Qatar Open women's tennis

Last night I went to the Qatar Open women’s tennis tournament. The tournament is now a Tier 1 WTP event, and has a serious prize pool (~$2.5 million) so almost all of the big names in women’s tennis were there.

I love tennis so to be able to watch pros of this level play, and for free, was incredible. (most tickets were free for the early matches, you just had to get there early to get them)

Unfortunately there was a dust storm yesterday so it made for poor conditions, cold (16 degrees), windy and dusty. Winds were so bad that play had to stop occasionally because of trash flying into the court. My friends and I didn’t bring thick enough jackets so we were cold/shivering throughout the evening. Didn’t stop us from leaving though! Where else could you see this line-up all in one evening at one court:

Ana Ivanovic (World #2, runner-up at recent Australian Open), followed by;
Maria Sharapova, followed by;
Venus Williams.

All in one evening. The Sharapova match was the best one, it went to three sets and her opponent really made a great effort in the first two. Great tennis.

I hope to see more before it ends, but as the tournament goes along it’ll be tougher to get the tickets.

My tastes in music.

Let’s continue on a lighter note. Though I've had this blog for a year-andf-a-half I’ve never really described my taste in music before. I suppose it’s a little all over the place, some metal, alt-rock, 60’s, world, even a few classical CD’s. So I guess a good way to indicate my favourites would be to go through the collection and list the artists I have a number of CD’s of.

I own more than three CD’s of:

Beatles
Dandy Warhols
Foo Fighters
Muse
Nine Inch Nails
Pink Floyd
System of a Down
Skunk Anansie / Skin
Weezer

And I have two of the following but won’t rule out getting a third in the future (or when available)

Audioslave
Fall Out Boy
Gorillaz
Green Day
Linkin Park
My Chemical Romance
Scissor Sisters
Sloan
Veruca Salt

I also have two of the following but I doubt I’ll be getting a third one, for various reasons:

Black Sabbarh
Coldplay
Eels
Grapes of Wrath (anyone remember them?)
Placebo
Radiohead
Sonic Youth
They Might be Giants

Make of these lists what you will. . .

Crap - forgot to mention I was on vacation for three weeks!

Oops, looks like I forgot to post about my three week vacation in Canada so I wouldn't be blogging for the rest of January. Sorry about that.

I had a great time visiting a lot of family and friends. I hadn't been to Vancouver in like 4 years so it was surprising how much had changed. It was like entering a Twilight Zone version of Vancouver where things were similar enough to how they were - yet different in a number of ways. More buildings, people moved to other places, or maybe got married, or had kids, or changed jobs and so on.

I do miss Vancouver, it has a scene and laid-back vibe that places like Doha and Dubai cannot ever hope to match. Will I ever end up living there again? Or Canada for that matter? No plans to, but then again I never plan anything far in advance. All of my career and location moves have been fairly spur-of-the-moment, especially the move to Qatar. So who can say if I'll ever live in Canada again. Maybe I'll end up in Europe or something.