SMALL WORLD

The world of expats in the Middle East is incredibly small - especially when you've grown up over here. Who needs “six degrees of separation” when one or two are enough?

Two examples.

My first day touring the halls of the Language Centre, I was introduced to Suhair, a Coptic Christian Egyptian woman from Sudan. Just to make conversation, I said, “I only really know one person from Sudan, David Knox, who graduated from Wheaton, my undergrad college. “ Turns out David went to school in Sudan with Suhair’s son, who is now at Indiana University, just a short car ride away from where David’s practice in Central Illinois is! (I promised to put them in touch.)

Wednesday, I was invited to a small Welcome-to-Oman dinner at the nearby on-campus home of two SQU faculty members, Carlo and Mariel, a married couple. She’s British and he’s Italian from Sardinia (who grew up in French colonial Africa, etc. etc.) They’re both members of the local PCO (Protestant Church in Oman), and found out I’d called asking for a lift on Fridays from other church members who taught at SQU. The other new guest was to be an Egyptian Anglican priest named “Medhat from Egypt,” Mariel said. “Is his second name Sabry, and is he connected with All Saints’ Cathedral in Cairo?” I asked. “Yes. How did you know?” “I used to be pretty involved at All Saints’ when I taught at American University in Cairo,” I replied. “I bet it’s the Medhat I knew there.” And sure enough, he was the one! In fact, he is in town being vetted for a co-pastor position at the PCO and may be around permanently very soon!

THE DUTCH SIDE OF THE FAMILY

OK, two more examples of "small world"!

I’ve met two Iowans who’ve also just arrived with our new teacher cohort in the Language Centre – Tom Griep from Dubuque and Carla Vander Something from Sully, just up the road from Pella! Of course, we were instantly comparing notes on Iowa, and somehow the fact came up that my Central College alumni relatives were all from Sheboygan county, Wisconsin. “My mother’s side comes from Sheboygan County,” Tom said. Her maiden name? Walvord! (He thought there had been some change in the spelling. ) As I recall from family history research, there were two Walvoord clans that came to Wisconsin in the early 1800s, related only back in the 1700s. But still, how weird of a coincidence is that?!!

FRIDAY PRAYERS

Sunday is the traditional day of worship in the Christian West (and East). In Muslim countries, the weekend will likely NOT include Sunday, however, so Christians make do with another day - usually Friday, also the Muslim day of gathering "jum'ah".

After calling the PCO (Protestant Church in Oman) office several times since my arrival August 15 and basically getting a list of service times (nice, but how does that help me with no car?), I was finally put in touch with other PCO attendees here on campus who could give me a lift (see Carlo and Mariel above). Mariel picked me up Friday morning with a Russian Orthodox friend, who also teaches in the Language Centre, and we were off to Ghalla, where one of the local permitted Christian centers is. My first church service since leaving Los Angeles.

Cyclone Gonu in June deposited a wall of mud about 5' high inside the building, damaging other parts of the buildinng as well. The whole area looked like a building site, with mounds of dirt 10 feet high around it, but at least the inside sanctuary had been painstakingly cleaned up, and worship was on. More on that in a later posting ...

THE PUZZLE OF A THOUSAND PIECES

Sometimes, getting business done in Oman has seemed like putting a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle together … one piece a day!

Take exchanging my US driver’s license for an Omani one.

DAY ONE: Five days after I arrive (August 20), the university takes a bus-full of us to the Omani equivalent of the DMV. I had brought all the necessary bits and pieces: two photos, photocopies of my California license, university ID, resident ID, application form. Everyone cleared through the process in about an hour. Except me.

The first step was a crude eye exam using a nickelodeon-like machine you stare into. Is the E facing up, down, right, left? The right eye passed fine. However, with my amblyopic left eye, we immediately ran into trouble. “Which way is the letter facing?” “What letter?” I asked. The policeman made the by-now tired old discovery that, yessiree, my left eye didn’t see too good. “Not good!” was the verdict. I was whisked out the door to talk to the next higher-up. “Hmm. Not good!” was his verdict. “You must talk to the mudiir (director).” Regrettably, it was after 2:00, and employees in respectable positions in Oman have gone home by then. “Come tomorrow.”

