DOHA TODAYPAGE | 03 PAGE | 06-07

Georgetown data portallaunched to supportCOVID-19 research

COVID-19: The art of coping with change

THURSDAY 7 MAY 2020 Email: dohatoday@pen.com.qa

SPONSORS

At Hamad Medical Corporation we are utilizing advanced technology and innovative systems to deliver the highest quality care to Qatar’s population.

www.hamad.qa

Ultra-modern operatingtheaters

State-of-the-art ambulancefleet

Highly-advanced patientinformation systems

Cutting-edge treatments forcancer

Novel way of celebrating GarangaoThe country has geared up to celebrate its traditional festival Garangao with fervour which

falls on 14th night of Ramadan. Traditional markets and other major outlets are packed with

gift packets of Garangao. This year, the Ministry of Culture and Sports will come to aid of

children to celebrate the festival at their homes maintaining social distance.

4-5

03DOHA TODAYTHURSDAY 7 MAY 2020

Georgetown data portal launched to support COVID-19 research at QF and globally The Center for International and Regional

Studies (CIRS) at Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q), a QF partner institution, has

launched the Covid Project, a data portal to support research into the societal, economic, cultural, reli-gious, and political consequences of the pandemic in Qatar and the region. The portal will serve as an important tool for analysis and a deeper under-standing of how the pandemic is being experienced in real time, with updates made on a regular basis to a crisis that continues to unfold.

This digital compilation of data and statistics on COVID-19 provides a focused understanding of how the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, as well as Iraq, are being affected by and responding to the ongoing global crisis.

Through dynamic graphs, the site presents aggregated data on each country’s health system that builds a profile of their health capacity. In addition, the portal includes a collection of the various policy measures these seven states are undertaking to limit the spread of COVID-19 and offers a way to view these from a comparative perspective.

Dr. Mehran Kamrava, the Director of CIRS, said: “As part of Georgetown here in Education City, the Center has built its scholarship on the region and is ideally placed to undertake a project focused on the experience and the needs of Qatar and the Gulf.”

The regularly updated data portal will also feature expert analysis by GU-Q scholars and global experts in economics, political science, health and social policy, through a series of ana-lytical articles, panel discussions, and podcasts.

“The unprecedented impact of the current crisis will require a multidisciplinary approach to the complex issues that will continue to emerge over time,” explained Dr. Kamrava. “And by leveraging our in-house expertise as well as GU-Q’s network

of regional and international scholars, we hope to draw attention to the issues that will become increasingly important in the coming period.”

Key areas of interest include the state of the health sector, challenges for Gulf migrants, Islamic ethics, the impact on family life, marriage, birth and death, and national development plans.

The COVID Project can be viewed on the CIRS website, and on GU-Q’s COVID-19 microsite, which includes health guidance, contact information, and academic updates for the school community.

— The Peninsula

Dr. Mehran Kamrava, the Director of CIRS.

Qatar Digital Library sheds light on first communications revolution in Gulf

The Gulf region is one of the world’s oldest crossroads of global trade and cross-cultural exchange. Geographically, it is a natural maritime highway between the Middle East and South Asia, and

beyond. Historically, trade and communication between the Gulf and South Asia was slow, subject to the monsoon winds in the days of sail.

Today, of course, communication between the Gulf and the rest of the world is instant, measured in seconds instead of months. Most people would assume that the instant communication revolution in the Gulf happened in the mid-20th century with the introduction of telephones, but it actually began a hundred years before, with the Gulf’s first electric telegraph. Now, thanks to the painstaking work of archivists and historians working on the Qatar Digital Library (QDL), new light is being shed on this little-understood episode in Gulf history. Long-distance communication through various forms of telegraphy (beacons, drums, flags) has been practised for over 2,000 years, but it was not until the start of the Victorian Era, in 1837, that the first commercial electric telegraph appeared, in Britain. Refine-ments to the system continued until, by the 1850s, its value was well-established. Then, in the 1860s, Britain sought to build a commercial telegraph line all the way to its most important colony, British India. As a result, the Gulf became one of the most important communi-cation corridors of the British Empire.

A series of historical documents held by the British Library and now available on the QDL reveal how the proposal to extend Britain’s telegraph line through the Gulf was first made in May 1860. That month, John Wortley de la More, an entrepreneur in the telegraph industry, outlined his plans to extend the existing lines further through Persia and the Gulf by establishing a link first from Baghdad to Basra, and then from Basra to Karachi, British India’s westernmost port (in modern-day Pakistan).

The ambitious plan was outlined in a letter to British India’s Political Resident in the Gulf, Sir Lewis Pelly. Another 61 records document the plan’s implementation between 1862 and 1864, carried out by cable ships, which laid a 2,000km underwater telegraph cable from Basra to Karachi. One of these records gives details of Pelly’s negotiations with the Sultan of Muscat, Thuwaynī bin Saīd Āl Bū Saīd, which resulted in a fascinating handwritten Agreement in Arabic and English, signed in November 1864, permitting the telegraph cable to be laid through the Ras Musandam Peninsula and potentially Bandar Abbas (the latter being leased to the Sultan at the time by the Shah of Persia).

In November 1869, a cable ship arrived in the Gulf to begin laying a telegraph cable from Jask in eastern Persia to Bombay in India. In an undated letter on the QDL, Pelly reported on the construction of a large telegraph station at Jask. A photograph of this impressive-looking station, dating from around 1870, can be seen elsewhere on the QDL. While there were some setbacks, the new telegraph line through the Gulf was a huge success. It enabled people in Britain and British India to communicate with each other in days instead of months, while people in the Gulf were able to communicate with India within hours instead of weeks. Since the telegraph was com-mercial, merchants could use it as well, helping to greatly expand trade between the Gulf and India.

Dr. James Onley, Director of Historical Research and Partnerships at Qatar National Library, said, “Users of the QDL will be amazed at the wealth of material available from the British Library, which houses the world’s single most important archival collection on the Gulf region. A search for ‘telegraph’ on the QDL will produce over 51,000 hits across 4,562 records. If we narrow our results down to the 1860s, we get 378 hits across 134 documents.” “If we focus on just 1862, we get 101 hits across 35 records. The QDL, just like the tele-graph itself, saves its users time: taking just minutes what would have taken months. Indeed, the QDL can be viewed as part of the same communications revolution started by the telegraph 160 years ago. Where the telegraph once connected people in the Gulf with Britain and India, now the QDL connects people everywhere with historical records on the Gulf in Britain and, eventually, India as well.”

— The Peninsula

the faces of the children.He said that the favorite artists of

children including Hadiya Saeed, Mohamad Anwar, Ahmad Afif and Rashid Saad will distribute Garangao gifts to children.

“The puppet shows will be presented through the windows of bus where the children can take a glimpse of their favorite artist,” said Al Mulla.

Qatar Museums (QM) and Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) have launched ‘Stay Home, Stay Safe’ cam-paign, to invite families in Qatar to vir-tually come together and celebrate Garangao.

This initiative is part of the ongoing partnership between QM and HMC and

aims to encourage families to practice safe social distancing while celebrating the traditional night of festivities by sharing children’s photos dressed in tradi-tional Garangao clothes.

The photos submitted will be posted on QM and HMC Instagram pages to spread the joy and happiness of the holy month of Ramadan.

The initiative also aims to promote virtual connections between families and friends, enabling the Garangao tradition to be preserved and celebrated despite these difficult times.

Families that wish to submit their chil-dren’s photos can send it via direct message to Qatar Museums’ Instagram account (@qatar_museums).

COVER STORY04 05DOHA TODAY DOHA TODAYTHURSDAY 7 MAY 2020 THURSDAY 7 MAY 2020

Qatar gets ready for Garangao celebrations SANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA

The country has geared up to celebrate its traditional festival Garangao with fervour which falls on 14th night of Ramadan.

Traditional markets like Souq Waqif, Souq Baladi and other major outlets are packed with gift packets of Garangao, comprising nuts, chocolates and candies.

The gifts are showcased at specially decorated place in the outlets, giving a traditional look.

