Blood donation at MRFC this Thursday.

It's the fashionable thing to do, these days. It seems every day I look in the paper, there's another blood drive going on! That's really good to see - normally over the summer months, during the mass-exodus, the blood bank levels get very low, and so the need for donors is increased.
Donating blood is a tiring thing, and so it's best done on a day when you can relax (and not have to work!).

The Rugby Club is situated very close to the ABA school in Al Khuwair, and the blood drive is between 10 AM and 1 PM tomorrow. Here is a map to the Club House:

View Larger Map

le fin.

Just a quickie: Nando's now open again.

Nando's re-opened for business last Sunday night.... as far as I've been able to determine, no price changes or new items on the menu.

Update: Thanks to the anonymous commenter, it appears that there is in fact some new items on the menu: gourmet burgers. I hope you consider the error "rectified"..... :/

Thats all!

le fin.

TRA to ban VPN's in Oman

This is a re-blog of the original article written by Riyadh Al Balushi (aka @blue_chi) here.

Essentially, The Regulatory Authority (TRA) have decided that too many people are circumventing the filtering system imposed on net users here via Virtual Private Networks. If you read Arabic, here is the draft proposal being tabled by TRA for banning all VPN's in the Sultanate.

According to Riyadh's translation, those found privately using a VPN will be fined RO 500, and those found commercially using a VPN will be fined RO 1000.

Now this is a double-edged sword, because many companies here use VPN's to conduct their business. In fact, as a business, you must pay an absolute fortune for a leased line here - the only way to get a static IP with Omantel (Omantel conveniently decided that ADSL connections could not have static IP's, even though all it would take is a few clicks of a mouse - Nawras offer static IP's on their connections for a reasonable RO 50 a month). To give you an idea, an 8MB ADSL (and 0.5mb up) residential line is RO 99 a month. A 1MB leased line (that's full duplex, up and down) is RO 1,725 a month (after RO 400 setup fee) (this falls to RO 1,294 a month if you commit to 3 years usage). You read that correctly - to get a Fixed IP (which is required by many corporate networks architecture) you need to spend between US$3,364 and $4,485 a month! And that is only for a 1MB connection - you can look at Omantel's rates here. Alternatively, you could go to Nawras and get a Fixed IP on a 16MB down and 2MB up connection for a rather frugal RO 369 ($959) a month. It's a wonder why Omantel continues to refuse to offer static IP's on it's Business ADSL packages. Stupidity does come to mind.

So now then, the rest of us. Many people have been using VPN's to circumvent the restriction policies in effect. Some people use VPN's to get their skype working, others use them to look at porn, others to access regional-specific websites (Such as the BBC's iPlayer), and further more people use VPN's to access educational institutions. Some people just don't want their browsing to be monitored and so choose to encrypt it. OpenVPN is the software of choice for these people (it's the defacto standard because it's available for free, you just need to connect to a host machine - which is where companies charge). Omantel have blocked the standard ports that OpenVPN use, thus knocking out a large swath of VPN users in one swipe. Nawras have throttled these ports, to a point where a stable VOIP connection cannot be achieved, but browsing can still continue.

It seems that this move by TRA is more about stopping people from VOIPing than protecting the moral fibre of internet users here in the Sultanate.

The point of this argument is this: Where do you draw the line? To ban VPN's because people are using them to enable their Voip connections, that's one thing, but to ban VPN's because people are encrypting their traffic and big brother is not happy (which is the reason being spouted at the moment) is just a slippery slope. What happens when I want to do online banking, or access email, or visit any website which is SSL encrypted (thats https:// as opposed to http://) - following that line of thought from TRA, they will want to stop ALL of that because it's encrypted traffic.

I find this just another example of how draconian the policy makers at TRA really are, and I wonder what will happen next? The filtering hardware and software already imposed on us by TRA slows our internet traffic down significantly already, and for those people that game online (pc or console) they'll tell you the same thing - finding other players that they can play with without a significant lag (delay) is proving to be harder and harder these days.

The fine, if you are caught, is significant - RO 500 for personal users, and RO 1000 for commercial users of VPN's. That's a large chunk of change. TRA will grant licenses for educational institutions and businesses, but you may not apply for a VPN license if you are a private user. There is no word on pricing from the TRA, nor is there any word on how long it will take to get a license granted, or how they will apply those licenses to the ISP's filtering processes. Smart money says it'll be done via a whitelist of IP's - except that wont work for Omantel ADSL business customers, or Nawras Business customers that do not have static IP's. There's a lot left to the imagination here.

