On the rails - Oman gets rolling

Today, the Tender Board finally announced that it was tendering for Project Management consultancy services (121/2010) and Design & Supervision consultancy services (120/2010) for National Railway projects here in Oman. The owning organisation is the Supreme Committee for Town Planning. Interesting!

The floats were picked up by Arabian Business here.


The ambitious plan is to 3 launch Construction tenders in 2012 and to complete all three legs of the work concurrently by 2017. I say ambitious because there's an awful lot of pre-contract work that's going to need to take place in order to get this monster done.

An excellent move, and part of a GCC wide initiative for a regional railway network.

The railway will certainly do a lot for building the economy of Oman away from Muscat. I don't know the route yet (but if you do, please do email me!), but I should imagine that I'd be buying up as much real estate as I could around the planned station towns :)

le fin.

Just a Quickie: WH Smiths now open in Oman

Just a quick one today.

Hopefully you all had a nice weekend :)

@blue_chi tweeted a picture today which was a bit of a surprise to me:


WH Smith is now open, in Oasis by the Sea (where Pizza Express is) Jawharat A Shatti (where Darcy's Kitchen is) in Shatti. I'm going to take a look at it later, to see if they have any books. I wonder if this will be much competition to Borders? It's certainly in a pretty handy location.

Burger King still is not open by the way.

le fin.

Edited: Thanks Loola for updating us on where it is. Muscat's very own Jet Driver (author of the amusing Omani Space Program stories - part 1 & 2 - one does wonder what Nasser Bin Tumoon has to say about what the astronauts like to eat when in space) has just updated us that the Turtles location at the airport has also been converted to a WH Smith. I wonder if the Intercon has been changed too?

Tom Jones - He's got pipes!

So last night was the main event for all of us here in Muscat. The old boyo Sir Tom Jones came out for a sing song. The place was packed out, and there was a steady stream of people entering the grounds from 7pm right up until 9:15 when the concert started.

There was not much chatter on twitter about the gig, but @raideraid tweeted this picture early on (thanks for letting me use it!):


In what was the second to last concert on the world tour (the last one being in Abu Dhabi on Friday), I have to say that it was a very well oiled machine. The supporting band, the sound and light guys, and of course the man him self, Sir Tom.

Now I'm not a "fan" of Tom Jones, but I enjoyed last night. The 10 piece band were excellent, and it was refreshing to see that all the music was live, with no computer wizardry evident! It was a good mix of old and new, but from a personal point of view I preferred his older music. His new stuff from 24 hours isn't bad, it's just not as good when you compare it to his back catalogue of hits starting from the 60s.

The crowd was a mix of all ages - not just your grannies!

I was amused to see quite a few pairs of knickers getting thrown on stage throughout the night. I think when he sang Delilah this may have been when the most were thrown - I wonder if he ever keeps any of them? ;) I saw quite a few Welsh flags, but was rather disappointed not to see any blow-up sheep. One can always hope for Abu Dhabi I guess!

His voice, as remarked upon by an amateur singer in a local band who I was talking to, was impressive. No worries whatsoever for what will be his very last concert on this 24 hours tour in Abu Dhabi. He sounded strong and no compromise was given - the guy is a professional and it showed when he sang. I thought to myself that this guy must be bored of singing the same songs, over and over for decades (OK so it's made him a fortune) and yet still delivers them with as much gusto as if it was the first time he had performed. I liked the finale - predictable as it was, but it was a good way to end the gig.

To sum up: A great concert that was entertained by people of all ages! Have fun in Abu Dhabi!

le fin.

Amusing pictures from around here, Tom Jones

Firstly a few pictures that I've taken around Muscat lately. If I see more amusing things I'll make this an irregular feature.

You'll have to look closely at this one.

The Private Parkings!

Self explanatory!

In other news, Tom Jones recently played both the Cape Town and Joburg concerts, and we're next. Neither of the shows were cancelled and there's a good few days until he's due to sing here, so there's no reason not to believe that it won't go ahead. I look forward to seeing hoards of people singing stupidly when Delilah is played. I wonder if anyone's going to bring a blow-up sheep to help the Welshman feel at home?

The only slight spanner to be thrown in the works is that it's potentially going to rain on Wednesday, as initially reported in the Omani bloggersphere by James at Oman Oman Oman. A brief look at Accuweather suggests that it will be cloudy on Wednesday, but not rainy. Time will tell I guess!

le fin.

