Oman's Omens

 

At the outset, the plan sounded fool-proof.

Leave less than an hour before sundown, explore a site in order to lay a Hash run later in the week, and then return home to prepare dinner. In order to make the plan even more viable, it was decided that Silas would accompany me and that we would ride to and explore the proposed site with Heather, who has issues with depth perception when it gets dark and the terrain gets rough. Can you see where this is headed?

Heather had chosen the Hash site based on the fact that it is right off of the Lollipop Roundabout (aka The- Roundabout-to-Nowhere), which has a certain romantic appeal, especially as the sun is setting over this cement circle in the middle of a road that truly leads to nowhere. We headed off-road and plunged down the ungraded dirt path, severely testing the shocks on her Pajero, and rounded a bend to reveal a looming support wall for the new highway. This, we decided, would be the best location from which to start exploring.

Exciting stuff.

"That wadi," I pronounced, "is the best wadi. Let's look at that one first." I really had no idea where we were going but the wadi looked so inviting. I know, I know, you are thinking wadi like this, aren't you?



And it kind of was like this, minus the water. And the trees. And the cooling shade. And those plants on the left. Now throw in an uneven floor strewn with knee-deep sandy gravel and rocks that are slippery even when dry, and that was our wadi. It wasn't long before things started to look ominous.

Ominous sign #1: A giant grey and blue scorpion went shooting across our path and skittered under a rock. Or maybe it was a blue desert lizard. Ah, scorpion looks more ominous, doesn't it?



Ominous sign #2: A racer snake slithered under my boot, timing its plunge just right to make Heather shriek.

                           

Ominous sign #3: Somewhere someone began artillery practice, positioning the practice shots in such a manner that it sounded like they were taking potshots at us three idiots.

Ominous sign #4: The sun went down and we were a thirty minute walk up a wadi looking at The Old Man of Muscat aka Cock Rock before we noticed the sudden absence of light.

Ominous sign #5: Silas, the human GPS, began to advise us in the most grating, whining, cry-ridden voice that we were nowhere near where we thought we were.

I know, with the scorpion-lizard we should have packed it in for the day, but the Hash must go on. So on we  went.

"Not to worry!" I told Silas. "Just over that rise is the Lollipop Roundabout. We will just scale this massive, scree-ridden rock face and BOOM, we will be on the road and can walk back down to the car." Silas grabbed his crotch and jumped up and down, looking doubtful, shaking his head and protesting: "No! It's the other way! We are in the wrong place! This is all wrong!"

And sure enough he was right.

Just as full darkness fell, we were feeling fairly confident that we were back in the wadi we had originally wandered up, but the walk out was still fraught with stressful hyperventilation, silent thoughts of the feasibility of building a makeshift tent from four boot laces and a sweat-soaked t-shirt, and a curiosity regarding how long a quart of water and two shriveled dates might last three mildly-dehydrated individuals before we would be forced to eat one another.

I would like to use some colorful verb to describe the way we walked out of the wadi in the darkness. I was thinking "skipped" or "strode"--you know, something that would suggest we were full of confidence and overcoming the elements around us, but truthfully the best one I can come up with is that we "minced" out. As a matter of fact, I minced so carefully that I ended up mincing so very gracefully onto a snake.

The snake, not enjoying the mincing, began to flail--I could feel it knocking against my boot, and I could see its body in the dull light of the highway next to which we had parked. As an extra bonus, I could hear it hissing madly. At that point, well, I'll admit it--I screamed. This in turn caused Silas to scream continuously until Heather was ready to clock him and feed him to the wildlife. I jumped two and a half meters into the air, releasing the snake and calming Silas somewhat. Once the adrenalin levels had leveled off slightly, we set off again for the car, which we could now see under those lights, shining beacon-like. A Pajero never looked so inviting.

Thinking a goat path might be more snake-free than the rocks that we had been on, I carefully led Silas
toward the hard-packed dirt just visible 20 meters away, only to nearly step on another snake. Silas again started to scream, frozen into place, wailing, "A snake! A snake! A snake!" My suspicion is that Heather used some secret magic power to levitate him off the path and over this latest road block because from where I was standing it looked like there was no moving him.

