Cultural Releveance

So here's what I've learned recently:

The lady that sold the car told me "crazy boys, try buy your numbers" I inquired and kept inquiring and eventually learned that having a license number that has repeating numbers is cool. So any number that repeats like 333 or 5828 is to be desired. Apparently, a guy in UAE paid 5 million for license plate # 1. It's totally a status thing.

I'm learning that status, wealth and overall appearances are an even bigger deal here. Cars are a way to obtain status, # of maid's are a sign of status, and of course sun glasses, watches...all of these things are what people chase over here, it's pretty sad. I'd be willing to bet that status is praised more over here. Status = wealth, wealth = power. Much more power for the really wealthy over here...no joke.

Obviously not everyone is like that. Salim is nothing like what I described. But the jury is still out on Suliman. Everyday for the past two weeks he'll come in my office and ask me about buying a car in the US and shipping it over here. Cars are cheaper in US, not by a whole lot, and shipping is increadibly expensive. I'm having a tough time trying to steer him away from this idea. He keeps giving me websites to check out. One day he came in and gave me a sticky note with the the website craigslist.com on it. I literally laughed out loud...for two reasons 1. he thought he was telling me something I'd never heard about and 2. because in order to search craigslist you have to narrow down the region...which i tried to ask where in the US he'd like to look. He told me he'd get back to me about that...and still hasn't. But the latest is this salvage website his friend told him about. All the cars have salvage titles...those cars as far as I can tell are meant to be parted out. I again tried to tell him...maybe not a good idea to buy a car that has a salvage title on it...also maybe not a good idea to buy it without seeing it...and then maybe not a good idea to assume someone you don't know or have never talked to in the US will kindly take your car to a port if you just give them a call. And on top of that you have to get the car repaired. I'm baffled by this logic....but it's fun and humerous to talk with him about it. But also kind of sad that he's willing to waste all of this time just because he wants a Lexus. I'm not sure how to kindly tell him it's just a car.

I was also told that you don't shake hands with Omani women. And the younger ones your not suppose to stand directly in front of them when conversing. Salim is suppose to be giving a presentation on the Oman culture do's and dont's which up until yesterday I was looking forward. We had a safety meeting yesterday about loosing fingers on the job. It's easily at most a 20 minute presentation. We were in there for 3 hours. This is horrible, but multiple times I had to hold back laughing when I heard him explain a person severing their legs in a car accident. His phrasing was the funny part obviously not people loosing limbs. He'd say things like "people cut legs off and still living!" In my mind I actually thought why would someone cut their legs off...then realizing he was still talking about car accidents. Another thing I've noticed is folks over here tell you a story or something and then will give you a very similar version of that story two other times directly following the explanation of the first story. I'm not kidding its the rule of 3 over here. It's pretty hilarious actually.

Some sobering parenting news....Jack figured out how to get out of his crib this morning....guess it's time for big boy bed. More developments and stories will most definitely follow.

Hans out