I decided there was no point coming “tomorrow” unless I could present a good case for why they should grant me a license in spite of my undeniably bad left eye. I decided a letter from an eye doctor stating my binocular vision was acceptable for driving was the slam-dunk solution. The mudiir would have his cover, and I would have my license.

DAY TWO: After the weekend, I could finally start on my intermediate goal. So, Saturday I stop in the University Hospital (considered one of the top hospitals in Oman) and finagle a walk-in eye exam with an Argentine eye doctor, Dr. Carolina Montana. (She is a friend of my Argentine officemate Carmela.) “Come back tomorrow for the exam report.” Fine.

DAY THREE: I stop back by, expecting to whisk the report off to the DMV. But it is tiny, in inscrutable medical-ese, and in ENGLISH. “Not good!” is my first thought. No one at the DMV will understand it or even bother. I need an Arabic translation. Patient Services at the hospital helpfully provides this service to patients. I leave the eye report with the translator, Khalsa. “Come tomorrow.” “You can’t finish it today?” “No. Come tomorrow.”

DAY FOUR: I return to pick up the Arabic translation. It is ready, in nice big type on hospital stationary,. “Very good,” I decide. I have to return to the eye clinic and wait for Dr. Carolina to again sign the translation. Then I have to return to Patient Services to have it stamped with the hospital stamp. All in one morning (OK, several hours, but ONE morning.) So far, so good. But now it’s about 2:00, and we have a teachers meeting. Timed out again.

DAY FIVE: After one missed day due to more teachers’ meetings, I believe today is the day! 9:30 my own private university driver takes me to the DMV. LOCATION ONE. (Start keeping track of locations here.)

We bypass all the intermediaries and go straight to the mudiir, Saleh Al-Nu’mani. You know he’s important because his office is inside ANOTHER office. He grasps the situation rather quickly. “You must go to the Police lieutenant next door on Saturday (after the weekend).” My eye problem is apparently too momentous for even the director of the entire Motor Vehicles office to excuse.

LOCATION TWO: Next door is the main police building. My driver (who by some providential choice is an Omani man who takes his agent –for-faculty role very seriously) decides to test fate and venture next door the same day. We are ushered into Police Lieutenant Sultan Al-Za’abi’s office. He is a serious, intelligent-looking man who dispenses with time-consuming Arabic pleasantries and gets right to work, checking the Omani regulations book about minimum vision requirements. After a short discussion, he sends a subordinate to type up a letter requesting an eye exam for me in the Police Hospital. My driver is incredulous. “Sultan Qaboos University Hospital is one of the best in Oman. Why isn’t that good enough for them?” And the Police Hospital is clear across town on a Wednesday, the worst traffic day of the week. Driver is not happy!

The Police Hospital sits atop one of the breeze-swept hills of the ritzy Qurum district with views towards the sea.

LOCATION THREE: We walk in the main hospital entrance and hand my papers to the officer on desk duty. Wait. Wait. Finally, we are told the eye exam building is somewhere else in the hospital complex.

LOCATION FOUR: Drive. Park. Go in the eye clinic door. Lowly young policeman directs us upstairs.

LOCATION FIVE: Important older policeman listens to our tale. Directs us back to Location Three, hospital reception. Drive, park.

LOCATION THREE: We are told many patients are ahead of me. Fair, yes, but … “Wait for the doctor to call you. “ Five patients go in and out. Finally, the doctor’s underling mentions my name, listens to the problem and directs us back to Location Five, the superior officer’s office above eye clinic. Drive, Park.

LOCATION FIVE: Superior officer wonders why we are back. “Go to the clinic downstairs!” he barks.

LOCATION FOUR: An eye doctor is present this time. I take the exam (shorter and more muddled than my University Hospital eye exam). Doctor scribbles note. Staples note. “Take this to a consulting physician” in Location Three.

LOCATION THREE: We are told to knock on the physician’s door even though the sign outside clearly says, “Do not knock.” We enter the empty room. I wait. An Indian doctor finally appears and looks at the results of the eye exam. He writes a short note in pen on the back. Something like, “This young [!] man has an amblyopic left eye, but his total vision is acceptable for a driver’s license.” (I peaked before he stapled the note.) “Please take this to the Patient Relations office to get stamped.”

