English Newspapers in Oman

With the launch of the Muscat Daily a week ago, the number of English language dailies in the Sultanate has gone up to 4. Always great to have more choice. But sadly the new addition hasn't really set itself apart from the older trio. Expect in price, perhaps. A short & POV look at the dailies that we have.

Times of Oman

Pros: Possibly the leading daily in terms of circulation. This gives them some other benefits. Many ads, for instance, appear only in the Times. They also seem to have a pretty good coverage of the local news surrounding the expat community. Plenty of supplements: such as H!, Thursday Mag, Entertainment on Wednesdays, Faces... Also have an e-paper. Not very user friendly though. And of course, they organize the Open Quiz annually.

Cons: Annoying viewpoints & editorial pages. Some regular & irritating letter writers. A few other verbose columnists pontificating on life, the universe & everything. Some of the local reporters are good, but most don't do any spadework. They're content just to copy-paste the press releases. Overall not much quality content.

Was subscribing to this. Twice, just stopped receiving the paper. Had to call up to get it restarted. Otherwise was getting it before 06:00, which was quite fine.

Oman Observer

Pros: Oldest daily. They carry the only decent cryptic crossword among all four. Probably copied from some British daily, as the clues sometimes indicate. Some good columns in their business section.

Cons: Nothing much to distinguish it from the rest. The only one that doesn't seem to be making an effort to boost subscription. No discount offers etc. Local news is usually very similar to that in the Tribune.

Oman Tribune

Pros: Unlike the others, relying heavily on the scant local content available, they run some good syndicated columns. Partnerships with the likes of Harvard Business Review & the Hindu Business Line are definite +s. Some good local columns on unexplored picnic spots in Oman.

Cons: Local reporting is probably the weakest of the 4. Not a very happy experience subscribing. Paper usually lands around 08:00. By this time one would have already left for office/school.

Muscat Daily. No website. From Apex Press & Publishing

Pros: Cheapest of the lot. At 100 baiza a copy or OMR 13 for an annual sub. Greater local coverage. Paper's actually landing around 05:00. Good section titled press releases, instead of passing it off as their own write-ups.

Cons: Not much content. Using a lot of self-advertising, big fonts and wide spacing to cover it. Should probably improve with time. One whole sports page devoted to U.S. games such as baseball, NFL & the like. Does anyone actually follow that stuff down here? Local news is more on Omani & govt activities. Not much on the expat scene. Their idea of the local beat seems to be reporting the accident stats from the ROP & covering overflowing drains. Have started with a lot of local columnists, many of whom don't really make the grade. Not available on Thursdays & Fridays.

Doesn't really substitute a regular newspaper. But at the price, a good supplement.

On a general note, none of the papers' websites really appeal. Too cluttered, too slow. Perhaps all could pay a bit more attention to engaging the subscriber a bit more.

Muscat Twestival

& other forthcoming events to look forward to

A group of Tweeple have called for an informal Muscat Tweet meet to get a chance to see each other in person. Nice initiative. That's on Oct 8th @ Al Masa Mall @ 19:00. Some 24 have already confirmed attendance.

The Singing Kettle is due to perform @ Al Bustan Palace on Oct 15, 11:00. Tickets available for sale at various spots. To get a flair for what to expect you could catch some of their shows on YouTube. I am guessing children will enjoy this.

Mallika Sarabhai & troupe are coming on Nov 12. This should be quite good. Particularly for all dance enthusiasts.

Quizpot is having its 4th National quiz for Indian Schools in Oman. I believe 13 schools participated last year. This is at Indian School Al Ghubra on October 22 @ 11:00. Conducted by Dr. Avirat Vaishnav. For classes VI - VIII. Going by previous editions, this should be very informative.

Not an event per se. The Muscat Daily is launching in Oman. This will be the 4th English newspaper in the country. Starting Oct 10. Will be published 5 days a week.

The Biggest of them all. The Mozart of Madras has announced an event in Muscat on Dec 3. Didn't find any further details. Can't think of a venue large enough to host this.

ISM Inter-house quiz 2009

Q: Id the 2 historical characters caricatured in the pic above.

Had the pleasure of conducting the Indian School Muscat's inter-house quiz for a second time. The event has four teams participating, one from each house. Four members per team, one from each class - IX to XII.

Still haven't managed to get the balance of questions right. Like the previous year it turned out to be a bit too tough for the teams, and way above the head for the audience. Had set an internal target of get  at least 85% of questions to be answered on stage. In the end it turned out to be 80%.

