On the face of it they offer an attractive package including online banking, good interest rates on deposits and a Credit card after 3 months.

Unfortunately they did not live up to expectations. The ATM card they issued did not work outside Qatar despite repeated assurance that it was working – every time I went to their branch I ended up waiting for an hour before being able to see anyone and then didn’t get any practical assistance. I never got a Credit card from them either.

Eventually I requested an ATM card with my name on it rather than a default name – its hard getting retailers to accept a debit card with the name “Speed” apparently this new card was guaranteed to work abroad. Well I never got chance to find out. The replacement card which I paid QAR50 for never arrived in my post box and they cancelled my old card within a week of me asking for a new card leaving me with no way of accessing my money. After checking my post for two weeks I went to the branch again to sort it out they said that they could issue me an unnamed “Speed” card for QAR50 straight away only I would have to come back the next day because they didn’t have one.

I pointed out that I was going to be travelling in three days time and I didn’t have time to spend another hour waiting the next day for a card which might be there (she couldn’t guarantee that they would have them the next day) and therefore would they please arrange to transfer the balance of my account to another person I was travelling with. Her response was that they couldn’t do transfers that day (it was Saturday) or even schedule a transfer for the next day – I would have to come in again.

At that point I had had enough, with the non existent service and requested that they paid me the balance of my account and immediately close the account. She was unable to do that too. I had to go to the reception counter and get them to write me a cheque for cash and then wait 90 minutes for my turn at the cashier to convert it to cash. However during this 90 minutes they decided to close the branch for an hour and threw everyone who was waiting for service out until they reopened it.

There were also had problems with their Internet security and reliability. About half the time I tried to use the online banking service to make a transfer it came up with service unavailable. The method for adding payees for transfers was laughable. You added a new payee to the system and entered a telephone number for them to confirm it with you. They then phoned you within a day or so and asked you to confirm your identity number to authenticate yourself and permit transfers to the payee. Just in case you forgot your identity number they helpfully displayed it at the top of the page where you entered the telephone number. Anyone see the basic flaw?

At least I got my money back. Its now been paid into a non-QNB bank account of a friend ready for my next trip.

I’ve now got to find another bank. Maybe I’ll try IBQ this time.

I don’t have a problem with ISPs blocking outbound port 25 other than their own mail servers – that is a sensible anti-spam precaution. However blocking inbound connections can only be used to prevent the running of mail servers and the only reason I can think of for them preventing this is to force people to use their MPLS based Internet leased line which cost over USD 1500/month for 512K last time I looked at the price.

Using nmap on a server in Amsterdam I quickly discovered it was only port 25 which was blocked. Other ports remained unaffected.

So my problem was to find a way of getting mail into my server using a port other than 25 (SMTP). Internet mail requires access to port 25 so I had to find another machine to forward mail into my ADSL line in Qatar. Fortunately I have access to such machines running Debian and postfix in Amsterdam.

The solution turned out to be surprisingly easy:

1. Arrange for the ADSL link gateway to port forward traffic from a free port (I chose 200) to port 25 on the internal mail server. I used IPTABLES to do this but the same can be done with almost any ADSL gateway – look for “Application Sharing”. This can be tested by using netcat (nc) to the gateway from a machine in the outside world (some names obscured):

ams1:~# nc www.mydomain.com 200
220 www.mydomain.com ESMTP Postfix (Debian/GNU)
helo www.x31.com
250 www.mydomain.com
quit
221 2.0.0 Bye

2. Configure the relay machine (mine is in Amsterdam) to accept mail for the ADSL connected system (my system in Qatar). To do this edit /etc/postfix/main.cf and add the domain to the end of the line (note the use of the comma ‘,’):

relay_domains = $mydestination, mydomain.com

3. Setup a special delivery transport for mydomain.com. To do this edit /etc/postfix/transport and add the following lines (myddnshost.dyndns.org is the dynamic dns hostname for my system in Qatar and the 200 is the port number I am using):

mydomain.com smtp:[myddnshost.dyndns.org]:200
.mydomain.com smtp:[myddnshost.dyndns.org]:200


Now rebuild the map file:
$ postmap /etc/postfix/transport


and edit /etc/postfix/main.cf again. Ensure the following line is present:
transport_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/transport

Finally restart postfix:
$ /etc/init.d/postfix restart

4. Now update your DNS and point the MX record at the relay machine. Wait for things to settle down (can take a few hours) and your mail will start to be delivered into your ADSL connected server.

