Madrid

Rio de Janeiro's successful bid to host the 2016 Olympics looks like a sign for Qatar. It was only last June that Doha's bid for the Olympics was turned down by the IOC (even though some argue that the Qatar bid itself was better).

All the Olympic buzz placed Chicago, Tokyo and Madrid as ahead of Rio as favourites for the 2016 Olypmics. But less than a year later, Rio came up on top.

Qatar can certainly take heart from this. Qatar now has a dream to host the football World Cup in 2022.

If it happens, it will be the first time the World Cup travels to the Middle East and Qatar will become the first Arab country to host this prestigious event.

The road ahead is not easy and is difficult even for the biggest countries. But with the unwavering support and commitment to sport that Qatar has shown, even the impossible looks more doable.

Qatar Living has been tracking the growth of Qatar since 2005 and are fully behind the Qatar 2022 bid! We support the dream and bid for the 2022 World Cup!

We're proud to announce our unwavering support to the country's World Cup bid at the exact moment the Qatar 2022 bid website goes live.

Stand up, Qatar, look the world in the eye, take a bow and make us all proud!

It's the big day...

Four cities from four continents are vying for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Chicago, Madrid, Rio and Tokyo.

Who would you go for ?

Chicago is the favourite with the backing of President Barack Obama.

I would love for RIO to get it....

http://www.usatoday....

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama pledged Thursday to do his utmost to bring the Olympics to Tokyo in 2016 as he prepared to go to Copenhagen for the big vote.
"As long as I go, I want to win," Hatoyama told a group of reporters before heading for Tokyo's Haneda Airport. "If our rivals are moving ahead of us, we'll cruise to the top from behind."

Tokyo is vying with Chicago, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro to host the Summer Games in 2016. The International Olympic Committee will vote Friday to choose the site, with millions of dollars in construction, tourist revenues and sponsorships at stake.

Pretty Chilling - read to the bottom. Try it out.
If you are a sceptical person - still read on as it's actually very interesting!!
This is actually really freaky!! (Mainly the end part, but read it all first)

1) New York City has 11 letters
2) Afghanistan has 11 letters.
3) Ramsin Yuseb has 11 letters. (The terrorist who threatened to destroy the Twin Towers in 1993)
4) George W Bush has 11 letters.

This could be a mere coincidence, but this gets interesting:
1) New York is the 11th state.
2) The first plane crashing against the Twin Towers was flight number 11.
3) Flight 11 was carrying 92 passengers. 9 + 2 = 11
4) Flight 77 which also hit Twin Towers, was carrying 65 passengers. 6 + 5 = 11

Nothing much in priorities after the Juma,so today too felt as same as every boring fridays lead me to try something different in the web instead of cover under the blanket. So after a long time chat, browsing, social communities made me to find something usefull in the net.

So, it reached through the 911 incidents and aftermath of the evil. The images, scribbles, comments, news, feelings etc etc. But, one news found something interesting. Its saying the relation between the Qur An and American Flag. It was like this,

1) The name of New York (New York City) 11 letters
2) The name of Afghanistan (Afghanistan) 11 letters
3) The name Ramsin Yuseb (terrorist, in 1993, the scheduled destruction of Gemini Towers in New York) 11 letters

[Mod note: Dear member you were warned last time NO PREACHING ON MAIN FORUM. There is a Group Expatriates Muslims you may post there as much you want.Next you will be banned]
Thank you

I've tried to explain my friends how Doha is... I just can't get it right.

