Coffee at sunset

Life as an 'ex-pat' can be difficult socially. The most difficult thing, from my point of view, is friendships. Due to the nature of ex-pat living, people don't really stay too long in one place and so relationships become very transitory as people come and go so often. Added to that, there's always seems to be a 'having run away from something' element to people that end up in Oman making them...a bit...strange.

Yup, that's definitely the word; strange.

In my two years here, I can count on one hand the amount of people I could call 'mates'; nice, normal people you can have a laugh with and vent your frustrations out on without being judged, labelled and outcast (sadly, an all too familiar pattern out here).

One of those mates is John, pictured here about to enjoy a steaming mocha and a good bitch about today's events in the 'office'. Under my careful 'STOP! LEFT! RIGHT A BIT! TOWARDS ME A BIT!' instructions, he posed for this shot only on the condition that I Blip it for his 15 minutes of fame.

It is my pleasure, dude.