Kuwait Couple and Police
This is a very strange report from the Daily Star. There was a similar report in the Thursday Kuwait Times, which claims there were two couples. Is there a police blotter where newspapers get their information, or do they use inside sources? The stories in each newspaper have different details, and sometimes the details vary significantly.
Culprits Freed, Cop Detained
In a very strange incident, the head investigator at Mubarak Al-Kabeer Police Station has ordered the detention of a first sergeant and released two persons who humiliated the policeman, reports Al-Anba daily.
A police source said the first sergeant arrested a 22 year old man and a 41 year old woman who were inside a car parked in the Abul Hasaniya at 2:00 in the morning, and asked them to hand over their identification documents but they refused to heed the policeman’s request.
The threatened to harm the first sergeant and dismiss him from service, but later handed over their IDs to another policeman who rushed to the area after receiving a call from the first sergeant.
The two persons were released and the policeman was detained but Director of the Security Directorate in Mubarak Al-Kabeer Brigadier Mostafa Khan and his assistant Brigadier Ibrahim Al-Tarrah ordered the immediate release of the first sergeant and referred the case to another investigator.
My comment: I cannot begin to figure out what happened in this story. It could be a hundred different things. The woman could be in the car with her son, escaping from an abusive husband. Or they could be unrelated and naked. There are endless possibilities in between those extremes. We don’t know.
The sergeant could be doing his duty and unjustly punished by superiors using wasta, or he could have exceeded his authority and been let to skate. We don’t know.
Stories like this in the papers mystify me. It all depends on the “police source” and his particular bias.
Kuwait Machine Gun?
From yesterday’s Kuwait Times.
Three Shot at by Teenagers
Two Kuwaiti citizens and a bedoon man were transferred to Jahra hospital after three teenagers shot them using a machine gun and ran away. The victims stressed they did not know why the assailants, who were travelling in a Japanese car, shot at them. The case is under investigation.
My comment: My husband, when I told him about this story, says that most people don’t know the difference between a machine gun and an automatic weapon, which can fire a series of shots in rapid succession. Somehow, the distinction fails to reassure me. Teenagers – children – with automatic weapons?? Where are these weapons coming from? How did they get their hands on them?
There has been a big to-do over Muna Al-Fuzai’s tongue-in-cheek article about Kuwait and subsequent defense of what she said.
Guys: Stop talking and listen for a change. Yes, Kuwait is a wonderful place, she is not saying differently. She is Kuwaiti and she loves Kuwait. She has a right to say what she sees and hears, and she has taken a courageous and controversial stand. You don’t have to agree with her, and she still has a right to her opinion. Did you notice? Her column is OPINION.
You are also entitled to your opinion.
First – Take a deep breath. Ask your mother, your wife, your sister, your maid – how safe she feels taking a taxi alone at night – if that is even an option. Ask her if she is careful where she walks. Ask her about her experiences with the police. Ask her if she will go to any ATM, or only “safe” ones.
As I see it, Kuwait has a huge bachelor population, and few options for these bachelors. Women here know to travel in groups, to be watchful, and to be wary. There is a problem.
And it’s not women, it is also children. It’s unthinkable.
Couple this with weak regard for the law and weak enforcement of the law, and you will see that there is a problem.
And where did these kids get automatic weapons? ? ? These problems are all connected to weak law enforcement, lack of respect for the law and a sense of entitlement. Entitled to take an automatic and shoot people? ? Entitled to TAKE sex from someone smaller and weaker than you? ?
It’s not just lack of respect for the law, it’s the law of the jungle.
Appetizer Puffs
These little bite sized morsels are just cream puffs made small. When you take them out of the oven, you cut the tops off as soon as you can touch them, and pull out the dough pieces inside. When cool, and just before serving, you fill them with savory mixtures:
• grated Gouda cheese mixed with port wine and a little cream cheese
• chopped shrimp mixed with a little chopped celery and mayonnaise
• chopped ham and a tiny bit of mustard and mayonnaise
• crabmeat with a tiny bit of mayonnaise
• chopped up crisp bacon with a little horseradish and mayonnaise
• grated cheddar with finely chopped pimentos and a little mayonnaise
• chopped clams with sour cream
• Chopped and drained tomato, with tiny mozzarella and chopped basil
• Kuwait: flaked, cooked hammour w/tiny bit of sour cream and a little bit of “Kuwaiti spices”
• flaked, cooked tuna with a little aioli mayonnaise and cilantro
. . . . . use your own favorite combinations!
1 cup water
1/2 cup butter
1 cup flour
4 eggs
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Heat water and butter to strong rolling boil. Stir in flour, stir vigorously over low heat about one minute or until mixture forms a ball. (You’ll know it when you see it.)
Remove from heat, beat in eggs, one at a time, continue beating and beating until smooth. Drop dough by tiny spoonfulls 2” apart onto UNGREASED baking sheet. Bake 35 – 40 minutes or until puffed and golden. Cool away from drafts. Cut off tops, pull out filaments of dough.
Fill just before serving so they don’t get soggy. Remember to put the top back on! These are easy to make, easy to serve and even fun to make with children.
Additional options: You can also make these sweet, filling with Creme Chantilly (whip up cream, add a little SIFTED [yes, it matters] powdered sugar and a little vanilla) and still serve by fingers, or you can pour a little chocolate sauce over the top and serve in a bunch of three or four on a plate as profiteroles. The blessing of these puffs is their versatility!
Photo from all recipes.com
Marriage – A Great Adventure
I remember the day we looked at each other in astonishment, the day we realized we had lived with each other longer than we had lived with our own parents. We think of family cultures as the culture we grew up in, but in our years together, we have created our own family culture, haven’t we?
