A Historic Easter in Doha

Last Saturday, I attended consecration ceremonies at the new Our Lady of the Rosary Church here in Doha. Any consecration is of course a special occaision, but this was the first church of any denomination to be built in Qatar in more than 1400 years.

Most states in the Gulf region have had hostile attitudes towards religions other than Islam for some time. In response to diplomatic pressures and the economic realities of needing to rely on an expatriate work-force, most have been gradually loosening these restrictions. Dubai has several large churches, and the Catholic and other churches have been operating more or less freely in Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman for some time now. The two Wahabi states, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the State of Qatar, have been the slowest to liberalise. Saudi Arabia continues to forbid the practice of any religion other than Islam, and priests who serve in the active underground church community there are subject to detention, torture and expulsion. As it is has in so many other areas, Qatar has dealt with the issue by trying to have it both ways. Churches have been formally banned, but buildings such as the shed-like structure I have been going to every Sunday for the past few months for Mass are ignored, with the understanding that the church does nothing to draw attention to them. Now the Emir has decided to take a step forward, and he has made a gift of land to several congregations so that real churches can be built here for the first time since the arrival of Islam in the 7th century (which of course in the Islamic calendar is the 1st century). My own Catholic church was the first, but it is to be followed by Anglican, Coptic and Orthodox churches, and an Indian church to be shared by 11 different Indian denominations.

This does not, however, mean the end of Qatar's tradition of ambivalence on this and other issues. As is the case elsewhere in the region, no overtly religious symbols – such as crosses – are permitted on the exterior, as are bells and steeples. Additionally, the land the Emir so generously gifted is a half hour drive outside of Doha, in the middle of flat, stony desert area it shares with petroleum storage tanks and power substations. You can see the church on the horizon in the photo below.
Although the church is finished, the road leading to it and the car park are not. The last 500 meters of the drive there was over rough, stony ground that was harder to drive on than the off-road desert tracks I've been cruising around on the weekends. The "car park" was just an area of field that some half-hearted effort had been made to remove the larger boulders from.

If all these things are not enough to discourage attendance, it has been reported that muslim extremist web-sites have made threats against the new church, if warnings provided by the American, British and Australian embassies are to be believed. (The Brits and the Australians have subsequently removed their warnings pertaining to the church).

All of this aside, it was a beautiful, if long (four hours) ceremony. I was exceptionally fortunate in getting a place to sit – thousands stood through the entire thing, including 2000 who were only able to watch it outside on giant video screens. I stood for the first half-hour or so, but one of the features of the ceremony – the "parade of nations," in which representatives from the 70-odd nationalities represented amongst the parishoners entered the church behind their national flags – resulted in the organisers reserving more seats than needed near the front, and once that part of the ceremony was over I was able to take one of the reserved seats for myself.

This must have been about 90 minutes into the 4-hour long consecration ceremony

The highlight of the ceremony was the depositing of the "relics" of Saint Padre Pio da Pietrelcina, a Capuchin monk who died in 1968 after spontaneously developing cruxifiction-type bleeding wounds on his hands and feet, into a reliquary built into the church's altar. None of the official material on the church or the ceremony have been terribly explicit about the nature of these relics. All that I can say is that when the presiding Bishop held the relics aloft and announced that he was about to place them in the altar, I couldn't really see anything, although I was sitting fairly close. Whatever parts they were, I think it's safe to say that the Vatican sent the better bits, such as his skull or femur, off to some other, more important church.

A happy and blessed Easter to all.

BlognDog
Doha
23 March 2008

Coincidence?

As Hillary's campaign failed to falter on schedule on 4th March, I have been deprived (temporarily, of course) of my rightful opportunity to gloat over her loss. So Nomadicity therefore has nothing to add to the discussion over the Democratic race.

We have, however, observed something about the Republicans that is so readily apparent to us it is baffling that no other commentators that we are aware of have picked up on it. Unlike the other candidate's spouses – who have been highly visible – John McCain's wife, Cindy, never caught our attention until photos of her dutifully standing by her man were splashed across front pages following rumours of an affair between John and a 40-something lobbyist.

