Hello,
Hope everyone's well.
It's coming close to a week in Doha and alot has happened since I last wrote.
Today (Wednesday) is Ash Wednesday, and my colleague at work invited me to attend the one and only Catholic Church in Doha. It was a 20 minute drive out of the City Centre and into the Desert. About 3km off the road intersection that leads to the borders of Lebanon, there stood a fortress-like Church in the desert with a few uncompleted structures in the surrounding area. It didn't look like a Church; it had no signage, nor the symbolic cross of christ. It was still a "Work in Progress" Church. The construction of the Church came with one condition imposed by the government - no cross must be displayed on any part of the buidling.
The Church caters to various sectors of the community, largely made of Philipinas, Indians and Lebanese. There are designated services in respect of the 3 communities mentioned, in their respective mother tongue. Then there's an English mass for the general masses. Seating capacity is about 2000.
To get to the Church, you certainly need a set of wheels. In Doha, driving/owning a car is a necessity.
On the subject of driving, boy oh boy, what a thrill I had in the car today.
We started off later than usual, and the newbies in the car, including myself were pooled together to attend our medical review at the Doha Medical Centre. It was some ways out of the City Centre but the peak hour traffic was something to contend with.
The driver had skill, and *balls* - the one thing you learn about driving in and around Doha is the ability to know your minor roads. From one small road to another, our driver got us to the medical centre in no time. Pavements are not just for pedestrians; drivers will just "carve" out an extra path just to inch a few hundred metres to the intersection.
As we approached nearer to the medical centre (which was on the other side of the road), he made a quick cut across the divider, drove about 200m against the flow of traffic and into the main entrance.
Dropping us off at our respective centres (one end for males, and at the other end of the building for females), he shoved QR500 into my hand and told me to "draw blood" and get x-ray. When I'm done, I was supposed to call him. What was his name - "My name is Hussein, Sadam Hussein"!!!!
At the medical centre, its pure chaos and mayhem. I am truly, truly thankful that we have an organised queue system in Singapore. You get your queue tickets dished out manually, then move on to a row of seats which is manually dictated by a masked woman "bouncer"! There's no queue number. When the bouncer points, you move to the next available seat. It was obvious that the bouncer gave priority to the caucasians and would many a times overlook queue-cutters! That irk one lady that got the brunt end of the stick from the bouncer; the irked lady got pushed a few notches down the queue and had to wait out longer than usual.
Once you get finger-pointed, you basically make payment of QR100, get a receipt and head out to the adjoining rooms with a signage that says "Draw Blood". The nurse was more attentive talking to her colleague than finding a vein in my arm!
The x-ray was the fun part when we had to get undressed and stand exposed to the radiation - it was done in an open room!!!! We also got to view x-rays of each woman passing through the scan before it got to our turn.
As the credit card ad goes - medical review, QR100; experience, priceless!
Till the next time, Martha
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