Qatar load of that!

Okay, so I spent the better part of a week trying to think of a pun featuring the word "Qatar" to no avail. I'm sure one of you will be kind enough to post something better in the comments section. Who knows, maybe I'll delete your comment and steal your idea.

Anyway, the point of this post is to describe my experiences on yet another Gulf-State-day-trip that work are so fond of offering me.

In Qatar, they have a strict "no bugles" policy

Travelling by plane is surely the most time efficient, liberating and enjoyable experiences available today. Sadly, travelling through airports is maddeningly slow and even more frustrating than having your hands tied behind you as you watch Jessica Alba undress. For a month. So despite only being 45 minutes flying time away and my first appointment of the day being at 10.15 (which is 11.15 in Dubai), I found myself waiting on the kerb outside my apartment at 5.45am.

My manager, Tel, was driving as I wanted to go out in town that evening and an 8pm landing meant I was carrying a change of clothes. I worried slightly when he was late, specifically as both Tel and my other colleague, Lukas, had recently missed a flight to Bahrain after getting to check-in slightly less than an hour before take off. “Hand luggage only” cuts no ice, apparently.

By 6am I was bricking it. Tel showed up a couple of moments later and didn't seem overly concerned. This was probably something to do with his intention to drive the length of Sheik Zayed road at speeds approaching that of re-entry by the space shuttle. The bonnet glowed white hot as we approached the velocity required to reverse time. I wondered, aloud, if the speed cameras could focus on us, but Tel swore that the third lane from the centre was perfectly safe from their view. How safe we were from colliding with the busses we approached as if they had 5 reverse gears and were red-lining the largest of them was another matter.

At the airport, after completing our first five of a dozen or so X-rays, we checked in for both legs of the flight at once. Qatar Airways is the national carrier and seems to offer nothing more than you might expect for a fare half that of the corresponding Emirates flight. As we weren't flying with Dubai's own airline, we were denied a handy gate and got on a bus to the fringes of the airport where our Airbus was inconveniently parked.

The flight was so short that the entertainment was limited to 2 "Tom & Jerry" cartoons, but they still managed to offer me a stale Danish pastry and some orange juice which proudly declared it was “MADE FROM CONCENTRATE”.

Doha is the capital of Qatar, an oil rich (even in the terms of Gulf States) land of sand which protrudes out from the main body of desert that is Saudi and northwards into the Gulf. Qatar has an image problem and Doha have been trying to top-trump Dubai for the last decade. Sadly for them, where Doha announces an intention to do something, Dubai does it first. And they make it bigger and add helicopters, polar bears or whatever else it takes to make Qatar's version look somewhat stale. They also have recently found that, with no governmental intervention, rents are spiralling out of control and are on a par with the most expensive of Dubai’s addresses. Couple that with too few schools for too many ex-pat kids and the place really has lost it’s “make lots of money here tax free” lustre in recent years.

Rush hour traffic in downtown Doha

Doha has only a few bars and there is no where near the proliferation of western mega-chains that Dubai glows above. Hence Tel and I found ourselves in a privately run cafe drinking the worlds sweetest tea. I wonder what it would have tasted like if I'd asked for sugar. I assume it would have become a solid.

We were discussing the first appointment of the day and it was making me a little nervous, although I wasn't prepared to share this with Tel. We had a whole day in Qatar so it was my job to try and fill as much time with client meetings as possible so the flight would be good value. The only snag was that we didn't have any clients in Qatar.

I had blagged an appointment with the CEO of one of the large banks in the country but only because I gave his assistant the impression that he knew me. She had said she would confirm the meeting and I sent her an email suggesting everything would be fine whilst at the same time providing her my contact details. I didn't want to hear back from her as that would undoubtedly be a cancellation, so I certainly wasn't about to call to reconfirm and give her the opportunity to "postpone".

"Hello, I'm Rick Theobald and I have a 10.15 with Mr Pootle."

Dear reader, I hope it's obvious that I've changed the names of some people who I include in this article, but just in case, here's confirmation. He isn't really called Mr Pootle.

"Please, have a seat." so far, so good.

