Doha: 15.11.2008
This was a short tour of three days and that too to a GCC country in the neighbourhood, so I thought a day-by-day and blow-by-blow account would stretch the patience of the reader a bit. I guess a collage of impressions would suffice.
Qatar is a small country and oil-rich. The average Qatari, one a population of mere 300,000, is quite well-to-do. Almost every Qatari owns a Land Cruiser or, lately, a Nissan Patrol. The older Qataris, ie 60 years and above, have old-world courtesy and the two I met in the course of business were well-educated, rich and very polite. However, it seems the younger set (below 40) is very arrogant. They have not really seen poverty and the collective golden spoon seems to them part of the cultural physique.
I did not have enough time to get into the history of Qatar, but culturally Oman seems to be a better bet, more full of traditional values and practices. Okay, let’s consider Doha as a city. By square km, smaller than Muscat, but more spread out, chock-a-block with traffic. It takes three tries to clear a signal. If you look at the architecture, the office area sports skyscrapers, which look ultra-functional, a robotic tower of metal and glass reflecting the bright Arab sun. Either rectangular or circular. I did not find any hint of Arab influence at all. Moreover they looked dead to me. It’s like a lot of money handed over to an architectural firm and told to make a latest-American office. Apart from being congested, the roads are not well-maintained at many places. Parking is tight. However, driving on the roads, one gets the eerie feeling of there being lots of cars and no men!
We had only an hour of a drive-around in terms of sightseeing. The Cornice was nice, like marine drive, U-shaped, and the tall towers visible on the other side remind one of Dubai creek or the Sharjah cornice. There are areas that remind one of Ruwi High Street as well.
The Islamic Museum was being inaugurated on the 22nd, the day I arrived, and the city was full of security and traffic was unusually slow. There were a number of Arab dignitaries from other countries as well as various diplomats present in town. This has been my luck on various occasions. Today, as I am leaving, the Jordanian King is landing.
Weather in Doha was pretty nice – 29/21. Our hotel Ramada Plaza had a few eateries around – KFC, Caravan, Pizza hut, Dairy Queen etc, so we were never stuck for variety in food. We patronised the hotel restaurants as well and found both the Indian as well as the Chinese pretty good. The hotel was also top-notch (at RO 100 per day it had better be!). We used to be quite busy right from 9.00 am to 9.00 pm, with a 2-hour break in the middle and so the hotel amenities remained unutilised. The Salsa classes had looked particularly interesting …..
Taxis were a difficulty. The ‘blue’ taxis, belonging to the only transport company called ‘Karwa’ were very scantily spread, the hotel limos were very costly, and the all-day taxis we tried to fix privately kept on taking off at intervals to do other errands.
Like Oman, Malayalis abound here, in all walks of business and especially in spare parts. I was quite excluded from the business discussions at most places as my colleague Krishnan, who was fluent both in Malayalam and Tamil, used the ethnic line to build rapport. There are also a number of Phillippinos in business and Sri Lankans in salaried positions. Apparently Qatar govt has currently stopped issuing employment visas to Indians.
Here also, people have the tendency of overstaying. A number of the Indian managers we met were here for 10-20 years, the loyal servant. The Qatari boss is apparently not very business-savvy. He likes to fling money around for building another structure or buying a business, but may be stingy in paying for material purchased. One of the Qatari arbaap we met was just happy that his business was employing 25 ex-pats and their families. In this scenario, no doubt dependable ex-pats are required.
Qatar has become extremely costly in the last three years or so. Rents especially have become 10 times !! A small shop (‘shutter’ as they call it) will have a monthly rent of QR 20,000 in the industrial area (ie RO 2,000). Even residential rent has become 3-4 times and are wiping out the savings of a lot of ex-pats. Those Qataris who own land or built-up structures have become even richer. There is one chap who owns a few supermarkets whose monthly income is QR 10 million.
Bottomline – Qatar is like a noveu-rich Oman.
Qatar is a small country and oil-rich. The average Qatari, one a population of mere 300,000, is quite well-to-do. Almost every Qatari owns a Land Cruiser or, lately, a Nissan Patrol. The older Qataris, ie 60 years and above, have old-world courtesy and the two I met in the course of business were well-educated, rich and very polite. However, it seems the younger set (below 40) is very arrogant. They have not really seen poverty and the collective golden spoon seems to them part of the cultural physique.
I did not have enough time to get into the history of Qatar, but culturally Oman seems to be a better bet, more full of traditional values and practices. Okay, let’s consider Doha as a city. By square km, smaller than Muscat, but more spread out, chock-a-block with traffic. It takes three tries to clear a signal. If you look at the architecture, the office area sports skyscrapers, which look ultra-functional, a robotic tower of metal and glass reflecting the bright Arab sun. Either rectangular or circular. I did not find any hint of Arab influence at all. Moreover they looked dead to me. It’s like a lot of money handed over to an architectural firm and told to make a latest-American office. Apart from being congested, the roads are not well-maintained at many places. Parking is tight. However, driving on the roads, one gets the eerie feeling of there being lots of cars and no men!
We had only an hour of a drive-around in terms of sightseeing. The Cornice was nice, like marine drive, U-shaped, and the tall towers visible on the other side remind one of Dubai creek or the Sharjah cornice. There are areas that remind one of Ruwi High Street as well.
The Islamic Museum was being inaugurated on the 22nd, the day I arrived, and the city was full of security and traffic was unusually slow. There were a number of Arab dignitaries from other countries as well as various diplomats present in town. This has been my luck on various occasions. Today, as I am leaving, the Jordanian King is landing.
Weather in Doha was pretty nice – 29/21. Our hotel Ramada Plaza had a few eateries around – KFC, Caravan, Pizza hut, Dairy Queen etc, so we were never stuck for variety in food. We patronised the hotel restaurants as well and found both the Indian as well as the Chinese pretty good. The hotel was also top-notch (at RO 100 per day it had better be!). We used to be quite busy right from 9.00 am to 9.00 pm, with a 2-hour break in the middle and so the hotel amenities remained unutilised. The Salsa classes had looked particularly interesting …..
Taxis were a difficulty. The ‘blue’ taxis, belonging to the only transport company called ‘Karwa’ were very scantily spread, the hotel limos were very costly, and the all-day taxis we tried to fix privately kept on taking off at intervals to do other errands.
Like Oman, Malayalis abound here, in all walks of business and especially in spare parts. I was quite excluded from the business discussions at most places as my colleague Krishnan, who was fluent both in Malayalam and Tamil, used the ethnic line to build rapport. There are also a number of Phillippinos in business and Sri Lankans in salaried positions. Apparently Qatar govt has currently stopped issuing employment visas to Indians.
Here also, people have the tendency of overstaying. A number of the Indian managers we met were here for 10-20 years, the loyal servant. The Qatari boss is apparently not very business-savvy. He likes to fling money around for building another structure or buying a business, but may be stingy in paying for material purchased. One of the Qatari arbaap we met was just happy that his business was employing 25 ex-pats and their families. In this scenario, no doubt dependable ex-pats are required.
Qatar has become extremely costly in the last three years or so. Rents especially have become 10 times !! A small shop (‘shutter’ as they call it) will have a monthly rent of QR 20,000 in the industrial area (ie RO 2,000). Even residential rent has become 3-4 times and are wiping out the savings of a lot of ex-pats. Those Qataris who own land or built-up structures have become even richer. There is one chap who owns a few supermarkets whose monthly income is QR 10 million.
Bottomline – Qatar is like a noveu-rich Oman.
