Everyone will remember where they were. Like all major tragedies everyone will always remember just what they were doing when the news of yesterday’s tragic events at Villaggio unfolded. I was grocery shopping when the tweets started. I stood glued to my phone, shopping forgotten as someone tweeted that children were stuck in Gympanzee. I started to text friends to check they were OK. At that point no one knew the extent of the fire and that so many children would be lost. A total of 19 people died yesterday, 13 of those poor souls were children.

Doha’s community is close. Those that live here love the fact that it has a small town feel to it. It sometimes takes me an hour just to buy a coffee at Villaggio Starbucks as I end up chatting to so many people I know, my coffee growing cold in my hand. Everyone knows everyone, and everyone will know someone that lost a child in yesterday’s fire. As shocked as I was yesterday I was also proud to be a part of that community, as it stood as one in the face of tragedy. People were united as they poured out emotions over social networks, the only place it seemed that was actually reporting events as they took place. Local TV and radio seemed blissfully unaware what was happening, or else chose to ignore what would prove to be one of the biggest disasters in Doha.

What on earth went wrong yesterday? It’s a question practically reverberating around this small close-knit community today. One that needs answers and not excuses. Fire procedures seemed non-existent, sprinklers failed and fire alarms were never sounded. There were reports of people coming out of changing rooms to empty smoke filled stores. No staff had alerted customers, and no alarms had rang out. Photos of fire exits with padlocks are all over the Internet today. There needs to be a thorough investigation and this must never be allowed to happen again. Smoking bans now need to be enforced properly. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen people smoking sitting next to a no smoking sign. How sad that it takes 19 people to die to prompt change.

Today when I took my youngest to nursery there were no smiling faces. Everyone nodded somberly; a few wiped away a tear or two. This is a tragedy that has affected every one of Doha’s residents and that will stay with them forever. The triplets from New Zealand that lost their lives were due to start at my son’s nursery in September. Today it seems no one is smiling in Doha. Even the sun doesn’t seem quite so bright today. My thoughts are with the families that lost a loved one. Last night they were in my prayers and today I woke and thought how they would also wake and for a few seconds they would think life was just the same as normal. Then their worlds would come crashing down on them once more as they realised that their lives will never be the same again. Hug your children, call your parents and friends and make the most of life, as you never really know just how precious it is until it’s too late.

I am now so addicted to Facebook and Twitter that I find myself thinking in tweets and status updates. My life consists of what can be summarized in 140 characters. Even after a recent car crash, after checking my husband was OK, I was busy taking photos of the crash and updating Facebook with the latest drama in my life. Do you ever wonder why we have become so addicted to social networking sites? Even those steadfast friends that swore they would never join the masses are slowly submitting; scared of being excluded from the new social circle, where the majority of invites to events are now generated.

It wasn’t that long ago that people liked to keep their lives private. Coming from the UK (home of the stiff upper lip and the ‘keep calm and carry on’ motto) it took me a while to get into sharing the most intimate details of my life. However once you get started it’s strangely addictive and the need to confess to my chocolate cravings or upload a photo of my latest shoe purchase is now not only a fun pastime but a necessary daily requirement; like the need to eat!

Likewise I am addicted to the voyeurism that social networks facilitate. I want to know not only what my close friends on Facebook are up to but also what my showbiz heroes are tweeting about. I’m at the point now that if I don’t get my daily fix (OK hourly if I’m being really honest) I feel slightly disconnected from the world. It doesn’t matter if I am having breakfast with a close friend; I still feel anxious that I may be missing a vital tweet or FB update from someone else during that time. I half hope that she might need to visit the ladies room so I’ll be able to quickly get my fix. In fact my hand rests protectively on my iPhone fighting the pull of these addictive sites.

So there lays the problem with social networking sites, they kill the real art of communication. Long gone is the need to call a friend and find out what she has been up to; yesterday she tweeted she was fine, but is she really happy? How many of us are tempted to always put a positive spin on our lives? Has the ‘keep calm and carry on’ motto really been left behind in the stampede to share; or do we still chant it under our breath as we sob onto the keyboard whilst adding smiley faces to our status updates? Let’s be honest now…I wonder how many friends would share the fact they were suffering from severe depression or tweet that they are actually bulimic.

So maybe it’s time to forget about Facebook and turn off Twitter. Maybe it’s time to reconnect with our friends through good old-fashioned methods like the phone and face-to-face meetings. Yes that’s what I’ll do, I’ll make some calls…but maybe on the home phone, then I can still check up on Rob Lowe’s latest antics. Hey #onestepatatime…

Is it 2012 already? Christmas passed in a flurry of bottomless selection boxes, a completely oversized turkey and the inevitable ever-expanding waistline. Now it’s the ‘New Year’ (OK half way through the first month but in-laws and deadlines overrode blogging until now!). The New Year always brings with it a variety of things; possibilities, expectations and resolutions, as well as at least a month of writing last year’s date on every document I come across.

Of course diet and exercise are on most people’s lists of resolutions, including mine, alongside the far more ambitious ‘write a novel’ and ‘snog Brad Pitt’ (one of which I WILL do by the end of 2012!). Do you ever wonder why we feel the pressure to set ourselves ‘goals’ each January? Are we sometimes just setting ourselves up to fail with unachievable targets within unrealistic timelines? I mean January must be possibly the worse time to attempt to diet; there are still Christmas selection boxes to empty and tins of chocolates to finish off (even if all the caramel ones are gone and there’s only the strawberry creams left). Most people are feeling so flat and broke after the Christmas festivities that the thought of launching their bloated body into the work out world is beyond unappealing. Plus the cold weather doesn’t lend itself to crisp salads; comfort food needs to be hot and packed with carbs and calories.

