Chapter 1: Basic Necessities [An Infidel's Guide to Living in the Middle East]

The saying that you always want what you can't have holds true in the Middle East.  When alcohol and pork become haraam, attachment to both of the aforementioned items increases exponentially.  Unlike places in the UAE, pork is forbidden in Qatar.  Being an expat in desperate need of pork means you need to do three things:

1. Make friends at military bases; pork is sold there and if you're nice enough, you may get someone to share their monthly ration with you.  My ability to do this resulted in H's favorite birthday present ever.
2.  Go to embassy parties as often as possible; make friends with other nationalities so you can go to their embassy parties too.  Pay attention when the 'secret' room in the back of the parties is opened, where platters of various pork delicacies can be found.  My mouth is watering just thinking about this; kind of strange given that pork is easily accessible to me now in the United Kingdom.
3. Pork sausages and vacuum packed prosciutto travel well.  Fold some into your clothes when returning to Qatar.  Just be sure to take the labels off.  If there's nothing saying it's pork, you can always say it's beef if customs opens your luggage.  

Rumors abound that at certain restaurants, pork is available to those who order the right menu item or use a certain phrase.  I was never successful with this, but keep your eyes and ears open in case this myth is actually real.

Alcohol is available from the single distribution center and hotel bars and restaurants except during Ramadan.  In the month prior to Ramadan, alcohol allowances at the distribution center double so everybody can stock up prior to the holiday.  Always, always get your Ramadan stock at least two months before Ramadan.  The month before Ramadan the alcohol distribution center is a total zoo, with lines stretching down the road to even get into the parking lot.  In addition to queues, items sell out.  There is also the annual rumor that the distribution center won't reopen following Ramadan, creating marginally controlled mayhem.  So be prepared, stock up early, and stock up well.

By following these tips, you can help make your life in the desert just a bit more enjoyable. 

An Infidel’s Guide to Living in the Middle East

Our friends came over for drinks last night; fortunately we tippled so much that I don’t think they minded the overwhelming scents I was exuding from spending the afternoon slathering myself with all of the samples at Lush.  H came home and Anonymous Friend started telling him how I walked home doing jazz hands courtesy of my gold glitter coated hands that came from picking up a glitter encrusted bath bomb to smell. 

“Actually,” she said,  “you have a little bit of the stripper dust left on your face.”

I went to wipe it off and remembered the nice face cream(s) I had sampled at Lush.  So I promptly stuck my face in front of H’s and made him feel how soft my skin was.  Which promoted a Middle East flashback, this time not triggered by the pervasive smell of pork.

 “If you guys ever get transferred to the Middle East, you must promise to do one thing.”

“What?” Anonymous Friends asked.

“Well, you know how Chanel and La Mer and all of the other expensive face products are always behind lock and key at cosmetic counters and you can never sample them?  In Doha, Sephora has all of that stuff out and every time I went to the mall (which was at least once per day since that’s all there was to do in Doha), I used to slather very generous quantities of them all over my face.”

H piped in, “One day I finally asked AE why she didn’t just buy the creams and then I saw that they were a couple hundred dollars each.  So sampling them in store was a much better option and one of the limited perks of living in Qatar.

Anonyomous Friend, “Haha, that’s amazing.  You guys should write an insider’s guide of tips for living in the Middle East.”

H, “Wow, that would be fun….we could call it “An Infidel’s Guide to Living in the Middle East.”

Me, “Done.  High end face cream samples at Sephora will get it’s very own chapter.  Now if only we can think of enough other perks to write a book; perhaps we should aim for a pamphlet instead.”

What True Love Looks Like aka Our Laundry Machine Takes 4+ Hours to Wash and Dry a Single Load

True love is when H thanks me for doing the laundry, when his undershirts go into the dresser drawer looking like this:

 

And he means it.

True love is also when H doesn't mind that I hang my underwear to dry from his (in use) shirt hangers.  Fingers crossed that we don't have any static cling emergencies.

Pound Land: The Most Depressing Place on Earth

I should preface this entry by saying that I actually enjoy bargain shopping and that lots of fun can be had in dollar stores and their international equivalents.  One of my fondest college memories is buying toy jewelry at the local dollar shop for my “pirate who has been on a very successful looting mission” Halloween costume.  And H and I went into a 99 Pence store here after well over 30 hours of traveling from Perth.  We touched everything in the shop and ended up buying soap.*

So today, while walking through the city, I remembered that we needed trash bags and popped into Pound Land to pick some up.  Biggest mistake ever.  The ‘Home’ aisle was full of crazy people.  One woman was spraying all of the cleaning products in the air and then smelling them.  She may have been trying to find a nice scent or doing something else but those things will stain your clothes.  One under 18 couple had a cart full of cleaning products and a large baby bump; I guess they were setting up house together?  And then there was the senior citizen brigade who could not stop jostling at the check-out queue, complaining about how the store ‘wasn’t doing the queue right,’ and other general grumpiness.  This was before one guy broke out into song; possibly to make it harder to hear his very loud, very grumpy wife?  I am definitely going to have to find a new place to bargain shop.