To avoid mixing up of one kind of nut and chocolate with others, because of the expiry dates of products, they are put in small packets inside the gift bundle.

Name of the items with expiry date are printed on each packets following the consumer protection law to ensure the health and safety of people.

“We received Garangao gift packets in large quantity from local suppliers a week ago,” Samiullah Sediqui a shopkeeper operating in Ain Khalid told The Peninsula. He said that the gifts have good demand but it is still less compared to the previous year.

The festival brings echoing memory of Qatari culture and heritage which is narrated by forefathers to their children and grandchildren on the occasion.

To celebrate the festival, girls wear traditional gowns with embroidery and gold jewellery like earrings, neck-laces, bangles. And boys wear traditional Qatari dress ‘Thawb’, jackets, and caps.

As per the tradition, children sing ‘Garangao

Garangao yatona atawna Allah Yatimkuk, Bait Makka Yuwaddikum (Give us, Allah will give you and send you to Masjid Al Haram in Makkah Al Mukarramah) while visiting their neighbouring houses for gifts.

But this year, they will celebrate the festival at their homes maintaining social distance following the pre-ventive and precautionary measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.

To compensate the collective celebration which is banned because of social distancing, the Ministry of Culture and Sports has launched an initiative which will enable children to receive gifts, enjoy popular puppet show of the occasion and take a glimpse of their favourite Qatari artists from their homes.

As per the plan, the Ministry will move special buses at the night of Garangao to distribute gifts to children at homes. The gifts will be packed and disinfected properly following the preventive measures to curb the spread of coronavirus. Strict measures will be followed to avoid gathering.

The buses will be equipped with loudspeakers playing Garangao songs wishing for the safety, health and happiness for all and to encourage children to know about the traditions of their community.

The celebration will be held in cooperation with a group of sports clubs and some entities affiliated with the Ministry of Culture and Sports with full commitment to adhere to the preventive measures.

Director of Sports Affairs at the Ministry of Culture and Sports, Issa Al Harami said that the celebration is a

symbolic initiative aimed at spreading joy in the hearts of children and reviving the popular heritage during the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic.

He said that 10 sports clubs are participating including Al Rayyan Sports Club, Al Sadd Sports Club, Qatar Sports Club, Al Khor Sports Club, Al Shamal Sports Club, Al Arabi Sports Club, Al Gharafa Sports Club, Umm Salal Sports Club, Al Ahly Sports Club and Al Wakra Sports Club. “Buses will move in the country carrying the logo of the Ministry and the club, equipped with loud-speakers playing Garangao songs,” said Al Harami.

He said that it is difficult to cover all areas of the country but large number of the children will get the gifts of Garangao.

“The Ministry will provide opportunity to everyone to celebrate at their places with the help of Garangao buses which are expected to reach most part of the country,” said Al Harami.

The Director of Sports Affairs explained that the cele-bration aims to preserve heritage of Qatar, which is passed from one generation to other, and to bring a great joy for people of all ages, especially children who were keen every year to move in groups singing songs of Garangao and folk songs related to this heritage night.

“The Ministry decided to hold these activities in this way to compensate children for what they missed because of the outbreak of coronavirus,” said Al Harami.

Salah Al Mulla an artist from Theatre Affairs Center said that the center will move the bus to a number of streets in Doha starting from after Iftar to bring smile in

PICS: BAHER AMIN & SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA

DOHA TODAY DOHA TODAYTHURSDAY 7 MAY 2020 THURSDAY 7 MAY 2020

EDUCATION06 07

We are living in an inherently unpredictable world, where change has become quite pervasive in our lives. As a result, it has become

more important than ever to learn how to cope with change.

Currently, this means minimising our suffering caused by the drastic changes that accompany the rapidly spreading coronavirus, which seems to have just appeared out of the blue. Our ability to cope at this time will have a powerful impact on our social and psycho-logical lives.

However, being able to cope with change is no small thing, and people vary widely in their attitudes and responses, especially in the case of radical change – for example, the end of a relationship, the loss of a job, or a catastrophic event. While some individuals can success-fully adapt to change and perhaps even embrace it, turning it into a learning experience and an opportunity for growth, others may resist it fiercely and whole-heartedly. They become increasingly preoccupied with exploring its root cause, or investigating those accountable for it and their motivation. This is where the experiences of others can perhaps offer some guidance.

In this article, two books, written centuries apart,

become sources of advice on coping with the coronavirus pandemic: Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese (1998), and Boccaccio’s Decameron (mid-14th century).

Be Proactive: Who Moved My Cheese gives us deep insights into facing change with an open mind. Johnson presents us with four characters: two mice and two mini-ature humans, all running around in a maze, looking for some cheese to eat and enjoy. Here, the maze is a met-aphor for our lives, while the cheese represents anything we need to achieve happiness, such as a fulfilling job or a relationship. The process of looking for cheese therefore symbolizes our pursuit of happiness in this life.

Every day, all four characters visit the ‘Cheese Station’, eat some cheese and then go home. One day, however, these mice and humans discover that the cheese has gone. It is finished. This is where the real story begins: while the two little mice “put on their running shoes” and immediately start looking for cheese else-where, the little humans spend long days ‘reacting’ to the new ‘cheeseless’ situation.

They start shouting, demanding to know ‘why’ the cheese has finished, ‘who’ is responsible, and ‘why’ it has happened. In short, one cries, “Who moved my cheese?”, while the other complains, “It’s not fair!”. Grumbling with

indignation, they use up all their time and energy ana-lysing the situation, with no clear vision or any will-ingness to take action. From this, it is evident that they have chosen to dwell on the status quo, rather than trying to find a solution.

For the mice, however, the answer is clear: since they have run out of cheese, it is time to look for another Cheese Station. They respond to the change promptly and positively. No sooner have they embarked on their journey, when they find what they are looking for: Cheese Station D. The little humans, on the other hand, are still sitting at the scene, ‘analysing’ the situation, and bemoaning their lack of cheese, until they finally realise that they need to ‘act’!

What then, can be learnt from this story? Having read the book, I have drawn eight lessons: ‘There is no use crying over spilt milk’.

Constant complaining does not produce any positive results; instead, it af fects our psychological and physical wellbeing, and maybe even our future.

Move on! There is no point wasting your time and energy overanalysing the situation; rather, take steps to deal with it and continue living your life.

Develop a positive mindset! When change occurs, try

and perceive it as an opportunity for development and growth, rather than sinking into despair or feeling miserable.

Have a Plan B and even a Plan C! Always be ready for change, so that when it occurs, you are prepared for it, and can act and adapt accordingly. Preparedness will help lessen any adverse impact of change.

Make this your motto: “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”! Never be afraid to take some risks in this life. When the two mice set off on their quest for cheese, they were taking a risk, as there was always the possibility that there were no other cheese stations.

Be resilient: Change is inevitable. Nothing is permanent. Have patience: Strive not to

lose heart or give up too soon. Where there is hope, there is life! Hope can be a pow-

erful force that motivates us to carry on. Some advice from the 14th century: Beware of Fear!

We are fortunate to be living in the 21st century, when we have a myriad of options for learning and entertainment. More than 650 years ago, thousands of Italians survived an epidemic that ravaged northern and central Italy, by merely using simple but effective techniques.

Referring to Boccaccio’s Decameron, Spicer (2020)

writes about how the Italians got through the Great Plague in the 14th century by engaging in creative activ-ities while confined to their homes. In the Decameron, Boccaccio describes the lives of a group of 10 friends who leave Florence for a deserted villa in the countryside, fol-lowing the outbreak of the Plague in 1348. The men stay confined to the villa and spend their time telling amusing stories, which helps them survive the epidemic. These stories were later depicted in art, film and literature, enriching Italian culture and becoming part of Italy’s heritage.

According to Tomasso del Garbo, a physician at the time, we should “use songs and games and other pleasant stories that do not exhaust the body, and all those delightful things that bring comfort”, in order to get through such difficult times. In another work offering advice at that time, Italian theologian, Nicolas of Burgo recommends that we “beware of fear, anger, sadness, excessive anguish, heavy thoughts and similar things. And equally one should take care to be able to be joyful, to be happy, to listen to lullabies, stories and melodies” (Spicer, 2020).

