Bowling in Muscat

Last month I was emailing back and forth with some visiting Canadian Navy people who were interested in bowling in Oman. I actually found it quite hard to find decent information all in one place for fans of bowling here, so I thought I'd put together a little post about it.

As far as I know, in the capital, there are 3 separate bolwing alleys:

Al Masa Bowling Alley. Open Hours: 9:30am-1:00am (Tel: +968 2469 3991) Located in Shattie Al Qurum

 

Oman Bowling Centre. Open Hours:Not sure but similar to Al Masa(Tel: +968 2448 0747) Located in Al Khuwair

 

Funzone Oman. Open from 9:00am till midnight has bowling alley and also an ice skating rink. (Tel: +968 2466 2951) Located in Qurum

If you know of another bowling alley in town, let me know and I'll add it to this list!

Enjoy the weekend!

le fin.

Recycling in Oman

This is a post I've been meaning to write for quite a while and have just never gotten around to! Well.... here goes, the latest in my series: MM guide to Oman.

The Sultanate of Oman does not really do that much recycling, but contrary to the widely held belief, not everything you throw in the bin needs to go to the dump. Here's my round up of what you can recycle here:

1. Plastic water bottles. Masafi & Tanuf, and the Environmental Society of Oman have an active plastic bottle recycling program - rumour is that the recycling plant in the UAE is unable to accept the bottles currently, and so the bottles are being shredded and baled and stored until such a time that the UAE will allow the plastic refuse to be transported over the border for recycling. This may be old news, I've not heard an update to this in over a year. There are collection bins dotted all over the Capital, I personally use the one at the ABA school in Al Khuwair.

2. Paper. Apex publishing, the people behind Muscat Daily, The Week and a bunch of other publications, operate a paper recycling operation. They will come to your location (for volumes significant enough) to collect the paper, or alternatively there are a few collection bins around town - again I personally use the one at the ABA school in Al Khuwair.

3. Aluminium cans. Basically soda cans - not steel cans that are used for soups and such, but the aluminium ones. I'm not really 100% sure what happens with them, but there is an active group of people (at least here in Muscat) that will go around from bin to bin and collect the pop cans. I'm told they sell the cans by weight to "takers" who take the cans back to India on ships on return voyages for recycling there, and also I've heard the cans are sold to truck drivers heading back to the UAE, where apparently there are also takers who pay for the empty cans. Either way, if you separate your cans into a bag and leave them outside a dumpster, in less than an hour it's usually been picked up by someone.

4. Can ring-pulls. Yes the canning plants here are still using older machines that have the detachable ring pulls that went out of fashion in many other countries years ago for the number of broken nails and amount of litter they cause! Even the UAE has the newer style cans with the ring pulls that stay attached to the can. But, there's a silver lining, and that is that most of the expatriate schools in town run collections for these ring pulls, which are made from a high quality aluminium. The ring pulls are collected by a girl at the TAISM school, Tara Mary Aziz and donated to a charity in Thailand that melts them down and makes prosthetic limbs from them.

Thats about it, there is the charity shop run haphazardly by the Dar al Atta charity which is down in Ruwi which accepts all sorts of things - clothes, furniture etc, and there are numerous book sales run by various different groups (my two favourites are the Dar al Atta Lets Read campaign, and the Oman Cat-Astrophy expat-run animal spay and neutering program).

So, hopefully you will think the next time you throw a can in your trash, and try and reduce the amount of waste you personally generate - remember, every little helps!

I'm not aware of any other domestic recycling programs in town, if I've missed something please let me know by commenting here or dropping me an email!

le fin.

Newspapers in Oman

Time for another instalment of the series: MM guide to Oman - this one is about the news papers here.

I'm only going to talk about the English language ones, of which there are 2 main types: dailies and weeklies.

The Dailies 

Times of Oman
This is the oldest newspaper in the country, and is published daily, it currently costs 200bz. You can subscribe to the paper on this page, annual subscription costs about RO 70.

Muscat Daily
This is the newest paper in Oman, it currently costs 200bz. You can subscribe to the paper on this page, annual subscription costs RO 13.5.

Oman Observer
You can subscribe to the paper on this page, annual subscription costs are not disclosed on their website, but from memory I think it's about RO 70.

