Tales From the Field - Qatar National Sports Day 2012
Feb 10, 2015, 9:26 am
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Tales From the Field - Qatar National Sports Day 2012
Edit: Title should read 2012 and not 2010
It is the second Tuesday in February today and accordingly the state of Qatar is holding it's fourth annual National Sports Day.
As I went down for my swim this morning I was remembering the first sports day, when I was working at Qatar Airways. I thought I would share some memories here on FT.
QR had hired a large sports venue for the day, with football pitches, racquet courts, a swimming pool and some other facilities too. Perhaps around five or six hundred employees attended - a good turn out.
At the time I was working in Product Development, a small department populated mainly by beautiful and petite ladies. Needless to say I was not playing sports against them! Many of the ladies went to play racquet sports inside.
But my male buddies in the Corporate Planning and Revenue Management Departments were out in force. Planning and Product had quite close relations so I joined their team and we spent the day getting paid to play football!
I am sorry to report that Revenue Management cheated as they had been practising beforehand and were able to employ all manner of tricks, including team co-ordination and actually kicking the ball so that it curved into the goal!
But Corporate Planning still put in a respectable performance, only losing something like ten-nil in the game we played against them.
By the end of the day I was red from the sun and knackered. But it had been great fun. There was a raffle at the end where we all put our business cards into a pot. Anko (see this thread) was invited to draw a name and mine came out. I won a selection of QR IT-related knickknacks including a USB port, mouse and so on. Some other colleagues won tennis tickets, a model and although I did not see the prize unwrapped one of them may have been some noise-cancelling headphones.
We were all given QR sports shirts for the occasion and I still wear mine sometimes when I am going down to the pool.
Happy memories.
It is the second Tuesday in February today and accordingly the state of Qatar is holding it's fourth annual National Sports Day.
As I went down for my swim this morning I was remembering the first sports day, when I was working at Qatar Airways. I thought I would share some memories here on FT.
QR had hired a large sports venue for the day, with football pitches, racquet courts, a swimming pool and some other facilities too. Perhaps around five or six hundred employees attended - a good turn out.
At the time I was working in Product Development, a small department populated mainly by beautiful and petite ladies. Needless to say I was not playing sports against them! Many of the ladies went to play racquet sports inside.
But my male buddies in the Corporate Planning and Revenue Management Departments were out in force. Planning and Product had quite close relations so I joined their team and we spent the day getting paid to play football!
I am sorry to report that Revenue Management cheated as they had been practising beforehand and were able to employ all manner of tricks, including team co-ordination and actually kicking the ball so that it curved into the goal!
But Corporate Planning still put in a respectable performance, only losing something like ten-nil in the game we played against them.
By the end of the day I was red from the sun and knackered. But it had been great fun. There was a raffle at the end where we all put our business cards into a pot. Anko (see this thread) was invited to draw a name and mine came out. I won a selection of QR IT-related knickknacks including a USB port, mouse and so on. Some other colleagues won tennis tickets, a model and although I did not see the prize unwrapped one of them may have been some noise-cancelling headphones.
We were all given QR sports shirts for the occasion and I still wear mine sometimes when I am going down to the pool.
Happy memories.
Last edited by Sixth Freedom; Feb 10, 2015 at 9:38 am
