Historical Association of Oman calendar captures Oman’s picture-postcard appeal
 

The Historical Association of Oman (HAO) has unveiled its calendar for 2009 featuring snapshots of the Sultanate’s diverse historical and natural beauty. The images have been contributed by well-known Omani and expatriate photographers, notably Salem Ahmed al Busaidy, Khamis al Moharbi, Catherine Lonie, Ali al Mahrouqi, Yusuf Juma al Zadjali, Andrea Catchpole and Phill Bridger. The calendar cover is adorned with a snapshot of Birkat al Mauz, a delightful oasis town at the foothills of Al Jabal al Akdhar.

There are also historical glimpses of Manah, Wadi Bani Habib, Husn Raymi in the Dhahirah Region, Bahla and Wadi Hajjar. Also featured in the calendar are fine landscapes that capture the picture-postcard appeal of mountain villages like Misfat al Abriyyin, Wakan in Western Hajar mountains, and Saiq in Al Jabal al Akhdar. Detailed captions and historical facts provide interesting background information about each featured snapshot. The bilingual English-Arabic calendar is available at bookstores in the city at RO 1 apiece.

The HAO was established in 1972 by Royal Approval, with His Majesty Sultan Qaboos as its Patron. In 1996, His Majesty appointed His Highness the Minister of Heritage and Culture as Supervisor of the HAO on His Majesty’s behalf. The body primarily serves as a historical forum, and a non-governmental and non-profit-making organisation. It aims to gather, collect, study and disseminate all that pertains to the Omani civilisation and culture. (For further details, visit the website www.hao.org.om)

Muscat Hills golf edges closer with the seeding of fairways


Muscat Hill’s Leon Sasson test drives the freshly planted fairway

 Golfing at Muscat Hills Golf and Country Club, Oman’s first championship grass golf course and residential development, is now close to reality with two fairways already fully seeded and two greens grassed in. As Chandra Lahiri, Group Managing Director, explains, “The irrigation system has become fully operational.

And, with seeding completed on two fairways, we expect play on the first nine holes to commence by March 2009.” Muscat Hills Golf & Country Club is conveniently located within five minutes of Muscat’s Seeb International Airport and Muscat’s Convention Center.

As Oman’s first Integrated Tourism Projects (ITPs), residents, visitors

from the region and elsewhere will have a perfect oasis for leisure or a starting point for their Omani adventures. Golfers, while playing this fantastically challenging mountain course, will  have rolling vistas of the spectacular Hajar mountains, the multiple deep wadis and the Arabian Sea with its beckoning kilometres of pristine beaches. Lahiri continues, “With golf play this imminent, we have been adding to our pool of highly qualified staff from around the world, who come with international experience in the golf and leisure industry.

Southern Golf Oman LLC, with Mike Knudsen as General Manager, will continue to maintain Muscat Hills Golf and Country Club. Golf Course Superintendent, Craig Hanney, and his crew that includes Omani trainees are responsible for the seeding, grassing and maintenance of the fairways and greens. Leon Sassen (see accompanying photograph), a PGA licensed golf teacher, has joined our exceptional team as Manager, Membership and Marketing. A 3 handicapper on grass, Leon is probably the best golfer in Oman today.”

Sassen will manage the Muscat Hills club and golf operations. He is currently engaged in developing a very few, high-value sponsorship opportunities at Muscat Hills. The dynamic Muscat Hills Team is looking forward to extend Oman’s famed welcome to all local and international lovers of golf at Muscat Hills Golf and Country Club where they can play at the edge of Arabia and partake of Oman’s bounty of natural and heritage endowments.

Tourism opens up new horizons for Omani youth

_ By Vandana Jyotirmayee  _

TOURISM, which is supposed to be the most promising field in Oman, needs not only just the attention of the tourists around the world but also the awareness in terms of career and job opportunities so far as the youth of Oman are concerned.

Salalah College of Applied Sciences held a tourism awareness seminar, and invited professionals as guest speakers from different areas related to tourism. The seminar started with the welcome speech of Dr Bakheet al Mahri, Dean of Salalah College of Applied Sciences.

He louded the efforts of the students who are willing to be part of the country’s overall development. Oman has the richness of natural resources, pristine beaches, and world’s best deserts on one hand and

the beautiful Khareef season on the other which attracts tourists from all over the world to offer the miracles of nature displayed in forms of waterfalls, lush greenery and mist on the mountains. Tourism has opened up new doors of Oman and it has become one of the most thriving tourist destinations.

Once on the occasion of the National Day, His Majesty Sultan Qaboos said, “We should prepare a new strategy to develop this sector so that it can stand on its own feet in a severely competitive, flexible and diversified international market.” The development of tourism has become one of the key objectives of Oman’s human resource development planning, as it is particularly suited for creating the job market for the youth of Oman. Seeing this tremendous growth, it can be understood that there is immense potential in the tourism and hospitality industry for students to take up careers in this field.

Other than the plans for hotels and resorts, there are 21 integrated projects as told by Rajha bint Abdulameer bin Ali, Minister of Tourism. The new tourism projects are expected to provide 10,000 job opportunities in the next five years. Recently Emirates Airlines gave specialised training to Omani students, both boys and girls. There are excellent job opportunities in tourism in other GCC countries and UAE as well. Rawas Hafez al Rawas, the Tourism Development Manager from the Ministry of Tourism was one of the guest speakers for this seminar. He discussed different projects which are in the pipeline and the ones which are ready to be implemented in the coming years.