Ho hum

It was a pretty eventful weekend for me. Wednesday night was a nice relaxing evening at the fantastic PDO boat club watching the Exiles band play (the same band from the ANZO ball). Thursday evening was an eventful affair that ended up with a drunken bout of The Beatles Rock Band. I still managed to get high 90's. Ok it was on easy mode. The new band at the Safari bar, Oxygen, seemed ok. The two lead singers were wearing some pretty sexy outfits which seemed to pack the punters in, and the guitarist (from Norway, I think, or one of the Scandinavian countries) also demonstrated that he could actually play the guitar quite well.

Friday morning I woke up to find I'd won Tom Jones tickets in the recent prize draw over at Muscat Confidential - score! But seeing as I've already bought my tickets, I am giving them away to fellow blogger Delirious in the Desert.

And speaking of fellow bloggers, new girl on the scene English Girl in Oman has blogged again about life here, a dinner party this time. I wonder if anyone will comment with embarrassing dinner party stories. I hope they do because I find that sort of stuff really entertaining to read :)

Also, Reality in Oman has blogged twice in recent days. The first on haggling at the Muttrah Corniche (I so need her haggling skills when visiting the dodgy t-shirt guy in ruwi) and the second was an alarming commentary on the issues she is facing from her family for marrying an American "white boy". While one could argue that anyone marrying an American is cause for concern (because they're.... American?!) it is entirely dis-heartening to read what is happening to her and by extension, her immediate family as a result of her uncle's desire to be an asshole. An enlightening insight into the inner-workings of Omani family politics. My commiserations go out to her, but I'm sure in just a few short months when she is state-side, it'll be a distant memory.

The Jet Driver also blogged recently on the greed of some people in the 40th anniversary celebrations, worth a read because I think it's definitely something that rings true. I just wish he'd write more about the Basis Bus One because that had me in stitches of laughter.

In local regional news, I read with some amazement that the Qatari's have decided that they will now refuse to offer Visa's on arrival to European and North American passport holders. And rather bizarrely, one of Qatar's Diplomats caused a commotion on a United Airlines flight to the USA recently when he tried to sneak a quick smoke in the toilets. Obviously this set off alarms and then the guy joked that he was trying to set his shoes on fire. What a dick!

So, now, or after May 1st, in order to visit Qatar, if you are not on the magic Visa on Arrival list, you will need to obtain a visit visa ahead of time. That's really good for business that is. Suddenly Qatar is competing with the UAE to be more like Saudi. But understandable I guess. However, what really amazes me is that in order to get a visit visa, British nationals must now present bank statements of the last 3 months showing that they have at least $1300. That is a real corker! The Doha rugby club is a great venue and a great place, shame they are not going to be hosting many more games there because of this ruling!

Have a good week everyone.

le fin.

Not much news today.

However,

A little bit of news on the Tom Jones concert. It appears the old crooner has over done it a bit - he's got acute laryngitis and has subsequently cancelled his last 4 concerts (in Singapore and South Korea). His next gig is in South Africa on the 7th of April, which I guess will indicate whether he's back on form again, or still suffering.


Notably, the Tom Jones website has been pretty quiet on the issue, with the last update being on the 1st of April.

I googled acute laryngitis and it seems that recovery periods can be measured in days, not weeks (obviously in many cases it takes over a week to heal). So it would seem safe to assume that the South Africa dates will go ahead (well maybe one of them), and then ours too. Time will tell I guess, but he is 69 now, so perhaps it'll take him longer to heal.

I got in touch with the event organizers here in Muscat, and was given this information to share:

1. Sir Tom's management have given them no reason to believe that the event will not go ahead.

2. In the unfortunate event that the show is cancelled, full refunds will be available for ticket holders.

That's all for today.

le fin.

Happy Easter

To those that celebrate it, Easter Sunday is tomorrow. I for one was surprised that it was Easter already, and successfully failed to send a letter home to my family, again. I'm getting quite good at that!

In a small website spotlight, I'd like to point anyone interested to this website. It is called Church in Oman and seems to detail and highlight all of the possible worship options for Christians here in Oman. Friday's are obviously the biggest days for attendance, but seeing as Sunday is Easter, I'm sure there'll be a few people attending then too (service starts at 7:30 pm in Ruwi).

I'm off to find a Cadbury's Creme egg, they're tasty!

le fin.