Monthly Archives: March 2008

World-class dream, third class execution

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“We have invested significantly in our operations previously, as well as in recent years, with a view to making Oman Air not only a regional player, but an international one. Our new corporate identity project has aided the carrier’s transformation into a world-class airline,” Oman Air CEO Ziad bin Karim Al Haremi said.
Oman Air reinforced its ambition to become a global player last month when it assumed a new corporate identity, changing its livery and logo. (read full article)
Duh, duh…Oman Air website (above) sports the same old look…no scent of re-branding whatsoever. And, yeah, local opinions can be manipulated, but what about global audience. What signals are they sending? Your guess is as good as mine.

Blogs vs. social networking sites

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This post is inspired by Pradeep’s thoughts.

As the whole world goes ga-ga over Facebook, I find it difficult to relish Facebook and its state-of-the-art features. I did register at Facebook a longtime back, but till today haven’t had the motivation to spruce up my page and complete the profile. As a matter of fact, I have registered with major social networking sites only to lose interest very soon. Ryze and Orkut are the only two tools which I have used and enjoyed to a certain extent. Okut was nice because it helped in locating friends/colleagues who were part of my life at certain point of time. Now, Orkut is no more a fancy thingy for me. I do check Ryze once in a while to browse the Bangalore network, which keeps me abreast of the happenings back home.

The best thing that has happened to me is blogging. I am going to complete two years in a few months time as a full-time blogger, and without battling an eyelid, I can proudly claim I have enjoyed each and every moment of it. Through blogging, I have made new friends, renewed contacts with old friends, and got to interact with people from different parts of the world. This learning curve and experience has been lovely. I can’t get enough of it. The best part is I have motivated a few others to become fulltime bloggers, and I know they are enjoying their blogging spell as well.

Muscat girl murdered by hubby in Bangalore

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MYSORE –– In a tragic incident in Bangalore, an Infosys Technologist Amith Bhudduraj (30), who has been working with the company for the last nine year, smothered his wife Rinku Sachdev, a Managing Executive with Chartered Bank, with a pillow and then committed suicide. Rinku’s parents are from Muscat.

It is alleged that he suspected his wife was having an affair with one of her colleagues.

Amith’s friends, getting no response from inside the house or from his mobile, informed the local Police. They spoke to the house owner and entered the house with a duplicate key. Rinku’s body was found lying on the cot while Amith’s body was seen hanging from the celling, suspended by a wire.

The parents of Amith who live in Delhi and Rinku’s parents who are in Muscat are flying down to face this double tragedy. In the meanwhile, the Koramangala Police have registered a case and sent the bodies for post-mortem. It is learnt that the couple were married in Mumbai and shifted to Bangalore last year.

Related stories:

I’m sorry, mom and dad

Techie spied on others in office

(Photo and text source: Star of Mysore, Mid-Day)

Restaurant review: Wok of Life

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‘Wok of Life’ is a new Chinese restaurant that has come up in MBD, near BankMuscat. Yesterday being a weekend, we decided to check out the new kid on the block that commenced operations in mid-February.
The restaurant is quite spacious and the décor is elegant. We were told the hotel could seat up to 120 people. Being a Friday noon, there wasn’t much crowd, and we were lead to our table by the affable hotel staff.
We decided to give starters a miss, and zeroed in on four main course dishes – Cantonese chicken, Seasonal vegetables with broccoli in Chinese parsley sauce (Ah! how can a name be so complicated…), Singapore veg. noodles and Veg. fried rice.

Before our order arrived, we were given a complimentary round of kimchi (a South Korean delicacy akin to Indian pickles). Frankly, the kimchi tasted weird, nothing close to the one I had relished in an authentic Korean restaurant in Bangalore, a few years back.