Stay in control of what you can control: While it is true that we often have little control over major events in

our lives, we have direct control over how we react to those events. Resisting change and dwelling on the question, ‘Why did things change?’ will only consume us, leading to frustration and negative energy in every area of our lives and in the lives of those around us. Today, people have found various ways to cope with the recent change.

Fatima, an undergraduate student, declared that she had found reading to be a great source of entertainment, pleasure, and even ‘therapy’ during the current lockdown. She now reads one book a week. She also told her class last week that she was happily memorising chapters from the Holy Quran together with her sisters. She consequently proved to be a source of inspiration to her classmates. Another student called Rana Elgamal, already a film buff, has started writing critical reviews of every movie she watches. She wants to make a name for herself as a film critic, remarking, “I never thought of this before the lockdown”.

Similarly, Shaikha Al Subaey is keeping herself occupied and motivated by creating digital artwork, which she currently has more time for. Using her iPad, she creates beautiful images that reflect people’s behaviour and emotions during quarantine then she posts them in social media platforms. Some of her drawings communicate cultural and ethical messages. Salma, however, is studying ballet online, taking morning classes. She claims to have found the experience “exciting and rewarding”.

There have been footages of orchestras around the world performing concerts online. Despite being physi-cally distant from each other, these musicians have managed to play pieces beautifully and harmoniously. These are all illustrations of how many people are coping admirably, in spite of the challenges they are facing.

Together, we shall get through this: We can adapt to change during the lockdown, entertaining ourselves with common pleasures such as playing board games and sharing stories with family members. Let us learn a new skill, take an online course, pursue a new hobby, or share some rewarding activities, such as drawing, writing, reading or various sports. Such activities not only enhance our sense of wellbeing and help us grow as indi-viduals, but also connect us with others in a safe environment.

Another excellent avenue of self-expression that can also help us come to terms with our thoughts and feelings at this time is art. In an article in the Washington Post, Saddler (2020) wrote that the rate of new enrolments in one virtual art academy had “exploded fivefold in March compared to the previous 12 months”. Art seems to have become more popular than ever in these circumstances.

To cite Voltaire, “Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world”. Voltaire’s use of the first-person plural here indicates togetherness and collaboration. In other words, have fun together! Let us look at this lockdown as an opportunity to read more, acquire new skills, strengthen family ties and consolidate our relationships through shared activities.

Although home entertainment cannot protect us com-pletely from the coronavirus and its effects, it will help us remain ‘proactive’ and safeguard our psychological and social well-being. This will go a long way towards com-batting the fear and pessimism that can haunt us from time to time in these circumstances.

The article was written by Mohammad Hosam Alnahas – Lecturer, Qatar University.

COVID-19: The art of coping with change

FOOD BOOK08 09DOHA TODAY DOHA TODAYTHURSDAY 7 MAY 2020 THURSDAY 7 MAY 2020

CATHY BARROW THE WASHINGTON POST

I made a cake the other day and it was terrible. There may have been tears. I’d allocated half a pound of precious butter and three eggs to this unmitigated

disaster all in the name of not wasting the buttermilk. For the last several years, as a recipe developer, it was

not unusual for an experimental dish — or dinner - to go awry. It might be so disappointing we would opt for cereal instead. But what I once shrugged off as a learning expe-rience or misstep is no longer palatable as I cope with egg and flour shortages and infrequent grocery shopping.

My kitchen brain, once free-wheeling and experi-mental in the Times Before The Virus, is now the provi-sioner, an eagle eye trained on the pantry.

Day after day, to sidestep possible failures, I am relying on dishes I’ve made for decades. The next time the baking urge hit, I fulfilled the hankering with my grandmother’s coffee cake, the one I learned to make when I was 12. There was my tried-and-true slab pie made with frozen fruit and shared with neighbours by placing foil-wrapped packets on their porches. It’s the new form of ding-dong ditch.

Using what’s on hand is important, but so is variety — for both the cook and the diner. I keep a running list of ideas for dinner, selecting one each morning after checking supplies and defrosting what’s necessary. This new regimen has called for flexibility, when there are no Brussels sprouts, I substitute that sprout’s botanical rel-ative, cabbage. If the peas are gone, do chopped frozen green beans work? Yes, they do.

I’ve instituted a global flavour rotation in weekly menu planning, looking to dishes inspired by foods from France, Italy, China, Israel and India as well as beloved recipes from the American South and my New England mother’s roots. And I’m looking back at recipes I developed years ago and wondering why I abandoned them.

I had all but forgotten these Inside-Out Samosas, and now I can’t stop making them. They can be a main dish, a side dish, a brunch dish with an egg on top. It’s all the flavour of a samosa without the dough to roll out and shape.

I like to make them with gold potatoes for their creamy texture, but any potato will do. (Purple potatoes are a little weird.) Even leftover mashed potatoes stand in. The cori-ander and cumin seeds, butter crisped, add textural crunch, but if neither is in the pantry, use half as much of the ground version. Use frozen mixed vegetables or mix up your own frozen vegetables. Or opt for fresh vegetables chopped into pieces about the size of a pea. I recommend you par-cook fresh vegetables to ensure they are tender in the brief time the pancake takes to brown.

I use an ice cream scoop to portion the cakes and slightly damp hands to pat the mixture into flat disks. Dredge in flour (or panko bread crumbs) and then shallow fry for a crisped exterior and a creamy, spiced interior. If you make them the size of silver dollar pancakes, they will be especially crispy.

I struggle to get the hot crisp cakes to the table — so many are snatched right from the rack where, after cooking, I place them on paper towels. But try to wait because here’s a chance to open that chutney you’ve been hoarding since visiting the international grocer.

Spicy chutney makes these cakes sing. If there’s lime or mango pickle in your cupboard, that belongs on the plate, too. If there are cucumber and yogurt lurking in the refrig-erator, make raita. That’s what I did when I paired these cakes with Chickpea Tikka Masala. It felt like a feast.

Stay well, friends.

INSIDE-OUT SAMOSAS45 minutes 2 to 4 servings (makes 8 patties)With ingredients that are both common to the pantry

and may be easily swapped out, these spiced, fluffy pan-cakes are everything that is delicious about a samosa, without the dough.

NOTE: While the recipe calls for frozen mixed vege-tables, you may substitute 1 combined cup of any other frozen vegetable, such as shelled peas, carrots, corn, or chopped squash, green beans, broccoli or cauliflower. If using 1 cup of fresh vegetables, such as carrots, celery or squash, dice them into pea-size pieces, then cook in salted boiling water (the same water you cooked the potatoes in) until just tender, one to two

minutes, and chill in an ice bath.Make ahead: Reheat gently in a skillet, or wrapped in

foil and heated in 350-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes.Storage: Leftover samosas can be stored, well-

wrapped, in the refrigerator for about 2 days. They do not freeze well.

Ingredients4 (1 1/2 pounds) potatoes, preferably Yukon Gold, but

any will do1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided2 tablespoons unsalted butter or ghee1 1/2 teaspoons coriander seed1/2 teaspoon cumin seed1/2 cup (4 ounces) diced yellow onion2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger or 1 teaspoon ground

ginger1 garlic clove, minced1 cup (8 ounces) frozen mixed vegetables (see NOTE)3/4 teaspoon garam masala1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper1/4 cup all-purpose flour (may substitute 1/2 cup

panko)Vegetable oil, for fryingYour favourite chutney, for servingStepsPierce the potatoes all over with a fork. Place in a

medium saucepan, cover with water and add 1/2 teaspoon salt. Bring the potatoes to a boil and cook until a sharp knife passes to the centre of the potato easily, about 20 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the potatoes to a plate and cool slightly.

Slip the peels from the potatoes. Using the large holes of a box grater, grate the potatoes into a medium bowl. Alternately, you can use a potato masher and mash the potatoes until mostly smooth, but still a little chunky.

