Carrefour Follow Up

Sorry about that folks! - was away for some nice R2I, I mean, R&R.....yes, that's it - for the past few weeks.

Ah, but no sooner did I get back to beautiful Muscat that I had occasion to drive up the ramp to Carrefour once again. This time, behind a Toyota flat-bed lorry with about 300 four-metre lengths of black, plastic piping. 

The scene unfolded with my sub-continent friend ripping across two lanes of the His Majesty's Highway, with the customary tap on the brakes just as he pulls in front of me - to add to the infringement, and also to my stress.

I flick my high-beams to warn him about the "you're gonna have a bad day" limitation device, and with seconds to spare, he cops it and slows down - his sidekick sticking his noggin out the window to gauge the space. They made it by what I imagine to be about 5mm, but from my distance it looked an imperceivable amount.

A quick flash of the hazard lights and a wave through the mirror and all was well. Jet Driver's good deed for the day had been done. 

However......there is another limitation device at the top of the ramp and logic would dictate that it would be the same size as the other one, and I am assuming that it was this logic that was at work as our main character sped up the tarmac towards Safety Device Number 2, with wild abandon.

He made it through the last barrier with 5mm to spare, so no reason why he shouldn'.....

The plastic pipes hit the top of the barrier at around 60 kph, and the resulting needle-like shrapnel shower would give any scene from "The Matrix" a run for its money. 

Time slowed down. Everything now in very slow motion: my avoiding action, braking and swerving, dodging shards and other chunks of debris, then full chat as the traction control kicked in - almost through, ahhhhh, sidekick is opening his bloody door, more power, blast the horn, brakes on again, quick look in the mirror. Daniel Craig would have been proud. 

"Everything ok, mate?"

"What I tell boss?" was all he kept saying as I drove away.

Babies, Cars & Kinetic Physics

I have been thinking of writing this for a while, and the fact that it has been raining made me decide to expedite the process. 

I know that all of my expat readers have seen one of these before, but I wanted to draw them to the attention of local drivers. 

This is a child's car seat. It is not a toy. It is a safety device, that is designed to prevent your kid from becoming a flying death machine when you or someone else, does one of your usual and utterly astonishing road maneuvers. 

Now, I know that cultural awareness and tolerance is spoken about widely in the papers and on a lot of the blogs here - and while I fully respect the religious beliefs of my hosts, there has to come a time when you need to be practical. 

Picture the scene. This morning - coming out of Seeb and onto the highway, I am driving behind a late model Mercedes, and in the back, I see the beautiful smiling faces of three local children. Two girls and one boy - all between three and five years old. 

Dad hits the brakes as another muppet slices across two lanes of traffic, and the kids disappear, only to resurface again albeit in a different order - grinning and waving.

I just don't know how parents can allow this situation to occur. 

Time for a crash course in Physics:

The force of gravity upon you means that right now, you are experiencing what we call 1G - or one times the force of gravity. 

When you accelerate or decelerate, you experience different levels of G. 

For example, when I make a tight turn at work at high speed, I can experience about 6G sometimes more. 

As well as being uncomfortable, it also has an effect on my body's perceived mass. 

If my head weighs 10kg - this means that in a 6G turn, it now feels like it weighs 60kg. 

During a rapid deceleration, I can experience "negative G' which will try to pull me out of the seat. 

If I wasn't very securely strapped in, I would quite literally be minced after I disappeared through the instrument panel.

The same thing goes for your children. 

In a 120 kph crash, the deceleration factor can make the average child without proper restraints, pass through the car interior with the force of an elephant.

And if it happens, there is no prayer in the world that will save them.

A flying child with that much kinetic energy, has several options: 

They can, if you are lucky, go through the windscreen, killing only themselves.

Or, if your vehicle gets hit at an angle, the child can bounce around the inside of the cab, killing everyone. 

Put three kids in the car - and you triple your chances of instant death for all. 

Think that it can't happen to you? Think again.

I get the feeling that it happens here a lot. 

What stuns me is that, as far as I know, there is only one retailer that sells these seats in this country - Baby Shop in the Centrepoint chain.

This is absolutely outrageous!

THE USE OF CHILD CAR SEATS SHOULD BE LAW IN OMAN - Take that to the Ministries. 

Get it sorted. Now!

Fireworks Tomorrow Night

The fireworks are coming tomorrow. 

Beautiful things they are too! Reds, greens, purples.....all the colours of the rainbow. 

An awe-inspiring sight in the sky - the flashes and bangs, the ooohs and ahhhs of the crowd and the joy on the faces of all and sundry as the night is transformed into a hypnotic kaleidoscope of colour and light, complimented by an orchestral score of truly epic proportion.

But even in its almost divine luminescence, it couldn't hold a candle to the bright LED brake-lights of the twenty thousand cars that are going to just stop dead along the hard shoulders of every major artery or piece of high ground in and out of Muscat - with orange hazard lights blinking as they go.

Add to that, the countless whirling dervishes of bright blue from police cars and ambulance lights splitting the sky as the local sport of rubber-necking goes interstellar overdrive, and 

it will all pale in comparison... accompanied by the sounds of Armadas and Yukons crushing Echos and Serions into a melange of scrap metal, grey plastic and middle-management Indian family remains. 

I'll bring the popcorn!