Eunos Chump

Miserable overnight flight home (including scampering from one side of Frankfurt airport to the other in the early hours to catch a connecting flight), but I'm recovering now.  England is so lovely and green!  Some more pics from the trip: Toyota Fortuner I briefly drove.  2.7 VVT of rubbishness.  It's only sold in this part of the world - often seen (briefly) from the camera on the front of a Maverick missile.  There's load of this. Back in the office tomorrow, probably to get a kicking for my £5300 hotel bill :)

I had a bit of a ride out today, eventually I was about 60 miles from Muscat into the interior of the country.  There were some old Portuguese forts I would have liked to see, but the road signs stopped as soon as I came off the main road, and my satnav (Copilot Middle East) lacks detail outside the main population areas.  Rubbish.  Anyway, it all mostly looked like this:  Spotted this today, I looked on longingly - I'm really missing the tactile experience of a bike.  However, the standard of driving here is absolutely atrocious, way too risky for biking.  I thought it was OK last week, but that was the weekend when the roads were empty.  The working week is Sunday to Thurday, and it's total anarchy.  There's a multiple pile-up on the expressway almost every day. Also saw this - a new Renault Safrane!  Doesn't look very Renault, because it isn't - it's actually a Samsung SM5, which is in turn based on a domestic-market Nissan. ...

I've got a Camry hire car now, complete with my name on the back so I can find it easily (the Duster went back because of some admin nonsense).  The interior (beige velour) smells of damp carpets, which seems odd given the climate, it's only got 1 wheeltrim, and it drives like a big golf buggy. It was 43C today, I don't understand how this part of the world is even populated.

I had a ride into the mountains yesterday, looking for rain (apparently it only rains about 3 times a year in Muscat).  There was no rain, only more lifeless scenery.  I did see a couple of Harleys up there though - bikes are very rare here.  

It's OK, I'm not actually cruising, that sort of behavior definitely ain't allowed here (like a lot of things, such as Skype).   That's the office, over that hill - not so much in the sticks, it's in the lifeless, blasted desert. Me and the Duster are getting along fine.  I had a look underneath and have discovered I've been short-changed with a non-4x4 version, but that may explain why it's so good on fuel.  That doesn't really matter when pez is only 20p a litre though. This is what I should be driving - huge vulgar truck. Better behave - jumping a red light gets you a mandatory 2 days in the police cells!  The standard of driving isn't too bad, apart from the taxi buses (which are used exclusively by the Indian immigrant population), and Land Cruisers driving straight off the desert onto the expressway. Back to the Disney Arabian  palace hotel...

...in Oman, for another office installation.  Short ride to Frankfurt on this A320, then onto Abu Dhabi via A330, then finally Muscat (there were less than 30 people on the plane by this stage).  BA was too expensive and all the other airlines were booked solid, so went with Lufthansa.  It was pretty comfy, very unimpressive range of films/TV though so it was a good job I'd brought along some suitable reading material. Oman is hot :)  It's worse than Singapore in fact, I can only manage a couple of mins outside (though I am pretty soft regarding heat).  Hotel is spectacular, here's some snaps taken from my balcony: As ever, the office build is behind schedule and there are serious problems with comms links/power which need sorting before I can start any proper work.  I would go sightseeing in my EXECUTIVE hire car, but there's nowt to see and it's not much fun being on my lonesome, anyway. I am missing decent tea and TV already.