Your Words Make all the Difference
Thank you, Kimberly, for sending me this great message:
Scamese
This was in my newest New Yorker magazine, originally given me by Little Diamond, now I can’t live without my subscription. 🙂 There is the kind of news you get on television, like what they have pictures of, maybe not the most important stuff but visual. Then there is National Public Radio news, and the New York Times, and The New Yorker. The New Yorker also has some of the greatest, funniest covers ever, and great cartoons. This one, as you might imagine, is near and dear to my heart:
Disable Your GPS Settings for Camera on Your Smart Phone
Thanks to my very savvy Kuwait friend for forwarding this timely reminder to be careful about what you post. What stalkers can learn from a photo on a social-networking site is frightening.
More News From Better Books and Cafe in Kuwait
I wish Better Books and Cafe had been in Kuwait while I was there. And are people having luck with Magic Jack in Kuwait? We had one, and it stopped working. We thought it had been blocked or something.
Better Books and Cafe (Kuwait’s only used bookstore and cafe) has several announcements and a new contest for you.
Better Books and Cafe is on FACEBOOK
‘Magic Jacks’ are for sale – they facilitate inexpensive telephone calls between Kuwait and the USA and Canada
A database of our Classics, Cliffs Notes, Autobiographies and Fiction books is now available. Customers can now browse our database and reserve books via email. Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning authors have been highlighted. Better Books has many more books than are not on the database yet. More will be added every month. Prices of books with multiple entries may differ as per publication;
A new toilet has been constructed just upstairs for Better Books – no m
Better Books and Cafe (Kuwait’s only used bookstore and cafe) has several announcements and a new contest for you.
Better Books and Cafe is on FACEBOOK – click here to ‘Like’ us;
‘Magic Jacks’ are for sale – they facilitate inexpensive telephone calls between Kuwait and the USA and Canada
A database of our Classics, Cliffs Notes, Autobiographies and Fiction books is now available (see attached, press ctrl+F if you’re looking for a particular book or author). Customers can now browse our database and reserve books via email. Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning authors have been highlighted. Better Books has many more books than are not on the database yet. More will be added every month. Prices of books with multiple entries may differ as per publication;
A new toilet has been constructed just upstairs for Better Books – no more walking past the mechanic two buildings over.
The store has two additional bookcases, an extra beanbag chair and one more plush carpet.
Most genres are now segregated and labeled making books easier to find – we even have a separate shelf for books made into movies!
Upcoming Events at Better Books and Cafe:
Art of Living will start a course 24-28 April. Contact us for more information;
Due to the success of the Nithyananda Yoga Center courses held this month, there will be yoga twice a week and a 3 day ‘silence meditation’ course at their premises. Contact 25635450, 99838117 or 99315825 for more information
A second Gavel Club has been formed so your teenager is welcome to attend a Gavel Club meeting every Friday night free of charge. A nominal charge is requested if/when they join. Gavel Clubs are Toastmasters-sponsored groups for teenagers and allow active members who put in effort to gain confidence and expertise in the art of public speaking and develop their leadership skills. For more information, call/email Anil Lobo 99283020 / anilrlobo@yahoo.com. or Xavier Muthu 9985 0173Xavier.Muthu@trade.gov
Expat Mums is a new online community called recently set up for expatriate mothers of all nationalities here in Kuwait. They have regular events such as playgroups, stroller walks, mums’ lunches/dinners/coffees, and soon to be Story Times and Music Times at Better Books Bookstore. There are also specific sections for Classifieds & Reviews of local businesses in our secure online website. The group is open to all regardless of faith/origin/belief. To join this community, please visit http://www.expatmumskwi.com
And lastly “MOVIE NIGHTS” will return to Better Books and Cafe in May. Please vote for the movie you would like to see:
May 14 6-8pm Georgia O’Keeffe or Blood Wedding
May 21 6-8 pm Himalaya or Pope Joan
May 28 6-8 pm The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) or Frankenstein (1994)
BETTER BOOKS AND CAFE CONTEST
Match the correct novel to its first line to win a PRIZE.
1. _____ If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.
2. _____ It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.
3. _____ 124 was spiteful.
4. _____ It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
5. _____ Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano BuendÃa was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
6. _____ Call me Ishmael.
7. _____ It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
8. _____ In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
A. Beloved
B. The Great Gatsby
C. 1984
D. Moby-Dick
E. One Hundred Years of Solitude
F. Herzog
G. The Bell Jar
H. Pride and Prejudice
Prizes must be collected at Better Books before 16 May 2011.
All mentioned books are available at Better Books – reserve them today.
Feel free to forward this email to your friends.
Good Night, Kuwait
I’ve just had such a great day, and it started off so inauspiciously – no sleep. I was able to grab a little nap this morning, and another hour this afternoon, and in between – time with husband and friends, lots of catching up . . . it’s been a great day.
