Qatar National Day

We observed Qatar National Day in our own quiet way yesterday: by hardly leaving the house. Most of the city was closed, so there wasn't much point in going anywhere, and most of the streets were blocked with traffic, so we couldn't have gone much anywhere if we wanted to. So instead we walked to the playground in the next housing compound over, cleaned the house, sang some Christmas carols to my guitar's accompaniment, and had some homemade fried rice for dinner. Rachel and I watched parts of the parade on TV. The parade consisted exclusively of Qatar's military might (most of its hardware comes from the US--but only at a price!) marching and rolling down the corniche road in front of a stand where the Emir and lots of other dignitaries sat. It also involved some precision paratroopers landing right on the median of the corniche road in front of the grandstand, a Qatar flag being raised out of the sea by a navy helicopter, and flyovers by their jets. The fireworks in the evening were all at the corniche, 6.5 miles away as the crow flies, but we could hear them inside our house as we put the kids to bed. When we turned on the TV, we almost wished we'd gone, because... wow. Nothing makes a good fireworks display like billions of dollars of LNG/petroleum money to throw at it! Have a look at the video here.