French Lessons

Now that S the Wunder Domestic has the house well in hand as evidenced here both by her salad,

as well as here by my newfound ability to lay in one place and enjoy bonbons and National Geographic,












we have become a stop on the Europe-Dubai-Muscat-India-Muscat-Dubai-Europe trail. As matter of fact, if things carry on in the same way that they are headed now, we will soon have our own entry in Lonely Planet.

 

We have joined couchsurfing.org, the website that matches travellers up with potential hosts all over the globe. And right now everyone in chilly Europe (more specifically, Germany) wants to come to Muscat, and they all seem to be seeking space on our third floor.  Frankly, it seems to be the cat that is attracting everyone to stay with us as, more often that not, people's request to crash at our place begins with, "Nice cat".

At first, we joined couchsurfing in order to find a place to stay in Germany other than a hotel as staying in a hotel has become increasingly challenging as the children have become larger and noisier. For one thing, we can no longer hide them in pillow cases and sneak them into a double room which means we actually have to pay for them.

And for another, they make so much noise that the hotel guests around us increasingly have to resort to borrowing broom handles from housekeeping in order to bang on the ceiling and shut them up. Then there was the time that Tehva was discovered at 5:30 a.m. wandering around reception naked. And the time that Tian got a massive nosebleed and drenched a hotel's mattress, two pillows, and sheet set after a long flight.

Hotels have become a last resort.

Now that we have done our surfing, we have graduated to host status on couchsurfing which means that complete strangers write out of the blue and ask terribly nicely whether or not they can stay at our place, share our chow, and get pointers as to where to visit.

I am such a sucker that I almost always say yes and Tony, playing the part of the beleaguered spouse, says, "Whatever," and before we know it we are preparing the third floor for another visitor. Silas goes upstairs and puts clean sheets on the bed, arranges towels, and writes notes of welcome in the language of wherever the Surfers are from. Tian sweeps out all the corners and cleans like the obsessive soul that she is. Tehva mostly yells at the other two as they busybody about.

Our Surfers thus far have mainly come from Germany, although we have also hosted Americans and, more recently, someone from France--Nordine. Nordine made couchsurfing exactly what it is supposed to be--an exchange of ideas, an education on both sides, and a feeling of joy at being with and connecting to other people.

He determined that he would teach the children some French during his time with us and then devoted afternoons and evenings to getting them to at least listen to and understand some of the language. He sang them songs in French and filled the memory of one of the computers with programs and music for children. He brought cakes and treated all of us to shwarma. He took Silas and Tian up the waterfall inside the swim-through cave in Wadi Shaab and scared the crap out of them by jumping from high ledges.

Thanks to falafelfeast.blogspot.com!

 

In the car, as we drove here or there, he let Tehva play with his iPhone, wearing the battery down to nothing while using a geography app. We talked food, education, travel, culture, identity, the future, the past, and connected so strongly that on so many levels that Tony and I started to suspect that we were long lost family of some sort. You know, that French side of the family.

He not only surfed our couch...he made a huge positive impact on our family, and that is the kind of education I was hoping for for all of us when we came here.




 

Confession #1

Yes, yes, it's been awhile, hasn't it? Actually I have been writing this post in my head for ages, trying to find a way to throw this on the table. Its admission speaks tomes about shifts in our collective mentality as a family living in the Middle East.

We have hired a house maid.

There. It is now out in the open and thus allows an examination of its implications from all angles.

Yes, we have a house maid. How we came to employ a housemaid is pretty straightforward. We simply convinced ourselves that by employing this woman, whom I will call S, we would be doing her a world of good by supplying her with an extra bit of money. Naturally we would be doing her far more good than she would be doing us.

By convincing ourselves of the goodness of our deed, we handily steered past the need to consider the fact that we not only would be underpaying (by American standards, although not by Omani standards) this woman severely but would be doing so quite happily simply because "everyone else is doing it."

Done.

I found myself needing to unburden my soul to someone within minutes of this monumental decision and upon confessing to a friend was met with a snort of laughter and a sarcastic, "Oh, well, how civilized of you. And she's only coming in two days a week? Well that makes it all right then, doesn't it?"

Doesn't it?

Another friend, also an American, sat with a shocked expression on his face and finally managed a "Wow. That's very colonial of you."

It is? Yes, I suppose it is.