In a small saute pan over medium-high heat, melt the butter or ghee. Add the coriander and cumin seeds and toast in the butter for about two minutes. Add the onion, ginger and garlic and cook, stirring, until the onion is just starting to brown on the edges, about 4 or 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and scrape the onion mixture into the bowl with the potatoes.

Add the frozen vegetables, garam masala, cayenne, black pepper and remaining 1 teaspoon salt to the potato mixture. Using clean hands or a stiff spoon, combine this mixture thoroughly.

Spread the flour out on a plate. Use a 1/4-cup meas-uring cup to portion and form 8 patties. Lightly dredge the patties in the flour. (If using panko, spread out the crumbs and whisk the egg and a smidge of salt in a small bowl and place it on the rimmed baking sheet. Dredge the cakes in egg and lightly roll them in the panko.

In a large, wide, nonstick skillet over medium-high heat, heat just a whisper of oil until shimmering. Working in batches as necessary, without overcrowding the pan, carefully slide the cakes into the pan and cook without moving until well browned, at least three minutes. Let the cakes get a good crust before carefully turning them to brown on the other side, another three minutes, adding tiny amounts of oil as needed.

Transfer the cooked patties to a plate. If working in batches, repeat with the remaining cakes.

Serve the cakes hot or warm, with the chutney on the side.

Nutrition | Calories: 285; Total Fat: 10g; Saturated Fat: 4g; Cholesterol: 15mg; Sodium: 593mg; Carbohydrates: 43g; Dietary Fiber: 7g; Sugars: 3g; Protein: 6g.

RICHARD MOE THE WASHINGTON POST

So much has been written about Abraham Lincoln that it’s rare when a historian discovers an episode in his life that, if fully developed and interpreted,

yields important new insights. Ted Widmer has done just that in his superb new book, “Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington.”

It’s ostensibly about the train trip the president-elect took from Springfield, Illinois, to the nation’s capital; it’s in fact about how Lincoln and his fellow Americans came to know and trust one another, an experience that profoundly shaped his presidency.

In February 1861 Southerners feared that Lincoln’s election meant the end of slavery and their way of life; talk of secession and civil war was rampant. Northerners rejoiced at the election’s outcome, while fearing that it could lead to the country’s dissolution; they looked to Lincoln for reassurance.

Widmer, a historian at the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York, spent 10 years applying his impressive talents as a researcher and sto-ryteller to explain how our 16th president used a 13-day train trip to introduce himself to his fellow citizens and to prepare himself for the greatest crisis in the nation’s brief history.

The issue of slavery, most believed, would determine future events. Though his views were well known, Lincoln adopted a “strategy of silence” during the cam-paign and now through the four-month interregnum. But the Republican platform was unequivocal: Slavery must not be extended beyond the states where it already existed. “That was the rock that now loomed before the ship of state,” Widmer writes. As their next president, Lincoln believed he must calm anxious citizens — but the Constitution left him no means to do so.

Lincoln chose to use his train trip as the vehicle for connecting with those who elected him. Widmer dem-onstrates a deft ability to relate Lincoln’s circumstances to those of others in the nation’s past: He quotes George Washington as feeling like “a culprit who is going to the place of his own execution” on the eve of his inaugu-ration in 1789.

“But his long trip from Mount Vernon to New York had helped to make his presidency real to the people. Now, in order to save the country, Lincoln needed to summon all of his strength for an even longer journey... and he needed to get there quickly while there was a country left to save.”

In plotting his route, however, speed was not his pri-ority; political sagacity was. He insisted on visiting the capitals of the five “essential” states that had elected him — Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey; if hostilities broke out, he would need them to provide the manpower to deal with it.

On Feb. 11, an emotional Lincoln bid “an affectionate farewell” to 2,000 friends before the “Presidential Special” headed out. Hundreds and then thousands lined the tracks, trying to catch a glimpse of the man who embodied their hopes. These were “Lincoln’s kind of people,” in Widmer’s telling, “and he reached out toward them every few miles, waving, or bowing, or shaking hands, or saying a few quick words sometimes from a train that slowed but did not stop.”

As Lincoln had plotted his route strategically, so too does Widmer with his writing; his creative structure and new research offer compelling diversions about some of

the people and history the president-elect encountered. Included are past and future presidents, as well as the slaughterhouses of Cincinnati and the nauseating cor-ruption of Albany. Every place had someone or some-thing distinctive, and Widmer invariably finds it.

The trip proved exhausting and at times fearful - with at least two assassination attempts and threats of

others. Lincoln was often in pain, Widmer says, “especially his hands, after the nightly ordeal of shaking hands with thousands of local well-wishers.” Nonetheless, “the trip was making a difference. Even when the president-elect said nothing, the response was overwhelming, as at Ashtabula, when he could barely speak and the crowd burst into a ‘state of din-bewildered enthusiasm,’ screaming simply because he was there.”

Lincoln’s confidence grew as the Special entered New Jersey, where he told state legislators that while he favored reconciliation, “I fear we will have to put the foot down firmly,” which he suddenly did, literally and dramatically — to the cheers of the astonished lawmakers. “This was the clear statement everyone was waiting for,” Widmer writes. “... He had found his footing, in every sense.”

In Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, Lincoln “talked humbly about the way he understood the Declaration [of Independence], and the hope it inspired... the equal rights that inhere in all people.” The key word in the declaration, he added later, was “all” — “All men are created equal.” “It permits no equivocation,” Widmer adds, before asserting, “Lincoln had reset America’s moral compass.”

Lincoln ended his remarks with a “stunning” admission: He would be “one of the happiest men in the world” if the country could be saved with its great idea intact. He would “rather be assassi-nated on this spot than to surrender it.”

The evening before, detective Allan Pinkerton had warned Lincoln that an armed mob would be waiting for him in Baltimore and that he must deviate from his course to evade the “death trap.” Given a choice between con-tinuing his journey with his dignity and his purpose intact, or avoiding assassi-nation by stealth and probably inviting ridicule, he quickly chose the latter; the Special completed its journey, safely, to Washington.

“No one knew yet what a Lincoln presidency would mean, but the fact that he had survived the ordeal meant that his presidency would actually begin,” Widmer writes. “His odyssey was complete.” Days later, Lincoln arrived at the Capitol for his inaugu-ration to speak of “the better angels of

our nature.” Widmer has written a revelatory work about an

important but underappreciated episode that placed Lincoln “on the verge” of developing the confidence and courage to become America’s greatest president. His book could also be on the verge - of becoming a Lincoln classic.

The journey to DC that introduced Lincoln to the nation

Pancakes bursting with the flavour of samosas offer comfort in uncertain times

TECHNOLOGY10 11DOHA TODAY DOHA TODAYTHURSDAY 7 MAY 2020 THURSDAY 7 MAY 2020

DREW HARWELL THE WASHINGTON POST

When the coronavirus shuttered the Kansas head-quarters of the High Plains Journal, an agricul-tural trade paper for farmers and ranchers

across the Midwest, digital marketing director James Luce decided to replicate the office experience entirely online.

Employees were told to create a digital avatar and spend their workday in a virtual office, replete with chat room cubicles and a gossip-ready “water cooler.” They were also instructed to keep their home webcams and microphones on and at the ready, so a spontaneous face-to-face chat was always only a click away.

Luce believes the software, by the San Francisco tech startup Pragli, is the future of remote work. But not eve-ryone is so smitten. One older employee who has struggled to adapt — barging clumsily into other people’s video conversations or awkwardly lingering in someone’s “room” after a meeting adjourned — recently changed her avatar’s face to show it shedding a single tear.

“We have no shyness now at this point,” Luce said. “It’s weirdly brought us a little closer together.” In the weeks since social distancing lockdowns abruptly scat-tered the American workforce, businesses across the country have scrambled to find ways to keep their employees in line, packing their social calendars and tracking their productivity to ensure they’re telling the truth about working from home.

