A trip to spend a bit of time with mama - #3 Doha

Doha, the capital of Qatar (population 2.8 million) was a shock for me because of the weather. It reminded me of Darwin in Australia. Hot and humid to the point of feeling like being in a sauna. If you are going to visit and want to spend time outdoors, go in December or January. Otherwise, you will need to be very careful outdoors. The felt temperature during my stay was about 50 C. Surprisingly, even at these temperatures I saw birds, smaller than sparrows, with beaks open, rummaging in the bushes. 

Practical tips: if you have an e-passport, try the automatic gates - a much faster way to enter and exit the country. Travel insurance is mandatory, but does not seem to be checked. Sim card: get a Vodafone sim at the airport - it was reasonably priced for a short stay. On Friday (Muslim holy day) the metro starts running at 2pm. Get the Karwa Taxi app to book a free metroexpress minibus to your destination to/from the metro station. I didn't and walked - not recommended. Doha is huge and there is a good chance that your destination will be a fair distance from the station. There are also free scheduled metrolink buses. 

Food: Carrefour and shopping malls are your friend. Small grocery shops - probably not, especially the ones that do not take credit cards. The Qatari Riyal is hard to exchange outside Qatar and if you find a place that buys it in your country the rate may be quite bad, even though the Riyal's value is fixed (pegged) to the US Dollar.

Gender and age imbalance. Doha is full of young men from Asia living and working there. This is especially visible when you get on the metro in standard class.

Ok, so what was interesting. Architecture, definitely. The geometrical shapes of the buildings, but also interior and exterior details.

There is a lot of construction going on in Doha. 

The metro: modern, fast, cheap standard class fare, good frequency, connecting to the airport, interesting architecture of the stations, driver-less, 3-car sets, a separate car for "gold club" class (5x more expensive than standard) with access only from the platform, a separate car for women and families. The Doha metro stations seem to be deep underground - compared to shallow metros it takes a while to get to the platform. The wayfinding could be better. I kept getting lost and arriving at a wrong exit on street level, only to have to go back down again and try a different corridor and exit. Once on the surface there was often no easy way to cross the street, so taking the correct exit is important.  

All platforms are fully enclosed. You cannot see the train until the doors open.

It would be great if you could exit from the station directly to a nearby destination, like the Villagio Mall. Not having to walk outdoors through a car parking lot would improve the experience a lot: 

Some stations seem to be in the middle of nowhere:

Metro architecture:

All metro and tram stations that I encountered on my trip were underground and fully enclosed:

I wanted to take more photos of the metro stations, but the security people were getting interested in me.

Outdoor cats: very thin, resting in the shade, very friendly. People leave them water and food.

Doha Hamad airport is competing with Singapore Changi for the the title of the best airport in the world. Singapore is currently #1 and Doha is #2. 

People flock to green spaces. These wigwams were occupied by a group of young people:

Italian facades, gondoliers, and an ice rink in the Villagio shopping mall:

Car parking garage masquerading as a wing of a palace:

 

A trip to spend a bit of time with mama - #2 Singapore

Singapore is a fascinating place. A multicultural country by design with four official languages: English (note: not everyone speaks English), Malay, Mandarin (chosen for strategic reasons: because this is the official language of the People's Republic of China, not the mother tongue of the most of the native Chinese Singaporeans at the time as I understood it), and Tamil. 

A country where everyone is an immigrant. A country whose modern history starts with a British colony planned and designed by Sir Stamford Raffles to compete with the Dutch. A country whose founding prime minister's (Lee Kuan Yew) goal was to merge with Malaysia, only to be brought to tears two years after it happened, when he realised that Singapore had to go its separate way. A country that experienced terrorism from Indonesia. A country that experienced Japanese occupation. A country that honours its start as a British colony and where an Australian can feel at home because of history, language, driving on the left, streets named after British kings and queens, even the currency - Singaporean dollar, printed in Australia, and a bit stronger in value than Australian dollar. Raffles Place could be in Brisbane:

But Singapore is also unique. There are many landmarks that are immediately recognisable, and some that made an impression on me:  

Singapore is almost on the equator, it is was hot and humid when I visited, around 33 degrees Celsius. An umbrella is your friend. It protects you either from the sun or from the rain.

