Qatar World Cup Stadiums: no air-conditioning?

Hello there!

I have not blogged in a year (For various reasons that I'm not going to go through now.) Today, as I sat reading about a new proposal for stadiums in Qatar for the 2022 world cup, I had that old urge, you know, to rant.

Following FIFA announcement that Qatar is to host the world cup of 2022, there was a general murmur of uncertainty about hosting crowd-intensive championship in such a hot and humid climate. And then, when it became apparent that Qatar has no problem air-conditioning the entire-peninsula if need be, there began an outcry among environmentalists about the feasibility of air-conditioning entire stadia and the costs and carbon emission involved.

In answer to these dilemmas, Tangram Architects came up with a concept that they claim doesn't require refrigeration.

(For those of you who don't know, refrigeration is the act by which air or liquid is cooled mechanically. Like in refrigerators. A process in which significant amount of power is consumed).

The design also purports to achieve temperature of 27-30 degrees inside the stadium. And since Fifa requires 26-29 degrees, the design will generally pass.

How is it done? See the illustration above. The wind is funneled to a storage space beneath the stands, in that storage space there is a huge water tank: an artificial "lake" underneath the whole thing. The water is extracted from a hill reservoir nearby, therefore it is "cool". When hot wind blows over the cool water, its heat gets reduced through a process known as "passive cooling". And then the wind is extracted from this water hold to the stadium above through air-shafts at a "correct velocity".

It's a very interesting idea. And there is an energy model to prove it will work.

An energy model for those who don't know is a simulation of how the building will perform in different heating and ventilation scenarios. You input building composition, outdoor temperature, preferable indoor temperature, sun direction, and the energy model will tell you how much heat loss you will be incurring. In this case, you input the temperature of the water, the structure of the stadium, the temperature and velocity of incoming wind, and, voila, you get approximate temperature of the inside of the stadium.

So the energy model says it will work.

But! the output of the model depends on the input and assumption of the model builder. If, for example, the water extracted from the hill reservoir is not as cool as it's believed, the inside temperature may be way higher than comfortable.

Someone independent (or a third party) should be commissioned to build a different model and see what happens.

Second, storing huge amount of water like that underneath a building is no small undertaking. That lake must be protected against inspects, fungus, contamination, and the other ailments that befall stagnant water. It's like the filtration and chemical treatment of your swimming pool, but on a much, much larger scale. This process requires maintenance and it consumes power. And then there is the question of the smell of the air as it passes through the lake and then push into the space of the stadium. This is the world cup after all, no? So will the spectators be smelling chlorine and other chemicals while sipping on their Whisky and waving the flags of Sweden and South Africa?

Wait, I forgot alcohol is not going to be served.

But seriously, the comfort of the spectator IS a factor. I paused at the "correct velocity" as it is mentioned in the article. What is considered "correct" velocity? will the velocity of the wind be enough to allow the cooling but not disturb the watching experience? football fans can live with a little bit of hair ruffling, but more wind will just spoil the experience.

I have other questions I'd like to ask the designers of this concept. (Like, how do they plan to deal with dust storms?) But it is an interesting idea nonetheless and I'm sure the coming months and years will carry some answers.

How To Report On Issues Related To Construction

1- Hire construction reporters: there are business reporters, crime reporters, science journalists, life-style editors, etc. So why not construction reporters? It's a huge sector. And no, I don't mean the "business" side of construction, but someone who can delve into the nuts and bolts of things.

 2- Ask an engineer.

 3- Ask another engineer.

 4- Ask a specialized engineer (e.g. fire protection engineer).

 5- Engineers are generally interest-driven and motivated by competition and not above slandering each others. So if a claim is being made, take it in the context of where it is coming from.
 
6- Do not spread fear-mongering stats in order to grab headlines: safety of construction is not less important than food or transport safety. Unsubstantiated claims (or ostensibly sound but substantially erroneous or misleading claims) are dangerous and could drive people to panic and act irresponsibly.

 7- Sympathize with the resident/tenant/user of the building: it's not enough to tell me 90% of Abras (for example) are not seaworthy. Tell me where to find an alternative route. Tell me how to figure out whether an Abra is seaworthy or not. Tell me what to do in case of an accident. I know it's not your responsibility, but you'd certainly appear more responsible when you do so.

