An expat Christmas

Xmas 2009 has been a very pleasant one - we missed not being with our family in NZ but did spend the morning skyping. We got up early and managed to skype everyone at Jo and Rays, after they had enjoyed their xmas feast, as well as the Iredells in Geelong. We had skyped Napier the night before . It was a very hot day in Auckland - Qatar was just the right temp - not too hot, we are heading into winter. The heavey rains had been the night before, with thunder and lightening.

Holidays - love em

Have a wonderful Christmas holiday. We are thinking of you all and will raise a cup and a glass to good times where ever that may be.

An odd mix of photos that I thought I would upload and share with you

The Blog is back

Hello Blog Followers – Well as it approaches the end of the year we would like to wish you all a very fantastic Festive Season and too much good for 2010.

It's been a while since the last blog and in that time we have had the pleasure of having Jared and Courtney visit on their way back to N.Z. after their year in Canada. We had a great time with them and showed them as many sights as is possible in Qatar. From driving to the top of the country, both East and West coasts and about as far south as you can go before hitting Saudi Arabia. One of the highlights was doing some Dune Bashing in a four wheel drive down to the Inland Sea. Scary stuff as you disappear over the top of a huge dune and it is some time before you see the magnitude of the dune you are sliding down sideways with sand spraying all over the vehicle. They got to have a camel ride, eat out at many restaurants, eat home made cooking, go shopping, laze around the pool at the Dip Club and generally get a feel for this part of the Middle East.

Since then we have had a catch up with our niece Hannah (now known as Denise – get it?? ), who's working in Sudan, for a week holiday in the U.A.E. We hired a car at Dubai and proceeded to get well lost in Sharjah. Thankfully the on board G.P.S ( called Lynne ) managed to get us to the Airport where we were meeting Denise. Managed to negotiate the motorways of Dubai and even found, and had lunch at, a Kiwi owned Cafe right next to the beach. A couple of enjoyable days were had exploring Abu Dhabi and letting Hannah loose on the shopping malls - they don't have shopping or supermarkets in Khartoum where she is...Don't quite know how she manages. And now nor does she. I've never seen anyone so excited about a supermarket before.
Then we met up with friends at the far northern bit of U.A.E at Ras Al Kaimah then to the far eastern coast where we stayed at a delightful beach with Snoopy Island just a short swim offshore. The Emirati's were in full on holiday mode as it was their National Celebrations of 38 years since the formation of the Emirates. It was great to see so many families out enjoying themselves. You don't often get to see the women having fun and it was a great laugh to see a whole bunch of them at the beach having a game of tag ball – hooting and leaping about in their abayas by the water.

Apart from that it has been mostly all work and little play for the Toms here in Doha.
Last weekend it was National Day for Qatar. We went down to the corniche for the big Parade in the morning. Essentially this was a display of Qatar's military might with processions of all their forces and air,land and sea vehicles and hardware. They would probably fare pretty jolly well if they decided to declare war on another country ( not likely as Qatar is a peaceful place ) or if they were ( and that's not very likely either ) attacked by somebody else. They had just about every kind of plane, tank, rocket launcher and off road vehicle possible including some pretty modern looking bomb disposal robotics. All the variously dressed forces were very amply armed with all sorts of nasty looking guns. They locals all loved this immensely and cheered and clapped everybody and everything that passed. Some young local women next to us were eagerly checking out the potential of the men in the parade and were very excited when they eyed some that they promptly advised us were Ninja's....All good fun and again it was great to see families out and about enjoying themselves and their National Day.

That night a bunch of us positioned ourselves on the10th floor of a building with a very pleasant mediterranean restaurant in preparation for the fireworks to be held that evening. Surprisingly the fireworks kicked off at 8 p.m. exactly when they were scheduled to ( nothing ever happens on time here so this was a new experience for us ). Luckily we had only just ordered our mains. They do a good line in fireworks here and this was no different with a brilliant 20 minute sky filled display lighting up the whole Corniche with the huge skyscrapers of West Bay as a backdrop. Stunning.

Thats all folks....Hope you have all been good and Santa brings you lots of lovely pressies.