Celebrate A Year With Me ...

What a lot can happen in a year!

Take 'Me' for example (because it is ALL about 'Me' after all!) ...

One year ago, I was miserable in my job.

I was being paid big bucks to sit in a chair in a job I DESPISED.

One year ago, I was thinking that it was the last Christmas my dad would be alive; and that I'd never feel the warmth of his bear hug again.

One year ago, I was still convinced that having a pet in the ME was a really bad idea.

One year ago, I didn't own an i-Pad and couldn't really understand what all the fuss was about.

One year ago, I hadn't even heard about Mac TV.

One year ago, my Kiddo still had a little bit of the 'baby' in her.

One year ago, I could run.

One year ago, I had a fully functional iMac, whose drive had not crashed.

One year ago, I would have never believed that one lone young gunman, armed with a Bushmaster rifle, would ever conceive of entering a school in Newton, Connecticut, and killing 20 innocent school children and six heroic adults.

One year ago, overwhelmed by what I was seeing on TV and in the world around me, I turned to the internet for distraction.

I clicked on a blog post written by a lady living in Saudi Arabia.  It's a shame I can't remember the blog, because she changed my life.  But I remember her blog was written on "Squarespace", and beyond the content, I loved the look and feel of her site.

And so it is, that one year ago, I decided to escape the insanity by giving blogging another chance.  I made a conscious decision to step away from the sadness and the madness for at least a couple of hours a week.  A conscious decision to take those few hours to focus on whatever silly thing meant something to me.  A conscious decision to work it through in my head and then put those thoughts to page (in this case to screen).

Over the past year, I worked up the courage to step away from one career, become a stay-at-home mom, step into a new career.  I got an I-pad.  I bought Smilin' Vic a Mac TV dongle thingy for his birthday.  

I spent weeks with my dad, listened to him sing to me, sang with him, started Skyping with him.

I bought Kiddo a kitten, the bestest Christmas gift this family's ever gotten!

A few weeks ago, I had "the talk" with Kiddo.  Though she's not yet a teen, she's no longer a baby.  

Last week, I brought my iMac in to the repair shop, hoping they may somehow salvage a year's worth of photos  from the crashed hard drive ... And I come to you tonight from my iPad :-)

I endured three months of physio and ultrasound therapy that resulted in worse pain than I started off with.  After eight months and a recent replacement of a running routine with a walking regimen, I can finally say my piriformis syndrome (aka runner's butt) seems to be on the mend.

I admit I haven't managed to work over horror and disbelief at some of the acts that I see perpetrated the world over.  Mass shootings, random killings, targeted attacks, wars, child abuse, murder, honor killings, bullying, rape, neglect ... No amount of rumination, writing, blogging, crying or screaming will ever manage to bring meaning.  

But for the rest ... The silly stuff.  Well, the last year, the blogging:  it's been my salvation.

If you've been reading as I've been writing, thank you.  It really, really helped.

Thank you.

Check Me Out At Expat Blogs :-)

I've submitted an entry for the 2013 Expats Blog Writing Contest titled "Top Ten Things I Wish I'd Brought to Doha".

I'd be thrilled if you'd pop by.

If you'd like to check it out and leave me a comment, click below:

Top 10 Things I Wish I’d Brought to Doha

And that's my bit of self-promotion done for the day :-)

Thanks. Seriously. :-)

Thanks for dropping by!

When Nations Collide ...

This week was International Week at Kiddo's school.

Every year when International Week rolls around, it strikes me as slightly odd. We're talking about a school in which over 2,000 kids from more than 80 nations come together on a daily basis. Seriously, every day is international day for them!

My Canadian Kiddo's best friends are South African, Indonesian, British and Qatari. She has a silent crush on a little Scottsman, a little Dutch boy has a crush on her, and her other BFF from Ireland moved State-side at the end of the last school year.

But then I stop and look back on my own expat childhood, and I realize that I didn't actually learn THAT much about my Indian, American, British, Venezuelan, or Lebanese friends' cultures. We were far too busy playing and just being kids to actually learn about the meaning behind Ramadan, or Diwali, or Chinese New Year.

