National Day

This ordinary looking building, possibly a Royal Oman Police block of flats, has a secret. By day it is an austere, sombre block with a rather foreboding crest on the roof.

By night it dons a coat of many colours and is the blingy-est building on the block.

It was difficult to get a good picture  as our drivers did not understand the concept of "slow down,  I want to take a picture". No matter how many times we passed this place at night, it was always at high speed - anyone would think they just wanted to get back to the hotel and go to sleep.

Many building are bedecked in the national colours, from a modest display of national pride...

 

to the full blown rope light dreadlocks seen above. There are also more portraits of Sultan Qaboos bin Said than you could shake a stick at. They are on cars…

…on the walls of shops…

 

(Seen here above a pencil sketch of some I suspect is supposed to be the shopkeeper) 

This is the shopkeeper, you decide.

….and 100 feet high on office blocks.

This book, extolling the virtues and delights of Oman, has 51 pictures of the Sultan. (And, yes, I'm afraid I did count them.)

The cult of the leader is strong in Oman in normal times, on this 40^th National Day, celebrating four decades since he came to power, it is ubiquitous.

I could get all high-minded about the relative merits of democracy and autocracy, but I do not really know enough about it to give a qualified opinion, so, suffice to say I just wish I was the lucky sod with the rope light and large-scale ink jet printing franchise.

Shopping - Electrical Shop Muttrah Souk

Went to Mattrah Souk to buy a 3-way 13amp adaptor. 

Ran the gauntlet of souk stall holders looking for a suitable outlet. Several dozen stilted conversations along the lines of: "No thanks I do not want a pashmina, and, yes it is lovely and probably a very good price, and no I don't want any frankinsence, even if it is best quality and a very good price"  Repeat for dish dasha, hat, cermonial daggers, powder horns, and, and, and...

Finally find an electrical shop which is being studiously ignored by a local stall holder, presumably miffed at not sellling me a pashnia, frankinsence, dish dasha, hat  etc etc

This is looking promising

The shop is presided over by Ali Bin Ahmed, who seems to be able to reach any item of stock without leaving his seat...

which includes a 13amp adaptor. 

To fully appreciate the wonders within I took a Photosynth 360 photo-panorama of the shop. Microsoft shut down the Photosynth site in 2017 and deleted all the contents. I may be arsed to recreate it one day but probably not. If you want to know what the whole inside of the shop looked like you will have to go there - I doubt it will have changed much.

Eating Out

There was not much need for eating out. We had breakfast in the hotel and lunch on site and after a dirty pint -  the one just back from the site, and before a shower - I'd munch my way absentmindedly through copious bowls of pop corn and olives which were served with every drink and must have put on a couple of kilos in the last few weeks [and the rest. Ed.]. The killer combination of beer and a weak will. Still, plenty of time to diet when you're dead.

Herb and Simon came over one night and we went to the Japanese restaurant on the eighth floor of my hotel.

Does just what it says on the door

There was a shed-load of sushi,
sashimi, soups, stews, rice, eggs,
noodles, and not a little saki.

But we managed to force most of it down

A day or so later Herb came over again and we went to the Golden Oryx with a lot of others from the fireworks championships.. 

Everyone else thought it was brilliant, and that included Cindy Cheung (the Chinese Team Leader) and she should know what with being Chinese an' all. But then again she is Hong Kong Chinese and that is different (so I am told).

Personally I thought was the worst Chinese meal I could remember and I remember London Chinese take aways of the 1970s. Maybe we just visited at a bad time on a bad day. And it cost silly money. Personally I would have preferred less choice, plainer surroundings and better food costing less than my flight.

Apart from the Arabic, this place would not have looked out of place in Brighton:

And I just had to have lunch here one day. It is the Omani equivalent of a greasy spoon (a working person's cafe for the uninitiated).  

I was probably the only westerner they had served since arriving on the planet. The guy asked if I was from England and I said yes, then I asked if he was from outer space - ho ho ho! how we laughed...

The menu was sparse, just an indeterminate meat curry, a similarly anonymous vegetable curry and some fish which looked as though they had been to the fish equivalent of the university of hard knocks - if they could speak they would probably say 'Hey! Hoo yoo lookin' at...?' - so I had some.

I am unlikely to hired as a food critic on account of my insensitive palette and lousy memory for menus and tastes. I can differentiate  between major food groups but that's about it. However, I do remember that the rice was flavoursome (cardamom maybe? a little chilli and something a little bit sweet) and the fish was just plain delicious (flaky white fish with a crumbly, mildly spicy coating). The green salad with limes and chillis was an excellent foil and pomegranate juice was not too sweet which suited perfectly. Bloody marvellous, one of the best meals I had, I could hardly walk back to the hotel. And only 2.2 Rials (about £3.50)

The other best eating out experience was at the local kebab stall, the only eatery I visited twice. (Later I discover they are called schwamas)

The stall is not much to look at in daylight...

...and still pretty grim in the dark.