Cindy McCain

Am I the only one to notice that she and Laura Bush both look like escapees from the set of the Stepford Wives? Is this a coincidence, or is it officially mandated policy of the Republican Party that all first ladies must conform to this standard?

Laura Bush

I'm not trying to be a conspiracy-monger -- but have a look at Paula Prentiss from the original 1975 Stepford Wives film and judge for yourself.

Paula Prentiss

I'm taking a welcome break from the stifling morality of Doha, spending some time in the anti-Doha, Prague, where pork, alcohol and provocatively dressed women are found in abundance. My former regular Prague hang-out, Square, has been converted to what the manager proudly described to me a few minutes ago as "the first Starbucks in Central Europe." I was further informed that Poland is next on their list, but as yet still no plans for Sweden. Not that I feel deprived.

BlognDog
Prague
6 March 2008

Souk on This

After many months here in Doha, I am finally managing to find some things to see and do here besides complaining about the lack of things to see and do. One recent find was Doha's old souk. It's no competitor with Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, but amongst Doha's sterile forest of glass-façaded skyscrapers, I discovered Souk Wafiq, one of the few surviving fragments of old Doha. It's old character has not been destroyed by updating its shops and facilities to serve contemporary needs, but neither has its vibrancy been choked by well-intentioned but misguided attempts at "preservation", thus avoiding an artifical, Disney-esque result. Pavements, lighting, and ventilation have been upgraded; historical elements have been preserved, and its clear that obviously incongruous shops (such as computer retailers) have been kept out, but otherwise it's an ongoing commercial enterprise, with merchants selling spices, supplies, desert and maritime gear, jewelry, clothing, antiques, artwork, furniture and carpets. So often living in the Middle East imparts a sense of despair that Arab society is incapable of basic competency, but every so often something like Al Jazeera broadcasting or the Doha souk comes along to provide a bit of hope. Following are a few shots I took whilst wandering around on a quiet Saturday afternoon.







In addition to the souk itself, there are a few blocks of traditional homes around the souk area that have been carefully preserved, and even a traditional mud-plastered fortified tower (that no doubt once represented the bulk of Qatar's defence expenditure) has been retained.

And if you're worn out by a day of haggling and carrying around your purchases, at the end of the souk a cluster of cafés and restaurants – Turkish, Moroccan, Egyptian and Lebanese – stand ready to serve up a meal in traditional surroundings.

BlognDog
Doha
16 February 2008

London Crack Whores

One of the few diversions I have in Doha's immorality-free environment is spending a few hours at the hotel's fitness centre, vainly trying to burn off the extra kilos I've piled on in the course of pursuing my only other diversion, namely, stuffing my face at the hotel's breakfast, lunch and dinner buffets.

The fitness centre -- or "spa" as they refer to it -- here at the Four Seasons is definitely the most lavish facility I've ever graced with my grotty work-out outfits and flabby physique. The whole place positively reeks of luxury from the moment you are greeted at the reception by the appropriately fit-looking staff. There are a number of water features, starting with a vertical cascade down ridged ceramic panels at the entrance, which creates a soothing, mountain stream kind of sound. Moving past the reception area, another oval fountain lined with river stones stands in front of an incredible backlit golden agate panel.

This wall was created from thinly sliced pieces of back-lit, translucent golden agate

Here's another view showing the small fountain in front. My simple camera phone snaps don't do it justice.

It all is very effective. The stunning visual effects, combined with the soothing sound of gurgling water, the relaxing new age ambient music and the scent of the aromatherapy oils in the air do combine to quickly put you in mellow, relaxed frame of mind. Downstairs – where you find the changing rooms, plunge pools, thalossotherapy baths, massage rooms, sauna, steam room, ice room, Swiss showers, and other facilities – there are some additional water features. In the massage area is huge bubbling baptismal font looking thing, and surrounding the main reception area (where they assign you your locker key and offer you a refreshing glass of honey lemonade after your massage or workout to restore your body's electrolyte balance) is an artificial stream that makes a pleasant babbling-brook type sound as it passes over the white river stones that line its bed. Until recently, you could actually hear that sound, but over Christmas, they installed tempered glass panels over the water channels, so that you no longer really hear it. And since the water condenses on the inside of the glass, you don't really see it either.

