After three months out of Salalah, I have to admit it feels like I left it for too long. I was on fire when I left here, flying high on the ice cream, only to go back to New York and have it suck the life out me like a spider sucks a fly. Wallah.

We got the building permit 2 days after I arrived back in Muscat. It took 4 months. Why? No reason, other than New York does its best to thwart any activity by any small business. Ironic that the slogan is “NY Loves small business!” What a bunch of crap.

We rented a space for the new store, and all we are doing is renovating the inside. There are no structural changes, nothing on the outside, but with the psuedo-legal garbage they make you dance through, paying constantly, you are lucky to even get to the stage where you can build. It’s a total scam from start to finish.
Really it made me angry.

Now I understand why you can see a sign that a store has been rented and six months later nothing has happened. And just think if you are waiting for an alcohol permit!

Enfleurage was built with no permits, totally “illegally.” But we didn’t have the ability this time. Anyone who can build without permits will do it to avoid the city and all the outstretched palms-bureaucracy. You can bet those big companies, like all the LVMH owned boutiques now on Bleecker aren’t bothered, though. They just pay, having almost unlimited funding, and no need for their stores to make a profit, or even pay their own bills, anyway.

The rents they pay are ridiculous. On Bleecker street, west of West 10th, you find rents for $26,000, $42,000 and even $74,000. That’s monthly, people. Think Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren, Burberry Brit, Tommy Hilfiger, etc.There is no way Bleecker can support those rents. The stores are the size of Enfleurage, 500 square or thereabouts. It’s not 5th Avenue. Just amounts to advertising for those big companies pretending to have small trendy boutiques and it’s chic to one on Bleecker.
Annoyed? Disgusted? Yup. Totally.

Anyone out there wanting to open a business in NYC? Good luck to you.

Only thing that saves me from becoming a normal embittered New York business owner is that I have Oman.

And, of course, that we are opening that new shop, albeit a couple of months late.

Anyway, things are slow here as usual, and can be frustrating but so far nothing on the scale of NYC. More fun developments from America: Verizon no longer considers businesses under 100 employees “small business.” Instead, we are “mass market,” meaning there is not even a dedicated phone line, and they can’t be bothered with any customer service. Go on and try to call them if you don’t believe it. My friend was just told by Citibank, where he has banked for 16 years, that he would now pay $22 monthly for the privilege of having a checking account there. When he objected, he was told that he was “a class C customer” due to his balance being below class “A” and “B” customers, presumably. HSBC (British/Chinese) here in Oman declined to open a business account for me as my worth was less than the minimum million+ Rials needed (and to be kept undisturbed in the account for several months.)

2011 is the year that we finally are actually told, straight out, and flat out, by these disgusting large corporations, that we are so insignificant that it’s not even worth it for them to sell us their services. Think about it. Pass me my fiddle, and let me play while they burn.



Here in Oman we have the chaos of Cyclone Keila, which is a lovely storm, because you can be correct with any prediction. You can find a website, complete with radar, affirming whatever you like, telling you that it’s over, that it’s just now coming, that it doesn’t really exist, that it’s sitting on top of us, whatever you like. And it’s not just Omani weather reports. With the chaos in Muscat it seems Oman is not very organized with its weather communication. 14 dead so far......Doesn’t help that there was another Cyclone Keila back in June. Must be a mistake. Chaos!! Remember our “hurricane Irene” in New York a couple of months ago? Just hype really. I had thought it was the city overreacting so as to avoid disaster but now realize it was just a cynical news story.

Anyway, my garden is almost completely denuded of leaves. So sad. There is terrific damage to innocent banana and coconut trees all over Salalah and this morning people were out surveying the carnage.

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Michelle Krell Kydd writes a great blog dedicated to all things olfactive and gustatory. It’s called Glass, Petal, Smoke. This latest entry is just terrific; she writes about a periodic table of Smell. Featuring a table of “smellaments,” the Cognac Aroma Wheel and a completely insane page of podcasts called Chemistry in its Element, Distilling the Compounds that Count. Interested in the essence of LSD? How about Chloroform, Cholesterol or Cisplatin? How about Mustard Gas? Luciferin? Formaldehyde? Tetrahydrocannabinol? I’m putting a separate link to it at the bottom. It’s wicked weird and cool.

Glass, Petal Smoke

Chemistry in its Element