Vol 20 No vacation for me.....

Hi everyone! I can no longer compose blog entries at home. My Word program has failed and of course I don't have an Office disc with me. Need to figure that out. Suggestions?

Things are getting hot here. And I'm told will stay this way until October. Afternoon temperatures are between 102 and 107! Night time it cools to around 80. (That's 39 to 43 in the afternoon and 27 at night for you Canadians). Fortunately I work during the hottest part of the day. Unfortunately, on the weekends it is getting to be too hot to do anything outdoors for most of the day. Everyone goes out in the evening and into the night. Boys and young men are all obsessed with football/soccer here. The beaches and any little patch of grass turns into a football/soccer field. Kids don’t have an early bedtime here like they do at home. Kids are up and out in the city with their parents at all hours. It’s just normal here. I wonder how many hours of sleep they get a day? They all seem happy and healthy so it seems it’s working for them.

Here's some photos from a day trip Firas and I took to the Oman Dive Center. They own the whole bay. This one is of the road on the way. Dusty, rocky mountains.

Here's the bay.

Here's the donkey that hauls the dive tanks to and from the dive boats! Too funny!

I was going to take a trip to Turkey next week but now I think I need to wait. Firas is going to Ohio for a couple of weeks so I can have 2 weeks of my 4 weeks paid vacation while he is gone. But I only have so much expendable income right now and I need to find an apartment and then furnish it so I think I'll just keep working while he's gone and then take my time off next fall/winter. Unfurnished apartments here don't come with appliances so I have to buy everything. Hopefully I will be able to buy used appliances from an expat who is leaving and maybe some furniture too. Anyway, I'm bummed, but I have decided to be responsible. Dang it!

So now I have to find an apartment and that is proving to be difficult. I shall persevere. While Firas is gone I'll have more time to hunt. We have been working crazy hours as we build the business. I've been working from 9:30am to 8:pm 5 days a week and on one of my days off I usually end up working for about 5 hours. I blame my parents for making me such a dedicated employee. Firas is very, very happy with me. He is starting to panic about what he will do when I leave. I am the only one who knows how to do everything in the office including using all of the features of Eaglesoft, out dental software. I had used it at Brenda's office but I know so much more about it now. I'm trying to train everyone so I am not so indispensable. I was sick last week for a couple of days with a sinus infection and Firas was very funny, nursing me back to health with vitamins and juice so I would come back to work.

Now that we are getting busier, (we have about 475 patients now), I have been trying to teach Eman, our receptionist how to schedule profitably. We just opened a 3d operatory this week so we can stagger chairs now. Should make a huge difference. And we just hired an endodontist (root canal specialist) to work a couple of days a week so we can refer most of our root canals to him. Yay! Cause that is my least favorite procedure. Always has been. It's boring. Because Omani people are not accustomed to the concept of preventative dentistry most of them have terrible teeth by the time they come see us. Which means lots of root canals.

Don't worry about my working long hours, we usually have at least 1 "no-show" everyday so I get to sit and do nothing. And I got a very nice bonus this month, too. Firas is very appreciative of the work I do for the clinic so that makes it easier to keep putting in the hours. Bonuses will increase as we make more.

When I had the sinus infection last week I got to check out the health care system here. I went to Muscat Private Hospital, which is where most expats and wealthy Omani go. My office provides me with health insurance that covers 90% of the bill. The Dr I saw was Egyptian and he was one of those Dr's that doesn't listen to everything you say, just the main problem. So I told him I had had a giant headache for 5 days that I woke up with everyday and that hurt more when I bent over but that I wasn't congested at all. I also told him I was nauseous and had diarrhea for a couple of days but he ignored that. Perhaps everyone has nausea and diarrhea on a regular basis here. 3 x-rays of my head later he declared I had a sinus infection. 3! Why 3? My sinus' were cloudy on the films despite the fact that my nose didn't feel congested. I didn't know that was possible. The hospital has that old feel to it that so many hospitals have but the staff seemed competent enough.

This is the Sultan's Palace. Kooky, huh?

In an unrelated aside, at least once a week I have a mild heart attack while driving on the highway to or from my house. There is nowhere to cross over the road so men just make a run for it and because I am not as bad a tailgater as everyone else here it always seems to be me they run in front of. And I’m usually going the limit, which is 120kmph. Aaaaaagh! I swear I’ll wet myself one of these times.

Hugs to all of you, don't forget to leave a comment......