Taking “Normal” for Granted
Today a good friend sent a story about a guy driving a very expensive car and a kid hitting the car by throwing a brick. The guy stops his car, ready to kill, and the kid cries and says it was the only way he had to get his attention, he needs help getting his brother back into his wheelchair. The guy instantly goes from raging anger to compassion, and keeps the dent in the side of his car to remind himself that it shouldn’t take a brick to get his attention.
In the story, it says sometimes God uses a brick to get our attention.
I know, I know, you wonder where I am going with this.
It brings two very simple things to my mind. First, I have bored you more than once with my woes of jet lagging. Right now, I am sleeping great, although I am still falling asleep around nine at night, I am sleeping through the night. Thanks be to God! I wake up in the morning thankful for something so simple – a good night’s sleep.
Sleep isn’t so simple for those who suffer sleep deprivation – and their name is legion. My heart especially goes out to young mothers with their first baby . . . no one tells you how sleep deprivation can change your life. You think you can handle anything. Sleep deprivation is a big brick thrown into your life – it really gets your attention. Without adequate high quality sleep, life loses its lustre, and the simplest thing can be overwhelming.
Second, this is the time of year when many blogs feature colds and flu and lingering illnesses. I rarely get sick, but when I do – oh, I am such a baby. I don’t want concerned people around, I just want to be left alone to suffer. I just want the sickness to be OVER. And then, one day when it is gone – oh! how good it feels, just to be NOT sick! And I thank God for the every day blessing of good health!
We take so much for granted as we go through our daily lives. We forget how really good just being “normal” can be.
But maybe these are the bricks being thrown into our lives to get our attention, to help us to be thankful for our blessings?
Maybe slowing us down helps us to see things we might otherwise speed right by in the busy-ness of our active lives?
Maybe this is all a part of being thankful for the bad things that come into our lives, as well as the good? Alhamd’allah!
I think this is the first day of the Islamic New Year. If so, wishing my Moslem friends all the blessings of a new and, God willing, abundant and peaceful year.
12 Rules to Help you Enjoy Life in Kuwait
By Meshary Alruwaih, Staff writer, Kuwait Times with his permission.
(Actually, even better than with his permission – because it never showed up on the online KT, I had to ask him to send it. And because my computer doesn’t read the file he sent, my husband had to run it off, and I am having to enter the whole thing the old fashioned way, by typing. So any garble, any mis-spellings or wierd grammar is mine, not his.
If you haven’t seen this article, I would love to hear your impressions. I found it very matter of fact. What do you think? Is his experience your experience?)
Life in Kuwait can sometimes be pretty boring. No matter how biased one can be in favor of one’s homeland, it’s always beneficial to acknowledge the limitations and deficiencies of it. Such acknowledgements serve as a gate to self-criticism, which is a necesary prerequisite to making recommandations and offering solutions as to how to improve the experience of living here.
This article provides basic recommendations on how to enjoy your life in Kuwait. The lack of development in all aspects of life in Kuwait has meant that people here – Kuwaitis and expats alike – have a harder time and less options for enjoying life than their fellows in other neighboring countries like Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. I mean, as Kuwaitis, we are stuck here, but for the expats, why would you come here if you could be in Dubai or Doha instead?
Returning from the US, I’d been hoping for a myore dynamic government attitude towards turning Kuwait into an open society, business hub, financial centre, and all the other meanlingless promises we have been hearing for so long. Going by their words, Kuwait is supposedly always on the brink of turning into a vibrant, go-ahead society, where different types and varieties of activities and exciting new venues are always just about to evolve.
Having pretty much given up on all those governmental promises, I’ve formulated some suggestions and rules of my own for helping to enjoy life in static Kuwait, apparently frozen in it’s very own time warp, so here they are:
1. Follow Politics. Do not miss political intercourse in Kuwait. All political actors here have their special sense of humour, whether comical lies and promises by ministers, or stupid proposals by MPs. It gets even funnier when people take to the street to protest, you get women dancing, swearing at ministers, and all kinds of amusing slogans.