 But the people were nice.

and the food was... well, see blog Snippets of wisdom - A night on the Tiles for more details.

Delicious meals are one thing but...

a delicious restaurant didn't really appeal to me, or anyone else it seems as I never saw it open.

Maybe it's not a restaurant at all...

Fun with Words - Signs of Oman

To have a business in Oman you must have a sign. Not some brass plaque on the door but a BIG ILLUMINATED sign and it must say what you do. 

You would not go into this shop to
buy a trouser press or a
table tennis ball.

There is help for those who don't read too well:

That may well include educated Brits as the 'supply of building materials' means tools (above) and hardware such as door furniture (below). They tend not to sell wood and bags of cement, though I dare say they would pop round the corner and get you some if you asked.

As well as describing the nature of the business, the sign may give you some linguistic flourish to further extol its virtues:

Of course it is possible to be too honest.

Well, you'd think twice, wouldn't you...

Some shops think nothing of using endangered species to sell stuff.

And some try to reassure you of their reliability with technical talk (the sign equivalent of the toothpaste advert featuring a chap in a white coat with a clipboard).

Personally I like my pharmacies to be a bit scientific, as opposed to, say, emotional or experimental. So this one does it for me.

Others do not inspire the same level of confidence. Though the idea of viral jewellery is kind of intriguing. And you should be in no doubt about what you are likely to find inside Silky Textiles next door.

You can get most things over the counter, though some signs make you wonder exactly what is on offer:

Malls proliferate and, despite being mainly populated by the major international chains they, too, have a few independent traders who entertain us with some interesting signs. 

The shop on the left just seems bizarre to a non-make up wearer. It is positioned as 'sophisticated', witnessed by the black and grey colour scheme, blow up fashion photos and the flightcase furniture (What is that about? To me it says 'You need so much of our muck that we need to pack it in boxes the size of a small car, which are capable of surviving the rigours of international air cargo')

But I cannot see the fashionista admitting buying their slap from a store called MAKE UP FOR EVER (PROFESSIONAL / PARIS) - they'd be fessing up to underwear from Primark and shoes from Lidl next.

Then I Googled it: MFE was started by someone called Dany Sanz (yeah, likely!) and appear to have 17 stores worldwide. It was also mentioned on several blogs (one sub-titled "where the fashion nerd meets the pop culture obsessed") and I lost the will to go on.

This development still does not make it sophisticated but means it should not really be in an 'entertaining signs' blog  - nonetheless, I am leaving it in as yet another example of how little I know about some aspects of the world I live in.

I just liked the name Beach Sparkle.

But if this were a competition, the winner, would have to be:

Stationary Pivot may be a direct translation of something in Arabic, or it may just be a delightful description of a stable place around which the universe revolves.

And who would have suspected that this singular point would be in a back street in Oman.

(More fun with signs and beauty tips to come... watch this space)

Suffer Little Children - Cute Suits

Most parents love their children which is not a bad thing. It is the fate of children the world over to live up to their parents idea of them as 'little angels' (or cultural equivalent) which may not be so benign. Many parents express these Angelic qualities to others by dressing their kids in suitable 'little angel' attire. But who really knows what angels wear?  (Apart from Michaelangelo of course, and he had his own agenda and should not be taken literally.) 

Regardless, I would take a big slice of the action that it is not this:

Angel suits for very small girls

or this

Angel suits for very small boys

Also spotted were cute departments selling angelic footwear

and angelic hats (at a 20% discount):

I did not see any very small boy Angels wearing Mini-Elvis-Angel outfits, but I did see these girls and many more like them. 

This does not seem so much an expression of parental love but more of a cute show, where the poor little sods have to out-cute each other in public.  

This has probably been happening all over the planet since the first cave-baby was displayed to other envious cave-parents in a bear skin tutu. But, unlike today's kids, they were not being targeted by multinational marketing departments determined to sell fashion-crap and all the nonsense that goes with it.


It would be nice to think that the kids themselves don't know (or care) and are not adversely affected by all this, but one has to wonder where the 'little princess' and its adult counterpart 'the fashion victim shopoholic' start.

Then again I don't have kids so what do I know... 

(The lack of a question mark indicates that this is a rhetorical question, but do not let that stop you from suggesting answers)

Fun with numbers

We have a wide range of skills talents and abilities of which we are not aware.

Reading backwards is one. Most people can do it and not even realise that it is happening.

Take Arabic (Oh go on! After all this is about Oman). 

I will assume you know that Arabic is written right to left (for those who did not know that read the following sentence. ‘Arabic is written right to left’) OK, so that is everyone up to speed on the basic premise.

Digression: Some people write OK as okay, which is OK. Okay?

Arabic has an 'alphabet' and numerals. As this blog is called Fun with Numbers and there are only 10 of them (whereas there are 28 letters) let's stick to numbers.  Many of them look similar to western numbers but there are differences...

Close, but no cigar*.