The remaining three minutes' walk was punctuated by residual screams until we finally were safe again in the Pajero. However, it wasn't until we had climbed up the dirt road to the Lollipop Roundabout that we felt we had arrived back in civilization. And that roundabout? That is obviously not the Roundabout-to-Nowhere--it is the Snake Wadi Roundabout. And I do not recommend a nighttime visit. Especially with Silas.

Legally Yours...

It is time to unburden my soul and divulge that until last week I had been driving illegally here. For two years.

It started innocently enough. Upon arrival in Oman two years ago, I heard the rumor that it was okay to drive on an American driver's license for two months before getting one's Omani license. However, if one were unfortunate enough to hold an Indian license or an Armenian license, or a license from any one of countless and seemingly arbitrary countries, one would not be able to drive on one's home country's license. But being American does have its advantages and so away I drove.

Two months passed, and it just seemed so inconvenient to go down the road and obtain that Omani driver's license. And so the months dribbled by and before I knew it, a whole year had passed. Then in our second year, the ROP went through a stage where it was pulling people over and checking for licenses. Friends of mine got pulled over while still holding their British or Canadian licenses and the cops simply waved them on, reminding them very kindly to go down and get their Omani licenses.

I heard these stories and very quickly rationalized that if the only punishment I would receive was a kind smile and a badly constructed, grammatically incorrect reminder to get my Omani license, then I would just continue to drive illegally.

But then my husband started to hound me and so, in a moment of absolute obsequiousness, I agreed to be dragged down to the licensing center for the grand event, along with three whining children, two passport photos, one crabby husband, and a slew of documents, photos, and payment options. This promised to be an event.

At first blush, the office itself rivaled any Department of Motor Vehicles in the US. It was populated by disgruntled workers dressed in uncomfortable-looking clothing who were being stared down by a room full of individuals whose behinds looked like they had become fused to the seats upon which they had been sitting for quite possibly three to four hours. And of course there was the universal "PING" of numbers changing to call up the next individual.

And right smack in the middle of the entrance way, positioned in such a way that there was no way to skirt around it, was the Number Desk, run by the Number Desk Dude. His job was to scrutinize anyone who walked through the door and then thrust a number at them. He took his job very seriously, scrutinizing everyone carefully before blessing them with a number. And I should know, because he scrutinized me four times while I was there, beginning with the moment we walked through the door.

 The Number Dude did not speak. He simply arched an eyebrow as if wondering why I had walked into the licensing issuing center. So I did not speak either. I simply thrust my American license at him. He scrutinized and then thrust a number at me and waved me toward the Ladies Only seating area. Because I am a lady. Shocking, I know.

My number came up almost immediately which was disconcerting because my support crew (i.e. Tony) had stepped out to take the leaky Churtle to the toilet and I was left to forge this first interaction alone, armed with nothing but two photocopies of my license, my residency card, and the original of my American license. I dragged my heals over to window 2. "Lessons?" murmured the Licensing Lady.

"Yes." I had had lessons in driving long ago. Yes seemed the right answer to this.

"No. Lessons?"

"Um..." Where was Tony? "American license?"

"Yes!" She smiled and took my license. Duh. License, not lessons. Next question. "Coffee?"

"Yes?" Wow. Omani DMVs offer coffee? Sweet!

"Yes." And with that she grabbed the two photocopies from my hand. Copy, not coffee. 0 for 2.

The Licensing Lady then requested money: "200 baisa."

200 baisa. That's 50 cents US, or therebouts. Hmmm...what could this be for? I sat and pondered a bit too long because she again demanded 200 baisa. Was this a low-level bribe? A coffee fee? Copy fee? I lamely started, "My husband took my daughter to the toilet and he has all the money so..." She glared and then made her request, "200 baisa," and then shooed me away.

When Tony returned from the toilet he tucked 200 baisa in my hand, which I handed over to the License Lady in exchange for a blue and white form in Arabic. "Great. Arabic?" She nodded. My bureaucratic Arabic is about as fluent as my Sanskrit. She waved me off again to negotiate a translation from an unsuspecting bystander, which Tony managed to do within two and a half minutes.

Form filled in, I took it for another scrutinization from the Number Desk Dude. The Arabic must have been arresting because the Number Desk Dude smiled slightly as he punched up another number for me and waved me again toward the Ladies Seating. Once again, my number pinged up quickly and it was back to the Licensing Lady.

