Vol 18 Dating

I thought I would tell you all a bit about how dating in Oman has been going. I have never in my life been this popular. Talk about an ego boost. If you are a woman and you are white, you are hot. It’s that simple.

Most of the Omani men are married but that doesn’t stop them from asking me out. They are allowed to have 4 wives here, though the wives ought to be Muslim. I think it is this 4 wife thing that makes men so unabashed about asking me out. Or perhaps their beliefs about American women has been mis-shaped by images of promiscuity seen in movies and in the TV shows that are becoming popular here. “I would like to take you to coffee” is the standard invite. I had a car salesman calling me every few days for weeks asking me to coffee. Finally I told him I just didn’t think I would ever have the time to go with him. He asked if I was seeing someone else and seeing a way out, I said “yes, I am”. “But I want you!” was his disgruntled reply. At least he stopped calling.

When I walk down a street or even when I am driving in my car with the windows down, young men will shout out “Hey, Lovely, how are you?” The thing about it is, it’s totally innocent. If I say hi back to them they get shy and giggle. Even little boys do a version of it. “Hello” they say and wave and then scurry away giggling.

I inadvertently went on a date with the Egyptian manager of the mall that our office is in when I first got here. He offered to show me around and everyone in the office said he’s nice so I said sure. Next thing I know he’s buying my dinner and telling me he’s been waiting for me to arrive. He saw the picture I sent with my application. He’s short, balding, 63 and MARRIED! He gave me a rose on Valentine’s day and sent me an internet card that was extremely mushy. Eman told me the way to dissuade him was to tell him “don’t waste your time thinking about me”. So blunt, but that is how the women handle the men here. He has stopped pestering me for more dates finally.

I was also pursued by a Lebanese restaurant manager last week. He got my cell number from someone and kept calling and text messaging me such gems as: “Suzan, what I want from you is something bigger than sex coz I had enough I want a good and real relation with you and its up to you suzan and hope that u answer my call” He called me 6 times that day. I answered him on the 6^th call and gave him the “I’m seeing someone” line. Seems to have worked.

I have gone out on the weekends to listen to the excellent bands the better hotels book in. The crowd is 90% male and 90% of those are western expats. Firas calls it a “sauseega factory”. He comes with me sometimes to keep the men off. When I go by myself a lot of the men take a stab at chatting with me. I just keep moving around in the bar and listen to the band.

I did met one seemingly nice man. A Brit named Chris. We went out a few of times and I quite liked him. But on our 4^th date he revealed some things about himself that had me beating a hasty retreat. You never can tell about people. Appearing normal and being normal are two different things.

Let me assure you all, at no time have I felt unsafe here. I could walk down a street in town by myself at 2 in the morning and feel safe here. There just isn’t much crime to speak of here. Say what you like about Muslims, I like these ones. They’re doing something right. (They all think Americans are crazy because George W got reelected).

Anyway, that’s how the dating thing is going. A bunch of you have asked so I’d thought I’d satisfy everyone’s curiosity.

Vol 17 Friend

Eman, the receptionist and I are becoming friends. She has taken me to meet her tailor. He makes a lot of her clothes and she always looks great. She doesn’t wear an abaya but does wear a head scarf. I bought a bunch of fabric at the big souk and I took one piece of it and a blouse that I have that I like to the tailor to copy. If he’s good I’ll have him make more. It’s only costing me about $5.00 US for him to copy the blouse and I spent about $5 on the fabric and lining as well. The fabrics here are gorgeous, especially the georgette, which is what I bought a lot of.