Here's a view of the glass-covered water channels that line the walls of the reception area the passage leading to the pool and thalossotherapy areas

A detail showing the glass covers that have been installed over the water channels

Many of you are probably wondering why they installed these panels, since the designer's objective is obvious – create a striking visual feature and the soothing, natural sound of rushing water. Those of you who are not baffled by this probably, like me, saw some of the recent news coverage concerning the numerous injuries that have been sustained by visitors to London's Tate Modern Gallery, which has recently installed a new work titled "Shibboleth" by Colombian artist Doris Salcedo in the museum's Turbine Hall. The work basically consists of a giant crack in the floor, which Salcedo says symbolises "racial hatred and division in society". I think that she secretly has meant it to symbolise the huge gap that separates most people from intelligence and awareness, since numerous art lovers have managed to hurt themselves by tripping on or falling into this crack in the floor since the piece was opened to the public this past October.

View of "Shibboleth" in the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall

Just contemplate this for a minute. These are people who have taken time out of their busy lives expressly for the purpose of going to the Tate Modern for one reason -- so that they can look at a crack in the floor. Yet there is no escaping the conclusion that if people are managing to hurt themsleves on this exhibit, it can mean only one thing – they weren't looking. But what else can you do in the Turbine Hall besides look at this exhibit? It's not as if museum officials allow or encourage visitors to, for example, bring their ironing or reorganise their recipe collections whilst they are in the hall. Like the Four Seasons, Tate Modern officials considered covering Shibboleth with perspex panels. So without bothering to ask for confirmation of my suspicions from the staff at the Four Seasons spa, I think its safe to conclude that some moron has managed to hurt themselves on this water feature, and the Four Seasons lawyers have decreed that rather than banishing this idiot to the specially designated area that has been created for such morons on an island in the Bering Sea, the spa should instead totally ruin the inspired vision of the designer by completely neutralising the whole concept with some silly glass panels. It's a frustrating state of affairs, but it does go a long way towards explaining Bush's re-election in 2004.

BlognDog
Doha
25 January 2008

Benvenuto La Macchina

There is a logical explanation (or if you prefer, a lame excuse) for the subdued level of activity at Nomadicity over the past few weeks. Since mid-October most of my free time has been occupied with the complicated task of migrating from the Windows world over to the Mac platform. Yes, I know that Apple has an optimisticly worded web page that explains how simple it all is. In technical terms, they are big fat liars. The complexity was not entirely unexpected – I originally moved from the PC to the Mac environment shortly after Macs were first introduced in 1984. From that time, I was a big advocate of the platform, but when I moved to Poland in 1997, Mac support in the country was limited and my company gave me a Windows™ laptop for free (Resistence is futile! Lower your shields and prepare to be assimilated!). In those pre-WiFi, pre-magsafe days I was living in a flat with a phone jack on one side of the room and a power point on the other. So I had a choice – have a phone line snaking across the floor towards the power point, or have a power cord snaking across the floor towards the phone jack. One day the inevitable happened – I tripped over the cord and my mac laptop came crashing to the tile floor, breaking the LCD panel. So from that point on, I've been resigned to being a part of the global Windows®™© empire, patiently enduring an endless series of hangs, crashes, freezes, blue screens of death, viruses, trojans, spam, malware, adware, spyware, obtuse error messages, the cheerfully obnoxious Office®™ "assistant", and "wizards" more evil than anything JK Rowling ever dreamed up. After losing my job in 2002 and going freelance, I no longer had a company IT manager standing between me and a Mac, so when it came time to buy a new laptop in 2004 I came within a panther's whisker of doing so. But my business partner, who was hoping to maximise the discount we could get by buying several Dell machines together, planted doubts about system and platform incompatibilities in my mind, and in the end I chickened out. I almost did so again this time to – I actually prepared an order for a high-spec Fujitsu-Siemens machine with built-in HSDPSA from a local supplier in Stockholm earlier this year, but this time I had the good fortune to be working with several consultants who were Mac users and found that most of my compatibility concerns were unfounded. Printing on an office LAN, file and folder sharing, and even connecting to an Exchange®℠™®© server all apparently work reasonably well. This was also about the time all the Windows©®™®℠ Vista℠®©™® horror stories began to appear in the media. So, this past October I took the plunge.

