Qatar Masters

We spent the weekend at the beautiful Doha Golf Course watching the final two days of the Qatar Masters. The weather was like San Diego in May – extraordinarily beautiful – there was a breeze and the green grounds are perfectly manicured amid stone hills and rocky water hazards dyed a TV-appealing blue. I have never appreciated desert landscaping until this weekend. The development here has been designed by the best of the best and this was no exception. There is grass on the course but heaven help the wayward golfer whose shot strays outside of the fairways.

Cacti that I have only seen before in 2” pots are the size of trees here. I had never understood the fascination with the desert orchid that seems to grow randomly. Now I do. I want one. They are gorgeous. Huge Aloe Vera plants flowed along the walkways in lieu of azaleas, Mother-in-Law tongue plants followed (huge Mother-in-Law tongue plants) next to pencil cacti that are ten feet tall. The colorful bougainvilleas are the perfect desert backdrop. There is a cactus here indigenous to Arizona that was imported just for the golf course and it seems to be thriving. At the Doha Garden Club, we heard a few stories about one of the Sheiks who owns five football field size greenhouses and flies around the world in his personal 747 collecting new varieties of plants. He has a family 747 that follows him to bring his new acquisitions home. He has an on-site horticulturist, plumber and I think they said 20 workers per building live there. I cannot imagine the labor force that tends to the Doha Golf Club. At our club in Bintan, Indonesia the workers used to weed the fairways by hand and I have to think it is even more intensive here.

We settled into seats in the grandstand at the 16^th/17^th holes and watched some great golf for the last few hours. The people watching was extraordinary!

Saturday morning, somewhere in Doha a woman of Japanese descent got dressed. To attend a golf tournament in the desert, she put on gray tights, brown knit pants, white sox and black tennis shoes topped with a white mock turtle neck, a long sleeve black sweater WITH a knee length gold and black sparkly tunic (it would have made any Saints fan proud). Her visor was oversized – black in the front and gold on the sides and she was carrying a black jacket with just enough of the Burberry lining peeking out with her Gucci gray and black tote. Her husband joined her sporting a bushy mustache, Elvis sideburns and a black Harley Davidson cowboy hat.

There was actually a woman in local dress working the tournament and watching someone in full Qatari National dress scream around in a golf cart was startling to say the least. I doubt it is very common as we only saw one man and one woman; since we couldn’t see her face – I couldn’t tell if it was a family thing or not. I have to think it was a true experience for the US golfers who were teeing off as the call to prayer echoed across the desert.

The restrooms are designed to look like castle shaped desert outposts. There is very little water pressure and I would imagine the sewage/water system is not connected to anything except a tank. The gift venue was all in temporary collapsible buildings and the snack bar was called the “Golf Restaurant”. The food was truly international. The American contribution was French fries! There were only three US players competing (one from Germantown, TN) so the food selection was mostly British. Beer was only sold in one area and served in bright blue cups, which could not be taken out of the beer tent.

The entire experience was wonderfully fun – very international – and free. Our Swedish neighbors hosted a Swedish caddy and all of them were celebrating the win by a Swede when we got home and all of the whispering before a shot was done with either a British or an Australian accent. We did meet a couple from Houston (oil company employees), a VMI alum whose daughter teaches at the Qatar branch of Texas A & M and a woman who has lived in twelve countries following her husbands career around the world. The crowd was small enough that we saw several people we knew as they passed by the 16^th hole.

Doha really is an international small town.

A Day at the Camel Races

We were number three in a four car caravan – not difficult anywhere else in the world but HERE – a true challenge - on our third attempt to see the Qatar Camel Races at a track out in the desert. All of us had seen pictures or reruns on TV but we always seem to hear about them after the fact. Today, Cristina actually had a phone number to call and verify everything. She called twice and two totally different sets of facts were verified – the first phone all said the races were at 2PM, there would be refreshments and grandstands to sit in. The second phone call said the races started at 1:30PM and there would be no grandstands but there would be buses. So when we showed up we were not exactly sure what we would find.