Thousands of companies now use monitoring software to record employees’ Web browsing and active work hours, dispatching the kinds of tools built for cor-porate offices into workers’ phones, computers and homes. But they have also sought to watch over the workers themselves, mandating always-on webcam rules, scheduling thrice-daily check-ins and inundating workers with not-so-optional company happy hours, game nights and lunchtime chats.

Company leaders say the systems are built to boost productivity and make the quiet isolation of remote work more chipper, connected and fun. But some workers said all of this new corporate surveillance has further blurred the lines between their work and personal lives, amping up their stress and exhaustion at a time when few feel they have the standing to push back.

David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of the remote-work-software firm Basecamp, said companies are increasingly subjecting workers to closer supervision due to a fundamental distrust that they’ll stay motivated on their own. The virus lockdowns, he added, have also led some managers to frame this monitoring in the New Age language of social gathering, in hopes of eliding over the fact that workers are being watched.

“What people crave is human connection. These are the crumbs of human connection,” he said. “You don’t end up extracting better, deeper, more creative work by subjecting people to ever harsher measures of surveil-lance.” Nearly half the US labour force is now working from home, according to a study by MIT researchers in April. And many employees are probably working longer and more sporadic hours than ever before: NordVPN Teams, which runs virtual private networks for busi-nesses, said in March it had seen working time in the United States climb from eight to 11 hours a day since the stay-at-home orders began.

A growing cottage industry of what some managers call “tattleware” now caters to company leaders wanting some way to peer over workers’ shoulders and confirm

their productivity. Several time-tracking and employee-monitoring companies, including ActivTrak, Hubstaff, TeamViewer, Time Doctor and Teramind, told The Wash-ington Post they have seen their customer base and revenue soar since the pandemic pushed many com-panies remote.

Several companies allow managers to regularly capture images of workers’ screens and list employees by who is actively working and their hours worked over the previous seven days.

One system, InterGuard, can be installed in a hidden way on workers’ computers and creates a minute-by-minute timeline of every app and website they view, cat-egorizing each as “productive” or “unproductive” and ranking workers by their “productivity score.” The system alerts managers if workers do or say something suspi-cious: In a demo of the software shown to The Post, the words “job,” “client” and “file” were all flagged, just in case employees were looking elsewhere for work.

InterGuard’s system can also record all of the workers’ emails, instant messages and keystrokes, and takes pictures of workers’ screens as frequently as every five seconds, which managers can review as they please. “You could literally watch a movie of what that person did,” said Brad Miller, chief executive of the system’s Con-necticut-based parent company, Awareness Technologies.

Business is booming for their subscription-based software, Miller said: Hundreds of companies a week, three times their normal interest, are now asking about using the employee surveillance tools. He called it “finan-cially irresponsible” for companies not to keep a close

eye on their employees’ daily work and said managers “feel completely entitled to know what their workers are doing” if they’re allowed to log in from home.

“It’s silly to say, ‘I just trust them all,’ and close my eyes and hope for the best,” he said. Some workers have grimaced at the surveillance, he added, but most should have nothing to hide: “If you’re uncomfortable with me confirming the obvious [about your work], what does that say about your motives?” Alison Green, whose popular “Ask a Manager” blog serves as a workplace advice column and sounding board, said she’s heard from a rush of housebound workers stressed out about their bosses’ increasing demands.

Many said they’re already facing incredible anxiety over how their job responsibilities will change, whether their companies will have to lay off workers or cut wages, or even whether their industry will survive. But they are hesitant to speak up about the constant monitoring, for fear that any criticism could lead them to join the more than 26 million Americans who have filed for unem-ployment aid since mid-March.

“It’s really demoralising to feel like you’ve done good work for a company, maybe for years, and have a solid, reliable track record, and they’re treating you as if you’re going to spend your day drinking beer and watching YouTube,” Green said. “People don’t work well under that kind of scrutiny, even in the best of times.” A digital-mar-keting worker in Tennessee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to be punished by her boss, said the aggressive amount of check-ins — via emails, calls, text messages and Zoom video calls — has left her team feeling “incredibly stressed out.”

“They’re just checking in constantly. Every meeting is, ‘What are you working on, exactly?’” she said. “I worked all weekend and woke up to an email this morning asking for everything I did last week.” Not all systems portray themselves as the work police, and some, like Pragli, suggest they can use always-on webcams and micro-phones to help bring workers closer together.

Pragli executives argue that emails and Slack messages, the traditional lifeblood of office communication, are socially unful-filling: efficient but soulless, and powerless to combat the distractions and loneliness of working from home. In a company blog post last month, co-founder Doug Safreno wrote about how Pragli was born from his yearning for human contact, and how he believed fea-tures such as a frictionless video chat system could help “create that sense of togetherness.”

“In an office, I would see other people at the water cooler. I could look up and see other people around me working. I passively heard people moving around in the office,” he wrote. “I knew I was part of a team working toward a shared mission.”

A happier workforce, they argue, is ulti-mately more productive, and much of Pragli’s infrastructure appears designed to maximize work output. The app’s default setting automatically sends users an alert at 9am: “Time to go to work!”

Pragli’s system measures employees’ keyboard and mouse usage to assess whether they’re actively working - any more than 15 seconds can shift a worker from ‘active’ to ‘idle’ — and allows anyone to instantly start a video conversation by clicking on another person’s face, similar to swinging by their desk in a real-world office.

For that reason, Pragli recommends users keep their webcams and microphones on at all times; users can also connect their calendars and music playlists, so their co-workers know what they’re doing and lis-tening to round-the-clock. Workers can also hop into specialised virtual rooms whenever they like, including a “water cooler” for workplace chitchat and a “silent room” for workers who don’t talk but leave their microphones on, to convey the kind of ambient background noise one might hear in a coffee shop.

Pragli co-founder Vivek Nair, who said user activity has exploded 20 times over since February, said the company is working on a mobile app for users who have asked about conducting virtual meetings while on a walk. They are also developing a facial-recognition feature that could display a worker’s real-world emotion on their virtual avatar’s face; a beta version of the feature currently works only if the person smiles.

In a Pragli office, workers’ virtual avatars are lined up in a grid and viewable at all times. But another start-up, Sneek, takes that

idea even further, uploading pictures of workers’ faces taken through their webcam as often as every minute for their colleagues to easily see.

A worker can click on their co-worker’s face to start talking, knowing they were just at their desk. The service also allows anyone to instantly send a photo of their co-worker to an open Slack channel: Del Currie, Sneek’s co-founder, said this “sneeksnap” command is great for when an employee does “some-thing silly,” like pick their nose.

Currie said the periodic photos were built to help remote teams feel a sense of teamwork and closeness over the Web. He knows some people are sceptical but says the system can be more humane than email and other methods of workplace communication.

“These other things eat up so much of your mental space because you’ve got work dinging you all the time in your Slack channels,” Currie said. “Those things are probably more invasive than having a picture snapped of you now and again, really.”

This new wave of digitally mandated corporate camaraderie is quickly burning some workers out, said Green, who has heard from dozens of employees feeling socially fatigued and unable to say no, lest they be painted as an outcast. One respondent told her they were overwhelmed with Slack social-support channels, Zoom call “fun” challenges and chain emails about quarantine tips and recipes, writing, “I have more meetings now than I ever had in the office, and this is while also juggling a full workload.” There are some signs that all of this tech-enabled social monitoring is hitting a wall. The video-chat service Zoom recently removed an “attention tracking” setting, which alerted a call host when a participant was focused elsewhere, following public outcry about how invasive and creepy the feature seemed.

But some employees are registering their feelings in more subtle ways. At the High Plains Journal, one woman working from home with four kids gave her Pragli avatar a shock of white hair. And in meetings, when workers click the “Celebrate” button to fire off a burst of virtual confetti, Luce said it’s now almost always done sarcastically.

Bettye Young, an account executive at the journal who spends most of her day on the phone with clients, said the move to Pragli meant she had a whole other thing to watch. If she’s in another room of her home in Dodge City, Kansas, she can sometimes hear Luce, her supervisor, start talking through her com-puter, asking where she went.

