Outside My Window
I live a busy life. To bring some order into the enormous potential for chaos, I have routines. Not inviolable routines; I can be flexible when I need to be, but routines that help me take care of the important things so that they don’t get lost in the pressure of other demands.
I start each day with coffee, and sit at my laptop and check all my e-mail. I read my daily readings in the Lectionary (see blogroll). Then I check the blog and respond to comments. Sometimes I write an entry, sometimes I don’t.
So this morning I have just sat down with my coffee, just opened my first e-mail, and suddenly, three men are outside my window, washing the windows. I am still in my nightgown, and had NO warning.
The Qatteri Cat was fascinated, and thought I had arranged this for his special entertainment. I was aghast, and rushed to the back rooms, away from the prying eyes.
I needn’t have worried. As you can see, just as I grabbed my camera, another traffic accident happened and they were very taken with the loud argument that ensued. My friends, the Kuwaiti police showed up about an hour later to sort things out.
Lenten Update
As you know, I gave up bad language in my car for Lent. Yes, I could have given up chocolate. It would have been easier.
I’ve done fairly well. I totally slipped up once, my husband was driving. At first I thought, “well it doesn’t count because I am not driving” but – it does. It counts.
I have not succeeded in not thinking the bad word. I ask forgiveness, and I ask for help not even thinking the bad words. He IS helping. My language is getting better. Alhamd’allah.
For my non-Kuwaiti, non-Middle East friends and readers, you can actually get in more trouble here for bad language than you can for crashing a car.
True story: in one country, a man was trying to get into a gated community and was refused. He was angry and wanted to back up, rather than going forward and turning around, so he put his car in reverse and gunned the engine and smashed into the car behind him. The woman driver was shocked, and just sat there. So he moved forward, and gunned the car in reverse, and hit her again! He did it a third time. She got out of her car and screamed at him “What are you doing, you a$$####???” and he had HER arrested for bad language. He stoically paid for the damage to her car, but SHE had to go to court and through a lengthy humiliating process of finding a lawyer, etc. She also had to pay a huge fine and listen to a lecture from the judge.
A wise person NEVER makes any hand gestures, either.
Giving up bad language on the highway is not only a spiritual improvement, it could also save me a lot of trouble down the road.
Amer Al-Hilal Steps Up to the Plate
He eyes the pitcher. He swings the bat! He connects! He hits the ball out of the park!
OK, OK, sometimes I carry an analogy too far. But seeing our fellow blogger Hilaliya: A Kuwait State of Mind on the front page of today’s Arab Times, taking a swat at the recent ban on internet phone services made me feel like dancing.
He encourages all of us to raise the cry against this ban, a ban which is unenforceable (think of all the IT people running around Kuwait who know just how to get around this blockage) and counter to the best interests of the state of Kuwait. As Amer says – Kuwait needs a Minister of Communications who looks toward the FUTURE, and makes policy decisions for the long term good of the state and community, not one who barely comprehends the new technologies and is unwilling to go with the times.
You can’t hold back technology. The genie is out of the bottle. So how can you use the new technologies to better serve the needs of the wealthy state and its inhabitants?
Google Earth for Dummies!
I’ve been on the waiting list at Amazon for months, ever since my nephew, Earthling, wrote me that this book was in the works. (thanks, Earthling!) It arrived this week. Wooooo Hooooo!
Yes, I love GoogleEarth. I soar and swoop, look at my house in Seattle, look at different places in Qatar and Kuwait, go to Florida and visit my son – all via Google Earth. With Google Earth for Dummies, I can now do even more. Like all the Dummy books, the writing is simple, there are a lot of illustrations, and it tells me things I would never otherwise know.
It’s $16.49 through Amazon.com, plus shipping, of course, and you can find it here.
Intlxpatr: The Name
People keep asking about my name: Intlxpatr. There’s a part of me that wants to keep quiet and let you think it has some deep mysterious meaning. But no, here is the truth.
I didn’t really intend to start blogging as soon as I did. I wanted to think about it, and part of that is exploring the environment, right? So I would look around the hosting sites, and I ended up being asked questions almost immediately. At first, adreneline pounding through my system, I signed back off, thought about it a while, and then signed back on. They wanted commitment; I had cold feet.
I wanted a clever name, but it seemed to be that all the names I liked were already taken, or just not right for me. Even the blog name, which isn’t particularly clever, was a “just for now” sort of thing, I always thought I could go back and change it later. Here There and Everywhere just stuck, and has grown more and more appropriate as I write about all sorts of things. I never much liked boundaries!
For the blogger name, I wanted something unlikely to be duplicated. And something that wouldn’t give me away. Intl – international, xpatr – expatriate. So dull, so simple. . . so vanilla. And, as it turns out, so annoying to people who have to type it . . .
There is a little bit of a joke in the name. . . but I am going to maintain SOME mystery. Anyway, I know it isn’t clean and simple, but it’s who I am. At least for now.