We chose one another, in itself, a great adventure. We chose a life full of change and risk. We stacked the obstacles against our survival as a couple, and yet we prevailed, by the grace of God.
We laugh at how young we were to have made such a lifelong commitment. We laugh at how we walked into parenthood – no, RAN into parenthood, joyfully, with no clues as to the huge responsibilities, the agonies as well as the intense delights.
Happy Anniversary, Adventure Man. I thank God for our marriage, and our partnership.
These are for you.
Morning in the bush
Picnic Stop
The thrill of the chase
The Great Migration
Zanzibar
Exercise After Eating
From BBC Health News:
Exercising after meals can help promote weight loss by boosting hormones that suppress appetite, say UK scientists.
Thanks to these hormones, active people feel less hungry immediately after exercise, and this carries through to their next meal, experiments suggest.
Even when their meals were bigger, sporty people gained fewer calories overall because they burned off more.
The Surrey University and Imperial College London work is published in the Journal of Endocrinology.
Exercise may alter people’s appetite to help them lose weight
Twelve volunteers were fed the same breakfast.
An hour later, half of them worked out for an hour on an exercise bike while the other half sat quietly.
Both groups were left for another hour and then allowed to eat as much as they liked.
Unsurprisingly, people who exercised burned more calories than those who sat quietly, 492 kcal compared to 197 kcal.
And when given the chance to eat afterwards, people who had exercised tended to eat more, 913 kcal versus to 762 kcal.
However, when the amount of energy burned during exercise was taken into account, the sporty people took in fewer calories overall – 421 kcal compared to 565 kcal for the inactive group.
And levels of hormones called PYY, GLP-1 and PP, which tell the brain when the stomach is full, increased during and immediately after exercise.
Volunteers also said they felt less hungry during this time.
Researcher Dr Denise Robertson said: “In the past we have been concerned that, although exercise burns energy, people subsequently ate more after working out. This would cancel out any possible weight reduction effects of exercise.
“But our research shows that exercise may alter people’s appetite to help them lose weight and prevent further weight gain as part of a healthy, balanced lifestyle.”
My comment: We keep hoping we can lose the weight with no sweat, but it seems like everywhere we turn, the secret seems to be . . . eat less . . . exercise more. You can read the rest of the story HERE.
GoogleEarth – Make Your Own Maps
You, too, can make your own maps, and get where you need to go, thanks to GoogleEarth. If you are a landmark driver, like me, this will make your day.
A friend gave me a map to her house that blew my mind – it was a GoogleEarth map, with lines and arrows and landmarks – everything I need when I am driving. I could see the roundabouts! I could see the major landmarks! I knew EXACTLY where to turn, which mosque where I would turn right, and which field to drive across.
She said her husband had done it; she didn’t know how. I opened GoogleEarth and figured it out. Now – oh my! I have maps to everywhere! It is so totally cool!
You open Google, find EXACTLY the image you need to use for your map (be sure your major landmarks are in the frame) and you go to File on the toolbar and scroll down to Save – there is an arrow, and you choose Save Image.
You open your drawing program – in my case, Appleworks, but it will work with your drawing program, too.
You paste your map into your drawing program, and then you add your arrows showing the route to take, and you add text identifying the landmarks, and perhaps writing out the directions.
And then you print. It’s that easy. And holy smokes, the maps are totally usable.
Spoiler
We were having a big film fest in Pensacola, and five minutes into The Prestige my son asked me if I knew how it was going to end.
This started a long time ago. They think I am amazing. Most of the time, I get it right. Sometimes, with Law and Order, or CSI, there is a twist I hadn’t thought of. I read a lot of mysteries and . . . there is a secret.
Don’t go any further if you like NOT knowing how a show is going to end.
Here is the secret. A movie or a TV show only has a limited amount of time to tell the story. You can figure that most of the information they give you is significant. Like in Law and Order, a lot of times it’s one of the people they originally interview, even if they came off well in the interview. (Those guys have gotten more and more tricky, though, and it gets harder to figure out all the time.) Listen for something that could be a lie.
The Prestige suffered a little from it’s own arrogance. They TELL us right at the beginning what the story will be, what the twist is, and how it will be accomplished, if you are watching closely and thinking “why might this be important?”
My son had already seen it. I told him “this, this and this” and he didn’t say anything, just said I had to see if I was right. Hee Hee heee . . . I was. And he was so poker faced I didn’t know how blown away he was that I had figured it out.
You can, too.
And if you haven’t seen The Prestige, it is a very good movie. It appears to be coming to Super Movies sometime soon.
Parking Wall of Shame
At the Al Manshar Mall, where there are only about forty spaces for a huge mall:
Emergency Lane Rant
It’s not your arrogance that drives me totally crazy, as much as the fact that your arrogance puts us all at risk.
First, you are driving too fast, and weaving between cars. Yep, it looks like fun, but you’re cutting it a little close, brother. And if you are young and have all your wits about you, you might do OK, but if you are tired, if you are drinking, if you are on drugs, your reactions are impaired and so is your judgement.
We can’t help but bear witness to your carnage along the sides of the road. It’s not like they sit there for weeks. The tow trucks haul them away, and they are replaced overnight with new, bloodier, twisted wreckage. The highways are littered with your crumpled bumpers, and shards of your shattered windshields.
Worse, as traffic piles up, and ambulances arrive to try to save those who survive the impact, no-one moves aside! When time is critical, when seconds can literally mean life or death, the ambulances are stuck trying to get past cars which won’t move out of the way.
As for the rest of us, stacked up along the highways, waiting for the wreckage to be cleared, it doesn’t help to have these drivers zipping by in the EMERGENCY lanes. Hello???? What part of EMERGENCY is so hard for you to understand?
You’re not special. We all have places we need to be. And – you are in the emergency lane. You endanger us all.
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