1 More Day! Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series Final @ Wadi Shab

Don’t miss out on the Red Bull event of the year!

Some incredible world athletes risking it all for the championship!

Whether you intend on attending this incredible event or not, you should pick up a copy of this week’s Y-Magazine which came out yesterday, Tuesday, September 25th.  On pages 38-39 of this 48 page pdf file in a section titled “Meet the Divers“, you can find info on these cliff-diving world champions written by Clint Derric Egbert (Eggybones), one of the editors of Mediate, Oman and sports writer/photographer (0bvious from this report!).

A careful read of the divers involved will make you realize just how much the judges have their work cut out for them!

If you suffer from FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), you definitely don’t want to miss this event.  I like what the brochure says here: “Be a part of Cliff Diving history“!

Some have asked about parking and worried about the logistics of it all.  There will be plenty of parking and I hear that engineers have even designed bridges to enable the crowds to reach the sites more easily.  Probably not ideal for very young kids though as it requires a good 10-15 minutes of walking and it will be quite hot!

One cool thing to know is that there will be tubes for sale for around 2 rials and guests will be able to float out and watch the diving from these tubes.  You will be able to buy food provided by Left Bank and I’m sure there will be plenty of water available as Tunuff is one of the sponsors.

For those of you wondering who won the 2 VIP tickets from the draw, it was Christie Swart! Congratulations, Christie! 🙂  I’ll send you an email and text you the details tomorrow on how to get the tickets.  29 people participated and 19 had the correct answer.  The correct response was 85-90 kms/kph.

The divers at Wadi Shab on September 26th. (Red Bull pic)

Photo of Kent De Mond in action on Sep 25, 2012 at Wadi Shab. Taken with permission for the sake of promotion from the Red Bull content pool.

Still Can’t Believe I Won a Blackberry Bold 9790!

Merge 104.8 FM is a relatively new radio station here in the Sultanate that just turned 15 months old on Sept. 7th.  I wrote about their launch way back then.  They have done a number of prize give-a-ways throughout the year.  I remember once they filled up a Mini Cooper with cash and participants had to guess how much cash was there! Recently, they have (or Omantel has?) been giving away Blackberries in various competitions.  In one of these cool promotions, they had a slow-mo video of a diver and asked online participants to add a comment that the diver might be thinking. (Located here)  I added what I thought was a funny line in between my 8am and 12pm class yesterday and thought nothing of it.  (“After a dive like that, they’ll have to change the name of this place from “Wadi Shab” to “What-a-Dive””)  Imagine my surprise hours later when I checked facebook, to see the following comment, “Congrats to Andrew Dale Brown can you please email us your contact details studio@radiomerge.fm”.  I couldn’t believe it.  I still can’t believe it, even after going down to the studio today and meeting up with the whole Merge gang (minus Sami unfortunately) which was a blast.

I’m not that familiar with the different blackberry models out there so I was wondering just what I was going to get when I opened the box.

Wow! What a beauty!

Great features on this phone! I love the keyboard and touchscreen.  It comes with a 5 megapixel camera with auto focus (new feature) and it even takes some pretty decent video!  This gadget is so sweet that I’m thinking of getting one for the wife even though she says she doesn’t need one.

I was in Muscat City Centre this evening anyway at Nawas to find out how to get internet on the phone (and at the Omantel desk for another big headache regarding my bill…That’s a whole other blog post coming…) so I took a quick peek in E-Max to see what one of these things cost.

Wow! That’s a value of at least $440 US!  Thanks again, Merge, and Thank You, Lord!

At a time when Nawras is selling the iphone 5 for 499 rials, I couldn’t be happier with my Blackberry!  I got this thing hooked up to the internet through Nawras for 2 rials/week (for 300 MB) by sending the text “BB7” to “80050”. It’s 9 OR for a monthly subscription by texting “BB30” to the same number.  Blackberry owners with an Omantel SIM card in the Sultanate can hook up for 7 days for 2 rials or 30 days for 8.9 rials.  They save 100 baisas (or about 25 cents, US) more than Nawras SIM card owners, haha! To subscribe for Omantel, send an SMS with “Blackberry” or “BB” to 90891.  The awesome thing is that it’s prepaid and no need to subscribe and all that nonsense!

On-line and doing fine! 🙂