We drove for almost an hour through desert sand and rock – we passed a compound of tiny buildings with a huge sign that said “TRAINING CENTER” which was probably where the trainers lived. We saw a herd of nearly twenty small camels with one young man watching them off to right hand side – they were roaming freely and I saw one that was the tiniest I have ever seen. Then we began passing groups of three camels. Each group had one very tall camel with a rider or a man leading him and one small camel on each side of him. The middle camels always had their heads thrust forward as if to always be ahead of the pack so maybe this is a psychological boost before the race!

Until a few years ago, the tradition here was for three or four year old boys to ride the camels. There was a huge uproar I assume when tourists began attending the races and were horrified to see toddlers atop huge camels unsupervised much less following them around the track in a bus watching while they held on for dear life. The new process is much more humane. A tiny R2D2 look alike robot wearing the colored racing silks of the owner and holding a riding crop perches on top of each camel. He is remotely controlled from one of the hordes of Land Cruisers driving along the road that parallels the track.

Thirty camels are lined up at the starting point – pushed and shoved into place by small stable hands some of whom kneel off to the side with a rope in their hand that is looped through a leather strap around the camel’s nose. Not all of the camels have a string attached – thank goodness – because as the starting gate is raised and the camels fly out – the small men that had been holding the ropes yank one end free and dive under the fence along the side. One came through right next to me – startled me to say the least. And filled my shoes with sand and probably left over camel poop. The animals are huge and to watch that close up is fascinating.

The finish line is only fifty meters away from the starting point so the usual process is to watch them start and then walk down and watch them finish. The first few races were the younger camels. Hilarious to watch - occasionally one would run a few hundred meters and apparently just decide this was not much fun and would make a U-turn and amble back ignoring the colorful swatting robots on their back and the waving stable hands who were trying desperately to get them to turn around and RACE. By this time, I was feeling a little sorry for the animals as they ran along with their lower lips flapping and foam spewing from their mouths. I actually enjoyed assuming that with the crush of Land Cruisers filled with men driving along honking, screaming and clicking their remotes, that there was no way the owners of the reluctant camels could do anything but continue to drive around the track. We never could find out what the radio range of the remotes was.

After watching two starts, we got on the bus to watch an entire race. A twenty seater packed with our group and an Asian family pulled into the maniacal traffic just after the camels were off. We merged with cars that were FULL of men screaming, honking (regardless of all the signs with a big red line slashed across a bugle), aiming and clicking their remotes out of the windows and many standing in the open sun roofs – thobes and headgear flapping!

We did two races in the bus taking photos – my friend’s daughter took the best ones as she is young and was not at all afraid to sit on the windowsill and click away with all of our cameras. With each race, the camels got larger and faster – there were no programs or signs but we did hear that there were ten races but after five – we felt we could leave without missing much as the announcements were all in Arabic so we couldn’t understand the racing commentary.

At the end of the day my favorites were the colorful blankets, tassels on the bridles and the little silk jockey outfits on the robots. The people watching was interesting as there were no local women but men of all Middle Eastern nationalities. We did see a Mercedes (according to one of the men in our party- the most expensive one on the market) with bodyguards all around it.

While waiting to race the camels all wore muzzles (I keep hearing that they spit at people) that were simple woolen colorful things – some decorated and some not but all beautiful. The very best was my thoroughly engrossed spouse pointing out the “nose warmers”!

Expat Friends

Packing the bags for Cairo – sounds pretty amazing. I just checked the currency rate and I realized that I have gotten used to checking money that is not in US$. I will have exactly 22 hours in Cairo with my daughter and her new roommate from Chicago. I have been looking for anything I can find regarding “what to do with 24 hours in Cairo” and the souqs and food seem to top the list when I factor in arriving at 5:00PM one day and leaving at 4:00PM the next – especially arriving on a Friday which is like landing in London on Boxing Day or the US on a Sunday.