Some expected bouncers were the questions on - U.S. Consulate on Ho Chi Minh Street & Foucault's Pendulum. In some cases, the intention was merely to expose the minds to a few new vistas. Umberto Eco is a much more enriching read than Dan Brown any day.

However the teams bravely attempted all. Very few "Pass" uttered. This was much more comforting than seeing a wall of blank faces. Overall they did well. Three of the four, were in contention right up to the last quarter. Some very good guesswork by all the houses caught the audience by surprise. Yellow house ended up winners, retaining their position from 08. However at the end, only 1 question separated them from the runners-up. Houses Blue & Green too had put up a spirited challenge.

The quiz, being close to Teacher's day, had a link round on famous people who were once teachers. As feared, the connection was not easy to make until the last question, on Dr S. Radhakrishnan, was asked. The problem - it was easy to find celebrities who were once teachers, but not those who were generally known to have been teachers. Another interesting observation when setting: a lot of these celebrities were English Teachers once. Not sure what to make of that. Either English teachers have a lot of potential (prime candidates for a future career as novelist for instance) or that anyone can become an English teacher!?

Surprisingly the teams on stage were not very clued in on media & entertainment. Some or all, missed out on Billy Crystal, Avatar, Sting & David Caruso aka Horatio Caine! A team guessed Michael Jackson for the CSI star's impersonation question! "Every Breath You Take" is 80s, but  everyone  must have heard Sting? Got guesses from Bryan Adams to Elton John. The teams were also not at all familiar with the 50s rock stars, even though some anniversary celebrations were being widely covered in the media.

Some of these passed ones in the entertainment area were remarkably answered by the audience - class IX students. And, as in the 08, the scorer's table came up with a few answers. Guess this has partly to do with the way teams are selected. The selections are done in-house. Possibly the elimination questions are very academic in nature. Hence those with their noses in their books tend to do better. And the ones hanging outside Shatti Plaza tend to miss out. Plus the quota of one member per academic year per team also pushes out some promising talent. Might be better to just have the 4 best from each house represent them. Surely they don't have quotas for other events such as football or basketball?

Tried one other innovation as well. The Pounce, an idea picked from Hirak. Gave two 'Pounce' cards to each team. This was well received, though not all used it wisely. The Pounce basically enabled teams to answer sitter out of turn. The idea was, if a team felt any question was way too easy, and they were too far in the queue to get a shot at it, they could 'Pounce' on it. All teams were pretty enthusiastic about this, and almost all cards were used up by the midway stage. Towards the end, with 3 teams very much in the race, all were regretting that they had not reserved their wild-cards till then. Some of the Pounce cards were wasted on questions that ended up with the teams pouncing anyway. And in a few cases, they ended up giving the wrong answers.

My favourite question for the day was the caricature at the top of this post. Didn't think it was too tough, but went unanswered.

The better half tells me that, even though not a quizzer herself, after seeing many quizzes that I've set, she's able to guess a few answers easily. Says I always seem to set something on Richard Feynman, P G Wodehouse, Calcutta and Calvin & Hobbes. Just as Pickbrain tends to ask on Red Cross, Nobel Prize  and the Pope.  And once the participants cue in on that, they'll start cracking the questions easily.

Of course, once the quizzers figure that, I'll move on to Dawkins, Mostly Harmless & Seinfeld.

Rembrandt in Oman

Rembrandt in Oman is an  exhibition of the great painter's etchings organized by Al Salmi Library. Kudos to them for arranging this refreshing show down here. And to all the sponsors as well. The show is soon to close after it's one month run.

Initial feedback on the show, from acquaintances, were poor. They were probably expecting some of his more famous paintings to be up on show. The Night Watch, perhaps. Probably disappointed to see a lot of black & white sketches.

The show was quite fascinating nonetheless. The artist's trademark use of chiaroscuro to highlight parts of the picture was very visible. Rembrandt's use of lighting is quite famous. It is said that he made shadows fall where he wanted them to fall.

His name, of course, even more famous. Once Sam Goldwyn seeing a film he was producing, with only half the actor's face illuminated, worried that exhibitors would pay only half the price. Director Cecil B. DeMille told him it was Rembrandt Lighting. Quoting deMille quoting Goldwyn "Sam’s reply was jubilant with relief: for Rembrandt lighting the exhibitors would pay double!"

It was amazing to see the contrast that Rembrandt was able to bring into the prints. And the level of detail in some of them was wonderful. All this in, essentially, a 2 colour medium. Quite a few of the etchings were on biblical themes.

