Anyone listening to the radio lately?

The last month or so has been very disrupted for me: Mad rush at work before Eid, then a 2 week vacation, and now 2 weeks back in Muscat playing catch-up after my leave.

I have found myself in my car a lot lately. Sitting in traffic. What on earth is going on with Ghala? It's total gridlock there every day - I'm glad I do not have to work there every day or I think I'd be riding a motor bike.

So with all this time spent sitting in traffic, I have been listening to the radio occasionally, and have noticed a few changes - have you?

Firstly, as previously reported on this blog, Rachel has left - I wont miss her, I just didn't like her style, and honestly wondered why she remained in her job for so long. It now seems that the music being played is a lot more current, and Darren Shortt seems to have kicked his breakfast show up a notch - I like the Nathan segment, and the ice cream song (even though I hardly ever get it - names of things was never my strong point).

Other than the odd advertisement for the 80's night this weekend, I have not yet heard the new girl Erin's show, but I'm guessing that she will be starting soon. It'll be good to hear a new voice, if only for a change - but her voice seems to carry well on the radio. Perhaps I'm just biased to North American accents ;)

The widely spread "secret" that a new radio station is to launch now appears to be actually happening - I'm told that within a few weeks a new English language radio station will be launching nationwide here in Oman. It's format has been rumoured to be the following:

Morning show with a live DJ, rolling music until the drive-time and then another live DJ, and then more rolling music until the next morning show. I for one am not sure what to think about this. I remember when Hi FM started it's test broadcasts, and it was just non-stop music - and it was great - for a week, until all the songs in the rotation were well and truly played to death.

I have to wonder how effective that will be as a competitive radio - if I want non-stop music, I have access to that via my own cds and mp3s, and if I'm bored of a track I can always skip it - "why do I listen to the radio"? I thought to myself recently.

And, I realised, for me, I listen to the radio for different reasons at different times. In the mornings I'm listening because I'm driving to work, and I find the traffic reports are helpful - I have to drive to a lot of different places for my job. I also like the banter, and, shock horror, the music seems fresher recently. In the day, it's for some music that is not in my car's music system, and on Wednesday nights I like the house mixes. Which while we're on that for a moment: Hi FM appear to have obtained the rights for Roger Sanchez, a prominent house DJ from Miami and well known by aficionados of the world famous Winter Music Conference held annually there. Being someone that likes house music (amongst many other types of music) I look forward to hearing some of his mixes on the radio.

Now, those readers of my blog that have been following me for a while will know that I like to poke fun at Darren, and while researching for this post I saw the following picture:


What on earth is going on with that waist coat Daz!?!

I don't actually know the name of this new radio station - if you do, can you share it with us all?

Are you listening to HiFM lately, or am I the only one?! What do you all think about it? I honestly feel it's gotten a lot better than it was - how about you? If you do listen to the radio - why do you listen?

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.

ROP crack down on Road Safety "turns" blind eye to Retail concerns

What a nice weekend that turned out to be?!

I even went for a drive in Bertha down to Yiti. The old road is such a nice drive I find. Normally, on my frequent trips to Ruwi, I take Qurum heights road, as opposed to the other road via Hatat House. Seeing as I was heading for Hamriyah on the weekend, I figured I'd go via Wattayah. The road works are progressing at the Qurum wadi crossing, and now it looks like the final part of the bridge is being completed and hopefully the road works will be finished soon.

Imagine my shock when I saw the following sign (picture taken by a passenger!)



Click on the photo to make it bigger so you can really see what the sign is suggesting. Yes, that's right, some bright spark thought that it genuinely would be a good idea to have shoppers headed for The Sultan Centre (and the Al-Harthy Complex) to do a U-Turn on what is possibly the busiest stretch of highway in the country. That is staggeringly stupid. I wonder if ROP approval had to be given for this sign? Or whether ROP approval was even sought?

Now as I said, I do not regularly drive this route so have not much of an idea when this new route was made (and the subsequent kamikaze sign) but what on earth is going on there? Someone should take that sign down before a serious accident occurs.

le fin.

WTF is going on with traffic in Gala?

