How I managed to lose my wedding ring in the Arabian Gulf

So basically, here’s how the story goes...we go jet skiing and, on the way, Miranda says, “I think I’ll take my rings off.” I say, “Good idea, I won’t bother taking mine off because it’ll never come off.” You have to understand that I deliberately got it made slightly smaller so that it REALLY takes some twisting to get it off. It can be done but it takes a lot of effort. Never in a million years did it cross my mind that there might even be a slight chance that it would come off, there was just no way. I was wrong. After coming out of a spin, I hit a wave that catches me offguard and I go flying off the jet ski. Hitting the water sideways, but no worse than diving off into a pool, I’m jolted into the water. I’m now haunted by visions of my wedding ring slowly floating downward to the bottom of the Arabian Gulf (yes, it’s in slo motion and there’s dramatic orchestra music). Needless to say, I was pissed when I looked at my hand later after we got home and, lo and behold, there's no ring on my finger. I was heartbroken. Miranda made me feel better with comforting words, saying that it is, indeed, something that can be replaced. But still, this was something very sentimental to me and now it's gone. So we’ve left a piece of us here in the Gulf that’s sure to remain for some time. Miranda gave me an interim ring that’ll do until I get a replacement, one that will have to be special in its own way. At least I lost it in a jet skiing accident in the Arabian Gulf instead of just accidentally dropping it down the toilet. Still, I really wish I’d taken it off. Lesson learned. Luckily, I have an understanding wife that refrained from saying the four words that came to her mind and I'm still have the most important thing in my marriage: my wonderful wife. But the ring will be missed. The end.

Helllloooo strangers!

It's come to light that we've been particularly "slack" in the blog-update department over the past couple of weeks. I'll skip the excuses and instead tell you what we've been up to lately...

Much of our time seems to be related to settling into our new home... discovering what things we don't have (usually at an inconvenient time!), and then going out and finding them. For example, we bought a few Food Made Fast cookbooks (for inspiration and to mix up our regular dinner stand-bys - they are wonderful, btw!), made a grocery list based on a couple recipes we wanted to try, and went about finding the items we needed at the grocery store. Who knew that something as simple as spinach or fresh basil would be so hard to find! And red wine vinegar? I've given up on that one! I suspect that - because it has "wine" in the name - we'll never find that one on grocery store shelves. However, I DID find red grape vinegar. Hmm. Maybe the same thing? Not sure. So, we get (most of) our ingredients home and begin making a meal... then we realize we have no measuring cups or spoons. We "guess-timated" for a couple weeks. I have yet to find measuring cups! It makes cooking interesting, to say in the least!

Also, Kelly now has a liquor permit (a requirement if you want to buy booze here in Qatar). It helps with dealing with the above-described situations. To acquire a permit, you need your residence/work visa, a letter from your employer with your monthly salary (they give you a monthly quota based on your income!), you have to state your marital status, nationality and religion! Then you get an id card with a photo on it. And only those people with ids can go into the store. So I just have to give Kelly a vague list and hope he picks out some good wines. So far, so good!

Thanksgiving also happened in the time between our last post and this one. While I was sad to be missing the beautiful Maritime autumn weather and fantastic harvest food (Honey Crisps, oh, how I miss you... *sigh*), we were lucky enough to be invited to, not one, but TWO Canadian Thanksgiving dinners here in Doha. We had real, honest-to-goodness roasted turkey, stuffing (well... Kelly did), gravy (our hosts even made gluten-free gravy for me - it was the awesome-est!), carrots, mashed potatoes, corn.... all the good stuff! Among other things, I was especially thankful for the kindness and generosity of Canadian friends this Thanksgiving.

