After a day of doing bugger-all yesterday, I came back to the hotel and was given a message by the receptionist:
“You must be ready at 7.00 tomorrow! Medical or something! 7.00 exactly!”
Even after my very brief acquaintanceship with Oman so far, I was pretty sure that nothing has ever happened here at 7.00 exactly, but I reassured him that I would be there.
At the appointed time, I found my fellow processees in the lobby, except for one who had moved out to a friend’s house the previous day. Half an hour later the car arrived, and we spent another hour driving around Muscat looking for this missing colleague. By the time we got to the immigration/labour/whatever office, it was about half eight.
There were two waiting rooms: one, virtually empty, allotted to ‘ladies’, while the other was full of Indian labourers, and a smell of tuberculosis seemed to hang in the air. We each got chits of paper with our allotted number (which also stated “there are 153 persons waiting”) and watched the electronic display slowly edge upwards.
The display was still only half-way there when our minder got bored and ushered us into an office, where we took turns to be photographed and fingerprinted (I must remember to wear gloves when committing my dastardliest deeds). Several queues later and we emerged residents of Oman in time for lunch.