infernal molar

The infernal vortex continues. Fiery gusts make 116 feel like 140! And now that I have a car, I am seared and sauna-tized when I open the driver side door every afternoon. What the hell, all puns intended!  The heat has given me a low-grade headache all week.  The beat up rental Nissan's A/C doesn't work until I arrive home, so I roll the window down and what's worse tell me.  And the A/C's in the flat seem to be laboring and there is no cold water from the taps.  Ka toi! 


And to make it precariously worse, the remains of the second molar on the lower left side that protruded like the tip of a thorn wobbled and finally came out while eating hummus and there is vaguely a little piece left visible though nothing is little about a simmering thump-thump absence.  Is it time to visit a dentist?  Only if I am robbed of my sleep or my ability to eat. 


I booked a room in Al-Ain this Friday and while I do have a car I'll walk to the border and take a taxi to the hotel.  Why fry in the car?  Will I fry walking 20 minutes to the border?  This concerns me unless I cross relatively early and then do what?  Call someone?  Go to mass?


Tomorrow the university has this open day where all the schools of thought celebrate the end of the year.  Most of my students will celebrate tonight when they head off for home.  I will be here, though, there is a third and final quiz to mangle into something passable.  Next Sunday is a holiday and with the quiz on Wednesday there are two days of classes left.  Of course there is the week after the quiz, which students like to skip because it's a 'tradition'.  So basically we're done.  And good thing, it's too hot to do what I am doing and it's strange because this is my thirteenth year in the Gulf and the heat has never bothered me as much as it does now. 


An earthquake registering around 5 was felt in Dubai but not here.  It is too hot to feel anything.  Imagine people losing their electricity and thus their A/C.  It'd be like...the 1970's around here.

ride a rhino

The police officer looked through my paperwork and stopped at the copy of my Michigan driver's license.  'What this type?'  It's type o, normal ya know, a normal operator's license.  'Go to internet, explain type o.'  I swear they're jerking my chain, and why? Why is it so important to get an Omani license?  Well, it's good for ten years, I hope to be around the area for a while if nothing else comes around. Oman's private sector will hire teachers until they're 67, so I have work here, and of course I want a car.  It was the one 'selfish' expensive item I wished for a year ago so, another trip into the offices of the whatever.  Plans to cross the border on Friday are scrubbed. I'll run out of Starbucks and Camels before then, and Dostoevsky is slow reading yet I'll have something to gnaw on for another weekend, where I see temps climbing to 115+.  Yuck.


We practiced the present perfect continuous this week so I write on the board:
                                              
                        I have been living in Buraimi since October 2013.
                        I have been living in Buraimi for eight months.


The students were surprised I'd been here for only a short time and one asked where I was before.  It isn't easy to explain so I wrote this on the board:


                 2009     2010     2011     2012     2013     2014


"In 2009 I was in Al-Ain, in 2010 I was in Turkey, in 2011 I was in Salalah, in 2012 I was in Nepal, in 2013 I was in Nepal-USA-Oman, and in 2014 I am now in Buraimi, whew."


The students don't understand and it's impossible and really quite pointless to explain an acceleration of coincidences and a foggy delusioned dream of winding up in New York with an end of time screenplay and a Nepalese wife.  Sigh.  It's embarrassing to think how I hit that ball so far out of play.


Two girls came to the office after class and said I should marry an Omani woman.  They know better than that, and I certainly don't solicit their advice.  'I'll do this, I'll marry an Omani woman, she will remain Muslim, I will remain Catholic and any children will be raised Hindu.'  Ha ha.


One of the teachers is doing his speaking assessment in the office, two students are reading a conversation.  "May I uh have uh a pencil uh because uh yanni, uh forget uh at uh home."
Go practice, you fail if you don't practice.  They are useless.  Well, I wouldn't go that far, brother.


Twenty minutes I waited for a taxi after my failed attempts at the police station.  The sweat has dried and I am sticky, a headache persists, in 30 minutes I will entertain the students with speaking assessments:  How was life 50 years ago?  What's your favorite season?  I like cooking, what about you?  Have you ever been caught in a rainstorm?  Have you ever rode a rhino?  What's your opinion of Turkish wrestling?  Who do you like in the Stanley Cup? 

shake and flee

The afternoon meal burns, making it almost impossible to teach.  I know I'm over that line, 170, and with temps wickedly hot a twenty minute walk is dangerous.  I could get one of them exercise mats and do something inside.  We'll see.  Next week, Insha'Allah I get my Omani license and then we'll rent a car and I can look around for a mat, what else.


I was thankful for the bottle of Armenian Cognac though it may have contributed to the indigestion.  A few small glasses after the evening meal was a nice albeit brief alteration in my solitary confinement.  I'm thankful there isn't a daily desire for such lubrications, even beer has become less desirous here, Lord, I gotta get outta here!


Patrick laughed and said I was a lucky man.  I expected speeding tickets would choke almost a grand out of me but the call came and the man named Ramadan said I had only two 'flashes' and $52 was my bill.  Wow.  I will never understand how things work here, it looks like incompetence, and I'm happy if it is, it looks like mercy, and I'm grateful if it is, whatever the case, I shook the man's hand and fled. 