Oman Tribune
The Tribune, The edge of knowledge, started up in 2004 as Oman started to grow on the back of the regional developmental advances in the early-mid 2000's. I personally don't read the Tribune much, only if I see it laying about when waiting somewhere. You can subscribe to the paper on this page, annual subscription costs RO 70.

Gulf News
This paper is produced in the UAE (I think) and is 500bz a day for the paper, but it's well written and has a lot of added features written into it. The paper is also less self-censored and occasionally likes to stir the pot a little. I don't know about subscription costs in Oman, but in the UAE it is Dhs 400 for a year (about RO 45.


The Weeklies - These are all free

The Week
This is published every Tuesday, and is produced by Apex Publishing - the same people behind Muscat Daily. Personally I only read the editors comment, and the letters of people writing in to bitch about (invariably) the driving here. It's also got a classifieds section it - sometimes handy if your looking for a car or furniture for your house. You can download it every week from here, or find a pick up spot for them - but they go fast!

Hi!
This is published every Friday and is produced by the same people as The Times of Oman. I don't really read it much,

Black & White
This one is actually published every month, but I hardly ever see it - I don't even know where you can pick up the paper to be honest - but you can download the most recent copy from their website, at time of writing it was up to date.

Y!
This is produced by Sabco Media, the same people behind Merge 104.8 and a large majority of bill board around town. Notorious amongst certain circles for hanging it's editor out to dry when a legal case was brought against the publication a few years ago. It's a shame because it can cover quite provocative topics from time to time. You can download it from their website, and it is my favourite weekly paper published here in the Sultanate.

And thats my summary of all the locally published news papers in Oman. There are of course other papers available here, but these are the English Language local papers that I'm aware of here in town. There are also a number of other weeklies/monthlies - I just captured the "big 4" English ones.

le fin.

AC service in Muscat

In another one of my on-going series of posts, MM guide to Oman, here's one that I hope may be of some use to you: AC servicing here in the capital (sorry everyone in the rest of Oman). One of my favorite Oman-based bloggers (now sadly retired because of all the hate-filled comments people would leave her) Angry in Oman wrote this entertaining review about an AC service technician called Alex Joseph.

Well this morning I woke up to discover that my AC in the bedroom had decided to stop blowing cold air, and as if by magic when I went for a walk at 5am this morning I found the above sticker very close to my house!

I figured it must be a sign, and so I rang up Alex this morning and arranged him to visit the house around 11:00 am this morning. Mrs Sythe was a bit dubious about having a service technician come to the house without me around but she rang me afterwards and said he arrived right on time, without having to be guided to the house, we just gave the way number and the villa number and he arrived on time. With his own tools and step-ladder, which was pretty handy. He even commented upon our Clowder (thanks to Erin for teaching me that word - it means group of cats, we have 3) and said hello to one of the more inquisitive cats.

He quickly identified that the problem was with the roof top compressor unit and not the blower in the bedroom, so up to the roof he went, and 10 minutes later he was all done after having replaced a capacitor. He charged Mrs Sythe RO 10 for the visit and the replaced part and was on his way.

I rang him to thank him for doing such a good job, and so quickly, and asked him where his servicing areas were. He told me he works from Ruwi to Maweleh and everywhere in between - handy. So, if your AC has busted and your sweating because it's the summer - you could try this guy, he's pretty good.

le fin.

Giving birth in Oman

In another one of my series, MM guide to Oman, here's the skinny on giving birth, as an expat, in Oman.

Basically there are, in Muscat, 5 Private hospitals (well, Badr has multiple branches) worth mentioning:

Muscat Private Hospital
Starcare Hospital
Badr Al Sama Hospital
Atlas Star Medical Centre
Apollo Medical Centre

There is also the Aster Al Raffah Hospital, but I attempted to call them 4 times across an entire day and they failed to even answer their phones - so I could not possibly even include them in the above list.

Starting from the top:

Muscat Private Hospital

MPH is the biggest private hospital in the country, and is also the most expensive hospital to have a C-Section birth in. They are located in Bowsher and their number is 2458 3600.

Traditional birth - RO 600
C-Section - RO 1450

9 months Ante-natal package with 12 consultations and 3 scans is RO 495

However, if you were to book and pay for in 1 hit the ante-natal package and a birth package, you'd get 15% off, bringing total cost of antenatal + birth to either RO 930.750 or RO 1653.250 depending on the method of delivery.

Starcare Hospital

Starcare Hospital is a relatively new private hospital and is situated on the same road as the Muscat City Center in Mawaleh. Their number is 2455 7200.

