In a country where the surface shows passion and enthusiasm about education and freedom of all kinds, there seems to be a bit of a problem on some freedom issues.

If you live in Qatar and tried to "google" something, the results you'll get will be totally different from the results you'd normally find somewhere else. That's simply because our beloved ISP is forcing us to have the "safe search" option enables. What they don't understand is that Google is just a search engine. If they want to block away pornography, they can block the websites and not Google. I guess they caught some retards looking at tiny thumbnails of naked women on Google's image search and this made them think Google was a porn site.

When is this going to stop? Youtube, which normally doesn't allow obscenity, was also modified to fit with Qtel's standards.

I just want to tell Q-tel that we're not stupid. We know that censorship is not a funny issue. They're just trying to make it some how humorous to have censored sites all over the internet with their new censorship page:

I'm not going to go into how children show learn that obscene photos and video are wrong and they're stuff they shouldn't be looking at. Keeping them jailed out is not effective. In face no1 downloads pornography from websites, people know zillion other ways to get access to these stuff. So i don't really see the point of censorship.

We have more dangerous issues to worry about like pirated material all over the internet.

So what’s the convention on holding the door for other people in this part of the world? How far behind you the person has to be in order for you to hold the door open until they get to the door? Or should I just be holding the door until someone passes by and takes care of it?

I’m writing this post while in class, pretending to be taking notes. I needed to write something before the idea cools off. As I was running to class, a Qatari girl was walking behind me. I open the door to enter the building and hold it open for few seconds for her to enter. Guess what happened to me for the 3rd time this week? She did NOT say thank you or even gesture it in anyway! This happened to me several times before. I just don’t understand why is it so hard to thank people who do you a little polite thing.

I read a post on Mimiz Blog a while ago and she mentioned how she felt insulted when a person sat in the library with the bottom of that person’s shoes was pointing to her. We consider this rude, but not saying thank you is not rude in any way.
Where did this habit come from? I’m sure it’s neither culture nor religion. I’m not talking about holding doors. I really couldn’t care less if they thanked me or not. I care about the general courtesy between us. What kind of society is that? I noticed this in restaurants, gas stations, star bucks and other places. And guess what? It’s the Qataris that do this most of the time. And to be more accurate, the girls do it more than the guys.

Again, don’t get me wrong with the generalizations. What i mean is that mong the people who have this ugly habit, Qataris are the majority. It doesn’t mean all Qataris do this.

So what’s the deal about that? I mean did we forget how to live happily with each other? Did we start to think that people are obligated to serve us and we don’t need to thank them? What kind of ugly society we’re turning to if we didn’t have common courtesy.

يشتمني ويدعي أن سكوتي معلن عن ضعفه ،

يلطمني ويدعي أن فمي قام بلطم كفه ،

يطعنني ويدعي أن دمي لوث حد سيفه ،

فأخرج القانون من متحفه ،

وأمسح الغبار عن جـبـيـنـه ،

أطلب بعض عطفه ،

لكنه يهرب نحو قاتلي وينحني في صفه ،

يقول حبري ودمي : " لا تندهش ،

من يملك القانون في أوطاننا ، هو الذي يملك حق عزفه " للمزيد من لافتات احمد مطر: اضغط هنا

I understand that some people don't have the time to go to McDonald's and order their Big Mac, so instead they send the glorified driver to do it for them.

You're telling me now those don't have the time or can't bother to get a little piece of paper and write their order on it? They have to let the driver hand the guy at McDonald's his cell phone so they can order their extra calories.

Whatever.. every one is free to do whatever they want, right?

ok so here's what ticked me off..

I go to Subway.. I see a Land Cruiser (of course) with a lady sitting in the back..Honking for the guy in Subway to come out and take their order!
For God's sake, this is Subway.. you're supposed to move your lazy ass and get your own shit!

and then they're all surprised when they read tht 80% of people in Qatar are over weight and the vast majority of them are WOMEN!