THINGS ARE HAPPENING
Well, things are starting to happen. Seth has been hard at work, organising at full speed & been very successful.
He managed to get one of the company cars the day we landed & has impressed the staff at his work & myself by successfully negotiating the driving style, a completely new city & learning right-hand driving fairly instantly. Often people are driven about by drivers for the first few weeks. They were impressed he could remember how to get to work. Since then he has clocked up over 600km driving up & down the motorway systems & all around, finding & organising all his comforts - all unassisted.
RED-TAPE
I think the few years living in Japan & organising everything on his own & all in a foreign language really has helped. In fact here, everyone speaks English, (at least all the Omani locals) and very well too, they also have no trouble understanding our accent. So it's much easier than Japan was. The bureaucratic red-tape procedures of Japan were also all good practice in learning about documents, permissions, lots of patience & red tape required to get things done in Oman. However, it does seem working for PDO opens channels though, to make things easier & quicker. Because they constantly bring in many, many foreigners it looks like they have their own diverts within systems.
A HOME
We have now been here a week and Seth has charmed his way into securing us a really nice 4 bedroom, multiple bathroom, brand new home 3 storey home with a fantastic view, in a very nice area, & close to great facilities. However, it is off-camp in a public suburb. How he managed to do that when we were last on the list I don't know. It seems it will be about a 2-3 week wait now as they finish it off, put up curtains, build in gas or something that the builders had omitted, hook up the utilities & furnish it for us. We are really ecstatic about it. We can really get settled that much quicker & will be able to get live-in domestic help. I've seen Helpers out & about with families on occasion & it really does look wonderful to have that extra pair of hands with the wee ones.
This picture is an example of a typical house scape from one of the nice suburbs (off camp). It feels similar to where we are currently staying.
THE ESSENTIALS
We now have a wireless internet connection. That was definately the hardest comfort to live without. We have satellite tv hooked up, upstairs & down, with great channel selection & the little kids channel is excellent including a lot of British programmes we didn't get in NZ. And our 9 boxes of airfreight arrived so we have some of our home comforts, like a radio (forgot to pack the CDs though) kids things, extra clothes etc. Seth has organised local SIM cards for our mobiles & finally got our land line sorted & discovered the number. We have been to the kids school which looks absolutely great & even comes with its own grassy football field in the middle of the sandy desert. The kids can't wait to start. We're joined up to the recreation centre, got our passes, been shopping for the essentials from cleverly tracked down malls & as of yesterday we collected our first car & pick up the 2nd car we've bought tomorrow.
CARS
The cars are essential as I was absolutely not allowed to drive the company car & couldn't leave the house to buy, do anything & being so hot for us, haven't yet managed to stay outside let alone walk with the littlies to the local shops. Now I have access to a car, I can start learning to drive on the right-side, learn the roads & finally take the kids to school & help them settle in.
I had to drive back from the car dealers alone & following Seth which was a bit of an uneasy time. At one of the busy roundabout sections when vehicles flood you from all around squishing between lanes, I lost him for a few terrifying minutes & only saw him as the lights changed leaving me behind, to wonder what lane to get in, how on earth to do it & what direction to take. But we made it home eventually. I might try and get him to take a driver car to collect the 2nd car tomorrow though as I'm not too ready for that one again. I find I really have to focus on the correct side of the road when turning across roads.
We've only had one occurrence of driving down the wrong side of the road, & that was leaving a mall & Seth doing a sneaky to get to a lane & direction we needed to. No cars were around luckily. Sometimes to go in a particular direction you do have to drive for a long way to one of their many roundabouts to change directions. Road barriers prevent u-turns, which I'm grateful for. I can only imagine what it would be like otherwise.
DODGES
We are going to be driving tanks, or the closest I'll ever get to them. We have bought Dodges, those big American brand cars that are just starting to import into NZ. Seth will have a Dodge Durango which seats 8 adults comfortably plus boot space (helpful for all the visitors) & I in a very ugly Dodge something else. It looks very much like a masculine car, not a girls car. However it does feel safe (there are 38 serious car accidents a day here in Muscat pop about 800,000), easy to manoeuvre & has good visibility & no one back home will see me. I did see 2 western guys watching me drive it & having a bit of a laugh at me. Don't know if it was because I looked ridiculous or if it was because my driving was ridiculous, uncertain & very slow. I will just stick to the school run for now choosing the easier of the 2 ways. Do I go the longer way with easy turn, motorway & 1 roundabout or do I take the shorter route, difficult turn, narrow roadworks, & 2 roundabouts? I put a lot of thought into these things. Thankfully the local supermarket is nice & close and doesn't require going on a main road. I might find the DVD men again.
