A Month in Qatar

03 May A Month in Qatar

When the opportunity came up for me to head to Qatar for a month, to help out OJ, I couldn’t help but jump on it. For someone who hasn’t done much travel outside the US it was an exciting prospect. Considering I also spent a large chunk of my college career as a biblical studies major this was a location, culture, and people group I’ve had a bit of an interest in as well.

Qatar is an interesting place to say the least. The best way I can sum it up after a month of immersion is “Asian oddity combined with Islamic law and tradition”. The Qatari nationals make up a surprisingly small percentage of the population but they run the country, its laws, and its businesses. Immigrants from the Philippines and India make up the workforce and the majority of the residency. Downtown Doha is a beehive of construction activity. Buildings that are done are practically empty, and who knows where people are going to park. Buildings still under construction go up at an alarming rate, whether that’s good or bad, I’m not sure. Whatever the case, the skyline looks decidedly western in appearance. Outside of town, into the industrial area, it’s a whole different planet. It’s basically a developing third world country. People jammed wherever they’ll fit and roads with potholes you could name “Jaws”. A lowered 7 series is not the best car to get around in here.

The major difference between Qatar and the US that I ran into was the difficulty of finding almost anything. They have plenty of stores and malls that, in appearance, are well stocked. All filled with all the latest and greatest from the suppliers of the far east. On closer inspection however it’s nearly impossible to find anything useful, tools, electrical equipment, quick detailer, anything. For example, one day it took us close to 7 hours to find a deep 9/16 socket. It’s hard to understand how anything gets done here in a timely manner.

The food, however, is fantastic. I’ve had Middle Eastern food in the states but it doesn’t even stack up against the real deal. There isn’t any bad food, other than the western fast food chains, it’s just different levels of good. It’s all super fresh. You can tell there’s no preservatives in anything. Most food is made in front of you. It’s all delicious. The only thing I missed was pork, none of that over there. I would be a happy camper to consume real arabian food as a staple of my diet. The coffee was also a nice highlight. I’m a bit of a coffee geek. I even go so far as to roast my own beans for everything but espresso (Intelligentsia roasts a much better blend than I can) and I make turkish coffee on a fairly regular basis. This trip was the first time I’ve had it served. Other than getting used to the cardamom flavor it was quite good.

And then there’s the cars. What is seen on the road is a paradox, like everything else here. This has been mentioned before but everybody drives a Land Cruiser, it’s like owning a refrigerator, you just have one. They make up probably half of what’s on the street. And it’s ok to drive a vehicle that’s identical to your neighbor’s, they all wear the same thing too, practicality before individuality. The other half of the traffic is little Nissan pick-ups and the perpetually empty short bed mid size trucks that seem to be there to simply occupy space on the roads.

Then there’s the exotics. While they do make up a relatively small percentage of what’s on the road there’s still many more than we could ever hope to see in the US. Porsches and Mercedes of all shapes and sizes, Bentleys, Aston Martins, Matte Pink Superveloces, the odd Rolls Royce, they are all a relatively common sight in Doha. It gets to the point that we roll through a parking lot with a couple Porsches, and the response to “anything interesting?” is no.
Most of the owners of these cars are hungry for performance and that makes us happy. There’s plenty of demand, but setting up the supply has been a bit of a struggle. It’s easy to get discouraged over here with the plethora of contradictions, the legal system, or lack of it, and the lack of anything familiar. But on an almost daily basis we run into somebody new who has a car that we make better, faster, stronger, and they’re excited about it. It’s taken a ton more time and sheer effort than we first planned, but it looks like things are finally starting to fall into place for a location for us to set up shop and start the flow of parts and tuning capabilities into Doha and the greater Gulf region.

M.Eastway

A beautiful specimen in front of the hotel.

We happened across this weekly car gathering. Not huge but a very eclectic gathering. This is one of best looking Lincoln Continentals I've run into.

We showed up in the Dodge, it created a bit of a stir.

Way, way overboard with a F-650. Awesome.

The story of getting the X5 registered is long and frustrating. We tried for two weeks to get it registered the way it was while the wonderful couple who bought it waited patiently. In the end the great matte paint job by Luci had to be smoothed and clearcoated. Over here, to the traffic department, matte is not cool, it's faded and must be fixed.

How long would it take us to run into one of these in the states? This one was just chillin in front of the hotel. Plate numbers here are a status symbol and can be bought and sold. Low and sequential numbers are more desirable. For the sake of the owners I cut the numbers out of the pictures. I wouldn't be surprised if the 111 on this thing cost more than the car.

Road pirates, complete with on board plants; to deter scurvy.

Turkish coffee, not for the casual coffee drinker.

Sheikh Al Mandarin's C63 parked at the mall.

I wish we had a picture of the one with the road worker captioned Please Don't Kill Us.