Moving back to Small-town Canada in my teens, I was confronted with a completely different reality: you were a phenomenon if you'd just moved there from the nearest town 60 kilometers down the wooded highway. Coming as I was from South America, it's fair to say everything about me was perceived as odd. Even though my blue eyes, skin tone and fair hair blended in seamlessly, my neutral accent and trilingualism were often a topic of great interest. It's fair to say I never quite fit in. In fact, for the first time in my life, people focused on what made me different, rather than what made me the same.

I tried really hard to fit in. I adopted the same speech patterns as my new friends (speech emulation is apparently quite common in third culture kids), I cut my long hair to channel Canadiana via an eighties feathered mullet style, I tried to avoid anything that would make me stand out. I lost any desire to be the lead in the school play, contenting myself with the blessed anonymity that came from playing the part of the tree at the back of the stage, simply swaying in the wind.

But I was never really happy being what I was expected to be. I never necessarily wanted the lead; I think I simply wanted to get off the stage. I wanted to stop pretending and get back to being that girl who could hang out with others so different than her, yet so very much the same. I wanted to go back to a place where diversity and differences were the norm. Oddly enough, as much as I yearned for a return to those differences, I never really figured out what those differences were.

When I moved to Qatar, I found myself somewhat at peace, relishing my 'sameness' as an expat in a sea of expats. Yet life here is amazingly not that different to a small northern Canadian town. Within a short while, I was quite surprised to find myself spotting the 'differences'. Shortly thereafter, I realized that my small-mindedness could not be blamed on where I lived, it was result of what I had failed to learn.

As a young child, I could get away with ignoring the differences and continue playing; worst case scenario, I could get upset about the differences, have a small hissy fit, and stomp away until the urge to play again wiped the slate clean. But as an adult, pouting and stomping away are no longer viable solutions when confronting things I don't understand. I realize I have to TRY to understand, LOOK for happy mediums, STRIVE to find the beauty in our differences, and sometimes PRAY for enlightenment when it comes to finding commonalities.

And I realize that having celebrated International Week once a year from a very young age might well have made things much easier for me as an adult. And Kiddo's yearly school celebration starts to seem much less odd. And I start to embrace the tradition, as she proudly wears her National dress to school one day (nothing so unique as a sari, or an abaya, or a kimono for us Canucks .... It's a tuque, plaid vest and moon boots all the way), Qatari colors the following day, and a hockey jersey the next.

This morning before work, as I stood by the stove cooking what seemed like a thousand French-Canadian crepes for Kiddo to bring to the international buffet, I wondered if, despite our many differences, moms of all nationalities were at this very moment equally frazzled and behind schedule for the sole purpose of contributing to their child's international palate enlightenment.

I wondered how many of them realized like me that they were thirty minutes behind schedule, still hadn't showered, and were going to be late for that very important meeting. Were they all wondering at their brazenness for sealing still-steaming food items into plastic containers in defiance of every food packing guideline on earth?

Were they watching their child dissolve into hysterics on the kitchen floor at the mortifying thought of having to pick up a tardy pass because Maman hadn't properly scheduled her early morning baking marathon?

I pondered all these things calmly, finding comfort and solace in the thought of that shared 'one-ness'.

As I dropped Kiddo off at school just as the first bell rang, I proudly watched her line up excitedly with dozens of other kids just beyond the school gate to hand over the plastic bag filled with food containers, so like all the other plastic bags filled with food containers laid out on the receiving table. As an Indonesian volunteer mom dressed in traditional garb graciously accepted Kiddo's bag with a smile, I watched other parents scurrying with kids and plastic bags in tow, trying to make it to the gate before the final bell rang.

And I started back across the parking lot, thinking to myself, "none of us are that different".

Which is when I saw a lovely little Qatari girl alight from a G63 Mercedes SUV with her nanny. Her driver reached into the rear and pulled out a cake box (from an uber-expensive local bakery) the size of small house. I couldn't take my eyes off that golden box, and I watched the trio as they made their way across the cross walk to the gate, thinking to myself "we're NOT all the same."

Until I saw the little girl's eyes light up and her grin quickly spread as she took her place proudly in line, so excited at the prospect of her golden contribution being laid there amongst a sea of cheap plastic containers.  Her obvious joy at being a part of it all exactly mirrored my daughter's.