When I drove her home she invited me in. Eman is Omani. She lives with her husband, Yassir, and their 18 month old son in her in-laws house. I met Yassir’s mother, father, brother, brother wife and their house maid. They are all from Pakistan. It’s totally normal for a family to live together and is not economically related. Yassir owns his own house which he rents out. They were all very, very nice and very hospitable in a broken English kind of way. I was invited to dine with them. The dining room has a large Persian rug on the floor and pillows around the walls for lounging after the meal. No table or chairs. I was thinking, oh boy, my Mom would have trouble eating here with her bad knees. They laid down a strip of plastic over the rug, placed the dishes on that and we plopped down on the floor. Because they know I’m a vegetarian they served an all veggie meal. Yassir said normally they just scoop the food out of the serving dishes with their fingers and eat it but because I was there they busted out plates and forks. Ok, I have GOT to learn how to cook food like that. I have never tasted dhal that delicious and I have eaten a lot of dhal. And there was a sweet dish made from soaked grated carrot, ghee, raisins and cardamom with chopped almonds and pistachios. Maybe that doesn’t sound yummy but I got sent home with a big tub of it because I raved about it so much. Eman says she will have me over for a cooking lesson when she is feeling better. She has a sinus infection right now.

After the meal they showed me their photo albums. Pictures of their dead brothers. Eman’s 28 year old brother and Yassir’s 19 year old brother died within one month of each other in car crashes a couple of years ago. Eman’s brother left behind a wife and 2 children. She has since remarried and abandoned her children to be cared for by Eman and her sister. They take turns. She says this is not typical Omani behavior. Then they showed their wedding pictures. Combo Omani/Pakistani wedding. Lasted 4 days. That means 4 dresses for Eman. One Omani, one Pakistani, one western, and one more simple dress for the last day when Yassir came to her parents home and ceremoniously took her to his home. The first day of the wedding was ceremony and prayers. Second day was feasting. I never did get out of them what the third day was for but there were a lot of photos of family on that day. Everyone’s clothes were incredible. Her hands and feet were covered in mendi (henna). Gorgeous.

Eman is so sweet. And funny. She has a degree in translating and she’s trying to teach me Arabic but the sounds are so difficult I think she is only doing it so she can keep laughing at me. The phrase she has me say most is “come with me, please” so I can get the patient from reception to the treatment room without her help. This phrase contains the two sounds I am worst at. The phlegm clearing sound that is similar to the ch in “loch” as in loch ness monster. And the thd sound that makes me sound retarded. She laughs and laughs at me. And makes me say it over and over. I can hear that I am saying it wrong but my mouth just can’t seem to figure out how to make those sounds well yet. Every morning we run through the traditional series of hello’s and how are you’s. I pretty much have those down. And I can get the patients to open and close. I’m still working on “please wait here, while I get the Dr.” Much more difficult to learn than Thai was. I keep wanting to say things in Thai when I can’t remember the Arabic word.

She is taking me to see her hairdresser on Monday. She assures me he is good. When I see the women here without their head scarves their hair looks good so maybe I’ll be ok, but I am always nervous to try a new stylist.

Vol 16 Dental Update

OK, I have to let my dental friends know how the dentistry is here.

Firas continues to do a very thorough initial exam. We take an FMX and then he takes as long as needed with the patients.

We use rubber dams for composites (yay!) He's actually quite careful, and thorough.Turns out he’s very good at root canals and crown preps and he’s very, very good at extractions. Better than Dr Ismaily, the oral surgeon that works out of our office. Dr I is the “big cheese” in the dental community so it is quite a coup that he is working out of our office. He teaches at the University and is the government’s dental representative. But I assisted him one day on four 3d molar, (wisdom tooth), extractions on a 20 year old guy. He extracted the upper two so fast he took quite a bit a sinus and bone with them. I showed them to Firas later and I think he was surprised. Here's a photo I took of the teeth.

We are still trying to find a good lab for our crowns. We’ve tried 3 now. The dentists here are so bad the labs haven’t had to learn how to make good margins. We’re going to start sending to a lab in Ohio if we can’t get one here to work for us. We keep having to send the cases back to the lab over and over which is a pain but I'm glad we do that instead of cementing the crappy crowns.

We’ve done some cool surgeries, crown lengthening, etc (remember, he interned in oral surgery), and Wow! Is surgery ever cool! I love it.