 In other words: when you make an apocalyptic statement like "hundreds of towers across the country are enclosed with dangerous non fire-rated panels made of petroleum-based plastic cores that can burn within minutes", it would be nice if you could also tell the poor bugger who lives in such building and still has 11 months on his tenancy contract what to do. Which government agency should he approach to find out whether his building is clad with fire-rated tiles or not. Should he panic? Can he force his landlord to revoke the contract and return the down-payments/security checks? What he should do in case, God forbids, a fire of that nature began?

Magic Potion

Here's my attempt to re-write the lyrics of Teardrop by Massive Attack

 
 (Try to sing along to the same tune, here goes):


Come on

 Spell the beans

 Get your hands on a touch screen

 Unwind that tape of love

 Easy….

 (easy)


 When your mast lost its sail

 Stood in the sun lonely and bare

 You cried those vinegar tears

 La teezi…

 (teezi)


 Life goes on, with or without

 This music can suck a draught

 Loosen your jaw and let’s bitch about

 Everything….

 (everything)


Love, love is a verb

 Magic potion without a herb

 That moment you can not curb

 A boner….

 (boner)

April Fools

Childhood memories are the hardest to interpret. It is hard to fathom why a certain scene stayed with you, while other, probably more significant events, didn’t make it through your memory's natural erosion.

 The younger ones are measured with springs. They blossom; they shed petals and secrete pollens. They are yet to develop into something strong enough to stand alone in the middle of a storm. They have that fragility of childhood. But they are perfectly legal. The old geezer of a poet with pedophiliac tendencies wrote about them. He measured their age with springs and leered at them under the pretense of remembering his childhood sweetheart, her being no more than 13 springs old when they stole their first kiss.

 The scene from my childhood that I remember the most is set in my grandfather’s farm. In a small clearing by the over-ground water tank, there my uncle used to park a tri-motorcycle. Green, battered and caked with dry mud. Used for freight and transport, her open box in the back witnessed every kind of substance related to farming: from pesticides to animal blood to rotten pomegranates. It didn’t have a hand-break, so my uncle had to turn the front wheel to the left as far as it would go (which is 45-degree) and then lock it in place. The “Trella”, as we called it, would then go round in the farmyard. Leaving heliocentric tracks around a walnut tree. The ruts would get deeper as my cousins and I pushed her and shoved her through ditches and clumps of grass. In the spring the ruts would grow even deeper. The yard would be overgrown with green except these ruts. They’d become like tunnels dug through the undergrowth; skillfully engineered tunnels, with their curves drawn by the perfect circularity of a wheel turning.

 Till this date, the site of that front wheel locked in place fascinates me. Everything about the “Trella” oozed with femininity, except that front wheel. It had a mysterious masculine power. The handlebars stuck out like buffalo horns, connecting with the wheel itself through two massive steel tubes, with two rusty, coiled springs that did nothing to absorb the rugged terrain. The mud guard, its inner side collecting and accumulating a layer after layer of dead insects, entombed in sand and earth material carried along from all over the region where her travel took her. The single headlight mounted on the front, its bulb stark clean. No one dared driving that vulnerable thing with the light covered in mud.

 I remember that masculine front wheel now. I want to lock horn with it, to challenge it to change its course. I want to ask it how it feels to be captive to your own lock-mechanism. To go round each year experiencing April in the same determined doggedness that you experienced it with the year before. Leaving those grass-less ruts. Invisible tunnels where your deeds disappear or, better yet, get ignored. I want to jump in the driver’s saddle seat, feel the vibration of the damp earth through my groins.

 I want to ask April some questions. I want to interrogate it, debrief it. I want to know everything it is willing to tell me. But I know it won't tell me the truth. Its short-lived freshness, brief vivacity of color. They won’t last. The only recurring theme is its mendacity and annually celebrated excuse for a lie.

The Elephant

There is an old story from India that aptly illustrates how frame of reference affects an understanding of physical properties, and indeed of the larger setting in which those properties are manifested.

It is said that six blind men were presented with an elephant, a creature of which they had no previous knowledge, and each explained what he thought the elephant was.

The first felt of the elephant’s side, and told the others that the elephant was like a wall. The second, however, grabbed the elephant’s trunk, and concluded that an elephant was like a snake.

The third blind man touched the smooth surface of its tusk, and was impressed to discover that the elephant was a hard, spear-like creature. Fourth came a man who touched the elephant’s legs, and therefore decided that it was like a tree trunk. However, the fifth man, after feeling of its tail, disdainfully announced that the elephant was nothing but a frayed piece of rope. Last of all, the sixth blind man, standing beside the elephant’s slowly flapping ear, felt of the ear itself and determined that the elephant was a sort of living fan.