*Possibly not as weird as it sounds given that every drug store and grocery store that we’ve gone into in the UK has 1-3 bar soap options and the nicest one we found was actually at the 99 Pence store.  We had also spent about 26 of the previous 32 hours on airplanes and soap = clean = luxury.

Acclimatizing

Today I felt like a true local; I went for a run this morning in the rain, in about 9°C weather.  Then I realized that I had on many more layers than the real locals who were out exercising in their t-shirts and shorts.  I was wearing:

• Fleece leggings
• A long sleeved shirt
• A fleece jacket
• A raincoat, with the hood up
• Gloves
• Wool socks

I’ll see how I’m doing next spring.  Speaking of spring, it’s April and it has snowed multiple times!  I would be horrified if I wasn’t so excited by seeing snow after multiple years of living in very hot weather.  Unfortunately with the cold weather, I really feel like we’re nearing the holidays in November / December.  This has the potential to feel like a very long year if that keeps up.  Somehow I don’t think H would object to having a pre-Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving dinner in June though.

Middle Eastern Scars

Over the weekend H and I decided that it would be fun to try out our new Mormon family sized curry cooker (much cooler than a slow cooker) and make a giant batch of real southern barbecue pork.  We brought home about 8 pounds of pork shoulder on Saturday afternoon and H trimmed it, made a brine and left it to soak overnight.  We woke up early on Sunday to rinse it, make barbecue sauce, and set the pork to cook for 12 hours in the sauce.   About two hours in, the pork started scenting our house with the most mouth wateringly delicious smell.  We kept going to peek through the glass lid to see how it was progressing.  Fortunately, the cooker came with dire warnings that lifting the lid adds 30 minutes to the cooking time, because four hours in, I really wanted a taste but not badly enough to add another 30 minutes to the cooking time.  Finally, we decided we had to get out of the house or the smell would drive us crazy.  We went hiking, we went grocery shopping and we picked up some delicious Savanna Dry cider.  In the grocery store, we were shocked to find Barbican and Maamoul cookies, familiar items from our days in Doha.  And then we drove home where from outside our front door, I smelled the tantalizing scent of true barbeque.  We walked inside our house where the smell blasted us full on.  I turned to H and started laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“I just had an oh shit moment.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is such a pervasive smell of pork around our property and for a second I worried that someone would come investigate and catch us with 8 pounds of forbidden deliciousness.”

“Haha, you know Doha now gives driving points to people who violate their ‘morality code.’”

“Yes.  I think it’s safe to say that we would lose our driver’s licenses if we were there.”

“It would be a shame too, that’s my favorite driver’s license, with the Emir on his white stallion.”

“Very true.  But seriously, how good does that barbeque pork smell?” 

Of All The Places

H and I have been talking about getting scuba certified for years.  Now that H has a slightly more predictable schedule, he’s decided that we should finally buckle down and take the course in the United Kingdom.  He sent me the following instant messages this morning:

H: “Check it out, www.anonymousukscubacertification.co.uk”

Me: “Looks great, only problem is that they do the certification training in the North Sea.”

H: “So?”

Me: “The North Sea is icy cold; think how cold your shower was this morning when you ran out of hot water and then multiply that by a thousand.  People are out in shorts and tank tops today because it’s 16 degrees Celsius.  How warm do you think the North Sea actually gets?”

H: “Not warm at all, but then we’ll finally have our scuba certification.  And they’ll provide dry suits so it shouldn’t be too bad.  Not to mention it would be kind of cool to get our certification in the North Sea”

Me: “True, fine.  I’ll do it.  But I want a dry suit that looks like a polar bear costume, white with black paws and a little black nose on my mask.”

H: “Done.”

I know, I know.  Instant message conversations with me most definitely are the highlight of H’s day.

Camping?

H really wants to take me camping, he thinks it would be fun.  Periodically when we revisit the topic, I remind him that we’ve already been camping.  What else do you call using an open air toilet?  H’s response is that when the open air toilet has plumbing (it did) and was in our private open air bathroom (yes, that may have been the case), it’s not called camping, it’s called staying at a luxury hotel.  Perhaps, but I do really like that form of camping.

Anyway I think it’s now a moot point because after waiting 48 hours for the leasing agent to send cleaners to our dirty rental (still hasn’t happened), I caved and took a really quick shower standing on my toes*.  Unfortunately I was unable to remove our single towel from the dryer (apparently it can’t be stopped mid-cycle), which meant that I dried myself using a paper towel.   I no longer have the paper towel plastic wrap or I would give a brand shout out for its absorbency but I do suggest that dirty shower + paper towel = camping.  Thoughts?

*No, flip flops are not considered essential luggage for an allocated 20 kilograms a person when moving to a cold, rainy location.  Biggest mistake ever.