The sim card situation is a bit of an extortion for a short stay of a day or two as the minimum package offered at the airport costs S$30. I did without it. Wifi at the hotel, and then exploring the city the old fashioned way. I got lost a few times. Who came up with the idea of printing maps at metro stations with North in random directions? Once North is to the right, once it is to the left and down. It messes with my sense of direction. An interesting way to explore the island is to take any double-decker bus with free front row, upper level seat and ride it till the terminus, which will probably have a metro station. Paying for public transport is convenient for tourists, because you can use a bank card to touch on and off. 

Singapore is a country that started building huge social housing blocks of flats in response to a disastrous fire. Not just blocks of flats though, whole neighbourhoods with their own sport fields, even golf fields, schools, shops, parks, metro stations, and elevated transport pods, not really rail (they run on rubber wheels) even though it is called light rail, not buses, as they are powered by a 3rd rail, like a metro, they look like driverless Sci-Fi pods, but I guess they are best described as very short (one or two carriages), rubber wheel, driverless, elevated metro system running in a figure 8 loop with the high capacity metro station in the center. A similar system is used at the Singapore Changi airport to transport people between terminals 1, 2, and 3.

Singapore is a country that is trying and succeeding in greening the city. The results are sometimes spectacular, like the Jewel garden at Changi airport: 

Singapore is a country that is trying and failing in making it a cycling city. Why? Because car is the king. There are multiple motorways criss-crossing the island, there are multi-lane roads, even in the historical centre of the city - in the old town, there are pedestrian overpasses to not slow down the cars. Some of the overpasses have escalators and lifts. There are parking lots and multi-story garages everywhere, often cleverly hidden. The city is designed for cars and metro. Despite the highest in the world cost of car ownership, the car is a very convenient transport mode in Singapore. That Jewel garden? It sits on top of a giant multi-story parking garage built in place of a surface parking lot. 

As a pedestrian, you press the beg button and wait, like in Australian cities, or you walk up the stairs, cross the road, walk down the stairs. The footpaths are often very narrow and walking is an obstacle course around rubbish bins, tables, chairs, columns, curbs and stairs. There are very few places to ride a bike, at least in the city centre. In some places there are signs not to ride a bike. I did not try it. Maybe some day the city government will implement a road diet and reduce the number of car lanes to accommodate wider footpaths and separated bike paths.

Car parking lots available throughout the city:

Singapore is entrenched in a fossil fuel business. It has three oil refineries and tens of oil tankers waiting to be processed every day:

One interesting thing regarding food. If you are a vegetarian, it is hard to find vegetarian meals in regular shops and food courts. Maybe I was unlucky, but all I could find was spaghetti with tomato sauce. Whereas in Japan it was easy, in Singapore the same Japanese shops or food types will not have any vegetarian options. I'm talking about places the regular people go to where meals cost less than S$10. Luckily, Burger King has a plant-based Whopper meal.  

My wife told me to include this bit, from Fort Canning museum: Singapore is the place where chicken come from:

Overall, a super interesting city-island-country, that I would not mind visiting again in the future. 

A trip to spend a bit of time with mama - #1 Introduction

In the beginning of 2023 my wife and I learned that both our mothers were admitted to hospitals in Warsaw, on the same day, with very serious heart problems. Last time we saw them was 2018. We decided to visit them and spend some time with them this year. We went separately at different times of the year and stayed in our moms' apartments.

I love travelling, but I haven't travelled since late 2019, and I pledged to not fly for pleasure anymore because of the climate crisis. There is very little left for me to do to fight the climate crisis. I went to protests in Gold Coast (Fridays for Future) and Brisbane (Extinction Rebellion), I was a member of Queensland Greens for two years, helped with elections, signed petitions, wrote letters, fought against a new motorway in Gold Coast (NoSecondM1), etc.

The only areas left to me are my private choices: not commuting by car - using public transport and riding a bike instead: sold our 2nd car in 2018. Not investing in fossil fuels - keeping my pension savings in such a fund since 2018. Using renewable energy: installed solar panels in 2016, heat pump in 2022 - our house does not use any methane anymore. Swapped my wife's petrol car for an electric one - 2023 - the state of public transport in Gold Coast is so bad that she would not be able to get to/from work without a car, and we would have a hard time getting to shops, appointments, etc. Unfortunatelly, we need one car here. This year we also finally moved our mortgage to a bank that does not help fossil fuel companies.

