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And At Once I Knew I Was Not Magnificent
Future stretches once again into the unknown, long-term and short-term plans are thrown into a paper bag, shaken, and I haven’t opened the bag yet to know what will happen, and maybe I’ll bide my time, because I don’t want to know yet… So. Evenings by the pool, summer welcoming us with rain, but it…
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These Last Couple of Months
It’s been a while, how are you guys? Lila and I spent some time in the Philippines, Julien joined us for two weeks, and now we are back in Saudi, scratching our heads in bewilderment, wondering how we got back here. Manila was great as always, although we had our fair share of bad luck:…
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Merry Christmas, This is a Machine Gun!
I thought that being the only woman in a room of 200 or so men was the low point of my Christmas (believe me, it’s a creepy feeling); turns out I was wrong. The low point would be the part where we take a wrong turn coming home from the Intercontinental Hotel, reach a dead-end…
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Non-Happenings
I’m happy to report that you have nothing to worry about when it comes to medical exams for an iqama in Saudi Arabia. No crazy ladies herding you from room to room like cattle, no one shrieking “Yallah yallah” in your ear, no hurried nurses savagely stabbing at your arm for blood. I was the…
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Week Two
Some observations after two weeks in Saudi: It’s true, there are no fitting rooms in clothes shops! We were at Dharan Mall and I just had to see if this was an urban legend or not. Apparently, it isn’t. There are fitting rooms, however, in the toilets. But for someone like me who has a…
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Mountains Beyond Mountains
This morning the doorbell rang. It was Julien, tired and unshaven, but it was Julien! I didn’t even know he had caught a flight back home. Miraculously, the sun is out as well and the temperatures have risen. It feels like summer again. So I leave you with my favourite song from the newest Arcade…
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Welcome to The Kingdom
A 6-hour plane ride is all it takes to change your life radically. We finally flew from Paris to Bahrain. I won’t go into the details but Lila hurtled up and down the aisles, pulling blankets off sleeping businessmen and picking scraps of dirt off the floor and putting them in her mouth. By the…
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Go and Find a Place to Let it All Out
Philip Selway’s solo album is doing my head in. I never even knew there was a voice lurking within that bald guy behind the drumkit, often overshadowed by Thom Yorke’s manic dancing. But then again, I should’ve known that every damn member of Radiohead is a genius. I once read this article where the journalist…