I hope to see the Pyramids on the flight in. I am planning a longer visit next month and will see them up close and personal! I am trying to talk various friends into joining me!

Fred the Cat is doing well although he sits in front of the window and looks like he is pining away for the wild life. He eats a bit of food every time he wakes up – I think he is just checking to see that it is still there. He does love Arabic bread (don’t we all?) and hopefully will have the very expensive nasty eye surgery soon.

Hummus is a mainstay here and I am going to post my friend Judy’s recipe, as it is so good, so easy and better than any of the premade stuff I have tasted plus it is easy to add extra garlic.

Judy’s Hummus

2 cans of drained chickpeas

1/2C tahini (buy the good stuff and check the date)

Lemon juice

Garlic – mashed and diced

1 ½ teaspoon salt

Put it all in the blender/processor and serve with a little olive oil drizzled on the top. A few black olives or a little chopped fresh cilantro on the side.

I have discovered that one of the difficult things about living this expat life is saying goodbye. It seems we do it quite often – both to friends that we know we will see again and worse - to friends that we have met and grown to love that live outside our home stomping grounds! We know we will make the effort to see them again but they don’t live on our regular Southeastern USA route (otherwise near a child or grandchild) so we know it will be a trip in itself.

Twice now in a new country I have been lucky enough to meet someone who makes me laugh, doesn’t care that I am a hopeless housekeeper, enjoys the food and atmosphere and can enjoy a glass of wine while wallowing in the “now” of being so far from home. Someone who realizes that this is temporary and something to be enjoyed as thoroughly as possible but also understands there are ‘blue-I would love to be somewhere where I hear my own language with a familiar accent’ days.

We have made so many friends but I think the first thing I heard about expat friends is very true – they need to be “quick, deep and transitory” to be unforgettable.

One-Eyed Fred

Rumor has it that we find dogs and cats find us. I have never wanted a cat. My friend in post -Katrina Bay St. Louis actually had seven cats at one time – one of which still loves me. The feelings were only sporadically reciprocated. The idea of having a pet sleep with me was totally put to rest when Peanut (greatest sleeping dog ever according to all of the kids and their friends) actually had a chance to sleep in the bed with me before we moved to Singapore – it lasted all of two hours before he was snuggling back in his kennel.

On the flip side – watching the animals in our new country could break your heart. People here do not see pets in the same light as we do in western countries. I could understand that in places like Vietnam where people struggle for enough to eat and dogs are in the food chain. I could kind of understand it when we were in Singapore and people collected pets that were cute and then dumped them when they grew up. Here there is a coldness towards animals that I don’t quite get. The idea of kicking a dog just for fun seems outdated in most of the world but here it doesn’t seem to faze people that bored teenaged boys could actually do that and no one say a word to them much less try to stop them. I would like to think that this story is an urban legend but I know it could very well be true. .

Qatar is developing fast and the government seems focused on the important issues such as infrastructure, quality of life issues and education. Buildings and roads are built in the blink of an eye but projects are also started and then dropped just as quickly. Huge construction projects seem to have been affected by the Dubai World reorganization. There are issues with foreign workers who are not protected from overwork and abuse. The animal issue is understandably way down on this list and seems to have become an issue at all only because of all of the western expats that live here.

One night recently I walked my friend Patsy to the front gate of our compound and we met a white cat that was meowing loudly. He looked like he had been on the losing end of a catfight. One eye seemed seriously damaged although it wasn’t profusely bleeding but it was incredibly gross. When I stroked him – he started purring and rolled over on his back. Patsy laughed and said “Uh oh, you are going to have a cat if you don’t watch out!”

