not as big a business hub as say Dubai or the first growing Riyadh.

I first visited Doha in around 1993 and it was a very different place with a couple of major hotels (including the Sheraton which still remains).When I came for the England - v - Wales game last November, I was struck by how quiet it seemed to be notwithstanding all the football fans. Despite some of the traffic around the hotel when I walk to the Pullman in the morning, it feels very quiet indeed which rather begs the question, who is occupying all this living and working space? 

It might be that Qatar is planning on growing its business community. However, as a regional hub I suspect that it will struggle to compete with Dubai and will also face very stiff competition from Riyadh now that the KSA Government require any businesses that wish to work on Saudi to have their regional headquarters in the Kingdom.

Still I have enjoyed my visit and one of the advantages of the relative sedateness of its business sector is that one can stay in 5 star hotels for a very reasonable price (QR500 for a 5X hotel like the InterContintal or Grand Hyatt including breakfast which is c. GBP120 at current rates.

Where the streets have no name

 The venue for the Trial I am involved with this week is around a 6 - 8 minute walk from my Hotel, so in an effort to do some exercise this week, I have decided to walk  rather get a taxi. 

In the the Middle East that is sometime easier said than done - even in November it can still be pretty warm and Qatar is no exception. On the first morning, I managed to navigate a route that allowed me to keep more or less in the shadows (there are some very tall buildings around the route which I was able to use as shade) but had kept my jacket on so that I was somewhat hot and sweaty when I arrived.

However, notwithstanding the temperature, the biggest challenge was that Doha  - particularly in the business areas where my hotel is located, is not really designed for people to walk around. So there was a marked absence of pavements (and many of those that were available had been blocked off - mainly it seemed to stop people parking on them). I therefore found my self traversing car parks and access roads for the various Government buildings, apartment blocks and hotels I passed on my way. 

This led to a number of dead-ends - I was able to see my destination (another skyscraper) but the most direct route (keeping to the shade) led me down cul-de-sacs, through construction sites or into underground car parks and led to some entertaining conversations with security guards who were somewhat bemused to encounter a be-suited, gently perspiring out of towner with a briefcase wandering around their subterranean lairs!

After trial and error I have now found the optimal route - around 6 minutes and limited number of car park visits but it is quite an interesting reflection on the degree to which  the town planners here are expecting most people to travel by car.

(Hotel) room with a view

 I am in a very nice room for my stay in Doha - on the 37th floor which seems to be on a corner and has various views in different directions over the West Bay area through picture windows in the bedroom and the bathroom. Whilst there are blinds (although only partially obscuring the view) and curtains (which do not meet in the middle) the vista is a little disconcerting when brushing my teeth and I can only think that given the height, the interior designers assumed that the room occupants would not be overlooked by anyone else!

It also took a while to get used to the lift system.It turned out that there are two banks of lifts which are next to each other but occupying separate areas - one set servicing different floors from the other although other than some very small lettering on the lifts themselves, you have to be very observant to figure out whether you are in the correct lift bank - I spent 10 minutes waiting for a lift when I first arrived before noticing that despite pressing their call button, and the fact there appeared to be 5 sets of lifts, none of them were actually stopping at my floor!

First world problems I hear you say, and I must admit the novelty of being so high in the sky has not yet worn off.

What’s in a word?

 Like many people I am part of a Wordle WhatsApp group where we keep everyone on the address list (which includes both kids, Em and her Mother, and my Brother in Law) up to speed on our daily score. 

For what must be a tiny proportion of the World’s population who have not come across Wordle, it is a word game that basically gives you 6 attempts to guess the daily word where correct letters are flagged as either being in the correct place (green) or at least in the word but in the wrong place (Taupe/Brown). 

It is great fun and a good way to stay in touch with your nearest and dearest. It was also a great favourite of my Father who was an avid part of the WhatsApp group. He sadly passed away in the Summer and this will be the subject of a longer post in due course. But it was very much in keeping with his general approach to life that not only was he enthusiastically tackling the challenge up until only a couple of days before he died but also (perhaps not so enthusiastically) he was prepared to embrace the WhatsApp technology on his Ipad/IPhone. This was by no means a given even though notwithstanding his advanced years he was an avid Teams/Skype/Zoom user despite the vagaries of the technology. However, as appears to be the case with a number of people of his vintage he was always quite suspicious of his mobile phone - the smaller keys did not help but I think he carried a deep suspicion of the likely costa of using it (even for a posting messages) which I assume was ingrained form when mobile phones were initially introduced,

In any event, he also took great delighted in keeping up with everyone’s scores and  - along with all the other ways he was part of our lives - he will be sadly missed from the daily round up of Wordle scores from around the globe.

Not a great start

 So managed to miss yesterday’s post as I arrived back home too late (after a welcome drinks for some new colleagues) to ensure it was posted yesterday so have now decided to see if I can manage to post once every other day. 

Spent most of today preparing for my trip to Qatar. This was mainly a combination of clearing the decks at work of various admin and BD related issues relating to my forthcoming trip to Seoul so I can concentrate on the tasks at hand as well as packing enough clothes to last me around a week. 

Usually I can fit everything into a carry-on bag but I need to make sure I have enough formal clothes as well as some “leisure wear” in the unlikely event I get some down time (nothing worse than trying to relax in a suit while everyone around you is breathing easily in a polo shirt and chinos/shorts). 

As a result I am taking a hold bag so of course I have to make sure I get full value for having to hang around the carousel and as a result I have probably wildly over-packed (I made a similar mistake for a recent Trial in Abu Dhabi where I probably  took enough clothes to last me a month - I think this was in turn a reaction to the ridiculous luggage restrictions we endured on the various Ryanair flights we took around Europe in the Summer - may be more on that in a later post…..).

I have also packed some gym kit in the (probably forlorn) hope that I will get myself onto an exercise bike at some point while I am in Doha. I am back in training for the Dubai 92 KM road race next February. 

Build Up Ride (45km) was successfully completed last weekend and I have been out in the morning 3 times this week but I am definitely going to struggle to get back on my bike given my travels before the next BUR at the end of the month so am aiming to get tot he Hotel Gym a couple of times if the opportunity arises.

Anyway, next post should be from Qatar.

Once more with feeling

 It’s 1 November, so welcome to another month of posting a blog per day - or at least making an effort to do so. I always make the same excuse when I re-start my blogging activity at this time of year that I am too busy (or too lacking in inspiration). Work-wise, this year is no exception. I am just about to travel elsewhere in the GCC to start a Trial for a week, I will then be back for a a couple of days, and then off to Korea before returning in time for another Trial and hopefully a bit of a break. Still it should provide me with plenty of material so wish me luck.