Social Celebrities - Riyadh Al-Balushi

The next Oman’s Social Celebrity I’m going to tell you about is Riyadh Al-Balushi. Better known as Omani Cuisine, or Blue-Chi, Riyadh is one of those guys who has been online for a long while. In the past I exchanged several mails and tweets with him but took us many years before meeting personally. Here is what Riyadh shared with us:

I am a lawyer, a columnist and a blogger. I have had many different online projects over the years, but currently I am mostly known for the Omani Cuisine website for which I also run a somewhat popular Instagram account and an iPhone/Android app. The Omani Cuisine is basically a restaurant review blog where I go eat out and write about experience at a restaurant. I think my website is unique because I have had for more than 5 years and I have written about the majority of restaurants worth going to Muscat, so it somewhat of a comprehensive resource for eating out in Muscat.

Current place of work?

I am a lawyer IRL, blogging for me is just a hobby.

How did your passion for social media start?

I have always been passionate about creating web content and had many different websites over the years way before social media and blogs were popular. I had websites about web design, gaming, information technology law and food; somehow my food blog seems to be the most popular one in Oman!

What’s your favourite platform?

My favourite platform is blogging on my self-hosted WordPress blog. With blogs you can go to a level of depth that you cannot achieve with other social media platforms and for me I like to have my most valuable content on my own servers rather than having them hosted on something like Facebook.

What’s the biggest challenge you had to face?

The biggest challenge I have is making the time to update my blog, it is very tempting to "pretend" to be active online by simply updating my Instagram account and synching that to Twitter and Facebook, but Instagram and Twitter seem transient and not permanent enough for me, when my objective to build a more permanent online resource that can only be achieved by writing proper content on my blog. So it is always challenging to find the time to sit down and write something proper instead of just a one-line tweet.

And the biggest satisfaction?

I get the most satisfaction when I realise that there are people I do not know who actually use my website or app when they want to go out and eat. It kind of makes me think that I've actually made a contribution to someone's lifestyle.

How many hours a day do you spend on social media?

24 hours... Just kidding, it is really difficult to tell because I'm on my phone all the time doing something or another on a social media platform, it is not necessarily related to the Omani Cuisine though. I do not really spend a lot of time nowadays doing the Omani Cuisine stuff because I only update it when I go out to eat and then maybe write a blog post two or three times every month.

Who’s the person you read/follow the most online?

I can't think of a specific person that I follow the most online, I use Flipboard on the iPhone and iPad to read the latest news.

If you were not into social media, what would you be doing?

Urmm. I don't think this question applies to me because I have a real job offline which is not related to social media. What I am passionate about is the creative process and the desire to produce something to share with the rest of the world. If I am not doing something on the internet, I would be writing something in the paper, creating art, or speaking at some event.

Good work Mr. Blue-Chi, I’m sure you’ll keep entertain us for many more years to come. And if you missed our first celebrity, Nicole Bassit, you can read about her here.