Doha World Championships Notebook - Day 5

In Qatar, Sunday is working day

******
A visitor to Qatar will immediately realise that the working week is generally from Sunday to Thursday, with Fridays and Saturdays being off days.

Daylight sets in from 3am and most of the time, government offices work from 6am to 2pm but commercial offices work in two shifts – the first from 7am to noon, then from 3.30pm to 7pm. Foreign nationals working in Qatar fall in the latter category.

Indians, Nepalese, Ugandans, Kenyans, Filipinos and South Africans who work here as taxi drivers, hotel attendants, guards and cashiers go to work in shifts. Most of the shopping malls also stay closed on Friday mornings.

You must have permit to buy beer in Qatar

******

Qatar is getting ready to host the 2022 Fifa World Cup but one of the greatest fears football fans have expressed has got to do with Qatar’s strict regulations regarding consumption of alcohol. Now get this. One must have a permit to buy alcohol in Qatar, and also to drink in licensed bars, clubs and hotels. You may have the means but not the permit to buy beer, and therein lies the basis of fear among the foreign football fans planning to converge on Doha for the world’s greatest sports extravaganza in 2022.

Drinking alcohol in public is banned, and I am yet to see groups of people gathered at pubs and bars partaking of the frothy stuff. As is committing a sin, liquor license holders prefer to buy alcohol and to consume it in the privacy of their homes.

Cost of communication

******
Qatar, a country of 2.7 million people spread over some 11,571 square kilometres, has two mobile telephone networks - Ooredoo (formerly Qtel) and Vodafone. Both operators provide two types of package: pay-as-you-go and monthly post-paid options. To sign up for either service, a SIM card must be purchased and activated. You can get credit through top-up cards, which are widely sold throughout the country, or online. But the two mobile telephone service providers do not bombard users with endless marketing messages and sales promotions the way Kenyan mobile telephone service providers do.

In Kenya, mobile telephone service providers auction users to the highest bidder and you will receive up to six marketing messages every other day. Those with twin Scard phones endure more suffering.

Scribes, too, have their day

******

The world over, it is a common practice in major sports competitions for journalists to trade their pens, notebooks, cameras and voice recorders for football boots, kits or running spikes. Well, the 2019 World Championship in Athletics is no exception. On Friday, journalists covering the championship will compete in 800 metres race at Khalifa International Stadium from 3pm.

There will be 16 heats and the best time will win. Either by default or association, journalists from Kenya covering the championship have become the clear favourites to win on Friday, never mind the fact that some have not won even a village competition back home. It is fair to say that a majority of Kenyan journalists are in a race against fitness.