Whirlwind Week

This week is brought to you by the letter “B” for BUSY.

C will be working long and late hours at the film festival and I will be attending the film festival!

The night before last was the Qatar Professional Women’s Network (QPWN) after work networking event. I am truly enjoying this group and the friendly ladies that I meet there. It is a great mix of people – some coming to just meet and talk to new people, others who are there to network and others still who are entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs be it with a new business, idea or cause.

I bought tickets to their launch event as well – www.qpwn.org has all the details but it is the official kick off to the group and a year end celebration that feature some leading local (female) leaders.

Last night we went to Katara in the new cultural village to the open air theatre for the opening of the festival and to see “Hors la Loi” (Outside the Law), which was a French/Algerian production about the Algerian freedom movement (FLN) spanning from 1925 to the late 1950s.

It was a very good movie but I unfortunately I didn’t see the end…it was very hot and humid in the open air theatre and the seats were quite uncomfortable (think McMahon Stadium style flip downs but with fake leather coating…sweaty!). I didn’t get dinner as I had to go right from work and we arrived early to get seats (that turned out to not be required) and then of course the movie started 40 minutes late. I was sweating and sweating. And I only had 2 small bottles of water (although I had 2 litres during the day) and we were so packed in I didn’t drink them because it was a huge pain to get up and get out to the bathroom. I made it through nearly 2 hours and then I started to feel like I was going to be sick. So I tried to drink some water but it wasn’t helping. My friends who had come with me where also uncomfortable so we left – but I was quite dizzy and nearly didn’t quite make it down the stairs before I went over to the portable toilets and started heaving. I was so incredibly hot. One of my friends happens to be an emergency room nurse so she ushered me to the ambulance that was air conditioned and I laid down and tried to cool off. I started to shiver and then the cramps hit. Thankfully my friend L was able to get us a lift back to the car and she drove me to where C was so he could pick me up. Diagnosis: heat exhaustion! OJ, water, shower and bed. Guess I need to acclimatize myself better! I really need some clothes that are more suited for the heat (that aren’t revealing of course).

The part of the movie that I saw was very good, although it was too long. But I hope that it all ended well without too much more bloodshed (violent time, violent movie) but I imagine there was a lot more destruction before the resolution.

Tonight is the Arab Short Programme and it appears that I may have been able to get Kevin Spacey tickets thanks to the very kind F&R – I will keep you posted.

Salma Hyek is a judge and already over at City Center were C is working – lucky him!