Traditional birth: RO 600
C-Section - RO 1200

9 months Ante-natal package with 12 consultations and 4 scans is RO 400

Bringing the total cost to RO 1000 or RO 1600.

Badr Al Samaa

This is a chain of hospitals, with branchs in Ruwi, Khuwair and Khoud. Their phone number for the Ruwi branch is 2479 9760.

Traditional birth: RO 250
C-Section: RO 450

There were no Ante-natal packages that I could find out about, but I did learn that an ultrasound scan is RO 8.

Atlas Star Medical Centre

This place is situated in Ghubra very close to Muscat Grand Mall. Their phone number is 2450 4000.

Traditional birth: starting at RO 135

Apollo Medical Centre

This place is in Hamriyah, their phone number is  2478 7766

Traditional birth: RO 175
C-Section: RO 450


Now, something that all of the above hospitals have in common is this: They are not setup to handle complications in child birth - should you have an emergency then you will be transferred to one of the Government hospitals in Muscat - SQU, Royal (Ghubra) or Khoula (Wattayah). The costs quoted above are basic guide costs. Should you need inducement, or something else, then they will attract additional costs too. An emergency trip to one of the Government hospitals (which are world-class in their services on offer - at all times of day and night) will run you around RO 100. I should also point out that should you go into labour outside of "office" hours, eg 2am - then your Doctor will most probably not even be there in the Private hospitals - you'll probably just have the mid-wife and that's it.

Once you have had your baby (or babies!) then there is still more to do. Every new mother in Oman gets a green maternity record card which is issued by the Ministry of Health. When you have given birth, you are issued with a letter from the hospital you are in to confirm the birth. You then need to take this to the government clinic in Darsayt, the same place where you go for the blood test for your employment visa.

They will produce a birth certificate which you then also need to have attested by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs attestation office in Shatti Al-Qurum (because giving you a simple Birth Certificate would be too easy). Finally, you can then get that attested by the embassy/consulate of your home country which will also help you with the paper work for getting a passport for the baby. Your baby needs a visa to reside in Oman - I understand the grace period is 180 days to get a passport sorted out for your baby, and a new visa stamped into it.

Please feel free to add any relevant bits of information that I have probably missed!

le fin.

Buying alcohol in Oman

Apologies for the tarnished example, my book gets a work-out!

Another installment in the irregular series of posts: MM Guide to Oman, here's the low down on booze in the Sultanate.

There are bars all over the country that are licensed to sell liquor to anyone of age (including Omani's - the of-age here in Oman is 21). These licenses are almost exclusively held by hotels, but there are a few exceptions dotted around the place, albeit lately these seem to be dying out. Alcohol, like Pork products, are available here, but there is a 100% tax levy in place on these products, making the cost quite high, but still what I'd call reasonable. I won't go into a list of all the bars in Muscat here because I'll still be typing it days from now, and well basically, I can't be bothered to do it at the moment.

In addition to the hotels / bars scene, there are also a number of licensed retail outlets that sell alcohol products in the country. I'm only going to focus on the Muscat area because thats what I know, so if you live somewhere else in the country and have something to share, please do so.

In order to purchase alcohol at these retail outlets, you must have a valid ROP Liquor Permit. These permits can be obtained from the ROP, and in Muscat, you have to go to the special office at the Ruwi Police Station. In order to get the permit, you need the following:

Copy of passport & labor card
2 passport sized photos
No objection letter from your employer
Labor card application in original - copy returned after issuing labor card. This is to confirm basic salary as registered with the Ministry of Manpower
Employment contract attested by the Ministry of Manpower to confirm employment and eligibility to apply for a permit
Completed permit application (Which you can get there)
If you are renewing your permit, bring your old permit with you.

This is my 3rd permit, I've found RO 100 is a good amount

Now, you are technically allowed to purchase a license up to a value of 10% of your basic salary. So essentially, if you have a basic salary of 1000 rials a month, you can purchase a liquor license of up to RO 100 a month in retail purchases. The permit lasts for 24 months, and the cost of it is calculated on 0.4% of the value of the license on a monthly basis, payable in full at the time of application, so a RO 100 monthly permit will cost you RO 96 (100x0.04x24) and it will last you for 2 years.