Just a quick one today.

I just sat in traffic for ages in Gala - it took me 75 minutes to travel a distance that normally takes 15 minutes during the day. Why? The Sultan Qaboos Mosque round about (not the highway exit one, but the next one in from there) was completely snarled by idiot drivers that don't understand the concept of not going into a junction (in this case a round about) until it is clear to exit it. Total grid lock. When are they going to put lights in there?!


In other news, lots of Halloween parties went on over the weekend. The wife and I went in disguise (a vampire and a witch!) to the VICE house music event (hosted by BMB Events) that the Dragon featured on his blog recently. The music was good, really good (that is, if you like that sort of thing), but attendance was a little low. It wasn't helped by the fact that there were no signs at all outside Rock Bottoms pointing to the event being held upstairs, we very nearly just gave in and went to the Halloween party at Rock Bottoms, even though I don't like that club, because we were in costume and happened to be right there. I'm sure that some people did end up going to Rocks purely because there was absolutely no indication at all that there was a party being held upstairs. Things to remember for next time I guess. Thanks for the tickets Dragon, and BMB Events!

le fin

Bootleg DVD Rentals & Oman Blood Test

Weekend one of Ramadan now completed, I feel like I need another break!

Wednesday evening consisted of a spot of physical exercise for a few hours, and then I went to a friends house for a social gathering. This friend of mine had decided to buy one of those huge inflatable water slides from Toys R Us and subsequently decided to throw a party for the kids, and parents. By the time the wife and I rocked up at 10pm the kids were a bit thin on the ground, but apparently the water slide was a big hit :)

On Thursday I saw a big car accident. Nothing new there. The 18th November St - Wizarat Road car crash count stands at 9 separate accidents that I've counted so far.

Thursday evening saw a nice bbq near the beach in Azaibah with some friends. A local fishermen sold us a Kingfish and it was fantastic :) It's a shame all the best catches go to Dubai. Doesn't anyone realise that there is no one left in Dubai?! Also we had some great beer-can chicken!

Beer can chicken is pretty much what it looks like: Get a chicken, stuff a half-full beer can into the hole and then whack it on the bbq for a few hours. I was of the opinion that the Diet Seven-up chicken was actually better than the beer ones, but diet-seven-up chicken just doesnt have quite the same ring to it, does it?

One night last week, the wife and I went to go and see a friend of ours and hang out, have dinner and watch a movie. Our friend had joined a DVD rental place next to the VKool store in Al Khuwair / MQ boundary. She paid RO 35 one time fee and could rent 25 movies before needing to re-charge her rental card. Not bad she said, until I saw the DVD - it was a fake! RO 35 (thats US$ 91) to rent 25 movies ($3.64/movie) is not too bad when comparing to Blockbuster or similar. But these movies are bootlegged, and skipped a bit towards the end. So, if you're going to rent movies, maybe give the Video Club near V Kool a miss - those movies they are renting out cost all of 100bz to produce, they're just raking the cash in.

In other news, it's that time for me, 2 years gone already, I had to go to give blood today at the Infectious Diseases Examination Section in Darsait. It's situated here and it looks like this:


So I turned up this morning at a little after 8:30 to be presented with the usual chaos that ensues when there's lots of people all trying to get the same thing done. The Omani ringmasters did a great job and I emerged 3 hours later clutching my stamped bit of paper and a bit of cotton wool stuck against my arm. I'll go for my labour card later this week I guess. To anyone interested to know what they test for, they test for: TB, VD and HIV. So all you naughty people who are fans of THC will be just fine.

le fin

Speshal parking & a nice mosque

So again, these shorter hours make blogging some what harder to do, what with the same amount of work needing to get done in less time. But here are two nuggets for you.

First up is a lovely example of what happens when you go too fast in a residential neighbourhood:


Spectacular job I must say. Well at least the car's parked in some shade!

On Friday, the wife and I took a trip down to Muttrah and to the souq in order to find a nice battery powered knock-off watch. Got a lovely thin one for 8 rials, very pleased with it - something nice and basic for every-day use. However, the souq was heaving, more so even for a normal Friday night. We ended up in some back streets a bit lost, but then happend upon this rather nice looking mosque:


It's almost oriental, right? Anyway, we thought it looked great so wanted to share it with you.

