AFC action - Oman to face down Kuwait on March 3rd

In the Asian Cup, Oman must now face Kuwait at home (in the Sultan Qaboos sports complex) on March 3rd at 7:30pm.

The last time the two teams battled each other, Oman gave the Kuwaitis a slap on their own turf and secured victory. This time Oman's playing them at home, so things should be even better for the local lads, right?

A few snaps of their last encounter

Well, maybe not.

The Oman Football Association has decided to start charging for the tickets to see the game. The price? A rather digestible RO 1.000 per ticket (which will be available at the gate). Except, apparently, there is a lot of outcry in the local Arabic papers about this proposed charge.

Furthermore, the Kuwaitis have said that they don't care if the tickets are RO 200 each, they're sending hoards and hoards of supporters to the game. And in the last game, I'm told that some Kuwaiti fans are suspected of having thrown rocks at the Omani players. Given the little spat (someone threw a firecracker) that happened in the SQ complex when Oman was playing Australia in the AFC qualifying game last year, it should make for some pretty entertaining action post-game between the supporting fans. I'm sure the ROP are just super pleased!

The winner of this match qualifies for the Asian cup in Qatar 2011, and what is an asian cup without the gulf cup champs?

So, the first obvious head-scratcher is - why wont the locals pay RO 1.000 for a football game, but are pretty happy to smoke heavily, buy cinema tickets for RO 3.00 and chat away on their cell phones? It is RO 1.00, not RO 10.000. If you cant afford that to go to a football game, then you've got bigger things to worry about.

The second head-scratcher is this: why on earth were the tickets for free in the first place? Oman is a big country, with a smallish population (yet big in GCC terms), with a pretty fixed income (ok it goes up and down) heavily based on hydrocarbons. Are the people here so blinded by the renaissance that they think there will be a free meal ticket for life? What is going to happen when Oman introduces the VAT (rumoured to be 5%)? Or, income tax, which is an absolute necessity as the countries running costs continue to increase, and oil/gas income declines.

And lets not forget the team's motto during the Gulf Cup.... One Oman, One Pulse. So lets make sure there's lots of support for Oman there.

So anyway. March 3rd, 7:30pm at the Sultan Qaboos Sports Complex - Oman will take on Kuwait, and hopefully give em a good shoeing. And then hopefully the Kuwaiti supporters will quietly bugger off back where they came from. Hopefully.

le fin.

Another Hi FM update...

So, this morning I received an email from a friend of mine who does the school run every day.

Apparently our good friend Darren Shortt at Hi FM had a few words to say at the start of his show this morning on Omani Blogs. It's great that he reads them, and enjoys them enough to even speak out.

Darren started out his radio show with a shout out to Eternally Distracted and Muscat Confidential, two of the arguably best Oman based blogs. Then he said, "But when they talk about Hi FM.... well we'll get to that in a minute". This was at about 7.05 this morning, and at that point, unfortunately my friend had to take her kid into the school and so she missed it.

And, rather amusingly, I can not find a single person that was listening to the radio show this morning - so I don't even know what he said! I used to have my alarm set to Darren's radio show in the mornings, so I would have heard it myself, except I realised I preferred to listen to "beep beep beep" than listen to Darren's radio show when I first wake up in the mornings, and so didn't avail myself of the pleasure of listening to his dulcet tones this morning.

Did anyone hear what was said?! I'm tickled pink that Darren felt the need to talk about it on air! I wonder if he googled his name again......

A rather amusing start to the day.

le fin.


*** Update ***
Gatvol, another fellow blogger, and chronic Oman Forum member, posted this thread on the forum today, and Darren replied. My latest blog post here presumably upset him a bit, fair enough, I was a bit harsh I guess, so presumably thats why he didn't comment here either. Or was that the anonymous poster?

Anyway, his comment was this:

I was talking about Omani Blogs on the radio, and bigged up Eternal distracted and undercover dragon, and a couple of others, and I went on to say those who talk about hi fm well that’s a different matter, ill come to that later!!

About half hour later I then talked about the muscatmutterings.blogspot.com saying what a good read it was, and one that i personally follow, and admire the writing ( though reading it today i wished i hadnt!) and that they talked about us yesterday, whilst not all good the blog had suggest a rock show, which i think may be a good idea, so what kind of support would that get, are you interested etc... and concluded with well its not all good about us but all press is good press!!