2. Don’t get involved in the Kuwait stock market. Do not let your life become dependent on colors, today green, tomorrow red. Rational economic and political order is missing in this country, which is reflected in the market. But let’s face it, it’s always fun to watch how people react to instantly making or losing moeny when it’s not your money.
3. You NEED (Wasta) connections. You cannot enjoy your life in Kuwait without having Wasta. You will certainly need to renew your driving license, get a job for your visiting younger brother, extend his visit if he cannot find a job; these simple procedures will turn into pure suffering if you do not know someone who can help facilitate the process.
4. When June comes, get out as fast as possible. It’s oven-hot, and there is neither water nor electricity, do not come back before September.
5. If you do follow rule number four, do NOT use Kuwait Airways. Truly a horrible experience!! (My note – see previous article on Kuwait Airways here.)
6. Friendships? If you are a Kuwaiti, make friends with expats; if you are an expat, make friends with Kuwaitis. The interaction and exchange of views and insights are fun.
7. Visit a diwaniya. At least once a week even if you don’t like it, it’s important. It’s where you achieve Rule #3.
8. Do not watch Kuwaiti football. Do not watch Kuwaiti football league as it is extremely weak and very boring. And definitely do not support Kuwait National team, as you will end up suffering all the ills in the world. The Gulf Football Championship is coming up soon; don’t say I didn’t warn you.
9. Join one of those health clubs or spas. Well, if you can afford them, of course. They are nice and you will enjoy your time there, but they are ridiculously expensive.
10. Movies: forget about cinema in Kuwait. The Kuwait Cinema Company is months behind its counterparts in the west and even those in the region. Get smuggled DVDs from one of those places in Hawally or Salmiya. Sorry, IPR guys!
11. Starbucks: Make peace with Starbucks, you have to like it, they are everywhere, and chances are you will end up in one of them, so accept the fact that Starbucks is a part of your life.
12. Read Kuwait Times – every day! It will keep you up to date on local politics, provide funny stories about not-so-smart criminals, give you material to discuss with your Kuwaiti and non-Kuwaiti friends, and it can easily be found in any Starbucks. Oh, and you get to read my column twice a week!
(Meshary@kuwaittimes.net)
My comment: There’s a fine line between tongue-in-cheek and telling it like it is, and I think the column writers at the Kuwait Times are very brave in their reporting life here as they see it. I disagree with number 4 – when everyone else leaves, it is so much easier to drive here! I haven’t had any major electrical outages. And honestly, there is some major infrastructure work – and planning – that needs to take place here yesterday.
Having said that, I usually do leave for a while in August! It can get HUMID!
Clicks: Newest Coolest WordPress Feature
Too Totally COOOOOOLLLLL. If you are on WordPress, and you look on your Blog Stats page, you will see a new feature. Now, you can see all the clicks people have made from your blog to get to other referenced blogs/web pages, etc. Too too cool, and it just happened, without any great fanfare.
WordPress, I adore you.
I am also grateful for all the trash your Akismet feature keeps from showing up in the comment section. Infinite gratitude for that feature.
Search Engine Terms Challenge
Little Diamond, now en route to her home in Beirut, posted yesterday on blog search terms and her mystification at how some people end up on her blogsite when what they are really looking for is something else entirely.
I have found the same experience. I think the search engines must scan words, and no matter that they are in posts months apart, maybe even years apart, if you have written enough, your post may qualify. For example, if in November, you wrote a diatribe against porn, and in January you wrote an entry about stars you can see in the evening sky, then someone looking for “porn” and “star” is going to end up on your blog (equally mystified!)