These six blind men went back to their city,and each acquired followers after the manner of religious teachers. Their devotees would then argue with one another, the snake school of thought competing with adherents of the fan doctrine, the rope philosophy in conflict with the tree trunk faction, and so on. The only person who did not join in these debates was a seventh blind man, much older than the others, who had visited the elephant after the other six.

While the others rushed off with their separate conclusions, the seventh blind man had taken the time to pet the elephant, to walk all around it, to smell it, to feed it, and to listen to the sounds it made.When he returned to the city and found the populace in a state of uproar between the six factions, the old man laughed to himself: he was the only person in the city who was not convinced he knew exactly what an elephant was like.

Excerpt from "Science of Everyday Things".

Burst Pipe

Dubai: An underground water pipe that burst on Shaikh Zayed Road on Monday morning caused traffic congestion and a number of minor accidents, Dubai Police said.

The Al Marabe'e exit on Shaikh Zayed Road in the Sharjah direction was blocked by police as a result, and traffic was diverted which caused the congestion along the road and at the following exit.

Dubai Municipality workers and equipment were seen trying to fix the problem, while deep excavations were made on the side of the road, under the metro track.

Meanwhile, the congestion and unexpected diversion caused a few minor accidents in which no injuries were reported.

That was on Monday. The work on the damaged pipe hasn't been finished. And Al Marabe'e exit is still blocked, which has lead to this:

Taken this morning: Motorists forge their own trail through the Municipality tended lawn under the metro-track.

Later in the morning: Troops deployed to prevent state of anarchy.

I remember that a pipe (probably the same one) had burst back in 2006-07. Which is five years ago. Five years construction warranttee on the pipe expired?

Self Defenestration

The father brought little Mohamed a trinket tied to a lanyard.

Little Mohamed loved it, he kept it slung around his neck all the time, getting on his mother's nerves.

The mother got fed up and took it from him and hung it on a window handle, where he couldn’t reach at his natural height.

The mother woke up the next morning, opened the window (which swings outward) to air the house.

She then got busy in the kitchen.

Little Mohamed woke up; saw his trinket hanging from a lanyard by the handle of the open window. It looked so beautiful in the sunlight, swaying with the soft morning breeze.

Mohamed brought a chair, climbed, and leaned out of the window frame to retrieve his trinket.

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The above is not how this went down, but it's one of the many possible scenarios.

You may blame the architects, the landowners and the authorities but, eventually, it's your responsibility as a parent to take care of your child. Cars of various brands have different safety features, but ultimately it's your driving that makes a difference, and it's true in the case of a hosue or an apartment: it's the way you run your house-hold and educate your child or spouse about safety that makes the difference.

I'm not saying architects and authorities aren't responsible, we are. But we can not guarantee prevention (except in the case of fixed, un-openable windows.) The code says window sill should be 110 CM above finished ground level, and that window handles should be beyond children's reach. But that's just a theory. Children are very inventive and creative when it comes to bypassing problems. What I'm trying to say is, height alone won't prevent your child from jumping (accidentally or by a delusion). You need to make sure he or she understands the dangers. You need to make him NOT want to open the window or lean out of it.

My mom tells me that she once caught me when I was two and a half years old standing on mid-section of your balcony's railing (we lived on the fourth floor), arms spread to the side and shouting "Jonkaaaar!". Jonkar, like Iron Man and Grendizer, were all cartoon characters with the supernatural ability to fly.

One more thing that may have been missed in the controversy: 50% of children still die due to jumps from 4 and 5 floors height. In other words, once you go above the fifth floor, the odds are more or less the same, whether you're on the seventeenth or the seventieth floor.

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P.S.: The title refers to the act of defenestration, which apparently was a popular phenomenon in Europe centuries ago. Especially as an act of a political retribution (throwing a corrupt nobility or a feudal leader out of a window of a high palace, occasionally to be plucked and finished off by angry mobs surrounding the palace)........ I could think of a few acts of defenestration that I would like to see happening myself.

Under My Olive Tree

The olive harvest season falls on the months of October and November. The exact timing of harvest varies from one region to another, and from one kind of olive trees to another. And it also depends on the convictions and personal preferences of the farmer or the landowner. Generally speaking, it’s best to pick the olives right before they drop out of ripeness and boredom.