It was a pretty deep plunge at that, at just over 40 thousand Swedish crowns for a MacBook Pro, software, extended warranty, etc. I must say that the initial impression did not disappoint in the least – judging from the packaging alone, Apple clearly deserves much of the hype it generates. The attention to detail and concern for æsthetics were obvious the instant I had the elegant black box in my hands. Inside, under a thoughtfully designed and implausibly attractive protective foam panel that precisely balanced the competing needs for protection, bulk, and weight, sat the laptop itself, and underneath, nestling in a sort of little niche that presented and protected it in the way that some holy object might be housed in the temple built to display it, was a elegant little box holding the OS DVD and the instruction manual, with the words "Tutto Mac" emblazoned in a confident, yet unassertive, 24 point dark gray sans-serif font. I thought the Italian was an attempt by some left-coast designer to try to nudge up Apple's cool factor another notch or two, no doubt after being inspired by Starbuck's belief that using the Italian words for coffee with milk somehow makes their drinks cooler. A glance inside the manual, however, revealed that, in fact, the entire manual was in Italian, and I soon learned that it had been delivered with an Italian keyboard as well. Hence, I decided to christen my new machine "La MACchina".

The patient, delicate and time-consuming effort I've gone through over the past few weeks to move everything over to the new environment and get it all working properly has reminded me why "macchina" is a feminine noun in Italian. I'm still fussing with getting the synching with my Palm device and telephones working properly. At various points, I had addresses but not calendars synching, then one phone but not the other, then both phones but not the Palm, then massive duplication of entries, then losing all the entries, then restoring the entries, and finally, as of yesterday, getting the calendars but not the addresses synching. Still some more fussing around to do, I am sure, but am getting close, and now I've finally managed to get Apple to replace the Italian keyboard with a Swedish one, as I originally ordered. I also ordered an English OS, but it arrived in Swedish, and that apparently I am stuck with.

Despite the pain, it's good to be back. Apple has come a long ways since I last used their OS under System 7, at a time when computers were simple enough that I knew what every last file in the System Folder was there for. Systems 8 and 9 have come and gone, and now System X has gone through several feline permutations – Jaguar, Panther, Tiger and now Leopard. Hopefully, they'll name the next one "Tabby".

Speaking of cats, the big news from the USA this week was the escape of a 4-year old, 150 kilo Siberian tiger named "Tatiana" who killed one and injured two at the San Francisco zoo. The police shot her to death, despite the fact that her species has been driven to the brink of extinction by humans, so she wasn't exactly unjustified in scoring a point or two for her own team. But I suppose if I were facing a member of the most powerful feline species in the world, moving towards me with fresh blood dripping from its claws and fangs, I would probably also reach for my police revolver if I had one handy. But I would probably do something else first, without taking the time to locate the nearest litter box to do it in. So if you have cats, it may not be a good idea to be watching the evening news with them in the room if the tiger attack story comes up – they might get ideas. Odds are you are a bit tastier than that dried, re-processed meat flavoured cereal you've been feeding them all these years anyway.

BlognDog
Stockholm
28 December 2007

Fun with Republicans

Having long ago made up my mind on who to support in next year's Presidential election in the USA (Barack Obama), I haven't been bothering to pay much attention to what the other Democrats -- particularly Hilary Clinton -- have to say. Clinton is in fact one of the worst apologists for Israel amongst all United States Senators, a body long infamous for its extreme pro-Israel bias. I knew this about her long before her decision to support the Lieberman legislation that attempted to pressurise Iran over its civilian nuclear programme, even whilst Israel's 200 illegal nuclear weapons are ignored. But she has many other bad positions on a range of issues. One that particularly irritated me was her vocal support of the requirement adopted in 2003 that requires passengers simply transiting a US airport -- but not entering the country -- to have a US visa. At the time, Clinton made a number of irritating public statements, complaining to Tom Ridge that the lack of a visa requirement would allow a potential terrorist "to take a flight from a country with less-stringent security to a U.S. airport and possibly roam that U.S. airport during a layover." Just imagine! Someone freely ROAMING -- Buffalo style -- around in an airport! Possibly stopping at Starbucks for a skinny latte, wandering unmonitored down the single malt aisle at the duty-free, or even purchasing uncensored reading material from Hudson News! I contacted one of her staff, an apparent policy-wonk wannabee named Josh Albert, and asked how Clinton planned to handle things when the airlines started moving their transit hubs and the thousands of jobs that go with them out of the USA as a result of her short-sighted policies. He said he doubted that would happen, but in 2004, Iberia airlines did exactly that. So no need to waste our time over at the Hilary for President web site.