As an individual with almost no experience in employing and underpaying people for menial tasks, I realized I had a long way to go and a lot to learn when it comes to having domestic help. And what better person to guide me through the ins and outs of this than the housemaid herself. On our first meeting, I confessed that I was not sure how to have a housemaid and asked if she could help me know how to do things. "Yes, of course," S replied. "I have been a housemaid for 18 years. I know just what to do. I will teach you."

On her first day of whipping my house into shape, I got up early and cleaned so that S would not think us total slobs. I also made the kids get up early and do their chores so that S would not think our children lazy. Silas was hanging underwear on the back balcony when S arrived, which painted the picture of non-laziness that I was desiring.

S took a quick inventory of my cleaning supplies and a walking tour of the Marble Mansion and, I suspect, secretly divined that we were in fact total slobs. Not only that, but she quickly decided that we were completely lacking on the cleaning supply front and placed an order for all sorts of scrubby things and chemicals that I had never considered necessary purchases during my time here. Now, however, I own them all plus I have spares, just in case. Gotta keep S happy.

Having gotten all of that nonsense sorted, she launched into a bi-weekly ritual that we now have down pat. S arrives at an ungodly hour two mornings a week, which is a challenge as it means that I have to get up even earlier to arrange the house into some semblance of order. She traumatizes the cats with the vacuum and then sets about mopping and scrubbing while I jump around the swishing mop and try to get breakfast made for the kids.

S hugs the children as they get up, encourages them with their studies. and generally plays the good patient mother-figure while I step on cats and slop tea on the floor in an attempt to stay out of her way while feeding the children. We then leave the house for the school's morning exercise routine, but not until I have plunked a bag of produce on the counter and asked S to work a miracle.

She asks, "Supper, ma'am?"

And I say, "Yes. Here is a bag of ____________" (fill in the blank...okra, eggplant, lentils, tomatoes, wilted green stuff, etc.)

S eyes the bag suspiciously and then says, "Ok, how bout ________________" (fill in the blank with some Sri Lankan word that I have not heard before).

I nod and then walk out the door.

We come home an hour later and S has taken that one bag of veggies and from it made an enormous pot of rice, a beautiful salad with colorful vegetables arranged in rings, a curry, and a cooked vegetable dish. I have come to suspect that Jesus may have been something of a Sri Lankan housemaid what with that loaves and fishes trick.

This is all well and good, but there is more to it than this. Having a housemaid means that we really live in the Gulf now. It is like putting pictures up on the wall, or planting annuals in a flower bed around your house. Having a housemaid says, "I have bought into this culture." In a sense, the housemaid thing is expected of residents of the Gulf, whether expat or local, and truthfully everyone here seems to have at least one housemaid. As a matter of fact, our landlord has two housemaids, plus a houseboy and a driver. Tony says that when he gets seven cars he too will employ an underpaid driver.

So that is our latest confession from Oman. Tune in next time for another stunning confession from the Middle East. I will leave you guessing...

I Think I Just Drooled on Myself

Aside from the fact that Oman is seriously lacking on the affordable English-medium school front, and I am doing a little something about that, this post has very little to do with Oman. For those of you who troll the blog in order to live vicariously through me, sorry, this one is a bit of a downer. I promise the next blog will deal with the new housemaid or the return of the Big Car, or something equally expatty.

No, this blog is about The School and the six children I pack into it every day.

That's right, my little school has grown again to six warm bodies, with two tweeny girls in to replace the two boys who left at the end of last year for greener pastures. Our school, which last year was pure insanity punctuated by small stretches of intense concentration, has become a place of surface calm. However, with the introduction of more girls, it is now also a sounding place for anxieties great ("My mom is so down today") and small ("I think my armpits stink. Do you have any deodorant I can borrow?")

Silas, who never enjoyed being part of the masculinity movement last year, has asked twice recently when we are going to get more boys. "Honestly, Silas? You didn't even like having boys here last year. They were too loud for you, remember?" And then he remembers and drifts off to bemoan the fact that he has to spend several hours every day bending to someone else's will, with that someone being me.

Ya' know, I just want to put this on the table right here...girls are a whole different ball of wax from boys. Perhaps my late realization of this fact is one of the reasons that the international schools here have been loathe to give me any consideration at all in their hiring over our two years here.

But boys...boys go for long stretches without noticing anything aside from their impulses--whether that is to jump on the nearest boy or spray water on the cat sauntering by. And then they will buckle down for fifteen to twenty minutes of glorious and intense concentration, pounding through an hour's worth or work in record time. They roll all over the floor, fiddle with tidbits, clap loudly, fart, scream, and generally raise the dead, but they get their stuff done without much more than loud noises.