Late Night Tesco

H and I had a really fun midnight trip to Tesco the other night for beer, sponges and disinfectant.  We really enjoyed people watching to see who else shops at that hour on a Monday night.  Thankfully we had a hot pizza to eat the car before going into the store; otherwise we might have missed the dozen or so loitering ‘almost 18s’ who were waiting for the 18 year old friends to exit the store with booze / already drinking with their 18 year old friends in the parking lot.  Awesome way to make me feel young again.

We also enjoyed the older man checking out behind us with a shopping cart overflowing with potato chips and ramen.  Seriously?  I think we can all guess what he had been doing earlier that evening.  Then there were the people picking up soda and chocolate, probably on the way to their own night shifts, not so entertaining.  Lastly, we had the twenty something year old couple who appeared to actually be doing their weekly shopping trip.  That was fairly depressing; I almost went over to them to remind them that Tesco does deliver.  H may or may not have accidentally thwacked one of them with our shopping basket though so I felt it was better to keep my distance.

All I can say is that Tesco > Carrefour for late night grocery shopping.  Carrefour was always out of milk late at night but Tesco was fully stocked.  The real trump card though is that unlike Qatar’s Carrefour, Tesco sells all kinds of alcohol.  Now if only the beer was refrigerated, late night grocery shopping would have the potential to be the perfect date night.

My New Favorite Excuse of All Time

My relocation agent just suggested that perhaps our rental hone was not professionally cleaned prior to the commencement of the lease, as per the rental agreement, because “sometimes people like to clean their new homes themselves.”  Pardon?  Do I look dumb/stupid/gullible/like Anonymous Colleague?  Yes please, can I please pay for the pleasure of cleaning up someone else’s multi-year lived in, recently vacated , dirty home myself?  Maybe if I’m really lucky, I can also cook, clean and iron for the prior tenant too, in their new home?

And while we’re at it, was Amelia Bedelia hired to do the inventory?  Somehow I think that when items like ‘used tissue, closet shelf’ make the list, one would recognize that the house has not been cleaned, as per the lease conditions.  Please, will someone remind me to replace the ‘used tissue, closet shelf,’ ‘three candles, half burned,’ ‘broken vase, kitchen sink,’ and ‘dirty toilet brush, guest bath’ before I move out so that the rental agency doesn’t charge me for missing items?  Thanks!

Expat Dictionary 101

One woman recently told me that she loved Anonymous Third World Country because for the first time, she “truly felt like an expat.”

Definition: she had a driver, cook, maid and nanny.

I’ve never had such an experience.   For me, feeling like an expat has been more a feeling of displacement, not belonging, and difficulty.  Don’t get me wrong, I love living overseas and there are thousands of wonderful things about this kind of life, but it is often difficult and unglamorous.

With the excitement of a transfer and getting to live in and explore a new country and its environs comes a lot of stress, hard work and waiting.  Every new visa means more than getting to be a tourist in a new country.  It means among a hundred other things:

• Quitting a job
• Selling a car
• Disposing of food / alcohol / cleaning products
• Saying goodbye to friends
• Closing a bank account
• Cancelling a lease, internet, utilities, insurance
• Filing a second set of local country taxes
• Packing a container to ship and two suitcases of belongings that you can’t live without for 1-3 months
• Updating an itemized inventory for container insurance
• Finding a new place to live
• Finding a new job
• Finding new friends
• Buying a car
• Getting a new driver’s license
• Setting up a new bank account
• Getting insurance
• Setting up internet and utilities
• Waiting 1-3 months for your belongings to come
• Finding your way around and locating grocery stores, dry cleaners, doctors, restaurants, hair salons etc.
• Living out of suitcases

My particular favorite circular reference is that you can’t set up a local bank account without an address and you don’t get an address until you can pay your deposit and first month’s rent.  Wiring money from another country takes 2-10 business days and when you have 30 days to get yourself into ‘permanent accommodation,’ it means you have a maximum of 18 days to find where you want to live, in case the wire transfer actually takes 10 business days.

H and I just moved into our new ‘permanent’ home after hours at the leasing office trying to locate our wire transfer.  And we were the lucky ones; the other family at the office had the same problem and went ‘home’ to their hotel room for another night, without the keys to their new rental ‘home.’  Unfortunately, H and I showed up at our new home to find that it hadn’t been cleaned, as specified in the lease, nor were there any linens for the bed or towels in the bathroom, also as specified in the lease. 

So H and I had an amazing night sleeping on the couch in the unclean apartment because a used rental couch without sheets seemed a lot more sanitary than a used rental mattress without sheets.   This was after a late night trip to the (thankfully) 24 hour Tesco to get beer and disinfectant to make one bathroom usable enough for the evening.  We either didn’t get enough disinfectant or beer though because we started to clean one toilet and stopped when we found dried vomit/excrement on the outside of the toilet bowl; needless to say I’m posting this from the closest coffee shop with internet and a bathroom.  Sadly I haven’t chosen a new gym yet or I could also be writing this freshly showered.  I know, I know, this blog should really be renamed, The Glamorous Life of Anonymous Expat.