MUSCAT: MAF Shopping Malls, the region’s leading shopping mall developer, recently announced that the construction at its Qurum City Centre site located in the heart of Qurum’s commercial district in Muscat is on target to be complete by October 2008.

The fit out of the Carrefour hypermarket, the single largest store occupying 12,552 square meters, has now commenced. Ibrahim Al Qasimi, spokesperson for Qurum City Centre, said: “The start up of the fit out process at Carrefour, the main anchor store of the centre, marks an essential and effective step towards developing this project on time. Qurum City Centre will be the first mall of its kind in the Qurum commercial area, and will include strong representation in key categories from upmarket retailers in various segments, such as fashion, food and beverage, and other convenience and service sectors.”

“Building the infrastructure is one of the most challenging phases in any development. We are working on providing the highest quality of infrastructure to meet the demands of this project by implementing the highest standards possible,” Al Qasimi added.

Another major store making its debut in the country at Qurum City Centre is the famed international retailer H&M spread across 771 square metres, along with 74 retail outlets spread over a gross leasable area of 20,600 square metres, 1200 parking spaces, a designated food court and convenient access to and from the mall. Qurum City Centre promises to be the new hub of central Muscat.

The display panel near Star Cinema signal in Ruwi showed 46 degrees centigrade at 1.30pm today. At this rate, it looks like, this year, Muscateers are in for a sweltering summer, and the magical figure of 50 is just four degrees away. All said and done, spare a thought for the construction workers who toil in these terrible conditions to eke out a living. I am falling short of words to describe their plight.

Meanwhile, the Yahoo weather forecast (below) is no where near the actual weather conditions. Their highs for the day are hovering around 30s, and I wonder if they are displaying weather conditions for the month of April, and not May.

How are you? How are things back home? I know it is 2am (Indian Standard Time) and I am sorry for calling you at this unearthly hour. But what to do…I couldn’t resist this damn cool offer (100 baisa per minute) from Omantel.

Enlarged portion of the ad

I am dying to meet the marketing guys of Omantel for coming up with such ‘gems’!

I wanted to write about this a few weeks back, but somehow skipped my mind. Here it goes:

1. The managing director of a leading public relations firm in Oman mailed me saying they wanted to use my blog as a tool to ‘market’ soon-to-be introduced telecom services aimed at expats from sub-continent. We exchanged a couple of mails, and the communication ended when I enquired about my benefit (my blog’s) in the whole gamble. PR guys must understand that unlike traditional newspapers or magazines, blogs are not channels to plant/publish stories.

2. The business development manager of a leading advertising firm in Oman shot a mail regarding the ‘Bank Nizwa’ post, which was published in this blog at the beginning of the year. He said they would like to bid for ‘Bank Nizwa’ account, and wanted to know if I had contacts in that bank. I said, I don’t know any.

At this rate, the day is not far off when BankMuscat and Toyota will start advertising in the blogs too. Watch out!