And, from my rooftop, I even have a view of the sunset, LOL. That is not a real palm tree; that is one of those huge-communication-towers-disguised-as-a-palm-tree.
(Lord have mercy, I have forgotten how SLOW the internet is in Kuwait. Folks, there is a whole world out there where uploads and downloads take mere milliseconds, and some of those countries are a very short airplane ride away. What is it with the slow internet in Kuwait? There isn’t even a broken cable off the coast of Egypt – that I know of – that would make it so slow. The slowness seems to me to be everpresent. Sometimes it is slow, other times it is slower. Aargh.)
Al Jazeera (English) Covers Egypt
If you are in the USA, the best coverage I have been able to find has been on Al Jazeera live. They have English language coverage. Unlike Egypt, which has closed down all access to the internet, you can stream Al Jazeera live by clicking on the blue type below.
Their coverage is – from what I can tell – fair and balanced.
It’s in the mid 70’s Fahrenheit, in Cairo in the daytime, getting down to the 50’s – 60’s at night – perfect weather for a protest. Looks like Paris in the late 60’s.
“I’m Not Sure I Agree With What I am About to Say”
After all these years . . .
AdventureMan can still crack me up. As we were talking the other day, he started a sentence with “I am not sure I agree with what I am about to say . . .” and he didn’t get any further. I was cracking up too badly to listen. Like – if you might not agree with what you are about to say, why on earth would you say it??? I didn’t even have to say it, he started laughing, too, and whatever he was about to say did not get said.
This morning, he came in wanting to interrupt me with some item of business and I glared at him. I glared at him.
“I’m paying bills.” I said. That says it all. Paying bills is stressful for me. Historically, as a young military wife, it was all about making sure the bills were paid and wondering how much money would be left after paying all the bills. We never did not pay a bill. We often eeeked our way from paycheck to paycheck.
Now, by the grace of God, there is enough money, even retired, but we still need to be careful, and I particularly try to be careful because so much is done electronically, that transposing two digits could post a payment to the wrong account, or pay the wrong amount. For me, it takes concentration.
“After 37 years, I should know that, shouldn’t I?” he asked, backing carefully out of my office.
LLLOOOOLLL.
What Mormons Do Right
Today, after church, AdventureMan took me to my very favorite place in Pensacola, Tudo’s (Vietnamese) and as we were waiting for our food, and our take out order (the Happy Baby has a bad cold so we are also taking lunch to his Mom and Dad) I notice the guys in the next booth are speaking in a foreign language, and because I don’t speak it, I can only guess, it was perhaps Maylay.
I think they had to be Mormons. They were in their twenties, and very clean cut. Two were probably foreign students, and two were in white shirts with ties, and dark pants, what I think of as Mormon-boys-on-their-mission dress, and it carries over into post-mission life. We saw them often, two by two, in Germany and in France, sometimes singing, sometimes going door to door, sometimes passing out pamphlets. They always spoke the language of the country they were in, maybe not so well at the beginning, but at the end of their two year mission, they spoke it pretty well.
From time to time, at the next table, they were all four speaking the same language, and it was not English.
So lets say, from a strategic point of view, that our goal is to spread the ‘good news’ (which, oh by the way, it is.) Doesn’t it just make sense that you make an effort to speak the language of your target nationality?
You would be amazed at how few of the other denominations who send ministers and evangelists overseas, how very few of them have much training in the language of the people they will be serving, or ministering to, or trying to share the good news with. You would not be amazed that when you are trying to communicate, especially big ideas, it really helps to be able to communicate. It also shows respect for another country and another culture, and humility to learn other languages and other ways. I can imagine that much of their success comes from an ability to build a personal relationship, and that is more likely to happen if you speak their language.
I am not Mormon, as you know, and I admire much of what they do right – I admire their neighborliness, their obligation to reach out and help where help is needed, and their stewardship of resources, built right into practicing the religion. I especially admire their ability to teach languages to the young missionaries they send out, and their vast library of genealogical resources.
“How Do You Want to Die?”
I had taken my mother to her internal medicine specialist, she had an earache, and as an aside, had mentioned she no longer is taking Lipitor, because it gave her problems with her legs, but should she go back on it?
“How do you want to die?” asked the doctor, and we just looked at her with our mouths hanging open. It seems kind of a bald question, doesn’t it? But the doctor was entirely serious.
“Doctors ask themselves this all the time,” she continued. “Do you want to end up in a nursing home, or living with your children, as your body continues to fail and your money dwindles away and you can do less and less every day?”
“I want to die in my sleep, at home” my 87 year old Mom responded.
“Then you want to have a heart attack,” the doctor said. “That’s what really happens when a person dies in their sleep, their heart fails.”
“That’s your choice,” she said. “Doctors discuss it all the time. Most of us want to go while life is still good, and we want to go quickly. We see too many people prolonging their lives and regretting it.”
I’ve never heard a doctor speak so bluntly before. We’re still kind of in shock. It has definitely given us something to think about.
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