Sultanate of Oman

whuaaaiiii…

As I promised in my previous article, I would love to share my life when I was abroad. And today I will start to tell you about how was my experience in Sultanate of Oman.

Where is Sultanate of Oman?
Oman, a nation on the Arabian Peninsula, has terrain encompassing desert, riverbed oases and long coastlines on the Persian (Arabian) Gulf, Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman. The Wahiba Sands is a region of dunes inhabited by Bedouins. The port capital, Muscat, is home to the massive, contemporary Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, and the old waterfront Muttrah quarter, with a labyrinthine souk and busy fish market.

Well, it started when I was in 4th grade of my study in in Hospitality Industry, which is Hotel Management. The requirement to get my bachelor degree is that I need to do the job training in one of the Hotel. I can choose and apply anywhere in Indonesia, But I dare myself to try it Abroad. And I’ve got the chance to do it as a Guest Relations Officer in Shangrila – Barr al Jissah di Sultanate of Oman. The hotel is charming and has a stunning view. Surrounding by the creme color rock mountain, and the blue ocean on the other side. The hotel’s lobby ceiling plated with 24k gold and a huge bouquet flower arrangement on the bottom.

I was living in Oman for 6 Months, sounds easy right? Only 6 months. But, is not as easy as you think. As an Asian women living in the middle east, I need to fit my self with the weather and any other nationalities who worked with me. I was sharing with other 3 Indonesian girls as my roommate, and we shared pretty much everything in life that time. Our apartment has given from the hotel, where we had the tennis court, basketball court, Cafeteria, entertainment room where they used to change it into a small cinema every Monday night.  The food in the cafeteria is OK for me, I meant is not as per my preference at all time, but they changed it every day. Sometimes our chef cooked an Asian food which includes a mix of Philippines and Indonesian cuisine, And sometimes an Arabic or Indian food. Is not all the cuisine I can eat and sometimes I missed my Asian food. In Oman, there is a Philippines restaurant which served some of the Indonesian soups. My friends and I used to go there on our off days, or we ordered some fried rice from an Indian takeaway guy whom we called him “Baisap”.

Because Oman is one of the Arabic countries, I need to watch out the way I was dressing up. I don’t need to wear Hijab, but also I cannot wear the type of clothes which were showing some skins.

Omani people are friendly and helpful; I can say that Omani is the calmest Arabic people compare to any other Arabic in the middle east. The weather there either is Summer and winter, but winter in Oman will not have snow. Summertime the temperature will be until 50 degrees Celsius and winter until 12 -14 degrees Celsius. I still keep in touch with some of my Omani friends until today from Facebook. And some of them even visiting Indonesia for their vacation.

My activity there was only going to work and come back to the apartment, and then spent the rest of my days with friends gossiping, singing` or cooking together. Ups, I had a boyfriend when I was there. Our relationship kept continuing until the next 4 years, but unfortunately was not working out as we wanted to be.  Well, is life, sometimes everything went smooth as you wish but sometimes we faced some obstacle on it. So for five months I also spent most of my times with my ex-boyfriend.

There was the first time I realized that working without seniority or age matter like what happened in Indonesia. No bully and everyone seems to teach each other to be a better colleague. I learned a lot how to be professional when I was there which now I trained my staff the same way I’ve been learning. As I was training, I got the equal responsibility of permanent staff. They trusted us that much. I am sad to see in Indonesia; trainee only does cutting the onion or opening the hotel doors, or something else that they don’t need to learn it. Why? because their superior doesn’t want to take a risk if something terrible happened. Mistakes is a good experience to learn as well.

After six months I’ve been living there, time to go home. There was a time I need to say goodbye to all my new family in Oman. Friends are become a family, while we are very far away from our parents. On that day, I remembered there were tears on everyone faces. And we exchanged gifts to remember that we were there. It was hard, but that is life, people comes and goes for a reason.

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