The Rented Renault and “how to keep the US relatively out of your hair”

Quickly, something I forgot to write about last time was my visit to Sultan Qaboos University, where many of our PFs are students. This was some afternoon this past week, probably “metric Wednesday” (that’s Monday, the middle day of the week) as the Embassy workers would say. The library is enormous, and clean, and state of the art, and there are adjacent sex-segregated entrances. Sigh.

Another day this week I went salsa dancing with a handful of comrades at a bar in the Intercontinental Hotel. A few of them have danced for a long time and it was a delight and inspiration to see them knowing their stuff out there on the floor. I mostly watched, but I was urged up for a meringue. Good fun. Afterward I went with some others to watch the Spain-Portugal game at a tent that is set up outside the hotel in a great atmosphere, bleachers and huge screen and popcorn and so on. I think we’re going back there for the final.

Soccer on the beach was a little bit masochistic and quite fun, whatever that says about my psyche… I’m consistently awful at the game, so it’s really not about winning or losing (we tied) but running around outside. Within minutes my clothes were as soaked with sweat as they’d be with water had I plunged into the lukewarm sea. Which I did eventually, of course. Several of us ended removing our shirts and mine was so trashed with sand and sweat I left it off on the way back to the hotel, serious culturally insensitive moment. I got honked at and stuff. Whooops.

Yesterday, Metric Saturday, a few of my friends and I rented a car! This is my first time driving outside of US/Canada, and it was perfectly fine. I was paranoid, idealizing all the things that could go wrong if I got a ticket or wrecked the car and so on. What actually happened was not on my mind in the slightest. We drove to Wadi Mayh, which is a canyon about 20 minutes south of the city. Somewhere as you approach the road becomes dirt. Having read the fine print a few times, I knew that driving on unpaved roads nulls the insurance on the car. Not a problem until it’s a problem, you know? So out we drove without incident. We parked on the side and dipped into the knee-high water for a while. After a cyclone these canyons are allegedly huge rivers which would have been much more beautiful, but it was nice to be in the hot dry air and submerged in clear water with fish nibbling at us. After chilling in the water for a while we got back into the car and decided to explore the canyon further. We drove around a date farm, which more closely resembled a village. School, mosque, houses all crowded together around a mini mountain with an irrigation well. All around the huge rock / hill are acres of date trees. It was fantastically beautiful. We continued on the dirt road until we reached a spot where the water flowed over the path. It wasn’t deep, mid-shin, and it was full of big round rocks. I sat at the wheel considering this obstacle. It was so shallow. Our next destination was through the canyon, so really we had to cross this obstacle if our day was to continue. We concluded that momentum would be required. I put the Renault into reverse and when I felt there was enough of a head start, off we went. We came down into the stream with a disneyland ride-esque SPLASH and pushed through to the other side, triumphant. We cheered. We congratulated each other. I said conclusively “that was such a success!”

Not 100 meters up the road a man was hanging out by his car and waved at us, pointing to the front of the Renault. So I got out and looked, then asked him what was wrong. Looking down the road behind us there was no shrapnel or anything. He gestured more emphatically and then I noticed that our bumper was half underneath our car. We made our way back down to the crossing and inspected the land. Pieces of black plastic were everywhere. We had come down into the river and a stone knocked the bumper half off, shatter a lot of plastic under the front of the car. There were expletives.

We tied the bumper up enough that it wouldn’t drag. We drove BACK through the river, slowly, and it was fine, so we probably should have abandoned that “momentum!” idea. Whatever. Eventually the bumper started to drag and making our way back on highways to Muscat was stressful. We pulled over frequently to re-tied the loose bumper. Alhamdilulah we made it back without having to be towed. The Omani worker (Indian-owned company) came out to look at the damage and his response was “khalas, ma mushkilah.” Which means “alright, no problem.” What? He meant “ma mushkilah, come sign things.” I explained, in Egyptian Arabic which he would understand and which would allow me a good level of detail. Sunday I’ll get a call from the company, after they get an estimate from the mechanic, telling me how much we owe. If the damage is in excess of OR 170, we pay OR 170 and the insurance covers the rest. If it is less, we pay it, and I get the difference credited to my card which they had charged when I first took the car.

Fortunately I couldn’t pick a better group of people to make a poor decision with so we were all in agreement and nobody said “I TOLD YOU NOT TO!” and we’re splitting the cost four ways. That means worst case scenario I’m out OR 42 (~$110), which is a week’s stipend. We get OR 80 every two weeks, and I only used about OR 40. So it’s living on jam sandwiches for the rest of the summer. I would be very surprised if the damage is that much, since it was only the bumper and the car drives perfectly. But we shall see!

This blog entry will be the first my parents know of this, intentionally so!

Yesterday evening we celebrated Independence Day. We procured a small amount of spirits, and everybody brought some food! We grilled burgers on the roof of our hotel, there were pies and potato salad and freshly-caught lobster and music and mirth. On July 4th, metric Tuesday, we’ll be going to the Embassy party. We were invited to it after they came to the center to give us the mandatory “security briefing” so an otherwise dry talk was well worth it. A pool, bar, and food! We even get to leave school early! And why celebrate the founding of the best-designed polity in the world once when you can celebrate it twice?

Today, Metric saturday, just like last Metric saturday, I stayed in all day working. I’ve been doing lots of reading, a “literature review,” of a topic about which I’m going to write my thesis! The long and short of it is evaluating the role of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council, think a Gulf “EU”) in establishing and maintaining security and stability in the Arabian Peninsula, particularly concerning Yemen, Iraq (neither of which are members), and smaller instances of violent sub-state actors (as in Saudi Arabia). The broader “so what?” is something like “Implications for regional international organizations,” or, “How to keep the US relatively out of your hair,” or, “Peace in the Middle East.” Salivating. It feels very good to be this genuinely curious about an academic subject – I can’t say I’ve felt this way before. It keeps my mind occupied, at any rate. If you go to the GCC website, http://www.gcc-sg.org/ you will find a frustrating and funny message. That is kind of slowing down my research in terms of primary sources… I have two friends who “know people” in the Omani and Saudi foreign ministries. I’ve started drafting questions I can ask them regarding intra-Gulf politics and hopefully I can get some juicy primary sources out of that. Otherwise its lots of charters and resolutions and oil statistics and incidents of violence, which are cool but not quite primary research. If this topic sparks the interest of any of my blog’s readers, I encourage you to ask me stuff because at this point I probably won’t have the answers and I’ll have to find them. Alternatively, if you know stuff (or sources and people to talk to), I encourage you to tell me.

It’s 11:00p and therefore thirty minutes after my bedtime. Getting up at 6:30a and working until 5p is just stupid. But reality.

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