Today is the first day that I am working in my new home office in Doha Qatar. Our family will be living in the Middle East for the next couple of years as my husband was offered a position with an Engineering company in Qatar. We have a beautiful villa with large sun filled rooms and my office is overlooking a peaceful row of palm trees – a welcoming patch of colour in the otherwise light brown desert landscape.
View of our Villa
Living in the Middle East can be peaceful, mysterious, breathtaking, intimidating and exciting all at the same time and in only a week, I’ve already experience all of these emotions.
Qatar is quite an interesting country with a few unspoken laws of do’s and don’ts. For example
women should dress modestly and cover their shoulders when in public. It is also not strange when a handshake from a woman is refused by members of the opposite sex as most Qatari people have a strict traditional culture and strong religious views. Western influences however are slowly changing the culture and make it more accommodating for expat living.
The diversity of different cultures moving into Qatar to work as expatriates is phenomenal – for example, in my daughter’s school there are children from over 60 different nationalities.
Other things to get use to is that all the street- and shop names are in Arabic (which is quite different from English). Luckily most of the time the English name is displayed as well, so one can actually easily find your way.
Shopping is another experience when you “loose” yourself between the new and ‘never-heard-off” brands – but, with an adventurous spirit the best way to “learn” is to test and try everything.
Well, my first impressions of Doha are quite positive – I think I will be able to stay here for a while.
The best of all however is that relocating to another country will have absolutely no impact on my business as a Virtual Assistant. Being virtual and communicating with clients via the internet enables me to just carry on where I left off a week ago while I was still in South Africa.
There are certainly many benefits of becoming a Virtual Assistant, but having the world as your office is certainly one of the greatest advantages.
Don’t you just love being a VA!!
What do you consider as the biggest benefit of being a Virtual Assistant?