And I thought to myself "we're not the same, but we're really not that different after all".

What else could you expect when a thousand nations collide in a small town?

So Much We all Share In Common

Just Call Me a Twit ...

Well folks, I went out and did it.  

This afternoon, closing in on my 44th year in existence, I went and got myself a Twitter account.

It's a lovely account, and I've been admiring my username as it appears on my homepage for a while now.

For quite a while.

Admiring ...

For a while ...

Because ...

You see …

I don't actually know how to use Twitter.

There.  I said it.  I am a Twitter novice, a Twitter virgin, a Twit.

I have no followers; I'm not sure if I'm supposed to follow someone first, or if that's rude and perhaps I should just wait for someone to knock on my virtual Twitter door?

I can't ask anyone to follow me because I don't know how.  And if I did, I don't know how to write like a Twit.

I know there's a trick to it, a hashtag ("#") here, an "@" sign there, but which one goes where?

I feel like the new kid in class all over again.  Everybody knows everybody, and I'm hanging out just waiting for someone to come say hi, maybe ask me to sit next to them ...

Sigh ...

You'd think being the new kid on the block would get easier as the years go by.

In many ways, I think it's harder.

Back in grade school, I worried the kids would think I'm a twit.  Now that I'm certain I actually am one, I worry that the other twits won't like me.

What Drives Me Crazy ....

I talk a lot about the driving in Doha.

Everyone in Doha talks about the driving in Doha.

Nothing special about a "Doha-ite" discussing driving in the ME.

It's really no different than a Canadian complaining about the weather.

And while the weather can get pretty bad in Canada, -50C pales in comparison to driving in Doha on the overall "horribility scale".  

(Just came up with that made-up term and I think I'm going to have inject it into conversation daily - isn't it great!)

Obviously!

Speeding, overtaking, driving on sidewalks, driving in the breakdown lane, traffic jams, letting kids ride unsecured in their seats, driving with kids dangling from the windows or halfway out the sunroof, riding dune buggies down the highway; the list goes on.

I've compiled a list of pictures from the commute to and from work last week.

Probably not the way they pictured the end of their dune buggy ride ...

Unexpected stop ...

Hard to see in the image … but this was a child of about 3 climbing out the sunroof in traffic directly in front of me.  

Again, not the clearest of images, but these are two kids just enjoying the breeze as they hang out the window ...

Unsecured jersey barrier load ...

Oh, and just for fun, I timed the 12.4 km commute back from work last night: 54 minutes. Yup, a few fit 40-year-olds could run it faster than it takes me to drive it. If I didn't run the risk of getting run over on the way, I'd probably try it myself.

Unfortunately, I'm not fit enough to outrun the Toyota Landcruisers driving down the sidewalk, nor mentally agile enough to figure out quickly whether the guy with his left-hand signal on is actually going to turn left, or go straight, or go right, or just stop ...

So I drive ...

Driving in Doha drives me crazy!  

• I sit in traffic fuming,
• practice my best defensive driving techniques as I
• swerve to avoid the "Saudi Side Sweepers" (very daring diagonal cut across three to four packed lanes),  
• curse Oliver Lucas (inventor of the car horn) as the driver behind me honks incessantly to egg me on through the red light for which I dared stop,
• try to ignore the guy in the truck next to me who's picking his nose with white-knuckled fervor, and
• resign myself to the fact that the booger he's just carelessly flung onto my windshield is probably going to stay there smack dab in my line of vision for the duration of the ride home.  

Sigh .....

But you know what?

Then I get home and none of what drives me crazy really matters.  The nonsense that is my daily commute fades away to nothing;  what rattled me to the core a few short moments ago becomes nought but a blip on the frustratometer, a funny anecdote that I'll pull out after a glass or two of vino.  

Like last Thursday, when after an incredibly long week at work I came home to appetizers, centerpiece, and homemade turkey dinner, prepared by Smilin' Vic and Kiddo, who both had the day off.

And little moments like this, folks, can make all the crazy disappear ...

And just like that, "crazy" became "thankful".

(Happy belated Thanksgiving to my American friends and readers.)

Homemade pumpkin pie (even the crust)!