We’ve seen the worst decay imaginable. We had to extract a little boys anterior maxillary 6 teeth they were so badly decayed. They were little brown stubs. All of the interproximal filling we do are deep. Challenging to get the matrix sealed. He’s getting very creative with them. I don’t understand why people leave their dental problems until they get that bad here. We had a guy come in the other day (gross alert- skip ahead if squeamish). His upper left 3 molars were so far gone. Unbelievable. GIANT lingual abscess. The size of a small egg. Firas had to do a careful root tip count from the x-rays and then hunt them all down though the squish. Sutured him up and when we saw him later to remove the sutures I could not believe how quickly all that flesh had sealed itself back up again.

I am thoroughly enjoying myself at work. We have so much fun. He’s really funny. He lived in the US for the past 15 years or so, so he’s very Westernized but he has the Arabian accent. Too funny when he starts imitating Americans.

And he’s generous. I’ve already gotten a raise. Nice one too. He promises bonuses when we make our monthly production goal. We almost made it in February so we may make it this month. The practice is growing quickly. We’ve been open almost 3 months and we have 350 patients. The schedule is filling up. We do have problems with patients no-showing or arriving very late and still expecting treatment. We also get walk-ins expecting treatment and because we are trying to build the business we are accommodating when we are able which means I’m working 10 hour days every day. I’m on salary so I get to take my overtime in pay or time off. I think I’m going to take the time off option so I can have long weekends to visit places near by like Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Firas is going to Ohio for 2 weeks in April so I get 2 paid weeks off. I think I’m going to go to India. Airfare is cheap from here to neighboring countries.

The front reception area.

The hallway to the operatories. I love the curved lines.

We have a big problem getting supplies. It takes forever for them to arrive after we order them and we just can’t get so many things here, which is why he had me bring so many supplies when I came. And the suppliers will say yes, I can get you that and then just never bring it. They don’t like to say no to the customer. The other dentists don’t use rubber dams so we have to get those from Dubai. We only have one rubber dam forceps so I am constantly running it through the sterilizer and we figured out that you can use a curved hemostat in a pinch. We just ordered 2 new chairs. One is to replace the chair that is in the surgery. We just don’t like it. The other is for another treatment room. Right now we have one treatment room, the hygiene room and the surgery to work out of. We really need another regular treatment room. We have capacity for 2 additional treatment rooms after that too. The chairs are all Adec, out of Oregon, so we won’t get them until some time in April.

We have a hygienist from Michigan who is originally from Washington State interested in the hygiene position. We’re keeping our fingers crossed. Meanwhile we have two American hygienists helping us out. One is our office manager, so she’s getting behind in her manager duties and the other is a woman here with her husband that doesn’t need to work but is willing to work 2 days a week.

Vol 15 Big News!

OK, big news. Eric and Val are bailing. She quit. She’s been threatening to quit since before I got here. She kept asking for more and more money and Firas kept giving her more and more. But she was never satisfied. Always wanted more. Meanwhile she and Eric and the kids were going off every weekend, spending money like water. Eric was working here too, managing a chain of Precision Tune’s. Car shops. They were not hurting for money. Our office manager ran into Eric’s step-mom, (she and his Dad live here), and she said they have a spending problem. From what I’ve seen I’d have to agree.

So they’ll be gone in 2 weeks and I’ll be floating around in that big house all by myself. Now does anybody want to visit?.......

Firas is trying to find someone to sublet the house and then find me an apartment closer to work which would be nice. But apts here are difficult to find and are usually unfurnished. Not even a fridge and stove. No takers yet on the house. We also need to find a new hygienist if any of you knows one who’d like to move to Oman.

Meanwhile, Firas gave me a raise a couple of days ago. 100RO per month, about $260 US. Nice. I'm feeling the love.

Hardly anyone’s been leaving comments……perhaps no one is reading this……perhaps I should stop writing it…….