Oman wins Gulf Cup!

Oman won the Gulf Cup against Saudi Arabia last night after a thrilling penalty shoot-out.

As alcohol is forbidden, Omanis find other ways to celebrate. The most common of which is for Omani men between the ages of 18-25 (and there are lots of them) to jump in their cars and drive around beeping their horns until 3am.

Seriously, that's what they do. They just drive around, all night, beeping their horns.

Their cars incidentally are covered from roof to tyres in pictures of love hearts, team players (Ali Al-Habsi mainly) and His Majesty Sultan Qaboos (HMSQ). They are also not averse to having their cars spray painted in the national colours (red, white and green).

As I type this, I can still hear some beeping as they continue to drive aimlessly around. It's half past one in the afternoon...the next day!

Due to the win HMSQ called a public holiday today. I found this out upon arrival at a Ministry Workshop (for my stats work) at 7:45am this morning when I enquired as to why nobody was there. The announcement was made on local Arabic radio late last night which I don't listen to and wouldn't understand anyway. The roads were completely empty when I left for work this morning so I should really have worked it out for myself.

Nice to have a day off work though.

When using my extra leisure time to create this blip, I purchased an Oman football (pictured) and an Omani flag (not pictured) before heading down to the beach where I knew these goal posts were. I used to live near this beach and it's a common sight to see young Omanis playing football in 'pitches' like this. They all play barefoot and it always reminds me of images of young Brazilian players before they get their big break. Oman is a relatively young country and so it may take a little more time before some world class footballers are produced.

Three days after the Muscat rain storm, this pitch is still flooded so it was a bit messy getting this shot. As per usual, I was stared at quite a bit although I'm starting to think it's Bucky attracting all the attention and not me.