I arrived back to Madrid early in the morning on Wednesday, after a very tiring flight and minus one iPod. My friend was waiting for me, it was also very early for him. He belongs to the global-crisis-hitting-hard-on-Spain's statistics: unemployed. So he was very kind to come and collect me from the airport. We went straight to the Metro and he started asking me about Qatar. The truth is, everything I could say about Qatar was not even close to what it really is. You have to be there to understand, to appreciate it. The hot, hot days, when you feel like a very oversized hair drier was blowing straight to your face. The long and beautiful Cornish, displaying the magnificent Gulf. The Qataris, strolling slowly in shopping malls, women covered from head to toes, and men dressed in thobes. The laborers, during the week, working their backs off building the modern city, in the intense heat. The call for prayer, so Middle East, so charming, and so mystique.The laborers during the weekend, like ants in the surroundings of the souqs, wearing their nicest clothes, only to walk around or sit under any shade they can find, sometimes holding hands in brotherhood, wondering how their people are back home, and with hope that all their exhausting work can give them a better life...

How could I explain the amazing Souq Waqif? The crowded alleys with unique shops where you can find everything. The beautiful smell of the ouds, and the smell of arabic perfumes whenever someone passes by. As I met with each one of my friends, I just stopped trying to explain all the things that my eyes and heart have seen and felt. "A very interesting place that you have to actually see by yourself in order to understand it" is my answer to "so, how is Qatar?". I'll write about it for them, I'll try very hard to find the words that can describe this unique place and how is compared to other places, not better, not worse, just different. Very different.

I was on the bus on my way back from lunch with a friend. As I realized that my stop was next, I threw my scarf around my neck and closed my coat. I put back in my purse the guide to Qatar that one of my friends gave to me a few days earlier, after I announced that I was temporarily moving to Doha in a month's time. As I walked towards home, I started daydreaming about this new place that I didn't recall knowing about, never, ever in my life. I had no idea of what to expect from it.

As the days passed by, I started getting anxious. Two weeks before my departure from Madrid, I was living at my friends' flat. I had my two suitcases prepared to leave, and I started saying 'hasta luego' to my favorite sites in the city. As I didn't know much about Qatar, I started researching about it. I'm a Wikipedia freak, and I always have a tab with Wikipedia ready to search any topic I'm curious about. When I typed 'Qatar' on the search tab, a very short page showed up and I was not satisfied with what I read. Not enough at all. As I searched in Google this time, I scrolled down the page, and I found JUST what I was looking for: QatarLiving: Everything you need to know about LIVING in Qatar. That was exactly what I needed. I didn't need a tourist guide online, I needed a place where I could find helpful hints on the issues involving living in a place. From schools, housing, what to wear, where to go, everything.

My biggest concern was what to wear. As a firs-timer in an Islamic country, I didn't know what was considered inappropriate and disrespectful to the culture. So my first enquiries where about the kind of clothing I should be wearing while in Qatar. I was relieved that I didn't have to wear an Abaya, or to cover my face. I was not relieved when I had to leave behind all of my strapless summer dresses, shorts, short skirts... basically 3/4 of my summer wardrobe. So, as I put each one of the garments in a box, I thought of the heat, those 50˚ I've read about, and I sighed. Not this summer.

And of course, one thread led me to the other, and for some reason I ended up reading a post by a woman, complaining that her niece arrived to Qatar and they denied her visa because "they didn't want prostitutes" in their country. That came to me as a shock. In two days I was going to take off from Madrid, by myself, and I was going to arrive to Doha, by myself... I panicked because she was saying something about women arriving alone to Doha. So I dressed pretty much like a nun for my travel. When I arrived there was no problem at all. Soon enough, I let the city embrace me with its unique Islamic charm. I've been here just for a couple of months, but I think I know my way very well. I don't use the map for driving anymore (only a very few times every now and then), and i feel like there is an answer to any of my questions. This is how I ended up in QL. And now, I have always a tab opened with QL, next to Wikipedia, and next to FB.

Specially for Baldrick :)

More than a year ago cardboard boxes containing rolls of film from 70 years ago were discovered .
The rolls turned out to be in remarkably good shape despite being almost untouched for 70 years. And so began a painstaking process of unfurling, scanning and trying to make sense of some 4,300 negatives taken by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour during the Spanish Civil War, groundbreaking work that was long thought to be lost but resurfaced several years ago in Mexico City.