Qatar forever - Choose your destiny!!

Everything started one and half year ago……

I was told that I had been hired for Al Raha Beach project. This huge development in Abu Dhabi was “just about to be signed” for at least half a year before I came and all the time after I came, until Envac’s chances died completely with leaving old Al Raha management only few months after I arrived.

But that didn’t look like a problem. We had still Yas Island and many other “promising” project were around. Until the world financial crisis came only few months after I arrived.

UAE’s happy spending finished and everything stalled. The biggest Dubai developer Nakheel bankrupt and with him disappeared many “happy times promising” projects like Waterfront (city twice the size of Hong Kong), one mile high Harbor tower or canal network going 50km deep inland. Rents dropped to half because people were losing jobs and going home in hundreds (180 Al Raha engineers got sacked on hour one sunny morning). Car loans and car prices dropped, because all cars have been left at the airport by leaving people, abandoning everything…even their loans.

Needless to say that I had everything already secured for the peak price and that Envac haven’t got any bigger project for our “cutting edge” waste collection system by now.

UAE was not hit by the crisis that hard as USA or EU, but it was. Who apparently was not hit were Saudi Arabia and Qatar and our salesmen, were more and more often starting to travel to those countries trying to secure our asses.

So one day, I think it was around March 2010, happened the inevitable. “As you probably see, there is not or soon won’t be any work for us here in Yas” begun my project manager our face to face conversation. “But there is a boat going to Qatar. Are you on the boat? Or you stay here on this sinking Island?” was his question he should have asked some people to report to our boss Mike.

I was suspecting that something is happening long time before this day. Longer we stayed on Yas, with more of our work being finished and more time without hearing any news about some future projects, more I was playing with thought, what I would say when this question comes? “I’m on board” I replied immediately.

I was not happy to say that. I had everything in Dubai. A lot of good friends, my apartment, car, my routines and activities I liked, I worked position I felt finally comfortable with…I had there my happy living. I didn’t want to leave all this, especially when traveling to a country where everything was supposed to be way worse than in UAE. But on the other hand it is better to lose it temporarily and have possibility to come to get it back when situation change, than sink with the Island and lose it all forever.

So on sunny Sunday morning 2.5.2010, I was sitting in the airport waiting for my flight to Doha. It was not my first flight to Doha, but this one was different in that it was the first, last and only one that day. No transfer, no continuation, no other destination, no way back…

Actually there was the way back in form of return ticket one month later, which was giving me something to look forward to, because I hadn’t heard a single positive thing about Qatar!!

Qatar is a flat, dry wasteland on peninsula of the size of Cyprus with one real city and capital Doha. There are no mountains, no proper sandy desert, just plains full of loose rocks and stones going across whole country. And where are no villages, there are oil and gas rafineries. In Qatar lives out of 1.5 million people in total only 1/3 of expats, which majority is from Asia and other Arab countries, so there are relatively few westerners. Also ratio of 3.5 men on 1 most probably veiled woman is not very pleasant environment.

Doha as a capital is more decent, traditional and Arabic with lower average road lane count, with much lower average building altitude, insignificant bar number and only one liquor store in whole country. Don’t need to mention that there is no climbing wall or Magic community. So what is there?

This was what I knew about Qatar so don't be surprised that I was worried. But I was comforting myself that it is only for one month and that I’ll survive and then go back, because we were supposed to get small Yas Island project extension. So I took it as easy as possible and tried to get my own picture about the country, because in the corner of my mind I thought that it couldn’t be that bad J