13 Years!

Hard to believe but the 1st of May will mark my 13th year in Qatar. 13 years! I never would have guessed that I would have been here this long.

Coming here was a straight-forward expat story. I was looking for a new job and it so happened that a former colleague had moved to Qatar so when his office was looking for someone with my background he sent me an email to see if I would be interested in applying. A couple of interviews later and I had the job so I packed up and moved to Qatar. Aside from flying in for the interview (and for that I was here less than 24 hours) I had never been to the Middle East before. But it wasn’t the first time I packed up my life and moved somewhere I wasn’t familiar with, when I took a job in Bermuda I hadn’t even been flown in for the interview so I already had accepted the job when I moved there. I like travelling and seeing new places so it wasn’t as intimidating as it might be for many. Being single helped too.

When I arrived Qatar was already in the grips of large-scale change as the Emir was ambitiously transforming the country. Skyscrapers were going up, roads were being built, new malls and museums were under construction, new apartment buildings and compounds were going up everywhere, and Qatar Airways was growing like crazy. When I arrived the population was something like 850,000 people, now it’s 2.7 million. It’s a staggering average growth of 9% a year, and that’s through the 2008 financial crisis and the 2014 slowdown due to the oil price drop so in fact most years it was more, I think in the early days 15% population growth was fairly standard. Construction couldn’t keep up with demand and for a long time the rental prices for homes and offices were sky-high. Everything was challenged by the growth. Ever been to a car dealership where staff didn’t bother you? I have. They didn’t need to bother you, the cars were selling as fast as they were bringing them in so if you weren’t buying it didn’t matter, someone would.

Thankfully the pressure has eased and population growth has slowed somewhat, with the population growing only 50,000 or so a year (only!). Vacancies are up and rents have been easing to a more affordable range. Traffic is still bad though, hopefully when the Metro is finished it will ease things a bit.

Being in Qatar this long has made me an ‘old-timer’ amongst a lot of expats. I actually get gasps of disbelief sometimes when I tell someone how long I’ve been here. I think it’s odd, plenty of expats have been here longer than I have, but in expat circles it seems like 3-5 years is the norm before you move on. My office has something like 100 employees and only two of them have been there longer than I have so I suppose frequent turnover does happen. I think some of the issue has to do with how in the early days there was not a lot to do. Most of the amenities and shopping areas that people use now did not exist when I first arrived: three-quarters of the buildings, 80% of the hotels, most of the malls, Souq Waqif, Katara, the Pearl, Aspire Zone, the museums, they weren’t here. I remember when a new hotel would open, EVERYONE went there (if it served alcohol as hotels were the only new things to get a liquor license), and for the next month it would pretty much be the only place anyone wanted to go. It was somewhere new! Now a new hotel opens and it’s just not an event, there’s tons of hotels so a new one is lost under the radar. I just found out a new 5-star hotel opened months ago. In the early days everyone would be talking weeks in advance of its opening. Not that I go to bars much anymore.

It's surprising how over time my friend group had fewer and fewer Western expats and instead it slowly became more Muslim and Arab. Hence why I do not go to bars anymore, none of my friends drink. I count myself fortunate to have a lot of local friends now, I think it really helped me to settle in and stay for the long-term. In the early days I probably would not have had an issue leaving after 4-5 years if a good enough opportunity came along, now it is not as easy, why abandon a comfortable life to start anew? In other words, I’m not in a rush to go anywhere. Not saying it’s not impossible, life happens and circumstances change, but so far the plan is to be here for anniversary number 14.