في مسقط

After a 13-hour flight from O'Hare to Abu Dhabi and then a 45-minute flight on to Muscat, I made it to my new apartment in the Al-Khoud area, which is about a 10-minute drive from the university. I don't really know how to direct people to my place unless one is coming by way of the airport, but I'll figure it out later. I'm just grateful that my assigned uni buddy was able to follow me home from the airport on Thursday night so that at least ONE person knows where I live and she was able to pick me up to take me grocery shopping yesterday.

Overall, the apartment is pretty decent -- lots of space. I've got a master bedroom with a full bath (not a bathtub, but a workable shower space - will have to squeegee the toilet and floor when I'm done bathing), a smaller bedroom with a full bath, a HUGE kitchen with a gas stove and fridge, a living room with an attached full bath, and a common dining room that links the kitchen and the bedrooms. The foyer connects to the living room, of course. It's a little too much apartment for me, but at least I can compartmentalize my life into separate rooms for sleeping, reading, game-playing (I've been playing a lot of Yahtzee when I wake up at 2:30am and can't get back to sleep), paper grading, etc.

I'm on the ground level, which doesn't bode well for uninvited pest "visitors." The cockroach body count (after I cleaned yesterday and gave my flip flops a workout) is 6 roaches. These are not measely roaches, mind you, but brown 6cm suckers that give me a heart attack when I open the door to a bathroom and find one running away from me on the floor or when I pick up a plate whilst washing the dishes and one reveals itself to have been hiding between two sandwich-sized plates. Today's housing goal: communicate that I need pest control to come to my apartment as soon as possible. I get the feeling that they're coming through the floor drains in the bathroom, but we'll see what the experts say. Another point of order is to get some weather stripping for my front door. Currently, there is a 1.5cm gap between the floor runner and the bottom of the door. Not very energy efficient, mind you.

Today, I'm using another colleague's computer to read, but not respond to, email from the past few days. In about 20 minutes, my buddy will take me to personnel so that I can get my university ID card, get finger printed, submit identification forms, etc. They may do my medical today, but we'll see.

Things are decent. I'm surprised to have a delayed jet lag (the first night I was able to sleep 10 hours straight); last night, I went to bed at 11:30pm, woke up at 2:30am, and still haven't gone to bed yet. With the Ramadan schedule, I'll fit in with the sluggish fasters...