The typical cost for a case of 24 bottles of Heineken is around RO 13, with most cases of beer coming in at around that price point - RO 10 - 15 a case. Bottles of spirits and wine are also in abundant supply, with even bottles of Verve Cliquot bubbly available for RO 30 a pop. Bottles of wine (and boxes for that matter) start in price around RO 3 and range upwards, with some special bottles going for upwards of RO 20 a bottle. A bottle of branded Vodka for example, will run you around RO 7. So that should give you an idea of roughly how much of a permit value you will want to purchase.

So now that you have your permit, it's time to go shopping! There are essentially 5 major retailers here in the Sultanate:

African & Eastern (A&E)
Oman United Agencies (OUA)
Desert Trading Company (DTC)
Marketing & Services Company (MASE)
Gulf Supply Services (GSS)

Now there are little branches of these 5 chains dotted around all over the city - and I'm sure I've missed a few out, but here's my quick list of where to find them, I've just put the localities where they are, it's a game for you to find them :) :

A&E - MQ, Al Khuwair, Sohar
OUA - MQ, Ruwi
DTC - MQ, Al Khuwair, Wadi Kabir
MASE - Qurum, Ruwi, Rusayl, Salalah
GSS - Wadi Kabir, MQ, Gala, Seeb, Sohar

The opening times are approximately 09:00-13:00 and 16:00-20:00 Saturday to Thursday. During Ramadan the shops remain closed, so stock up before.

Also, you can bring alcohol into the country with you when you fly. You are allowed to carry either 24 cans, or 2 bottles (2 liters max) of wine / spirits - and of course you must be at least 21 years old to do so. One final thing to mention is that it is illegal to transport alcohol in Oman unless you are bringing it home from the store, or the airport - and even then make sure you have the receipt and the permit with you. That said, in 5 years of living here, I've never been stopped by the ROP when driving around town, although once I was stopped at a check point in the interior of the country, and the only question they asked me was: Do you have any whiskey for us?

Regardless, you've been warned. There is also a thriving black market here for booze, but I advise to steer clear of it, not worth the trouble it can cause, and the market is more geared towards laborers who want a RO 3 bottle of brandy to shut-out their problems for a night.

le fin.

Internet in Oman

It seems that an increasingly large number of people are arriving at ze blog after searching about internet and phones here in the Sultanate, so I figured I'd write a little summary of internet connectivity options here to help these searching people as a part of a new series of irregular blog posts I intend to write: The MM guide to Oman.


Essentially, in Oman, there are 2 methods for internet connectivity: ADSL or Wireless. By wireless, I mean either 3G (or 4G!) or WiMax. In terms of vendors, there are two major ones to consider, plus a few smaller MVNO's (I'll get to them in a moment): For ADSL, your only option is Omantel, for Wimax, it's Nawras.

Some brief history here, Omantel is the government-owned incumbent tel-co and Nawras started up here back in 2005 and is the main competition to Omantel (the share-holder listing makes for interesting reading; the local Omani partners include Ministry of Defence Pension Fund, Royal Office Pension Fund, Diwan of Royal Court Pension Fund, Internal Security Service Pension Fund and Sultan’s Special Force Pension Fund). So - Omantel, over years of government funded works have got copper and fibre lines all over the place, whereas Nawras do not. Both Omantel and Nawras have their own dedicated fibre back-bones to the outside world - but because of the immense cost it would be for Nawras to install their own phone lines to peoples houses, they have opted for wireless technology. Local Loop Unbundling does not exist here in Oman yet - Omantel still own the fibre and copper originally paid for by the State, and so far have resisted requests to share this with the rest of the market to help provide better prices and products to the general consumer. Something to note here is that Haya water (the sewage people) have been laying fibre lines everywhere that they have been installing sewage networks in the capital (Seeb, Maweleh, Azaiba, Ghala, Ghubra, Khuwair, Qurum, Shatti, Wattayah & Wadi Kabir currently, with Ruwi & Hamriyah happening soon) I understand that either Omantel or Nawras will rent these fibre lines from Haya, affording FTTH (Fibre to the Home) across most of the capital..... eventually.

So, starting with Omantel. Omantel has ADSL, traditionally over copper lines. The costs range, and there is no current offering for "dry DSL" in Oman - however, Omantel have bundled the cost of a phone line and the ADSL charge into one package to make it seamless. As of May 2012, here is Omantel's ADSL pricing and the plans they offer:

Basically, ignore the first two green options, you'd have to be a very light internet user to even consider them. So, to the meat: RO 20 a month gets your a phone line, 2Mb line and unlimited data usage. If you happen to live at The Wave, or Muscat Hills, or another FTTH area (parts of Maweleh) you can get up to 40 Mb line for RO 60 a month (along with a 5Mb upload too).

