Winter in Qatar.
Has been a long time since my last post. Working people get a burn-out, non working expat mum’s get blog-tired, LOL.
Anyhow, lots of things to write about: Romke turned 40 and got his beloved Jura espresso machine, my parents came to visit, Romkes parents and his brother came to visit, kids got their school reports, Qatar won the fifa bid 2022, we went to Dubai for a week, I finally unpacked the last moving box (the one with all the lego inside…), we got a terrace and grass in our back yard, we went to the ExxonMobil Qatar Open tennis tournament (we got tickets for the ExxonMobil VIP box one night), Olav received his first mobile phone when he won first prize at a tennis tournament, our first visit to the hospital with Nils because I thought his foot was broken (he’s fine now and what a positive experience to go to a doctor here in this country)…
See, that’s the problem when you don’t write for such a long time, there’s just too many things to write down. So you keep thinking: I’ll do it tomorrow when I have more time and write a proper story. And tomorrow will always be tomorrow…
So, no proper story tonight. Just some talk about the weather. Because it is winter in Qatar. It has rained for 3 days, which is unheard of here. Precipitation per year is 73 mm. (Singapore 2150 mm, The Netherlands 760 mm, Curacao 553 mm, Czech Republic 527 mm). People keep telling us that they lived here for 4 years and never used their wipers. There are no drains, no gutters. It’s a good thing everybody has a 4 wheel drive here (except Romke), all the roundabouts were flooded, often you just had to dive in. The roads were extremely slippery with big areas where you couldn’t see the road anymore, just small lakes. It’s a mystery to me how the Qatari can keep their thobe spotless white, our shoes and trousers were caked with mud. Everything now is caked with mud, they say: “when it rains in Doha, it rains mud”, and it is true.
I tried to find a video that would show you, but came across this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Ml3EqlqfE . You have to see this, this is what the Qatari do at night. This is one of the reasons why we see a new car wreck every day.
At night it is 14 C (57 F) and during daytime it depends if the sun shines or is hiding behind clouds. Last 3 days it was only 18 C (64 F). Remember, houses here have no heating and have tile floors everywhere. The laundry will not dry, there’s condense on the inside of the windows. And I got the “winter clothes Inge” box from a high shelve, and I’m wearing boots and jumpers! Good thing we know it is only for a couple of days, then things will go back to sunshine all day. I can’t wait.
