1200+ entries in 0.01s
Mocky: unlike london where I coudn't place any cars
Mocky: and some vw looking toyota busses
Mocky: all the cars here are normal models you'd find in the us, except there are a few toyota models I've never heard of: "fortuner" is one
Mocky: if I had my ford expedition here, I'd be the king of the road. land rovers are a good bit smaller
Mocky: also, that could be good advice in general
Mocky: vehicle size seems a status symbol. "if a bigger one is speeding up from behind, get out of the way!"
Mocky: to my eyes, uniform includes shiny watch and a landrover, or lexus suv (with which to intimidate slave labor on the roadway)
Mocky: *lots* of jewelry stores here with shiny watches
Mocky: i'd fucking rock a crown
Mocky: i'm not wise to the ways of watches, wouldn't recognize a rolex. "shiny watch" works for my description
Mocky: well when everyone wears the exact same white robes everyday, a watch is pretty much only place on the body for bling
Mocky: I still have 4 leads to finish chasing down re not needing a Qatari to form a company. not necessarily promising leads but still need to get to the truth of them
Mocky: still broke, but it still isnt' a problem. fan blows on me and I sleep fine. 3 day of rain in the dessert. got soaked today waiting for taxi for 30 minutes during downpour which stopped the moment i got in the cab
Mocky:
http://btcbase.org/log/2018-10-21#1864601 >> there are some important things that are going to be brought to life by the republic and sure as shit they aren't gonna wait for Qatar to buy in. rather, if the outward appearance is correct and there are men of valor here who can recognize the opportunity then this will be their chance to play host to some business and profit exactly to the degree of their continued valor and foresight and not one riyal more
☝︎☟︎ Mocky: lol, why not stomp with boot heel :D
Mocky: so far so good. gotta see how well I fit in at these 5 star hotels
☟︎ Mocky: hiya mircea_popescu
Mocky: So can be replaced individually i bet! lol
Mocky: yup, but seems like central air in homes is pretty rare. wallmounted units are the thing, with compressors on the roof.
☟︎ Mocky: yeah, but not a big deal for me. I wouldn't want to be a landlord here tho
Mocky: no, i'm subletting a room via airbnb from a nigerian who rents it from someone who also sounds african on speakerphone. and thankfully unseasonably cool with now 2 years worth of rain in the last 2 days
☟︎ Mocky: so, working on day 3 of no AC. Everyone I mention it to here laughs at me and says that no repair men here actually know how to fix anything, only to install new. AC, cars, computers, machinery. They just spend hours spinning bs to talk you into buying new.
Mocky: BingoBoingo, isn't bubble gum flavor just as gross?
Mocky: I'm still not used to friday and saturday being the weekend & so many places being closed between 1pm and 4pm every day
Mocky: word was that they may be angry if they feel forced to pay for an intangible, but that will fade and you don't lose respect. but get caught in a lie and they are done with you
Mocky: another thing was that Qatari business men highly value honesty since many foreign partners actually do try to rip them off and are deceptive.
Mocky: even if you're a crazy ass vet doc who keeps getting into accidents by not looking
Mocky: if you are a white woman or a doctor, cops very accommodating toward you, let you off tickets
Mocky: also huge fine if you stop past the "stop line". If you go over camera starts recording, tiny light flashes. if you reverse back to proper spot and wave your hand out the window showing submission at the camera, you don't get a ticket!
Mocky: I found out why cars are so nice toward pedestrians in the crosswalks. if you run a red, 3000 USD fine. cameras at most intersections
Mocky: theres also a "blockchain doha" group with 103 members, I can reach out to
☟︎ Mocky: i also reached out to local bitcoin guy. turns out there are two. one sells other buys. I reached out the the seller but no response yet. The buyer doesn't have contact info listed and i don't have the bitcoin to answer his ad so haven't contacted yet.
