Yesterday marked my one year Doha anniversary. 12th April 2010 was the day that I left London for Qatar with 2 overstuffed bags, a lot of hope and nervousness, a bit of fear, and the smallest amount of ‘WTF am I doing?’. It hasn’t been the smoothest of roads here (literally and figuratively), but then, I didn’t expect this to be a walk in the park. I’ve had a look at the post I wrote half a year ago, describing what I learned in my 1st 6 months and everything mentioned there still stands true. Since last October, the only major events in my Qatar life have been the purchase of my car (which has led me to discover where my favourite petrol station/car wash is) and the small expansion of my circle of friends, leading to a tiny increase in the number of nights out I have; but not too much you see, I still like staying at home and working my way through 6 seasons of The Sopranos. Other than that, I have fallen into a nice routine. I go to Lulu’s every Wednesday night for food shopping, Arabic classes are now Sunday and Tuesday (level 2 is DIFFICULT, our new book has hardly any pictures in it!), pizza for dinner on Thursday and sunbathing on Saturday, sometimes Friday after my morning run, but poolside is a bit more crowded on that day. I am a creature of habit and this works for me but unfortunately, it doesn’t make for thrilling blog posting/reading so I think I’ll have to put myself out a bit more to come up with interesting stories to share with all of you.
You might find this amusing…yesterday I went to a conference and saw a few Middle East company reps that I 1st met in London over a year ago. I was speaking to one rep in particular and our conversation went a little like this;
Rep: So, how do you like Doha, how are you getting along here?
Me: Yeah, everything is going pretty well, I like Doha ok.
Rep: Can I say, you look like you’ve put on weight.
Me: (slightly open-mouth silence)….uh…oh….ok.
Rep: No, but this is good, you look good.
Me: Yeah, maybe it’s the amount of sun I see here, it’s put some colour in my cheeks…..
HA! As you can imagine, this lifted my spirits and gave me another reason to celebrate my one year anniversary. The peculiar part is, I know for a fact that I have definitely NOT put on any weight and all of my clothes fit just the same (if not better, thankyouverymuch). I felt like saying to this guy, no matter how fabulous a woman looks, never EVER tell her that she looks like she’s put on weight. Once all of the conference talks were over, and as I was helping myself to the free lunch, I mulled over this man’s comment as I savoured my Umm Ali and mini slice of chocolate fudge cake and then thought about how much I’m looking forward to Friday’s celebratory all you can eat/drink brunch at the Four Seasons.
That guy has some balls!!!!! He is obviously single and not married otherwise he would know the cardinal rule that you always tell a woman she looks great no matter if she’s put on weight or not! Oh and by the way you have a supermodel figure so nothing to worry about! Me on the other hand not only did I put on the Abu Dhabi 20 but I moved to Doha and put on another 20!
I think supermodel is pushing it but thank you very much Sarah, you are too kind. I liken his comment to cultural differences, perhaps wherever Mr. Afyouni is from, they like their woman with a fair amount of meat on their bones.
Pingback: Culinary Delights « Alexandria in Qatar