Monthly Archives: December 2007

Recipe of the season: Event management

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Ingredients:
3-5 VIPs, One LLC company, 500gm of key decision makers, 8-10 jobless people, 3-4 lousy entertainers from abroad, one City Amphitheatre or one large conference hall in a five-star hotel, 5-6 display ads in newspapers, 250gm of hype for garnishing.
Method:

1. Rinse decision makers in warm water to boost their ego and keep them aside for a while.
2. Take jobless people and issue them fancy designations; and ask them to wear designer suits till the recipe (event) is done.

3. Take stupid entertainers from the freezer and camouflage them as superstars for local flavour. Sauté them in butter till they scream, “I love you Muscat”, during shows.

4. Grind decision makers till they shell out a decent sum for sponsorship. The decision makers in turn will pass on the entry passes to their clients and friends, all-free.

5. Take care to avoid ticket sales for the show as the recipe might not taste good sometimes.

6. Take freely available Muscat crowd during weekends and lure them with free tickets (call ticket distribution as corporate selling for better impact).

7. Ask the VIPs to make blaring speeches, emotional the better. Let the jobless people boost the ego of these VIPs by way of welcome speech, vote of thanks, flowers, gifts, etc.

8. Slowly drop stupid entertainers into the grinder till they come up with horrible performances of the decade.

9. Take care not to lose the crowd mid-way. Lure them with raffle draws. Normally, 8 out of 10 times crowd disappears into thin air before the recipe (show) is done.

10. Don’t bother for the crowd opinion the day after. Tom-tom about the grand success of the show. After all, the VIPs are happy and so are the decision makers.

11. If you are confident, repeat the recipe after some weeks. Come what may, usual suspects can be found lined up in the first few rows of all shows!

PS: This recipe tastes good during winter.

Is UNDP’s ranking system biased?

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(Infographic: Kishor Cariappa)

The Human Development Report for 2007-08 has been released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Oman continues to be dubbed a country at high level of human development. Here are a few surprises.

# Oman’s human development index (HDI) of 0.814 puts it just below Antigua and Barbuda (0.815) and Trinidad and Tobago (0.814).

# Oman’s life expectancy of 75 years is clubbed between Qatar (75) and Argentina (74.8), while South Africa and Lesotho have higher adult literacy than Oman.

Will this kind of ranking give the true picture?

(Cross-posted in OCB)

Sold out before launch

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Cairo-based Orascom Hotels & Development said Monday the first phase of real estate offerings of its two projects in Oman was sold out after their launch Nov. 20.

OHD said its JebelSifah and Salalah Beach projects created an influx of demand from buyers and agents resulting in a total sell out at an average selling price of $2,500 per square meter for its Jebel Sifah project and $2,000 per square meter for its Salalah Beach project.

The two projects offer several hotels, residential units, marinas, golf courses, town centers in addition to all related amenities and services.

JebelSifah covers an area of 6.2 million square meters and offers more than 1,000 residential units and 2,000 hotel rooms. The first phase of the project comprised 220 residential units.

Salalah Beach spreads over an area of more than 15 million square meters and plans to offer 1,200 residential units and 1,200 hotel rooms while the first phase of the project comprised 140 units.

The Muriya group started marketing their products in mid-October this year and they officially launched the project on November 20, 2007. This means they managed to sell 360 residential units in just under a month. The word ‘sold out’ is always taken with a pinch of salt in the real estate market.

Last heard: The Wave, the once ‘sold out’ project, is still struggling to find buyers in the GCC and UK markets.