Time Magazine Person of the Year
Time Magazine announced it’s person of the year – it’s YOU! It’s me! Here is what they had to say:
TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year: You
NEW YORK (Dec. 16) – Congratulations! You are the Time magazine “Person of the Year.”
The annual honor for 2006 went to each and every one of us, as Time cited the shift from institutions to individuals _ citizens of the new digital democracy, as the magazine put it. The winners this year were anyone using or creating content on the World Wide Web.
You can read the rest of the article
here.
WordPress Blockage + Website Unblocked
I’ve been fiddling all morning and I can’t get onto WordPress through Safari. Checking around, I can’t look up any of my favorite WordPress blogs on Safari today – Jewaira, Africa Blog, Sociolingo – nothing happens. All kinds of other things are working, though, including a site that has been blocked for months – Go Fug Yourself.
It’s not what it sounds like. It’s an unfortunate name. It’s a very funny, nasty, mean-spirited blog about fashion mistakes. Did I mention it is very very funny?
I pity anyone who wants to be a celebrity. Imagine having to look perfect 24/7 and occasionally not getting it right. These critics are merciless. Did I mention they are also hysterically funny?
Every month, I write a note to QualityNet saying they’ve made a big mistake blocking this site, that it has NO sexual content, and, in fact, mocks and scorns women who show too much of their “lady parts”. I was shocked today to see it is no longer blocked!
Off the Charts
Yesterday I was stunned to discover this blog on the WordPress Top 100 Blogs. It was #87, near the bottom, but I was astonished to even see it there at all, and delighted. Alas, such success is fleeting, and it was only for the one day. Checking this morning, I am now off the chart.
In the meantime, it is so much fun watching what people are downloading – Mom’s Fruitcake. Christmas Divinity. There is such a need out there for EASY recipes for time-challenged Christmas celebrators.
In the meantime, dear ones, time is flying! If you need two easy recipes, these two are the very easiest: Chocolate Macaroons and Russian Tea Cakes. Happy baking :-)!
Cross Cultural Flummox
Scanning through the blogs yesterday, I saw one I almost didn’t check. It seemed to be a no-brainer. LaialyQ8 asked if you would share your password with your husband/wife.
Sheerly out of idle curiousity, I checked. And I was stunned to see the responses. Almost every person said they WOULD.
I’ve thought about it all day. It has to be a cultural difference. Hands down, I bet most of my friends would say “no way!” It isn’t a question of how much you love someone, to me, I just need some areas of my life that are private. I don’t keep secrets from my husband – I share things with him gladly.
But do I think he needs access to my correspondence with old girlfriends, friends I knew before I knew him? If they confide details of some crisis to me, does he need access to that information?
He trusts me. He should! And he would never, never ask me for my password, and I wouldn’t ask for his. Of course we share passwords for financial records and access, but not for our e-mail accounts.
It never for a heartbeat occurred to me there was another way of thinking about it. I was flummoxed (that’s for you, Zin!) And it is good information; I need to think about this and integrate it and try to understand it. That’s one of the things I love about living in a foreign country; challenges my assumptions and forces me to think differently, outside the box.
Alhamdallah for the Thorns
1001 Kuwait Nights and I have been exploring parallel lines of thought – thanking God/Allah for problems as well as blessings . . . even the idea that problems, too, are blessings, or a conduit to blessings . . .
A friend sent this today. I hadn’t seen it before, but it continues the exploration of the theme. . .
Thorns
Sandra felt as low as the heels of her shoes as she pushed against a November gust and the florist shop door.
Her life had been easy, like a spring breeze. Then in the fourth month of her second pregnancy, a minor automobile accident stole that from her.
During this Thanksgiving week she would have delivered a son. She grieved over her loss. As if that weren’t enough, her husband’s company threatened a transfer. Then her sister, whose holiday visit she coveted, called saying she could not come for the holiday.
Then Sandra’s friend infuriated her by suggesting her grief was a God-given path to maturity that would allow her to empathize with others who suffer. She has no idea what I’m feeling, thought Sandra with a shudder.
Thanksgiving? Thankful for what? She wondered. For a careless driver whose truck was hardly scratched when he rear-ended her? For an airbag that saved her life but took that of her child?
“Good afternoon, can I help you?” The shop clerk’s approach startled her.
“I….I need an arrangement,” stammered Sandra.
“For Thanksgiving? Do you want beautiful but ordinary, or would you like to challenge the day with a customer favorite I call the Thanksgiving “Special?” asked the shop clerk. “I’m convinced that flowers tell stories,” she continued. “Are you looking for something that conveys ‘gratitude’ this thanksgiving?”