For pure entertainment value, however, the Republican candidate sites are unbeatable. Most amusing is their fascination with Nazi-style political slogans and tag-lines. Tom Tancredo is For a Secure America, Mike Huckabee's tag-line is Faith-Family-Freedom, whereas Fred Thompson prefers the decidedly non-alliterative Security-Unity-Prosperity. Mitt Romney offers the more verbose True Strength for America's Freedom, whereas Guiliani uses the unoriginal but still catchy Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Führer! Actually I just made that up -- "Rudy" not only doesn't use his surname, he also is the only Republican without a campaign slogan or tag line. Next time he runs, he'll probably take things a step further by stealing the Jenny Craig weight loss centre approach to branding by sticking an exclamation point after his name (Rudy!) as if it's impossible to articulate without getting excited.

All of them clearly are trying to adopt the proven election-winning approach pioneered by Cheney and Rove, which is to try to convince voters that letting anyone else into the oval office is essentially the equivalent of handing the country over to an unholy alliance of job-stealing Hispanics and wild-eyed jihadists. Tancredo, who earlier displayed his leadership skills by advocating that the US bomb Mecca and Medina in order to "deter" terrorism, has a new ad that opens with the words "Tough on Terrorism" (just in case you didn't get the message with his For a Secure America slogan) and closes with the tag line "Tom Tancredo: Before its too Late". In this ad, Tancredo first softens up his audience with images from the Atocha and London Underground (7/7) bombings as well as the Beslan incident, with ominously Rovian narration and music. Having put us in a suitably fearful state of mind, the narrator then solemnly informs us that foreigners pose a threat "beyond the 20 million aliens who've come to take our jobs," and blames "spineless politicians who refuse to defend our borders against those who've come to kill" and then shows an anonymous terrorist (in silhouette only -- no need to show him for the viewers to just know he has dark skin) depositing a bomb in a crowded shopping mall. Also no need to specify the kinds of measures those "spineless politicians" are refusing to take -- it goes without saying that Tancredo is just itching to expand the Guantanamo-Bagram-Abu Ghraib gulag system into the USA.

Mike Huckabee prefers to stick to discussions of more abstract concepts such as "leadership" on his campaign web site, allowing him to avoid more embarrassing topics, such as the fact that he's a racist, immigrant bashing, anti-abortion, gun-toting fruitcake whose supporters appear unable to articulate any reason for backing him other than their conviction that he was chosen by God.

Fred Thompson takes a more traditionally conservative view -- all problems are caused by foreigners and poor people, whom he intends to deport, kill or imprison until life gets better.

Mitt Romney is one of several Republican candidates who pledges to "punish sanctuary cities", those annoying municipalities who have the bad taste to try to provide some limited protections to immigrants, and worse, do it through legislation and initiatives enacted by democratically elected officials supported by voters. To his credit, he is the only republican who has a site in Spanish as well as English. But clicking on "en español" changes more than just the language. While the English press release section contains a long list of threatening declarations explaining how, as Governor of Massachusetts, Romney signed legislation to "allow state troopers to enforce Federal immigration laws," how he made immigrants pay higher tuition for the same education at state universities, forced them to learn English and prevented them from getting driving licenses, the message from el Romney hispanicó is entirely different. In the spanish press release list we learn that "Romney favorece más visas para trabajadores extranjeros" (Romney favours more visas for foreign workers) and the very short page on "migracíon" quotes Romney as saying "Queremos que Estados Unidos sea más atractivo para los inmigrantes legales" without, of course explaining how his extensive plans to harass, track, and intimidate them is going to achieve that.

Strength through Joy! Work Makes you Free!

BlognDog
Doha
23 November 2007

Censors 2, BlognDog 1

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