Friends come and go all the time in Doha, but not a lot come back! So this week when a buddy that left the sandy dunes of Doha for the lush fields of Cork made her way back to Doha, for a holiday I was super excited. Not many people come to Doha on a…
Well, what do you know, it seems the Irish property market has come full circle. Ten years ago the advice was buy, buy, buy, why?, because the prices were going up. The quicker you bought, the quicker you could flip it and buy two more and so on until just like Jacks magic beans you’ll…
It’s probably ingrained in us Irish and maybe even more-so that any other nationality, that we are prone to suffering from a small bit of negativity. We lean towards the down side. We highlight the pitfalls, point out the inefficiencies and harp on about the negative in like, any situation. We loved to go on about Christmas starting…
It was only when a good friend of mine recently flew back to Ireland for her citizenship ceremony that I came round to the idea that being granted citizenship in a country, particularly Ireland of course, is a pretty big deal. Up to then I ashamedly looked with cynicism at highlights of ceremony on the…
Not an avid cinema goer per se, but this week I was looking forward to seeing The Girl on the Train. Having read the book I felt confident that there was little likelihood that it would be banned like the last movie on my must watch wish list, The Danish Girl. I was prepared for…
It’s the most notable thing about the Middle East, not the Burj Khalifa, not The Pearl in Doha, it’s the heat, the stifling, enveloping, steaming heat that descends in April and doesn’t offer respite until October, sometimes November. For weeks before the big Five O (degrees Celsius) you can feel it a little hotter each…
Thousands of families continue to flee Ireland every year to set up home abroad, leaving their homes empty. Having an obsession with home ownership possibly one of the first questions that Irish people ask when they meet abroad is, do you own a house at home? Not entirely a superficial inquiry, myself, I think that…
Only weeks to go before having a baby in the Middle East and along with the baby, reality starts kicking hard. Having a baby abroad is all very well and sounds like a great adventure at first but as the due date draws nearer so too does the reality that you’re thousands of miles from…
Last week I complained about the weather, my biggest issue was the rain, it was too wet to be outdoors and I my only options to entertain kids were indoor play areas and McDonalds. Sure, I waxed lyrical the first few weeks about the smell of the rain and the fresh air, but the novelty…
Spending summer away from Doha and slipping back into life in Ireland offers a perspective which is impossible to achieve without having the experience of living life in two very different countries. Every summer when I come back to Ireland I notice various changes, a nudge here, a dart there, many only obvious when being…
thereluctantemigrant 