Here but anywhere

Most days living abroad are just like every other life, days turn to weeks, which turn into months and nothing extraordinary happens. If you are lucky, you even forget where you are, it becomes so normalised and routine, that you barely even notice that you are in this random corner of the world. The environment melts away and you’re simply going about your business, no longer aware of the cultural or climatic differences. Last week I was fully in the swing of my usual antics, which led into a wonderful social weekend, when it dawned on me, I could have been sat anywhere in the world. Kuwait had faded into the background. When did somewhere in the world become anywhere in the world?

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Calendar girls

Most people I know work in a 12 month cycle, the year begins January 1st and ends on preferably a drunken night on December 31st. I used to be one of those people, living the standard calendar and making those new year resolutions to be broken my mid Feb. Expat me, works in a completely different way. My annual flags seems to have moved and fall into 3  distinct phases. Pre Ramadan, summer break and the new year. In this case the “new year” in my expat circle is September, this has now become the clean slate, the bench mark for all the great intentions for the 12 months ahead and the re setting of routines. When did my end of the year become the start, the middle become the end and the start become the middle? Welcome to my expat life!