Muscat festival starts today

Today sees the launch of the 2013 edition of the Muscat Festival. This year, thankfully, it has been moved from Qurum park to Al Amerat Park and Sultan Qaboos sports stadium - along with long standing location, Al Naseem Park as well.

The two parks open every day from 4 -11pm, and the SQ sports stadium runs 4:30 - 11:30pm

The official website has a handy page showing you how to get to each of the three locations. The Muscat Festival has been running since 1998, and as far as I can tell has become incredibly popular. I've never actually gone to the Festival, and perhaps this year I'll brave the crowds and go and have a look!

le fin.

ONTC announce rapid bus lane for Sultan Qaboos St

In an announcement from Faisal Dropoly, a spokesperson for Oman National Transport Company, as part of their plans to roll out a complete and competent bus network by 2015, announced in a press conference last night that in partnership with Muscat Municipality and the ROP, a dedicated rapid bus lane will be installed between the Al Sahwa Tower r/a near Muscat City Center and the Qurum City Center junction in Qurum.

The dedicated bus lane will be installed as part of the Sultan Qaboos Street re-building following changes to account for building the airport, which is already evidenced with work at the Azaiba and Ghubra junctions, as well as a new section running in parallel to the airport.

The estimated journey time from end to end in rush hour in the morning will be just 20 minutes and will cost 100bz one way, or a book of 20 tickets will cost RO 1.500. Wow. 20 minutes for that distance in the rush hour in the morning?! Thats amazing.

The ROP are involved as part of their drive to reduce traffic related injuries and fatalities - Taxi's will no longer be allowed to pull in on the side of the highway to solicit for fares as this has been highlighted after an extensive research study conducted by the Oman traffic safety awareness committee as a particularly dangerous practice.

The announcement did not contain an exact date for when the bus lane would be completed (no surprise there then), but it did indicate that trials would begin before the end of the year. Exciting times indeed.

More tomorrow.

le fin.

Carmen at the Royal Opera House

Last night I went to watch Carmen at the Royal Opera House. It was the first event that I've attended there and by no means am I even remotely experienced in the world of Opera to give a critique of the show, but I'll let you all know my thoughts of it, my first ever opera to attend, well because it's what I want to write about today.

I arrived with Mrs Sythe at 7pm, having been forewarned by people experienced from previous events there to get there an hour early. There was a security scanner at the door and no one was allowed to bring in cigarette lighters, so smokers among you, beware.

There were programs on sale for RO 3, which are actually very nice, and there were RO 5 coffee, sandwich and cake combo's to purchase, as well as juice, water or coffee at RO 1 a pop. It seemed weird to be drinking coffee in such a nice location out of a paper cup.

No food or drink is allowed into the auditorium, obviously! On the back of each seat in front of you is a small dim-lit tv screen with subtitles available in a variety of languages so you can understand what they're singing about, a definitely much appreciated piece of technology seeing as the entire thing was sung in 135 year old French.

The set's were quite simply amazing, it turns out they were built in Italy and shipped over, and I understand it is the intention of this production to go on tour - one would hope they do because the set's really were quite amazing, and it'd be such a waste for only a 3 day run!

There were 4 acts, each with a 25 minute intermission, which is why the show ended up lasting 4 hours. I noticed that after Act 3 a quite noticeable number of people had left, presumably to go home as it was by that time 11pm. Perhaps not a great choice for those people with young children. The orchestra were conducted by this French guy who, for me, entertained me the most - but probably for a bad reason. This guy was really into his conducting, and his mannerisms had me smiling in no time. At points he'd get excited and start jumping up and down while conducting - presumably this is the done thing, I just thought it was funny - but then again Opera is not my first choice for live entertainment and so I'll respect the fact that the guy did seem to know what he was doing and was very well applauded, so he must have been good.

The attendants were very well drilled - they closed the doors and that was it - no one in or out till the next intermission - something I know other people had previously complained about - people entering or leaving in the middle of a performance. So they have learned and adapted. The same thing with getting out in your car after the performance - there were guards on hand directing traffic, it took me all of 2 minutes to get out and onto the highway home.

I happened to bump into a friend of mine that had a press kit, and learned that tickets for the next season of the ROH will be announced later this month and due to go on sale in early January - so for those of you keen to snap up some tickets for the next season, stay tuned for more announcements in the press in the coming weeks.

More soon.

le fin.

Some more on ROP statistics

Rather than drone on and on about how bad the driving is here, and how it is scary (but it really is) to have to drive here when you look at the statistics, I wanted to write about robberies in the Sultanate today.

There is a general belief that "there is no crime" in the Sultanate, but really, there is. I read with amusement (I'm nasty like that) that a man had his 1996 Honda Civic nicked in Mawaleh - he was a PRO for a company and had left his wallet, but more incredibly, a passport of someone in the company he works for, in the car over night. What a tool! Why on earth would you leave someone else's passport (or even your own) in a car overnight? The words "lazy" and "muppet" spring to mind.

The article in question which prompted this blog today though, is the statistics of burglaries in Oman in the first 3 months of this year. 1,342 thefts happened in the first 3 months this year, compared to 1,208 in the same period last year, an 11% increase. It's a general trend as it seems, the population is getting older, there are more people out of work and so I guess it is inevitable that crime will rise. We all know someone who's had their house broken into, car damaged or even simply just been ripped off by an unscrupulous retailer/mechanic.

