This morning the public relations man from school took three
of us to an immigration office to get our resident cards. Mine went fine, was finger printed
electronically, picture taken twice and finally got my resident card, which
means I don’t have to carry my passport all the time. The other teacher, had
problems as someone made a mistake with the dates she came in to Oman. She finally got her card after the dates were
corrected. That all took 2 hours. There were busloads of migrant workers lined
up to get cards. Most construction work and manual labor is done by East Asian
workers. They sweep everywhere, take care of gardens, pick up the trash that is
tossed everywhere, knowing it will be picked up by this army of workers. They
work on putting up the apartment buildings. I’m guessing these poor fellows are
brought here with no building skills and told to build apartment buildings such
as mine. The actual workmanship in these beautiful apartments is terrible.
Grout smeared all over tiles, uneven and broken tiles and my polished granite counter
top has the area near the seams ground with a grinder and smeared with a rubber
cement to fill in the seams and counter top patched together in several pieces.
Holes are punched in the walls to put in wires and some electrical plugs were
never wired. Building inspector (if any) must have been paid off.