“Not exactly!” Sandra blurted out. “In the last five months, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.”
Sandra regretted her outburst, and was surprised when the shop clerk said, “I have the perfect arrangement for you.”
Just then the shop door’s small bell rang, and the shop clerk said, “Hi, Barbara…let me get your order.” She politely excused herself and walked toward a small workroom, then quickly reappeared, carrying an arrangement of greenery, bows, and long-stemmed thorny roses. Except the ends of the rose stems were neatly snipped: there were no flowers.
“Want this in a box?” asked the clerk.
Sandra watched for the customer’s response. Was this a joke? Who would want rose stems with no flowers! She waited for laughter, but neither woman laughed.
“Yes, please,” Barbara, replied with an appreciative smile. “You’d think after three years of getting the special, I wouldn’t be so moved by its significance, but I can feel it right here, all over again,” she said as she gently tapped her chest. And she left with her order.
“Uh,” stammered Sandra, “that lady just left with, uh….she just left with no flowers!
“Right, said the clerk, “I cut off the flowers. That’s the Special. I call it the Thanksgiving Thorns Bouquet.”
“Oh, come on, you can’t tell me someone is willing to pay for that!” exclaimed Sandra.
“Barbara came into the shop three years ago feeling much like you feel today,” explained the clerk. “She thought she had very little to be thankful for. She had lost her father to cancer, the family business was failing, her son was into drugs, and she was facing major surgery.”
“That same year I had lost my husband,” continued the clerk, “and for the first time in my life, had just spent the holidays alone. I had no children, no husband, no family nearby, and too great a debt to allow any travel.”
“So what did you do?” asked Sandra.
“I learned to be thankful for thorns,” answered the clerk quietly. “I’ve always thanked God for the good things in my life and never questioned the good things that happened to me, but when bad stuff hit, did I ever ask questions! It took time for me to learn that dark times are important. I have always enjoyed the ‘flowers’ of life, but it took thorns to show me the beauty of God’s comfort. You know, the Bible says that God comforts us when we’re afflicted, and from His consolation we learn to comfort others.”
Sandra sucked in her breath as she thought about the very thing her friend had tried to tell her. “I guess the truth is I don’t want comfort. I’ve lost a baby and I’m angry with God.”
Just then someone else walked in the shop. “Hey, Phil!” shouted the clerk to the balding, rotund man.
“My wife sent me in to get our usual Thanksgiving Special….12 thorny, long-stemmed stems!” laughed Phil as the clerk handed him a tissue-wrapped arrangement from the refrigerator.
“Those are for your wife?” asked Sandra incredulously. “Do you mind me asking why she wants something that looks like that?”
“No…I’m glad you asked,” Phil replied. “Four years ago my wife and I nearly divorced. After forty years, we were in a real mess, but with the Lord’s grace and guidance, we slogged through problem after problem. He rescued our marriage. Jenny here (the clerk) told me she kept a vase of rose stems to remind her of what she learned from “thorny” times, and that was good enough for me. I took home some of those stems. My wife and I decided to label each one for a specific “problem” and give thanks for what that problem taught us.”
As Phil paid the clerk, he said to Sandra, “I highly recommend the Special!”
“I don’t know if I can be thankful for the thorns in my life.” Sandra said. “It’s all too…fresh.”
“Well,” the clerk replied carefully, “my experience has shown me that thorns make roses more precious. We treasure God’s providential care more during trouble than at any other time. Remember, it was a crown of thorns that Jesus wore so we might know His love. Don’t resent the thorns.”
Tears rolled down Sandra’s cheeks. For the first time since the accident, she loosened her grip on resentment. “I’ll take those twelve long-stemmed thorns, please,” she managed to choke out.
“I hoped you would,” said the clerk gently. “I’ll have them ready in a minute.”
“Thank you. What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. Nothing but a promise to allow God to heal your heart. The first year’s arrangement is always on me.” The clerk smiled and handed a card to Sandra. “I’ll attach this card to your arrangement, but maybe you would like to read it first.”
It read: “My God, I have never thanked You for my thorns. I have thanked You a thousand times for my roses, but never once for my thorns. Teach me the glory of the cross I bear; teach me the value of my thorns. Show me that I have climbed closer to You along the path of pain. Show me that, through my tears, the colors of Your rainbow look much more brilliant.”
Praise Him for your roses; thank him for your thorns!
