All started on Friday the 16th when I had to wake up early in order to get to Katara beach by 11 am. By the time I got to where I was supposed to be, I met the event director and he told me to set up my ‘photographs booth’ along with some other people’s pictures. At first, it was a disaster as I was supposed to be given some photo stands but somehow they didn’t have it that day. On the other hand, there were some performances such as Arabic dancing, hiphop, etc and there were also Parkour athletes that came all the way form Kuwait and Bahrain! They were simply epic

As a solution, I had to stick up the photos on the sound system fences which was a pain in the bottom.

The top photos are mine, including the winning photo while the falling ones are other people’s pictures. Ps, there were not supposed to fall, it was such a hardwork!

So that was day 1, not many things actually happened on the one but for some reasons, I thought it was so much fun.

Here comes day 2

Quite a lot happened that day, including marathon competition and the ‘Youth Got Talent’. Basically, it was those talent show but this year it happened to be only singing and they are actually planning on opening audition for dancers as well next year! Not to mention, they’ve got photo stands for me this time.

One of the parkour athletes. Legit!

Got my stands! yaaaay.

Above is my school mate, Yara, who participated in the Youth Got Talent. She sang a Christina Aguilera song and she sounded amazing! I will make sure I put up videos later

Day 3.

This day was basically the continuos of the other 2 days, more parkour shows, skateboarding and also the announcement of the talent show winners. Also, this day was the last day yet probably the most special as it was Qatar’s national day! Us volunteers and organizers were asked to wear Qatari flagged coloured scarves and accessories. My friends and I were and still are very proud to know that our friend Yara won 4th place and the whole of our school’s students participation in this festival was great. Not only Yara and myself, but also another guy who won 2nd place in the short film competition.

I really don’t know what else to say, those 3 days were simply great, I got to know loads of new amazing and inspiring people. Not to mention the amount of strangers that came up to me “you’re dhia? you won the competition right? your work is amazing” was creepily sweet! <3

The highlight of the event was the event director, also my new friend, Ziga, who came all the way form Slovenia to work with the Youth Company! He was indeed a very sweet and helpful guy whom everybody loved. He was also very entertaining as he presented the whole event and made many laugh!

It was great to know everybody else and also made friends, not only form outside of school but ironically, I actually got to know some of my school people through this event!

Just before the event ended, Muhammad Farid, CEO of the Youth Company (the one in black hoodie and holding a mic) called up the organizers of the event.

Nurliyana & Ziga

There was actually another sedan covered in graffiti, provided for the parkour athletes.

I’m not sure how and where to start, but this past week, starting from last Sunday until yesterday had been ridiculously tiring yet one of my best weeks this year.

Starting off since last Sunday, which was my last week of school for this term, when I received a call from one of the dudes in The You(th) Company to tell me that one of my submitted photos for this competition was chosen as the top 25 out of more than 100 photos submitted and that it will be exhibited in Intercontinental Hotel.
To give you an overview, The You(th) Company is the first Youth Social Entreprise in Qatar aiming to provide a worldwide platform for youth development and to supply the community with useful youthful consultancy services. The company is considered ‘newborn’ as it’s only been running for about a year(?) and already ran a one week festival called “RUN THE WORLD FESTIVAL” which started on the 11 till the 18/12/2011, consisted various competitions which include photography, short film, and mostly sports as this year’s theme happened to be ‘youth and sports’. On the 16th-18th was the beach festival where 11-15 were just exhibition and conferences.

But anyway, when I got the call I was honestly not bothered to go since I was so tired and had loads of things to do for school and plus, I didn’t tell my parents I submitted pictures for a competition. Somewhat somehow, I decided to explain to my folks and got them to bring me to the ‘announcement night’. Guess what? Apart from one out of 4 photos that I submitted got in to the top 25, my short video was in the top 5!
And guess what? I won the first place for the photo competition To be honest, I REALLY didn’t expect that since I wasn’t really satisfied with the pictures I took, but oh well. Here are pics from that night and my winning photo.

Later on that night, the facebook admin of Run The World fest. admin uploaded that photo up and look, the amount of likes and feedbacks! <3

Here is the video that I submitted & got nominated to top 5

Apart from above, another thing that made me feel excited were that: I will be going to Dubai next March for the World Scholars Cup to represent my school! Hyped hyped hyped, cannot wait!

Lastly, I’ll make one post about the 3 day beach festival itself.

A cliche question about choices. Or, is it?