Here is news about Saudi promoting new laws for controlling the use of technology for terrorism, fraud, pornography, defamation, violating religious values and disregarding public etiquette.
They had earlier arrested Fouad Al Farhan, a 32-year-old which was considered a the first of its type there. http://www.itp.net/news/507409
Now the law make its even more strict and The new law also covers the religious and social use of information and communications technology. Read more at http://www.itp.net/news/509250-saudi-tightens-grip-on-internet-use.
I hope the ROP agresssively enforces this, with stings, speed traps, and checkpoints. If they can do this with speeding and reckless driving I think it would have an impact on next year's road accident fatalities.
* Updated, thanks to Amjad for the PDF and the link. *
-www.omania2.net
-www.omanya.net
-www.omanya.com
-www.omanianet.net
Any more omanias?
Members of the Royal Navy of Oman try to pull a dead whale out of the sea along the coast of Darsait village in Muscat, January 16, 2008.According to Oman's Ministry of Environment, the whale was killed after a collision with an oil tanker and DNA samples will be taken before it is buried.
REUTERS (OMAN)
I am currently working on a review of the restaurant at the chedi, but for today, I will share one major grievance with you. Bottled water.
Our recent visits the The restaurant in the Chedi Muscat, started off on the wrong foot with something as simple as water. They used to serve locally bottled Arwa or Tanuf, in big or small bottles, for a 200% mark up over the cost anywhere else. Fair enough, this is the Chedi.
Now, they sell 750 ml glass bottles of still water, imported from Scotland, for a whopping 2.8 rials, which is slightly more than Seven US dollars. It's just water. It's not particularly great water, but it's fancy, pretentious, expensive water that required many tonnes of fossil fuels to extract, bottle, and ship it here.
Additionally, they won't sell any other type of water, nothing local, nothing cheap, and our requests for a pitcher of tap water were initially refused. They have a good scheme here, knowing full well that tourists are terrified of drinking tap water, and so will pay the extortionate rates for bottled water.
The attitude from the staff was that the Chedi is too good to serve water from plastic bottles, or to offer filtered tap water. Thus, I was rather surprised to see that the complementary water inside the suite for which we had paid RO 350 per night ( 900 USD!!!) was Arwa, in plastic bottles. So it's ok to serve water in plastic bottles in a 350 rial suite, but not in the restaurant...because in the restaurant, you can charge the guests an arm and a leg for it. It's a rip off, pure and simple, not to mention an absolute waste of resources.
If the Chedi wanted to get serious about being an environmentally conscious hotel, they would serve filtered tap water, for 100bz a glass, with the money collected going to the Environmental society of Oman, or some other charity. They could offer the guests the option of buying the premium water, and quite a few would go for it, for the snob factor.
Kids, when you go to the Chedi, do me a favor and complain long and loud about the bottled water issue. Demand tap water. I think if they get enough complaints, they might be willing to change the policy when their contract expires with the Scottish company next year. Maybe.
This is also Cross Posted over at my blog, Other Oman
I'm totally lovin' the new "middle road" which was opened this week and takes you from a new intersection in Al Khuwair where the Zakher roundabout used to be right down the center of Al Khuwair and then through the sand dunes of what used to be 3urooq until you stop at a new intersection in Bausher close to the sports stadium without having to go through the traffic of the highway. The road is still not entirely ready. They're still building some flyovers which will connect the newly opened road and extend it all the way to Hawasna filling station in Death Valley road. When construction ends later this year, the road will run from Madinat Qaboos all the way to Bausher without any stops.
However while driving there today I noticed that they had changed all the speed signs from 80 to 50. For real?!! I tried to slow down to 50 and just couldn't. How can you drive 50 km/h on a two lane road?!!
Has anybody noticed an increase in helicopters over the capital the last few days? Any thoughts?
I think It's either an increase in routine training of RAFO pilots, or GW Bush is going to be stopping through Muscat during his upcoming middle east junket.
Either that or a giant government spying conspiracy, where they are using the helicopters to read our minds and predict future crimes. I, for one, am lining my cap with tinfoil right now.
Just kidding. Do you guys think Bush wil be stopping here?
As far as I know Oman's smallest currency denomination is the 5 baisa. What's up with this pricing?
Hot on news is the formation of the Common market among the 6 GCC countries, of which Omna is a member.
This will have economic, social and financial impact within these economies. For example it will be easy for GCC residents can buy property and start business within any of the GCC countries. The member countries will benefit from free trade relations among each other which will be a great boost for several industries. Even the corporate tax within these countries can become equal and thus cutting competion between the members.
Any ideas as to what will be other effects of this?