Then there are girls. Girls want to discuss everything, intensely negotiating several facets of the assignment before anything has even begun. Then they will sometimes commence their work by commenting on their general inability to do what is in front of them. They comment on how stupid they are, or act the cheerleader, telling one another to be confident in their abilities. They hem and haw and chit and chat. Finally, in the end, they get on with it and finish their work very competently, usually with a flourish and an extra spritz of deodorant, just for good measure.

In my ongoing endeavor to console myself that this is all good, I have been cruising other home schoolers' blogs as well as teachers' blogs for the answer to the never-answerable query: Is this girl thing normal? And the thing is, I don't find much commentary on this phenomenon. I do find lots of talk about teaching boys but I don't find much on the girl thing.

Strangely enough, this negotiatory behavior seems normal for my five girls--it's beginning to feel like a compulsion, this rearranging their thinking and developing their communication abilities while they chatter amongst themselves. And their chatter is somewhat exhausting, full of language that suggests they are both doubting their abilities and supporting and encouraging one another--like a manic school day each and every day without the option for medication.

I am intrigued by these girly girls as I am not sure I ever was one. At any rate, by the end of each day I am fairly exhausted by the split-personality mood they set and, thus, I think I just drooled on myself. Don't worry, happens all the time.

I Swear...It Was an Accident

Tehva is trying really hard these days to figure out how far she can take the word, "accident". She will clock her brother and swear it was an accident...drive her sister batty by making off with her pencil during school and claim, "Oops...accident." She will pick the cat up by the collar and claim ignorance of the fact that the cat was slowly asphyxiating because, "It was an accident."

Just the usual violent tendencies that every first grader has, right?

Perhaps there is something in the water here...desalination does carry its risks, doesn't it?...but I think Tony and our lovely big blue Hyundai Santa Fe met Tehva's behavior doppelganger last night. Don't worry, though, it was an accident.

Road rules are a bit fuzzy here, but only after you have taken your driving test. While you are taking your driving test (which costs $60 a pop payable directly to the instructor) the rules are strict and unbending. As a matter of fact, statistically speaking, you have a 99% chance of failing the test the first seven times you take it, unless you are a leggy Russian blonde...that segment of the population passes on the first try 100% of the time, or so I hear. Being neither blonde nor leggy...nor Russian now that I think of it...I know about the Russian pass rate only based upon gossip, which, you probably know by now, is the main source of reliable info in Muscat.

But I digress. As I had begun, road rules are a bit fuzzy here once you hold your license. As soon as that card is in your hand, speeding maniacally while flashing your headlights and nearly rear-ending someone to get them to move out of the passing lane becomes legal. Actually, speeding for any reason becomes legal. Changing lanes without signaling? Legal. Drag racing down public thoroughfares? Legal. Passing in no passing zones? Totally legal.

And overtaking on the left while the person in front of you is making a left hand turn also is legal. Especially when you have had six previous accidents, drive a Mercedes-Benz, and rolled the Lexus you had owned previously.

Let me pull my tongue out of my cheek in order to inform you that Tony, Silas, Tian, and the Santa Fe were on the receiving end of the "legal" left turn, while I was at home with Tehva trying to get dinner finished like the responsible housewife that I am. Thus, I was only allowed to bear witness to the aftermath of the accident. However, when we pulled up in the plastic Kia Rio I was hardly prepared to see the front end of my car laying in the middle of the road, the left bearing jutting out from the left wheel well, and the headlamps dangling like disconnected eye sockets.

"It was an accident," shrugged Tony, as a figure in a black abaya skittered away from the wreck and climbed into a fancy saloon car off to the side. The other victim, the aforementioned  Mercedes, appeared largely unscathed, although it seemed to be haemorhaging oil the longer I stared at it. And the longer I stared, the more I noticed that there was an inordinate amount of traffic on this dead end road, and that the men driving those cars were attracted like moths to flames by the spectacle of five whities standing in the middle of the road staring dumbly with, "Whadda we do now" expressions on their faces.

It occurred to us as we stood there that we really had no clue how to proceed with an accident report in Oman. What's more, aside from the words, sierra, tissa riyal, haram, mobile, and maktab, I could understand almost nothing of what was being discussed between the men who had shown up on the scene. The growing cast of characters gradually, and very kindly, introduced themselves like a misplaced wedding party--"I am the Husband. I am sorry for my wife's behavior." "I am the Brother. This is not my sister's first accident." "I am the Random Stranger who speaks English. I have come to watch the show." "I am the Towtruck Driver. I sweat a lot."

