Grach
Maybe he uses his grach for barking?
If I were looking for a place to live, this ad would have served it’s purpose. It’s got incredible placement, along Gulf Road, and it is clear what it is advertising, and the phone numbers are nice and big, big enough to write down while you wait at the spotlight. (ooops, stoplight.)
Maybe the “grach” was intentional?
And the the flat has three flowers?
It made me smile. It made me pray to have enough time to grab my camera so I could share the grin with you.
Bottom line, if he paid someone to make this sign, he should get some of his money back. On the other hand, it DOES get your attention.
Catching Up
I’m trying to catch up on all the magazines that arrived while I was gone. This was a cover on one of my New Yorker magazines, and it gave me a big grin. Hope it makes you grin, too.
The Avenues Mall in Kuwait
This if for my outside-Kuwait readers; most of the Kuwait readers have already been to The Avenues.
The Avenues is the newest mall in Kuwait, and has the greatest variety so far of shops with names familiar to most malls – Banana Republic, Starbucks, etc. But it has a couple stores with unusual things – one is a Moroccan design store, but everything I liked inside it said “this item not for sale!” Excuse me? What’s the point?
There is an IKEA attached, lots of coffee places, a few places to eat, mostly places you find in Malls – Paul’s, etc., but nothing outstanding. The coffee places are nice for sitting and waiting for friends who are shopping when you are bored or tired, but if you are interested in GOOD food, I think you can do better eating outside the mall.
The mall is vast. The good news is, there is lots of parking, so you only have to think about where you want to be. We were really lucky, as we pulled in, a car was just leaving a really nice spot. You know how you always THINK you are going to remember your spot? At The Avenues, you need to remember the letter, the number AND the color. Probably the S46a comes in handy, too. We took a photo, and it was a good thing, because we thought we remembered very clearly where the car was, and we were mistaken.
Going to a mall in Kuwait is one of the major summer pastimes. When the heat outside is 118 degrees F (48C), you look for places that are well air-conditioned. We found places in the mall where the air conditioning was working so hard it sounded like being in a wind tunnel!
As for shopping – the quality of the clothing is not the same as you find in the same stores elsewhere. Prices are high, and even when they mark them down, it is hard to think of most of this clothing as a good value for the money. There are no bookstores.
It IS full of light, and a great place for walking – groups meet up at the Avenues purely for walking, and then usually for a cup of coffee afterwards.
So, in conclusion – it’s huge. Positives: It’s light and airy. It’s great for fitness walking in Kuwait’s heat. It’s a good place to meet up with friends, great central location. Negatives: it’s just another mall, just bigger. Not a destination.
What would make a mall that interested me more? A Sephora that truly had the entire range of make-up products that European and USA Sephoras carry. A really good household department with high quality sheets and towels, and well made clothing in beautiful fabrics. An Eddie Bauer. A Clearwater Creek. A Barnes and Nobles. A couple Indian furniture shops. A L’escharpe. A jewelers/gold souk with ALL the major jewelers in Kuwait. A perfumers souk. Some really good local food places.
What about you? What would you like to see in a mall?
Any Exercise is Good
From BBC Health News comes a report on a study that shows that even mild exercise three days a week can help forestall the negative effects of a sedentary lifestyle:
‘Even light exercise’ aids health
Even low levels of weekly exercise could help reduce blood pressure and improve fitness, scientists say.Experts say walking for half an hour, five days a week, is the minimum required to achieve health benefits.
But a Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health report from Northern Ireland found walking on just three days a week gave similar benefits.
The finding could encourage those with sedentary lifestyles to take up exercise gradually, the authors say.
This could be helpful as few people currently meet the minimum recommendations for exercise, with many saying they do not have enough time.
Read the rest of the article HERE.
I find it really hard to exercise in the heat of Kuwait. If you go out during the day, it is like living in an oven. And even hitting the pool is difficult when you are surrounded by oogling eyes. I have exercise equipment . . . and I don’t use it as often as I SHOULD. Aaarrgh.
But I love articles like this that get me moving, that give me hope that even though I am not as fit as I would like to be, any exercise is helpful. Bye! Off to the pool now!
Cheap Gas
Back in Florida, I went to church with my son and his wife. The preacher at this church was very very good. Why do I think so? Because what he said has stuck with me all this time. Here is what he said:
Be careful how you fill your time. Be careful about the thoughts you think, the books you read, the programs your watch.
Bad thoughts are like cheap gas – if you put cheap gas in your car, your car won’t perform up to it’s full potential.
I totally get what he is saying – I think about the time I spend on worthless things, things that won’t matter two instants when this life is over, things I will regret having wasted any energy on.
