author - oman observer

The alarm goes off; you open one eye, look at the time, and begin negotiations. Five more minutes, maybe ten, and you finally get up, already looking forward to going back to bed tonight. The day has...

As His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik begins his state visit to China on Sunday, November 1, attention will be focused on the developments and announcements emerging from his meetings. But I think...

I will not name the supermarket. I still shop there. But somewhere there is a checkout queue that has taught me more about patience and human behaviour than I ever expected to learn while buying...

The State Visit of His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik to the United Kingdom is an important occasion for Oman, especially when we remember that the last formal state visit by an Omani Sultan to...

El Nino has been appearing in the news a lot recently. Reports suggest that Oman may experience a wetter and more fertile winter between October 2026 and May 2027. So, are we happy or worried? In a...

The alarm goes off, you open one eye, look at the time, and begin negotiations. Five more minutes, maybe ten, and you finally get up, already looking forward to going back to bed tonight. The day has...

I work for Cambridge, so when I took my family there recently, they appointed me as the official tour guide. They believed that working for Cambridge was enough of a qualification. If you work for...

I don’t gossip. I want to make that very clear from the beginning. Of course, I sometimes share useful information about people who are not present, but you may agree with me that this is okay. I...

I've begun to think that medical schools should have two graduation ceremonies. One is for medicine. The other is for 'Putting Patients at Ease 101.' The first earns you a licence to...

Some places behave as if they have opinions. You arrive expecting walls, paths and a bit of history and suddenly you become more careful with your steps, listen more closely and act as if the place...

The last biscuit lives a very confusing life. At first, everything looks perfectly normal. Biscuits disappear one after another, exactly as biscuits expect them to. The chocolate ones barely have...

Every family seems to have one. The uncle who signs birthday cards with his left hand. The cousin who somehow manages to write across a page without smearing half the ink. The child at school was...

People often assume that borders have always existed in their current form. A map makes that assumption feel reasonable. However, for much of history, places were understood through daily life rather...

Choose the right words, say them clearly, and people will understand you. Simple. Many of us think communication is mainly about words. Over the years, however, I have become less convinced, as some...

Take any family gathering and there is a good chance that, somewhere in the room, two people are not speaking to each other. Nobody can quite remember how it started. A comment was misunderstood....

We live in a strange time, one where phones rarely get forgotten, yet people often walk into a room and stand there, wondering why they came. A low battery now has the power to quietly spoil an...

The World Cup is almost here again, and with it comes one of the strangest transformations in modern life. Perfectly reasonable people suddenly become football experts. Family dinners are rearranged....

People love to blame fate. It has become the easiest escape button in life. A person forgets to do his work, then proudly says that destiny blocked his way. Another person repeats the same mistake...

I often find myself asking a simple question. Why do conversations about faith turn tense so quickly? When the conversation slows and people really listen, another picture begins to appear. It feels...

People love to blame fate. It has become the easiest escape button in life. A person forgets to do his work, then proudly says that destiny blocked his way. Another person repeats the same mistake...