LOCATION SIX: The driver, patiently if grudgingly enduring this ordeal, now entering its fourth hour, sits with me in a waiting area of a brand new wood-and-marble office. The three men in the office would like very much to stamp the eye exam + note and let us go, but the only one with the proper authority to sign the form is not there. “He is out, but he will be coming back. Please wait.” After 45 minutes we ask when he will be there. (I have a 1:00 teachers’ meeting.) “He is at the hospital here. He will come soon.” I tell the driver we will give him 15 more minutes then leave and come back after the weekend. After 13 minutes, the driver wants to go. “Just two more minutes,” I urge. My Teutonic sense of time came in handy because in two minutes the Man-With-The-Keys-To-The-Kingdom does arrive, signs, seals and delivers the coveted form without which I have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a license.

It is now 1:15, too late to go back to the DMV (and I have missed my teachers’ meeting). I have no choice but to wait till after the weekend. Saturday will now be DAY SIX – and I will have been in Oman half a month tomorrow. Let’s hope all the saints, apostles and holy angels are with me next time. I really do need that license. You can’t really live here without a car.

Stay tuned for more Perils of Paul …

TGIW

Thank God it's Wednesday! (Yes, the work week here ends on Wednesday.)

Today was the first teacher-y thing we've done so far. All the instructors had to report 8-8:30 this morning for duty for the all-important Placement Exam, which decides what level the incoming pre-freshmen will be placed in. Test monitors, following the British usage, are called "invigilators" (I think that's illegal in several Southern states). There was Invigilator A and B. I was neither. I guess we newbies were too inexperienced to be entrusted with a task so grave. We were sort of "hall monitor/gopher".

A gaggle (a "flock"? an "exultation"?) of teenaged Omani girls swathed in black but for their nervous faces poured into building F. I guess a "herd" would be a more appropriate group name, since they were basically herded into various empty classrooms for the test. They went up the "Female Lift" (elevator), while I went up the "Gents Lift". (Very British influence in Oman - for decades now - with Muslim segregation of the sexes thrown in for good measure.)

One poor British instructor ended up by himself with a room full of confused young women and spoke no Arabic, so I thought I'd make myself useful translating and helping them fill out the forms. They got the names and numbers right, but the "field of study" was a bit problematic. "Please, teacher. How spelling agriculture?" (These were low-level learners, obviously.) And we politely confisccated all cellphones, since text messaging and pre-messaging have been known cheating tactics.

After all the girls were into their test taking (only girls in my building this time), I sneaked off to the "refreshment room" to mingle with other teachers and the central testing coordinators. One of the testing unit men, Farah Bahrouni from Tunisia, had ignobly torn a nice triangle out of the back of his pants so that his red shirt showed through. He took it in humorous good grace. We ribbed him that his wife would now be wondering what kind of "exam" he had been giving. One Omani woman, a scholar of the Qur'an, apparently, joked that in the Surah about Joseph, his proof of innocence when set upon by Potiphar's wife was that his clothing was torn "from behind" and not "from before." A witty (and pious) reply!

One of the test committee members, an Omani woman, had baked a Martha Stewart chocolate brownie recipe she had gotten off the net for all the hard laboring test givers. So you see, we are up to date out here!

Afterwards, skipping lunch, I got to Famco - the faculty-staff clinic - early enough to get my required medical exam. (I had arrived the day before after 2:00 when the admitting office was already closed.) Standard stuff: weight, blood sugar, blood test, blood pressure. They want me to get another chest X-ray, but since I had just had one done in June for my contract finalization, I insisted that they use the already finished one. They are very fast and free with radiating people here in the Peninsula. (Kind of like the fascination with radium when Madame Curie first discovered it - people were putting it on their food!) But the old X-ray wasn't sent to the university hospital - too logical - so now I have to track it down in a file somewhere in the Personnel Affairs Dept.