To detect whether someone is using a VPN, there are a number of methods that can be employed to do this. The most obvious one is to just simply block the common ports that are used by popular VPN providers, which has already been done. After that it get's technical, and essentially what can be done is that a profile is looked for in the pattern of your internet traffic coming from your account. For example, if all the traffic coming from your account is being funnelled through one port, then that's an easy guess that you are using a VPN. It gets very technical very quickly and thus over my head, but suffice to say - YES, it is entirely possible to detect when people are using VPN's.

One does have to ask the question - when does internet access here become so limited, that it's just not worth the already high prices charged for access?

le fin.

Hi FM's offices get a bit toasty.

Local commercial radio stations, Hi & Hala FM recently suffered a mild set-back.

The news broke yesterday but I've just been too busy. Thankfully the weekend has now arrived!

On Tuesday morning, at roughly 3am, a fire broke out in the offices in Al Khuwair and totally destroyed some of their offices. The studio's were affected indirectly, and appear to be operational (they are still broadcasting).

Some of you may be excited to hear that fortunately the entire back catalogues of Scooter and Hillary Duff was also lost in the fire. Tragic.

In other news, today marks the half-way point for this Rammadhan - all eyes on Eid now!

Meanwhile, this story may be of some interest to those of you who are looking to buy-in to Nawras's upcoming IPO. It seems they want between 700-900 bz per share, and are looking to flog 260 million shares... so that tots up to a lot of capital.

Enjoy the weekend!

le fin.

Driving in the UAE

If you fancy a quick dash to Dubai Do Buy, then this news may be of some use to you.

It appears that the gentlemen over in the UAE have finally decided to start actively enforcing road fines on foreign-registered vehicles visiting their emirates. An email has been doing the rounds on the expat circuit for some time now, so it may be old news to some of you.

Some of the pictures in the email are clearly dated, I mean, just look at the cars in the pictures.

In fact, it may be worth wondering about where exactly these pictures were taken - any evidence that they were even taken in the UAE?!

Anyway, the next two pictures in the email did grab my attention:



It appears that the boy's in Dubai have figured out that they can turn a tidy profit catching people speeding in residential area's - and about time too! Now here's the key facts rumoured in the email:

1. The speed limit in residential area's (eg where all those villas are) is 40 KM/h.

2. Don't drive down the hard-shoulder on any high-ways - harsh penalties will be levied if you're caught.

3. Unless otherwise noted, speed camera's have been set to 10 KM/h over the posted limit.

4. The Jumeirah road is apparently pegged at 80, and the camera's are set at 81 KM/h.

5. A first offence nets a fine of Dhs 1,500, a second offence lands you in jail for 3 days.

Now it's most probably nonsense that has been emailed around, but there's usually some elements of truth to these rumours.

Rather amusingly, James from Oman Oman Oman recently went to renew his registration on his car, and was alarmed to have been informed that he had a fine levied on him from Dubai, and he had to pay it before he could renew his registration. Interested, he looked at the apparent speed he was fined for, and was rather shocked to see that the Dubai police reckoned he was going 3225 KM/h. And rather than handing him a medal for breaking the land-speed record, the ROP guy simply said, "you must pay the fine - RO 63". The fact that there was clearly an error on the ticket and that it's just simply not possible to get any car to go even remotely as fast as that, or that anyone driving that fast should be put in jail, that was just conveniently ignored by the ROP officer manning the desk.

It appears that there is no method to question these UAE-levied tickets, and that you must pay them in order to renew your registration. It would seem that they have us all over a barrel - and surely some sort of QA/QC process must be in place? I mean, come on, 3225 KM/h and that doesn't even raise the slightest of questions that perhaps, maybe, the recorded speed was wrong? Just maybe?

Have you been fined for speeding in Dubai lately? How about driving through SALIK gates without a valid account?

le fin.

An interview with a dragon.

Recently, whilst out hunting for treasure, I came across the dragon sipping champagne and snacking on some flame-grilled Blue City management ribs. Even Ms Dragon was in attendance, back from a gruelling day of lounging on a yacht. What a great time to interview the Undercover Dragon I thought! And so I did......

1. Undercover Dragon, and Muscat Confidential has become the most
widely-known blog in the Oman expat community. Your style of writing,
and willingness to tackle some tough topics has been your
stock-in-trade these past 4 or so years. What was your inspiration?
Why did you decide to start blogging?

