Night coaxes you into wishing day

And this day is its remembrance,
Wistful, dark.
Where is the Buddha, and which wretched soul would he want to embrace now?

The wretchedness is below par.
Less tepid perhaps
Or more.

Is it any more real than the tree which meets your eye and goes on to become part of a forest in your mind? It is not less tepid. And yes more real than the forest in your mind. Let the wretched soul absorb too your abstraction. It has endured much worse. And why should you care? There is here this sleeping Buddha that meets your languid eye and you are content. The forest is at peace. For now.

Could Muscat be the un-Dubai?

“Too much Pakistanis in Oman”
Summarized the cab driver after querying the belonging-nesses of his passengers and finding out mine. Not much comment on the other two: Dan from Mauritius, and Valentin from Austria. A walk in the busy Ruwi market where South Asian is the only visible species of humanity will convince you the cabby was not jesting when he generalized.

“Too much Toyotas in Oman” was the comment by another driver on another day.

How Samsung overcame Apple and the Desi gold-rush
Observe the phones on Omanis and you would be tempted to put forth a generalization of your own: that it is from tiny Muscat that Samsung smartphones emanate before reaching the far corners of the world. Observe the desis in the gold shops in Ruwi and you could be forgiven for bracketing all desis as a tad materialistic (in their defence, gold prices had struck a three year low that week). In short, there is no shortage of the fetish that afflicts the consumer, be it arab or ajam.

Overpriced cabs and overheated heat
In pricey cab fares, Muscat competes with Vienna. Add to that the humid, no-wind heat, and you don’t feel like going anywhere post office time. But anywhere is where you must go, otherwise you are not an intrepid consultant but a trepid one, and trepidity will not do. No sir.

What does Omani cuisine have in common with Norwegian?
You have heard of neither. But that did not prevent our intrepid-ness from seeking local cuisine wherever it was local. We were somewhat disappointed in the first (and hence only) Omani food joint we sampled. That was to be made up in spades by the superb non-Omani food that we had in two Turkish, one Japanese and one Indian food joint. So Oman passed our food test, and we decided we can continue our good work in this good land.

Mini-Dubai or un-Dubai?
Conspicuous consumption, super-abundance of desis, and fine cuisine. My inner quest for the un-Dubai would at first sight seem dashed. But the typical Omani is hard-working and welcomes you with a warm smile, and that changes everything. For the intrepid, in the end, it is all about the locals and how they greet the non-locals, and here Muscat says ta-ta to Dubai.

Dan from Mauritius, Valentin from Vienna

Food

More food

Best bread in the world

And then some

Lest we forget

The token landscape pic