☟︎ Mocky: but so many nods around the table, makes me suspect flaws widely present, to some degree
Mocky: it could also be that the above descriptions have selection bias of young Qatari biznis noobs, or peripheral wot members
Mocky: remember, it's indians coming up with those ideas so options dun enter into it
Mocky: a chick unrelated to todays info breakfast also suggested the coffee bar in La Cigal Hotel
Mocky: but that was suggested as not a good place to start
Mocky: men from a couple of the most powerful families hang out at a Costa coffee chain in the shittiest mall in the city
Mocky: the regular spots are mostly 5 star hotels on the water. St. Regis, The Four Seasons, The Pearl Qatar & Medina Centrale. Also there's some pickup beach volleyball at katara beach on fridays once the day cools off
☟︎ Mocky: "majlis" not majalis
Mocky: the vet doc has been invited 12 times. he said in the beginning he prepared things to say, ways to pitch business. but they never wanted to talk business with him, just playstation
Mocky: this is only done by qataris established enough to have own household
Mocky: normally is informal "playstation" time, but occasionally, perhaps once a week, it's more formal and they talk business
Mocky: re meeting Qataris, I found that 30-something aged men interested in business hang out at certain places on a daily basis. if you go and hang there and get to know them, if they like you they may invite you to majalis. which is the regular practice of closing off half of the home from women in the evening and doing man cave shit
☟︎ Mocky: bitcoin is also illegal for banks to exchange in. which apparently some wanted to do but now central bank authority has banned
☟︎ Mocky: if there is more beyond that, i haven't dug deep enough to find it
Mocky: bank invests, shares profit
Mocky: yes lending at interest illegal. credit card issuance with interest, illegal
Mocky: asciilifeform, this I haven't heard, but flashy stuff like rolex, lambos, bentleys I have heard
☟︎ Mocky: i get the impression from other talks (not today) that there is no end of "i have great biz idea for importing from my home country india" being pitched
☟︎ Mocky: got a years worth of rain here today
Mocky: too many keyboards sitting on lap
Mocky: files swim to safety?
Mocky: And sticking a Qatari with ongoing expenditures was never on my radar, def seems like something to explicitly avoid.
Mocky: Being as the requirement for standard LLC is 51% Qatari ownership, this new info suggests to me that having two locals who split the 51% may be the way to go. They can still close it down but not at the whim of a single person.
☟︎ Mocky: to much time seeing fat cats in US
Mocky: and move so slowly
Mocky: the cats tho! so skinny and downs syndrome looking
Mocky: but ~all cats i've seen are stones throw from open dumpster. i bet if they had auto-closing lids on dumpsters cats would go extinct
Mocky: no dogs but word this morning was that expat western women keep them here like surrogate children just as elsewhere, and there are enough to make a good business
Mocky: maybe they want to claim "i started a charity like my older brother" no idea yet why
Mocky: and don't want to have to put sweat into it either
Mocky: Word is that they want to make a profit, but don't want to have to put money into it. and they want the profit now. but don't think it thru, maybe can be convinced easily
Mocky: One Qatari owns a chain of 9 fittness supplement stores. 3 of the stores were found to have someone pocketing the cash from transactions. Owner fired everyone in all 9 stores because "see, everyone tries to steal from us". Also he had his driver who can barely count to 10 doing store inventory for him.
Mocky: like both don't think and won't listen
Mocky: came across like simpleton management, decree whatever occurs to you, dilbert-esque pointy haired manager on steroids
☟︎ Mocky: and this wasn't like just one school. was city wide "make every teacher do x" after 900 parent complaints "stop doing x"
Mocky: Also re impulsiveness: one school adminsitrator said they have a rule of 3 for instructions comeing down from Qatari management. Let them ask three times including an official goverment memo before you do anything they say. Because as soon as they start to see the fall out of random impulsive decisions they will reverse it and have you undo all your work.