Hope that helps....


Darren

------------

So, the news here is:

1. Perhaps a rock/alternative show (or complete format change?! never!) is in the works at Hi FM?
2. Perhaps I should apologise to Darren for my remarks? I should probably point out that a beep beep beep in the morning is more likely to get me out of bed than a radio show/music - and thats the point of an alarm clock. Sorry Dazza!
3. Apparently some people do listen to the radio, because I had 33.33% new unique IP's (from the last week of data) visit the blog today, according to Google Analytics (love that software).
4. Did you (Hi FM) get any feedback?

le fin.

Hi FM is hiring!

With not a lot better to do today other than sit around and nurse my head and listen to some music, I ventured on to Twitter. I treat Twitter like a chat room, which I'm not sure is the point of it, but it's pretty amusing to pass the time.

Recently, Other Oman blogged and twittered about a stolen 4x4 vehicle..... and a twitterer tweeted that they had found it. Less than 12 hours. Twitter 1 - ROP 0. Pretty good I'd say.

But on with business.

The arguable grand-father of the Omani Bloggersphere, Muscati (his blog is now defunct) tweeted the following:

@muscati Hi FM looking for a new presenter: "Us or Canadian accent preffered but not essential!!" http://bit.ly/ayWoV6

So, I clicked the link, and this is what I discovered:

Hi Fm is the Number 1 brand in english radio in Oman, and it is looking for a new team member.

You will be a strong confident individual, have a great on air persona, with a proven background, have good production skills, and can work as a team player and fit into a AC format station with ease.

You MUST hold a degree, ( visa requirement ) Us or Canadian accent preffered but not essential!!

You will be rewarded with life in the sun and a great renueration package.

In the first instance email your CV and Mp3 demo (no more than 3mb or 3 mins no online listen links please as we are not going to hunt for a demo!!) to darren@hifmradio.com

Previous applicants need not apply,

To apply:
CV and Mp3 demo to darrenhifmradio.com

Interesting. However, it does amuse me that to work in radio, you apparently do not need to know how to spell. Which I guess makes sense.

I was tempted to submit a false application.... but I just cant be bothered. Perhaps one of you will? :)

I wonder if this means that Hi FM will start playing some more alternative / rock music?

Does Omanization policy not apply to Hi FM? I find it odd that none of the dj's on the station are Omani... I wonder if the chaps down at the Ministry of Manpower have clocked onto that one yet? But then again, no one actually listens to Hi FM, do they? So I guess no one will ever think to go and raid them ;)

Enjoy the weekend.

le fin.

News roundup: Muscat soon to be smoke free

Thanks for all the contributions towards the 24hr muscat post, it's interesting to know there are so many 24hr places here in Muscat, please do contribute towards it if you know of a 24hr place that isn't listed either in the main article or in the very helpful comments.

Many of the Omani bloggers wrote recently on the seemingly hilarious (but not funny for those effected) ruling in the UAE courts with relation to the Sheik Issa bin Zayed Al Nahyan's drug-fuelled bout of torture. It's like it's something out of a comedy show. My question to add to this on-going topic of discussion (mostly over at the Undercover Dragon's blog, but also noted Dhofari Gucci and Suburban's Other Oman) is this: So the guy was hocked up on drugs - why has he therefore not been charged with substance abuse? The laws in the UAE are so strict, that you don't even need to have taken them to be charged. Most famously, just having a trace of them, on your person, is enough to do some hard time (read the story of this poor guy who got sent down for 4 years for having 0.003g of cannabis on his shoe).

Then of course, there's the more recent story of a British muslim woman who was raped in the toilets by a staff member of The Address hotel. She reported the raping to the police, but all they were interested in was how frequently she had sex with her fiance. The authorities ended up charging her, and her fiancée for "illegal sex". Insanity. The British embassy had to intervene and specifically request that she at least be given proper medical care after the raping because the police had just locked her up in a cell. And the emirates are trying to be seen as a progressive state? Better try harder.

The repo market may just have arrived in Dubai. Barclays recently won the right to foreclose on a number of properties - this may prompt the start of a spate of foreclosures in the cash-strapped emirate, and thus maybe perhaps the cheap spin-off market of foreclosed properties being flogged off cheap in order to realise funds.

But now, the main story (courtesy of Muscat Daily).


