No Ramadan this year?

In my over four years here in Qatar, this year’s Ramadan month is the most busy for me. Almost every day of this month we had an overtime until night (overtawad for me ). We’re supposed to have a 2 day break every week but for this month we we’re obliged to use our one day break to overtime some jobs. And believe it or not, even in this eid holiday, we are again obliged to come to the office to finish some jobs before the holiday ends. This is really a very tiring month for us!

But then, I received a little consolation – last week, I was really surprised when I saw in the Qatar Living website that my entry on their photo shoot competition won me a voucher for a dinner for 2 (suhoor meal) at the Intercon’s Ramadan Tent. Here’s the link -> http://www.qatarliving.com/node/209701.

Ice Skating

Ikot Dance (Whirling Dervish)

‘Ikot’ in tagalog means ‘turning around’. Can anyone help me identifying the exact name of this dance wherein the dancer keeps on turning around the whole course of the music. (I’ts called “Whirling Dervishes” – thanks to Sir TallG of Qatar Living).

Furthermore, according to Wikipedia, the “Whirling Dervishes” is a dhikr (remembrance of Allah) in the form of a “dance” and music ceremony called the sema.

The Sema represents a mystical journey of man’s spiritual ascent through mind and love to “Perfect.” Turning towards the truth, the follower grows through love, deserts his ego, finds the truth and arrives at the “Perfect.” He then returns from this spiritual journey as a man who has reached maturity and a greater perfection, so as to love and to be of service to the whole of creation.

Little Drummers

Castle at City Center

We were treated at the City Center by their tito Jerry (a childhood friend of Emily) who by the way just arrived from Saudi Arabia. He was here in Qatar before he went to Saudi and then he was now transferred back to Qatar upon his request to his Saudi company.

The two kids were so happy when they found out that there is a big castle display inside the mall, so they easily obliged when I asked them to pose for a picture. But the sad thing is that they are not in focus in all of my shot because I just put the camera near the floor without looking at the viewfinder to try to focus on them. Because of this mistake I learned something, next time I’ll shoot similar to this situation – I will focus lock first on them and I will make use of 2 second timer before I’ll put down my camera low on the floor.

Emily’s Birthday

It was my wife’s birthday yesterday. Here’s some of the pictures (mostly taken by Ryon).

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Archizonians in Qatar

I met some of our schoolmates at the Filipino Restaurant in Souq Asiri, also there was our former professor – Arch Bayani Tadina.

We talked about giving some donation to our Alma Mater especially at the Architecture Department because we all know that the (old) facilities of our school are now utterly deteriorating. Below are Architects Bayani Tadina, Gil Castro, Lim, me and Eryn.

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It shows here the difficulty of using a non-zooming lens specially if the place is tight like here inside the Filipino Restaurant. I’m using here my favorite 30mm sigma lens.