she shoved me

I went to and returned from Dubai with no automotive troubles, the old car is amazing, but I picked up a scratchy throat, a few too many cigarettes in the car perhaps, but also four hours of sleep is contributing to a ‘ya, I’m not going out tonight’ feeling.

The bookshop had three of the titles on my list but I didn’t buy any of them.  I bought another map of Oman and a New Yorker.  I returned to Al-Ain for a Hardees frisco burger and then stocked up at Lulus which, according to a stockboy, ran out of Chobani yogurt two days after it came in.  Next shipment?  I don’t know.  Can you tell your manager to double the order?  Ok, sir, but I don’t know.

I don’t know. 

When hair feels heavy it’s time to cut it off.  It has been two and a half months, it’s good to feel it fall aside, sometimes I wonder how the head’d look bald, I can’t wonder anymore than just wonder.  So, it’s almost time to sleep again, a few photo postings on facebook, do you do that other than to seek acknowledgement, well, if someone likes it and they don’t say anything then I have done what God wants me to do, right?  I do not post for adulation.  I know the photos, most of the time, are ok, not world class, I don’t have that kind of camera.  If someone likes a photo does that make a person feel better about himself, the world, in life in general?  Well, how do you feel?  I feel if someone likes a photo then I’ve done what I intended to do. 

Before I took off this morning I walked out to the all-night coffee shop and took a few photos once the streetlights went off, which is usually around six am and it is still dark.  When I returned to the building I took some photos of the entrance.  The images on the LCD look very cool, this camera takes amazing images in low light, however, what I see on LCD isn’t always what I see on this laptop.

I had a couple of Indian-Scotch whiskeys with Dr. Pepper and I need to lay down, an early start, off to work on the weekend, whoa yay.  Sunday I’ll go in after mass and breakfast at McD’s.  Is that alright?

1.31.15

The end of the month, it went fast, didn’t it, that’s good.  February will go fast and I’m happy for that.  A meaningless reminder I am older, a consumer made holiday is absurd will go quickly, a brief yet appreciated holiday will fly by and then it’s March.  Anything good to look forward to, St. Pats, if I were somewhere else. 

Clothes are being washed, there’s a lot of clutter in the grotto, can I finish Pynchon today, I’d like to read two books a month, a reasonable goal, yesterday at the bookstore I was very tempted to buy very large books.  Does a 1000 page history book count as two?  

Two turkey pastrami pitas and I have to lay down and within twenty minutes between the awake and sleep, the rare moments I have when I know I am in that brief dream-state,  I am traveling in an airplane and all of a sudden I get a shove on the shoulders from behind, my eyes open, mom.  Was I actually shoved or was it a muscle twitch that coincided with an imaginary mother telling me to wake up, this is just a nap. 

9:45pm

I came out of the booth with a new haircut and there was Peter, in for his annual head shaving.  I wondered if I'd ever see the man I practically kept in business when he ran his antique and jewelry shops in Al-Ain.  Now he is general manager of the new hotel 25km out of town on the road to Sohar.  “lost our liquor license, business in the hotel has completely dried up, no pun intended.”  I said I’d pay a visit in a few month’s time and I’d bring me own.  No worries, we got a cellar full of it. 

We walked over to the tea shop and shared shwarmas, samosas, and tea while he regaled me with his experiences in Oman going back to 1969.   Perhaps the most interesting information aside from the largest British invasion in Oman since 1945, which consisted of six Marines in Duqm, pegged to be the next Hong Kong, or going stir crazy after six months in Salalah’s mountains, was the country’s plan to build light rail from Buraimi to Sohar, to Muscat and all the way down to Duqm, in the next four years.   Six international companies are in on this audacious construction and with it will come the infrastructure which will completely change Buraimi.  Is this something worth hanging around for I don’t know.  Next September the new campus opens and I told Peter I’d like to return to Salalah, to the mountains I didn’t see much of, to the oceans I didn’t swim in enough.  But we’ll see, I said.  I am tired of job hopping and a border pass is like my escape from this place that we agreed hasn’t really changed at all in 21 years.  “It hasn’t changed much in the last 30 years.”  Light rail may just change all that.