He followed me home and sat on my front porch meowing. I took water outside and he actually tried to come inside. He was filthy but friendly. My neighbor had asked me to go to the nearby shopping center and after my daughter offered to babysit her 18-month son – there was no way of not going! She enjoyed the break but was not happy about me possibly feeding the cat and joked about dropping the cat food I bought into a trashcan on the way to the car. When we pulled up to our townhouse – the cat was sitting in my window! Curled up six feet above the ground waiting. I fed him and tried to contain him in my tiny backyard. He had water and food and a box with a towel – he ate, crawled into the box and crashed. The next day was a national holiday so we ended up keeping him for another night – he spent most of the day in my other next door neighbors yard (also not happy about a cat) after somehow climbing over the wall without breaking his neck and hiding under a rug hanging outside while it rained. I fed him and left him alone most of the day as it seemed the driest spot available. That night I actually let him into the kitchen while we cooked dinner and he sprawled out on his back and fell asleep! He spent another night in the box with the towel while I spent time online looking for his owner. I was so sure he had to belong to someone.

Plans were set. I borrowed a carrier, Cicely came to help me catch and cage the cat and he was still trapped in my backyard. Then we saw a flash of white as he jumped up to one window and then over the wall into my neighbor’s backyard – remember these are ten-foot walls. I met Cicely in front of my house, handed her the carrier and tried to open the gate next door but it was locked. I had to knock on the front door and lie to the 6 and 4 year old girls who live next door as their parents didn’t want them to even know about the cat as they really want a pet not to mention the shock of the messy eye. Their maid was quick to help me duck out of the back door, shutting it before the girls could follow. I called the cat and he actually meowed. He was in the middle of the flowerbed using it as a litter box, having shoveled most of the dirt on the patio. I scooped him up and before he knew what happened he was in the kennel on the way to Qatar Veterinary Center!

I was surprised when the vet’s assistant looked at him and explained that there had been no injury. There is a rampant eye infection among kittens born in the wild here. Their eyes become infected before they are ever open and they lose the eye, as it is never treated. She said that even though he was friendly and purring that he was probably a ‘compound’ cat. These cats develop amazing social skills enabling them to live around humans who feed them but usually don’t really ever connect. I got the feeling she felt we should neuter and release him, not necessarily try to make him a pet. I was still sure there was a family out there missing their cat.

The veterinarian was very nice. He said Fred (I had to give them a name to even see the vet) was not quite a year old, basically healthy, had ear mites, needed to be neutered and vaccinated. He reaffirmed what the assistant said about the eye – said it had been gone for a long time and if he had had an owner – the odds were that they would have had the eyeball removed and the eye sewn shut. I agreed to pay for the neutering, etc and made arrangements to have him boarded until I COULD FIND THE OWNER! They didn’t laugh.

He was there for a week as I thought I had found a home for him on Christmas Eve but the young man did not back out until five thirty in the afternoon which was too late to pick him up. So he lived with them for a week and we picked him up and brought him home expecting a wild animal, especially after he howled in the back of the taxi all of the way home! He was anything but – he is more like a dog – he followed us around, he used the litter box, he has to have been around people before! He is just a cool relaxed cat – unless of course he is just recovering from the stress of surgery, kennel for a week, and being on the street for a while. I still think someone has to be looking for him so we have made a flyer and posted the information on every website I can find.

My husband got home in the wee hours of the morning and I let Fred out to meet him (he of course was out of town while all of this was going on but was clued in when his phone beeped in Singapore with a text message from the bank saying I had charged 1000QAR). Unfortunately he was hooked almost immediately. I hate to admit it but Fred will be with us probably until we can find him a home – I really do not want a cat. Hairballs totally freak me out.

One clue that he might actually be wild – he crept into the kitchen and the next thing we knew he was sitting in the sink drooling over the birds at the feeder outside. He didn’t even care if his feet were wet. He looked like a hungry shopper at the meat counter.

