BitJockeys Suggestions: Fishermen and Skyline
OK, I made it more panorama by cropping out the excess sky, and I bumped up the saturation a little, and that is about all I can do, other than sepia, which doesn’t look right at all, and some other general effects that don’t enhance.
BTW, do you notice that the Sheraton – that pyramid shape at about 2/3 way across skyline – has just disappeared? It used to be the most striking building on the skyline and now, it disappears.
Slow Saturday; Yousef’s Take in Fisherman Skyline Photo
I LOVE what Yousef did. It’s a slow Saturday, nothing much going on. If you want a crack at this photo, take it. Play with it. Send it back to me, show us what you’ve done. Keep it clean. 🙂
Yousef:
is that a WOW or what?
So . . . I don’t have all these tools. Go for it. The shot is in the Eid morning photos you will find here so have some fun with it.
Second New Twist on an Old Scam
This one cracks me up – the names make it sound so credible, right? WRONG!
Offer Coming From U.A.E
This letter must come to you as a big surprise,
but I believe it is only a day that people meet
and become great friends and business partners.
I am Mr.Andre Sayegh, Chief Executive Officer with a reputable bank here in U. A. E. I write you this proposal in good faith, believing that I can trust you with the information I am about to reveal to you. I have an urgent and very confidential business proposition for you. On November 6, 2000, an Iraqi Foreign Oil consultant/contractor with the CHEVRON PETROLEUM CORPORATION, MR MOHAMMAD AL NASSER made a (Fixed deposit) for 36 calendar months, valued at US$17,500,000.00 (Seventeen Million Five hundred Thousand Dollars only) in my bank and I happen to be his account officer before I was moved to my present position recently.
Upon maturity in 2003, as his account officer and as well the Planning & Financial officer, it is my duty to notify him on the maturity date so I sent a routine notification to his forwarding address but the letter was returned undelivered. After sometime, I tried sending back the letter, but it was again returned and finally I discovered from his contract employers, Chevron Petroleum Corporation that .Mr. Mohammad Al Nasser died as a result of torture in the hand of Saddam Hussein (former Iraqi President) during one of his trips to his country Iraq, as he was accused of leaking information to the Americans. On further investigation, I discovered that Mr. Al Nasser’s family wife and two sons died during the Gulf War in Iraq and was the reason why he did not declare any next of kin or relation in all his official documents, including his Bank Deposit paperwork in my Bank and did not leave any WILL.
This sum of US$17,500,000.00 have been floating and placed under dormant/unserviceable account by my bank management since no one have heard from the owner since 2003. I wish to let you know that all the investigation I have made so far, my bank management is not aware of it, I am the only one that have the information. With the recent change of government in my country and with their efforts to support the United Nations in checkmating terrorism aid in the U. A. E. By end of this year, the government will pass a new financial control law which will give the government authority to interrogate account owners of above $5,000,000.00 to explain the source of the funds, making sure it is not for terrorism support. If I do not move this money out of the country immediately, by end of the year the government will definitely confiscate the money, because my bank cannot provide the account owner to explain the source of the money.
I cannot directly transfer out this money without the help of a foreigner and that is why I am contacting you for assistance. As his Account Officer to late Al Nasser, coupled with my present position and status in the bank as Head of Business Planning & Financial Control, I have the power to influence the release of the funds to any foreigner that comes up as the next of kin to the account, with the correct information concerning the account, which I shall give you. All documents to enable you claim this fund will be carefully worked out and there is practically no risk involved, the transaction will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of law, beside U. A. E is porous and anything goes. If you accept to work with me, I want you to state how you wish us to share the funds in percentage, so that both parties will be satisfied. If you are interested, contact me as soon as you receive this message so we can go over the details.
Thanking you in advance and May God blesses you. Please, treat with utmost confidentiality. I shall send you copy of the deposit certificate issued to Al Nasser when the deposit was made for your perusal.
I wait your urgent response.
Regards,
Mr.Andre Sayegh
A New Twist on an Old Scam
Got this one – as Intlxpatr – today. Hee heee heee, I grinned thinking of a big check made out to “Intxlpatr” packed in a box marked “old African cloths.”
Good Day!
I have been waiting for you since to come down here and pick your Cashiers Cheque but did not hear from you since that time. So i went to the bank to confirm if the draft is getting close to expire and the Manager of the bank told me that before the draft will get to your address that it will expire. Then I told him to help me and cash the bank draft of $1.5 million to cash payment.
However, The Bank Manager have successfully cashed the draft and packaged your Cash in a Diplomatic Cargo box and had registered it in the FEDEX EXPRESS COURIER COMPANY here in Benin Republic because i am travelling to see my boss and will not come back soon.
You have to contact FEDEX EXPRESS COURIER COMPANY to know when they will deliver your package to your address.
CONTACT FEDEX EXPRESS COURIER COMPANY WITH THE INFORMATION BELOW/
NAME: DR UGO ODILI
CONTACT PHONE NUMBERS: +229-97555256
E-MAIL: ( fedex_ccltd@sify.com)
Please, Send them your contacts information to able them locate you immediately they arrived in your country with your Diplomatic BOX.