Well, thanks for the compliments! My inspiration was the piss-poor standard of the press in Oman, combined with the cultural tendency of Oman to not want to discuss anything controversial in public, even when it was 'common knowledge'. I didn't think either were good for the long term viability of the country, politically or economically. I wanted to show that a more open debate was both legal, tolerable and healthy.

2. Where did you come up with the name, Undercover Dragon?

I've always been a fan of the movie 'LA Confidential', so that's what stimulated the blog name. Undercover Dragon was a combination of my intent to remain anonymous and to be a bit of a fire breather. I think I've calmed down a bit over the years though...

3. Of all of the blog's you've written, what is the one that stands out for you? The one you are most proud of?

Hmmm. I guess the Blue City series was always fun to write, especially as I was proved correct in the end about its fundamental non-viability, even before the so-called global crisis hit. And the interviews with an expat homosexual and Omani bi-Lesbian about day to day life here were ground breaking too.

4. Do you feel that your blog has helped to educate people on corruption here in the Sultanate?

Only a tiny bit. Most of the true corruption is strictly quite legal, and most middle class Omani appear to accept the system as it is, seeing as they don't perceive they pay taxes anyhow, with an attitude that it's not their money anyhow. The issue is less one of corruption than incompetence. For example, it costs a lot more per square foot to build a 4 star hotel in Oman than in Europe, takes longer, and the result is to a lower standard. The economy is plagued with inefficiency and poor or lazy management, in both public and private sectors.

5. Do you ever get worried about being found-out and made to face legal charges from various people in the country? Or further afield?

I worry that it would cause a lot of hassle, cost and inconvenience for myself having to defend against frivolous charges. There is very little case law in Oman in these areas, and the law itself is so broad and ill-defined that that would be a risk. I was most concerned about the weird haters that seem to be out there finding out where I live or impacting my family.

6. Writing a local blog here with the readership that you have, have you ever considered writing a column for a local paper? Have you ever been approached by one of the local papers or magazines for this reason?

I did do the interview for Times of Oman, which was ironic, and Hi! Magazine too. But the pay for writing articles is too low to be worth the pressure, and I doubt any paper would want to sanction having Undercover Dragon as a staff writer!

7. How about a book?

I don't think many people would be interested. The Omani market is incredibly small, and outside Oman I don't think anyone cares. The blog will stay there in the internet for ever I guess, so it will always be caught by the search engines and their spiders for anyone would wants to read it. No publishers have made me any offers!

8. Being a social dragon, I'm sure you must have attended parties with regular humans. I know I've heard more than a few conversations over the years... "Who is the Dragon"? I think everyone & their dog has been fingered as the Dragon, are you ever tempted to tell anyone?

Oh yes, that has been one of the strangest parts of the blog. And yes, I have shared the secret with a very, very small number of trusted friends. Part of the problem is that the Dragon is not totally me. It's a character. And people would tend to confuse the two, as they do with actors, which I don't want either. But sometimes it is a temptation. I've also had many requests for clandestine meetings which I have always turned down. I've also come across people occasionally implying that they are the Dragon, which is really funny!

9. Do you have any regrets?

Only that I had more time to make the blog even better, and that the Government could make the law clearer as to what the boundaries are. Protection for journalists here is really substandard, even compared to a draconian system like the UAE, which is terrible. But it's not in the interests of the powerful in the country to change that. And most ordinary Omani who would like to see more and better journalism are too busy trying to pay the bills and keep their heads above the massive levels of debt they are in to care too much either. The public gets what the public wants.

10. What tips do you have for other bloggers out there?

If you want to do anything controversial, probably better to stay anonymous given the state of the law and the attitudes of a lot of people in Oman. But its not as easy to do this as you might think if there is any personal material in the blog. Little details leak out over time and someone dedicated can build a profile that would narrow you down. The other advice is generic - its easy to start a blog, but most people hit a soft patch after 1 or two months and stop. You have to find a niche and stick with it, posting regularly no matter what. If you write well you will find an audience. The growth in the Omani English-based blogs over the past couple of years has been great to see.

11. What are your plans moving forward?

Ah, more on that over at Muscat Confidential soon. I'm still on extended vacation! But some big news coming...


And that's that! I wonder what the big news will be....

le fin.

Horny taxi drivers.

The great thing for me about Ramadhan is my working hours - they're reduced. The bad thing is my workload, it increases. Which will undoubtedly have an impact on the blog, and hey it's a hobby so it's going to play second fiddle to work, as always, so advance-apologies if the blogs slow the next few weeks.

