Health Test

I was at Festival City Mall the other day and saw a new booth.

It's a medical booth set up by the Government to promote healthy heart awareness, providing a free check-up (weight, blodd pressure, and a quick blood test for blood sugar and cholesterol). So I lined up and after about 15 minutes got my results, which they wrote in a booklet for me.

In the meantime they had a simple test where you could see how healthy your heart is. It was a points-based one where you answer questions and add points based on your response. For example if you're normal weight add 2 points, if you're obese add 6 points and so forth. I was on the cutting edge of elevated risk but I wasn't too worried, being a male of my age it was almost impossible to score in the low-risk range.

Anyway the reason why I wanted to do the blood test etc was because I went to this booth in a different mall four years ago -- and I kept my booklet from back then. When I got home I found it and compared how I've done over the years:


Blood pressure: still normal
Blood sugar: still normal (not bad considering this time I had eaten maybe a half-hour before)
Cholesterol: Improved! I was at 129 mg/dL but now it's 110. That's what more veggies and less meat does for you I guess.

The big shock was my weight though - I'd gained 5kg! That was a real surprise, I had worked hard in 2016 on losing weight but I guess I gained it back. *sigh*


If you see the booth it's worth getting checked out. It doesn't take long and it won't hurt to know your numbers.

Souq Waqif Date Festival 2018

I went to the Date Festival at the Souq tonight. In the past it was a simple tent but this year they've really built it up. It's a huge tent with dozens of booths, and occasional majlis-style seating areas for people to relax at.

This time they included not only local dates but vendors from all over the Middle East and North Africa were there. I saw dates from Tunisia, Algeria, Iran, and so forth.

An Iranian buddy of mine was manning one booth. He told me business was pretty good, slow on Sunday-Tuesday but a lot more hectic on Wednesdays and the weekends. I picked up some dates from him as well as some sweet spreads from Iran. I didn't really shop at the other booths, I wanted some dates to take to a majlis this weekend and didn't want to buy them from someone else.


The festival is on until March 15th.

It Rained!

Thankfully Qatar had some decent rain over the last couple of days. Not enough to cause lakes and flooding everywhere but certainly enough to give everything a good soaking. Looking at the forecast that's it for the next week so it's possible that's all the rain were going to get for the year. Dry year so far.