We did an inordinate amount of standing around, just the nine of us. Strangely, the perpitrator who had slunk off after the crash never did turn up on the scene again...she just sort of disappeared and left the boys to work things out. We negotiated who was to blame--the men decided that the woman was definitely to blame. We chatted with the police, who did nothing more than examine Tony's license. And then we were told who would pay. 

We would.

We were told our insurance would pay because in Oman that is what we do. No, no, that is not called insurance fraud...that is called taking care of one another. Not having been aware that I was inadvertently living in a communist state, I was confused, and even now the logic continues to baffle and amaze me. I guarantee there is more to it than that, but that is the essence of the reason that we were given for our insurance paying.

As we gathered up the last miscellaneous bits and pieces of our car, the Husband philosophically intoned, "It was an accident but no one was hurt, hamdulillah. And money comes and goes, but life is precious, hamdulillah." And then he shook Tony's hand and walked off.

Like I said, nothing to worry about. It was just an accident.













 

Protests...Or Not

On Thursday, this message made its way through the cell phone/email grapevine:

Demonstrations have begun in front of the U.S. Embassy in Muscat. It is possible that the demonstrations could grow in size. U.S. Embassy personnel have been instructed to avoid the area of the Embassy. There may also be additional protests in the coming days. In light of recent attacks against U.S. missions in Cairo, Benghazi, and Sanaa, U.S. Embassy Muscat is carefully monitoring the current security situation in Muscat and throughout the country.
We remind U.S. Citizens to avoid areas where demonstrations are occurring, and recommend that you avoid the Embassy area. Even protests that are intended to be peaceful can turn confrontational and possibly escalate into violence. As always, please be aware of your surroundings and monitor local media.

The Embassy advises U.S. citizens to maintain valid travel documents and enroll with the Department of State through the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program. By enrolling, U.S. citizens make it easier for the Embassy to contact them in case of emergency.

And with that, a flurry of forwarded messages commenced, finally resolving in a repetition of the same message upon everyone's phones until we were all whipped into a frothing frenzy.

Then the frightening thought arose: 
Where do we go if we have to get out fast? And what do we take? What would happen to our house? Our cat? Our cars? Our stuff? Crap, where are the passports?

Rational thought counters:
Come on, this has happened in every foreign country in which I have lived. It happened in Korea after an American army tank accidentally plowed two little girls walking home from school.

It happened in China in the early 1990s as the Taiwan issue arose again. An American aircraft carrier positioned itself in the wrong place in relation to Taiwan, and for a week solid there were air force jets doing low fly-bys over our little town. We had black out practices nightly. Students anonymously left disturbingly ungrammatical and what I construed as possibly threatening letters on my podium: "Okay, teacher. I sorry. American home. Good bye. You!"

It happened last year when Da Boys started using their local grocery stores as torches.

But it all blew over.

But then another frightening thought arose:
Where will we go if we have to leave? Do we bag it and just head back to the home country? Where can we drive that would offer some sort of safe harbor--not Yemen. Duh. Do we go and bunk up with friends in India--but what about the visa? Maybe we could jump the border to the UAE--no visa required there but will they have protests, too?

Rational thought counters again:
Get the lowdown of what's happening on the streets.

We did what many did and visited this link:

http://www.muscatmutterings.com/ 

which is generally a good source for the gossip going on in Muscat. Then we visited this site, which does the same for Salalah:

http://dhofarigucci.blogspot.com/2012/09/protests.html

and began to decompress.

Since Thursday, I have kept an extra ear out for news of protest activity here. The radio news stations are closely monitored and tightly controlled so there has been no news from the traditional media outlets. Instead, everything here spreads via word of mouth--or cellphone or blog posts.

So the news is that there is very little news to report regarding protests in Muscat. The Kiwis report that their government's perceived threat level within Oman has remained at moderate. The Canadian government reports no travel warnings for Oman. And the Australians advise travelers to take nothing more than the regular travel precautions.

And so from now on, when I go out I will wear my Canadian flag on Saturday/Sunday, my Australian flag on Monday/Tuesday, and my Kiwi flag on Wednesday/Thursday. And on Friday I will have a nap to recover from the stress of posing throughout the week.

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.