Heavens open on the opening day!

It732;s raining cats and dogs in the desert! Actually it does rain in Doha, but the frequency is around once in two years!

It8217;s raining cats and dogs in the desert! Actually it does rain in Doha, but the frequency is around once in two years! And it had to be now, the day the opening ceremony of the 15 th Asian Games is scheduled, the day all the work and toil and sweat veers to fruition. D-Day, as Europeans and Americans love to call it.

The daily weather forecast, made at 6:10am, does talk of 8216;strong showers8217; from 9 am 8212; rejoice Indian met offices, the strong showers came at 2 pm, though it has been raining since the morning 8212; and of thunderstorms at 12 and petering out to drizzles around 6 pm. But the very effect has taken a lot many old timers by surprise. 8220;This definitely isn8217;t a regular event, in my 10 years here this is the second time I have seen such rains,8221; says D Ravi Kumar, a journalist who migrated a decade back. 8220;The last time was the year I arrived here, and then old timers had said that was a freak,8221; he said.

The forecast that the Civil Aviation Authority of the Qatar Meteorological Department has provided says rains will be there tomorrow as well, though the intensity will be low. That should leave rest of the Asian Games untouched.

Wireless in Doha

The Wi-Tfi or wide-fidelity internet connection that the Doha Asian Games organisers have been boasting about looks a trifle over the top. You pay 300 riyals 3.65 riyals to the US dollar for 100mb data transfer authority, and then you spend the rest of the time fiddling with the system to actually get through on the net. Once connected, you are 56mbps fast, but that8217;s the 8216;if8217;.

So what8217;s the problem. Sreejith Menon, who works for The Manni Way, a company that takes of the wi-fi issues here, explains that the technology has yet to evolve and there8217;s little one can do but grin and bear it. 8220;This system works on a 802.11 standard with 24 GHz processor and a 54-56 Mbps transfer speed. However, it can handle only a definite number of access points.

8220;At the Main Press Centre, for example, there are around 20 access points more is not possible, simply because there isn8217;t enough area covered and each access point can handle a certain number of connections. So I8217;d say a maximum of 500 connections,8221; he tries to explain.

Five hundred? There are a thousand or two thousand journalists and the electronic media working there at any given point of time. 8220;If all jostle for space, you wait,8221; said Menon. 8220;That8217;s it.8221;

That makes it Why-Fi, probably.