A few observations today though:

1/ Traffic accidents. Here we are, on Day #3 of Ramadhan, and I've already seen 2 accidents, one fender-bender and one nasty-looking T-bone at a junction. Both were in the afternoon around 3pm. Keep your eyes peeled.

2/ Horny taxi drivers. In conversation with a friend of mine, she told me the adventure she had on Thursday night. After working late, and taking a taxi back to her house around 10pm. This cabbie apparently took a liking to her and placed his hand on her upper thigh - and would'nt remove his hand! So another case of the horny taxi man groping their female fares. This story, however gets worse - the woman opened the door and jumped out of the car while it was still moving as her fear was that great of this obvious sexual offender - thankfully another car was coming and the taxi slowed down to a near stop allowing her to jump out. Quite rightly, she called the police and reported the taxi driver, and gave the plate number, and this is the most alarming part of the story. Are you ready? The ROP sent a female officer to see the woman (who had made her own way to a police station) who advised her to withdraw her complaint against this man because he was the sole earner for his family. What?! With that logic applied, it's a miracle rapes are not more common here, or maybe they are? Have you experienced wondering hands from a taxi driver, or someone else? I'm just blown away that the ROP asked someone to withdraw a complaint on a taxi driver for sexual mis-conduct - in Ramadhan. It's just staggering.
le fin.

And it begins....

The moon was not sighted yesterday, which means that Ramadhan starts tomorrow, Thursday 12th August. If Ramadhan lasts 30 days, Eid will start on Saturday 11th September, which is nice, especially for me as I appear to have gambled and won on my Eid vacation!

While we're on the subject, I'd love to have the business card for the person that chairs the moon-sighting committee. Imagine that card?

Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed al Salmi, Minister of Awqaf and Religious Affairs, Chairman of the Ramadhan Moon-Sighting Committee.

Do you think the card is longer than normal, or in a smaller print?! It's a bit of a mouthful anyway!

The official announcement (in English) is here.

Also, read here for the official word on Ramadahn hours - essentially Muslim staff only need to work 6 hours a day (up to 36 a week), and non-muslim staff are at the sole discretion of the employer.

Do you have any Ramadan month tips? I'd say survival tips but that's not necessarily the case for all of the audience here. My top-tip is this, for non-muslims: Try to avoid having meetings before 10 and after 12 = before 10 it's highly likely some people won't make it, and after noon people have their eye fixed firmly on 2pm, and bed!

Enjoy the weekend everyone, and Ramadhan kareem!

le fin.

Just a quickie: Al Fair Azaiba now open

I recently blogged about an Al Fair Azaiba location store to be opening soon. Well it's opening a lot sooner than I previously thought (October). It's open right now...

I wonder how much trade the MQ branch is going to loose, and whether the dvd guys will move down the the Azaiba branch? :P

Today is the last day that the alcohol stores will be open, I'm told. Ramadan is pegged for Wednesday - we'll see.

More tomorrow.

le fin.

The Al Bustan Palace - a review

Picture from Google

Recently I stayed at the Al Bustan Palace and figured I'd write a little review for anyone considering a trip there.

The service in the hotel is great. I drove up to the front door of the hotel and before I knew it the doors were being opened to my car and the bags removed from the trunk - the pampering had begun! Walking into the main lobby, I was greeted by this sight:

Picture from Google

That is a pretty impressive chandelier! At check-in, we were then escorted all the way to our room and given some history on the hotel on the short walk. Once we got to the room, the man then showed us around the room and handed us our welcome pack. Two minutes later, the door bell rings and it's the bell-hop with the bags.

The room looked like this:

I didn't take any pictures of the bathroom, but one thing I do have to say here is the soap was great. I'm unashamed to say I took the complimentary soaps home with me - they were simply huge and really, really good!

All the usual stuff was there for a hotel of this stature, including a really nice cotton dressing gown :)

The balcony outside was pretty small, but served it's function really well:

And when I saw the view... well I had to go for a walk around the grounds to explore!

The blurb that came with our welcome pack boasted of a private 1 KM beach, I think that's a bit of an over-estimation but perhaps I'm wrong. I didnt take any pictures on the beach or around the pools because I didn't want to offend any of the other guests, but Google is my friend, and here's a picture of the fantastic infinity pool, and the beach:

After a nice walk around the hotel, I went back into my room to find a nice little gift waiting - a seriously delicious chocolate fudge cake. It was not finished... but it was really, REALLY nice! I'm not quite too sure why we got the cake, but free cake is free cake...