Bahrain Censors Google Earth
This morning my nephew from GE sent me an e-mail with an article from the Financial Times on Mahmoud’s Den and Google Earth in Bahrain. When Google Earth upgraded the resolution on Bahrain, Bahrainis started recording the discrepancy in properties, and circulating copies of residencies, luxury cars, boats, etc. in contrast to the poor, crowded villages. The Bahraini government banned the use of Google Earth in Bahrain. You can guess what happened next – downloads shot through the roof. It’s just human nature.
The article in Financial Times gives more information.
When are governments going to figure out that when you ban a technology, you only make it more attractive? Google Earth downloads for free, it is available to everyone with a computer and adequate bandwidth. No matter what safeguards you put in, there are ways around it. That’s just the nature of technology.
Mahmoud’s Den sports a button that says “No Sunni, No Shiia, Just Bahraini”.
Top Posts
The Top Posts column in WordPress statistics disappeared for a few days, and oh! I really missed it. I’m not so interested in the total numbers as in what people find the most interesting. I love the new Top Posts system, where you can click on a little icon that looks like a graph, and it shows you the total history of that particular post – how often people look for it and choose it, not coming from some aggregator, but from somewhere like a google search. I like it that WordPress keeps improving itself, and listens to our feedback.
Two Months and Still Learning
This is another anniversary of sorts – around now I have been blogging for two months.
I’ve been reading the Kuwait blogs for more than a year. I knew I was moving here and I wanted to know what it is like. I could get lots of hard information on web sites, but I wanted to know the “feel” of the place, and once I started reading blogs, I was hooked.
Somewhere along the way, I was tempted beyond my ability to resist to comment – I think it was when 1001 Kuwaiti Nights then ZinZin, asked if anyone out there was reading her blog. . . and her blog remains one of my favorites to this day. Then Jewaira wrote a story about vampires, and I found myself making an analogy to those of us who float around watching, but not participating – it’s kind of like being un-dead. The last straw was when – I think it was Erzulie called those who read without commenting, without blogging “floaters”, which has a very disgusting connotation. . . and all those factors came together, and I figured that yes, it is a big risk, but I don’t want to be a “floater.”
Went with WordPress, and man, am I glad I did. There are some NASTY people out there! They would fill my comment section with totally disgusting stuff were it not for the Spam catcher!
It took me a while to figure out the mechanics, but it’s been fun, it’s been a growth experience, and it’s been therapeutic when going through some tough times. Only after I had been blogging for a month did I tell anyone I was blogging – the first one I told was my husband, then my son and then my niece. Slowly, slowly, I have been telling my friends. Pretty much they are all shocked, and then delighted. As you know, my niece Little Diamond also now has her own blog.
I have my own reasons for blogging – and one of them is to get down in writing some of what I experience. One thing I learn every day is that when change comes, it can come in a flash, and everything changes. You learn to survive. You learn to celebrate RIGHT NOW what can be celebrated, and you learn to celebrate the small things.
Having expressed those lofty ideals, at first I got hooked on statistics – was anyone reading? Here is what I learned – that the posts I spend the most time and energy on often get very little immediate response, but get good response over time – the trip reports, the book reviews, some of my cross-cultural stories. What gets HUGE readership on a one time basis is pure fluff – my all time high came when I published the e-mail forward about cell phone usage and cancer. Second was The Mermaid of Mangaf. Third was when someone ranted at me. Go figure! I’ve learned my lessons. I have about 100 faithful readers a day, and I am content with that. No! No! They are NOT all my relatives! 🙂
In the meanwhile, I want to thank you for including me in the Kuwait blogging family. I read your posts; you brighten my days and you always give me new things to think about. Right now I am following The Ultimate with her translation of Killa Matgoog’s analysis of the current political scene in Kuwait. It’s information and analysis I don’t find so clearly written in the press. I’m enjoying blogging, and you are giving me wonderful help and feedback. Again, thanks for making me feel at home.
Bloggers and Productivity
A teeny note found at the bottom of page 36 in the October 9th
-
New Yorker
(yeh, I’m a little behind in my reading . . .)
“A report last week by Advertising Age Editor at Large Bradley Johnson noted that about 35 million workers – or one in four people in the U.S. labor force – spend an average of 3.5 hours, or 9% of each work day reading blogs.”
I’m not all that great in math, but wouldn’t 3.5 hours of a work day be more than 9%? Depending on whether you work a fairly standard seven – eight hour day, that would be nearly HALF your working day. They must have meant 9% of the work week . . . still, significantly cutting into productive working time.
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