The numbers 1 and 9 are the same in both written languages. Whereas a zero is a dot like this (.) and 5 is what we would call a nought or zero (0). The number 4 looks like a reversed 3 and worse still is the number 6 which looks like a western 7 (see pic above). The numbers 2 and 3 are quite easy to remember as they are like sevens but with either two or three ‘points’ on top (so look for the points). The 7 and 8 are Vs, with 7 looking like a regular V and 8 looking like an upside down V which is best depicted on a computer keyboard with the ‘carat’ symbol (^). To tell which is which it is only necessary to remember which way up they go. Think ‘V’ and ‘upside down V’ and you have them in their correct numerical order – namely 7 (V) and 8 (^).

Here is a chart showing how they correspond:

In Arabic, while letters are written from right to left, numbers are written left to right, which is backwards to them but the same as we are used to in the west.

This is the number 19.

It is the same in Arabic: 19.

When we read it we read from left to right. That is to say we read the 1 first and then the 9.  But we say Nine-teen

This is in effect reading the letters backwards (9 first then the 1).  

And we are even smarter than we thought as we do not say nine-one, but because the 1 is actually a 10, we add them together without thinking and it becomes nineteen**. 

And we do the same with the other 'teen-numbers'.

We do this instinctively***. I doubt many of us have thought about it as reading backwards but that is what it is. 

So, clever you! You have a numerical skill you may not have recognised.

But it only works with the 'teen' numbers. Twenty-seven is written 27. One hundred and eighty is written 180 (pronunciation is matter of personal choice) and so on.

So why do Arabic writers write all their numbers left to right when they write their letter the other way?

Damned if I know – but I am working on it and when I find out YOU will be the next to know. If you know tell me and I will pass it on.

* An expression used in any contest where the correct answer would win a cigar. This example looks like 179 but in Arabic is actually 169, which is close but not close enough to win the cigar.

** Of course you could argue that we see the two numbers 1 and 9 as a single shape which we know to be the number 19 but that spoils the fun of being smarter than we thought, so I won't dwell on it.


*** OK, we had it drummed into us at school, and maybe the word should be 'habitually'.

TGV - On the Train

...continued from previous post 'TGV - Paris, Montparnasse'

Finally our platform was decided but we had to watch the board to find out where to go…

…as the public address system is worse than the British system...

...though it does come with a big light, presumably for sending morse signals which would certainly be easier to understand than the announcer. The camera may be to make sure that you are paying attention or may be a quality control monitoring device, tuned to detect furrowed brows to see if they need to turn to morse code.

Any way the board showed we were due to depart from platform 5 and we all traipsed off to the lower level.

The train was fully booked and the platform was alive with scurrying life forms scrabbling to find their carriages...

 

Luckily two trains had been stuck together so there was room for all of us.

My carriage is in the second train and is sort of comfortable, but once again there are other people on board, including a baby which makes one apprehensive.

As it turns out the baby is OK for the next four hours. It is a pity the same cannot be said for the mother who chirps and cheeps, throws baby-food all over the place, and makes raspy rattling noises with one of those coloured  plastic clowns designed to give kids nightmares. I wonder if babies are allowed to travel unaccompanied?

Mother and baby seen here 

in a rare moment of repose

The TGV has two types of carriage which, in typical French style, are named Zap and Zen. From what I can work out, Zap is for people who want to work on their laptops and party with their iPods and Zen is for people who want to meditate and not be bothered with mundane everyday matters. Having said that the Zap passengers who want to party must do so without disturbing anyone else (some party!).

I assume the Zen passengers are requested to chant their Ommmmms silently so as not to disturb the Hari Krishnas who are not allowed to ring their bells. Seems like a fair trade-off to me.

In fact the only substantial difference between the two carriages that I could elucidate from the man in the peaked cap is that Zen does not have power sockets, so presumably one cannot recharge one’s laptop or mobile whilst recharging one’s psychic batteries.

France, where a peaked cap
still denotes authority

But I was in a Zap carriage (with power sockets) and did not want to disturb the Zenners by crawling around on the floor to check – so it will remain a mystery.

The train also has a bar where you can hire a DVD player and some DVDs, buy magazines and have a snack.

The snacktastick choice here is between a very healthy looking sandwich and an even more ‘good for you’ salad which is so full of fresh-loveliness that I swear it will extend your life by several days. They ought to run a campaign along the lines of: Travel TGV – live forever.

Happy punters can lean on the stagger-tables and swig carafes of vin-wonderful...

…while lesser mortals, condemned to a life of sobriety, must suffer the pitiful conditions in the foreground

 

We arrived at Bordeaux St Jean…

Which has a big clock and probably a lot more fascinating stuff not visible from the train. And then on to Agen...

 

...which is only 40 mins from home, except that on this occasion I arrived home an hour or so later which would make it an hour or so from home.

So that was Oman, except there is a lot more to say about it, so I will continue with this blog until I am distracted by something else…

...and then I will probably share that with you - the choice is yours.