Last match of the trip, and one would have thought best match of the first round. At the end it was a 1-1 tie in which Spain deserved to win.
Before the match, we went to The Pearl, the artificial island full of fancy things.
Spain vs Germany
Tag Archives: qatar2022
México vs Argentina
The main event. The match with the highest demand for tickets out of all 64 matches including the Final.
We stopped at Lusail Mall before the game.
USA vs England
This was one of the most attractive games for us. It was a good game but unfortunately not very spectacular: 0-0. Al Bayt is both the farthest (about 1 hour drive) and the most beautiful stadium we’ve visited. It’s made to look like a Bedouin tent, impressive.
Brazil vs Serbia
Brazil looked very, very strong. After seeing them it’s clear it won’t be easy to knock them out.
3-2-1 Qatari Olympic and Sports Museum
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.
USA vs Wales
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.
¡Nos vamos al Mundial!
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.
Polla Qatari 2022
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:
- Register at https://fifa2022.kirsch.mx. Bookmark it while you’re there.
- “Like” the Facebook page so you can keep up with announcements.
- Invite your friends to join. Tell them to use your user name as referral and maybe you play for free.
Good luck!