A Green Kind of Magic in Izki
PHOTOS BY LENA PETERSEN You have all heard of the Bahla ‘magic.’ Well, now Izki has it own ‘green magic’ in the form of Ishaq Al Saqri’s latest agricultural venture. Stretching far...
Let’s not throw out the baby, with the bath water!
Very few teachers, lecturers or students are at ease in this current COVID-19 educational environment. It is quite simply, only a sticking plaster, for a savagely beaten, bruised, and somewhat...
The ‘Tutorial’ landscape requires regulation to protect the unwary
COVID-19 continues to exert relentless chaos in, and create havoc over the lives of all of us, and it is so much worse because it is an invisible, insidious foe, but none are more disadvantaged than...
Sas boost for start-ups in Oman
The Sas Accelerator’s second cohort, organized by the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology (MTCIT), through Sas Center for Entrepreneurship in partnership with Google for...
Can camels swim?
Camels are almost mystical, almost prehistoric, almost creatures of fantasy and wonder, but they are big, heavy brutes of things, slow looking, and even when they are galloping at full pace, appear to...
Let’s talk online, techie, and the olden days this week?
The Internet, new technologies and all that stuff can be quite bewildering, polarising and just occasionally, downright new, for all its good points can’t it? I’m from a generation that used to...
COVID-19 defiance, climate change extremism, and BLM. Really? Now?
It is 2020, and tens of thousands are dying all around the world, and yet we still have groups and individuals around the world intent upon thrusting their particularly obtuse agendas upon us....
From Botswana, an Eloquent Artist
Bokamoso Kumwenda, known to most around her as ‘BK’ is an artist with a rich African heritage who has merged into the Omani art scene in the same manner as her art appeals to the afficionado…...
Expats exit hits real estate rental market
Nizwa: The much-publicized contraction in the real estate rental market in Oman is just one consequence of the departure of tens of thousands of expatriates from the Sultanate during the last year,...
Masirah Island, closer to God and to nature
Noted British actor Benedict Cumberbatch observed that, “You come into this world on your own, the same way that you leave it. It’s made me want to live a life less ordinary.” That’s not the...
Getting learners back in classrooms
Never has the global education sector faced challenges of the magnitude it does today! Even in times of war, conflict and natural disaster school has been one of the key priorities, as societies for...
Harat al Yemen: Enchanting ruins opening doorway to another time
The Dakhiliyah oasis of Izki can cast its origins back as far as 2,660 years, to the Mesopotamian ruler King Assurbanipal’s plaques of Ishtar, and Oman can cast its beginnings back, almost...
The Salt Flats of Shannah, Salar de Uyuni, and Bonneville
Sugar may sweeten your life, but salt will preserve it.” So said John Christian Bovee. Perfect sense in the time of a pandemic, and slightly ironic, I guess. You probably have, like us, come across...
Not all effort is rewarded, and not all progress is earned
Bill wanted to be a carpenter, a woodworker who was known as a ‘chippy’ back in the day, because you would always find them at work surrounded by woodchips and shavings, as they constructed doors,...
I’m a bit claustrophobic today... !
I quite like COVID-19 now, because I understand that for the first time in history, I can do my bit to save mankind by doing nothing. I also understand now that at my age is when work is less fun, and...
COVID-19 frustrations fuel righteous indignation
Professor Guy Hall, Associate Professor and Academic Chair of Criminology at Murdoch University in Western Australia, writes that “Frustration Aggression Hypothesis (FAH) offers the best insight...
The debris that makes up the beautiful sand
MUSCAT: It is just one little picture, yet… there is so much to see that tells whatever story you wish of it. The flotsam and jetsam, the discarded, unwanted, un-needed, the lost, and the lonely....
The Sultanate’s migratory mudflat habitats and inhabitants
They come in their thousands, the migrants, winging their way from North Africa mostly, to the estuaries and mudflats of Oman, every year. Some here to stay, where the climate suits them, while others...
“The human is a fickle baby… ”
Surely those of you who reside in the capital feel some pangs of conscience when you reflect upon the lot of those of us in other parts of the Sultanate, don’t you? After all, Muscat, the nation’s...
The aflaj of Oman: Smart human solution that made life in dry environment possible
NIZWA: Perpetual and ubiquitous, the Falaj system of the Sultanate has long sustained life in what could have otherwise become an arid, inhospitable environment. Collectively, or plurally known as an...