But she’s also found some ways to make this new world work for her. In the mornings, she likes to chat with her co-worker, and she’s taken to expressing herself by changing her avatar’s clothes a few times every week. For one recent outfit, she chose a blue top with a single image of a skull.

Managers turn to surveillance software, always-on webcams working from home

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna on Tuesday urged companies to build resiliency into their businesses and their networks in response to the unprecedented challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.During his keynote address at the IBM’s ‘Think Digital’ event joined by

90,000 virtual attendees from across the world, Krishna also announced new AI, Edge and Cloud capabilities to help clients accelerate recovery and transformation.

“History will look back on this as the moment when the digital transfor-mation of business and society suddenly accelerated,” Krishna said.

“This is an opportunity to develop new solutions, new ways of working and new partnerships that will benefit your company and your customers, not just today, but for years to come,” he added.

Krishna called Hybrid Cloud and AI “the two dominant forces driving digital transformation.”

Krishna announced broad range of AI-powered capabilities and services that are designed to help CIOs automate their IT infrastructures to be more resilient to future disruptions and to help reduce costs.

One such new offering, Watson AIOps, uses AI to self-detect, diagnose and respond to IT anomalies in real time.

Watson AIOps is built on Red Hat OpenShift to run across hybrid cloud environments and works with collaboration technologies at the center of today’s distributed work environment, such as Slack and Box.

With new offerings built on Red Hat OpenShift, enterprises can autono-mously manage workloads across a massive volume of edge devices.

Telecommunications providers can quickly orchestrate virtual and con-tainer network functions to help them provide new services today and as 5G adoption expands.

“Technology platforms are the basis for competitive advantage in the 21st century,” Krishna said.

“They will determine how quickly you can pivot to new market opportu-nities, how well you serve your clients, how much you can scale, and how fast you can respond to a crisis like the one we’re facing today,” the IBM CEO emphasised.

As enterprises embark on a journey of digital transformation, there’s a fun-damental shift in the role that IT plays in the business — in defining business strategy and driving topline growth, and India has played a key role towards achieving this.

“The IT delivery platform needs to transform to a hybrid cloud IT archi-tecture — which is scalable and adaptable to business and operational needs. At IBM Research lab, we are leveraging AI to transform IT and help our clients accelerate, automate and modernize their IT landscape to stay ahead,” said Gargi Dasgupta, Director, IBM Research India and CTO, IBM India /South Asia.

IBM Research India played a significant role in envisioning, researching and developing many of these AI- driven innovations, in collaboration with other IBM Research labs.

IBM also announced a reimagined Business Partner programme that gives partners the flexibility to engage in one or more pathways to success.

IBM CEO: Digital transformation accelerating like never before

12 13DOHA TODAY DOHA TODAYTHURSDAY 7 MAY 2020 THURSDAY 7 MAY 2020

TRAVEL

WALTER NICKLIN THE WASHINGTON POST

Who needs a map, you might logically ask, when you’re not going anywhere? But in a time of social distancing and sheltering in place, maybe

maps are needed more than ever. Like magic, they can transport us. And if the raison d’etre of travel is “to learn something new,” then to ponder maps can turn idle time into lifelong learning.

Grabbing my easily distractible attention at this self-isolated moment is a colourful, glossy road map peeking out from my desk’s clutter. Measuring roughly 18 inches by 24 inches, the printed map encapsulates an antipodal, 103,483-square-mile country that required 20 hours of air travel for me to get there. Yes, it’s a map of New Zealand.

The time I spent there a few months ago wasn’t long enough. I had never before been and didn’t want to leave, and thus hoped to return one day. That day, much sooner than I ever hoped, suddenly feels like now — thanks to the map. Whether in plotting a future trip or reliving past travels, maps provide serendipitous, safe escape from the coronavirus lurking outside.

“Ready for an exciting journey?” asks the prominent typeface on the road map’s frontispiece. Published by Mode Car & Camper Rentals, the map both led and fol-lowed me everywhere — from the rental car’s glove compartment into my computer bag, then across the Pacific to where it now sits among domestic clutter.

To unfold the accordion-like panels is to be granted the revelatory overview of New Zealand’s North Island on one side and the South Island on the other. Major urban centres, such as Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, have their very own maps placed in insets where the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea would nor-mally, realistically lie.

The paper is beginning to tear at some of the folds, proof of its frequent use, especially when my hands were still damp from splashing in the breakers off Raglan or capsising while canoeing on the Whanganui River. And that time I spilled a “long black” in the car, there’s evi-dence of that, too, in the coffee stains fouling the map’s Bay of Plenty. But paper, like Mother Nature herself, is more forgiving than a laptop keyboard or smartphone, which would have been ruined forever by such a spill.

I pick up the road map, unfold it, spread it across the desktop like a tablecloth. Its careful typography and precise lines cover up the disorder underneath of random stacks of disorganised sheets of unrelated papers. It also seems to impose temporary order on the

outside world, now turned upside down by an unseen virus: If something can be mapped, it can be controlled.

The semigloss, heavyweight paper that the map is printed on feels good to the touch, more down-to-earth than satellite-based GPS. The road map’s very physi-cality, unlike fleeting images on MapQuest or Google

Maps, seems warmly reassuring in this time of physical distancing when we can’t touch others.

Sure, I admit to following — passively, unthinkingly, unquestioningly — the commanding voice on my smart-phone when, for instance, trying to forge the quickest path from Point A (Auckland) to Point B (nearby

Stair climbs andmasks: Welcome to thepost-lockdown hotelDARA DOYLE BLOOMBERG

When the lockdown finally ends and global travel resumes, expect a night at hotel to feel rather different. Walks up stairwells, face masks, breakfast in

rooms and no gym or entertaining clubs. Welcome to life after lockdown, according to Pat McCann, chief executive officer at Dalata Hotel Group Plc, which runs 44 hotels across Ireland and the UK.

None are open to the public right now, but 12 in Ireland and three in the UK are hosting about 900 frontline workers a night. That’s provided McCann with lessons about what a hotel might need to look like to persuade travellers it’s safe to stay in one of his 9,000 rooms.

“Confidence will have to be build,” McCann said in an interview. “You remove all possible opportunity for infection.”

Hotels could open on a phased basis in the not too distant future, said McCann. But many common routines will remain off limits. Visitors will need to check in fully online before they arrive. Screens will be erected in reception to ensure minimal contact between staff and guests. New arrivals will be offered face masks, and directed to their rooms.

While people are eager to leave the confines of their homes after weeks of being stuck indoors, resuming close public contact with strangers — be it at the hairdresser, a restaurant or in an aircraft cabin — may take time. The hospitality industry has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, and the travel and tourism sector could see as many as 100 million jobs lost to the virus, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council.

In some Dalata-run hotels, old-fashioned bus boys may control lifts bringing guests to their floors. In others, most or all elevators will be closed, meaning guests need to use stairs. They will then arrive at rooms that have been deep cleaned after every stay, from door handles to taps, McCann said.

Breakfast will be delivered to rooms where it’s not possible to adequately socially distance in restaurants, and guests will then dispose of the remnants hygienically. No meeting rooms or event space will open in the short term, no beverages will be sold at the counters.

Price will pay an important role in luring people back, McCann said. What’s equally crucial is getting the balance right between making people feel welcome and looked after and making them feel safe, he said.

“If it’s too restrictive, it will put people off,” McCann said. “But we’ve learned you can do this without being too oppressive.”

Dalata’s shares, which have dropped about 28 percent since the end of February, rose 1.4 percent in Dublin on Thursday.

McCann is still mulling whether staff will have to wear masks, saying they create their own risks. He’s also sceptical about temperature testing staff as they arrive for work, as some of those who have the virus may not display symptoms and an ineffective test may breed complacency.

“You assume everyone has it,” he said.

Beachlands). But to be an active participant in the journey — to be an aware traveler and truly understand where I was going — I needed the context of the printed road map.

