Connecting to the World

The last three weeks has been frustrating from the digital age point of view.  The television, to which David has attached surround sound (good grief - but hearing it in the marble tomb is awkward), was not liking the satellite decoder one little bit.  Nor would the only one of four cable points that we wanted use, work.  Apparently the bloke who used to rent the house put the cable in himself.  He saw himself as a bit of a "handyman" (in more than one sense of the word) but his efforts seem to be a little...well...useless really.  Once Zahir, our lovely landlord, shown David which particular plate in the the wall hid the maze of cables, my actual handyman husband (yes in more than one sense of the word) was able to splice things up in no time.  It's amazing what a difference not being able to veg out in the evening in front of the televish will do to you.  "Read a book" I hear you all cry. Whoops ran out of books that wind the brain down enough to relax and there are only a few English book shops in Muscat.  That had me twitching, I can tell you. But now I have a new piece of trash I can relax at night even if the television is sulking in the corner. I foresee a bit quite a bit of Book Depository coming on. Once we have a postal box to send things to.  I had mention there is no home delivery of mail?  I'm sure it's because they couldn't find any postman capable of understanding, following or giving directions. I'm slowly letting go of my slight OCD love of maps.  Today I even drove into uncharted territory - that's right, the 2012 road map of Muscat doesn't have a whole chunk or Muscat on it - the bit next to where we live.  The bit with the gargantuan bulk hypermarket in it.

Internet wasn't much better.   We having were having very little joy getting home internet connected because the provider needed a scan of David's passport.  Where are our passports?  With immigration.  Why are they still there?  Immigration is still waiting on copies of our marriage certificate (which we were told we needed the day before we flew out - it is locked in Canberra - BJ has sent copies, but they are apparently walking from Australia).  So we've been hot-spotting from our phones.  That's mostly been just fine.  Except that David's phone (the galaxy aka bitch fiend from hell) wouldn't talk to anything but my phone and sucked the data like the vampire it is.  It also got the tablet hooked on the Katrina's iPhone habit.  So, download spiralling out of control I was beginning to get a little panicky, not to mention blind from reading my phone.  As luck would have it there is only one provider covering this area and it only covers it wirelessly.  Good grief.  Anyway David managed to get a scan of his passport from Immigration and we are now the proud owners of a little purple and white wireless modem, which NAWRAS calls a fixed line modem.  Why? Because it's fixed by location apparently.  THAT caused some interesting issues getting customer service when it would go.  But now it does go.  Yay us!

Pretty minor stuff really, but we're both running out of the adrenaline that we've been using for the last few months.  Suffice to say, we need to slow down and smell the roses - or the frangipanni in the the garden, or the so far unidentified creeping thingy that opens its little trumpet-like flowers in the evening and fills the air with perfume -  or perhaps eat some figs out of the tree next to the kitchen.

What we see as we lie in bed in the morning

The view from the kitchen table during a morning cuppa