Salam!
It usually is an advantage for you in life when it comes to holding an Omani identity and an Omani passport. I have had two separate incidents lately that made me realize how lucky I am to come from such a beautiful peaceful country; Oman. I then thought of sharing those personal experiences to all of you students so that you could all join me in the realization of the bless that we, the Omanis, have been given by the recent achievements made in our beloved country and by the lead of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin Said Al Said.

It all started with “I am hungry, so let me hit the closest restaurant” hahahah. Oh yea, we all know about the close relationship between Omani men and food! Food and we are always like the finger and its nail! We never take away our thoughts of food especially when you have just hit the GYM… Anyway, So I started walking and then I have randomly stared at a KEBAB restaurant owned by Egyptians. In my first day in the restaurant I have kindly been served my lunch meal by an Egyptian man about the age of my father; late forties or so. Our conversation was in English in that first day although I was pretty sure that both of us realized that we both are ARABS. That was all about the first day and the conclusion was I liked this restaurant.

Then, I decided to hit the restaurant again the next day. This time there was no other costumers but me and him, so I decided to make my order in Arabic in order to get friendlier with the Egyptian man. And there it was! He replied me in Arabic although his facial expressions did not include any smile which made me a little disappointed, but I then said to my self maybe he is having a busy or a bad day. He barely started any conversations and all he asked me was ARE YOU A STUDENT? I said yes and then I had my meal served. That was all about the second time I have been into the restaurant and the conclusion was I still like that Kebab restaurant!

After a couple of days I went to the restaurant for the third time. Logically speaking, our conversations became longer and friendlier which resulted in bearing to send some smiles while we talk which is good in our faith (Al Ibtisama fi wajh A5ik 9ada8a). He was a little cautious though whenever I threw questions to him. Coz maaan I threw endless numbers of questions to him trying to be friendly. And that was it for the third day! Exchanging smiles and pushing the man into talking to me.

BUT NOW here is the very critical part of my whole story! I decided to hit the restaurant for the fourth time. There were no other costumers so I decided to throw some personal questions to him ( I knew I was not gonna be kicked out with those personal questions coz I was like his kid haha). The questions were about where you come from, how long you been here, do you have kids, are you happy and so no. We talked and talked and talked forever but his responses were exactly the same as he did in the third day! He was cautious and it annoyed me since I had no clue what is wrong! Is it I look like a bad boy to him? Is he allergic to his fellow Arab human beings? What was the matter with this kind man?!! Haha. Then out of nowhere he decided to ask me “WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?”. I was eating my meal and I had food inside my mouth which made responding to him a real hard task! yet, I decided to throw to him a response and since I had food inside my mouth, the response was like “ aggrr I Ca Ca Ca Come fro fro from Om Oman”. I swear to god (although its not good to swear a lot aye?) that the Egyptian man replied me with something like a loud scream coming from extreme happiness. He said “Oman Oman? Like do you mean the Sultanate of Oman?”
I said: “yea that is my country”

He then pointed his index finger across his lips pointing to his nose and said “Wallahi ana ba7tarimkum ya 3umanyin! Wallahi Qaboos rajil gada3 awi awi”

“Na7nu bin7ib Qaboos allah yi5alih likum inshallah” “wallahi mafish rajil zai Qaboos wa i7na bil 3alam al 3arabi ni7taju fi kul balad wa kul makan”
“kul 7aja yisawiha 9a7 mashala 3aleh”

(my mind was like bas bas 3an al 7asad haha, luckily the word mashala takes away any possible 7asad haha)>>> just joking

Yes this time I was the silent kid and he threw me with statements, questions, answers, words, words of wisdom and all kinds of good words and craps!!! Maaaan I felt we have exchanged our identities! I felt he was me and by saying he was me, I mean he mimicked my personality of me throwing questions to him in the past days! I was like OH MY GOD (girls usually say Oh my God; not boys aye?) He seriously loved the fact of seeing an Omani kid in his restaurant and he then said: Boy I kindly request from you to be proud of having such a beautiful country and such a wise leader”

He also said “ ma3lesh ana iftakarat wa7id min al million Saudi students hina bi Christchurch” (he carried on talking about some negative aspects from Saudi students which I personally did not wana hear and I was like yea I know I know but in the end of the story Saudis are our neighbours and I would wana hear their positivities too” (I love you Saudi haha)
He Carried on saying: “ ya rajil idrus ya rajil inja7 wa ma til3absh Abadan fi dirastak! Ya rajil il3ab ba3d ma tit5araj, dahua Qaboos nafsu yishuf abna2uh fi al 8ima”

Maaaaan my self esteem went up high to the sky, I then looked back into the mirror of my room and said: “ whaaaaat? Is this how valuable an Omani person is to some other people?” Well yea the truth is yes we are special. We are special because the achievements of our mothers, fathers and ancestors!