New speed cameras by the airport

OK so it seems the ROP are suffering from Gordon Brown's misplaced belief that Speed Cameras are the answer to slowing people down on the roads. They appear to be testing 3 new speed camera's at the moment, two completely new models, and one is the blue Dubai-style lollipop one. It is understood that all of these devices will still continue to capture from the rear, but the two new style camera's appear to have devices that measure your speed over a certain area, and will still flash if it decides you were going too fast. I'd like to see that one in practice, as evidence needs to be given - I'd imagine only image or video can suffice, yet the camera only points one way (so it cant record you coming).

I was out with a friend to try and capture images of these new cameras, but the new "bird house" one we were unable to get a picture of, thankfully the kind people at omania2.net were.

So here are the pics:

1. The original Style:


2. The Dubai Lollipop style:


3. The new floor-mounted style:


4. The new birdhouse style (credit to Omania2):



And then, as if to proove a point that these speed radar's are not the fool-proof solution that so many people think them to be, we saw this:


There's a foot-bridge going over the highway, and what is that, right there, under the foot bridge? Oh thats just someone too lazy to use the bridge, so decides to cross the highway by jay-walking. People like that need to be fined and arrested, because they cause a lot of accidents to.

So it looks like the ROP are taking a step in the right direction with these trials of new speed traps. I'd imagine the older ones will be re-allocated to other roads within the Sultanate. Perhaps the road from Nizwa to Thumrait? Or perhaps on a few roads here in town? 18th November could be a lucrative prospect for the ROP!

Ramadahn looks like it's going to be called this Friday or Saturday, and so the carnage will begin. I will be keeping a week-daily tally on the accidents I see on the stretch of road between Wizarat round about and the start of 18th November street. I'm predicting over 40 vehicles will be damaged in accidents in that one area alone.

Have a nice weekend everyone.

le fin

Wednesday, and the weekend.

Well, after posting yesterday about more traffic deaths, I then got into my car and drove through Ruwi. The first truck I pulled up next to at a traffic light, had bald tyres. Because it was in my mind about the number of accidents lately, I snapped a picture:


Then, at the next set of lights, I pull up behind a different truck, and wow, that one too, had bald tyres. I didn't get a chance to take a picture because the lights turned and traffic started moving, but I think this is a key problem here - unsafe vehicles are on the roads. But I'm going to put the traffic reporting torch down for a bit now, I think it's been flogged enough for the time being. Just don't drive into me!

So the weekend is almost upon us. Tonight, as the Undercover Dragon blogged about recently, you may get a free show if you cast your eyes upwards and look for shooting stars / bits of meteorites burning up in our atmosphere. Alternatively, if you cast your eyes to the rugby club then you will enjoy the delight of the Three Amigo's playing rock music, and various drunk people believing whole-heartedly that they are good at singing and dancing. It promises to be a fun night, and I'm told there are approximately 30 tickets left, and that the reservation list will be closed at 9pm tonight.

Tomorrow promises a trip to the Souq for me. The hunt is on: I'm looking for a new knock-off watch and wont pay over RO 20 for one. Anyone got any tips and suggestions? Perhaps a spot of brunch at the fabulous Blue Marlin restaurant in the Marina afterwards too.

But now back to something rather more serious. Over the last 8 months, on the Oman Forum, I've been following the incredible story of the end-user "Tommaso". The cliff-notes of this story are as follows (please note that this information has come from a single source, and as such this information may be flawed, but in my opinion it makes for an interesting read):

• He is European of Arab origin and had been working in Oman since 2007.
• He was (in his belief) unfairly dismissed.
• Because he believed strongly that he had been unfairly dismissed, he filed a complaint in the labour courts.
  
