Tuesday 30 March 2010

I might not have mentioned, but I'm interning for a local weekly newspaper in Muscat for a while. It's a pretty good job, so far we (that is, Lucky, Katz and I. Chikki was with us before she left for the UAE) have just been doing the music and movie pages.
Gossip, trivia, all that. Currently, we're trying to do a feature story, but this isn't about that.
Today, before we got down to making calls for the feature story, Katz and I sat down to quickly finish with the Hollywood and music pages. A little trivia, the song charts, and a few gossip stories.
"Dude!" Katz was staring at the screen of the iMac when I went over. "Ricky Martin's gay!" And there it was, on the TMZ website, in all its glory.
No surprise, really, but the man finally came out, in a post of his official website.
Of course I grabbed full rights to this piece, and spent some time compiling a 200 word story on it, with a huge smile on my face and my fingers crossed. Once done with that, I finished the rest of the music page and submitted it to our supervisor.
Later, in between being irritated by receprionists who answered the phone and sent me to extentions where no one picked up, I went over to our supervisor to check if our music page was fine.
"Yeah, but the Ricky Martin thing..." she said, dryly, "You know we can't run that."
"Ah well, I was trying my luck." I replied. "Didn't think it'd work."
"Yeah...Don't you know there are no gay people in Oman?" she mocked as I returned to the desk I work at.

That tells you everything you need to know.

14 comments:

Diwakar Sinha said...

little bit of setback, yeah...
same story here too..except its not really 'little'

Anonymous said...

bolg abt it then ...

scarlet

Mystique said...

@ scarlet: i just did.

KATZ said...

hahahaha... kat is awesome isnt she?

Spider42 said...

ha! nice post, and never knew you worked at a newspaper. always interesting.

and I doubt anyones surprised about ricky's announcement.. though I can see some deluded female die-hard fans being sorely dissappointed! :D

oh and didnt know you were in muscat either, havent been there in a couple of years but it used to be a pretty nice place when I visited the couple of times I did.

keep writing, cheers..

Espèra said...

Lol. So she thinks straight people don't read about gays?
I Kissed A Girl wouldn't have been so big if that rule applied. :P

KATZ said...

@espera: See the thing is, around here, the press freedom is very limited. We don't wanna get into trouble now, do we? :P

Mystique said...

@ Katz: stop praising yourself.

@ Sam: see, it's illegal. And very very closeted. the govt regulates a LOT.
Like, the ISP here blocks porn sites, and ANYTHING with "sexual content" including www.menagea3.com. My all time fave webcomic.

Espèra said...

I understand that it's illegal, but you're just stating a fact. It's like saying, Katy Perry DID kiss a girl. You're not propagating gayness or going against it, you're just saying, "Ricky Martin is gay, he said so himself."

Mystique said...

I know, sam, I know. It's just a very skewed deal.

scarlet pimpernel said...

Hi

I was just suggesting that you put that whole story in the blog ;-)

Anonymous said...

The trials and tribulations of living in the Middle East... ;0)

Jack said...

Mystique,

Well, that is the way it is. Very closed minds. Enjoy your holidays and just relax.

Take care

Mystique said...

@ scarlet: Ah. Right. silly me.

@ ED: Totally. Sigh.

@ Jack: Yep. Wish it wasn't so, though.