Level 3 in HACCP

About a month ago I went for a training course that is mandatory for my work. It was the level 3 course for HACCP, an internationally recognized Food Safety course. So I followed the course for three days and then did the exam. Lo and behold. I passed with flying colors. I passed with distinction.

So what did I learn about myself regarding this matter. First of all that I do have the necessary personal characteristics for completing some sort of education. Secondly I learned that participating in training is a very good way for me for learning because;

1. They are often only for a short period of time which allow me to complete without getting distracted.

2. There is no further relations/obligations with the training center (opposed to a school)

3. The learned knowledge is relevant for what I am working on and can thus be applied immediately

4. There is a certificate is direct proof of the acquired knowledge and skills

So hooray for completing the level three of HACCP. Now this week I am attending with the rest of the HSE department the training for Level 4 in HACCP. It goes more in depth in the principles of HACCP and touches new subjects.

Now I also hope that I can do a couple of other courses such as intermediate and advanced Food Hygiene. It would make me very happy if I were able to complete these as well before I leave Oman. But lets first make sure that I pass this HACCP course.

For the rest... it is raining in Muscat. It really reminds me of when I lived in Suriname. Relatively warm weather and heavy showers raining down and blocking traffic everywhere. But it is a good change. It is really winter here... man it's cold... at night it even drops to about 20 degrees Celsius ;-)

Eid holiday - Sunday

It is Sunday. I am get up. I take a shower and prepare myself for a couple of days in Sur.

Sur is not even that far, and I have been there before but still it feels like going on a holiday. I am going to stay with the Ruzaigi family. That is the family of Khalid, my host, manager and older brother all in one. So I leave at ten o clock and during my drive to Sur I stop a couple of times to take some pictures.

At twelve I arrive at Sur and have lunch with the family. I also meet some guys my own age with whom I will spend most of my time the next couple of days. Lunch of course is extensive and although there are about 15-20 people siting on the floor not many conversations are held. Mazin, Saleh and I leave after lunch to take a tour through Sur. Now Sur is traditionally closely related to the sea and has a long history of naval activity such as overseas trading, fishery and shipbuilding. Therefore we first visit a big old ship displayed at the old harbour, previously used for offloading ships but now turned into a marble paved boulevard. This ship is about 20 meters long and was use I believe for short journeys only. Before they used to build ships that were about 60 meters in length. After this short stop we head to the shipyard were they still built ships. Working on two ships the workers – mostly Indians – still built the ships mainly with simple basic tools. Visiting this smal yard doesn't make it hard to picture the social and economic life of older times in this town to have fully revolved around the fabrication of these ships. So much for culture and history. We continue walking around Sur and the neighbouring town of which I forgot the name but is connected to Sur by a recently opened bridge.

While walking and talking I am surprised about what I learn about the muslim country that I have lived in now for about two months now. I didn't expect to meet so many cultural muslims. Muslims who say they believe in Allah and meet all the religious expectations of going to the mosque and praying but in the end don't really care about it. Very interesting. I hope to investigate the opinions of the people of my age more here in Oman.

Any way, then a plan for the evening is forged. We will go to Ras Al Hadd and do some night snorkling, we'll catch some fish and lobster and then sleep under the bare sky. Good plan. Good plan. We make the necessary preparations and head to Ras Al Hadd, about 50km to the West of Sur.

A little before Ras Al Hadd we find a good location for snorkling, refered to as my Omani friends as diving, and get prepared. Fins, goggles, wetsuit, weights, torch and of course an underwater spear. The sea appears calm so we decide to give it a go. The water temperature is agreable and the visibility perfect. I had never done night diving before so this was a new experience to me. Although it seemed that many of the fish were sleeping there was an abundance of marine life to sea. There were for instance many small jellyfish that lit up in fluorescent colours when shone upon with the torch. And it was very noisy. Many creaking and sizzling noises made by I don't know what kind of creatures.

We started our hunt. Bahgwan, one of the guys demonstrated t me how to spear lobster and cuttlefish properly. Now the thing with cuttlefish is that, like octopuses, the excrete some cloud of ink when threatened and turning the water around you completely black. An interesting experience. When starting to hunt I felt kind of apprehensive and hestitant because it is not a daily thing for me to take the life of lobster and cuttlefish. It was not so much that I felt bad for the creatures, they were going to serve a good purpose in being our dinner, but more of the fact that it was not experienced in it. We spent about an hour in the water during which I saw a couple of rays, murene eals and a sleeping meter long turtle in a big crevice. The gain of the hunt was about twenty five cuttle fish and I guess about twenty lobsters.

The rest of the guys had aready started a fire that had turned into coals. Perfect for barbequeing the lobsters. We spend a couple of hours sitting under a beautiful clear sky, eating the fresh lobster from the sea and enjoying ourselves in random conversations.

Then our group of about ten guys broke up in two. With three other guys I went to one of the beaches where turtles lay there eggs. Testing our jeep to the max by driving over/through the sand dunes we reached the beach. No sight of big turtles laying their eggs but we did find some small hatchlings that were actually stuck in the nets that fishermen had carelessly had left behind. Filled with care for these small fin flapping sea creatures and as any responsible citizen would have done we freed them from the nets and set them free. I would have expected a little more intellegence from these 'wicked dudes' (you must have seen Nemo...) cause we had to correct them three times before they headed in the direction of the sea; a beautiful place of both freedom and danger. How small the chances that they might come back at exactly this beach in so many years to lay their own eggs here (provided that they were indeed of that gender)!

