Best in Show

Last weekend, the Canadian Jebel K9 Boarding Kennels together with Canines for a Cause held a dog festival at the Al Bustan hotel for charity.  There aren't many dog friendly activities in Muscat,  so we just had to take Ralph.

There was a variety of competitions and entertainment on throughout the day, including obedience challenges, agility demonstrations and even a game of musical hoops.

It was over 40C when we arrived in the morning but fortunately most of the activities were held in an air conditioned tent. It's been a long time since Ralph has done any obedience work, but we thought we'd enter him into a couple of competitions anyway.

Everywhere Ralph goes, he seems to attract a lot of attention and today was no different. The first event was called "Leave it" and quite simply involved sitting at one end of a short piece of red carpet with lots of distractions on and running when called to Jenny at the other side, without touching any of the items on the carpet. He was the first up and although a bit jittery at the start aced the test. After about another 30 dogs had their turn, Ralph was awarded first place and took his first rosette and prize of the day.

The second event for Ralph was the obedience challenge, which involved a series of 10 short exercises, including heel work, sits and downs. All the competitors went at the same time and after completion of the round, Ralph was tied for first place. This meant a "dog-off". The two dogs were asked to repeat some of the previous exercises, but it soon became clear that this was no real challenge so the final exercise was a long recall with a "down" halfway through. He may be out of practice, but after Jenny barked the command, he went straight down into position to the roars of the crowd.

His final competition was to bark on command. No sweat to Ralph.

Having swept up three first prizes, Ralph was then awarded the Judges Best in Show and won a brand new Samsung smart phone.

The event was well covered in the press and Ralph made it into the Times of Oman and the Y Magazine.

Times of Oman article

Y Oman Article

Ed Sheeran

It's fair to say that Muscat is not known as the entertainment capital, so this concert has been the biggest event in Muscat's diary for the past 5-6 months.

We were expecting this to be a good concert, however, one thing that we were not expecting was for  a city which only experiences about 3 days of rain a year, for the heavens to open and us to get absolutely soaked as we were waiting to get into the venue.

However, even this couldn't dampen our spirits and in a way it made the evening.

Christmas in Oman

So Christmas in 25 degree sunshine....

Due to the high number of trips to the UK over the last 12 months we decided to spend Christmas in Muscat. This all sounds relatively straight forward until you start planning a traditional Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. Luckily one of our dinner guests had their brother coming to visit from home and so a large ham was ordered to ensure we maintained a level of normality. Turkey, veg and cranberries all sorted and the only thing left to do was get in the kitchen and get it sorted. 

Christmas morning was a strange experience as when we got up and looked out, not only was it still warm, but everyone was at work and going about their day as normal. Takes a while to remember we live in a Muslim country. Late morning and our guests had arrived. Off to the marina for a couple hours wake boarding, knee boarding, surfing and trying to get towed on an inflatable pink chair. Santa did a fine job as the pictures show. 

Don't spill the hot toddy

Enjoying the first course in the garden

Our Christmas entertainment. One of the girls managed to recite the whole 'Twas the night before Christmas' poem from memory whilst her sister did an amazing rendition of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

And then main course, led to dessert, which led to a late night. Really good fun and was great spending it was some good friends. Not quite the same as home though...

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Oman is looking very festive at the moment. All around Muscat, buildings, trees and anything else that can be, is adorned with green, red and white decorations. You'd be forgiven for thinking that the Sultanate is getting into the Christmas spirit, but it is in fact all in celebration of Oman's 44th National Day.  The 18th November marks Oman's independence from the Portuguese in 1650, but as it also coincides with His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said's birthday, the country celebrates his rise to power in 1970 on this day too.

Although Oman celebrates the 18th November with much fervour, the day isn't actually a public holiday. Instead there are two days later in the month reserved for the holidays. While this seems strange initially, the logic behind it is to try and ensure the majority of the country stays in Oman to celebrate, rather than taking advantage of the four day weekend and disappearing off to the UAE.

One of the local office buildings

the road near to my office

one of the SQH flyovers

The Walk at The Wave

In addition to decorating buildings, the Omanis love to decorate their cars. There seems to be an endless array of stickers which you can use to show your loyalty to the Sultan. Here are just a couple of examples of some of the more extreme ones.