I think that January should be more about taking stock and looking back over the past year. Far too frequently in life we rush from one project to the next, never taking the time to pause and look at our past achievements. January is a great time for reviewing and congratulating yourself on what you did well. This year I ran 10K, that was definitely my biggest achievement and it didn’t even start off as a resolution.

So of course I’ve made a list for the year ahead, it’s not finite, but it’s a start. However I’ve decided to wait until February before I firmly start my resolutions. It’s a much nicer starting point; when spring is in the air, my bank account has been replenished and I’ve had time to overindulge ever so slightly on the carb front before banishing them from my diet for the rest of 2012 (well at least some of 2012!). Now where’s that tin…I’m sure there’s still a caramel barrel lurking at the bottom…

I’m not a competitive Mum in the sense that I’m pushy with my children about their grades and I don’t find myself screaming at them from the sidelines on sports day. However when it comes to their birthday parties I want them to be perfect. I’m not sure where this bizarre obsession stems from; perhaps having a birthday overshadowed by Christmas myself I feel the need to overcompensate for my kids each year.

Planning starts in the summer when the themes are decided. Although the parties are not until November early planning is essential in order to purchase all the party paraphernalia in the UK during our summer break. Past themes have included a bug party, which saw our villa covered in cobwebs with all manner of creepy crawlies suspended from the ceiling and hanging from the picture frames. Games included a ‘bug hunt’ and of course a spider piñata (always homemade).

Last year’s theme was ‘Harry Potter’ where children were sorted into ‘houses’ on arrival with a clever iPad app and given corresponding badges to wear. I dressed as a witch complete with green face and green eyelashes to really get into the spirit of things, and games included a snitch hunt with spray painted gold ping-pong balls, an obstacle course on broomsticks and a huge golden snitch piñata complete with feathered wings.

With birthdays so close my sons usually have a joint party but this year they opted for separate parties. So it was with a sense of relief when one opted for a ‘football’ party and the other a ‘under the sea’ party. Easy I thought…until somehow they fell on the same weekend. Cue a weekend like no other, and one I will definitely not be repeating next year. Who would have thought a football piñata would be so hard to make? Have you ever tried to draw hexagons on a globe shape at 11pm only to find near the end of your painstaking work that they don’t all join properly? Yes you do lose the will to live and on Thursday night, the eve of the party, it took all my willpower not to boot it out of our back door.

I’m actually finding it hard to type, as my forefinger is purple from the 250 water balloons we filled and tied. I swear the reason I now have a cold is that I sacrificed all the power in my lungs to the countless balloons we blew up this weekend, blazoned with various numbers. ‘Pin the bag on the WAG’ seemed a great idea for the girls at the football party until I realized we’d have to cut out so many. My passion for Louis Vuitton bags has now dimmed to the point I’ve had to revise my Christmas list, as I never want to see another one again. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the fish shaped lollipops ended up in the football party bags and football key rings and pens were found hiding under some Nemo stickers in the bottom of the fishy themed loot bags. At this point I am beyond caring.

Luckily my children are fairly good at sharing as the presents have merged into one big pile in our playroom with me frantically trying to match cards to gifts. I envisage a quite unspecific thank you note, tactfully avoiding names, along the lines of, ‘Thank you for your wonderful gift, it was a complete hit’…I think I’ll omit with who…

Although it’s too late to go back in time and learn a lesson on Valentine’s Day (yes that’s why I have two wonderful sons with birthdays so close) I feel I have definitely learned a lesson this year. So next year I’m hanging up my birthday cake shaped party hat. Suddenly a bowling party or the cinema with a group nearer five than 20 seems much more appealing, and maybe we’ll stagger the celebrations by at least a week or two. After all aren’t the kids getting a bit old for all this…or is that just me?

It’s the same every year, only this year there seem to be more of them. You can spot them a mile away; exiting cabs outside the mall, handkerchiefs clutched to their foreheads muttering about the heat; wandering down the aisles in the supermarkets with trolleys crammed with mops, brooms and cleaning paraphernalia; visibly shaking as they exit the car after their ‘first time driving’.

This is the prime time for new arrivals in Qatar, I was one once, and I remember clearly just how it felt. I arrived heavily pregnant with a three year old in tow and believe me there were some dark times in the first six months. The key to any expat experience is to make friends, as there are numerous expats that have been through, or are going through, exactly the same emotions and stresses as you are.

During my time here I have made some of the best friends I have ever had. With no family to help hold your hand in the expat world friends become your new family. There’s no time for gradual exchanges of secrets and fears in this world. It’s a warts and all exposure within weeks of meeting a new friend, and like marmite, they either love you or hate you. You become close quickly as you share the horrors and joys of this alien world, united as you laugh together, when alone you would have cried. You feel like you have found lifelong friends, and then inevitably, they, or you, leave.

It seems that having lived in Doha for four years now I’m considered a ‘long termer’, as most people only seem to stay for around three years. These past few months I seem to have said goodbye far too many times. That’s the downside of living in such a transient society. It’s great that I now have friends living in, America, Australia, Dubai, England and South Africa, and with Facebook, Twitter and Skype there are no excuses not to keep in touch. But there is no substitute for that much needed shoulder to cry on, or the shared chilled glass of wine on your villa steps after a particularly hard Doha day.

I know a few ‘seasoned’ expats here that prefer to keep their distance now, as they have concluded that the pain of parting outweighs the benefit of friendship. I think the opposite. The joy and companionship that friends provide, even for a short time, is worth the hardship that comes with goodbye. Anyway goodbye is not forever; as one close friend that left recently said to me, ‘it’s never goodbye, just until next time…’ I think it might be time for me to book that round the world trip.