on my way: The making of Sports Roundabout

This past weekend was Hallowe'en, and like good Canadian expatriates, we celebrated it here in Doha. There were more than enough Hallowe'en parties to choose from - there were colleagues of mine in attendance at a minimum of 4 different celebrations around the city over the weekend.

Darren and I chose to participate in a free Hallowe'en bash hosted by some of our colleagues on the rooftop of their accommodation. The event was characterized by a wide veriety of people, great conversation, lots of laughs and most importantly some fantastic costumes.

My favourite costumes were the Doha-specific ones. One couple came dressed as a camel jockey and owner - the owner was driving a cardboard Land Cruiser equipped with working headlights! Another man, my favourite person at the whole party incidentally, came as a local landmark - Sports Roundabout. He was very proud of his creativity and handiwork, and I thought I'd share it with both of my readers. So may I present "The Making of Sports Roundabout."

First of all, let us clarify what exactly a roundabout is. People who have driven in Europe are familiar with the idea, but it's a new concept for many North Americans. According to the website Driving in Ireland,

A roundabout or rotary is a type of road junction (or traffic calming device) at which traffic streams around a central island, after first yielding (giving way) to the circulating traffic. Roundabouts are statistically safer than both traffic circles and traditional intersections, though they do not cope as well with the traffic on motorways or similar fast roads.

See the diagram below:

Ok, so that's a roundabout, but what about Sports Roundabout? Well, in Doha street names are generally not known, so landmarks are used for giving directions. For example, we just moved from an apartment between Al Sadd and Al Nasr streets (2 well-known roads), close to the Red Dragon Chinese Massage place and attached to the Qatar Airways accommodation. Even with that description, our pizza often arrived only after 3 phone calls from the driver asking for more directions.

Many of the roundabouts have features that have become landmarks. Some key ones are Television roundabout (near the Al Jazeera Broadcasting Company), Immigration roundabout (near the Immigration department), Decoration roundabout (near a decorating/furniture store), Mall roundabout (near the mall named "The Mall") and Burger King roundabout (near - you guessed it - a Burger King restaurant). Sports roundabout is named for the tower erected in the middle of it, depicting athletes involved in different sports - a remnant of/tribute to the Asian Games held here 3 years ago.

Ok, enough background. On to the costume!

One day last week after work, Darren went to Toys R Us and picked up some toy cars. Then Friday morning he cut a cardboard box into an oval, measuring it to his waistline with makeshift tools, covered it with black bristol board and painted white lines on it. (There are no pictures of those steps for 2 reasons -- 1. I was not feeling well and decided to nap the sick away, and 2. Darren wasn't really dressed for that part of the project. It was Friday morning, remember!)

Anyway, after the paint had dried, Darren taped the cars in place with masking tape, since our crazy glue had dried up since its last use.

I participated, too - taping the traffic cones to the "construction site" at the back of the roundabout. I think Darren ran out of bristol board, but it's actually not surprising for a random section of the road to be missing around these parts!

And here's the Sports Roundabout, looking so proud of his creation.

At the party everyone knew right away he was a roundabout, but it took some prompting for many people to figure out which one. I thought the knee pads were a dead giveaway!