author - oman observer

November 18 has always proven a special day for me, and even more since arriving in Oman during 2009. It is really quite something to think that you are sharing your birthday with that of a nation. Of...

What a wonderful thing is knowledge, and while the Sultanate is absolutely and correctly celebrating the launch of its very first laptop, the Onsor, this month, and the public debut of several new...

The word culture is evident in many conversations today, but is often, in its purest sense, used incorrectly. Mostly, people are referring to the traditional identities of their country such as their...

PHOTOS BY LENA PETERSEN "The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are, and not be questioned,” said Maya Angelou, reaffirming that our safety and security lies at...

Life, living a ‘good’ life, and being true to one’s faith and heritage rely on neither money nor masculinity, either power or position, or a question of stature or station, but rather......

NIZWA, NOV 2 The recent public introduction to SHAFRA, a home genetic testing service for Arab societies everywhere, in equal measure awed and excited local investors recently as Chief Executive...

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 into...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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…...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...