Watar, Watar, Everywhere

In one of the local newspapers the other day, I read that the origin of the word Qatar came from some other term, and some other before it, but the one before that meant “search for water”. This is not at all surprising, as it’s danged hot here all of the time, and I never step outside without a water bottle. It would be worse if your job was to keep your sheep from withering, but in the past week I haven’t seen a single sheep, or goat, or camel. I did see a couple of cats in a souq, but I’m sure they take care of themselves.

What I have seen is an abundance of water, no searching required. Not always in liquid form, but the evidence is there; grand boulevards lined with date palms and topiary; sweeping lawns, manicured gardens. They’ve got the Persian/Arabian Gulf all around them, and their huge oil and gas reserves fuel massive desalination plants. It could well be that the irrigation water is all treated effluent from the municipal sewer plant – but that hasn’t been commissioned yet. Much of the effluent would be hauled to specific irrigation sites, but I’d guess a large volume of the irrigation water comes direct from the potable distribution system.

Yesterday morning, I went down to the beach to watch the sun come up. The silence was eventually broken by the hotel staff doing their morning things. They need to drag the beach of any footprints remaining from yesterday. They set up the poolside bars and restaurants. They sweep everything that isn’t grass or beach. They hose down all of the furniture. And there’s lots of furniture, from the lounges at the pool to the other lounges near the Gulf. From the al fresco dining areas near the hotel to the snack bar near the kiddie pool.

They do this with a hose, with no control or nozzle, turned all the way up. It took an hour. If our well system could produce half of this volume, I’d never worry about irrigating the garden again. These guys never worry at all, just throw more dinosaurs at the power plants and strip the salt out of another few million gallons a day. The Peninsula reports 437 million cubic meters of desalinated water per year. This equates to about 150 gallons per day per capita. In the States, 150 gpd is a pretty good planning factor, but most of the States aren’t in a desert and most of our water comes from freshwater sources without the energy cost of purifying it. In the Qatari defense, they are really rich. Really rich. And the oil and gas comes out of the ground like lies flow out of Washington. I can only hope that their rhetoric about environmental sustainability is more than simple rhetoric.

And for full disclosure, our per capita water in the US of A is almost ten times 150 gpd, but 80% of that is for cooling power plants and irrigation, the rest is for manufacturing, commercial and domestic use.

Meanwhile, the impetus for this trip came from the need for me to attend a meeting. A single meeting. A single meeting scheduled to last an hour. A single meeting scheduled to last an hour on the far side of the planet.

Success!

The other side of the coin is that I need to be in Saudi Arabia for two days of site investigation, but that’s not until next week. So I could have flown home, spent two days there, then flew back to this side of the world, or I could do what I did, hang out in a four star hotel on the water for five days. I’m not entirely sure I made the right choice.

The Intercontinental, while nice and all, is one of those mostly inclusive places. Not inclusive in that everything is provided for one daily rate, but inclusive in that there is nothing else near this place, so I’m sort of stuck eating every meal here. Sure, it’s all expensed, but I’m just not sure I’m getting the best value for the Company at their 240 Riyal buffet (about 65 bucks). Alternatively, I could take a taxi into a restaurant in the city center and back, but would likely total the same.

Besides, taxis in the Middle East (or anyplace I get sent) can be exciting places, and the more I do this, the more I evaluate risk, and carefully select the exciting places I frequent. Maybe that’s just me becoming more crotchety. Maybe it’s just me being bored in Qatar, waiting for these five days to end.

I did make a trip out yesterday. I went to what was once an ancient souq just off of the water at the city center. Parts of it were very, very old I’m sure, but the boutique hotels around the perimeter told a different tale. It was hard to tell who actually shopped there, as I went there very early in the day, wanting to see the place open up in the morning, when it would be cooler and more quiet, and didn’t see much trade. There was a mix of touristy and housewares, local clothing and spices. All of it in shallow, narrow shops, crammed pell-mell into some seemingly random shape with crooked lanes, blind alleys, dim lighting, roofs and ceiling of differing heights and coverage, plenty of shadows, unclear sightlines, and elevation changes out of nowhere.

I took a lot of pictures, but not especially for posterity. The one hour meeting concerned special training facilities, and realism is key for those types of places. When I finally get to design my training souq, I’ll incorporate many of the geometric and architectural elements of this place.

Bottom line, just more work. I’d never vacation here. I’d rather spend time on the water.


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