She read the form with great interest until her friend Licensing Man came through the side door. He had a quick chat with her, which sent her into gales of laughter and caused her to lose her place on my application so she had to start all over again reading all the intimate details that the nice Bystander had written. When she flipped the application over, though, she grimaced, pointed at a flimsy door, and said, "Go."

So I went. Inside the door were two ROP cadets clad in tan and sitting at a heavy, metal, government-issue desk with hands crossed, staring at the door through which I had just walked. As I walked in, one clapped and jumped to his feet. He handed me an eye cover and went over to an eye chart, pointing eagerly with his pen. He pointed. I read. He pointed again. I misread. He pointed again. I misread again. I must be getting old, but that's okay because he must be getting deaf; he made a note on my chart indicating that my eyesight is perfect...a seven out of seven!

Now back for another number from the Number Desk Dude. At this point we were getting to be quite good friends and he hardly needed to scrutinize at all as I was a known quantity. He simply slid yet another number toward me after only a cursory glance at my application.

What luck, I got to visit with a different bureaucrat this time--Licensing Lady's friend Licensing Man! He took my photos, perused all of the information on my form once again, looked carefully at my American license, asked, "Coffee?" to which I responded, "Yes" without expecting a cup of joe this time, and swiped the credit card.

"Okay," he said, returning my credit card. "Sit." So I sat, but only after consulting Number Desk Dude once more. After a mere 45 minutes I was holding my brand new Omani license, still warm from the laminater, and with an expiration date exactly 12 years in the future.

While it did not come with coffee, and no lessons were required, acquisition of my license did force a new appreciation in me for being a member of the fairer sex. While I breezed through the process in just under an hour, the legion of men who were there when I came in were still there when I walked out. Perhaps they were just there to observe the amazing efficiency with which Number Desk Dude and his associates were working. Or perhaps they were there to catch a couple episodes of HGTV as it was being shown on the overhead screens. Whatever their reasons for their extended stay at the Licensing Department, I breezed by them very happily on the way out, excited to finally be legal.

I Don't Eat That

Silas has learned how to read labels and in that learning he has become, well, somewhat intolerable.

So we were starved creatures one day while we were in Virginia, having just finished an exhausting tramp through the local library. The cure is to get a snack, obviously. However, as quickly as I could put yummy snacks into the basket, Silas tore them out again.

"No, Mom, not this applesauce. I won't eat it."

"What? Okay. How bout some granola bars?"

"No."

"How about these nuts? Some juice? Crackers?"

"No, Mom. It all has high fructose corn syrup in it." He placed everything back on the shelf methodically but sternly, as if he were the newest Anti-Corn Syrup Enforcement unit. And finally, after nestling the last item--some lovely peaches in light syrup--back on the shelf, he gently sat down on the floor and buried his face in his hands. "I can't eat anything here!"

And he didn't. Somewhere along the way he blithely jumped onto the "I-don't-eat-high-fructose-corn-syrup" wagon and waved at us as it pulled away. I, however, was too busy doing something...something...who knows what. I never saw him make that jump until it was too late.

Our entire summer was spent with Silas sneakily reading labels and refusing the sweet stuff. At one point as he went whizzing down a gigantic hill in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, he yelled, "I don't like the United States for eating but I love it for the bike rides! Yahooooooooo!"

So now we have returned to Oman, where finding much of anything that contains high fructose corn syrup is a challenge, and the boy is like a starved dog outside of a sausage factory. He sucks the air up in great greedy gulps, dissecting the odors that are all around us. "Oooo...I can smell curry. Oh, is that adobo? Mmmmm...I smell someone cooking rotis."

The air is thick right now with the heat and humidity of the end of summer, but the ocean breezes are starting to give us an occasional cooling puff and carry the smell of food far from the place it is cooked. This morning, in the quiet just after fajr...the dawn prayer...I was wrapped in a blanket of ocean air and then the breeze shifted and I was surrounded by the aromas of what smelled like Filipino food--garlic, vinegar, soy sauce, coconut oil. If Silas had been out with me, he would have left a trail of drool back to the house.

And it smelled like breakfast. But not the kind with corn syrup in it, for that would make the boy child cry.

German Lessons

Germany is closed on Sundays. This is what you learn when you fly with a six-year-old tyrant who has an earache and needs a strong infusion of ibuprofen. Or an attitude adjustment.

Germany is also a place that makes nine-year-old boys giggle because innocuous German words look like naughty English ones.

