Today I got back early from work, and therefore, have time to blog. :) Usually, I have "night activities", stuff like going out with friends, cell group, and CCA stuff. That's why I'm usually quite tired.

Anyway, I will continue with my 2nd day in Qatar.

Today, we had LOADS of site visits. We went to the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in the morning, then Qatar Foundation, an aggregation of top notch US universities, then went to the Qatar Urban Planning & Development Authority, then Lusail, a real estate development. And had a dinner with Singaporeans in Qatar at night.

I think the visit to the MFA was one of the most insightful ones throughout the whole trip. MFA's briefing was conducted at the embassy. And boy, was it like a mansion. It has this spiral staircase. The mansion was of off white colour walls. It had a Middle Eastern rug in the "living room", and the whole place was cemented with marble flooring. Anyway, the person who gave the talk was Ken Siah. I have a feeling that he's an MFA scholar. He's probably only in his late 20s.
Anyway, the talk gave us insight on some Qatari policies. like how 25% of the employee in companies have to be Qataris. And that the top management have to be Qataris. [Again, it reminds you of the affirmative action that we have in Malaysia] But the thing is, unlike Malaysia, the Qataris are the minorities. Out of approximately 1.5 million people living in Qatar, only 1/6 of the people are locals. Hmm. Ponder upon the practicality of the policy. How do they hve enough people to make up 25% of employees in a company? Hmm.

And the thing is...some of them actually go to office 1.5 out of 5 days a week. I'm serious. Talk about resource curse. The concept is where nations with loads of natural resources tend to be not as advanced as others. Hmm.

Then, we went to Qatar Foundation (QF). QF, as mentioned, is a university cluster. Besides that, it also has a research and community service development centre. There are 7 universities there, including Carnegie Mellion (IT school), Georgetown University (International Politics), West Virginia (Arts & Design), Texas A&M (Engineering), Weill Cornell (Medicine) and so on. They bring in the universities based on the excellence of a certain faculty. All courses are in English. It's darn big I have to say. They even have this High School Musical stage thingy, haha.

The High School Musical stage thing I mentioned. :)
QF was started by the current ruler's 2nd wife, Sheikha Mozah. Pretty impressive for a Middle Eastern lady huh. Not to mention pretty too.
You may be wondering who attends the schools, since all of these schools are in the secluded part of the world. Those from neighbouring countries attend. Like Eygpt, Pakistan, Qataris themselves (Qatar's 2nd language is English, so it's okay for them) :)

One of the universities at QF

Urban Planning & Development Authority (UPDA) was okay. We learnt stuff like how Qatar plans and builds cities and how Doha, the capital, is a good place to host international dialogues because of the stability of the country. We also learnt other random stuff like how Qatar and its neighbour Bahrain has this Friendship Bridge which they are planning to build, some 45km across the causeway, and when built, would be the world's longest fixed linked. UPDA also had this cool satellite system (more specifically, Geographical Information System) to take pictures of Qatar to plan cities and transport system.

Next was Lusail. Again, it's this huge project, with residential, office towers, marinas...stuff like that. It's 35km square, so definitely much bigger than the 1km square The Pearl. What I learnt here is that they allocate certain styles of buildings to certain people. For example, the tall buildings are open for anyone to buy, even foreigners. But they reserve villas, i.e. landed houses for the locals. This is because it is the culture of the locals to live in houses, with their extended family (talk about daughters, sons, nieces, nephews, aunty and uncles).
Short and tall buildings... :)
Weining, Kirsty and me

We planned to go to the Museum of Islamic Arts, but when we reached there, it was imminent to closing time, and therefore, did not allow us in. But thankfully, they allowed us to take pictures outside the museum. :) We created a havoc though, standing at the car entrance and therefore slowing down the traffic there. :P

Weining & I outside the museum
Darrick & I. Nice background huh. The financial district on the left.

We ended our night with the Red Dotters (you wonder why huh. Think: The size of Singapore on the map) One of the more interesting nights I had too. Some of my friends and I were sitting with this investment banker, who's only in his late 20s. He works for Standard Chartered. He started working in Singapore, then got posted to London, and then to Qatar. His fiance is also an investment banker from Stardard Chartered Qatar. It's interesting how they met each other. His fiance also worked in the Singapore office then got posted to London, but they did not know each other until they were in London. That's where they got together. After he found out that he was going to be posted to Qatar, his fiance also applied to be posted there too. How sweet. :)

Anyway, that night was probably the first night where we started our series of singings. Prof wanted us to sing to our guests. Singapore songs like "Home", "Di Tanjong Katong", "Singapore Town", "some Tamil song I don't understand" were sung. Some of them are sung in the government schools, and therefore, known to everyone. The government schools in Singapore have this policy where students learn to sing one song from the major languages, one Tamil, one Mandarin, one Malay, and one English (I think).
Anyway, my Prof some how found out that I sing, and got me to sing solo. =.= =.= Oh well, at least there was Clarence on the guitar and singing along with me to help me. :P
Clarence & I singing
I was so tired that night that a few friends and I just went back to the hotel right after the dinner whereas the others went to Souk Waqif. Luckily I went there the day before. :P