After an exhaustive cake-eating session, a swim was in order to cool down... so it was off to the main infinity pool for an hour or so's swimming. I found the pool was not really very deep, but I guess you don't need it to be deep if you're just swimming laps. Unfortunately my attempt to swimming laps soon devolved into a competition in who could do the best hand-stand in the water. After completing my first hand-stand (which I think was pretty good), the fountains in the pool started up. Naturally I figured that because of my outstanding hand-stand skills the pool was showing it's appreciation, but apparently it was just a case of fortunate timing!

Back up to the room to have a shower and get ready for dinner, and I saw that the room-staff had been in to the room again to turn down the bed. Complete with a Patchi chocolate as well. All this chocolate!

The rest of the stay was just as nice, but I'm not going to review the restaurants here.

I really enjoyed my stay, and I hope the pictures of the room are of use to some of you!

le fin.

♪ ♫ Everybody was kung fu fighting..... ♫ ♪

....Those cats were fast as lightning - In fact it was a little bit frightning - But they fought with expert timing ....
Ramadan is nearly here, and with that are the last-minute parties. The rugby club is throwing the event advertised above, and it promises to be a great night out, so turn up and support the club!

It's this Thursday from 8pm, non-members are RO 7 - any questions, call T on 9944 6746.

le fin.

Blackberry's, Al Fair & Hi FM

It's old news by the time you read this (broken in the Oman blogosphere by Muscat Jet Driver, and picked up by Muscat Confidential), but Saudi and the UAE have decided to ban RIM's popular business device, the Blackberry, from use in their countries from October. Now, this strikes me as quite a peculiar move for the UAE. I'm not surprised by the Saudi's because, well, just because.

But for the UAE to block the worlds most popular business application, when they are attempting to position themselves as the centre for business - well it's a bit of a head scratcher. The reason, we all know, for the ban is because of BBM. Blackberry Messenger has grown in popularity in recent years as an instant-messaging platform. Now the UAE has an estimated 500,000 users, and Saudi have an estimated 400,000 users (source). Saudi are moving to block BBM only whereas the UAE are going to kill the Blackberry totally - emails, internet browsing & of course, BBM.

The official reason being that RIM's devices do not comply with the local laws - they want to know what you're sending to each other in messages and emails. Which seems ok, accept if I was a nefarious character who did not want my messages being read by the authorities, I would probably use a disposable PAYG phone and if I really wanted to be secure, I'd use one of the many commercially available (and some free) military encryption programs to protect my data. So this to me seems like a power play by the UAE government to try and get RIM to come to the party. Except for a paltry 500,000 users, they'll probably just pull out.

I think it's a storm in a tea-cup.


I also think that there will be a surge in cheap Blackberry devices about to flood the local markets - Now might be the perfect time to buy a cheap crackberry. Workers in Dubai may also actually be pleased about this ruling. Too many people, the world over, are caught working when they should not be. They've been referred to as electric dog-leashes, and quite rightly so. Of course, all that is going to happen, is that companies will switch to a different hand-set and continue to push their emails to their handsets. My Android phone is capable of it, and many, many other smart phones out there are also capable of it.

The irritant is, of course, is that there are large companies based in the UAE, that have shelled out major cash for the RIM Push software server licenses - that is sure to make things a bit sticky. Interestingly enough, Oman's TRA have remained silent on this issue - perhaps they are watching and waiting to see what is going to happen.

Now, some local news.

Al Fair will be opening a new branch in Azaiba, and it should be open by October. I guess they decided that if The Sultan Center can survive there, so can they. And indeed, they will probably be pretty popular. More on that soon.

And finally.

I decided to try Hi FM this morning, having decided that I was bored of the cd's in my car. And I was greeted by Darren proclaiming that milk in bags, much like a chip with ketchup in it, incredibly pointless! Well I'll agree that a chip with ketchup running through it is incredibly pointless - I have to say that milk in bags is a great idea - and this is why: In Canada, milk is commonly sold in bags. Everyone has a cheap (or I guess there are expensive blinged ones too) milk jug. You cut the corner of the bag and put it in the jug, and pour away. It is good for environment because it uses less materials and when it's empty it takes up a lot less space in the eventual landfill it ends up in. Makes sense now?

Thats all for today.

le fin.