The main market. If you’ve seen a shuk (market) in Israel or any other Arab country: well it’s nothing like that.
However, if you’ve been to EPCOT then you have a pretty good idea what this is, just larger: everything is brand new but built to look a bit old. It’s all giant fancy stores, boutiques, art dealerships, and restaurants. It’s very nice though. The day we went it was still empty – like everything – but that’s because the Brazilians were just about to arrive.
Little wooden boats that were historically used in Qatar for pearl fishing. In our case, it was a two hour trip for seeing yachts owed by monarchs and eat really good food.
Like with most other things in here so far, there were more workers than tourists and no beer. But the food was excellent and it was a really nice and relaxing experience.
A 0-0 tie in which Mexico was better and deserved to win. This is a terrible result when combined with Argentina’s loss to Saudi Arabia.
The match was held at the 974 Stadium, built using 974 shipping containers and will allegedly be disassembled and reassembled in another country. Mark my words: it won’t happen. It’s a very nice stadium though.
Located next to the Khalifa Stadium, this is a brand new and very impressive museum. Like many other things – it was eerily deserted – but is a definite recommendation.
Next stop: Mexico vs Poland.
Straight out of one game we headed out to the next one at Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium. Time to support my adoptive country and fellow CONCACAF team.
This ended in a 1-1 draw that the US deserved to win. After the match we ended up eating Lebanese food at 1 AM in the Mall of Qatar across the street. Pretty pretty pretty good.
Fresh(er) after a quick nap, we headed out to Al Thumama Stadium to watch Netherlands vs Senegal and then USA vs Wales. If this sounds crazy, that’s because it is. Originally we had plenty of time between both games but things got rescheduled after we purchased the tickets leaving us very little time to go from one game to the next.
This was a good match. Unlike past World Cups where I’ve seen Netherlands play, there were few Clockwork Orange fans and they were oddly subdued. There were lots of Mexican fans though. In a sad twist of irony, we had to leave a bit early while the score was 0-0 so we can catch the USA vs Wales game.
Netherlands won 2-0. 
It was a rough first day.
My flights were: AUS-DFW, DFW-LHR, LHR-DOH.
American Airlines was quick to mess with my plans by delaying the AUS-DFW flight. But only 10 minutes at a time so that I can’t look for alternatives before missing a connection. I made it to the gate of my connecting flight 3 minutes after it closed.
I was instead forced to stay the night in Dallas (not the airline’s fault of course, so hotel’s on me) and put on a flight that lands me in Doha with barely enough time to get to my first match with suitcase and all.
Thankfully, I went to the airport early and straight to beg to a really nice AA lady, using my best sad kitten eyes face 
. She got me on an earlier flight direct to Doha! That gave me enough time to go to the apartment, shower, eat, nap, then to the two matches! Sure, it was a middle seat all the way to the back in a 15 hour flight. But I was going to make it! No complaints.
I was impressed at the big and modern airport. And most impressed at the speed and efficiency of immigration. Wow! Will everything in Qatar be this fast and efficient? (Narrator: no, it won’t).
The apartment we got is in a small building that is definitely not new in some random Doha neighborhood. It absolutely demolished my expectations though. It is simple with no luxury, but perfect: Large, comfortable, newly renovated. Two bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms, kitchen, fridge, washing machine, TV. Everything looks fairly new. AC works like a champ. There’s several places to eat and buy groceries around it that are quite cheap. Everyone speaks serviceable English – probably better than Arabic.
It took an eternity to go through the extremely buggy app. And it took an eternity for them to arrive over mail. But we finally – and just 2 days before kick off – receive the very last and most important Panini stickers for our album.
They sell for a lot of money in the black market. Best of luck.
With this post, I am proud to announce Polla Qatari 2022. This is the fifth FIFA World Cup pool / game / quiniela in a row I’ve organized and the sixth polla overall (since I did Polla América 2007).
With a little over 36 days until kickoff, I think this can be the best and largest polla ever!
I do this for fun and for learning. I find that it makes me enjoy the tournament, which is exciting on its own, a lot more. And my friends do as well. And I find that it forces me to play with corners of the software worlds I don’t get to use at work.
But it is a lot of work. The code is 100% custom written by me. Back in 2006 I wrote the original polla in a few coding all-nighters. Since then, every polla has started from the same codebase as the last one but goes through a lot of work and improvements on each iteration.
For this year, I had pondered a big rewrite using Python and microservices and other cool newer technologies (I do this for learning, remember?) but adulting (those pesky children! that pesky job) got in the way. I ended up reusing the same old codebase which actually required a lot of work to get back up and running with the latest versions of PHP and MySQL.
I set up Docker, Docker Compose, and hosted the code in a private GitHub repo. I’m using a package manager for dependencies. This is a nice improvement on my workflow and makes development and deployment a lot easier. It should make the code easier to maintain. And after getting it all working I made many small and big improvements both internal and external.
I am adding a few new features to the game: Winner selection, filters.
There are three things all readers should do right now:
Good luck!
Once again, the World Cup is coming. Qatar welcomes the world in a message of peace, love, and tolerance <ahem>.
It also means there’s a new Panini Sticker Album, and any self-respecting long time reader of The MKX® knows I collect them.
Unlike in previous tournaments, my kids are old enough to tag team with me. Fortunately, my kids don’t “like” things. They are either absolutely obsessed with something or they are completely indifferent. The Panini World Cup album fell into the first category.
So they did most of the work and they did it very quickly. As in: they’d wake up at 5 AM to work on it every day. Our album was completed with 2+ months to spare. You can read all about it on Ilán’s website, I highly recommend it.