Plus, GPS is just too easy, too detailed, leaving little to the imagination. Printed maps, on the other hand, are full of suggestive and mysterious blank spaces, waiting to be filled in by your crea-tivity and personal experiences. In contrast, my smartphone’s Google app called Timeline leaves nothing to the imagination and imposes its own artificial-intelligence-generated memories over my own.

For my last pre-pandemic travels — to Quebec in search of enough snow to cross-country ski — Google Timeline recalls with perfect precision which restaurants I visited, what time I arrived at my Airbnb, its exact address, ad infinitum. But it’s all too much detailed information, ignoring the old marketing axiom regarding the powerful emotional mix of reminiscences and anticipation: to sell the sizzle and not the steak. So, instead, I prefer to unfold my well-used street map of Old Quebec City, where my mind’s eye can see in reawakened soft focus the blizzardlike conditions blurring the groomed trails on the Plains of Abraham. And more: I can savour again the delicacies apres-ski in the warm glow of a rustic fireplace, away from Google’s prying, all-seeing eye.

“The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” That celebrated quote from Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past” speaks to the magic of maps. Among my favourites in seeing the world anew are topographical maps, available from the US Geological Survey. They are matchless in coming to understand your travels’ lay of the land — especially when planning or reflecting upon outdoor activities. The maps’ contour lines let you, the hiker, know how steep and strenuous a trek may be or, as a white-water canoeist and kayaker, how rapid a river’s descent.

Since cartography’s earliest beginnings, huge blank spaces — terra incognita and mare incog-nitum — seduced adventurous travellers. Like theater, maps entertained, as evidenced by the title of the first attempt at a world atlas (1570) — Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the Orb of the World). Included in this atlas was the fore-runner of my New Zealand road map, the hypothesised lands of the southern hemisphere Terra Australis Incognita (Unknown Land of the South).

Even earlier world maps, in the Middle Ages, known as the Mappa Mundi, make the point that maps are always mirrors that reflect the zeitgeist — and thus are portals to the past. Medieval map-makers were less interested in producing accurate navigational guides than in making the world conform to the harmonious order of God’s creation. Symmetry and perfect spheres took precedence over the irregularity of mountains and twisting paths of rivers.

“Dissected maps” were some of the earliest jigsaw puzzles, in the 1700s, making geography fun for children. Originally cut from oak or

mahogany, today’s cardboard versions are still popular, especially with adults keeping their minds active while stuck indoors. The 1,000-piece jigsaw of a 17th-century world map by Henricus Hondius, for instance, recently kept my self-isolated neighbours busy for days. They then swapped for other jigsaws with this under-standing: “Disinfect and leave yours on your porch, and I will take yours and disinfect and leave mine.”

Years ago I started collecting antique maps, especially ones of my native Virginia. Though now matted, framed, under glass and hanging motionless on a wall inside a house, they’re a traveller’s delight — transporting you not only over miles and miles but centuries as well. To linger over Captain John Smith’s 1607-1608 map of the Chesapeake, for instance, is to put you in his boat as he sailed up the Potomac looking for a waterway to the Western Ocean, as if seeing the places he records for the first time. His names for now-familiar places endure.

Naming and (through revisionist history) renaming places illustrate the power of map-makers. Their handiwork might be what we today call branding, for the story of a place can usually be found in its name. And if you could name a place, you controlled it. So it was that explorer Smith memorialized the land he mapped as “Virginia” after the virgin Queen Elizabeth, though he also recorded for posterity over a hundred Native American place names still in use today.

There’s even a name for the study of place names: toponymy. And so while gazing at my New Zealand road map, can it be said that I’m now engaged in a toponomastic search? Or call it mental peregrination, as I find myself hiking again up the rocky path of a small, spherical mountain rising where the Tauranga harbour meets the sea. Oddly out of place, this lone mountain is an extinct volcano called Mauao. What’s in a name?

The origins lie in a Maori tale of unrequited love. This small — at the time nameless — mountain deeply desired a neighboring, beauti-fully wooded hill. But her heart had already been taken by a higher, more prestigious mountain. So, sadly, the nameless mountain decided to drown itself in the ocean. His friends, the forest fairy people, who came out only at night, fastened him with lots of ropes to pull him to his death. They pulled all night and so created the valley seen today near Tauranga. But before they could get to the ocean, the sun rose — forcing the fairy people to retreat into the forest’s dark depths. Thus the mountain now stands where it does today, just touching the ocean, no longer nameless but called Mauao — meaning “caught by dawn.”

Three-dimensional space may be the subject matter of maps, but time is ultimately what they’re all about. The time of history and geo-logical prehistory, of course, but also your own time as a traveller, plotting ahead or endlessly revisiting. Even beyond the past and future, each map contains an alternative universe of endless contingency and infinite possibility, of roads not taken and unvisited places. What if?

Maps offer shelter-in-place globe-trotting

PIC: OXANA V ON UNSPLASH

VIDEO GAME14 15DOHA TODAY DOHA TODAYTHURSDAY 7 MAY 2020 THURSDAY 7 MAY 2020

14

ELISE FAVIS THE WASHINGTON POST

Your new home is overrun by weeds. Only a couple friendly faces and buzzing insects serve as company. It’s a near lifeless island, but you turn the

place around. Now it’s bustling with villagers, infra-structure and varied flora. Bridges form over rivers, shops pop up, homes receive renovations and the town centre is filled with fountains and stalls — some of which are handmade by you. Seeing these advancements throughout your island is rewarding: A bare plot of land is now humming with life.

This transformation is the beauty of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the new game from Nintendo’s life simu-lator series, in which you mold an entire island to your heart’s desire and befriend your anthropomorphic neighbours.

With new tools like terraforming and crafting, New Horizons gives you more control than ever before. Water glimmers and trees sway in the wind, making for a gor-geous atmosphere, and massive amounts of clothing and furniture bring customization galore. These additions make New Horizons not just a blast to play, but also the most enjoyable Animal Crossing game to date.

You spend your time accumulating money by per-forming menial tasks like fishing, catching bugs, chopping wood and digging for fossils. Although the tasks them-selves aren’t all that exciting, what you do with your hard-earned cash is, such as bringing much-needed improve-ments to your island and house or donating discoveries to a beautiful museum. Seeing the tangible results of your labour, and being able to fine-tune the layout and aes-thetics with more precision than ever, is what makes New Horizons so special.

Completing small tasks may sound monotonous, but a new tool wheel helps streamline that process with easier swapping between tools like your watering can and net. New Horizons finds a happy balance of repetition and creativity, as you split your time between designing and foraging.

Discovering a routine within this loop brings a sense of solace and comfort. It’s a rewarding process. Every time you gather enough funds to beautify or upgrade the island, your community benefits from it.

Sure, these virtual villagers aren’t real people, but the more you chat with them, the more they start to feel like little beings with different personalities. It’s fun to walk around the town as they go about their day, sometimes chewing on a sandwich by the river or sweeping in front of their homes. Their characterizations don’t go terribly in depth, but there’s enough there that I grew fond of new characters like Reneigh, a fashionable and deeply caring horse.

New Horizons is Zen-like: your island has a soothing aura, with happy-go-lucky residents and low-risk gameplay. With no overarching time constraints, you play your way without worry, differentiating the experience from other sims that put emphasis on micromanagement. For those who do want to micromanage, you absolutely can, but New Horizons is a game with immense flexibility and a slow pace that’s best played in short bursts.

The game progresses in real-time, tied to your con-sole’s clock and a geographical location (you choose a northern or southern hemisphere, which will change the appearance of seasons). New Horizons offers discoveries in abundance, as each season has rotating critters and your island resets daily with more secrets (fossils to dig,

money to find inside rocks and by shaking trees), like past Animal Crossing games.

Although you can track the months and hours that specific animal life spawn, an element of unpredictability remains as you cast your fishing rod or turn a corner to catch a bug. Even though I’ve caught an oarfish a number of times in both New Horizons and New Leaf, my jaw still drops whenever this massively long and narrow fish jumps out of the water. Moments like this are incredibly entertaining, because you can never completely plan what comes next.