Speaking of radiation, this evening, I joined my American neighbors Virgil and Myra and some friends at a Turkish restaurant for a small celebration of Myra's safe return from radiation therapy in India for her breast cancer. A US-trained Indian doctor has opened a chain of world-class, US-standard private hospitals in India offering treatments for cancer, heart surgery, neonatal surgery, etc. at 1/10 the cost in the US. Virgil and Myra warned me against the SQU medical center in dire stories of malpractice over the years. "For simple procedures, yes, but don't go there for anything serious!"

Anyway, tomorrow begins the weekend, and I hope to catch up on some of my hundreds of emails you have all filled my mailbox with!

Hayyaakum Allah! (God give you life!)

TAKE A NUMBER

As “aliens” here in Oman, the first task is to get us new faculty members legal. To live here, we need at the least a university ID, a national “green card” resident card, Omani drivers license, etc.

SATURDAY

Saturday, the first day of the workweek here, new faculty went to a large room with all the various legal and HR departments represented to get our paperwork started. After four hours of filling out forms and shuffling around from station to station, I had almost succeeded in getting my Sultan Qaboos University ID. The only snafu: I didn’t have the requisite little passport photo of me. (I had been here for three days prior and could have taken care of this many times, but no one told us.) So … “Come back tomorrow.”

Saturday night, a couple of other new teachers and I headed to a local photography studio and had our passport photo taken. With 39 copies of them just to be safe!

SUNDAY, BLOODY SUNDAY

Sunday, I waltzed back in with the photo. And after another couple of hours a university ID appeared with my name in English and Arabic. Without it, I couldn’t apply for the next card, the Resident Card. But that was done elsewhere. 1:30 pm a busload of us were driven to the Omani equivalent of the INS office. There were approximately 300,000 people in the waiting area – ok, maybe 300. Indian construction workers, Turkish taxi drivers, Filipinos, Pakistanis, etc.

You picked a number and waited till it was called. Mine was something like 495. But the number on the board was already over 600. What gives? I asked one of the overwhelmed Omani civil servants how my new number could be less than the one on the board. “Oh, it goes up to 999, then starts again at 300.” (Is Kafka listening here?) So, apparently, I had only about 695 people ahead of me. And each SQU teacher got a new separate number with many others in between!

Our graying, wiry bus driver Salman, who was responsible for getting all 15 of us through this bureaucracy and back to campus by dinnertime, quickly realized the first would be waiting till midnight for the last of us to get through, so with many probably illegal moves, he pushed us through the crowds into the inner sanctum, herding groups of us into the line for this door and that, no doubt pressing some cash into a few hands in the process. Somehow in the melee my name was finally called, and I got my pale blue Bitaaqat Muqiim (Resident Card). Two cards in one day; a record, certainly!

MONDAY, MONDAY

Today, feeling optimistic at my past success, I picked up all my 13 separate house keys from Housing (yes, there’s a lock on everything except the medicine cabinet!) and went with the 1:30 group to get my Omani driver’s license. You takes your number and sits down to wait. First came the eye test. “Which way do the three-pronged figures point: up, down, right, left?” Right?

Well, I did fine with the right eye, but my amblyopic left eye immediately ran into problems. “Which direction is it pointing?” “Is what pointing?” Standstill. “You can’t see anything?” “No, my left eye has amblyopia.” (I tried putting this in Arabic.) Problem. The tester went off into the main hall to talk to his supervisor. “You can’t see with the left eye?” the supervisor asks. “No.” “Hmm. Come back tomorrow when the director is here. We need to ask him.” (What choice did I have?) “OK, I’ll come tomorrow.”

Actually, I understand the delicate situation they’re in. No one can afford to risk making a bad judgment call on their own outside of procedure. They have to have some higher-up to take the fall. So, I’ll save everyone’s neck by going to a campus eye doctor this week and having him or her write an “authoritative letter” explaining my left eye condition and reassuring the license center director that I am capable of driving safely. (This, after 28 years of safe driving in three countries!) This will sooth the way for every party concerned, and I should get my license. (LA’s DMV made me get another whole eye exam when they encountered my amblyopia in 2005.)

Another day in Oman …

LETTER FROM Al-KHOUD, OMAN

Well, I’m finally here!