The food arrived after 20 minutes, surprisingly late since there were only 10-15 customers at that point of time. The Singapore veg. noodles tasted good, and it went well with Cantonese chicken. Seasonal vegetables with broccoli in Chinese parsley sauce was quite different, and it had a unique flavour. I want to try this again. The fried rice was a bit oily, but ok. Finally, we had Chinese tea, which I guess is the easiest tea on this universe to prepare. Throw some herbs into hot water, and tea is done, bingo!
For four main course dishes and tea, our bill was RO10.5. I glanced through the menu, and there is a good variety in terms of soups, starters, and main course items. Starters cost around RO1.5 to RO 3, and main course items around RO2.5 to RO5. Fish and crab items costs anywhere between RO5 to RO9. The food and non-pretentious atmosphere did impress me. The whole restaurant is a non-smoking zone, much to my relief.

Rating:

Food: 4/5
Ambience: 4/5
Service: 4/5

Third mobile operator in Oman

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Yesterday, I got a mail from a gentleman in Muscat, and he wrote:

I can tell you that very soon a third mobile telecom operator will be announced by the TRA. This operator will target ethnic minorities in Oman, mostly people from the sub-continent.

I am sure something is brewing. A couple of weeks back, a Reuters report mentioned about the third mobile operator only to be denied later by the TRA. Rumors are flying thick and fast about Airtel of India being a strong contender for the third slot. Interesting times ahead.

Muscat’s Miss India connection

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Muscat girl, Shruti Dilip has qualified for the finals of Femina Miss India contest, India’s most prestigious glamour competition. The finals will be held in Mumbai on April 5.

And for the second consecutive year, the Sultanate’s name will figure prominently at the event. In 2007, Sarah Jane Dias, who lived in Muscat for 17 years, including all of her school days, was among the finalists –– and went on to be crowned ‘Miss India World’. (read more)

I love beauty contests for one reason –– the question and answer session. It keeps you on tenterhooks! :D

A sample:

Question: Beautiful but not too smart. Basically, not pretty but not too smart. But very smart, but not too beautiful. Which would you rather be? Beautiful or smart?

Answer: Well, I’d rather choose to be beautiful, um because, to be beautiful it’s natural. But being smart you can learn… you can learn, um a lot of things… a lot of things from the experience… you can learn from a lot of things being smart.

One tight slap!

Hockey after 14 years

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I have been walking like a zombie since yesterday. Reason: I played field hockey after a gap of 14 long years on Friday, four matches at a stretch, and my bones, muscles are aching very badly. I was all excited when I was told about the sixes hockey tournament being organised by the Kerala Wing of the Indian Social Club in Wattayah a week back.

My teammates of Team Coorg did manage to practice for 4-5 days, and I managed to sweat it out for a day, that too a day before the tournament. Although the matches were of 20 minutes duration each, it was very demanding for the players to sweat it under scorching sun. There were plenty of on field action in terms of hits, misses and falls. Many a times, I was gasping for breath, unable to run behind the ball (I go for regular walks everyday, but realized walking and running are different ball game altogether). Although, our team didn’t manage a podium finish, we still had a lot of fond moments to cherish.


Team Coorg, that is our team.


The Omani team (in yellow T-shirts) won the tournament. They had tremendous stamina and firepower.

Back to Nokia

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Finally, I said goodbye to my Motorola SLVR L7 phone, which was with me for the last 17 months or so. Being a Nokia fan from Day 1, I changed loyalty only to realize how bad the Motorola phones are –– at least the one I had. It was a pain to write messages using my phone, and less said the better about the battery – the power draining off within 24 hours in spite of minimum use. The only great thing was the speaker – too powerful and crystal clear for such a sleek phone.

My latest possession is Nokia’s N95. I fell for its kickass 5 megapixel camera. Bought it yesterday, and haven’t got enough time to play around with is features. I hope it will be good.

(Pic source: Wikipedia.org)

Wanna lose weight? Then head to Subway…

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Jared Fogle lost a cool 111 kgs in a year by exercising and eating two Subway submarine sandwiches a day. His initial weight was 193 kgs. Good for him.

It beats me to assume that a junk sandwich can aid weight loss. Without blinking an eyelid, I would place the Subways, Macs, KFCs, etc in the junk list. I still believe a lot of folks will fall for Fogle’s feat and start believing that submarine sandwich is the last frontier in their quest to lose weight.

If it goes this way, soon Pepsi/Coke will come up with an ad claiming their ‘pesticide’ to have magical properties to cure heart diseases. Anything is possible.