Finance and Cultivation

I haven’t been kicked out of a building since my college days. So I find it strange when a voice comes onto a loudspeaker, tells everyone to pray, and then storekeepers ushers us out with great urgency. It is even more bizarre to witness an entire town freeze from doing commerce. We carry a prayer schedules in our purse and wallet to help us plan our shopping and dining activities; but we never seem to time it right.

Regardless of the prayer hassles, life here is easy on the pocketbook. A quick price list will reveal this:

box of juice Ceres 1 liter = $1.30
haircut = $4
1 lb. of Feta = $1
gas (gallon) = $0.60
6 fresh figs = $0.50
homehooch* b0ttle = $15
milk (gallon) = $1.60
dry cleaning (a shirt ) = $0.25
café meal = $4.50
Indian breads, spreads for 20 people = $6.00
5 various over the counter medicines = $12
eggs (24) = $4
gardener = $50 every day/monthly
nanny = $650 170 hrs/month
dates = free because they are on all the palms
fresh fish (grouper) = very cheap that I don’t even feel like spear fishing the ones off the reef near our house.
“house boy” cleaner/maid 1x a week for 3hrs. for 1 month= $70 a month

The quality of what you get is fairly high. Not much organic unfortunately. The only expensive aspect for us is travel. Flights are costly here because of the high tax and lack of competition. A roundtrip flight to Turkey is about 600 bucks. UK is about 900.

*You could make it, but it's not worth it. The local home brews are common but not very enjoyable. One batch of red made my eye twitch. Another batch (just one copa) made me wake up with a terrible headache. This is definitely a downside when all you want is one glass of good vin0. The upshot: Bahrain is just an hour or so away. It caters to the West and is fully stocked with non-homeh00ch products.