Antiqua Living

This bed is RO 395

Recently I came across a furniture shop in Al Khuwair called Antiqua Living. I think it's been open for a while and I think I heard about it about a year ago, but they got in touch with me recently and I checked out their store and their website, and I'm pretty impressed.

When I first moved here, I thought to myself, "right, we are here for 2 years, we're gonna save a bunch of money and then get out of here". So we bought the cheapest stuff around and went to Ikea in Dubai a bunch of times. Then real life happened: we're still here nearly 6 years later and regretting some of our choices in furniture. Not all, but certainly some of them.

Antiqua Living are perfect for what I'm looking for. They import custom made furniture from Indonesia and it's all made with high quality timbers - basically choose something from their online gallery, or head to the store (which is on that road behind Aramex / McDonalds - before the bowling club - Way 3534) with a picture or drawing of what you want, and they'll take it from there.

This table is RO 145 + the chairs

The prices, while not as low as IKEA, are pretty good for what you get, which is a piece of furniture that will last you a life time if you want it to. For an average sized table, expect to pay somewhere in the range of RO 145 for something like that shown above.

They are having an open house this Wednesday evening where there will be 2 interior designers on hand who can give tips and pointers for giving your home (or office for that matter) a bit of a makeover.

The open house is this Wednesday 27th Feb between 4-9pm.

Tel: 22061870. www.antiqualiving.com

le fin.

Opera Galleria opens today [store listing]

Just a quick note to say that the immensely popular cafe chain from Dubai, mOre, opens today at the new Opera Galleria mall, which also "soft" opens today, with the main opening scheduled in early 2013, nearly a year later than originally planned.

For mOre information, you can check out their facebook page or their website.

For the Opera Galleria mall, there are over 50 stores planned, however only 25 are open today, however there is currently no complete list, and the press release copied and pasted by all of the newspapers doesn't seem to list these 25 stores. However, I've built a list, from a few different sources, and think that is more or less up to date, but I'm sure there will be a few new announcements in the coming months, but I still don't know which of these will be open today, except, of course, mOre.

1. mOre café
2. Nawal Art
3. Richoux café
4. Gallery Arjan
5. Mouawad Jewelery
6. Fauchon café
7. Bank Muscat
8. Raymond Weil
9. Patek Philippe
10. Bulgari   
11. Qurum Jewelers
12. Eye Candy
13. Jean D’Arcel
14. Lalique
15. ROH Ticket office
16. Royal Oman Cuisine restaurant
17. The Omani Artisan House
18. Maathir Jewelry
19. Dar Optics
20. Majid Trading
21. Alessandro
22. WH Smith
23. Tamrah
24. Le Palais de Chocolate
25. The Indus Restaurant
26. Henry Jaques
27. Lladro
28. Ajmal
29. Raydan Boutique
30. Al Husn perfumes
31. Bait Muzana Gallery
32. Asmaa al Kharusi Collection
33. Panerai
34. Nawal al Hooti

The mall is open from 10am till 10pm, with food and beverage outlets open from 8am until midnight.

le fin.

A few updates...

Firstly...

I hope you are all having a great Eid vacation, personally I am having a great time!

Image from Joint Typhoon Warning Center

It seems that there is more rain heading towards the capital with showers expected by most weather predictors to begin tomorrow and run through until Friday at the latest - patchy showers, not continuous.

Last night was the Shaggy party, with the VIP after party at Zouk later on - I've not heard much about it yet but what I have heard was positive, great to see more acts coming to town :)

This Wednesday the 9th sees Jay Sean and Shontelle at the InterCon gardens, gates opening at 7. I'll announce the winner of the 2 free VIP tickets to The Script tomorrow. I'm told that there are a few tickets remainig for both the gigs, not many though! You can buy them at the following outlets: OUA MQ, Bose Qurum City Centre & Al Ghazal pub at the InterCon.

For people that like rock music, I woke up this morning and was surprised to see the following poster:

This Friday, at the Safari Bar in the Hyatt, RO 10 on the door, doors open at 7, band on at 9. Should be fun, even though it's on a school night for many of us.

I also saw that Craic Attack is coming back -

Tickets are OMR12, available at Crowne Plaza and OUA retail outlet in MQ. Doors open at 8pm (show 9pm).

Tomorrow I'll announce the winners to the Script concert... you can still enter... click here for details.

The Oman Cat-Astrophe lot have a petition going on to gauge support for an animal shelter campgain they want to launch. You can help by signing the petition on facebook, here. I suggest that your contact information can be found by clicking your name, and that you don't need to put your email address there publically for all to see.