Raise Your Voices
My blogging friend Hilaliya raised HIS voice in an article entitled Kuwait ‘Ministry Of Communications’ Attempts To Extort Internet Users and found an elaborated article on the Ministry of Communication ban. You can read his rant, and go to the Arab Times article by clicking here.
It FEELS Personal
A good friend who is also a psychologist often talked about how things FEEL personal even when they are not.
• When your best friend betrays your deep dark secret to another friend because she lacks self confidence and it made her feel important for a couple seconds
• When your young wife sleeps with your brother because after two babies she wants to feel exciting and attractive and young again
• When your brother uses drugs again, after you paid for rehab and he swore up and down he would never never use again
• When your father divorces your mother and leaves her to raise the kids alone
• When your oldest friend in the world stops returning your calls and communicating with you and you later learn that she if fighting a losing battle with cancer
• When your aging husband buys a small red convertible and turns you in for a younger model, too, because he wants to think he’s hot
• When your internet phone service is declared illegal and gets shut down to spare “government wastage”
In every case above, the situation has more to do with personal issues than with you, but man, it sure FEELS personal. The fact that is doesn’t have to do with you is almost insulting, because the impact can be so painful.
And so it is with internet service. This morning, I was missing internet service for a while. It happens sometimes, but rarely longer than three-four minutes. This time it went on and on. Of course my first reaction is “oh no! Am I being penalized for having written about internet phone service being blocked???” But no, this time it wasn’t all about me. It was just an outage, and – for now – just temporary. Alhamdallah!
But this policy is going to impact on all of us painfully. Please, please raise your voices. You know better than I do where it will be the most effective. It’s important that we be able to communicate with our family and friends in a reasonably priced way. The internet phones don’t hurt anybody. Let’s keep them legal.
Read and Comment from WordPress
This is to my non-blogging readers, those who have never commented, those who think you have to have a blog to comment. . . you don’t! There are ways to sign on with most of the major blog hosts and you never have to use your real name, never have to blog, but you are registered, have an “avatar” and a “home”.
WordPress just initiated a global desktop, just for you.
What’s new? Before, people who didn’t have a blog but just an account didn’t have any sort of dashboard so they couldn’t edit their password, get their API key, upload an avatar, track their comments, or any of the other fun stuff you can do under your dashboard.
Read more about it here and click to start your own global desktop.
You will want to have two or three names, just in case your first choice is already taken, and you will want to have a password in mind. Sign up, and start commenting from your own home base at WordPress.
Dying Laughing: Al Qaeda in Seattle
My niece, Little Diamond has found a SATIRICAL article (I can’t figure out where, it is not The Onion ) on Al-Qaeda buying property in Seattle. If you know Seattle, and the pride Seattleites take in civility, friendliness, and neighborliness, then you, too, will die laughing. Click on A Diamond’s Eye View of the World for your grin to start the week.
And a part of me thinks – isn’t this what we are supposed to be doing? Be kind to our neighbors? Isn’t it the only way to interrupt the spiraling cycle of hatred and violence? Sometimes, an unexpected kind word changes everything – I know it has in my own world.
Who Knew? Skimmed Milk Affects Fertility
Today’s Kuwait Times 1 March 2007 has a front page on women who drink skimmed milk having reduced fertility, inspiring a whole new category for my blog entries: Who Knew?
Skim milk as been a mainstay for women trying to maintain desired weight, along with non-fat yoghurt, low fat cheeses, and tofu – all which help women maintain bone density by providing calcium in our diets. The study, done in the United States between 1991 and 1999 concluded that non-fat dairy products may well be contra-indicated for women desiring to become pregnant.
When I was pregnant, I got nervous. I’m normally NOT nervous, but the new hormones bombarding my system made me really nervous and a little anxious, and it had a spiral effect. When I talked to the doctor – in Germany, where I was living – she just laughed and patted me and said “drink a little wine, my dear, and you will feel better! Have a glass at lunch and a glass at dinner.”
I followed her instructions. I felt better. I had my glasses of wine religiously. Thank God, my son turned out just fine, because now people react with horror to the very idea of a woman having anything to drink during pregnancy. But then – Who Knew???
The truth about the world as we know it changes daily. Our assumptions are challenged, and we have to be flexible, and move with the times and with the newest information. But I’m happy not to have to give up skimmed milk.
I have an apology to the Kuwait Times, too. I thought they had misused “affect” and should have used “effect”. I was wrong. They were right. I looked it up, and here is the information:
* Note on affect and effect from answers.com: USAGE NOTE Affect and effect have no senses in common. As a verb affect is most commonly used in the sense of “to influence” (how smoking affects health). Effect means “to bring about or execute”: layoffs designed to effect savings. Thus the sentence These measures may affect savings could imply that the measures may reduce savings that have already been realized, whereas These measures may effect savings implies that the measures will cause new savings to come about.
Recent Comments
intlxpatr on Shampoo Ginger tigerbutterya0c5ff1d… on Shampoo Ginger intlxpatr on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… John on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… intlxpatr on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 