The thrill of the alien

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I prayed last night for the return of my passport in order to be reunited with my family. At about 6 this morning, woken by the cacophony which is the night in the Seeb souk, and the idiot opposite who has the TV on really loud then starts playing Arabic disco at 3am. I went into the corridor and shouted to little effect.

Waking again at 5pm with the call to prayer amid strange and vivid dreams, I went online and saw cryptic messages from T sent while I was asleep boiling down to ‘You owe me big time’ and ‘Get you bag, you’re pulled’ which I had to assume meant she had found the passport. Another email from my mum this morning confirmed this although I will have to wait for a video call to confirm this. I walked along the beach today after spending an hour and a half in the office doing a bit of work to lessen the load tomorrow. P and K came in just as I left at midday.

The thrill of the alien. That is one way to describe the feeling of disorientation mixed with excitement, or rather a heightened sense of awareness, when one is in a strange country with very little that is familiar. There are ugly things about Oman – the shop signs, the scrabble roads, the litter on the beach, the industrial noise and endless traffic. In a sense it is both developed– in the sense of infrastructure and traffic – and underdeveloped in the commercial western sense. Where as we have endless sophisticated advertising and branding, they have brash, ugly shop signage that is all of the same ilk. They have endless ‘coffee shops’ that don’t sell coffee. If was to put on my entrepreneurial hat I would say two lines for tourism would be – a decent, Omani coffee chain to take on the limited inroads of Costa and Starbucks. Secondly, boutique western friendly hotels at reasonable prices. Oman is pitching at the high end market which makes perfect sense but means that many will not come here. For Oman, that of course could be a great blessing. But rather than leave the mid price hotels to Indian chains, an Omani-European chain could cater to those who don not like gloomy rooms and indifferent service. But then of course, you would need trained staff as well as well designed hotels.

My new room has what seems to be a permanent generator hum just outside the window. I am guessing it will continue into the night. Strange that when I came to look at the room earlier I did not hear it. We will see tonight whether it makes sleeping impossible. Shouting and the water truck, and perhaps less disco pounding would be nice, but I am suddenly aware of this incessant jangle. This part of town is the epitome of the hell of rapid modernization without thought for the peace of the people who are supposed to be benefiting from it.