In my last post, I talked about how Qatar nationalized more than 30 athletes for the Asian games. Basically they got people from different regions for different sports, for example they brought Bulgarians for weightlifting, Kenyans for running, Chinese for chess, and so on (perfect stereotypes I know but its true).

Everyone in the comment section spoke disapprovingly of that action even some Qatari guests of the blog. It does not represent their country, how can someone support and feel proud of someone who they just bought for the games to represent their country!?

Anyway, that was the subject there … In today’s post, it is a very different subject but related in many ways. Today I want to talk about the opening and closing ceremonies for the Asian Games in Doha 2006.
To get straight to the point, it was a fairytale ceremony, and by far the best ceremony I have ever seen for any competition. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen..period! I only caught glimpses of the opening ceremony earlier this month, since I saw it was an opening ceremony I didn’t even bother to keep the channel on and switched to watch something else. When I read the newspapers the next day talk about how great it was I didn’t pay attention either because they say the same after any ceremony, especially if hosted by a GCC country. But when I went to work the next day, the few people who saw it couldn’t stop talking about how great it was. (I am downloading it at home as we speak).

Two days ago, I was lucky enough to catch the closing ceremonies from the start. I couldn’t stop watching in awe and I couldn’t stop sending messages to everyone I know about it! Almost every message I got back was “I want to cry”.

It was nothing less than spectacular! The show itself, the performers, the story, the TV directing, everything was amazing!

The quality of the production and the scale of the production was same as or better than Cirque de Soleil. Basically, if I knew the show would be that good, I wouldn’t mind traveling to Qatar just to attend that! The theme was a 1001 Nights with many of the stories being acted out on a very big scale!

A comment I kept getting from some people was that yeah thats what money gets. OK, that might be true, but it also takes guts to take the ceremonies to that level. It could also be considered as an investment to Qatar, for reasons that I will get to later. In Kuwait, we have money, but we will never ever come close to doing something spectacular like that!! I can predict exactly what any future ceremony will be like ….. I see 2000 kids from elementary school wearing dara3aat for girls with lots of gold and small boys wearing dishdasha and ghutra holding ribbons and waving while singing about Kuwait and the emir. I know we’ve all seen that before, but trust me it will not change in the near future if we had a choice!

When we had the Gulf Cup a few years ago here in Kuwait, the ceremony was a typical ceremony that could’ve been done in the 60s and no one would notice the difference. Also, the money allocated for the tournament was apparently moving around and ended up going to certain pockets, and the few members of parliaments raised the issue but nothing happened with diwan al mo7asaba as far as i know. So saying that they spent on it is not an excuse, we have money but we have thieves in charge who steal the money and dont give a shit about the image of the country as long as a half assed job is done and they remain in their chairs.

Picture from the opening ceremony at the Gulf Cup we hosted last.

Back to the investment by Qatar. They spent ALOT of money on this ceremony obviously (DAE, the company that was in charge of the show), but there are a couple of good reasons that this makes sense to them. First of all, every single person who saw the show anywhere in the world (the Asian games is the second largest event in size after the Olympics) is in shock and has a certain view of Qatar after the games as a very modern very young up and coming place. The image they got after the games cannot be measured in dollars. Another major reason this investment makes sense is that Doha is competing to host the 2016 Olympics, and they showed how well they can host an event, and in 10 years they can host an event 10 times bigger.

Speaking of the Olympics, the ceremony in Doha was so good that it got the China 2008 Olympic committee nervous (source 1, source 2). It will be very very hard for anyone to reach that level again!
I have nothing but total respect to the organizers of the games. Unfortunately the only thing that ruined the ceremony was Ahmad Al-Fahad attending and giving a speech!

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This whole issue of how Qatar has proved itself and put itself on the map made us get into a discussion the other day about Kuwait and its future.

Personally I am very pessimistic and see no reason for hope for us here. My opinion is that it will be very hard for us to convince our children in the future that Kuwait was once the leader in the region! We were exporting culture in poetry, music, tv shows, and we even had people coming from abroad to study in the great Kuwait University back in the 60s and 70s!!

We will be like Egypt. Our parents still love Egypt and see the greatness in it because they lived during that period and saw it at its prime, whereas our generation and younger generations have a totally different view of Egypt to the point where it doesnt seem like Egypt was once as great as they say! With all due respect to the people of Egypt, it is a country in a very bad shape and noone wants to be like them! Will our children see Kuwait as we see Egypt??