Three days and a lot of money later – my spouse has fallen in love with the one-eyed cat with the ‘Daniel Boone coonskin hat’ tail. He has bought a new litter box, (and changes it) a scratching post, lifetime supply of catnip, toys and has scheduled eye surgery for the middle of January. Expensive eye surgery. This I didn’t expect and I still really do not want a cat. Once we don’t have to guard the front door with a spray bottle of water so he doesn’t try to return to his home in the trashcans of the desert – Fred might turn out to be ok.

The Christmas card that I tucked into my traveling spouse’s suitcase had a cat on the front that looks great with an eye patch! I really didn’t expect him to become quite this attached to a stray cat.

Karma Cat fact - Cicely rescued a three-week-old black kitten stumbling around in the middle of a three-lane road. People slowed down but didn’t stop but at least they didn’t run over her while she was in the middle of a rescue that I would have loved to have seen!

We now are seeing cats everywhere and watching Fred find little places to creep into that he can watch us and we cannot see him makes me realize how many homeless animals there probably are. A short national program to catch, neuter and release would not be that difficult for the Qatari government and I can only cross my fingers that it happens soon.

Saudi Arabia? Seriously?

We have just walked in the door from our ‘Inland Sea’ tour. We knew it included ‘dune-bashing’ (flying over the sand dunes in a Land Cruiser), dinner on the beach and a tour of the area around the sea. We tried to do a little more homework but didn’t come up with too much more information so we signed up to meet the driver at 2:00PM at Cicely’s house. Nazir was there right on time – tall, dark-haired taciturn young man who really did know how to drive a car.

Things started off okay and we drove for an hour to reach the edge of the desert where the tour really began. First we passed lots of ATV rental places – I counted at least 250 ATV’s lined up for rental along the side of the road. We passed one location and watched in amazement as a woman fully covered in black except for her eyes hopped on a large ATV and took off over the sands – Abaya billowing behind her. From where I sat it looked like she even wore black gloves. Then we passed a young man in a small dune buggy driving on two wheels – he stayed that way until he was completely out of sight!

Then the fun actually began. We stopped and waited and watched a group of French tourists ride camels while our driver had someone let most of the air out of our tires (they let enough out that anywhere else it would have been declared a flat tire). We passed on the camel rides and headed out over the dunes – we flew low and climbed fast – we literally drove so close to the edge that Cicely and I grabbed each other in the back seat and made loud scared noises and tried to laugh. My daughter pointed out that my poor husband who got stuck with the front seat because he has the longest legs was almost in a fetal position against the window holding on the handle with two hands. We climbed up dunes that if you had asked any sane person – it would have been impossible – like driving up a wall and then came down the other side full speed. Nazir drove very casually with one hand and sporadically would shift gears and steer when it seemed like we were headed over the edge. We flew over the top of one sand mountain and there were several parked cars lined up with the same group of French tourists. One car at a time was driving up the side of a huge dune, spinning out, sliding and careening around while we watched in awe. We were standing around waiting for our turn and then in unison the four adults said, “No, we are not doing that!”

One of the other drivers laughed at us and said, “See that woman. She is 88 years old! She sat in the back seat and yelled, Go! Go!” Now picture a small perfectly coiffed French woman with a beautiful silk scarf tied exquisitely around her neck and tiny black patent leather loafers. For just a minute I felt like an idiot and then Patrick said, “Yes, she is 88 and probably SENILE!”

So we ended up skipping that part of the trip and moved on to drive around what I think was the inland sea – a ‘little’ inland sea – where we found some beautiful sea shells, a piece of driftwood and looked across at Saudi Arabia! Somehow we came to the conclusion that this was not really the inland sea but some sort of tidal pool and will have to check on a map to see where we really went! The advertisement for the tour shows slip-covered chairs around a table on a pristine beach with beautiful dishes of Mediterranean food. The reality was a Bedouin tent on a beach overlooking oilrigs with plastic plates and cutlery with bottles of desalinated water! The food was good, the wind was brisk and with country music playing in the background – everything was fine until they started talking about “nighttime sand duning” on the way home – I didn’t quite get the details but I do know sitting with my eyes closed in the back seat, after taking a muscle relaxer for my back and clutching Cicely’s hand – it somehow involved launching from the top of a dune with the headlights turned OFF! I am not sure because I don’t think I opened my eyes until we were pulling into the station to have our tires inflated.

