Colourful Blossoming Flowers: Day 4: Doha

I shall continue my Middle East journey. :) We reached the hotel in Doha, where we checked in at 4am. =.= My roomie was Kristina that night , cus I had to help her with corporate gifts stuff (Kristina is the corporate gift's in-charge), and some of her stuff were with me. We had to wear formal the next day, so I thought of ironing our clothes. YES! It's the first time I'm ironing my own clothes!! I did play with the iron when I was younger and iron them, but this was for real. I am ironing my clothes cus I needed to. And so, I went over to Kirsty's room to get her iron (she has a travel iron:P). I tell you, these gals in the BSM are darn resourceful. Kirsty has an iron, some have hairdryers (including me), 1 has an antiseptic for hands (hygiene freak), etcetera etcetera. We then woke up at 10am, and departed the hotel at 12pm. This has to be one of my shortest stays in a hotel! 6 hours?! Oh well. We departed for "The Pearl". The Pearl is a residential development off the shore of Qatar. This is The Pearl:

The red ring is where The Pearl is. It is shaped like an oyster, and built on reclaimed land.

It's very high class and stuff, so it's target market is the upper class society.

It has housing beachfront villas, apartments, penthouses, marinas, schools, restaurants..it's just like a small town to itself. It's around 1km square. The villas are reserved for the local Qataris, I think.

Exhibition on The Pearl

The reason why it is named "The Pearl" is because last time, in the 1960s-70s, there used to be people working as pearl divers around that area, diving for oyster to find pearls. Reminds me of our Form 5 literature text...what was it called...The Pearl? Heh.

Next, we wend to the Qatar Financial Center (QFC). It's like Shenton Way in Singapore, where all the companies and some ministries are built. Again, same thing. Presentation, Q&A. It's intersting to know that Qatar has one of the highest GDP per capita in a world. The reason for that and it's fast paced growth (It's double digit I think) is due to the fact that Qatar is the No. 1 exporter of Liquified Natural Gas (LNS) in the world. LNG is natural gas (Predominantly methane, CH₄) that has been converted temporarily to liquid form for ease of storage or transport (from Wiki).

Unlike Dubai, Qatar's growth is based on real growth. It's revenue comes largely from LNG.

So why the QFC? The standard answer would be economic diversification. But more than that, it probably also represents the ongoing competition among the Gulf states. Dubai has one (financial center), Bahrain has one too. So why not Qatar? When things are too obvious, it is left to the observer's eye to see and infer.

View outside the board room of QFC. Why do some companies have such good views of the city?

L to R: Kirsty, Me, Farah, Weining
Talk about being international...Vietnamese, Msian (count me as one for now), Sporean, Chinese

We then headed to Mr Fazlur's sponsored tea session to interact with him. Yes yes, sponsored meals almost all the way. :P

At night, we finally got to rest!! We went to the hotel to put our stuff, and then went to this Indian restaurant for dinner. Pretty yummy food, but it was so much, that we almost couldn't finish it! Luckily we had Gabriel at our table. You'll see why below.

In the hotel...Weining trying to be funny

L to R: Fauzi, Farah, Me, Darrick and Nic
I call this the 4 + 1 picture...project mates +project mate's bf :P

At the Indian restaurant: L to R: Gabriel, me, Kirsty, Fauzi, Farah & Aiks

Then for rest and recreation that night, we had two choices: either head for some drinks (that group was actually led by Prof), and another, to Souk Waqif (The group tht was suppose to go drinking went on a 70 dirham cruise in the end instead, cus the drinking place wasn't open or something. At least we saved money going to the Souk!:P). Souk, in Arabic, is something like "pasar malam". And of course, being the guai me, I chose to go to Souk.

We went by foot. It isn't that far, but cus we had some phototaking sesions on the way, we took half and hour to reach.