This is the information they need from you.
1. YOUR FULL NAME.
2. YOUR HOME ADDRESS.
3. YOUR CURRENT MOBILE NUMBER.
4. YOUR VERIFICATION CODE – (PX002)
Try to contact FEDEX EXPRESS COURIER COMPANY as soon as possible to enable them release your consignment to you. I gave them your delivering address but you have to reconfirm it to them again to avoid any mistake in the delivery.
I have paid for the delivering charges. Also ask them how much the insurance fees will cost you. The only money you have to send to them is their INSURANCE FEE to receive your package which will be a token. I could have paid for the insurance fees, but due to some prevailing circumstance beyond my control.
Note; I didn’t tell FEDEX EXPRESS COURIER COMPANY that it’s money inside the box, I registered it as a package of an African cloths/Family Valuables. This is to avoid delaying or any upfront problem during the delivery, So do not let them know that the package contents money inside until you have received it in your house address, this is the code which you will send to them for verifications (PX002).
You call the Director of the company with this line:+229-97555256
Do let me know as soon as you received your package. Contact me by email as i am travelling out side the country today.
Best Regards,
Mr Melvine Parker (ESQ)
Obama and Dreams From My Father
It took me 20 days, but I finished Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father. I didn’t read it because he is President of the United States, although that would be a good reason, but I read it because our book club is reading it, and I know how busy the next few months are going to be, so I read ahead during the slower times of summer.
And the trick to finishing it was not allowing myself to read anything else until I had finished – I had a stack of really intriguing books to urge me on. “As soon as I finish, I can read . . . ” Even with all that incentive, Obama’s book is a slog.
He is a gifted orator. He is a plodding writer. There is also a problem I find with autobiographies by anyone – we all fool ourselves, we all position ourselves in a better light, and we have no idea how transparent we are when we do so. Fellow bloggers, do you ever read anything you have written a couple years ago and squirm with embarrassment, or even delete? To be an author is a very very brave thing, when you have a book published, there is no going back, your transgressions are all right out there, and the public can be cruelly critical.
What I liked about the book is Obama-as-Third-Culture-Kid, a man of mixed identity. Most kids who have grown up moving or grown up in different countries from their own, or who have immigrated, can tell you, being an alien is no fun. Obama learns how to adapt, how to look for clues to fitting in, how to pass. It’s a common theme in Third-Culture-Kids.
My favorite part of the book was his return to Kenya, his openness to his African roots, the open-armed love with which his Kenyan half-brothers and sisters welcome him and his response. He had some truly extraordinary adventures, working out just who his father had been as a person. He was blessed to recognize the richness of his inheritance.
The book plods along, but it was worth the time. For all it’s flaws, I find I like that man, and I understand more about where he is coming from. (for grammarians, I understand more about from where the man is coming.) 🙂
Stat Bump
There are a lot of factors in blogging that I don’t control. I have no control over the policies of the countries I live in. I have no control over who might like my posts and tell their friends. And I have no control over what posts might tickle interest among blog readers.
Kuwait has a lively, active blogging community, even in the face of competition from FaceBook and Twitter. Many bloggers have gone inactive, working in new areas, and have come back to blogging. Leaving Kuwait, moving to Doha, I lost about 300 – 500 regular viewers per day. I know, I know, some of you found the sunrise-over-the-Gulf daily photos SO so boring, but there were Kuwaitis all over the world who checked in just to see what Kuwait looked like each day, and having been in their position (I still check Seattle every day, and Pensacola) I know how they feel.
Some posts I consider “filler.” Maybe I can’t think of anything to say, so I share a piece of news that interests me. Or I ask a question. Posts I just tapped off and posted without giving it a lot of thought then take off, and over the months and years maintain a steady popularity. The posts I like the best are posts where my readers have stepped in, commented and we’ve all learned more about something.
At Halloween, I had my all time high stat bump – on an article I had written two years earlier. Last night, I watched the numbers climb irrationally on a news article on the Perseids – and oh, by the way, even though last night was the peak, they are still out there, and if you can find a quiet, light free spot, you are in for a thrill. I remember one year, AdventureMan and I headed for Clearwater Beach, and it was like Spring Break except it was dark, what a hoot! Everyone had blankets or beach loungers, laying out flat, looking up at the sky – with all their clothes on! It was night!
This is what I could see this morning:
Ah well, coming up are Friday and Saturday, the two worst-stat days of the week. Some days I don’t even bother blogging on Saturday!
Have you ever had an irrational stat bump? Did anyone in Kuwait or Doha go out last night to watch the Perseids? Any luck?
Written Communication, Plusses and Minuses
I was e-mailing back and forth this morning with a dear friend who is traveling. She was about to visit an old school friend, and before visiting, dug out all the letters she had received from the friend – an enormous collection – and read through them all. She said it was a very moving experience, and I could tell that even before visiting her friend, she was feeling close from having read all those letters.
When was the last time you got a letter?
