The Godfather

Andrew Millians is the course manager of FSV. In certain ways, I suppose that makes him my boss. Therefore it makes me a bit more willing to do favors for him than for the average Ang Mo on the street. Those who’ve been reading my blog since last acad year (ie- both of you),  may remember the time I wore six pairs of underwear, a jumper, a suit blazer and a leather jacket through security at Changi Airport to help him out at Christmas. This week, I’ve become Godfather and babysitter for his cat.

Now at first one might wonder, why would he need a catsitter when it’s the middle of the term and he’s here teaching classes. As it turns out, his young son is allergic to cats, and so the cat, which has been with Mr. Millians longer than either his wife or his kid, has to go. I suspect he paused for a moment when he had to decide whether to abandon his cat, or sacrific his family. So, until the new destination is decided, the cat is living in my guest bathroom.

This is Okra, and I’ll be the first to admit he’s a pretty cute cat. He has a soft, thick coat and he’s not bad-tempered or mean. He’s a bit noisy, but one time I was locked in a bathroom, and I got pretty noisy myself. As for his name, Okra is the American word for ladyfingers, but you can’t name a boy cat Ladyfingers unless you want all the other boycats to kick his ass on the void deck.

Even if okra could hold his own in a gang fight, I’m left with the aching reminder that I’m just not a cat person. There’s an arrogance to cats that I find disconcerting. I really want  a pet to love me, and cats don’t seem to provide that affection. Cats are too much like people, with quirks and moods.

Does Singapore have the same dog/cat divisions the US does? Are men here more likely to love dogs while women love cats? And do that many people have dogs when their flats are so small? I’m not firmly convinced by the small dog, which I suspect is something of a dog/cat combination. The idea of a dog carted around in a purse is a bit adsurd to me. How is it that dogs began to be associated with men, and cats with women? Is it something with tradition, where the dog would be a hunter with the man, and the cat would remain in the house with the woman?

So are you a dog person or a cat person? And if you just love cats, do you have any space in your bathroom for a spare one?

A Tale of Two Cities

  

On the border between the Sultanate of Oman and the Emirate of Abu Dhabi are two cities. There is really no reason for there to be two cities, seeing as it’s the middle of one of the world’s most inhospitable deserts. However for these cities, it is certainly the best of times, since they experience the joy and irrigation endless barrels of oil can provide. The city on the Emirates side is called Al Ain, and it’s the city I was in. The city on the Oman side is called Buraimi, and that’s the side Kevin was on.

 

But before I go into detail about the border, I should first introduce you to my car. Her name is Wadi Shab, named after a delicious Omani oasis with a perfect temperature swimming hole. 

 

She has a choice sound system, comfortable seats & fantastic 4 wheel drive for perilous mountain roads and sand dunes. Despite my liberal guilt at the poor gas mileage, she is easily the best car I have ever driven.

I was no longer driving that car. I left Wadi Shab and her 75 USD a day rental fee in Oman, then flew to Dubai, and picked up the Toyota Echo, a $25 a day crap car that completely sucks all the fun out of driving, from its manual windows to its AM/FM radio. (A tape player? Really! Who uses tapes any more?)

The plan was for Kevin to take the Omani bus to Buraimi, then I would drive to pick him up from the bus terminal. We had to do this because I couldn’t get the cars insured for more than one country.

 The drive to Al-Ain was uneventful. It’s expressway the whole way, with camels and dunes in the distance (exotic, right?) I’d agreed to meet Kevin at the Buraimi bus station at 3pm, and I was possibly going to be a bit late, but only a couple minutes. And then I got to the border. Actually border is a bit excessive of a term. I say border and you think Woodlands checkpoint, with drug-sniffing dogs and guys in crooked hats. No, this was a four lane road with some cones in it and a guy in military clothes waving everyone through.

Everyone except for me of course. He made me turn around. Even though the Buraimi bus station was apparently only a few hundred meters from the border.  I tried to explain that I only needed to go a tiny bit over the border, but he wasn’t so interested. That, with a combination of not speaking any ENGLISH, prevented a dear friendship from blossoming.

So I turned around. What do I do? My Lonely Planet writes that Buraimi and Al-Ain are essentially the same city, the customs border checkpoint is actually 24km deeper into Omani territory, and Buraimi is the only area to find a cheap place to stay. I go to the Al Ain shopping mall, thinking maybe I can email Kevin. We’re only about 3km apart, and since he already finished customs 24km ago, he can come to Al Ain any time he wants. But I have the car, and I can’t come get him. I email and I wander on foot, since I don’t want to move the car from the parking space I told Kevin about in the email. Of course, he’s never seen the ugly little car, so I don’t know how he would recognize it anyway. I decide to spread my dirty laundry over the back seat so maybe he’ll recognize one of my shirts.

I visit the Hilton and drink a $12 orange juice, and look at some of the world’s most ridiculous roundabout architecture. And I wait…and wait…and wait….What if I never find him again? Will we spend the next week of the vacation wandering the country aimlessly, writing poetry of longing and loss?

About 10:30pm, there’s an email from Kevin. He’s found my email! I am overjoyed when I see him, feeling like a long day has come to a close. By this time, it’s about midnight, and I’m in a nasty mood. I hate Buraimi and I hate Al-Ain and I have no interest in spending any more time there. Technically I’ve never spent any time in Buraimi, but I still hate it. So we drive and drive, deeper into the desert, looking for somewhere isolated enough we can pitch our tent and get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a better day.

We find a paved road and veer to park on the side of it, at which point, the Toyota Echo gets stuck in the sand. Wadi Shab crossed vast expanses of unpaved desert, and this stupid compact car gets stuck in sand only 2 meters from paved road.  We try deflating a tire. We try putting the coolbox lid under the tire to give it some traction. We try lifting the car and moving it. No luck. So we pitch our tent and go to bed, circa one thirty in the morning, thinking good riddance to the crappy day we’ve had so far.

It’s still sometime in the middle of the night when I get woken up by honking. “Hey, you need a tow?” I leap out of my sleeping bag, desperate for help. I have to trust somebody, because I’m not going to move this car by myself.

Our tent is surrounded by pimped out SUVs, and men in traditional Arab dress. They’re our age, maybe younger, and they’re out 4×4 driving in the dunes. “In the middle of the night?” I ask. I suppose why not, since it’s so much cooler in the dark. As for the Echo, it takes them about, oh, 10 seconds, to pull it out with a tow rope and their monster truck. And then, like hospitable hosts, they ask, “You guys want to come along?”

 So that, dear readers, is how I ended up making friends with Emiratis, bouncing over sand dunes in the middle of the night until I asked them to pull over so I could rest my dizzy head. They were very proud of me for not throwing up. Without the madness of those two cities, I would have never made the personal connections that so few people get in their travels.

When we woke up the next morning, our campsite was surrounded by a giant herd of grazing camels, and the magic of the Middle East had returned.