SUV LAND
Seth thought that his company carpark looked like an SUV car yard - with every imaginable make & model of SUV to choose from. Driving on the roads I understand why almost every westie expat & half of Muscat like to drive SUVs. The carpark at the kids school was also the same, very funny to see. The principal said it was so dangerous at pickup & drop offs that no kids were ever allowed anywhere near the carpark, they lined up nearby waiting for parents to collect them. Driving around it is funny to see so many westie woman driving these huge tanks. Cars here tend to be very clean too, so carparks full of lots of newish shiny cars do look like car yards. Interestingly one of the rules/laws here is that you must keep your car exterior clean. Everything is so sandy & dusty & the roads can be flawed in places (not sure if that is normal or a result of the June Hurricane). A lot of people head out off road into the desert, dunes & rocky mountains at weekends but must remember to clean up on returning. Even with water very precious here. It's more expensive that petrol. When hanging washing out on the clothesline, the clothesline wire needs to be wiped for dust & if any items fall on the patio, they're filthy with dust & need re-washing.
COLE IS 4
Today is Cole's birthday & we're very proud of ourselves for tracking down Toys R Us, getting the bicycle he has long been promised without him being aware of it. He thinks we only bought lunch boxes. And that he has to be a little bit bigger still before he is ready for the big boy bike. That, or else he has me duped into thinking, that he has no idea a bicycle came home in the boot and now sits sneakily in the cupboard.
There are a few shopping centres & a couple of large malls in Muscat but the foreign chain shops seem to have only one outlet in the whole city, same with the car brands. You have to discover where a particular shop is & how to get there as there aren't multiple branches spread throughout the areas. Not so for McDonalds, KFC Starbucks & other fast-food outlets though - they are everywhere. That explains how Seth clocked up 600km in 5 days, driving back & forth between car yards comparing specs & prices. When he went to fill the roughly 70 litre tank with gas it only cost about NZ$20-30, when it would cost around $120-$130 back home I think.
This week, after school one day we're going to a Pirate Birthday Party. We haven't started school yet, but because everyone knew we were coming & Cole & 2 others in his class have their birthdays on consecutive days they've included us in their party, which is very nice. We haven't even met them yet! We wouldn't be having a proper party for him otherwise. There are only 10 kids in his class currently so I imagine the whole class goes, & the teacher too is going to be there. It seems like it will be quite a close knit community around kids groups. Now that I have a car, I can get to another pre-schoolers group with Siena, especially if Cole & Kaija are at kindy & nursery school. This week it's a little Halloween party. So fun! We've never taught our kids about Halloween so it will be interesting. And Siena can terrorise everyone with her bravado antics. She'll probably act all innocent, sweet & clingy, pretending like she doesn't get up to any mischief.
COLDS
We're starting to get colds & sore throats, probably from the temperature fluctuations between roasting hot & aircon cold. Kaija has been struggling with hers so we went to the pharmacy & got her local medicine. Oh how NZ pharmaceutical & medical watchdogs would fret to see what she is taking. The great thing is, it re
ally works & although quite unpleasant they only need tiny half teaspoons full at a time unlike the large doses required back home. Its proper flu medicine for kids. It was behind the counter but didn't come with the inquisitions & refusals that cold medicine requests elicit back home. It's going to be heaven, having access to proper medicines for colds & flus for the next 4 years. Apparently people don't seem to get sick as often in this climate, but when they do, it's a nasty bout & often occurs when a different strain is brought in from abroad.
BLOG FORMAT
I was signed on to a different blog site but found it difficult to use in some ways so have moved to one. Unfortunately this one places posts all on one page in a long line which makes my ramblings even longer than they already are. They also start with the most recent at the top of the page. So reading down the page sequentially takes you back in time.
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