Junoon performing in Qatar on the 31st of January 2020

Junoon (Pakistan’s largest rock export) reformed sometime last year. With Ali Azmat and Salman Ahmed getting over their differences to being back Junoon to its fans. With Salman ruining the name of the band by singing all the songs himself in his weird out of tune vocals.  It was overdue.

I always had more pop-rock music inclinations with Vital Signs, Awaz etc being my favorites and didn’t exactly ever soak the greatness of Junoon when they hit big time with Sayonee. Lack of this immersion in Junoon was one of the reason I didn’t attend their first concert in Qatar for the first time in the 90’s. The venue as I remember was Khalifa Tennis and Squash federation and would have been a great venue.

Fast forward to 2020, now that the band is reformed and Omran Shafique is in the live line-up, I am more than happy to see Junoon on stage and in the crowd (Junoonis). They will be performing in QNCC which i am happy about since I won’t have to drive or a taxi, will just take the metro green line to it.

Q-post Revenue Diversification idea

Food delivery is an ever growing trend in Qatar with at least 4 different service providers Carriage, Talabat, Rafeek and Zomato as operators.

Snail mail on the other hand is a dying trend over here and diversification of income is vital for Q-post ( Qatar Postal Authority ) if it wants increasing revenue without spending much on infrastructure.

Existing strength for Q-post:

• Q-post’s delivery fleet remains idle after office hours that can be used reducing the need to procure additional vehicles.
• Has several branches around Qatar to act as hubs for drivers/food storage to serve restaurants in the area and drivers wouldn’t have to ‘hang around’ hot spots in the summer
• Follows official mapping and hence is aware of routes, making delivery more accurate.

 

An ode to a toy

Your smile captures me
Makes me feel deluded
and when you don’t laugh
I know that batteries aren’t included

Muscat

Day 2 in Muscat, sitting in a cafe in Muscat a quick summary of observation would be there are quite a few flies and the brand that I’ve noticed the most is 

 

Day 1 was spent mostly at the airport and trying to sort out my rental car which I had booked online but the rental car company -Dollar had no record of. 

Let’s see how the remaining trip turns out to be 🙂

Where is the spark?

On 03-02-16 got featured as a ‘local talent’ on a local radio station @QFradio2. I was asked to come and had time to read a couple of my poems with the listeners of the #QFDRIVESHOW . As I was quickly going through the poems to find something worthy of being read on air, I began having certain thoughts on what emotions were the ones that I used to feel and those that prompted me to write poetry. It was a natural flow because of a spark of imagination.

Where is my spark now?

Is it because that I am much older to when I used to write poetry? Is this a natural process that as when you grow up, you tend to lose the thought process since you are bogged down by more responsibilities and have to have more practical thoughts to sustain daily life than creative ones..

I am not happy that I can’t write poetry anymore and I do want to restart…….maybe I shall soon.

 

Premium Al Rabeeh Clinic

I’ve been lazy last year and did not visit a dentist and failed miserably at keeping up with the recommended bi-annual dentist visit. So at the beginning of the year, I got on to my feet and went for a dental check up to the clinic named above since it is near to where I live. Now, the clinic name specifies the word premium although I fail to understand the ‘premium’ element in it. Maybe, it’s much better compared to their regular clinics but when compared to some other local clinics, it fails to live up to the name.
There is no water dispenser in the male waiting area although there is a toilet. The urinals are shaped very weirdly, designed to ensure spilling quite a bit on the floor or you will risk splashing yourself with your own urine. Yep sir, choose your lesser evil.
Now, why I’ve mentioned the water dispenser is because during the evening time, the appointment system becomes void. I’ve had two instances both with prior appointments, first time I had to wait a total of about 45 minutes, the second time, I was late (I admit) but had to wait for over an hour to see the dentist.  I am guessing someone sitting in the
waiting area for this long would want water by now.
I managed to ask the dentist when I saw him eventually, on what the solution is to this waiting time to which he’s recommended coming on non-busy times, I followed his advice for my appointment yesterday and I saw him straight through.

Have you faced the same issue with other clinics in Doha? ( not the toilet or water dispensers but having a massive waiting time despite having an appointment)

Should I revive this back?

Hello Internet World.
I was going through my blog, post after post and reading comment after comment. All of it made me a little nostalgic and I started getting thoughts about restarting this blog.

Is there anyone left out there? ….. Hello??

Netherlands day 2

Day 2 and I have finally figured out why orange is so prominent of a color to represent the Netherlands.
It’s because of the kindness of the people here, also it is the color of their cheeks when blood rushes to it. Today I saw a stranger help the worker replacing trash bags out of the bins because she was struggling to open the bin door. I am sure he was orange!

Ended up walking a lot today, as I messed up the directions. An occurence that happens to me during every vacation 🙂

The Netherlands -day 1

I’ve arrived in Holland. Many obeservations. The residents here are great people, they geniunely help others. Pedestrians have respect, cars stop when you are at a crossing without traffic lights.
First nights stay is in Rotterdam, looks like a good place. I love how the Dutch are so open. Most living rooms are visible from the street and have little or no curtains.

Also went to Eindhoven yesterday and surprisingly the central rail station area there is much cooler than Rotterdam’s. Why am I surprised? Because I came with a different impression to Rotterdam. 

Also, to my surprise, the color blue is more prominent than orange.(Maybe it’s just because I got an overdose of blue at the Philips museum).

Idea for twitter

How do you get to know about the corner coffee shop performance and a private art viewing exhibition in a clubhouse? Equally applicable to small or big events there is a lack of one single resource about events. Event websites, being more for profit making and having sponsored spots and advertisements, tend to list events that they have an direct or indirect benefit from.

I present to you: #todayin(cityname)
(example) #todayinchicago Street performances by Fire eating jugglers at Devon Street.

Every day in the morning, people who have events to promote can use this hashtag in the morning.
This method can be also as for events on the following day

#tomorrowin(cityname)

This will bring forward all events which twitter users have tagged on what’s happening in the city. This hashtag will have daily inputs by users throughout the city and this way we can have up to date (literally) event schedule with a diverse range of events. This will take care of the shortcoming an existing publication will have, like promotion of only certain type of events.
This will also benefit travelers by bucket loads. When you are in a country and then you have spare time during your day without a clue on where to go and what to do, even normal event listings will be hard to locate. You can just type in #todayinthecity for the day’s events.
For smaller sized countries, instead of city you can type a country #todayinBahrian

This is a large untapped market for internet users craving for information, I see twitter grabbing it by ease and dominating the market. I am sure analysts at twitter will be able to see how many searches are made that fall into this category.

On a larger picture twitter should also consider introducing having standardized hashtags for dissemination of useful information and people using twitter as a search engine – gaining in traffic which would otherwise have gone to another search engine!