So here is my challenge. Take a look at your statistics and tell us what terms people used to find your blog today (or yesterday.) To start off, I will share mine:
+wordpress +snap
choosing a wife
what are the political issues in france
do i have to refrigerate leftover peca
“how do feeds work”
here there and everywhere
my+way+hemingway+tshirt
wherever you go
sugar cookies evaporated milk cream of t
good pirates
Spicy Foods Kill Cancer
Sadu House
divinity candy
rosette irons history
locard\’s exchange principal and its imp
tunisia love marriage
Larry Steward – secret santa
milton on freedom of thought
Zoe Oldenburg Ansiau et
Zambia expats life
african lion poop
Of course, my hands down favorite is the last one! Check your search engine terms, and post here in comments or on your blog. It’s a dull rainy day – let’s have some fun!
Unexpected Pleasure
As I was leaving Seattle, my niece, Little Diamond, passed a book along to me. It’s part of our family culture – we read, and we pass along.
When my son was in university, I remember him telling me that I had addicted him to books. His first memory of books was living in Tunis, and when we would be going on a long trip, or when he had done something particularly good, I would pull down a new book from the shelf high up in my closet. Knowing he was approaching reading age, I had stocked up on books before we left.
As a student, he told me that as he approached final exams at university, he would motivate himself by telling himself that as soon as his last final was over, he could go to the bookstore and buy whatever the newest book out was that he was eager to read. Reading – for fun – during his school breaks was his great reward.
It’s that way for all of us. Before any trip, we stock up on good books to read. Before I left Seattle, I stocked up books for my Mother to read! We seek out places like Half Price Books (I do NOT own stock in Half Price Books) and Amazon.com to feed our habits. In our concern against running out of good books, we all have piles by our bed of books we intend to read. Some of my books have been there almost a year – since I moved to Kuwait!
So I accepted the book, Snake Hips: Belly Dancing and How I Found True Love, although I looked at the cover in dismay, and actually took it off for the trip. It’s about a Lebanese-American girl who goes in search of her ethnic roots. While at first I didn’t like her, I kept reading in spite of myself – the book drew me in. Little Diamond reviews the book here, (as well as several others that sound really good.)
This book was an unexpected pleasure – as are many of the books my book-voracious niece reads. The main character in this book has an unexpected wryly objective view of herself, is painfully honest, and you find yourself hoping she will find herself, and true love, in spite of her clumsy attempts.
Blog Stats
Back in November and December, when I published all those Thanksgiving and Christmas recipes, magic happened. All of a sudden, the blog was getting 500 – 600+ hits a day. I watched in amazement. The two top posts were Mom’s Fruitcake Recipe and Divinity Candy. The Divinity recipe still gets about 3 hits a day. Go figure. I only started collecting recipes when I discovered I wasn’t a great cook, and needed some fail-safe recipes to protect myself. Life is funny that way.
The rational side of my brain knew it was temporary, sort of like being a rock-star; you know it is an aberration, you know it can’t last forever, and you can’t help but love it. I was addicted. I would look at those blog stats in sheer wonder.
It all came to a screeching halt the day after Christmas. Oh, yeh, a few loyal fans kept the stats up until New Year’s, but the drop after Christmas was dramatic – like 300 people a day. Running the recipes did attract a good number of regular readers who continue reading, but nothing like before Christmas.
WordPress has these great charts for displaying blog hits, feeds, readers, even daily hits on individual articles. Until January 25th, I am stuck with a statistics chart that shows a huge readership to the left, and a dribble to the right. I am eager to have the chart entirely normal once again so I can keep things in perspective.
We all have our own reasons for blogging. One of mine is to put down in writing some records of things I see, think about, hear, my reactions to events. I don’t want to care about statistics, they are irrelevant, maybe even detrimental to my purpose. . . .but I do.
How about you? do you check your statistics? Do you follow who is reading your blog? Where readership is coming from? Is this a good or bad thing? Does it interfere with your purpose in blogging?
WordPress Snap Feature
Yesterday I noticed a cool new thing on my blogsite; when your arrow goes over the blogroll on the right, Snap provides a small window-preview of the blogroll entry. Very very cool!