Ok, so I wanted to use the trip to see my mom, to see as much of the world as possible. But I planned the extra travel to be by train, or if not possible, by bus. No hired car, instead, using public transport or public bike infrastructure.

Cities I saw for the first time: Singapore, Doha, Vilnius, Riga, Tallin, Helsinki, Łódź. Cities I saw again: Warsaw, Cracow, Wrocław, Lublin, Melbourne. I travelled in Poland with my mom by train. I travelled to the Baltic countries (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) and Finland with my brother, by train, bus and ferry. I got to Melbourne by the round-about nature of the Singapore to Brisbane flight.

I travelled in September and early October. The weather was August-like: Summer instead of Autumn. The climate change is very noticable in northern Europe. September 2023 beat temperature records by a large margin. People, on a personal level, were generally happy about the weather: instead of cool and windy Autumn, a few more weeks of glorious Summer. Farmers - not necessarily, less rain, disrupted seasons. Warsaw was very dry and dusty. You can see the the dry grass, dust on the footpaths, cars, buildings, shoes. Warsaw may need to start installing sprinklers for city lawns and flowerbeds and should regularly (every day?) wash streets and pavements.

Doha is a hell on Earth for me, temperature wise. Qatar is a peninsula, surrounded by the hot waters of the Persian Gulf on three sides (water temperature is above 30C from June to October), and the Arabian Desert. It is hot and humid, even at night. The felt temperature is often above 50C. I turned around and went back to the air conditioned metro at some point because I realised that I may faint. Singapore, which is on the equator is hot too, but Doha was much worse - I was able to walk outdoors for hours in Singapore.

Singapore was very interesting. I would like to explore it more in the future - ideally when electric planes take off, or an Australia - Europe electric railway connection becomes a reality. There was a time, before WW1, when you could buy a train ticket in Tokyo and in two weeks you would be in Paris.

Vilnius, Riga, Tallin, Helsinki were great. As we travelled north, almost in straight line, the prices were getting higher, the countryside less populated, cities cleaner, footpaths better, and the people less stressed. Helsinki has an outstanding public transport infrastructure: metro, trains, trams, shared bikes. Everyone I had an interaction with in Helsinki spoke perfect English. I've seen the construction of Rail Baltica, in Poland, but also in the Riga city centre. It is much needed. There is no good train connection from Riga to Tallin (the only one has a four hour stopover in a small border town), and there is no train connection at all from Vilnius to Riga. Buses suck. Because of the design, scheduling and drivers. Out of the four trips with three different bus companies (FlixBus, Lux Express, EcoLines), only one driver did not risk our life trying to overtake other vehicles on narrow roads. Only one bus (Lux Express Lounge) had a 1+2 seating that was spacious enough to be comfortable. If you leave something on the bus, and you may, because the overhead shelf design makes it impossible to easily see what is there, don't count on the driver returning it to the Lost and Found (FlixBus).

Polish cities are a mixed bag. On one hand great public transport, increasingly good bike infrastructure, and fantastic pedestrian experience: plenty of zebra crossings, drivers stop at zebra crossings, very short wait times at crossings. On the other, there is too much graffiti, rubbish, and drunks.

This trip made me realise that long distance migration, like mine, from Europe to Australia, is a very bad thing for carbon emissions. It is not just the original migration of a young person, maybe with the closest family. It's all the subsequent trips to see family and friends, and them visiting back. The impact may last decades. I would not do it again. I moved out of Poland for better climate, health. Poland has a very dynamic weather. You need to be dressed for anything. It is easy to get sick. Also, the allergies were affecting us a lot. It was a tough place to live for me and my family. But, I would not move that far away again. I would try a little south: maybe Slovenia or Croatia. So, if you are considering moving to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, America, Europe, think about that. The distance to the rest of your family becomes more important with age. It's good to be close.

Fediverse / Blogspot

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Zucked - Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe by Roger McNamee

I posted a short review on mastodon.social:

https://mastodon.social/@tom_andraszek/110835146181262835

Finished listening to #Zucked - "Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe" by Roger McNamee. A bit wordy in the beginning and author's trust in Mark Zuckerberg at a time of Trump's election annoyingly naive, but correct in the conclusion: #Facebook and #Google are monopolies that have too much of our data and too much power. They have proven to be a danger to democratic societies and need to be broken up and the internet more regulated to protect our rights.