Muscat Municipality is to ban smoking (and chewing / sniffing of tobacco) in commercial places from April 1st. Being somewhat cynical my first reaction was that it was an attempt at April Fools humour by the people at Muscat Daily, but it was only a fleeting thought as I realised that Muscat is being dragged into the 21st century.

This is to include:

Shopping malls, entertainment venues (read: bars), and other places of leisure (read: restaurants).

Having just given up smoking (again) on Jan 1st, I'm rather pleased about it. How about you?

I will be entertained to see what the following establishments (off the top of my head) are going to do about it: Al Ghazal, Copacabana, Safari, Al Falaj, RBG, All restaurants in malls, Feenies pub, and many more....

It's about time though, really. I wonder if it'll be enforced?

le fin.

Welcome to 2010 everyone, hopefully you all had a nice weekend. Now it's back to work, and I don't think we have any more national holidays coming for quite a few months - the grind has begun, again.

Muscat is of course the largest city in the country, and is rapidly expanding. One of the things you usually find in larger cities are 24h shops/services.

So far, here in Muscat, there are a few 24h shops.

1. Petrol stations

There are some Oman Oil and Shell petrol stations that remain open 24/7. The shops attached to these petrol stations tend to be your best bet for finding foodstuffs or basic toiletries in the middle of the night. Most for the 24 hour stations are located next to the main Sultan Qaboos highway.

2. Pharmacies

There are of course always the hospitals that you should go to if it's a real emergency. However, if you need to just get some medicine quickly and you know what it is you need, you can go to one of the few 24h pharmacies in town. A good tip to remember here is that the Oman Observer newspaper carries the names and phone numbers of the 24h pharmacies so if you're out and about and need to visit one, you can get a paper from one of the 24h fuel stations and then get directions to a pharmacy. Here are 5 pharmacies that are open 24hours a day:

Al Hashar, Ruwi
2483 3115
Muscat, Ruwi,
2470 2542
Al Sarooj,
2469 5536
Scientific, Qurum,
2456 6601
Ruwi,
2470 2850

Furthermore, this website shows all branches of Muscat Pharmacy that are in the country, and the 24hour locations are marked accordingly. There are 7 branches of Muscat Pharmacy in the Muscat General Area that are open 24/7.

3. Supermarkets.

During Ramadan, The Sultan Center remains open very late, if not 24hours. However, outside of Ramadan, I think no supermarket is open 24h.

The Al Fawaris bakery in Muttrah (2483 5345) is also reportedly open 24h, but I'm not 100% sure of that.

Update: Thanks to Oman's Collective Intelligence for sharing that there is a 24h market called O'Mart in between al Khuwair 33 and Muscat Private Hospital.

4. Fast Food.

On the weekends (Wednesday and Thursday nights) The Macdonalds in Al Khuwair and Sarooj are open 24hours. Apart from the bakery noted above (which might not actually be open 24hours) I am not aware of any other food outlets that are 24 hours.

Update: Thanks to Adil for sharing that the McDonalds in Athaibah is open 24hrs all week. Also that the Bausher Hotel has a 24 Hour coffee shop that serves intercontinental cuisine. And also that the fast food outlets at the airport, Dairy Queen, Papa Johns and Costa Coffee are also open 24h.

5. Taxis.

Taxis run round the clock, of course, but finding a reliable one is pretty hard. There are a few fledgling taxi companies now starting to take form here in Muscat. At the Park Inn hotel in Al Khuwair there is now a taxi firm that will even drop your car home for you for a fee - good for those times when you had more to drink than planned and cant drive home. I forget the name of the company but if anyone knows please comment and let us all know.

And, apart from car rental desks at the airport, that is all I can think of that is 24hours here in Muscat, except of course the hospitals, room service in hotels, and the ROP.

If you know of a 24 hour service here in Muscat, please let us all know by commenting!

le fin.

MIA: The Jet Driver

Last week, I noticed (actually on Thursday the 31st) that the Muscat Jet Driver has closed his blog, making it by invitation only.

Another Oman-based blogger closes up shop? I hope not, but it seems so.

And look at the damage Twitter has done to our local blogs - Muscati, Other Oman, Amjad - are just three simple examples of blogs that have all seen better days.

Thanks for the entertaining blog posts Jet Driver - they always made me smile. Especially the meathead picture, which still cracks me up.

Muscat Jet Driver's pictorial definition of a "meathead"

le fin.