Then we continued to the final chapter of our day. Making our camp for the night at Ras Al Hadd to wait for the sunrise to come. Baghwan knew a place away from the crowded places where many Indians and Omani spend Eid holiday on the beach. In a small shelter, probably normally in use by fishermen we rolled out a mat and reposed ourselves for a couple of hours. The House of the Rising Sun... but not really. Now Ras Al Hadd means Head of the Edge and it is a place of specific significance. First of all because it is the place furthest in in the Middle East and thus the place where the sun can be seen first in this part of the world. Also it is important because it is the place in the sea where the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea converge. This contributes to climate that is very much more pleasant during the hot Omani summers.

Having slept about two hours I woke up by the sound of my alarm, set for the witnessing of the sunrise. I looked around and the light in the sky announced the birth of a new day. I waited halve an hour and then the sun made its shining appearance. Indeed a new day had come. The Father who by the power of his life giving Breath and the speaking of his Word had created the sun so long ago be praised for this daily miracle.

Eid holiday - Saturday

Eid holiday was a bliss. Taking rest and not experiencing any stress from work. Great.

Although I got sick at the end of Eid it was a great time to meet (new) people, see some things of the country and like I said, take rest from work.Friday, the first day of Eid was for me a day to go to church and spend some time reading. I was reading 1984 by George Orwell. I never knew that book was so good. And Church is always good too. Weekly I go there to take communion and spend time in prayer and worship with my fellow brothers and sisters: all honor and glory to Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Anyway, Saturday I left in the morning to go to Abdullah, my coworker who lives in Shinaz, about 3 hours to the West of Musqat.

Arriving at his house I was welcomed in the guest room, the only room I would be seeing that day

. This is typical for Omani hospitality; receiving guests in the guest room. No tour du maison or meeting any of women. We sad down to have water and fruit and afterwards some qa'awa and hahloawah. That is coffee and sweets. The Omani coffee is coffee with cardemom and served in tiny cups. The sweet is a very very sweet almost jellylike substance served traditionally at

eid (although you can get it al throughout t

he year).

Having sat there for a while and having met Abdollahs older brother Khamis we went to collect the result of a daylong cooking process. We went to collect the goat that was killed the day before at eid. What they do to prepare it for dinner is cutting it in pieces, wrapping it in some sort reed protective and draining it in water. After this is is put in a hole in the ground (about 1.5 meter/ 5 feet) and cooked/smoked over hot

charcoal. Result is a delicious tender piece of goat meat with a strong smokey flavour. This was our lunch. It was really good.

(photo's: the wicker basket with in the pot the heads of the goats. On the plate the prepared meat. yummy)

Having had lunch with the family (and again... of course only the men were there, because it is improper to meet the women in the family in their house) Abdullah and I went for a d

rive to Shinaz. There we found that the weekly bullfights were about to start. Normally these are on friday, but because of Eid they were postponed a day.

Since the famous bullfights were on my list of things that I would like to see in Oman I was feeling happy to be able to witness this

cultural event, charactaristic to the west of Oman. The bullfights are pretty gentle in Oman. Nothing bloody or really agressive. More of a challenge and short struggle to see who is the strongest of the two fighting bulls. As we arrived at the 'arena', an open field of about 40x40 meters, we saw about 30 bulls roped to poles encircling the battlefield. Some of them making load roaring sounds, probably showing somesort of displeased attitude, and other bulls were scraping the ground with there hooves (or what ever sort of foot it is that bulls have) causing dust flying around. The bulls were not really big though. The back was probably about 1.5 meters high. Yet they were able to show enough strength and toughness to intimidate me and all the rest of the people watching. But I guess that is the idea of the thing.

And then the fighting started. First, two bulls were distached from the poles and led to the centre of the arena. There they were placed at about 2 feet from eachother facing eachothers' ferocious (well, not really) looking horns. Then the fight began. There were a couple of scenarios. In scenario one, the first bull was scared of the other and ran away. Not really a big show, although at one occassion, one bull almost ran into the crowd of spectators. But of course we were not there, nor was it the point of the bull fight, to see the crowd being torn to pieces by a bull that was almost wetting his pants. Then in the second scenario the bulls didn't really care about eachother and were just looking at one another with the greatest amount of indifference. Too bad, no show. But, of course, the third scenario was what we were hoping for. A great display of power in a struggle to dominating the other bull.

Mainly what happened was the bulls beating their head against the each other and trying to

subjugate the opponnent by pushing its head to the ground. Most of the time these fights only took about 30 seconds upto two minutes. At the end, the ropes that were still attached to the necks of these 'behemoths', were grabbed some Omanis that had the job of controlling the beasts after the fights and the bullls were brought back to their place outside the ring. Most of the time

I had no idea how to determine which bull had won in the end. Sometimes the game just ceased and the bulls were seperated. But anyhow I really enjoyed this old Omani tradition. Reflecting on it the fact that these battles were pretty docile might be related to the friendliness of the Omani people... who knows.

After the game we went back to the house. I wanted to go home, because I had a long way to go and had to get up early in the morning, but of course I had to stay for dinner. I could not just leave like that. Dinner it should be and dinner it was going to be. So I stayed for another meal and then headed back to Muscat to take rest before my next adventure in Sur began....

(to be continued)