The weekends here in Qatar are on Friday and Saturday, meaning that the work week is Sunday through Thursday. I’ve gotten used to it by now, but this small change really threw me off at first. I’ve learned that Friday-Saturday weekends are common in Muslim countries due to a special prayer on Fridays. It makes sense, but it’s one of those things I never expected to be different.


I’ve made some friends here in Doha, some through the social travel site Couchsurfing and others from the tech talk I went to. Many have asked me, “So how do you like Doha?” adding, “There’s nothing to do here, huh?”
I can see how after years and even months, going to the same air-conditioned malls and few sights would get boring in this small city. Even Villaggio would lose its novelty eventually. In Sweden, I went to approximately 25 different museums in 3 different cities; here, I’ve been to one, which means I’ve seen half of the museums in the whole country (there are several more planned for the future).




But my new friends, and the family I’m staying with, have showed me the attractions that Doha does have, and I’m happy to say that I’ve seen a more fun city than I was expecting. While I know that I wouldn’t want to live here long-term, I’ve learned that I could live here, and that in itself is amazing to me.


Finally, I played Ultimate Frisbee with some new friends last week, and I’m going back tomorrow. There is a small group of expats here that get together every week to play ultimate, and I was lucky to befriend the social coordinator of the group. Since there is only one group, they can’t play against other teams, but they still work hard and scrimmage well. I was so impressed to see the same skills here that I saw in college ultimate.


I think playing ultimate here will be my Qatar version of swing dancing in Sweden. It’s now a goal of mine to find something fun like this in each country that I go to – a local, social event that I find all on my own and then participate in.
I’m glad that I’ve been able to find social activities here in between project meetings. My progress has felt slow; I’ve had about five meetings here so far, most of them with doctors. I wish there were medtech companies here the way there were in Sweden, though I knew that wouldn’t be the case. While doctors provide an important perspective for my project, my engineering background makes me more interested in medical gadgets and user-focused devices than big hospital machines. Still, it’s good to know, and it certainly teaches me something about the attitude towards medical technology here if there aren’t any medical technology start-ups.