Sales representative of Oman Air, Hayyan al Amri talked about the job opportunities in future for the students of International Business Administration. Apart from mentioning the importance of tourism he also talked about the several agencies and institutions related to the tourism sector. Mohammed Tabook of the Crowne Plaza discussed the quality services that they provide according to the needs of the tourists for the promotion of tourism in Oman.

Two video productions by the Ministry of Tourism showed the amazing diversity of Oman. It displayed the unspoilt wilderness of the Dhofar coast, tropical marine life and the 1,700 kilometres of breathtaking coastline. Dr Bakheet thanked the guests as well as the faculty members for their co-operation and reminded the youth again to take up their careers seriously and play an important role in the development of the country.

The Chinese love affair with horses

_ By Peter Harmsen in Beijing  _

For Shi Qi, the 35-year-old owner of a Beijing door factory, there is one haven for peace and quiet in an otherwise stressful existence: horse-riding. When he visits his plant on the outskirts of the capital, which he does nearly every day, he also stops by the Equuleus Horse Riding Club to mount one of his three thoroughbreds. “Horses are a hobby for me, not an investment object,” said Shi. “Riding is a form of communication without language, where man and horse try to understand each other.” Shi is one of a growing number
of wealthy who have taken up horse riding as a refuge from careers that seem to get busier by the year.

The craze appears to be immune to the global financial crisis — or at least has been so far — as ever larger numbers take up the expensive sport. The Equuleus club, located in the middle of upscale villa compounds inhabited mostly by expats, started out a decade ago as a modest operation with a dozen local horses. Now it is a thriving business with 85 horses — many of them retired from the jockey clubs of Hong Kong and Macau — and it is struggling to fit into the limited space at its disposal. “When we began, most members were foreigners, but now it’s roughly half-half,” said Michelle Wang, the club’s manager.

“More and more Chinese people come here to try horse-riding, and a certain percentage stay. For them, it becomes a lifestyle.” Members cited unofficial statistics showing that Beijing now has more than 100 riding clubs, up from fewer than 80 a year ago. At the Equuleus club, most members are “middle to upper class,” although Wang said she did not know for sure: “When people come here, they only talk about horses.” The Chinese love affair with horses is a reflection of growing wealth in the world’s fourth-largest economy — but it is more than that. It is after all a tradition with millennia-long roots in China that was only interrupted by the cars, the bikes and the trains of the 20th century.

They loved horses since ancient times
“The Chinese have loved horses since ancient times. Maybe this love is inside most Chinese, and once they get the chance they will of course like this sport,” said Shi, the factory owner. It is an interest that runs deeper than other Western fads picked up by China’s newly rich in recent years, such as golf, fine red wine or cigars. Indeed, Chinese history would have looked very different without horses. Chariots from the second millennium BC have been excavated from several famous burial sites, suggesting that ownership of horses was a symbol of nobility and kingship. There is reliable evidence that the stirrup was in use in China by about 300 AD, several centuries before it was adopted in Europe, although it may have a much older history in the Middle Kingdom.

Mounted armies twice swept in from the north and established empires that laid claim to all of China — first the Mongols in the 13th century, followed 400 years later by the Manchus. As protection against the threat from the north, China developed some of history’s most efficient cavalry armies — the Great Mounted Wall of China, which explains the geographical discrepancy in the popularity of equestrian pursuits. “There’s a huge difference between north and south. A lot of north Chinese like to ride horses, the south Chinese less so. In the past that was also the case,” said Shi.

He himself is a product of the northern horsemanship, born in the desert region of Xinjiang where he first mounted a horse at the age of ten. Now tradition is coming back with a vengeance, and businesses are noticing the trend too. In November, a major equestrian fair in Beijing featuring everything from saddles to instructional videos attracted thousands of visitors. The Equuleus club is also looking to capitalise on the growing popularity and establish a presence in less affluent parts of Beijing or even beyond elsewhere in China. “In this area it’s very difficult to expand because it’s a villa area and very expensive,” said Michelle Wang, the manager of the Equuleus club. “We’re thinking about looking for some land, maybe in other cities.”
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            — AFP

Who sets tolerable levels for melamine in food

International experts have said they had set a tolerable daily intake for melamine, an industrial chemical found in tainted Chinese milk, soy and pet food products and linked to the deaths of at least six babies. It is not yet possible to set a “safe” level of the chemical, the experts told a meeting in Ottawa sponsored by the World Health Organi-sation. But it is possible to say people can eat or drink 0.2 mg per kg of body weight, they said. Based on this, a 50 kg person could tolerate up to 10 mg of melamine per day. “We expect this could better guide the authorities in protecting the health of their public,” Who Director for Food Safety Jorgen Schlundt said in a statement.

Melamine-tainted Chinese milk has killed at least six infants and made close to 300,000 sick. Melamine, an industrial compound used to make plastics and pesticides, was added to watered-down milk because it mimics protein in quality tests. The tolerable daily intake of cyanuric acid, a related chemical, is 1.5 mg per kg of body weight. The groups said when both chemicals are in food the effect seems to be more than merely additive.  In November the US Food and Drug Administration found that levels of melamine below one part per million, as found in baby formula in the United States, were safe.

Schlundt agreed these levels provided a sufficient margin of safety. Melamine-contaminated pet food that surfaced last year in the United States caused harmful crystals that either damaged or shut down the kidneys of dogs and cats, and the FDA assumes that is the same issue with the infant cases in China. European Union regulators banned imports of Chinese soy-based food products for infants and young children last week after melamine was found in Chinese soybean meal.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     — Reuters