It’s Friday (Al-Jum’ah in Arabic, or the day of “gathering” at the mosque). I’m sitting in my air-conditioned faculty townhouse somewhere inside the sprawling desert campus of Sultan Qaboos University, while outside Weather.com says it’s 93º (“feels like 110º”) with 67% humidity. Less humid than usual. It doesn’t fog my glasses today, as it has the past two days since I arrived Wednesday noon.

THE TRIP: LAX TO JFK

It was nail-biting time those last few hours before sister Ann drove me to LAX around 9:00 pm Monday night for my 11:25 United red-eye flight to JFK. She and I had spent most of Monday running from bank to bank, the AAA, etc. getting final business done, including getting my updated will signed by two competent witnesses. (I ended up returning to my old Torrance apartment complex for that.) So that left about 3 hours to really pack.

I had all my clothes in piles next to the three suitcases ready to be put in, but it was all the final decisions about which letters, files, etc. to take that really took the time. I had been building up piles of things for Oman, but it was a matter of which things needed to go in the luggage NOW and which could go later in the air shipment Ann would put together.

I kept my watch on LA time the whole trip since on paper it would take parts of three days, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and I wanted to see what the REAL time spent was.

The United flight to New York landed after dawn Eastern time, but that was only 4:30 in the morning LA time. I tried to sleep, but the flashing light of the interminable in-flight “entertainment” on the screen lasted all night and kept my mind numb and sleepless.

I was overjoyed to find a line for Peet’s Coffee (a San Francisco chain much better than Starbucks) waiting for me in the JFK terminal. Emirates Airlines was in the international terminal, and I already had my boarding pass, so I stopped at the check-in desk merely to ask for an AISLE seat this time (I was wedged in at the window on the United flight by a father and young son who slept most of the flight, so getting in and out was a physical and etiquette hassle.)

JFK TO DUBAI

In the end, it turned out to be a moot point. The “11 hour and 57 minute” direct flight to Dubai leaving at 11:20 in the morning (8:20 am LA time) was blissfully empty, and I got an entire row to myself: reading material on one seat, beverage tray open on another, and me next to the window enjoying the long, panoramic flight along Long Island’s south shore, then Rhode Island, past Martha’s Vineyard, then Cape Cod, then out into the blue Atlantic. A gorgeous clear day and the perfect vantage point to take in the New England geography.

The service on Emirates (always in the top ratings by business travelers) made United seem like Greyhound Bus lines. The food and drink (even free wine and beer!) was frequent and high quality – and included! The multinational crew showered us with freebies such as kit with a sleeping mask to cover your eyes and socks to keep your feet warm and toys for the kiddies (yes, there were whining, crying youngsters aboard).

The airline wisely kept activities to Persian Gulf time, so as night came in Dubai, the airline dimmed the lights and stopped food service after dinner even though it was still light over the central Atlantic. I peeked out my window after night actually fell and thought I glimpsed the entire boot of Italy from space (“Wow, we must be 50,000 miles up!” I though.) It wasn’t. We were somewhere over central France entering Switzerland, the live flight map on the screen corrected me.

I tried to get as much sleep as possible to get on Gulf time immediately, but I did watch the sun rise (lurking for a while behind the deep blue clouds like the white shark in “Jaws”) over Iran about 7:00 pm LA time. Our flight path sagely avoided Iraq, and we did the less risky thing and overflew Iran instead. Baghdad was somewhere off the right side of the plane, but we couldn’t see it.

We headed south over the absolutely mirror-smooth Gulf right into Dubai airport in the hazy Wednesday morning sunlight, landing at about 7:40 am (8:40 pm LA time). After taxiing around the entire city (or so it felt) for close to 20 minutes, we finally were let out via the stairs (no “tubes”) to board a bus on the tarmac below – just as my Arabian childhood travel memories have it. The hot, humid August air hits you like a punch to the stomach. “Back home,” I thought!

