So what has changed in the Paranormal?

Not a lot. The pink bendy mirror thing has gone, replaced by a structure far more rectilinear and featuring (approx) 25,920 small silvery studs. It's probably an improvement. The impossible girl spent New Year in China and has returned, fattened out, to something possible. Danny is still louring in his corner. One beer and one Bailey's together costs less than just one beer in Doha (mine was the beer). More tomorrow.

The Flying Fickle Finger of Fashion

Blogger's new 'popular posts' gadget (right) is interesting. For one thing, it shows that readers and writers may have different ideas on what a blog is really about. The Paranormal has one spoof post about a gay bar in Doha and an even less serious one on Doha's lesbian scene. That's two posts out of more than two hundred. But these are the two that top the table for visitors. My challenge now is to write them out of the top spot but that's not going to be easy, given that everyone in the GLB World community who's contemplating a move to Doha inevitably does some research on Google and ends up here. I'm glad of the traffic of course, but it's not the Paranormal's core business.
Similarly, I'd be willing to bet that if BuJ Al Arab were to install the gadget, his hands down winner would be Farah Malhass, the Arab female bodybuilder, yet lady bodybuilders are hardly his core business either. (BuJ - please correct me if I'm wrong!)
The fun of blogging, for me at least, is not having any particular agenda and writing always on a whim. I would hate to be doing this for a living and having to woo the fickle click. But for anyone out there who needs a helping hand, haven't I just told you what to blog about?

Musheireb - now you see it, now you don't

Only a week separates these two pictures, taken from the roof of Doha Mercure (the Sofitel to its friends). That's how fast the old city is disappearing to make way for the new. The whole area from National to Boat Roundabout is now reduced to Rubble City. It's too late now, but somebody should have fitted a time lapse camera to Sofitel roof to record the disappearance of a city. A casual record can be found in the annals of this blog, but intermixed with so much fluff that I doubt it will ever feature in the National Archive.
On a happier note, The Paranormal blog will return to its roots this week, as Paraglider has a couple of days' work scheduled in Dubai.

Reticulated Moleskin Wipes

No, I haven't lost the plot completely. I just wanted to demonstrate to someone how easy it is to hit the top slot in the search engines if you choose a sufficiently obscure search string. As a wipe, natural moleskin is not very effective. Moles, after all, are designed - sorry, evolved - to slip through their tunnels, not to stick to the walls. But this is changed by the reticulation process. A properly reticulated moleskin wipe will remove dirt and grime from any smooth surface. Subsequent removal of said grime from the moleskin wipe is another matter, and one we needn't discuss here.
Now, to all the Chinese girls in the Paranormal and to Doha's Mandarin girls, a very happy New Year of the Rabbit!