To go to Germany as a non-German-speaking-mother-turned-tour-guide was, as a good friend suggested, possibly one of the oddest things I have ever done. The internet was loathe to give up its secrets regarding what a family could do in Germany, aside from drink beer and eat sausages. While Tian was extremely eager to undertake the drinking of beer if only to secure bragging rights, I was not so enthusiastic about the proposition. Imagine.

So at first blush Germany did not promise much in the way of a good time for my accompanying minors, but the stopover was courtesy of the Sultan so stop we did, and learn I did. But I didn't run into Yoda.

Not surprising, my children had an agenda upon touch-down in Franfort. Item number one on their list was pork sausage acquisition. Within Frankfort Airport, aside from a small city's worth of pharmacies, grocery stores, and bookstores, is a sausage store that serves up grilled tubes of meat at all hours of the day.

Having forgotten that much of the Western world thrives on astonishing serving sizes we each ordered a plate of sausages with french fries. We also forgot that pork takes some getting used to after 9 months away from the stuff. That is as far as Tian could get on her plate. Sad stuff, I know.

A train ride out of the airport propelled us into the countryside before we could say "Sparkasse", and landed us in Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

This was the most German town we four tourists had ever seen (outside of Germany at Busch Gardens Williamsburg) and we learned that it is the only town in Germany that has a chemist who is open on a Sunday and willing to sell painkillers for a six-year-old tyrant. We also learned the value of brushing teeth at least once in 24 hours, as well as what it takes to make three children look abandoned within the town square of any given European city. 

There is great value in sleeping on a stranger's floor, especially when that stranger also has a boy who loves to make fart noises and can play a mean game of war.

  This may have been the most powerful lesson that we learned in Germany, and the one I most want my children to take away from these years of being able to travel the world. Strangers are not strangers after just a few hours spent together. Imagine what would happen if we would require soldiers and generals from opposing sides of  any battle to have a sleepover. One evening spent making fart noises, running around in town, and eating spaghetti does so much to allow one person to know another.

We learned so much in Germany in 72 hours that our heads still spin with the experience, and when the once-stranger's mother and I mentioned that this arrangement we had undertaken--an American family sleeping peacefully on the floor of a German family--would not have been possible not so many decades ago, the children were baffled. Inconceivable. How could this not have been possible at any point in time? We had such fun.

And Germany does have a lot to do. Especially for families. Anybody up for a German excursion next summer?

Did You See That? Never Mind.

Seals. They lay around on flat surfaces. They make funny noises. And they must eat a lot judging from their size.

Silas. He lays around on flat surfaces. He makes funny noises. And he eats a lot. Obviously my son gives all signs and indications of being a seal. And yet recently he has begun to move away from sealdom and toward what may be a promising future in...noticing things. Sometimes. Okay, rarely. Maybe.

A few days ago, Tehva poured herself a bowl of Heart-to-Heart Kashi cereal. You know, the kind that resembles little hearts in structure and sweetened cardboard in taste and texture. As Tehva poured on the organic whole milk, rejoicing in her new found ability to fill a bowl to the rim without spilling a drop, tiny black bugs floated to the top.

"Ewwwww!" Tehva whined. "There are bugs in my cereal!" I gave Tehva a Tupperware and showed her how to skim the bugs off the surface and into the Tupperware so that she could chow down on a bug-free breakfast. (Of course she ate it! That was organic milk and that stuff ain't cheap!) Silas silently looked on and then uttered a single syllable: "Ew." See? He noticed!

And then we visited Jamestown National Park, nestled along the James River. We were all peering intently at an archaeologist screening dirt in order to find tiny bits, heads bent in concentration, knotted tightly in a group of tourists, when suddenly Silas screamed, "Whoa! Mom! Look!" Everyone paused and did a collective readjustment, squinting or bowing heads to look more closely at the dirt in front of us. "Look! A cargo ship! On the river!" What an observant boy.

And then there was the top of the hour news stories that we were listening to on NPR the other day. After the five minutes of talk about Syria, Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan, and American troops, Silas sighed. "Why is this always about war?" Wow. He noticed and judging from his use of the word "always" he has noticed this trend before. I was nearly dancing in the driver's seat.