DUBAI TO MUSCAT

The supposedly luxurious Dubai airport (Dubai is the Las Vegas extravaganza of the Middle East) was packed with unhappy, grumpy passengers sitting on seats or on the floor, or even sleeping on the floor. The airport designers had obviously majored in the minors – getting the luxury shopping right and all the travel efficiency and comfort aspects wrong. If I wanted Givenchy and Guerlin, no problem. If I wanted a sign telling me where to find the transit ticketing desk (I had no advance boarding pass for Muscat) – or even an elevator, no luck! I went through two security points (a 4th grader with an atomic bomb in his bag would have had no difficulty passing that test) to get to the well-hidden Transit Desk C. Then I passed back through the same security checkpoint to get back into the mall-cum-airport that is Dubai International.

Since the seating area for my gate would only open an hour before the 10:45 flight time, I joined the legion of other, mainly Indian workers huddled outside for a time. “This is nuts,” I thought, and headed off to tour the shopping arcade. At the end of the terminal, I discovered a quiet Starbucks that allowed customers the luxury of a seat, so I bought some Starbucks mugs with “Saudi Arabia” and “Oman” printed on them (a true novelty gift from the Gulf!) and sat down to read my newspaper.

The Oman Air flight to Muscat was only about 40 minutes, but you had to give them credit for trying to meet their hospitality duties in the air. They quickly rustled up a sandwich and candy bar lunch plus drink, served us all, then appeared after what seemed only five minutes to take away the half-eaten food. “Are you finished yet?” (Uh, no. I’ve just had enough time to start masticating my first bite of this beef sandwich you just gave me …)

OMANI SOIL

Our wheels touched down on Omani soil about 11:30 am Wednesday (after midnight LA time), and I was met at the visa pick-up desk by a university employee in traditional Omani garb (long white robe and round cap), who whisked me through all the points and out the door into an SUV taxi. Another American instructor at the university, Browder Swetnam from Arkansas, was also there to meet me, but he had just enough time to say a quick hello, press a cell phone into my hand, and say, “call me when you get to your housing.”

The taxi driver, Salman, spoke very little English, so I switched into Arabic, and we were chatting away instantly. (Omani Arabic fortunately turns out not to be too hard to understand.) He drove me to the university Housing office, where I was given a key to an on-campus townhouse (quite desirable, people have told me since). Salman drove me over to it and entered the hot, stuffy house with me. We soon located the power switch to start up the AC, fridge, etc., so cool air was blowing in short order.

The two-story townhouse was already furnished (plainly but sufficiently), and someone had been thoughtful enough to leave one teacup, one plate, one spoon and a cheap aluminum teapot. And a few sheets for the bed. I’m glad I brought my own pillow, however. But no soap, no toilet paper, no trash cans.

It was immediately apparent that a quick trip to a shopping center was in order, and so I called Browder on the phone he had given me (excellent idea!), and he stopped by to pick me up and take me to a mall to do my household purchases. Shopping centers and malls are something that modern Oman does well, especially in the suburbs of Muscat, so there is hardly anything I couldn’t find (if I didn’t insist on my favorite US brands).

The first evening, we were joined for a dinner out at a local Turkish restaurant by my neighbor Virgil Williams (from Minnesota), an English instructor with almost 20 years at SQU. It’s really quite yucky outside in August here, so “outdoor dining” is not really as glamorous as it might sound. Instead, we ate inside where the AC was. Now, THAT is glamour Omani-style!

Thursday and Friday are the weekend here, so I have luckily had two days of R&R after my arrival, but I have tried to stay on Omani time from the very beginning - 11 hours ahead of LA. (And with all the odd hours and lack of sleep my last days in LA, that’s been a lot easier!) Aside from the daily shopping trips so far, I have mainly been unpacking and reading a new historical novel about the Roman orator Cicero, “Imperium” by Robert Harris.

Saturday is the first real “work” day I’ll have, when all the new faculty meet for orientation. And we’ll be issued the various university IDs and residency cards that allow us to be legal here.

Meanwhile, I’m keeping comfortable in the AC, eating enough and lying low till my job starts up. And I’m very, very grateful it’s all gone so smoothly thus far. The wisdom and foresight by people like Browder and others at the university are largely responsible for that.

