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Muscat Confidential
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Day to day goings on in the small, safe and sleepy Indian Ocean country called the Sultanate of Oman, written by a rather cynical, and often crotchety, well-connected expat living in Muscat.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'gcc'
H1N1 gets closer, but all seems OK so far...
Sometimes this H1N1/swine flu seems like it was just a conspiracy to sell all that excess stock of close-to-expiry-date Tamiflu that Governments around the world accumulated during the bird flu threat. So far H1N1 does not seem anything worse than ty...
Monetary Union for GCC - except Oman - but agreement on VAT
Nice to see some actual progress at the AGCC conference, because it seems the old story on a GCC wide, including Oman, Value Added Tax [VAT] continues to rumble along, and as the only viable effective income tax the Governments can introduce at this ...
Happy New Year, and GCC Conference tells off Israel
OK – it’s a new year. People are generally back at work today, and life in the Sultanate proceeds to return to normal now the AGCC conference is over and we have our roads, coast, and hotels (and their associated bars and restaurants!!) back. The...
Happy Holidays & GCC Conference
Its more religious holidays, and yes folks, the turkey flowed as deep and wide as the champagne. The Dragon being therefore in a semi-permanent triptophane haze, no posts of late. No news either to speak of, as the swirling clouds of the GCC conferen...
Finally!!!
This morning I was able to log in to blogger. Yippee! Sorry about the format thing, but posting by email screwed up the formatting somehow.OK. Rumours around town right now of there already having been multiple terrorist threats made against the GCC ...
Muscat starts GCC Security lock down. Internet affected until New Year
Further on the big internet problem that started Friday, affecting not just Oman but, as in the story in yesterday’s Times of Oman, taking out pretty much the whole Middle East.It seems at least 3 and maybe 5 submarine cables between Africa and Eur...
GCC to ban unskilled labourers after 5 years?!?
It seems the half-baked idea of GCC Labour Ministers to restrict expat unskilled labour in the GCC to no more than 5 years will be raised in a couple of weeks at the Muscat Conference. While the Bahraini minister who proposed the ban thinks the chanc...
Blue City - Dragon Consulting offers a solution... How about Pink City?
Great Article in this weeks Economist about the way Argentina are grabbing the so-called pink tourist dollar.I have a business suggestion in these tough times for local real estate developments. Pick one, just one, of the many beach developments goin...
GCC rumour, & Muslims banned from doing Yoga in Malaysia
GCC date change due to Saudi's?I was talking to my contacts in the Al Bustan about how the refurbishment was going, and we talked about the recent GCC date change and hotel grabbing. They were adament that the Al Bustan would have been ready for the ...
Iran - the moose on the table for the GCC
Just in case you maybe think the GCC states are warming to Iran - here's a very interesting article in this week's Economist on the relationship between Iran and the UAE.Must admit, nice timing to help with Oman's negotiations on accessing the Kish g...
The motorway disruption season begins
Ah yes, the quaint Omani tradition of closing down the motorways for visiting dignitaries has started again, with the arrival of the Indian prime minister. Fucking great. No warning. Just shut down the only main road so some convoy can.... what? Feel...
What I'd do: The AGCC Conference - and cancelling tourist reservations
Lots of interesting comments on the previous hotel cancelation story. Amjad had a good question: what did I think should be done? Rather than comment back, it started getting a bit long, so here it is as a post.All in all Amjad - I'd guess I'd have d...
