Raining pretty hard these few days. A welcome respite in this region. Roommates and work group went to Schlitterbahn and San Antonio for the weekend, but I didn't want to go to the water park again.

This week, traveling abroad came up during work. Nigeria came up simply because it is so dangerous. Separated by distance and fascinated by colleagues who had been there, people talk about it with equal measures of relief and envy. This is a country that looses almost half of its oil income to corruption and theft. Daily, people try to tap into pipelines by blowing part of it up or drill holes in them. And when they get injured or killed, the oil company gets blamed.

One has gotten accustomed to thinking that the Middle East is not safe. But the most problematic country, Saudi Arabia, has kicked out every other foreign company a long time ago. Its state oil company, Saudi Aramco, dwarfs all the Majors. It single handedly controls all the oil in the kingdom. The kingdom, meanwhile, has become a buffer in the Middle East. It separates the Israel, Iraq, and Turkey hot zone from the relatively stable southern Arabian peninsula.

Everyone wants to go to Oman. The safest country in the middle east. It would not be an exaggeration to say it is safer than Houston. One can drive at any time to the beautiful interior, or enjoy the beaches. Dubai is mere hours away by plane...