Ha the licence saga!

What an experience it is living here. They certainly do things a little differently and if they don’t want to rush it’s, inshallah, which means “in gods will” in Arabic, or “when I can be bothered” in English! Heehee. It’s a great word and always said with many laughs in reference to just about anything in Doha.

I put in my forms to get my Qatar licence about 3 weeks ago. I had to give them a copy of the front of my passport, the page with the Qatari immigration stamp, my Qatar resident permit, my Australian licence, and about 10 photos as usual. Don’t know why but they always ask for more than the usual requirement of pictures and forms when ever anything official is concerned. It just seems to be the Doha way. Bec and I had been waiting for the promised but never to be delivered email invitation to attend the regular Monday licence trip, and, after 4 weeks decided to go and find out what the hold up was. Merely the fact the there was no filing system in existence and the new forms handed in were being added to the top of the pile! After sorting through a couple of hundred other applications she found ours and put it at the top. “Come Monday at 8am.” Ok…… that’s how it works…..

So on Monday we waited in the hall at work after having collected our forms and were then shuttled off to the Qatar license department. We were asked to hand our forms in when we got there and they were in turn handed over to the rather unofficial looking staff before being told to go up stairs. We found with some delay and little direction the “eye test” office and went inside. Not far behind us was some guy with all our application forms. They were given back to us and then to the lady running the show who started looking through them. It was discovered that 3 of the forms didn’t have stamps, Bec’s being one of them and they were handed back to the parties concerned. “Go way” she said and flicked her had at Bec, “you have no stamp.” After trying to get some direction out of her with little response Bec and the other non stamp people were told by another “staff member” that they needed to go back downstairs.
When they returned the lady decided that she didn’t want them to go for their license that day and also took a couple more papers off the pile, mine included, and told us to come tomorrow. It was on! Two of the people who had come with us spent the next hour fighting with her about not being able to get their license. Meanwhile people are getting their eyes tested and it only took about 1 minute for each one. The time they wasted arguing they could have tested half the country.
No one was paying any attention to what was happening so I just took my paper off her desk and handed it to the eye testing guy on the table opposite. He coyly took my form and proceeded with the eye test which consisted of me reading a total of 2 lines of text, one with each eye. Stamped my paper and told me to go downstairs. Bec did the same and he did the test for her as well with even less numbers!

We went downstairs to pay and complete the application and within 2 minutes had our license. Not sure if I’m actually ever going to drive on these crazy roads! The guys who were arguing ended up going to see the head honcho director who signed their forms without even doing an eye test?????





















Ummmmmmmm Doha Asian Gamas?????? Thought it was Games??????