Well this has been an incredible experience thus far.
It has been hard work to get here.
Fare-welling friends & family with phone calls, dinners, texts & hugs.
It's taken some conviction & belief to get here.
Conviction that adventure is good for me & belief that even doing something as radically bizarre as this- I will have everything I need.
Flying with Emirates was beautiful, apart from having to rapidly shed 5 kilos under a tree in the corner of the airport.
This 5 kilo loss didn't involve dieting or star jumps- only handing stuff I didn't really need over to Z, S & H.
Fear was there, but unfortunately I missed Valerie.
It was a long flight, one I unfortunately think I don't want to do again too quickly.
I watched bits of 3 Arabic movies, trying to learn, gauge something of the culture without understanding a word- the movies being sans subtitles.
None of the movies looked very Omani to me, more Indian & Turkish.
The usual fare of life; love, affairs, loneliness, wealth & poverty.
Knowing that the world is a small digital world made it easier. Also that people get on with their lives & that the suburbs, at the end of the day, wouldn't miss me at all.
(लेटर ठाट वीक...)
Dubai airport- So massive, bright and busy.
It wasn't the curvaceous, glassy architecture that shocked me, it was all the transit people asleep in dozens along the corridors and under benches.
Some young & Asian sleeping on their packs, some covered from head to toe in their native wraps. Unconscious, & uncomfortably close.
My immediate impression of Muscat, the taxi drivers offered me lifts, but not too pushily.
The heat & the sunshine blinding.
The following morning that I discovered Muscat bakery and began my unhealthy addiction to Indian instant coffee & pies that aren't called pies. Their fillings are vegetarian & spicy, or beef and rough, their shapes odd and curious.
The bakery guys were the first people I learned the local currency on. Which red note is 5, & which red note is 1OMR.
Jet lag was a strange beast. Not knowing sometimes if I should sleep or walk, eat or vomit, be alone or try company.
From there, life just starts to become normal- in a completely different way, in a completely different place.
(Later that week...)
It's all going quite tremendously.
I'm loving being here, but the heat, once I get happily & enthusiastically thru the day, all I want to do, after some kai & a little reading & perhaps a walk, is to nap!
In Muscat Oman, & its very 1st world in a lot of ways, & also very 3rd world in others.
& the nz dollar shrinks to a pesso when you leave nz.
I'm working back in the 70s- with Chalk!
My apartment is dead cute.
Very happy with it. A little noisy, & not everything works... but it's a palace to me. :)
I'm enjoying my wee bachelor pad.
So, on the whole…
It's Hot!
It's pretty strange!
Keep wishing me luck!
ways good company.