We sat down a short while after ten and I actually saw Mr Pootle head to his office. Then I spotted the nervous conversations from assistants. Our appearance was not expected.

"Err, can I ask when you made this appointment, Sir?" The lady asking was still unsure of whether I was a massive player in the world of Gulf Banking, or just some Geordie chancer. I was ready for this.

"Sure, I made it with Loopy (yes, keep up). Here, I have a copy of the confirmation email I sent her."

She looked far too happy, now she had someone to blame, and scampered off to get Loopy for me. So I could shout at her.

"Err, hello, Rick?" Loopy was pale. Probably she was worried about having brought someone (and, who was this man anyway?) all the way to Qatar from Dubai and having no appointment to offer. "I thought I said I'd confirm this appointment?"

"Ah, but we did. I sent you this ( I waved my copy like Neville Chamberlain) email and asked… wait… let me read for you, 'please let me know if anything should change'"

"But Mr Pootle is not free," she protested.

"I just saw him head into his office. Sorry, are you telling me that you didn't book this with him?" She virtually ran back to the relative calm of reception and grabbed a phone.

Tel was worried that I was now taking things too far, that we should cut our loses while they still felt guilty. Then suddenly, another gentleman wandered out to great us. A very senior member of the bank, he apologised for the confusion and took us to his office.

As it turned out, I'd managed to blag us into a meeting with exactly the right person and there is the very real potential that we'll have a project signed off by the end of the week. As my dear Grandma always told me, "Shy bairns get nowt!"

Mind you, she also said, "I want, never gets!" so go figure.

The afternoon meetings included one gentleman who's birthday it was. His staff had organised a large Indian buffet which we were invited to share before he'd sit down with us. At one point, Tel headed to the toilets and I found myself joining in with candles, singing and pop. Nice cake though and not a bad way to finish the working day.

We had time to burn before the return flight at 6pm so we headed to the Marriot hotel where a licensed bar was open. As it was still a lovely temperature and the sun was slowly scratching taller shadow lines across the bay, we sat outside.

"Yes, sir?" The waiter seemed eager to serve.

"Just a diet coke for me please," Tel was driving. That, and Muslim.

"Of course, and you sir?"

"Can I have a pint of shandy please?"

"But of course!" and off he ran.

It was a good five minutes before his return. He placed Tel's Coke on the table and moved to open the green bottle that accompanied it on his tray.

"Err, I asked for a shandy," I started, "that's San Pelegrino. Mineral water. Not the same thing."

In a moment of pure farce, he looked at the bottle in his hand with a puzzled expression, reading the label as if certain that he would discover it saying "Shandy" and I would be proved a fool.

"Oh, I will get for you. What is the… Shandy?"

"Do you have lager?" I pressed on, “Yes? Okay, so put some of that in a pint glass but not all the way to the top. Fill the rest with lemonade. Okay?"

He nodded and ran off. About seven or eight minutes later a different waiter returned.

"Sir. You ask for the Shandy beer?"

"Well, yes, a lager shandy, ideally."

"We have not this. We have Fosters, Stella and Cobra."

I took a deep breath.

"Okay. Can you please bring me a pint of beer, Stella let's say, with a little bit of lemonade in the top. Does that make any sense?"

He looked baffled for a moment and then... The lights came on, he smiled a knowing smile of recognition.

"Of course, Sir!" We traded knowing looks and I settled back to enjoy the last rays of the burnt orange sunset, wondering what sort of milkshake I'd end up with.

When the waiter strode, triumphant onto the patio once more, Tel burst out laughing. I turned in time to see the slightly hurt look of a man no longer seemed certain that I was going to want the bottle of Corona he'd brought me. With a piece of lemon in the top. Sod it. I was thirsty.

Cheers!

The trip didn't give me much of an idea what Qatar is all about. I'd pitch it squarely between the extremes of Dubai and the charmless magnolia paint of Kuwait. That evening, I was told throughout the day, everyone in Doha was gathering at the corniche to celebrate their official bid for the Olympics in 2018. Looking at the place now, there’s a lot to be done before this has even an outside chance. That said, from living here I'd put nothing past one of these Gulf States.