I have some letters my husband has written, saved away. 🙂 Most of my written communications these days are done by e-mail, instant-message, or texting. I used to have files of e-mails, but as they grew bigger and bigger, I sort of stopped saving them, except for important ones, or business-related ones.
These blogs are also written communication, but more like books, less personal and you never really know who is reading on any given day, and who isn’t, so like it is not the most reliable way to communicate something important, especially to one person or a small group of people; e-mail just makes more sense. Or picking up the telephone, which I don’t do all that often as I am not so much of a telephone person and many people I would call are in different time zones.
But it makes me wonder what record we will have of these times? I told my friend when I was in college, I worked part time in the university xerox department, and most things in the Northwest Collection came to me. I could read them as I copied them – diaries, letters, to-do lists, shopping lists – ephemeral things, but written on paper, and they give us a tiny peephole into the daily lives of people who lived a couple hundred years ago.
Think of your life, and how things have changed, even if you are in your twenties. Two hundred years from now, people will have so many questions about our lives, how we lived, why we did the things we did. With fewer lasting pieces of paper, will the record be so complete?
Think of our electronic storage devices – remember floppy disks? My computer wouldn’t even be able to read a floppy disk! Think of the tiny little USB devices we are saving onto now – how long will that technology last? In another generation, it will be as opaque and accessible as the ancient inscribes stones buried in the deserts.
As we go more and more paperless, how are we saving the ephemera?
As I upload a couple years worth of photos to be printed, I think of the scrap booking craze, how you take a few photos and decorate all around them, but do the resulting albums give you truth, or do they give you a fantasy of the truth?
I think of the photographs from a hundred years ago – people with somber faces. Serious faces. No one ever smiled for the photos. There are photos of my earliest relatives in Seattle, they are truly a grim looking bunch, I think it was the style then, and I have a feeling that they didn’t look like that most of the time; our family culture is pretty jokey. So I am also wondering about family lore, family history and realities. Like most of us expunge the photos of us that are unflattering – and destroy letters we would never want anyone to read. In so doing, we don’t change the real history, but we do change the transmission of history! Much of what gets transmitted ends up being censored, by us!
(This is not my family, just a photo from the early 1900’s from rootsweb.ancestry.com)
For years, I have taken my photos and put them in books – and they are heavy. But we actually take them out and look at the photos from time to time, whereas now, most of my photos are stored on the computer, and rarely do I take the time to upload them to be printed. I wonder what the photographic record will be, if there will be a downturn in photos showing what was going on because so few are printed in a relatively lasting format.
I have so much on the internet – photos, writing, etc. What is something happens to the internet. I haven’t even been saving back ups of the blogs. I used to, like the first six months, but, frankly, so much of it is trivial that I stopped backing it up. And if I lost everything, would it be a tragedy – or a huge relief? I think of friends who have lived through terrible events and who live their lives more lightly now – fewer purchases, fewer emotional turmoils – going through something horrible can truly streamline your life.
I guess I am just babbling.
Truly Humbling
Tonight, just for grins, I took a look at all the search terms that brought people to Here There and Everywhere.
These are the top twenty-five, in the almost three years this blog has been up and running:
Do you notice anything? Not a single reference to Kuwait? Not a single reference to expat living? LLOOLLLL, my whole point in doing the blog was to write about cross-cultural living, and my biggest hits are birthday cakes and funny cats and hummers? Yes, it is truly humbling. 😉
I’ve shown you mine – show us yours. What search terms bring people to your blog?
Kuwait Paper Dump Badge
I admit it. When I saw Ansam on her new blog had a Kuwait Paper Dump certificate, I was green with envy! I knew I didn’t deserve one – I have only contributed once, and even my contribution wasn’t truly acceptable because I don’t have a fax, so I took photos and sent them to Abaid.
Yesterday, when I opened my e-mail, I almost cried. He sent me a badge for my support and positive mentions. Honestly, it is the best badge I have ever sported on Here, There and Everywhere.
I’m from Seattle, remember, where recycle cans are issued, and sorting and recycling is mandatory. I’m also from the hippie generation, the back-to-the-earth movement that springs up every now and then, you know, make your own paper, make your own soap, grow your own tomatoes and basil. That my son, his wife, my sisters and my nieces and nephews and this new generation of Kuwaitis are all into saving the environment – it is just icing on my cake. And the candle on my cake is the new badge. You can see it here, and you can see it for the rest of the life of the blog under Kuwait Paper Dump in the Blogroll.
For those of you not familiar with the website, 3baid gathers up paper from around Kuwait from restaurants, service providers, Kuwait resources, events, etc. and publishes them all in one place, eliminating our need to keep track of all those papers. When you want to know what the possibilities are from a particular restaurant, you will find the menu there. When you want to know who has mushroom pizzas, you can click on “mushroom pizzas” and find out which places have them. It is an amazing public service they provide at Paper Dump, and they do it entirely as volunteers, serving the community.
I am so totally honored. Thank you for the badge. Thank you, too, for your quiet, persistent leadership in the Kuwait environmental/Green movement.
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