The government is going to issue a new law stating if you quit your job you may not return for two years.  While the law is aimed at general laborers who are brought over and treated like animals and then escape or abscond, it could also affect professionals and I think this is where the loopholes are found.  In any case while I have committed to returning to the inferno, plans to go to Salalah may be in jeopardy.  What about just staying here?  Lord.


If I swallow anything evil, put your finger down my throat


Next week I am looking at a road trip to Dubai.  Dubai is miserable right now but it has the only decent bookstore.  The worst thing that could happen to me on the weekends here is having nothing to read.  So, a stay of one day?  Two days?  What else do I need?  Have you decided your summer itinerary?  Well, I wrote up two scenarios, scenario one it'd be Thailand-US-Nepal, scenario two would be Sri Lanka-Thailand-Nepal.  Scenario one will be pricy and I worry about that, not to mention not doing everything I need to do.  If I open a bank account and I cannot get a credit card how will I get to Pittsburgh and pick up my stuff?  There's no guarantee a bank is going to give me one of those little evil things.  Maybe I should get one here, right?  Will it be accepted in the states?  Why wouldn't it?  For crying out loud a visa is a visa, a mastercard is a mastercard and they're both evil.  I just need a car to drive, maybe I should buy a car in the states. 

he's yours bee's wax

I don't believe in fate because I am in control of my life.  Even if shit happens and there's nothing you can do about it?  Well, in that case, I do believe in fate. You'd agree then we control what we know and what we don't know is chance, a conjured anomaly, an unseen idea that is or isn't something you'd bow your knee in front of.  Everything happens for a reason, I'm sure of that, but sometimes we don't know the reason until it has past.  In other words what happens in the present is a mix of chance and determined actions and the very second an action is in the past it's very easy to assess that it happened for a reason and that reason is not chance because it happened and it can't be changed. 


There are those who tell me everything I do and say before I've done or said it has already been determined.  There's nothing new under the sun.  Linear time, there is no past or present or future, is this what you're getting at?  If only I could escape my matrix. 


The students are taking their second major quiz today and the thunder rumbles.  This is too difficult, many didn't finish in two hours, ya da ya da.  I cancelled tomorrow's meeting in part to give teachers a break and also to deflect any criticism that'll come my way.  The class I proctored didn't know the difference between possession and contraction.  Does this mean the teacher didn't cover it in class or the teacher did but they forgot? 


No call yet from the car agency though I know it will come.  It's bloody hot every afternoon.  I walk 20 minutes to reach a main road to flag a taxi down and I've got an emerging headache, no matter how much water one drinks, hot is hot.

Four more weeks of teaching.  This hasn't been a quick academic year, perhaps it would have been faster if I enjoyed my life a little more. A solitary life is not a party of one.  I don't do fun things alone because having fun is a shared experience and it feels selfish, like tobogganing solo in Switzerland.  Who do I high five or talk about the fun if there's only myself?   


Two nights ago I woke up unable to sleep and the next day I made some absurd typos on exam labels.  I didn't tell the secretaries of my poor sleep that night.  How strange it is to me that I didn't see what I would have normally seen if I didn't have a good sleep.  Are you suggesting you would have read your speedometer correctly if you had had a decent night's sleep? 


Right now I'm woozy, a cup of tea perhaps, a smoke outside in the 98 degree shade?  Still no sure plans for the summer.  It would not be good if I were on a remote beach off the northeast coast of Sri Lanka and this broken tooth which is getting smaller was suddenly infected.  And I can't afford to see a dentist in the states. 

soggy roasted chickens

"Let yourself be open and life will be easier.  A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable.  A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed"  Buddha

Thursday afternoon, temps pushing 45 degrees, that's 115 and change.  Usually I leave at 4pm and walk 20 minutes to flag a taxi down.  I might wait till sundown.  I got work to do, right?  And I can listen to Bach.

My twenty two minute presentation on beating burnout went as well as expected though I did begin a little nervously, choking a few words, sounding as if I had no clue what I was talking about but I did know what I was talking about.

Early in my life living overseas I learned to keep my expectations to a minimum, intercultural norms require a pause before speaking, a moment of silence before acting, and it has served me well.

When I returned the car to Ramada on Tuesday I told him about the speeding tickets and he said he'd let me know in a few weeks time, maybe a month or two, how much I'll have to cough up.  So, wondering and waiting could leave me anxious and cause indigestion and that isn't how I want to be.

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all.  Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around-nobody big, I mean-except me.  And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff.  What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff-I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.  That's all I do all day.  I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.  I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."

--J.D Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

I concluded my presentation with this quote.  When  read it I kind of choked up.  While I say teaching is my default profession, I know I want to bring something to the learner's table.  If what I offer helps, inspires, motivates, then I can sleep well.  Some day, someone might be thankful, I'm just a teacher in the sand.

So, plans for this weekend?  No, the usual, eat, sleep, wash clothes, eat, sleep, wash clothes, watch tv, watch more news than I should.  I'm half way through 'The Idiot' and I'm halfway through a couple of magazines, I'm looking at Dubai in three weeks to look at travel guides, where in the world should I go, a new month begins ya hoo, two months and eleven days to go.  Three full moons and perhaps on the day of the third moon I'll depart but where, the states, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Nepal.   Really though, when it's too hot to do anything that kind of sucks, and Dubai's humidity makes everything even worse, I feel like a soggy roasted chicken when I go.  What to do, mel amal?