A Google search on "observation skills in boys" yields nearly one and a half million hits, so obviously someone other than Silas has issues with this. The first thought that comes to mind when I consider his inability to see any further in front of him than a video game at arm's length is to Google, "Ways to improve observational skills in boys." All of the solutions that surface are decidedly feminine and include sketching flowers, writing journals, and staring for long periods at photos of random individuals doing odd things like wearing umbrellas on their heads (my apologies to you men out there who enjoy such activities...I didn't say you were feminine...please keep your head. Er, heads?). And Silas is so not into any of those things.

My intention by doing this search, of course, was to find a way to incorporate observational skill development into this year's curriculum along with the thousand other things we all hope to incorporate in the school day. However, this past year I came to realize that in my little homeschool there is not enough time for everything I (or they) want to study, and that even if we really really want to study something, most days we are mentally finished by 2 p.m. And that's on a good day.

And so if anyone out there has any ideas about ways to develop observation skills in boys that don't involve flowers, sketching, writing long entries in journals, or bizarre photos, please let me know.

Fahal Island Swim Complete

Swimming is hard work and my body is not designed for it. Period. Or, as Tehva now likes to say, "Full stop." But, in the name of non-aerodynamic people everywhere, I decided to give this Fahal Island thing a go.

In the weeks leading up to the actual swim, info leaked down the chain to reach me and said information would either paralyze me with fear or lend a brief respite from the nerves: "My friend Mohammed says that he was fishing at Fahal Island last weekend and the waters were teeming with bull sharks!" This riveting story falls into the paralyzing category--bull sharks are known as vicious long-distance swimmer consumers, at least in my imagination.

"My friend Adel was out fishing near Fahal Island last weekend and he said the waters were full of jellyfish!" This allayed my nerves because I figured that bull sharks must hate jellyfish as much as I do and, thus, they would stay away.

"A few years back they cancelled the Fahal Island Swim because of ..." fill in the blank with a.) red tides; b.) choppy seas; c.) bull shark invasions. In fact, two days before the swim the sky over Muscat looked like this:

 and I thought, "Oooo, with those clouds I bet the seas around Fahal Island will be rough on Thursday. Maybe it will even be cancelled!" And yet Thursday dawned and the sea was like glass--somewhat choppy glass. Okay, it looked glassish between the teeny-tiny waves.

But there were no bull sharks evident and so I donned my highly attractive red swim cap and into the water I went,

along with 87 of my closest friends, only one of whom saw a shark. Kathy very wisely kept her mouth closed regarding the shark which, she later said, looked very confused about the sudden and unexpected presence of 5 power boats, 70 kayaks, one stand and paddle board, one canoe, and 88 humans 4 kilometers offshore. See the one with the goggles and red swim cap? That's Marlee, our "trainer". See the other one with the red swim cap and goggles? That's Nick. He backstroked the whole 4 km!

The Fahal Island Swim is a BYOKayak event (old lady sunglasses not required) and so I brought my own. Isn't he cute? If this were an endurance event in the USA, I would suspect that the requirement of a support boat was an avoiding-litigation thing. In Oman, I would suspect it has something more to do with safety, shipping lanes, and potential bull sharks. At any rate, finding my support kayak in the midst of the other 160 bobbing beings proved to be less of a challenge than I had been warned, mostly because no one else's kayaker was wearing granny glasses.

The swim, once it began, felt easy and smooth. The water was a perfect temperature. The "smell bands" that sometimes permeate the waters off the coast of Oman were absent that far out. Instead, my nose was filled with off-gassing from the brand new red swim cap I was wearing (required by the FIS organizers), the fumes from the support boat that was supporting two nearby swimmers, and the sudden need to vomit that overtook me about a kilometer into the swim.

I will spare you the gory details but simply add that it is possible to vomit in the sea and not drown while expelling one's...you get the picture, even though my kayaker didn't. Instead of photographing the vomit incident, he reportedly was waiting for me to drown and, at the same time, considering jumping to my rescue. This, however, would have endangered his old lady glasses and so he remained safely within his kayak.

Two hours on and I discovered that my plan to swim the right way had resulted in actually swimming the wrong way. In this photo you can see the point toward which I was told repeatedly NOT to swim.  But not to worry, it ended being a very scenic point to tootle around, and harbored all sorts of reef fish and a black and white speckled manta ray. 

Out of the water at 2 hours and 19 minutes. I finished in the bottom ten percent of the pack but I finished! No bull sharks sited.