It'd be interesting to get the data from, say, 10 years ago and compare it to todays data and see how crime rates have changed when compared to population change. And of criminals that have been caught, how many are local and how many are expatriates.

Perhaps the papers here are reporting on crimes more frequently now, or perhaps we really are in the grip of a crime wave here - what do you think? Do you think that there are particular crime hot-spots? Wadi Kabir? Azaiba? MQ in the summer? Mawaleh?

le fin.

An update on the Cyclone.

Just a little update for those wondering about this Cyclone Keila...

There is no cyclone at the moment, but there is a storm about 65 KM West of Mumbai. No need to worry, it probably will not even rain here.

You can check the Joint Typhoon Warning Center for accurate and up to date information specifically for the cyclone. You can also check the Weather Underground website for the weather forecast for Muscat.

So no need to worry about anything storm-related!

le fin.

The Ice Cream Crawl 2011!

This is a re-post from local restaurant review blog, Omani Cuisine (well worth reading by the way).

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The Omani Cuisine knows that there is no better cure to the crazy heat of the summer than some delicious cold ice cream, and to help our lovely readers pick the best ice cream place in Muscat, the Omani Cuisine decided to go on a mission next week to have ice cream at all the major ice cream places in town in one single day - we will try them out, compare their offerings, and decide by the end of the day which place serves the best ice cream!
The Ice Cream Crawl will take place on Sunday the 29th of May and its program will be as follows:

• 3.00pm to 3.45pm – Pinkberry  - Muscat City Center
• 3.45pm to 4.15pm – Baskin Robins – Muscat City Center
• 4.30pm to 5.15pm – Tropical – BankMuscat HQ
• 5.30pm to 6.15pm – Dream Cone – Zakher Mall
• 6.30pm to 7.15pm – Il Gelato di Bruno – Oasis by the Sea
• 7.30pm to 8.00pm – Marble Slab Creamery  - Qurum City Center
• 8.00pm to 9.00pm – Cold Stone – Qurum City Center
• 9.15pm to 9.45pm – Softy – Ruwi

In hope of making a fair and proper judgement of the ice creams we have on this crawl, the Omani Cuisine has sought the professional assistance of former Forbes Journalist Stephanie Dahl who will be featured heavily as a guest blogger on this mission.
All of our readers are welcome to come cheer for us (and have some ice cream) at any of the places shown in the program above at the timings indicated. It would be fun to meet you guys in person and learn about what you consider to be the best ice cream in town!
You can RSVP to attend the Ice Crawl on Facebook here.

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Not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

le fin.

Merge 104.8 transponder goes active. Hi FM shuffle their schedules.

It's been a while since I've posted anything, and for that, well I have a few nice things lined up for you to read this week and next. Starting with this...

By now you should all have heard about the new English language FM radio station due to open shortly here in the Sultanate. There is still no word on the official start date for this new station, headed up by previously popular on Dubai 92 FM & Coast 103.2 FM Disk Jockey, Chris Fisher.

I quite like the official logo for the new radio station, originally leaked by fellow blogger (and winner of Oman Collective Intelligence's Top 15 Oman Blogs list) (thanks for the #2 spot by the way OCI!) the Undercover Dragon from Muscat Confidential on the 10th of April.What do you guys think about it? It does kind of remind me of MTV Arabia's style though, but I like that so it's fine with me :)

The English language radio market here in Muscat is now about to get a little bit more competitive with the launch of this new station. Marketing budgets in the country are beginning to increase, with a noticeable increase in other than print media advertising from the Financial and Telecommunications sectors in the last 6 months.

The most competitive part of the day for these three English language radio stations here in Oman (Oman FM 90.4, Hi FM 95.9 and Merge 104.8) is naturally going to be the morning show. Which perhaps may be why Erin from Hi FM has switched from the evening show to the morning show (6-9), leaving Darren the 9-1 slot, Kathy in her usual afternoon slot and new Canadian DJ, Marcus is handling the afternoon rush hour show. So it would seem Hi FM is going for a more North American sounding brand of radio, even in a lot of the advertisements now, it features fairly prominently accents from across the Atlantic.

So we have Erin, seasoned from a spell in Egypt on Nile FM (and 17 years in the business), and Chris Fisher, experienced from 2 different radio stations up in the UAE (and has been working in radio since 1993) going up head to head. Radio Sultanate of Oman FM 90.4's morning lynchpin, Faiq Al Mugheiry (known as Faiq on the Mike) probably will not see too much of a change in his audience, as the younger demographic of the audience here in Oman have already switched over to Hi FM. So in my 5 minute analysis of the situation, it looks like Merge FM will either take listeners from Hi FM, switch from an Arabic station, or will have to convince potential listeners to turn on their radios and turn off their iPods on their way to work.

It'll be interesting to see, or rather, hear, what goes on in the next month or two as Merge launches onto the market. I'm guessing that there will be lots of give-aways. I'm also interested in how much it will cost to advertise on air now that there is direct competition.

As soon as I know the launch date for Merge 104.8, I'll let you all know, if you don't know before me!

le fin.