Day 4, February 19th

This is my first full day in Doha.  It was also a fairly full day from a schedule standpoint.  I had a breakfast meeting with a local business man.  It was an interesting conversation centered around his desire to educate me in the local business dealings and his firm.

The firm is primarily an executive recruiter which is handy when it comes to staffing the many jobs developing in Qatar.  He also took the time to outline the ruling family and businesses in Qatar.  It is amazing the number of businesses owned by the same families and how they are related.  One piece that learned that only I would find interesting is the word “bin” in a name means the son of.  I also learned that last names beginning with Al- typically indicate an important person, and Al-Thani in Qatar is the name of the ruling family.  It seems very integrated and incestuous.  One other important note is there is only one of each type of car dealer in this country.  There is no dealing on the price – what you see is what you get.

Saturday night I had dinner with the Country Director and a couple of others that just arrived to the city to work on proposals and evaluate the possibility of working in Qatar.  Our local operation has 160 people and is expected to grow to 300 by midyear.  There really seems to be opportunity here, and it’s not hard to find.  The trick will be how.

Breakfast and Dinner was my first introduction to the Qatari buffet.  Every hotel seems to have a buffet.  As always there is too much to choose from and they are trying to satisfy every nationality.  The food was good – generally.  It was good to meet the folks arriving in the region and get to know them.

Although feeling really tired, when my head hit the pillow my eyes popped open and I laid in bed staring at the ceiling until 3:30 am.  Thinking I was clever I popped two Tylenol PM pills which put me to sleep, only to keep me from getting up in time to go to the office at 8am, it was 11 when the phone rang and the locals were wondering where I was.  More about that later.