Day 22- Do I miss my expat life?

I know for a fact that most of my readers here, are a residuum from my old life. One of them, who is also a friend got in touch with me today. Among other things, she enquired if I missed Qatar, and my life there. Hmm. I have never really given it much thought, to...

Unpublished

Saved 5 years ago 'Getting a driving licence in Qatar' and other such mundane matters. I receive a whatsapp message this morning. The generic, forward kind. The kind you get from a chronic offender of the inpardonable sin of sending unamusing, irrelevant, inane forwarded messages that no one reads. This one read.. Virtually nothing is...

Inertia.

Lately, I have been thinking that I am stuck. Stuck in a rut. On a hamster wheel that obviously isn't going anywhere. It's odd though. If you asked me three years ago, where I'd like to be three years on- the current state of affairs would seem to be a great place to be in....

Waste not, hate not.

It's that time of the year again folks. Doha takes a chill pill- the pious get serious, the others can take a step back from the hecticness of it all. The roads become less insane (except between 6 and 7 PM when the severely tired and hypoglycaemic folks try to beat the Adhaan and get...

The Roads to Hell.

The not- so- young man had an attractive profile. He seemed highly educated and seemed to be somebody who had and enjoyed a fair amount of power and control. He was obviously rich and flashy, judging by his choice of automobile. I stared at him for a moment longer than would be considered polite or appropriate....

Random thought threads from a rainy ‘call’ day.

  I will admit that men and women of all vocations work hard. Engineers sometimes work odd hours, IT folk may work horrible hours, investment bankers suffer from stress ulcers; even tax practitioners and auditors have their "times of the year" when the hours are irrelevant. All said, for most people "hours of work" is...

Falling temperatures and rising spirits.

I sit in an uncharacteristically still and silent room tonight. The comforting thrum of the ol' but trusty air conditioner is conspicuous by it's absence.  I wonder if I will find it difficult to fall asleep without the white noise that I associate my nights in Doha with. All this, thanks to the sudden turn...

Of fleetingness and the ER.

  Working in the ER constantly reminds you of the undeniable ephemerality of life. The fleetingness of it all. One minute you are having your breakfast and next minute your coffee cup is on the floor, and you cannot move your hand to pick it up while your mouth utters garbled sounds. In the fresh...

Winds of change and change of winds.

Boy oh boy is Doha awake at midnight today! A there-one-minute-gone-the-next shower the previous night; a few degrees drop in temperature, a cool ocean breeze and the eve of the weekend- the perfect recipe for the folks of Doha to rush out onto the roads at night apparently. In droves. The grills have come out of hibernation,...

The post- call haze and an impromptu “what’s in my bag”!

I gaze at my Fitbit. It shows a series of numerals. 3 1 2 3 4 0 or thereabouts. I see the numbers, they register somewhere in the nether regions of my acutely occupied mind, stowed away for comprehension at a more convenient time (a.k.a. right now). This was at about the 17 hour mark,...