The driver really was very experienced and in hindsight – both my husband and daughter regretted not doing the driving up and down the side of the largest sand dune I have ever seen in my life. I don’t.

The desert at night is clear and dark and amazing. There was crescent moon that looked like a cutout, as it was so yellow in contrast to the blue-black sky. The stars feel very near and there seem to be millions of them.

Hunting and Gathering

I have been making a few notes about interesting things in the grocery stores.

My first all time favorite was the tea, which I thought would be just like the sleepy time tea in the U.S. which I love to have a cup of when I had trouble going to sleep. I used to carry some with me on my trips. I bought a box of the Sleep Nerve Tea and was a bit puzzled when I read the side of the box. “An effective herbal tea to relief nervousness and sleep disorders. It is recommended to be taken three times daily.”

The first night I tried it – I literally fell asleep in front of the television and snored. The next morning I read the ingredients and it not only contains chamomile flowers but VALERIAN Root! It is a natural aid product from Riyadh and I had to chuckle when thinking about all of the supposedly housebound Saudi women who drink three cups of this a day to stay calm.

Under directions for Iced Tea – “Put five bags in hot water and brew for five minutes. Remove the tea bags and add cold water (500 ml). Refrigerate. Enjoy it with your family members!” For all of those mothers who used a dose of Benadryl occasionally when the children were very small – serve this as “sweet tea” at meals and they will never know what happened!!

Do you remember Monosodium Glutamate - MSG? Remember when most of the Chinese restaurants stopped using it, when it was no longer used as a normal ingredient unless loudly noted on the package, when everyone would say they could tell when there was msg in something they ate as their hearts would race and the government spokesman said it was really really bad for us all. I hadn’t even thought about it again – assuming that everyone in the world agreed with the US government that msg was really bad for us - until last year in Singapore, I was learning to make sushi from my favorite Japanese friend and she made reference to a ‘special salt’. She said that she would bring me some the next time we got together as it was inexpensive, very nice and added a lot of flavor. She showed up with a 300-gram plastic bag of monosodium glutamate! Very inexpensive - yes and added a lot of flavor – yes but healthy – not so much.

Some of the large corporations that no longer market products with msg in the states sell soups, etc. here that are loaded with it. Name brands that I felt I could buy without reading the label operate under an entirely different set of rules here – no pork ingredients trumps no msg. No alcohol trumps trans fats. The only vanilla available is an artificial type with no alcohol and the only bacon bits are the plastic baco’s. Those are usually on the bottom shelf in the supermarket turned backwards so the word Baco’s is not facing the consumer who might very well be offended.

The international sections are incredible in every single store. They cater to a wide variety of people and aim to please as many as possible. In Singapore I developed a serious taste for Korean seaweed with Japanese rice and both are easy to find here – even in the snack sizes that were sometimes not on the shelves in Asia. Tex-Mex is huge, the Indian spice section takes up both sides of an entire aisle and the Asian foods are not lumped together – every region is represented – Philippine, Thai, and Malay but there is not nearly the number of Chinese foods that I am used to seeing! The British ‘biscuit’ section is always stocking – Walker’s digestives must have huge fans here as every flavor is here one day and gone the next!

The dairy section is vast. The crèmes that people use every day in France fly off of the shelves. There are at least ten different brands of yogurt and then one moves into the labneh, crème fraiche and even Philadelphia cream cheese occasionally. Kraft cheeses are usually easy to find and the sliced singles that we know are processed but still love in a grilled cheese sandwich occasionally are randomly here – there are probably four other types of sliced singles and of the ones with ingredients in English – there are not too many I would even try. They look scary and I have been told this is because Americans love ‘colorful’ cheese and so it is always dyed yellow and maybe this is true but there is something off putting about white single wrapped slices that I haven’t been able to get past.

