Blog blog ..... yawn....

Yaaaaaaaawn!

That is not the yawn of a bored blogger. Oh no. That is the yawn of a sleepy blogger.

I've been back in Australia for around 10 days now. Hello Melbourne! Hello My One True Love! Hello pussins! Hello green green gardens and velvet lawns - sooo unusual for Melbourne in summer, but then, I understand most of Australia has been under water for months now, so that explains it.

Yes, I've been back for around 10 days, and unconscious with exhaustion and jetlag for the better part of that time. Bahrain is 8 hours behind Melbourne, so it's almost exactly a reverse timeframe. When I'm sleepy, I should be awake. When I'm awake, I should be asleep. I get hungry for cereal at dinner time.

Every day I try to get up at a reasonable hour.... and then I go back to sleep. It's hard, especially when the pussins are all warm and cuddly and curled up on the yellow silk coverlet. That is the best kind of superglue to keep me in bed.

But I am resolved; I WILL adjust to this timeframe. Today, or tomorrow ....before I fly back to Abu Dhabi for a few days. And then everything will be topsy turvy again. Sigh!

Up with the birds

Five-thirty am, and the sun is slowly rising outside my hotel room window. I know, because I've watched it since I woke at half-past four.

Jetlag still has me in its tight grasp, and I've been managing around five or six hours of sleep a night - nothing near the eight hours I need in order to function effectively. Plus the coffee here is terrible as there's nothing like fresh milk available. I'm using a powdered horror called "Coffeemate" - not MY mate, I can assure you - though the locals use condensed milk. Ugh! No wonder Starbucks is so popular.

One good thing about the the jetlag though is that I'm getting lots of exercise. When I wake up early there's no point lying in bed, as I never go back to sleep. So I've been spending an hour in the lovely resort pool, slowly swimming laps backwards and forwards while the whole place is deserted, though I get some strange looks when the staff come on deck at six am.

On Monday I even asked for the gym to be unlocked for me, and one of the very nice reception staff couldn't quite believe her ears and asked me why, with a look of amazement on her face. I explained the jetlag, and she kind of understood but I think she was still sceptical.

This morning I also have a job interview via phone, for a position back in Melbourne, so I want to be nice and alert for it. I think a good swim, followed by a hearty breakfast, is the best way to approach that.

So, I'm off. The pool awaits.

Back to the Middle East I go .....

So. One week, four interviews and three job offers later, I've made a decision.

It almost breaks my heart to do this, but gentle readers, I'm leaving you. I'm leaving the pussins, I'm leaving the new thyme lawn, I'm leaving Melbourne and I'm moving to Bahrain.

Wow, it sounds so very final when I say it like that. So do you want the good news? It's only for three months. And I'm very definitely not leaving My One True Love, he is coming over at Christmas-time.


Yes, it's a short-term thing only; during which I will spend a lot of time travelling and blogging more witty and amusing travel posts - I know how you love those - and catching up with old friends who now live in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Dubai of course. Throw in some visits to Syria, Iran, Jordan and hopefully even Turkey, and it's going to be action-packed. I even plan to take my sewing machine for those (hopefully) rare moments of down-time.

It's fantastic to be returning to my old haunts, though strictly speaking I've never actually been to Bahrain before. But how excitement! A new professional challenge, a new personal one .... I can hardly wait! Adventures galore! Exotic travel tales! Fabulous new fabric markets!

And luckily I don't have to wait long, because I'm actually flying out in ten days time. Yes, that's right.

24 hours after that, I will be ensconced in a hotel in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, and I will be hot, tired, jetlagged, and no doubt wondering what the hell I'm doing there. 

What did I say last week about job-hunting? It never Bah-rains, but it pours?

Welcome back to Melbourne

It's taken me close to ten days, but I am FINALLY over the jetlag from India. Who'd have thought four and a half little hours could make so much difference? Not me, until I couldn't drag myself out of bed before 11am when I got home, which is unheard of.

You might be thinking that the first thing I did when I got home was start sewing, and you'd be right. And it would be logical to think that I ploughed straight into the 91 metres (yes! 91 metres in total!) of fabric I bought in India and posted home - but that would be slightly off the mark.

In fact I've spent the last week washing my 91 metres of fabric and hoping for it to dry in this cold, cold weather. When they make material in India they absolutely saturate it with dye, so it's imperative to do a warm water wash before you make anything, to get rid of the excess and ensure you don't accidentally dye other clothes or fabrics the first time you put your new thing into the wash. So, ten thousand tonnes of laundry later - and I'm still not quite finished, I have all the yellows and oranges to do yet - I am looking forward to breaking out my new scissors and using them with gay abandon on the new stash.

In the meantime though, while I was tapping my feet impatiently and drumming my fingertips as I hoped for more sun, I made this quilt. It's called Tangerine Dream, and I love it. Off to the Etsy shop you go, little quilt!