Two clearance forms completed, the kindly landlord
asked for the amount I expected to pay and a week from today we’ll read the
water and electricity meter and we’ll go together or I’ll go alone and take
care of that and that, my dear friend, will be it, I’ll go to the place of my
employment for the past two years and I’ll submit everything and Insha’Allah,
will receive whatever it is they owe me.
God bless them.
I drove to Lulus at the break of the fast call for
cereal to eat, of course, for breakfast.
Did that seem a bit much, driving ten minutes to buy a
box of cereal? It did so I also bought
some yogurt, bread and single servings of coleslaw, potato salad, waldorf salad
and spicy chicken salad. I just can’t
help but wonder what everything will be like in Kandahar. I am excited and I am kind of freaking out.
Saturday is the 4th of July so I will have
hotdogs and coleslaw and potato salad and maybe just maybe, fake beer. And don’t forget the potato chips.
I did finish the book about manic-depressives and no I
do not share any of the symptoms. I
started Pico Iyer’s ‘Abandon’ again. I picked
it a while ago and then put it in the’ I’m not gonna read this book’ pile, on
top of Borge’s impossible ‘Labyrinth’.
One of my favorite books is Iyer’s “The Lady and the Monk” and his
essays on travel and homelessness are fantastic but sometimes he just tries too
hard to impress whoever by taking license with English grammar and using
vocabulary that feels out of place. I
could hardly get through his book on Graham Greene but I did because the
subject interested me greatly. And like
that book, ‘Abandon’ is about ancient manuscripts and Rumi and I want it to be
good but he’s horsing around with the narrative and I am falling asleep or I’m
find myself backing up on pages because his characters lose me.
The last time I was in Al-Ain I bought two bags of
Caribou coffee. Today I started the
second bag and Shit! it’s decaf.
Shouldn’t they have pointed that out to me? I had a cup of it and it tasted ok but I
should buy a jar of instant coffee and in the morning have an instant real cup
followed by this brown water.
7.2.15
When I was in the bank yesterday to get my clearance
approval I asked the woman if the account could stay open. Yes.
And then I asked if I could deposit money in the account if I worked in
another country. (I told her where I
should be going). Yes, again she
said. Today I got an sms:
“…as a part of our commitment to be compliant with our
regulatory obligations the bank has registered with the IRS to be a FATCA
compliant bank. Your account has been
identified as a US account…please kindly provide the IRS W9 tax form to
continue banking with us”
Naturally I’m taking all my money out now, but maybe I
should comply. Really though, the Omani
government owns this bank, surely my account can’t be a US account, what kind
of horse hockey is this? Crap, if I go
in I’ll have a lot of questions to go with this W9 form I printed out: Request
for Taxpayer Identification Number and
Certification. The bean counters are
sniffing for money. I am of course not
required to pay taxes as a citizen abroad and I’ve never come close to earning
the 80 thousand exemption amount, so what are they doing?
Ok, let Washington know where you were. In one week I am sadly leaving.
I have a half glass of wine left, wine that is probably
the cause of the runs every morning after.
I also have, I guess, two shots of whiskey left. Why wait anymore?
A teacher patted my protruding belly this morning. No one would do that if the rest of my body
was large. I just have to hold it in and
practice breathing at the same time.
My last full moon in Oman is obscured by frivolous
clouds. I do have a two bar internet
connection which is enough to Bach.
Thanks.
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