More recently (as in, this weekend), we had a housewarming (or is it villawarming??) get-together with some current and past Bristolites from the Gulf office... or is it Bristol Gulf-ites? ...or Bristol Gulfies? Regardless of the term, we had a chance to visit with the peeps outside the office, share some laughs and a few drinks, and infuse our home with some positive energy. And we also got to talk to some friends and family this weekend on Skype. We even did a walking tour of our home for a couple people. It was fun!! It looks like we'll make Saturdays our day for connecting on Skype. So, if you want to chat, log on in the morning or early afternoon (which will be afternoon or evening for us) and hopefully we'll be around! Our skype names are miranda.devoe and kelly.devoe, and our iChat name is DevoesInDoha (I think its an AOL or .aim profile, if that makes any sense?).

What else???

Stella and Hendrix (the fur-kids) are settling very well now. They have found favourite perches to look out the windows at birds and visiting stray cats (!) and also have regular cozy spots on the sofas. And - FINALLY - they're back to cuddling with me in the evenings. I was worried that they had grown out of cuddle-time, but it's BACK! (P.S. sorry to be one of those people with no kids who turn their pets into their kids... I do recognize that its a tad bit ridiculous. But it is what it is, and I love the little munchkins). They have new food that they seem to like, but we still haven't got them a litterbox as nice as the one they had in Canada. Hey - don't judge - having a decent place to do your business is important!

This post is digressing quickly so I'll sign off now.

Cheers!

More quirks about living in Doha...

• You flick the light switch DOWN to turn it ON (...usually)
• It’s normal to see a car in a parking lot with its lights on and engine running with no sign of the owner anywhere. After seeing this a few times I finally realized that the person has gone into the grocery store or mall to do their shopping and wants to come out to a cool car when they’re finished. Gas is cheap. And the consequences of stealing someone’s property would be stiff. So why not!? I mean, global warming is just something Al Gore made up to sell some DVDs, right??
• When talking on cell phones, it is only the person making the call who is charged for the minutes talked. So people “miss call” each other (they call and hang up before the other person answers) which means that THAT person will have to call them back and incur the costs.
• Multi-level malls have escalator ramps – imagine a moving sidewalk and an escalator got married and had a baby – so you can take your cart (aka trolley) from floor to floor.
• It’s common not to get napkins with your meal at a restaurant. Instead, there is a box of Kleenex (pardon me: facial tissue) on the table. Yeah, it’s just as much fun as it sounds.

2 things that made me happy today at work...

1) Having a major client agree to the necessity for primary market research for their project! (btw - this is the reason I'm here) Next stage: formal proposal and working out the details.

2) Deciding to go in on a VIP box (read: court-side) tickets with some other Doha Bristolites to the Sony Ericsson WTA Tennis Championships here in Doha at the end of October!

http://www.sonyericsson-championships.com/
(The below picture is from last year)



That means we'll get to watch the best female tennis players in the world (including Serena and probably Venus Williams) play for 6 days. For, like, $200 CAD. That's NUTS! If I wasn't a big tennis fan before, I suspect I will be after this!

Quick pics of our villa!

We've been busy moving into our villa and don't have internet there yet, but here are a few quick pics that we took on our way out the door this morning.

This is where we are on the map (location=fantastic!):


The view of the front door from outside the gate (pretty much all villas and componds have walls around the property; they're private folks here):

Inside the gate, from a slightly different angle


Some greenery to the right of the front door:


The living and diningrooms, taken from the front foyer:


The giant dining table that seats 10 frickin' people:

Looking back at the front door from the livingroom:

Outside the large windows, there is more garden (it actually wraps all the way around the house). I hope to plant a few flowers or some ground-cover type of thing in the sandy area at the bottom-left of the pic:

Looking back at the living/diningroom windows from the back garden. We hope to get a small patio set so we can enjoy the weather. It's finally getting "cool" enough to be tolerable to be outside for more than 30 seconds!

We'll add pics of the rest of the house - the giant kitchen, 3 bedrooms, and 2 1/2 baths - once they are picture-ready.

Also found at the grocery store...

(Click on the pic to enlarge it; you need to see the detail and names/labels on each of them to fully appreciate it)









And the best one of all so far....

Name That Logo - Arabic Edition - Round 1

Some are easy. Some might be a little more difficult. All are well-known North American brands. Leave a comment with your guesses!

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