More Omani updates later …

NEW OVERSEAS ADDRESS

For mail to me in Oman after August 13:

Dr. Paul Sundberg
Language Centre
Sultan Qaboos University
PO Box 43
Al-Khoud, P.C. 123
Sultanate of Oman

Work telephone: 011-968-2414 1640 (968 is the country code for Oman)

HOME SWEET HOME

After seven years of being homeless – ok, a renter, not really “homeless” – as of August 1 (closing date) I now have a headquarters of my own on planet Earth! After selling my Urbana home in 2000 and moving eight times in seven years, my new condo plants me permanently in the historic Sundberg stomping ground of LA (since 1896), but on its far southern fringe: San Pedro, the historic port city for the city – now, along with next-door Long Beach, one of America’s largest ports.

After deciding I definitely needed and wanted a “home base” in the US to call my own while working overseas (rather than having Storage Unit #562 as my only US address), the end of June I started looking for a condo or duplex in San Pedro, one of the more affordable communities by LA standards, and found myself gravitating back to one condo I had visited on the first realtor-guided tour.

It was light, airy and spacious and had a killer view over Angels Gate, the entrance to LA harbor, and the Pacific beyond and a spacious balcony from which to enjoy it. More importantly, it also had two other requirements: a huge lockable storage unit on the garage level of the condo complex to keep stuff while overseas and two bedrooms, one of which to rent out and one I would fill with the rest of my stuff and lock up while away. The master bedroom was as large as two rooms and could easily serve as an office as well as a sleeping space, and the closed-off second bedroom wouldn’t detract from the flow of the unit, making it practical as a desirable one-bedroom rental apartment while I’m in Oman for three years.

I tried to view any potential property through a renter’s eyes. What would convince prospective renters to walk through the door and say, “I’ll take it!”? Since one of the prime draws in Southern California for over a hundred years has been the mild coastal climate and sea views, I wanted a place that would give the full “California dream” – cool breezes year round and a true panorama of the Pacific.

Unfortunately, very little of LA fits this bill, and the subsection that does is by now unaffordable except to corporate lawyers and movie stars. (Condos going for $800,000 and up along Santa Monica Bay!) Once you’re more than 10 miles from the coast, the climate zone shifts to desert and is hot and uncomfortable in the summer. Plus, why move all the way out to California to live in stuffy West Covina looking out your balcony at the apartment building next door and a gridlocked freeway?

Luckily, San Pedro was largely overlooked in the “irrational exuberance” of the real estate boom of the first half of the 2000s, and there are still relatively affordable homes here. My condo’s asking price (which I paid) was $525,000. But Midwestern readers should keep this in perspective: a dumpy free-standing duplex up the road with no view cost over $600,000. Other LA condos inland with no view at all are going for $400,000-plus, and you can’t touch a free-standing home in less attractive neighborhoods in LA for much under $500,000. So, I thought it was a gem at its price, and, more importantly, one that would hold its value and appreciate over time. Someone would always want it. Heck, I may just decide to keep it!

July has been mainly “home buyer hell,” between demands by Escrow, my own realtor Madeleine Drake (a seasoned “Pedro girl” who definitely knows from San Pedro real estate), the demanding sellers’ hot-shot realtor Mia Ellison, and the loan officer at Washington Mutual Bank, Samson Mendo, a Cameroonian who loves wheeling and dealing but doesn’t always follow through by promised dates.

After first considering a 5-year interest-only loan for 80% of the condo’s price, I was counseled by more experienced heads and ended up with a more traditional 30-year fixed rate mortgage loan (at 6.95%) with over 40% down on my end. I decided I didn’t know what my plans were after three years in Oman, but I did want to option of buying to keep and using my monthly payments to actually pay down principal rather than pay, in effect, years of “rent” to the bank and end up owning only my down payment. And who knows? Maybe I’ll want to retire there myself?

It was painful coming up with the 44% down myself to keep monthly payments manageable, largely cleaning out my taxable savings, but selling off all those assets at the top of the market a couple of weeks back looks like not such a dumb move now given the market roller-coaster (mainly down) since then!

At the moment, the condo is strewn with boxes waiting to be unpacked or repackaged for storage, but I’m living in my own home for the first time in years and enjoying the feeling thoroughly!

The San Pedro condo address (where I won’t be):

3138 South Gaffey Street, Unit 10
San Pedro, CA 90731-9514

(you can always look it up on maps.google.com to see where in LA it is!)