A Change of Pace

One of the first things you notice (once you’ve sort of settled in) is the difference in the rate that everything moves here in Oman. I put it down to the heat but I’m sure there must be other underlying reasons.

Before you can start work, you have to get your residency visa which means dealing with Government departments and PRO’s. A PRO or Public Relations Officer must be employed by every company that employs expats and basically they are there to deal with the Government departments. This does not mean however, that things will move more quickly for you and there can still be language barriers and all sorts of fun things to deal with. But this all said, obtaining my partners residency visa was the fastest on record apparently (for his company anyway). I think it took 3 weeks from memory, whereas his work colleagues took 4 to 6 months! I have a feeling some of this came down to my partner’s persistence…

The other thing you notice is that nobody moves very quickly here, literarlly. I mean, when walking down the street – wait, nobody ‘walks’ down the street here! – everybody drives everywhere. So, when they walk through shopping centres, the pace is quite slow. This I think is a direct result of the heat here. It’s summer at the moment and with temperatures being constantly in the high 30’s to mid 40’s with 70+ percent humidity, it gets warm very quickly. Why would you want to move quickly really?

Interestingly, the women all wear long black dresses and scarves that cover their head and hair, usually with something sparkling along the hemline. You would think that they would swelter in their outfits, but no, they look very serene and quite often, elegant. There is an aura of confidence about these women, particularly the younger ones.

But I digress…

The entire city shuts down for a few hour during the middle of the day – again, due to the heat – and starts up again at about 4pm. A big shift for someone like my partner and me is that everything happens at night. From sunset onwards people go out shopping, they go to the movies, and they eat late. An example of this is at the cinema, the final showing is at 11.30pm! In Australia, this would be the end of the movie when the cinema was closing. I doubt that we will change for this, like my partner said, he’s still got to get up in the morning and go to work.

Just another adjustment when you are an expat!