I run Debian Etch and Lenny systems with a mostly standard postfix configuration which uses hash tables. If your system is different then you may need to specify a different format. The /etc/postfix/transport file is extremely powerful and I recommend you look at “man transport” before making changes.

Today is National Day when they parade through the city, wave flags everywhere and generally drive in a more reckless manner than normal. Yes, you guessed right, it rained most of the day causing more flooding and general chaos on the roads.

The place I live in is on a small compound. The compound is surrounded by an road which loops in an oval about 300m on its long axis. The compound is at one end within the enclosed land the rest being wasteland.

When it last rained water drained into the road converting the compound into an island surrounded by dirty water about 30cm deep. After a couple of days the municipality sent a stream of water tankers to pump the water off the road and take it away.

As I am writing this the water has flooded about 30% of the road loop and the municipality has just sent a large tanker to pump out the water again.

However the locals are not to be outdone. In a burst of imagination someone has arranged to get a portable pump and pump the water off the road onto the wasteland in the centre. This would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that the water promptly runs back onto the road off the wasteland bringing even more mud and associated crap with it. Of course the locals are not the ones doing the pumping that has been left to some guys from the Indian subcontinent who work for them and will carry out the job unquestioningly.

When the tanker driver arrived he waved madly at them pointing out where the water was running back onto the road about 15m from where they were standing and they have finally shut off the pump as they evidently decided it was getting just too silly. They are now loading it up back onto their pickup before they go back to the villa about 100m away.

The really stupid thing is there is a good land drain in the flooded area. I have seen tankers discharging into it in the past. The only problem is it is blocked with crap. They would have been much better digging the mud off it then using the pump to excavate the silt from the hole. Once the water starts flowing it would clear itself in seconds.

Oh such fun

As this was a story of interest to the expat community in Qatar I posted a link to it on the popular website Qatar Living. Within a few minutes the entire thread had been deleted from the Qatar Living website without any message to me from the person who did it, there wasn’t even a marker stating that the thread had been deleted.

I then posted a complaint on the forum about the manner of the deletion and got a response from another site user. Within minutes of this that thread was also deleted without trace. I then followed this up with a message exchange with the ‘Moderator’ in which I was advised that the subject was ‘sensitive’ and there were concerns about the site being blocked by the ISP in Qatar. This was despite the fact that the original site and an extremely interesting Stratfor report on the same story were passing unopposed through the ISP (Q-Tel) firewall. I assume the Arabic websites were also unaffected.

The prospect of being blocked by Q-Tel isn’t something to be taken lightly out here. The administrators of the firewall seem to randomly block websites and it is near to impossible to get in contact with them. The email address posted on the block message appears to be a joke in that I have yet to hear of someone getting a response from it when they have complained. At the moment http://www.google.com is completely broken – any and all queries result in the original Google page being redisplayed and a search on any Google website including the word ‘Canal’ results in the response being blocked (I was searching for ‘Corinth Canal’ at the time).

At the time of writing this there is at least one extremely active forum on Qatar living where many users are letting off steam about the issue and the way that threads and messages are being deleted. I estimate that about 10% of new threads in the forum area of the website are being deleted at present.

There are several issues with all this. Qatar Living is a website based on a server in the USA and is probably in the top 20 of websites visited from Qatar. It has a large and extremely vocal userbase who use it for everything from discussing the weather (its hot and dusty) to selling unwanted furniture.

Whilst the users don’t pay for the service of the website (it is financed by advertising) – without them the site is worthless and quite a lot of the most active users are extremely unhappy at the moment.

The site does not have a clear policy of what topics are acceptable to the administrators and which are not. This results in a clash in expectations and some extremely public arguments on its forums.

