I am currently on a “Khaleeji” tour. I flew from Riyadh to Kuwait today. It was my first time ever in Riyadh and boy do I have stuff to blog about. Riyadh is easily the the strangest, and most interesting place I ever visited. (I know I will never get the time to properly blog about my 72 hours in Saudi Arabia , but I will try).

Earlier today, in Riyadh’s King Khaled Air airport, I was looking, in vain, for a duty free shopping are. Considering the unbelievable number of big malls in Riyadh, I expected to find a large duty free shopping area at the airport. But all I found was a little corner with a small selection of merchandise.

I have been trying, for months now, to find a USB-based charger for my Nokia N95. I have the original charger at home, an original Nokia charger in the car, but nothing at the office. As I always have my Mac with me I was delighted to hear that Nokia is producing a USB charger.

But has Nokia produced such a charger?? It seems it has not! I asked about this charger at several airports (the only time I think about this is while traveling!) to no avail. A quick Google search did not produce a Nokia branded USB charger.

[UPDATE: I am dumb and so are all the mobile shop clerks who haven’t heard of the Nokia CA-100 USB charger, which I just found on the Nokia site).

Anyway..

So, I walked over to that little shopping corner at the airport and I asked the clerk if he has a USB charger for my Nokia. He said “yes we have one”. And this is it:

Behold the “Dr. Omar” 4 in 1 USB mobile phone charger.

“Dr. Omar?” I asked with some bewilderment. The clerk assured it was “good”. My flight to Kuwait was about to be called in a few minutes and the gadget cost “only” 35 Riyals (and I wanted to get rid of some excess Riyals anyway). So I bought it.

The design of the package, especially the weird typography, was not exactly reassuring. But I was amused by the “Designed in Dubai” slogan on the back of the package. This reminds me of “Designed by Apple in California”.

Interesting!

Apparently the product works. I just tested it. It is not as fast as using a normal charger, but my battery is showing a nearly full charge after two hours. I hope it doesn’t damage the phone! We’ll see.

Anyway, this “Dr. Omar” dude has other “useful gadgets” up his sleeve. Like this one:

It’s an emergency mobile charger which works with AA batteries.

And how about this?

A charger you can wind-up by hand. (and it’s also a flashlight!)

Talk about “free energy”.

Despite the tacky packaging, this Dr. Omar brand is pretty nifty. And it’s one of very few Arab gadget brands out there.