Our task is to keep being special but this time by our own work and achievements…

I hope you enjoyed reading this story…..

Another similar story is to come but this time its from a KIWI perspective and point of view about Oman!!

Till we meet then…

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته


توقيع حضور وإنصراف لعام 2012 "أكتب حكمة أو مقولة أو مهمة عمل أو فكرة "

لنعبر عن حضورنا وإنصرافنا بكلمات إيجابية

أو كتابة بعض الحكم والاقوال المأثورة التي تخص تخصصك أو مهنتك أو آيه قرانية أو حديث نبوي

يستفيد من هذه الصفحة كل زائر لها

فكل ما ندخل المنتدى أوقع حضور بمثل هذا النوع من الكلمات الإيجابية

باللغتين العربية أو الإنجليزية

وأتمنى تفعيلكم لها



وسأبدأ أنا بهذه المقولة ...



سألني الصحفيون : كيف استطعت أن تعمل أربع عشرة ساعة في اليوم لسنوات طويلة وتنام في معملك ؟ قلت باسما : إنني لم أعمل يوما واحدا .. كنت ألهو لأنني أحب عملي
( توماس أديسون )

The post-"Auckland Ghair" OSA-Auckland meeting sure did feel empty even with a fairly good attendance. It just shows how marvelous and lively the annual gathering was, and I would like to thank everyone who worked hard to make it work.
Now, back to the umsiyah, it started with a video about the annual gathering made by BADER Al-ABRI (capitalized by the editor) , head of the most awesome committee in Auckland association; the media committee. The video put smiles on the faces of some, reminding us of the wonderful time we spent together, and tears on others "I assume, I DID NOT CRY", for missing all those amazing people that are not with us anymore…. In Auckland.
The night then continued with the "Name Game". It was a tough game for some, easy for others. Most importantly, it showed that some people knew nothing about Arabic poetry, while others had to google Mother Terressa… talk about vast general knowledge.


Sulaiman looking smart with a piece of paper on his forehead


We then watched another video, which was made by Tariq and Khulood, it was an introduction to TOO MANY of a kind, first time in Auckland association ever, Master Chef OSAA edition. It is really interesting and something I have always wished for. As of yet, there is a rumor of having as many as 1000/100 participants and there is still time to participate and show your talents in cooking, so don't waste any time and COOK! Also, on a quick note, I would really appreciate it if you reader lobby for including me in the judges committee… just sayin ya know… 
Next, the minister of finance, his tallness, Hafs Alfannah, requested "kindly" that whoever hasn't paid their taxes "joining fees" to do so ASAP… we love you Hafs
The sort of a main event for the umsiyah, the game "build it", fired up the place with heating competition to build the tallest structure using nothing but marshmellows and dried spaghetti sticks. I personally enjoyed the game so much and saw the flaws in my engineering skill, and also understood the importance of supporting structures. You can tell how much fun it was by looking at the pictures. Amazed, Happy, Surprised, Skeptical… few of many adjectives that were demonstrated in the game.



The victorious team with the state of the art design


Thought they would win.. LoL!


Hatim: I got this, I think the marshmellows are not for eating.. it is a trick



Finally, the night ended by distributing second place silver medals of the amazing race to the Aucklanders who didn't get one at the time of the gathering due to having two teams ending up in second place.
I just like to say, I went to the meeting thinking that it would be boring and repetitive, but it was actually fun and enjoyable. Kudos to Khadija, you are an awesome president *thumbs up*.

السلام عليكم و رحمه الله و بركاته

الملفات المرفقة

Account Summary1.pdf‏ (99.8 كيلوبايت)

Now that the formal article is written let me tell you what really happened at Auckland Ghair
The seventh annual gathering started off on Friday the 6th of April. It was meant to be a welcoming dinner where everyone was supposed to get to know each other and restore old bonds. It all went well at first with the girls. Met up at one of the girl’s apartment, the enthusiasm was in the air and as the number of guests slowly started increasing up, memorizing names became harder and harder and mind you the noise levels exponentially raised. As you would expect, we got a complaint not only for the noise level but also for having too many people in one apartment. C’mon… 40 people in one apartment is not that much. That’s when, I would say the girl’s amazing race started. Just imagine, we had to evacuate from the building in 10 minutes and transport 40 girls to New market and two HUGE (8idrs I don’t know what is it called in ENG ) of rice and meat (Both chicken and lamb… FLOOOS). That was an unforgettable experience and extremely enjoyable. Meanwhile, on the boys side it went smoothly with no complaints