Think about how we get so obsessed with small insults, unintended slights, even intentional wrongs done to us by others. Think about how we worry about money, about our possessions, about possessions we would like to have, how we envy others or try to find ways to make them envy us.
Think how little they matter in the long run, and yet we obsess, we give these people, things and events power over us by thinking about them too much, when we should be moving on, doing what we were created to be doing, living up to our best selves, the selves our creator had in mind when he fashioned us into being.
I want the high octane fuel in my machine, but somehow, the low octane creeps in, and I keep having to flush it out.
And another thought creeps in – this preacher has never lived in Kuwait or Doha, where all gas is CHEAP! In Germany, I paid almost $5 a gallon for gas, so every time I fill my tank here, I smile.
But what is the quality of the gas we get in Kuwait? What am I putting in my car? I don’t even know!
And would it make a difference if I did know? If the gas we are putting in our car isn’t good quality, is there anyplace we would go to put in a better quality of gas – isn’t all gas in Kuwait from the same source?
Random musings . . . .
No Sunrise
No sunrise photo this morning. By the grace of God, I seem to be back on Kuwait time in record time – it can take me up to two weeks.
I also noticed while I was in the US, I never felt fully on Florida time or Seattle time . . . maybe on some weird level my body was maintaining a Kuwaiti clock? I have taken a short afternoon nap most late afternoons, but I can do that sometimes even without jet lag. I’m feeling GOOOOOOOOODD!
If it weren’t for Rome, Season 2/Final Season, which I bought just before I left Seattle, I would probably be going to bed too early, but it is so gorgeous, and so engaging that we stay up watching one more episode than we intend every night. I know many of you have already seen it, and I don’t know how! How do you get these things before they even come out on DVD?
I couldn’t imagine how season 2 could be anywhere near so gripping as season one, but luckily, I was wrong. We are loving season 2, and I know I will be very sorry when this season ends.
The Wrong Kind of Attention
Yep. If I wanted people to notice me, I would buy a yellow – orange car. Statistically, they are the easiest to see, and the color people most notice. Think fire trucks (in many countries, not here) and taxis – yellow grabs the eye.
Maybe that’s not enough. Maybe we want to be really really really sure people see us. Aha! Let’s put “Terrorist” on the spare cover, in big letters!
It got my attention.
I am guessing it is some band or something.
I am also guessing that it could get a lot of the wrong kind of attention. Yeh, some people just don’t have any sense of humor. Go figure.
International Foods
My first trip to the Co-op to stock up on the basics – when I am gone, Adventure Man eats out or eats peanut butter and crackers, so the cupboard is bare! He very thoughtfully stocked up on skim milk for me, but beyond that, I am responsible.
I have a small, discreet camera but I wasn’t fast enough this time. One of the store people came over to me.
“Madam, why are you photographing this shelf?”
I told him I have a friend (well, aren’t you my friends?) and we were looking at ways the world is becoming more international.
“Look,” I pointed out to him, “here on this shelf you have Louisiana right next to India!”
I’m not sure he grasped the concept. I know he found it very weird that I was taking a photo of the shelves. Maybe he thought the Co-op had hired a mystery shopper (ho ho ho hohoho) and I was working for Quality Control?
By the way, now that I have started checking all my foods for country of origin, did you know that every can of tuna that we buy in Kuwait comes from Thailand? I have not heard anything about problems with quality control out of Thailand, not the same kinds of problems as with China, but they certainly are packing a LOT of tuna.
Even tuna branded “Americana” – wouldn’t you think a tuna branded Americana would come from America? Wrong! It is also canned in Thailand.
Different Day, Same Sunrise
We didn’t have any luck with the Perseids last night – the sky was too hazy where we were. Did you see them?
I’m doing well with the jet lagging this time, except that I find myself wide awake around sunrise – and how bad can that be?
It was beautiful again this morning:
Welcome Kuwait Sunrise
Adventure Man looks at me like I am stark-raving-out-of-my-mind.
“It feels different,” I have just said. “I can feel winter coming.”
The temperatures the last couple days have been 118° F. (48° C) going down at night to 91° F (33° C), according to my friends at Weather Underground: Kuwait.
But the five weeks I have been away have made a difference, I can feel it. The sun is rising almost a full hour later. The clouds are different, early in the morning, and there are more of them. No, no, I am not breaking out my sweaters yet, but the shift of the seasons has already begun in Kuwait, and I am nearly dancing for joy. I love the six months of winter in Kuwait.
For some reason, I am not jet lagging so badly this time, or at least not yet. Sometimes it hits me hard a couple days after arriving, but so far, so good.
And look at the Titian sunrise that greeted me this morning:
Watch out, Kuwait. Intlxpatr is back!
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