I don’t know if you have to be on WordPress for it to work? Would someone out there not on WordPress try the Snap preview feature and let me know if it works for non WordPress users?
The Onion Satire
In her blog, my niece, Little Diamond, posted a recent article (satire) from The Onion. Titled 800,000 Privileged Youth Sign Up to Fight In Iraq, you can read it here.
The Onion isn’t really news. It’s a poke at the news. It’s one of the funniest websites I visit.
Blogging: The Opinion Explosion
Today there was a lively discussion on National Public Radio about news, and the great enormity of it, and how news reporting is changing. It used to be, so they said, that news reporters reported the facts, as best they could find the information, and they kept their opinions to themselves. The goal was objectivity.
Hmmmmm. In the US, it seems to me we had an entire period when the press was seen as “muckracking” or seeking scandal. The tabloids have always been with us. Even in the HBO TV series Rome, there were cartoons on the wall, a sort of primitive newspaper, entertaining, whether true or not-true.
So my speculation would be that as objective and fair (or as Fox puts it “fair and balanced” reporting which totally makes me want to throw up because FOX is SO SO slanted) as we would like to think our news is, bias has always crept in, and it is always a case of caveat emptor when it comes to news.
Here were some priceless quotes and ideas from the today’s NPR discussion:
“Not everyone’s experience is that interesting.”
Two rules for basic research:
1) Not every authority is right. Don’t believe someone just because they claim “authority”. Authorities can be wrong.
2) Just because you agree with an authoritie’s opinion does not make it true.
When you blog, podcast, SMS, etc. information, be sure to give your source of information and some evaluation of how reliable that source is likely to be.
Wikipedia is not necessarily a reliable source to be quoting. You have to double check the sources of information there, too.
My favorite piece of verbiage: We are experiencing a cacaphony of unfiltered information.
My comment: It’s exciting to hear people discuss the new ways in which we are getting – and sharing – news/information. I was in traffic, trying desperately to write phrases and ideas down at every red light. (How often do you say “alhamdallah” for the red lights??) We have access to so much more information, but how much of it is “hard” and how much is opinion? I love hearing people discussing information and dissemination of information, and how it is changing our lives.
And how much harder it is for any nation to keep a big secret – the containment walls have become more porous, information seeps through. Cell phones transmit real time dramas, bloggers share information (and misinformation), news can be SMS’d before it hits the airwaves by official sources. Governments which like to control information are fighting a losing battle, and it will increasingly change the faces of government (oops, my opinion!).
As our actions become increasingly public (cameras tracking vehicles, bank withdrawals, parking lots, cell phones broadcasting private moments, etc) we will all become, privately and publicly, increasingly accountable. (I am extrapolating here!) What an interesting new world . . .
Farewell Old Year
I’m ready for a new year. I’ve read your blogs, I can see that most of you are ready too, we are all ready for a new start, new hope, a better tomorrow.
2006 was a full year for us – a move to Kuwait, our son’s wedding to a wonderful young woman, and several trips back to take care of family business. My husband and I looked at each other and laughed – this year we haemmoraged money. We thank God we had the money we needed when we needed it, but the sheer volume of it, going out, stuns us. We hope this will be a better year, a more stable year, as we squirrel around, hiding our nuts for the winter of old age.
By the grace of God, my Mom is doing well, and thank all of you who have expressed concerns for her. She is grieving, she misses him so much, but none of us would choose for him to suffer one more minute on this earth when he could be in a better place. She spends her time right now surrounded by family and friends. We know she is going to have some bad moments, but she is amazingly resilient, and we see all sorts of signs that she will do well, once the grief abates.
Here is a photo of the photo I told you about earlier in the blog – Dad holding me up so I almost look like I am sitting on the mountain. Those old black and white photos were SO crisp; they enlarged without any serious loss of resolution.
I tell my friends this set the pace for my life of thrill seeking behavior . . .(just kidding, folks)
I wish you all a great day, tieing up loose ends, and a wonderful new year.
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