Ramadan 2014 – Day 2 and 3, Happy Canada Day!

I looked at the calendar today and realized that it's Canada Day! Happy Canada Day everyone! (For you non-Canadians, it's Canada's national holiday.)

So remember how I mentioned that if the military were going to move the Ramadan cannon they would inform the media? Well they now have, the cannon has been moved from its usual location on the Corniche to the State Mosque. I'll go there this week to see it.

Last night was the first iftar at home, here's my typical meal to break my fast . . .

Looks similar to my sohour meal, doesn’t it? Much of it is the same: dates, nuts, cheese, olives, but I also made a pot of vegetable soup and included a slice of bread and a banana. Every now and then I might switch one of the items for a boiled egg for some extra protein. The only part of it that is traditional is the dates, under the Islamic tradition you should always try break your fast with dates (though I have read a few don't have dates then olives are an acceptable substitute), and some hadiths mention that it should be an odd number of dates, like three or five. Surprisingly my meal might be considered a big iftar for many Muslims, many have a very small iftar (dates, water, maybe something else small) then go to prayers and have a larger meal later in the evening.

Later that evening I went at Souq Waqif to watch the Algeria v. Germany match. Even though the match started at 11:00pm there were probably around 300 people watching the match on one of the big screens there. This was my first time watching at this screen and it was nice because someone had set up a lot of chairs for people to sit on. If you got there early enough (I did!) then you could watch the match sitting in a chair.

Switching to “Ramadan hours” and staying up later in the evening makes it easier to watch the World Cup. This of course has unintended consequences and there’s already articles in the newspaper about young men skipping Ramadan prayers to go watch the matches. Needless to say the elders frown upon these actions have many clerics are already reminding people that they should not be focusing on watching football or other television programming.

http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/news/qatar/289876/youth-skipping-prayers-for-world-cup

So of course the match went into overtime and I didn't get home until 2am, which left about five hours to sleep. Woke up and went to work. During the day I wasn't hungry or thirsty so much as I was exhausted. Not getting enough sleep combined with not eating any food or drinking any water makes one very tired and when I got home this afternoon I immediately had a nap.

That lasted three hours! Whoops, that was longer than I intended, I will have to set an alarm next time. I woke up about a half hour before iftar so I jumped out of bed and started preparing the meal. I figure I'll make the transition to Ramadan hours over the next few days.