Omanization

This country is going through the sometimes painful process of Omanization, and I have realized this because our toilets stink.

Now that the temperature of our tap water hovers at a steady 120 degrees F, the bacteria have taken over and the stink seems here to stay. On top of that, one of the pipes that connects the toilet to the wall (and ostensibly the plumbing system behind the wall) has begun leaking, leaving a sludgy puddle on the floor, and the shower plunger no longer works on the garden tub in the master suite.

As we are merely squatters here, we do not have to deal with these problems directly. Instead we can call the landlord, who is actually a very attentive guy, but who is not so talented with plumbing.

The landlord's solution to the toilet leak and chronic puddling was to come up, pinch the pipe a few times, and advise that we begin to turn off the water supply to the toilet tank when it is not needed, which means that the toilet doesn't get flushed as regularly as it used to, and that leads to more stink.

More stink led us to our friendly neighborhood Carrefour for more toilet cleaner, which we go through at a frightening pace. In the States in our little three bedroom rancher with one bathroom, we went through one bottle a year. Here we have gone through approximately 143 bottles since our arrival in Oman nearly two years ago.

So we were prowling through the aisles of Carrefour, sniffing the different toilet cleaner flavors when we drifted around the corner to the sugar aisle and found ourselves face-to-face with what looked a heck of a lot like a fellow American. "Are you British?" she asked in a lovely Mid-Western accent. "Because I just heard you say the word 'sugar' and you sound like you are British (can you really tell that from just the word 'sugar'?--apparently not) and I really need someone to tell me about all these different British sugars..."

We then stood for ten minutes, as one will, chatting about sugar crystals; however, eventually the conversation ambled, as it will in countries where a certain percentage of the population makes way too much money, to hiring a reliable driver here. She recounted her trials with her current-but-soon-to-be-fired Omani driver who spent the majority of his time fiddling with the automatic locks in the car, and his absolute inability to open the door for her or to accept the wages she offers. She finally threw her hands up and swore that she would next hire an Indian. They, after all, will open the door for an employer and happily accept those wages. And I guess they can keep their fingers off of the auto-lock button.

This begs the question, how much should one pay a driver who is on duty just until 2 p.m. and is only accountable for driving one expat oil worker's wife to the gym, social engagements, and the mall each day? Apparently not as much as the Omanis are asking.

Back to the house and fast forward four weeks, which brings us to today. A person who knows about plumbing is in the bathroom fiddling with the pipes and apparently having some success. He is not Omani, naturally. I have just returned from another ordeal at the grocery store, where the executives in charge of decision-making cannot decide whether they want to employ Omanis who are generally nightmarish at the registers but are, in the end, Omani, or they want to employ Filipinos, who are lovely and efficient at the registers but are decidedly NOT Omani.

Last week my checkout girl was Filipino. She did all the things we Americans like: she smiled and greeted me before she started scanning everything. She didn't stop to examine her nails half way through the job. She   didn't stop at any point to chat amicably with her BFF who just happened to wander up. She very ably scanned everything on the belt and did not bark at me to slide my own bag of flour/6-pack of sodas/insert- any-item-weighing-over-2-pounds here.

Today my checkout girl was Omani. It pained me to watch her scan my order, mostly because, before she scanned anything, she first asked me in Arabic, "Is this yours?" Then, in spite of my answer to the affirmative regarding the case of water, she refused to scan it as it was too big and heavy for her to move along the belt. Instead she told the man standing behind me to pick it up and hand it to me. I frankly am not sure if it ever got scanned. Such is the price of Omanization.

This is such a trigger topic and everyone here has an opinion. Of course it is necessary to have a population that is trained to take care of itself, even in the most rudimentary ways. The gas money will not last forever and, when it is gone, it will be up to the Omanis to fix their own toilets, scan their own groceries, sweep their own streets, flip their own burgers, repair their own cars, do their own ironing, clean their own houses, and raise their own children.

And yet, as we are witnessing here, these jobs make for dirty dishdashas and broken fingernails and as of right now no one in a white dishdasha or with a nice manicure seems to want to do them, which makes for lots of jobs for the rest of us. But only until the petroleum money is gone or until there is another political swing and it is decided once again to strictly enforce the employment of Omanis in jobs which they clearly don't want to do.

Long live Omanization. It makes for good entertainment at the very least.