Local blogger, Happily Married to a Biker has started a new blog to support her moms new store, Unique Star Fashion at the Zakher Mall in Al Khuwair. It's great to see more shopping choices with web-presence here in Muscat!

More tomorrow.

le fin.

Victoria's Secret coming to Oman...

I hope you all had a nice Eid break and got to relax and all that stuff. I spent most of it moving house and discovering a few alarming truths about some shops here - thats for another day!

A special thanks to a reader who thoughtfully emailed over a picture of a job advert posted on Gulf Talent - it seems Al Shaya are hiring for the position of Store Manager for a new store in Oman - Victoria's Secret.

I'm assuming that this store will open in either Muscat City Center or Qurum City Center, but perhaps it will be in the new Muscat Grand Mall - I guess time will tell. Anyway,

More tomorrow.

le fin.

Muscat Grand Mall - store listing

As promised, here is some more information on Muscat Grand Mall's new stores. There are quite a few and I didn't bother listing out all the smaller stores but have made a list of most of the bigger stores.

So here we go, in no particular order (and of course some things may change):

Carrefour
H&M (Al Shaya)
Index
"Toy Store" (no idea, but perhaps Toy's R Us?)
Books Plus (Apparel Group)
Max (Landmark Group)
Emax (Landmark Group)
The Body Shop (Assarain)
VaVaVoom (Al Shaya)

Mango (Jawad Group)
K Corner
Oman Mobile
Chic Shoes
Charles & Keith (Apparel Group)
Vinici
Bread Talk (Bin Mirza)
Crocs
Ajmal
Lala Rose
Claires (Al Shaya)
Payless Shoes (Al Shaya)
Mothercare (Al Shaya)
ELC (Al Shaya)
4U
Jumbo
Okaidi
Gymboree
Yateem Opticals
Sunglasses Hut
Gulf Greetings
Centre Point
Capital Stores
Nawras
Costa Coffee (Jawad Group)
Clarks
Pinkberry (Al Shaya) (woohoo!)
Magrabi Opticals
Mona Lisa
Inglot
Spring (Apparel Group)
Totem
Nike
Adidas
Diadora
Tips & Toes
Nandos (Bin Mirza)
Finland Eye Centre
Marble Slab Creamery
Caribou Cafe
Gloria Jeans Coffee
Edible 2 Go
Nectar
Lalique
The Pizza Company
Chillis (Bin Lahej group)
Uno Chicago Grill
Dr Nutrition
Champion
Joe Bloggs
Reebok
Mom & Me
Hobby Land
McDonalds
DQ (Jawad Group)
Asmak
Subway
Burger King
City Cinema (3 screens)
Fun City (Landmark Group)

That's quite the selection, and obviously not set in stone, but it clears up the rumour that Al Tayer are not currently leasing units for their brands in the mall, but Al Shaya are. I wonder what the LuLu Mall people have to say about that?

I also heard that perhaps P.F. Changs would be coming to the mall too, but didnt see it confirmed yet.

The Mall is slated to open on October 25th, but from the information I've seen, I think it'll be December or possibly even later than that.

Personally I'm pretty happy Pinkberry is going to be closer to town :) I wonder if H&M will stock men's clothes?

So what do you think?

le fin.

Oman wins in the footy, and other things.

First up,

Congratulations to the Omani soccer lads, who put the Myanmar game to bed with a sound 2-0 victory at home in the latest World Cup qualifier. The second leg is in Myanmar this Thursday - I'm sure the guys will do well then too :)

Next, Sohar, again.

This time a journalist was detained in Sohar as he was gathering information on the protesters. That's not what amused me, what amused me was that the protesters were protesting about the fact their friends had been sentenced to jail for... protesting. Oh, and they wanted more jobs. I guess they should have thought about that before they burned down LuLu's. Muppets.

The demolition of LuLu's is well under way and rumours are that construction of a new store is to be fast tracked with an opening pegged for early next year. I'll believe it when I see it!

Whilst on the topic of supermarkets, Carrefour is opening in direct competition with LuLu's in Ghubra/Bowsher at the new Tilal complex. I guess Waitrose pulled out then. Still no idea on the opening date - if you know please let us all know.

Next,

Tonight there is the free music concert at the Al Bustan Palace hosted by the US Embassy, it starts at 8pm and everyone is invited.

For fruit-phone users, Apple have launched an App store for Oman (not iTunes though, as far as I'm aware). I'm about as anti-Apple as they come, but for those who prefer fruit-based technology, they can now use an Omani credit card to buy their favourite apps.

And finally for today - Have you entered the competition for Yolanda Be Cool that is this Wednesday night? 2 free tickets worth RO 15 each are up for grabs. See here for details on how to enter!

More soon.

le fin.