Deleting threads without notice or explanation is extremely upsetting to users who feel protective about what they are writing and strongly object to censorship being applied to them by an unknown party.

The story in this case of a coup plot is extremly relevant to the users of Qatar Living and has been published in the press outside Qatar. The story is in the public domain and a much better way to handle the entire situation would have been to put a short note in the News section of the site referring to the stories in the foreign press and containing a request that it is not discussed in the forums because of concerns about the Q-Tel firewall. This would at a single stroke have defused the situation and would have put the entire userbase of the site on the same side as the site admins.

The problem with self censorship is the fear factor results in the press and other organisations being overcautious in what they publish and they do not challenge the ‘official censor’ in their interpretation of the regulations.

I do feel sympathetic for the administrators of Qatar Living in that they have spent a long time building up the site to its current position and they don’t wish to risk their investment. However I feel they have made a big mistake in the way that they handled this situation and the site has lost a lot of credibility as a result. If enough people become disillusioned then there is a danger of them moving to another site which would compete with Qatar Living.

One message I got from the unknown ‘Moderator’ on Qatar Living was “Why don’t you publish it in your own blog?”. Well Mr Moderator, I have

I woke up early this morning in a cold sweat and aching in every joint. It turns out I have an allergy to the dust which has covered the entire region, I’ve noticed I’m not at my best during a dust storm in the past but not like this. So I paid a visit to the pharmacy this morning and got some antihistamine capsules. It’s now 2 hours later and I’m beginning to feel human again, if a bit sleepy.

I went digging on the net about the dust storms and came up with the following story in the Gulf News from the UAE, it made me feel better knowing I’m not unusual with some strange disease.

I’ve been staying in the Rejaj Al Rayyan hotel. Its a reasonable place but the rooms lack the essentials for a long term stay (a serviced apartment would be much better) and they sometimes have problems in thinking things through.

• One afternoon I had stuck the “Do not disturb” sign on my door so they decided to telephone me and ask if I wanted the room cleaning, at least they didn’t knock on the door.
• Another night I had to change room at 00:15 because of a leak in the bathroom (these things happen) and one of staff members decided to wake me up in my new room by hammering on he door at 01:45 to enquire about a discrepancy in the minibar in the old room (I had never touched it). As if the question couldn’t have waited to the morning.

They have a few silly problems too, two of the three rooms I was in over the period had water leaks in the bathrooms, in the second case I complained three times before I ended up dragging a member of staff into the room to see the water dripping from the ceiling. At that point things finally happened. Also all the bathrooms have shaver points but none of them work in the entire place (whats the betting they failed to put the wiring in place).

That said, the staff were friendly and I’ll kinda miss them.

In my case I had two things to legalise, a degree certificate and a doctors letter.  They won’t legalise degree certificates directly and you have to go to a notary or solicitor first and get them to certify that the certificate is an original or true copy. That cost me GBP 69.00 and took about an hour a few days before I went to Milton Keynes. The doctors letter was more straightforward. In both cases legalisation consisted of them sticking a bit of paper to the back of each document (an apostille) and embossing the whole thing with a seal.

It all seems strange that they can legalise doctors letters directly but require a notary to certify University degree certificates. After all both are semi-independent organisations and if they can do one you would naturally assume that they can do the other.  Its all well beyond me, logic isn’t a feature of government or legal systems. You can find a list of what can be legalised on their website.

One document which I have yet to sort out for Qatar is a “Police Clearance Certificate”, unfortunately the UK doesn’t issue them apart for visa purposes in relation to a handful of countries and Qatar isn’t one of them. So I’ve ended up requesting a printout from the Police National Computer under the data protection rules, they have to send me this within 40 days after I formally asked them for it and I can safely bet they will take the maximum possible time to do it.

The Metropolitan Police website has a “Frequently Asked Questions”  (FAQ) section which explains the situation with regard to Police Clearance Certificates which you can find here. I’ve reproduced the text below.

Mind you the weather here near Heathrow Airport has been really bad this Winter and it will be nice to get back to the warmth of Qatar.  Mind you – you can get too much of a good thing. 45+ degrees in high humidity isn’t to be sniffed at in the summer.