• Upon dismissal and hearing of his filing, his previous employer then sent staff to his accommodation to persuade him to withdraw his complaint, offering him a total of 3 months salary to do so.
• He chose not to, because it was not about the money, but to draw attention to the actions of this company (brave guy!).
• His employer had his passport and steadfastly refused to return it to him.
• He petitioned the courts to have his employer release his passport. The court refused. (How can a court refuse to give someone back their passport?)
  
• His labour case was postponed, and then passed up to a higher court, where it was then postponed again.
• He then appealed the ruling on his passport return, which was also refused by the courts.
• He then applied to have his residence permit extended as he was unable to leave the country because the court refused to give him back his passport, and this application was also refused. (This may be explained because he had an active case in the courts, and the courts need time to issue it's verdict, the law has to take its course).
  
• He got his embassy to contact the Oman Embassy of Foreign Affairs (OMOFA), and after multiple attempts and a strongly worded letter finally got a reply that they are still looking into it.
• The following conversation is said to have occurred during a court appeal to have the passport released to the plaintiff:

Judge: (before even talking about any details) Case is postponed to (date)
The Co’s lawyer: Can I present a memo ?
Judge: Of course, please do.
My lawyer: I also have a memo that I would like to present, I would like to highlight some points though.
Judge: No need to submit a memo. I already have the opponent’s memo. That’s more than enough for me.!!!!
My lawyer: Excuse me your honour? Can you repeat that again?
Judge: I said clearly I won’t take your memo, I’ll go through the opponent’s memo which is enough to explain all the facts!!!
My lawyer: OH!!!!! If that is the case your honour, then there is no need for courts, we can then solve matter either amicably or nastily or forcefully!!!! I reserve my right to present the memo. I have different points of views that I would like to explain.
Judge: I said what I have in hand is enough, your opponent’s memo is more than enough for me.
My lawyer: I am claiming my absolute and indisputable right.

• Finally, a member from the Oman Ministry of Manpower is said to have gotten involved and successfully negotiated the recovery of this person's passport.

Points to take from this forum thread are:

1. It could be a total fantasy story, there is just no way to check
2. Why would a HE go to so much effort over a trifling labour case?
3. If this case is proven to be true, it is exceedingly alarming that a court has ruled that a Plaintiff (he brought the case against his employers, not the other way round) is not allowed his passport back. This is the single most alarming thing of the whole story, and it's really the only reason I'm blogging it.
4. I wish the guy all the best of luck in his labour case, but that's not really of as much interest to us.
5. Again if the story is true, it is a shining example of the efforts that the Government are going to to stamp out human trafficking and corruption. It has certainly taken time, but the point here is that this was resolved by the Omani Government.

Now to add to this, I wish to state the following comments:

I do not know the company involved, nor do I wish to.
I do not know the true identity of the original poster, nor do I wish to.
I do not know the HE involved, nor do I wish to.
I do not know the names of the judges involved, nor do I wish to.
I've blogged this story purely for consumption. It may be fiction, there is no way for me to confirm this.

And finally, I wish to stress that no defamation of the Sultanate of Oman is intended by this post, as this is clearly a case between a European citizen and a company in Oman.

le fin

More traffic deaths and statistics.

Rather alarmingly, 26 people died and 143 were injured in the week between 18th and 24th of July. Of these, 59 collisions were between vehicles, 34 involved collisions with fixed objects and 21 were run-overs. The accidents also saw 23 vehicles roll off the road. The highest number of deaths recorded was in the interior with ten deaths. The worst accident was near Jebel Akhdar. A vehicle collided with a fixed object and resulted in the deaths of eight people and injury to two people. The vehicle was badly damaged in the incident.

....... In one week.

Ramadan starts at the end of next week.... I'm more than a little worried. Take care out there, especially if you're driving in the interior. As usual, the mad dash for the Khareef seems to have resulted in more people getting into accidents going from, or to Salalah.

On a more entertaining note, Dhofari Gucci has blogged again. About cows, again. hahaha :P

Her blog is a great read and I suggest you take the time to stop by her blog if you have some time.

Additionally, I highly recommend this 15-picture gallery on The Daily Telegraph - Amusing pictures of animals that got stuck in stuff (they all got out ok). I especially found the cow picture amusing :)

le fin