At any rate, when it is decided to relieve the tree of its consignment of green and darkish oval fruits, a tarpaulin sheet will be spread underneath it, and then you either swat the branches with sticks to hasten the fall, or climb on a step-ladder and pick at the olives one by one and fling them downward. Whether to use sticks or human hands is determined by the availability of manpower and the nature of the olives themselves (e.g. are they heavy and ripe and ready to drop at the tinniest flick?) When the tree finally parts company with its crop, the tarp will be sifted through to weed out the twigs and other undesirable objects. The load of olives will then be funneled into sacks or pails, and then it will either be sold raw or fermented for breakfast or processed into oil.

I never fully figured out why an olive branch has become a symbol of peace. It has indeed been a symbol of peace and glory for a long, long time (since the ancient Greek). But it is not clear to me why or how it’d become so. I suspect it’s because olive trees live long, and they age well. They age beautifully and gracefully. In fact, ‘old age’ of an olive tree as perceived by mortal humans is never its actual state of aging. The olive tree that my grandfather had planted when he was young feels old to me, but it might just be in its prime years. You'd think a tree that had witnessed WWII and survived the severe freeze of '72 and a partial fire in '82 would look old and withered. But no, that's not the case. That's not the case at all.

The best time to harvest olive is between sunrise and mid-day. Something that has to do with photosynthesis and other chemical ingredients that make the slow circular trip between the leaves, the roots and the fruits. And, obviously, you need good light to do the work since autumn skies are overcast and it gets dark early.

An owner of a land that has two to three hundred olive trees can never handle the harvest by himself and his family alone. So he or she will have to hire pickers from the nearest town. Or maybe from a far-away town. Whoever is cheaper, faster and more hard-working. Men and women of various ages and marital statuses will answer the call. And since it’s not always possible to commute back to where they come from, the pickers will occasionally stay in temporary tents or shacks or whatever available within the vicinity of the land.

For many young men and women, the harvest season is the chance to see and be seen. There’s something novel and fresh about the harvest, about the regenerative power of nature and the freshness of the crop. There’s anxiety and anticipation. Always a surprise lurking around the corner: a tree could yield more than it’s expected; the girl whom you had met the last season has now grown into a beautiful young woman. The harvest season is an opportunity for networking and a source of stories for generations to come. No wonder that many folk songs are rife with references to it and its festivities.

Who owns an olive tree? Or let us put the question this way: who is morally entitled to claim an olive tree? The man who owns the land or the man who grooms and prunes it? The man who plant the sapling or the man who applies the pesticides? The mule that twos the water tank to irrigate it, or the family that picks its fruits? The question is not even framed in economic terms, it's just as simple as this: who has the most intimate relationship with an olive tree?

The answer is: nobody.

Or everybody, equally.

Syria has the fifth largest number of olive trees worldwide. Syria is currently bleeding, but it will survive. It will survive and live to 'age' gracefully and gloriously. Syria is not owned by one man; under its branches of peace and glory, there is a place for everybody.

Well....?

Kindly leave your answer in the comments.

A Perspective From The Graveyard

We stood around with our eyes fixed on the slight bump in the dirt before us. My colleague was wearing a white dish-dash with blotches of mud on it, evidently from the burial process that took place a few minutes ago. We had lost our way from the mosque to the graveyard and were a bit late. The look of utter devastation on my colleague’s face was nevertheless unabated. He was an only son. His father was slightly older than fifty-four years when a brain stroke took his life the night before.

On the way to the graveyard, while we were still struggling with GPS and crude, shouted directions from passer-bys, my other colleague, who is also an only son, told me to imagine how difficult it would be. Being the only son, losing your father, your sole role-model and life-guide, and becoming a de-facto patriarch of the family yourself. How absolutely life-shattering. I thought about it for a minute. I told him if you keep thinking about it, you’re going to suffer twice. Once through the worry and another (probably) through the real event, God forbids. And it’s not going to make it any easier.

There’s no rehearsal for grief.

Or is there?

It takes a year for the soft tissues of a body buried underground to decompose*, while the dry remains may persist for a hundred years. A friend told me that psychological studies showed that a family could take up to five years to regain balance after the loss of the patriarch. My other colleague (the one who can’t read GPS) got philosophical and said that death puts life into perspective. That we live, work hard, marry, make babies, make them grow and then die on them. I said, well, that’s life. It’s a cycle. Decomposition and regeneration. And we, human beings, are making more babies than ever. There’s more life on earth than death than ever before…. None of that will give you comfort when the big one hits. But that’s the reality. We may have different beliefs about what happens in the unknowable strata beyond death, but we all agree that life- with its cycle, bio-degradability, and renewability- will go on.

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*Interestingly, the prostrate gland in a male body is the last soft organ to go. I don’t know why this fact gives me comfort, but it does.