Sweat

If you wake up early enough, the sun hasn’t yet baked the contents of each dented aluminum dumpster. I run by but still hold my breath before them, where the asphalt is stained dark and the air is rancid and sweet.

This morning I decided that sweating here doesn't bead and fall. It's more like going from matte to gloss.

Yesterday and today I did one thing. I don't even want to talk about it, sore subject as it is. Getting usable internet here is like building a castle on the sand or whatever that dumb saying is. Except you don't have a castle. And you definitely don't have sand.

Ok. So I have an Omani SIM card because of the phones they assigned us for the program. I needed to buy a modem then, in order to use this card to get internet access. The cheapest modem was 25OR ($65) and was 3.5g speed. Since my phone service is pay as you go, I have to buy phone cards and with my cell, text Oman Mobile whether I want 10hrs for 1OR or 60hrs for 3OR. Now when buying ten hours, this doesn't mean that you can use one or two, and then none the next day, and then three the following. When you press "1" and send, you have ten hours from that very second until your subscription expires... which seems excessive until you bring home your $65 modem and realize it takes about 3 minutes to load the google search engine page. They have to give you at least ten hours at once cause it's gunna take that long to get anything done! It was so slow that most of the pages wouldn't even load, the main problem being that it just gave up when I tried to get on Shutterfly or Picasa. So there I am, spending oodles of money every second, unable to upload a single photo, which is why I bought the whole frickin system to begin with. "Tony" was kinda with me the whole time, since I'm the guinea pig to whether or not he gets this service for his own family for their home. Seeing my 7-hour-long distress, he suggested we go back and get the next faster modem, the one that goes for the "lucky price" of 65OR ($169). Obviously I'm not thrilled about this but I NEED internet to get any pictures out. Plus, when I do my independent study project in a few months I'm definitely going to research online, thus I have to have it functional. After last night's party, my brothers, sister, ten zillion cousins and I headed to City Center again for moral support during my upgrading process. Back at the kiosk they DID NOT want to let me return the modem - apparently "return policy" is a very American thing. When they finally consented, I offered them my credit card to pay the next 40OR to cover the full 65OR. Fat chance! I have to pay this part cash since they have nothing for sale at the kiosk for 40OR or some bull so they can't run a credit card for 40OR. FINE! I'LL GO TO AN ATM! My cousin "Silvio" escorts me to one. And then when that one fails to release any funds to me, to another. Finally, I hand him the bills. Look at me right now. I am in a mood.

Long story kinda shorter - the new modem works better, if only slightly. But, mash-allah, it uploads pictures!!! Shutterfly was making me feel like burning something so I put everything on google's picasa. I'm hoping you just need to go to the link below:

http://picasaweb.google.com/sarah872014591

I may have to send out "share" emails or some such #%$@...
can you tell that I'm frustrated? hahaha

Also, special thanks to my parents who donated the money to my checking account that I decided went toward the puchase of this frickin sweet modem. You guys seriously rock - there'd be no internet without 'em, ladies and gentlemen.

See? Now I legit have a headache.