Yogurt in the Middle East is extraordinary. The yogurt here is so rich and so creamy – I now understand a bit better why my friend Gowri always made her own yogurt instead of buying it in the grocery store – amazing difference in taste and texture. Kroger’s plain yogurt doesn’t look very appetizing when compared to Almaria’s delicious full cream yogurt but then the Almaria probably ranks right up there with the full flavored msg.

Americans may be the last holdouts for iceberg lettuce. In Singapore and here in Doha, it is referred to as ‘American’ lettuce. In Paris last summer, the salads that used it listed it as American lettuce salads! It is also very expensive here – QAR12.75 looks like a lot when I remember it being $1.00! It is the same price as all of the other lettuce choices.

The food here is amazing and I have picked up a few new recipes that I will be using forever! Eating local is easy – and delicious!

Dinner Dress

The people that know me well know that I am a very conservative, and perhaps, some would say ‘dull’ dresser. Last night I decided I would rather be the ‘dull’ dresser than the ‘middle-aged-woman-from-somewhere-in-the-southwestern-part-of-the-US’ who forgot to look in the mirror on the way to dinner.

There were roughly twenty couples at the small French restaurant where we met our Canadian friends for a dinner hosted by an American organization. We had a set menu that included a choice between sea bass and a chicken dish, berries or soufflé for dessert and included two demitasse-sized soups that were extraordinary. My friend brought a bottle of wine as the ticket had said that corkage was 10QAR. It turns out that was 10QAR per person who had even a sip of wine. Since the president of the hosting organization doesn’t drink and never has, she may not have understood the concept of a corkage fee being charged to open the bottle.

We sat down quickly as we arrived a few minutes late and the invitation said things would start promptly at 6:30 but that is not quite the way it played out. So while we waited for our food and sipped our wine – I watched the people - the entertainment was free.

The best outfit was by far a tight, very short polyester black dress with short cap sleeves that were sheer with an embroidered design. When she was facing away from me, I thought she was fairly young as the dress was short, she had long blonde hair and a nice figure. Then she turned around and I realized that she was way older than I had thought, had spent many years in the sun and a lot of money on her hair. On top of that when I heard a metallic noise as she walked by us – I glanced down just as my husband leaned over and whispered –“bondage boots” - black, shiny, knee-high with metal rings. AND a Christmas bell on a green silk string around her neck chiming in step with the sounds of the boots.

I loved Christmas sweaters when my kids were in school. Tonight may have forever ruined them for me. A woman wore red slacks, a black turtleneck and a Christmas sweater vest. The front was traditional colorful designs – a large stocking, a tree with little bells, but the coup d’ etat was the white fur around the sleeves – long fluffy white Persian cat hair. Add to that a large (really large) red flower in the short ponytail, big bright earrings and oversized glasses and it all made for a caricature of someone in a Tim Burton movie.

The standout for the younger table was interesting and maybe I am hopelessly out of date but a black suit with a peek-a-boo hot pink lace top and pants so tight I was embarrassed for her. Her husband had on a jacket with a tie that matched the lace so I think there was a plan.

On the flip side – a few women were beautifully dressed – one woman from Egypt who reminds me of an always impeccably dressed friend in Memphis – and who will be the new president of this organization after the current one returns to Texas in March. It makes an interesting side note - having a president of Egyptian descent who wears an abaya when she leaves the Hyatt after meetings.

Middle-aged dressing anywhere in the world is difficult but in this part of the world it is even a bigger challenge. I am not sure what the issue is for some of the younger members. I have to think that some of these women are very nice people who accepted the challenge of moving to a galaxy far away when their husbands were offered great jobs. Doha, Qatar had to have been so far outside of their comfort zone that being here and making it an adventure for their family makes them special regardless of what they wear.