Welcome to My Blogsite

Ma' Salamah!!

First of all, thank you for stopping by. The material that consitutes my site is dedicated to all those millions of expats (or exprats) who make a living working in the Middle East. And by the Middle East I mean Kuwait, Saudia Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Oman. In other words, the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries. What motivated me to start this blog? In a word - history. And by that I mean my past and current history. I first came to the Middle East in April 1980 and worked in Saudi Arabia. Momentuous year that was: Iraq invaded Iran, Ronald Reagan came to power, Zimbabwe came into existence and John Lennon was murdered. Apart from stints working in S.E. Asia, West Africa, Canada and of course the North Sea, I have worked in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar and I am shortly leaving for my next post in Oman. Over and above this, I have visited Bahrain and Dubai. So I have been exposed to everything that these lands can throw at me and I've lived to tell the tale!

So what about the content? Well, I hope to be informative, spreading knowledge and voicing my opinions about the matters affecting the Middle East. I certainly will be hard-hitting when needs be, satirical, mocking, ironic and, when necessary, down-right conceited. People who know me often say that I can be a supercilious bastard and that is purely down to the travils of scratching a living in the GCC countries. But seriously, I want to cover personal, social, economic and political topics. I will offer advice on anything and everything: how to make siddiqui, visa problems, the dos and donts of living here, transportation issues, entertainment - you name it, I'll cover it.

So I hope you will find my blogs enjoyable and please feel free to add your comments.