Searching for DIY (crafting) recipes has some unpre-dictability too. Although some can be bought, you also find them via random scenarios, like in a bottle while walking down the beach or when visiting a villager’s house. DIY recipes are used to make tools, furniture and decorative items and it was one of my favourite things to do. Once built, they are added to your eclectic collection used to spice up your town and house.

Crafting also plays an integral role. Your ax is no longer the only breakable gadget: Unlike New Leaf, other tools like your watering can and net fall apart too. Without a health gauge for them, though, it’s difficult to know when they’ll break which can be frustrating.

Not all furniture can be customised, but much of it can, and various styles and colours bring a personal touch (slick combinations also get you a better ranking from Happy Home Academy, who award you with a gift after judging your home).

Alongside furniture, many other things like clothing and pathways can be customised with beefed up design tools. You draw on a grid like past games to make a

pattern. You can import designs you made in Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer too, which is great for those with a collection of designs in the previous title.

Customisation doesn’t end there. New Horizons fea-tures character creation for the first time, letting you choose your avatar’s skin tone as well as hairstyles, facial details and clothing that aren’t restricted by gender. It’s not the most in-depth character creator, but your look can be changed any time and more options are added down the line, so it’s fun to work toward unlocking them.

As you progress, you also unlock exterior items like lawn mowers, picnic baskets, telescopes and playground slides for decorative purposes. Placing these small addi-tions around the island makes it feel more lived in.

The most thrilling addition of all, though, is the Island Designer app on your NookPhone (your in-game smart-phone with a slick new user interface), which you use to activate special tools. With them, you form rivers like magic and craft cliffs as if they were sculptures.

Terraforming controls take some getting used to — I occasionally made cliffs in places I didn’t want to — but you can easily rectify errors. Path-making adds a nice aesthetic too, with textures like brick and sand. Only one block can be placed at a time, so it can be a chore to build long walkways. However, these kinks were never drastic enough to distract from my positive experience.

Your island is entirely malleable. The most fun I had with New Horizons was when I handcrafted a tall cliff with a waterfall, and stuck my house atop it. This Minecraft-like layer of detail is impressive and gives a wide range of town layout possibilities. These design tools aren’t handed to you, and you work toward unlocking

‘Paper Beast’: A truly great PlayStation VR gameCHRISTOPHER BYRD THE WASHINGTON POST

Perhaps it was when I unspooled tape from an old reel-to-reel player and created a beast out of its ribbons, or maybe it was when I saw a tree sprout hot air balloons. It also could have

been when I watched an elephant lead a menagerie in an under-water procession.

Each is among the possibilities for the moment I decided that “Paper Beast” should be counted among the handful of truly great games available on PlayStation VR. Developed by Eric Chahi, creator of the renowned early nineties adventure game “Another World,” “Paper Beast” throws players into a hallucinatory cyber-scape running on a quantum computer — a place that visually evokes the work of the surrealist painters Dali and Magritte.

Before running the quantum computer you must tab through a user agreement that asks, among other things, if it can use part of your neural network while you sleep. Upon registering your responses the computer sets about its quantum calculations and a pop-up text appears on the screen asking if you’d like to play the SwirlyBeat music app while you wait. Trust me, you do.

Clicking on the app transports you to your own private party: a small room festooned in confetti and streamers, pulsing with light and Japanese rock music. On the floor are rocks that can be grabbed and tossed using either the DualShock or Move con-trollers. As the song fades, a glitchy sound rings out and the envi-ronment goes dark. Then, in a wonderful transition, you find yourself standing on a narrow patch of terrain, surrounded on all sides by curtains, listening to the song from the music app coming from a reel-to reel player on the ground.

Pulling aside the curtain reveals that you are standing under-neath a dinosaurlike creature whose skeletal frame appears to be made out of spools of paper. Surrounding you and the creature is a desert whose bright colours and flat surfaces are like something out of a Dali painting. A little later you’ll be in an elevated spot, overlooking a message scrawled in the sand: “this is not a simulation.”

I’m reluctant to say much about the ensuing journey because one of the elements I most appreciated about “Paper Beast” was that I had no idea what to expect from one moment to the next — something I seldom experience in video games. That said, I don’t think it’s ruinous to say the game involves observing the different paper beasts you encounter. You learn their goals and motivations and can then manipulate them for what are, generally, mutually beneficial ends.

Although ultimately innocuous, some of the solutions to the game’s puzzles are still deliciously twisted. For example, one puzzle requires players to dangle the young offspring of a family of crabs out of their reach, prompting the adult crabs (inadvert-ently) to help out another band of desperate creatures.

The beasts themselves are a treat to watch. Their abstract forms complement the game’s colorfully refined, low-polygon environments. Admittedly, I felt a bit like a psycho tossing some of them about and compelling them to do my bidding, but I promise not one crab was harmed.

“Paper Beast” is an inspired game that makes as good a case as any for the relevance of VR. Don’t be surprised to see it on the year’s best list.

them by completing certain quests. But it’s worth the wait.

Steady progression bolsters the gameplay, like a batch of scripted quests from character Tom Nook and a long list of objectives to earn Nook Miles, a new secondary, in-game currency.

You’re rewarded just for playing the game, so a lot of goals are met naturally: Sending villagers letters, fishing and even buying items grants you Nook Miles. This currency can be traded for fur-niture, new DIY recipes, hairstyles and clothes. With so much to unlock, it will take a long time to earn everything. Sixty hours later, I still haven’t come close to seeing all of New Horizon’s content. And that’s an exciting prospect.

If you need Nook Miles in a pinch, Nook Miles Plus objectives (short-term tasks for lesser rewards) are quicker to complete, such as taking care of plants. However, I started ticking off these boxes just for the sake of the reward. Even if I didn’t need wood, I would chop trees anyway because I was disappointed to realize I had limited options.

A lot on the island resets the following day, so this is a bigger problem if you’re bingeing, but Nook Miles Plus objectives remain low in variety.

If you run out of things to do, you can always visit a friend’s island. Nintendo hasn’t patched in online multiplayer yet, so we didn’t get the chance to do this. But we did play local co-op. On a single Nintendo Switch you can register eight different accounts to live on one island. This is a

wonderful addition: NPC villagers will inquire about the new player resident and it’s fun to see what kinds of changes friends or family members implement on the island in their own time.

You can explore your island simultaneously with others via online or local play, but it comes with restrictions. You designate a leader who can do almost anything they normally would, and other players follow. Followers don’t have nearly as much agency. They can’t pick things off the ground, the controls on singular joy-cons aren’t intuitive and if the leader opens up their inventory while another player is fishing, for example, it jarringly halts that activity by auto-matically reeling in their rod. Of all the features in New Horizons, this is an area that is lacking.

To curb griefing, Nintendo implemented a smart mechanic where any old visitor can’t ter-raform on your island without permission. Only those tagged as “best friends” can make sweeping changes to your island layout. Considering vis-iting other players’s towns is a big part of Animal Crossing, this may be a relief to those who put numerous hours into building their towns.

I’m hooked on New Horizons, and I expect to be for a long time. It has a treasure trove of content that unfolds from day-to-day, month to month, and likely even year to year, since Nin-tendo announced seasonal events and post-launch content will come. I’m excited to see what else the game offers as I keep growing my town, one day at a time.

‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ provides endless joy in bringing life to a deserted island

The Island of The Pearl-Qatar, an iconic mixed-use urban development ��� ��������� �� ����� ��������� ������ ��������� ���������retailers and visitors need, in one location. From beachfront Viva ������� ��������� �� ��������� ����� ������ �� ��� ������ ��������!���� ��� �������� "������ ���������� ��� ����� �������� �����������#������������������������������������������$�����Centrale. It’s a world that’s alive with wonderful surprises.

The Pearl-Qatar, where every day brings a reason to smile.

Come for a visit, stay for a while.

+974 4409 5155 thepearlqatar.com

UNITED DEVELOPMENT CO. Q.P.S.C. C.R. No: 22980Capital (paid in full) QR 3,540,862,500UDC Tower, The Pearl-Qatar