August in Mexico

Cool weather, delicious fresh food, stunning crafts, beautiful architecture, color everywhere.......Mexico couldn't be more different from Oman. I always expect to have a wonderful time there, and my expectations are always exceeded. Some highlights from Mexico City, Puebla, and Oaxaca, all chosen because their cool weather, delicious food and beautiful crafts.

in the cathedral on the zocalo in Oaxaca

making the famous barro negro (black pottery) in San Bartolo Coyotepec

the fanciful wooden animals of Oaxaca

the valley of Oaxaca from the Zapotec ruins at Monte Alban

the ball court at Monte Alban

the colorful streets of Coyoacan, the most beautiful part of Mexico City

the church of Santa Caterina

the garden at Casa Azul, Frida Kahlo's house in Coyoacan

Puebla, famous for its architecture, Talavera pottery and fabulous food (mole poblano, semitas, huitlacoche)

interior courtyard of our guest house in Puebla

July in Finland

It isn't easy to get to Helsinki from Salalah (Salalah-Muscat-Istanbul-Heathrow-Helsinki) but the long trip was worth every minute to be back in Helsinki, a beautiful, peaceful city with fabulous museums, great cafes and in summer, stunning markets.

After a few days of enjoying the markets and museums (especially a show of Oiva Toikka's works in glass at the Design Museum) we went to the summer house that Maria designed on a lake about 2 hours north of Helsinki. In the Finnish manner, everything in the house is beautiful and perfectly functional. After 10 months in Oman, nothing could have been more wonderful than trees, water, cool weather, Finnish design, and best of all, catching up on news with Maria and Tapani.


11 PM the day we arrived

Maria keeping fit by rowing us around the lake.



While we were on the lake, Tapani fired up the sauna.

2AM July 17th

Unlike the trip from Salalah to Helsinki, a daytrip from Helsinki to Tallinn takes 2 hours on a huge, comfortable cruise ship.

the medieval Town Hall

return to Helsinki at midnight

A broken foot and a beautiful garden

In late November, I had the foot that I broke in a bizarre accident in the Beijing Airport in 1992 surgically repaired here in Oman....in Muscat, the capital, not here in the hinterlands of Salalah where anything goes (more about that later.) All rooms in the hospital are single, but furnished with a pull-out sofa bed and 2 arm chairs....assuming that, as in the case of an Omani male, his 4 wives and their innumerable children will be present throughout his stay. Patients are asked when they would like their meals delivered, and amazingly, meals are presented at the requested time! The surgeon and the anesthesiologist were wonderful, but the nursing staff left much to be desired...no help to the bathroom post-op, no help figuring out how to shower with a knee-high cast, no response to requests for pain meds, and the enforcement of odd (dangerous) rituals like massaging a clotted IV line with the apparatus still in place. Nevertheless, after 6 days in the hospital (6 because physicians here are not permitted to prescribe narcotics for out-patients, and re-breaking a foot and inserting hardware is a painful procedure) I was discharged to return to Salalah. The usual chaos prevailed at the airport, but in the end, a soldier who was hanging around with not much to do, purloined a wheelchair and got me through security, despite the beep from the newly implanted hardware. As my wheelchair was loaded onto the lift that takes the food up into the plane, he knocked on my cast with his rifle, and said. "Camel milk 3 times a day for 1 week. Hallas." As my basket-lift device opened onto the plane, the captain greeted me at the door, and in a heavy Spanish accent said, "Welcome aboard. We been waiting; we couldn't leave without you."