meet my new mate...
its been a while now since I got a really cool gadget. Two or three years back, my wife and I decided to make a major switch from Nokia to Motorola. We were big Nokia bigots for the longest time until the new models no longer appealed to us and were craving for something else. We found the Motorola phones and were quite intrigued. Now, none of the Motorola phones were catching my eye anymore...well there was one but it wasn't a big leap from what I already had.
I got it around a month back and it was a big decision to go back to Nokia. After some internal justification, I convinced myself to take the plunge again. Aside from the really cool look (I have a weakness for black matte finishes), the phone is quite loaded on the inside as well.
It has 8GB of space so you can load all the MP3s and JPGs you want...and a few videos. The
phone came with Real Player and a free copy of the Spiderman 3 movie. The phone has support for Symbian 60 apps. So far, the most interesting sis file I've loaded is from Divx.com for its latest S60 Divx player. The display is solid - nice sharp and crisp colors during video playback and the speakers (x2) are clear enough you wouldn't need to use the earphones (it comes with) unless you are in a very noisy environment. One hiccup...during playback, somewhere in the middle, divx audio track gets delayed from the video track. I had some DVD players (playing divx) like that before so was not really surprised but hopefully they have a fix for it. I don't see the RealPlayer one having any problems (as yet).
It has a built-in GPS chip. Honestly, at the time I bought it, the GPS feature wasn't a big deal for
me - in fact, it was a ho-hum thing. It took me while but I've gone from seeing it as a toy into seeing it as a tool. It was really handy driving around in the desert and using it, at the very least, for getting a bearing of whether we were headed in the right direction or not. It shows estimated distance to destination and general direction. The maps aren't that details in the interior of course but the Muscat maps are accurate enough I suppose. Now, for some reason, I can't seem to find Manila GPS maps...I dunno why.
After four months of ballet classes, Vivian joined her very first ballet concert at the PDO Cinema Hall located PDO Recreational Center. The concert was a mix of ballerinas from different age groups and quite a number of performances. The Vivian's age group (youngest) performed a dance of what seemed like tranquil cygnets (baby swans). They were led by two ballerinas above their age group.
During my desert stints, I have had the benefit of experiencing (on four separate occasions) the traditional Omani dinner. I was told it was called 'debeha', self-spelled phonetically so I apologize if I am spelling it wrong.
The food itself was simply great. The first one I attended in Bahja, I had the pleasure of trying out camel meat for the very first time. I was apprehensive at first but the meal was simply great. The meat was tender and cooked just right...it was an amazing experience. The other occasions in Marmul were either of goat or fish and they again were cooked to perfection. I wasn't too crazy about the chili sauce but only because it was making me sweat a lot. As seen in the picture, 5 or 6 people group together in one mat and share a big circular pan of rice topped with the cooked meat. 