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Anyhow, Day 2: THE AMAIZNG RACE; the highlight of the event. Everyone was to assemble at Albert park at 0830 hrs and surprisingly, almost everyone was actually there on time. Team supervisors had cool shirts with the same color of their respective teams and had their names printed on them. I can still remember the envious looks that we got. In any case, since they did such an awesome job I have to acknowledge them by name:
Red team lead by Juhaina Al Ruhaili
Yellow team lead by sponge bob I mean Traiq Al Hajri
Green team lead by Ahmed al Mukhaini
Blue team lead by Hafs Al Fannah
Purple team lead by Rabab Al lawati
Black team lead by Khulood Abdullatif , and of course, we were privileged by the attendance of Ahmed Al lawati, aka the guy wider than the sky tower.
Grey team lead by Bader Al Abri ( who actually had all Abri’s in his team “RANDOMLY” allocated , must be some strong spell he cast….or Wa96a but who knows )
And last but not least White team lead by Khalid Al Hinai
The above teams are not according to order of who won it’s really according to the colors of the rainbow excluding the last three which are arranged from dark to light.
Moving on, everyone was pumped up about it and all had one aim in mind; victory. The teams started enthusiastically at 4 different locations and took 8 different routes… The aim of the amazing race was visiting the main and exquisite landmarks in NZ, and by exquisite I do mean the swing and chandelier; even the aucklanders admitted that they never even knew that they existed. It was a truly an amazing experience and the best part was bumping into the other teams and not know how far they are from the final destination. Then came that moment when the silver card was removed.. next stop smurfs village , Devonport here we come

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We got to the boat and met with most of the teams but while on the boat the supervisors received a notification on what’s app, which by the way was our walkie talkie. My face surly turned blue, not due to hypoxemia, but because the blue team had arrived to the top of mount Victoria and it wasn’t any less of a shock to Khadija and Val, who were preparing the top of mount Victoria for our arrival. They arrived at 11:30 in a taxi .Smart move.
This really got the teams hyped up, and upon close arrival to the opposite ridge, all the boys were gathered up round the door of the ferry since they had to run up the mountain. To explain this better I would like to use this metaphor. You know when you have a fairly small cage and stuff it up with birds , not that anyone will do that , but hypothetically speaking , upon opening the door to the cage the birds would fly with all energy they could possibly have , this is exactly what happened and all you could see were flying colors across the streets of Devenport. The run up the mountain was not easy but congratulations to the green team on second place , the red and purple teams on third place and obviously blue team for first place.
Having said that, I salute and put my hat down to the yellow team who kept their team sprit high even though they took a wrong turn. They came up the mountain triumphant and were welcomed by cheers from everyone to me it looked like a scene from a movie. So Go team sponge bob!!
Everyone enjoyed the scenery at the top of mount Victoria and had fish and chips for lunch. After having our muscles all well exercised and set for a year I guess we got ready for the opening ceremony which included speeches from Khadija VAL and Hamad THE president of Nz “WINK khulood ;)”. The ceremony was followed by luxurious nibbles at a fancy boat. It was a nice relaxing time that everyone enjoyed after a very long day and most importantly, I got to drive the boat for a while, shame I didn’t get to drift with the boat


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The final day arrived and everyone was supposed to get to western springs by 9 , YEAH RIGHT . Some actually did get there on time but most people arrived late “elnoom sul6aaaan”. The barbeque was good fun, relaxing on the girls side with not many activities, maybe vocal cords were exercised this time but the boys had a sports day and I would have said congratulations to Christchurch on wining the football mini tournament but I don’t want to pump them more than what they are now. To the rest of the boys, better luck next time and well done to everyone except aucklanders… LAST, really?!
The closing ceremony was a bit dramatic you know to please an Omani crowd you have to add a bit of drama so Bader professionally acted to be mad due to some pre- prepared comments from the audience. It was epic, some people actually didn’t realize it was a joke until the next day….


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What truly showed that we are a team is that all teams made videos of the amazing race on such short notice to share with everyone at the ceremony. Tariq sang a song that truly touched our hearts which btw he wrote himself. And what’s a gathering without food, besides you can’t come to Auckland without trying out the indian restaurant worshiped by the Omani’s Raviz, and so the dinner was served there.
We said goodbye with the hope of seeing each other again and our Omani gathering will always be one of the things that will keep us the one big family we are now



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All in all , Auckland ghair was indeed different , it was the biggest annual gathering ever held and had the active participation of both boys and girls and everyone showed team work collaboration and synchronization . It was an experience that was truly carved in our hearts memorable moments that can’t always be written on paper or typed in this case but rather such memories are deeply embedded in our minds and hearts