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Published: April 11th 2013
Sheep's Tongue Salad
At the Syrian place in the souk. Great place, the sheep's tongue made me want to barf.I know - it's been weeks since I've written and now I'm going on yet another driving rampage... but there are some good photos at least, right?
This morning was just difficult. I
can't stand when people call the type of driving in Qatar
Aggressive Driving. It is not Aggressive Driving, which is driving so that you can get where you need to be without standing aside and letting people (literally) run all over you.
No. Here in Qatar, I call this driving
Complete Disregard For The Lives of Others. Harsh? Maybe. But oh so true. People here use their land cruisers or lexus SUV's to shovel you aside into a guardrail, tailgate you at 100kph while flashing their lights, speed up when you try to pull out of side road, and straddle lanes until they decide which is faster in stop-and-go traffic all so that they can arrive at the intersection/roundabout 16 seconds before you do.
I don't even care about driving along the shoulders of streets when you've been sitting at a the same light through 3+ rounds, or creating a third lane in a two lane roundabout because actually does speed up traffic. It's these
people that truly do not care if you are in an accident or even if they kill you, just so they can get to their meeting 2 minutes earlier, in a city that has nothing vitally important and so much traffic that your bosses don't even care if you show up 10 minutes late because they've been there too.
Apparently yesterday on the Corniche was a three car accident where three people died and 15 were injured. The Corniche. Where you have roundabouts every 0.7 kilometers. How fast was someone going that they actually got themselves crushed to death? Their car was sandwiched between a crane and a big truck - obviously they were not the ones speeding on the corniche. People - really is your life worth this? Use that extra two minutes you saved, causing countless accidents or almost-accidents, and get to your destination safely and
let others do the same. IT'S NOT WORTH IT!!!!
So, yes, this is how my day started out at 6:45 am on my way to my weekly meeting with our big client. Traffic not so bad... until we get to the spot in our new freeway which merges from two
Lamb meat wraps with yogurt
also yum at the Syrian place lanes to one lane. Almost every time (apart from when it first opened and no one knew what the heck to do), there has been one from the left, one from the right, one from the left, one from the right. Shocking concept, huh? But no. This a-hole in Lexus suv decides he doesn't have to play by the rules, or even some semblance of common courtesy, so he pulls between me and the truck I let in (he was merging into MY lane no less), after he'd sat behind me flashing his lights and beeping even though THERE WAS NOWHERE FOR ME TO GO and basically demonstrates he is going to push me into the k-rail unless I let him through. I did and was just in shock. Then our one lane joined up with another one lane and he decides he is still not far ahead in bumper-to-bumper traffic, so he swings out to the right and almost right into a bus. I actually sucked in some air, while he swung back to the left, and then went for it again - the bus just let him go. When I got to the light about 30 seconds later,
Lamb and kibbeh soup
Syrian place - surprisingly, I liked this a lot! he was right next to me in the left lane waiting for the same light. What. An. Idiot.
On the way back to work from the meeting, after getting shoved aside a few times - no biggie - I was driving over 100kph in the left lane on a major road when a small bus suddenly swerved into my lane with no signal or anything and forced me to slam on my brakes and go to the side of the road and almost side swiped the guard rail. At least he acknowledged that he almost killed me because he just wanted to cut-off the guy in front of him, giving me a little wave, but that was it for me.
I got to work, turned on my computer, which proceeded to give me problems, and burst into tears! Hahaha!
I know LA has some serious traffic problems, but believe me when I say it has nothing, NOTHING on this. The worst I'd ever seen previously was in Panama - still like a kiddie-park compared to this. I hear places like Turkey and I know India are worse - I guess I'll find out someday...
Anyway, moving
Syrian dessert
As many of you know, i'm not a sweets fan, but our waiter brought these assorted jams (?) - very yum - apricots, apple, eggplant, mango, etc. on...
Since coming back, i've had to dive head first back into my project. I got offshore trained along with Helicopter Underwater Egress Training (since my previous training was not done in this area and our client only accepts local), H2S training, permitting training, reporting, etc. Pretty much, next to no time on other projects, even though they're waiting for me. It sounds like I will be going out to a nearshore drilling platform to do some super cool geologic exploration. I'm very nervous, but quite excited as well. My first time on a platform! My first time in a helicopter!!!
While working on this project (and living in Qatar of course), I've had pretty much no life. So, I'm ready for this project to be over in about 10 weeks. Then I plan to do some major traveling! Definitely taking a week off.
In the meantime, enjoy my photos and thanks for understanding my umpteenth "Daily Traffic in Doha" rant.
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Anastasia78
Anastasia78
It takes a lot for me to lose my cool but being in crazy traffic like you described would have me in tears without a doubt.