Besides seeing the beautiful etchings, also learned a few terms related to the art. Drypoint - Using a hard-pointed metal needle to engrave. Burin - Cold Chisel. Chiaroscuro - Use of light & dark to bring out contrast. And Intaglio - the International Business School Meet* at IIMC:) Overall, a positive experience.

* Formerly known as National Booze & Sutta Meet

Austerity - Indian style

Digest this. A couple of Indian Central Govt. Ministers, whose personal wealth run into crores, have been asked to stop spending their own money on accommodation, and waste spend the taxpayers' instead.

And I thought you had to spend your way out of the recession? Your own money, not the taxpayers'. Those who can, should be allowed to spend on their wants. This keeps money circulating in the economy.

So what is the new plan? Shun 5-star hotels and run them out of business? And then maybe airlines as well, by sticking to trains? Ministers have already been asked to use Economy Class when flying. Some have objected to this. Sharad Pawar claims that he doesn't fit into an Economy seat. Other ministers such as Farooq Abdulla have also stated their dislike for the cattle class. Pranab Mukherjee has been lambasted for publicly "advising" his colleagues to cut spending. And funnily he himself doesn't seem to be observing this in his planned jaunt to Cyprus

Of course, being economical when it comes to government expenditure is quite welcome. Apparently a lot of policemen have already been relieved from useless security cover duties. But asking all govt officials to use Air India is clearly not saving the taxpayers anything. Air India should be sold off, and the likes of Kingfisher & Jet allowed to fill its space.

Suddenly everyone seems to be on Krishna's & Tharoor's backs - showing them how their colleagues are very thrifty in spending public money. Poor rich fellows:(

Melange

1. Idiot's Guide to Answering the Queen's queries - Economics On why no one saw the crisis coming.

2.15 patriotic songs (Hindi) to listen on Independence day Not very patriotic myself. But I like good songs:)

3. Michael Foody on why he likes Twitter Quoting him , "The freedom to be mediocre most of the time is something that is necessary to be excellent ever and twitter gives me a way to be mediocre. And that’s why I like twitter."

4. Swaminomics on some Swine Flu & related stats from India

5. Driving Test Flowchart

A Holistic soothsayer!

During my teenage years, I had a fascination for all pseudo-sciences. Turned out that this was normal - most of my peers shared these interests.

1st read up Linda Goodman's Sun Signs. And started categorizing people by their DoB. Augmented this with Indian star signs. So now everyone was mapped on to a 2D matrix. And then added palmistry to the repertoire. Didn't really believe all this, though it didn't stop me from trying it out on every possible subject.

Later got hooked into Graphology after seeing a TV programme on it. Bought 3 books on it. Now this was more interesting for 2 reasons.
1 - It appeared scientific.
2 - Unlike the zodiac, very few were familiar with this. So it hasn't been widely ridiculed yet. And I could easily pretend to the local expert in school.

Finally added Kinesics to this list. And turned into an integrated cold reader. Took a few years to realize that this was all Bovine Scat.

After this I had taken to debunking practitioners of such arts. Usually they would be specialists in only one of the forms.

Sunita Menon seems to be a generalist. Her calling card reads 'Clairvoyant, healer, counsellor, psychic, guide, philosopher and mentor'. She's most famous however as a Tarot Card reader. As part of the independence day celebrations, the Indian Embassy in Muscat started of with a talk by this celebrity psychic. Celebrity status clearly enhanced by the likes of Karan Johar & Ekta Kapoor being her regular clients. In Kapoor's dud Krishna Cottage, the seance played by Rati Agnihotri is named Sunita Menon.


The widely covered tamasha at the embassy was billed as the "Exotic Indian Science of Tarot Reading". This appears flawed on many fronts. Tarots are not of Indian Origin. They came up in continental Europe merely as a game. Later when it spread to the British Isles, it started getting used for divination. Hence the references in the Harry Potter series, and probably the most famous - Solitaire in Live & Let Die.

I guess it can be called 'exotic' in the sense that it is 'foreign' to this part of the world. And it's as much 'Science' as 'Intelligent Design'.

Her show seemed to have impressed the audience, going by the newspaper reports. Keeping with her ilk, she doesn't appear to have definitely forecast anything during her talk, despite numerous queries. The only prediction that is not completely vague is when she said that the US would take another 10 months to come out of the economic depression, Europe even further, and India & the Middle East have already started coming out. Waiting to see if this happens. Though it'll be difficult to define what exactly needs to happen to certify that the depression is over.

Like everyone and their uncle, she claims to have forecast the market crash as far as 2 years ago. If she knew so clearly, why didn't she go short, and make some serious money out of her forecasting abilities?