Mocky: isn't necessarily bad, but bad that they waited till 3 months in to even think about it. In the case of the shelter, it was a charity, never meant to make a profit. but still "dun wanna pay anymore"
Mocky: also seems to go hand in hand with their impulsiveness. 3 different people described this exact scenario. Qatari goes opens a business with someone (one freelance vet service, one animal rescue shelter, one doggy day care) 3 months later decides, "I didn't realize I was going to have to keep paying so much every month (payroll, rent, etc.) where's the profit?" "it may take a year to become profitable, it's only been 3 months" "I'm not paying anymore." which
Mocky: a stable of horses, no matter how much it saves them in the long run.
Mocky: This goes hand in hand with their feeling that everyone comes to Qatar to take their money and rip them off. So all these fancy insurance / maintenance contracts "feel" like they give nothing to the buyer, plus they were dreamed up by foreigners who come to rip them off and decieve them. They detest such things. Easier to sell them a spoon they can old in their hand today for a million dollars than get them to agree to a monthly payout to a vet for care of
Mocky: i've haven't seen personally, so all i can do is report for now
Mocky: diana_coman, that could be a reasonable assumption and i suggested the same to my companions, they shook thier heads.
☟︎ Mocky: impression i got was totalcostofownership can't compete with how they feel about it in their gut
Mocky: Another example was horse needed some major surgery. owner had no problem paying for facilities, staff, ancillaries but balked at paying surgeon fee. "i pay you much less for minor treatments, why must I pay more for your time now". Selling them preventative medicine or machine maintenance is a non-starter. They'd rather pay 10x when the emergency hits because then they know they are getting something for their money.
Mocky: because insurance was to expensive for the given coverage, but because "paying money to get nothing".
☟︎ Mocky: They have a very poor appreciation for intangibles. They want to get something they can hold in their hand when they spend money. If it's something they can't see, they balk at paying for it. And if they do pay for it, it'll bother them to no end. One example was dude decided he wanted a car, ordered a brand new, fully customized Bentley. 350k USD. Wouldn't go pick it up when it arrived because balked at having to pay 900 USD /month for insurance. not
Mocky: so i dug into what it's like to be in business with Qataris and how their attitudes are, with my 11 new acquaintances at breakfast today. 3 of them have had first hand experience in their business dealings for years now and happy to tell stories. I'll relay the gist of it here. on the following points there was not the slightest disagreement from anyone at the table, only nodding heads and further stories illustrating the exact same points.
Mocky: i met others as well, europeans, americans, canadians but they didn't know about biz or qataris enough to contribute to the convo
Mocky: the other was an Egyptian veterinary doctor who has been working freelance here for some years
Mocky: an older american lady who works in a qatari house and has authority over the financial dealings of the sons with business degrees from uni and because of the status of the father (her boss) there are other lower station qataris that she doesn't need to listen to
Mocky: phf well i've only spoken to foreigners here about it so that could be the case here as well, but it does say "shisha" on the printed menu, but also printed in english for foreigners
Mocky: today was at a cheesecake factory, in a mall bigger than my home town in which I got lost twice
Mocky: yes, actually, but they don't call it hookah here, they call it shisha. but that wasn't today and no humans in sight
Mocky: talked to me for a couple hours about biznis, Qataris etc. got some good info
☟︎ Mocky: oh my god I found some humans today
Mocky: my AC compressor on the roof had a problem. now these clowns didn't fix it but did manage to break the indoor fan and circuit board as well. and i gotta get up in 6 hours for this meet and greet. gonna be a sweaty night
Mocky: i would say that local virii stand no chance against me but that would jinx it
Mocky: and i mean it's cool that 3 dudes will show up to fix your ac at 11pm, back in states it's 9-5 strictly, but man pushing up on 1am and they still working and not seeing signals of competence...
Mocky: but i think it's because my AC has been our for 6 hrs, cuz totally
Mocky: my tonsils have felt swolen for past 4 hours but im not saying it out loud so it wont be real
Mocky: it's hard to understand people here, randomly selected thick accent each time. it's a relief to run into brit or irish