Personally I use the RO 35 plan: 12 Mb, phone line and unlimited data usage - and I've never had one complaint from Omantel about over-usage, despite my occasional efforts to download the entire internet. The single biggest problem with Omantel is the time to install. It's gotten a lot better from when I first moved to Oman in 2007, when it took over 2 months for me to get a phone line installed and ADSL activated for me. These days the time for installation of a phone line and ADSL can vary from as little as a day to as long as a month, depending on your situation. One other point of note is that not all ADSL speeds will necessarily be available to you - it very much depends on where you are.


Nawras, being wireless, have leveraged this advantage heavily, and offer same day activation. Theoretically, you sign up in the store, take your modem home and it should work within a few hours. Most of the time this is the case, sometimes there's a little delay but really it's pretty much as advertised.

Nawras' pricing is similar to Omantel's in the sense that for RO 24 you get a 5Mb connection with unlimited data usage (versus' Omantels RO 25). I've no experience with Nawras' internet offerings but have heard of peoples connections being throttled for over-usage - but don't let that influence your decision.

Now, there is another type of internet access available in Oman, and that is internet on your phone - data plans. This is where MVNO's (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) come into the scene. There are effectively 2 major Cell networks in the Sultanate: Nawras or Omantel. Currently there are 4 MVNO's worth mentioning that operate on one (or both) of the main back-bone networks currently in-place here in Oman, and they are:

FRiENDi mobile, Samatel, Renna mobile and Apna Mobile.

Apna Mobile is a mobile phone company targeting Indians and pretty much no one else, and as far as I'm aware they do not offer any data plans, just marginally cheaper voice calls to India, and so I wont discuss them any further.

FRiENDi mobile marketed hard last year (2011) and seems to have reigned in it's marketing spend so far this year (2012) and offers the following plans:

Of note is that they do offer a PC-based internet connection too (Via a GPRS modem requiring a sim card) - but the cost is fairly high when you stack it up against Nawras / Omantel. So for your mobile phone: RO 3 a month for 600MB of data usage with a charge of 10 baiza per MB (that's RO 10 per GB) of overage should you go over 600MB a month.

Renna mobile also offer data plans, with plans starting at RO 1 a month (just like FRiENDi), but again their rates are fairly high once you get into heavy usage zones.

For the RO 9.5 a month, 6.5 RO more than FRiENDi, you get a 2GB data connection - when compared to FRiENDi's 600MB + 1.4GB of usage, the equivalent cost is RO 17 for the same usage (2GB). It really depends on how much you plan to use the internet.

Finally, for the MVNO's is Samatel. A bit of an enigma because their website does not actually work right now, and most of their booths (most infamously their airport booth) is usually empty with no staff and thus no way to actually figure out what their products are on offer. I'd advise giving these boys a miss until they sort their stuff out.

As for the 2 big boys, Omantel and Nawras - of course they also offer Dataplans for your smart phones:

Omantel has 2 different product lines, just like Nawras, one to reflect it's post paid (contract) plans (known as Mada) and one to reflect it's prepaid plans (known as Hayyak).

Their Prepaid plans:

Their Postpaid plans:

So, just like the MVNO's Omantel has plans that start at RO 1 a day (for 1GB of usage). If you are a heavy user, the 3GB plan is RO 14 a month and the 5GB plan is RO 19 a month - which makes Renna's RO 15 4GB plan fairly attractive to potential customers.

Nawras' prepaid plan's are called Mousbak, and their postpaid plans are called Ajel.

Their Prepaid plans:

Their Postpaid plans:

As you can see, their offers are very similar to everyone else - it really comes down to knowing how much internet data you plan to use and then choosing accordingly. 

As for wifi hotspots - there are a few dotted around the capital, Muscat, but don't expect to be able to rely on them - and most are not free. Most of the hotels have "free" wifi hotpots in their bars as an added attraction to get the punters in, so if your in a bind an need to get online for some reason, head to a 5* hotel like the Hyatt or the Radisson and find their bars.

I hope this helps you with any queries regarding Internet in Oman :)

le fin.