News roundup: economy, labor camps, Danish boycott

According to the Peninsula, Qatar's annual GDP growth is now at 20.8%. Yowza. (The real headline is patently incorrect, and the Pensinsula desperately needs a statistics editor.)

A local psychiatrist is alleging that living in a labor camp is more psychologically beneficial than living with a family. Um, yeah. That explains all the suicides.

On Friday, numerous imams (including Qaradawi) called for a boycott of Danish products because a cartoon in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten depicted Mohammad as a terrorist. So no more Lupak butter for us.

Parenthetically, it looks like Clinton's in town again, and Cat Stevens will be later this week.

Clinton

My friend Lanny shook Bill Clinton's hand this afternoon!

The whole HR department was at the Ritz for lunch, with someone who's visiting on a pre-employment trip. As they were about to leave, they saw a car being guarded by Secret Service agents, so they lurked nearby until Clinton got out of the car. Clinton started heading for the hotel, but when he heard our HR director say, "Hello, Mr. President!" he veered over and said hello. He shook their hands and asked them what brought them to Doha.

The third member of HR (besides the director and Lanny) is a serious Clinton fanatic. As in: she has his photo on her wall at work, and when the students asked us to decorate our office doors to represent our interests or personalities, the first thing she posted was the dustcover to My Life. So, while I haven't talked to her about this afternoon, I have to imagine that shaking Clinton's hand and having her picture taken with him was the highlight of her year.

Ask-me-questions meme

I've just spent a happy 45 minutes taking all kinds of silly web quizzes. I always love seeing my friends' webquiz results, but I feel kind of lame posting my own, so I will forbear.

Instead, I'll do the old standby five-questions meme (from kyra_ojosverdes), since it's more participatory.

Hit "Post a comment" and ask me five questions, and (as long as they're not too nosy) I shall endeavour to answer them truthfully.