Summer Weather in Qatar

Summer is more than halfway over, with luck the heat will break by October. Not surprisingly summers here are H-O-T, temps in the mid-40s are the norm. It makes mid-day pretty challenging to go outside for any length of time but if it is dry then the days are manageable. By evening it drops down to the mid-30s, not great, but okay. Unless it's humid.

As the old saying goes it's not the heat, it's the humidity. The humidity can vary widely in the summer, I think based on the wind direction (if from the sea then it's humid, if from the south where the desert is then it's dry. The humidity can make it unbearable, even in the evening. Just the other day I left a mall and walked maybe 200m to my car, and when I reached it I looked like I had jogged a mile. My clothes were drenched in a combination of condensation and sweat, and my forehead was dripping. Ugh. On humid days you can't even go outside in the evening for more than a couple of minutes, after which you look like someone poured water on you. Air conditioning is the greatest invention ever!

Of course there's also the risk of sandstorms. Usually they are larger storms from Saudi or Kuwait that you receive advance warning about but other times they can be quite sudden. Last week a thunderstorm in northern Qatar kicked up a lot of dust and sent it south into the city.

That wasn't the worst I'd seen but it was pretty bad. Thankfully because it was small it lasted maybe an hour or so; larger, slower storms can create a dusty haze that can last for days.

One plus about summer is that the weather drives the ex-pats away as tens of thousands head home to wait out the hot weather, returning when schools are back in session. This makes the traffic in Doha better and I'm not looking forward to after Eid when the traffic is again in full misery. My commute time to work will nearly double. It is for this reason that I actually prefer to stay in Doha for the summer. With the Eid holidays now in the summer I of course take vacations but if not for that I'd probably stay here over the summer without a vacation. I can handle the heat, but the traffic can be maddening when everyone returns.

Gaming

Usually at least once a week I'm hanging out with friends at a majlis. The guys like to play various games to pass the time, either electronic, board, or card games. Gulf Arabs like games and don't get all fussed about them. Brazillia (Buraco) remains very popular, as is Monopoly, FIFA on the PS4 is also a go-to (I can't play it worth a damn though) but we also like to play a classic strategy game, Risk.

With Risk now available on the iPad it makes it a lot easier to play a game and makes it portable. We played a few times on the airplane to the Seychelles, and another time at a restaurant that had a TV in our booth as we were able to connect the iPad display to the TV (one of the pictures is from the restaurant). Something to while away some time.


I'm familiar with a lot of boardgames so I introduced the group to a game called Lords of Vegas. It was a hit and we usually play it at least once during an evening. A game called Power Grid is also played occasionally but not as often as Lords of Vegas.

This is not a serious gaming bunch, games need to be reasonably quick to learn and play and have lots of inter-player interaction. Someone brought Axis & Allies once but that didn't work out well -- way too complex, too much setup and turns took a long time.


In time I might introduce a couple of other games (Settlers of Catan?) but everyone seems to be doing fine for now with what we have.

The Murphy's Law of a New Car

About four months ago I bought a new car. I had my previous car for nearly ten years so it was time for an upgrade, it also helped that prices were really good. With all of the layoffs business was down at the dealerships and used car places so there were lots of sales. I picked myself up a nice new car, a bit snazzier than my old basic-model 1.3 L Honda City. I've been here long enough to treat myself to something a bit better.

With my old Honda it had a number of small scratches and door dings but once the car is a few years old I didn't really sweat it. Well within six weeks of having my new car someone left a major door ding in it, enough to expose the underlayers beneath the paint. That was annoying, and I have no idea where it happened because it was on the passenger side, which I usually don't approach my car from. Oh, well.

But two nights ago I had parked my car in the street (the parking garage in my building is too narrow so I'd be at real risk of side-swiping my car against a post) and someone decided that it would be a good idea to u-turn on the road. The next morning I see a nice egg-sized scratch where the corner of their bumper hit the side of my car. So in four months I have two scratches that are worse than what I received on my old car in ten years. Murphy's Law of owning a new car I guess. If it had happened to my old car I wouldn't have cared too much but it's my new car!

Naturally I have no idea who did it. If you did it and you're reading this I hope your life sucks.

Dates Festival at Souq Waqif

For the next couple of weeks Souq Waqif has set up a large tent where local farms can sell dates.

Despite the fact that it was a weekday evening, and it was H-O-T out, there was still a decent crowd of people shopping for dates. Many wheelbarrow guys were parked outside the tent to take the shopper's wares to their car. At the festival people weren't buying a small box, they seemed to be buying at least 5-10 kg of dates.

A couple of years ago I posted about the various stages of ripeness for dates. We are most familiar with dark brown, wrinkly dates, which are actually the final stage of ripeness and are called tamr in Arabic. At the festival only a few stall sold tamr dates, the vast majority were selling dates that were at an early stage of ripeness and were yellow or red (bessar), or slightly brown rutab dates.

I didn't buy anything, bessar and rutab dates aren't really to my liking (less sweet, somewhat bitter and crunchy depending on the stage of ripeness) but a Qatari friend once told me that a lot of Qataris prefer them over tamr dates. If you've never tried bessar or rutab dates head over to the Souq sometime this week and give them a try.