Musings From Stu.

First of all I would like to start this rant by thanking my wonderful wife Sydney for letting me post this on her Blogspot. Second I would like to thank everyone that has supported us unconditionally during this adventure. Lastly I have to thank the half-witted people that have made this blog possible. I am going to hit on some things that will show you as readers what it’s like to live here on a daily basis, a view that Sydney tries not to complain about.

I’m going to dive right in: just the other day I went into a bathroom here and noticed foot prints on the toilet seat. That’s right, these people still haven’t figured out that it’s there for your bum and not your feet… but hey, we wouldn’t want to overwhelm them. As long as we’re on the subject of bathroom etiquette, let’s hit on taking a shower. I have heard now from a few different people that people here shower down in the middle of the bathroom. You heard me right: in the middle of their bathroom. This is made possible by, 1) take your shower curtain off and dispose of it, then you need to have a shower nozzle that’s detectable and six feet long. Next step you need to stand in the middle of your bathroom and hose yourself down. Well I guess they don’t have to worry about getting the toilet paper to wet.

The finer points of driving have eluded me since I arrived here. Take for example when we had nothing planned for a Saturday afternoon back in Boise, Sydney and I would drive to Idaho City just for fun. Well that has literally gone out the window. Just last week on the way home a Pakistani driving one of the thousand delivery trucks made the decision that the lane I was in was the one he wanted to be in and before I knew it, it was his lane, but not before my bumper and passenger side fender felt the effects. After the police showed up, blame was placed on the truck driver (which in this country can be questionable at times who will be found at fault in cases like mine). After leaving the accident I was passed by a Lexus with the sun roof open and two kids hangs half way out waving to everyone they could. That’s not what concerned me… it was the fact that the driver was cutting in and out of the rush hour traffic at speeds that were equivalent to a drug runner trying to lose pursuing police. With the crazy driving here you would think that they would have the sense to at least wear a seatbelt. Again that would be getting ahead of ourselves because they feel that cutting them out of the cars is completely acceptable simply because they don’t believe in them that’s right folks they don’t believe in them (true story). OH and last but not least if their blinker is on they are coming over regardless of what’s in their way and when you get one of them cornered, their response to coming within centimeters of hitting you is “My blinker was on”, in heavily accented English.

The final thing that I would like to touch on is the internet service in this country. First of all it’s government controlled and monitored, which means they are able to set whatever ungodly price they want. So for the average internet user like us we are paying four times as much as anyone in the States. Even though it’s our only connection to the outside world there are plenty of days that I would like to rip the cords out of the wall drive down to Etisalat and personally give them to the man in charge and tell him, “I no longer need your worthless, overpriced internet service.” But the truth of the matter is that we truly do need it and I will continue to pay them for half-assed internet service for the remainder of our stay. Thank you for listening to my rant.

Stu