Black Friday
Black Friday – the Friday after Thanksgiving – bargain hunters in the USA head to the stores. Some stores opened as early as midnight to attract bargain hunters. Many more open around 5 or 6 in the morning. Most have loss leaders – i.e. specially priced items, maybe even below cost – hoping people will come in looking for the bargains and buy something else.
Not me.
Not in a million years.
I did it one year; we had just come back to the US after living for years on Germany. I needed 110v Christmas lights, so I went to a store at 0530 and stood in line until it opened at 6 and got many packages . . . but not enough. Later in the day I went back to see if there were any of the bargain priced lights left, and there were stacks and stacks of them. I learned my lesson.
We also learned that many things go on sale a couple days before in some stores, or are still on sale and in good supply the following Monday.
I hate lines. I hate competitive shopping. I have seen women grab things out of one another’s hands, I have seen them race down the aisles . . . and I just ask myself “What is this all about?” I have that primitive instinct too, hunting down that elusive bargain, bagging it and getting it home – but at what cost?
Anomaly – while gas prices have dropped back to reasonable rates here, fewer Americans are traveling this year. Normally, Thanksgiving is the holiday with the highest accident rate of all the holidays because of the road traffic, but because Americans are holding tight to their purses this year, fewer are on the road or in the air.
We are packing up today and moving on to the next stop. We will stop and see good friends en route to our destination, have a meal and a good visit with them . . .
yes, yes, thank you, we had a truly wonderful and memorable Thanksgiving, a truly Southern Thanksgiving, with family, with friends, and I will share it with you as soon as I get a card-reader so I can upload to the computer. 🙂 There were three kinds of turkey – a deep fried turkey, a smoked turkey, and turkey breast pieces pan-fried in batter, like chicken nuggets only fresher, and tasty. My favorite was a big bucket of venison stew, one of the hunters had bagged a big buck up in Kentucky.
I don’t believe there was a steamed vegetable or un-sauced vegetable in sight! Lots of gelatins made with sour cream or cream cheese, macaroni and cheese, three or four different kinds of stuffings and sweet on sweet sweet potatoes . . . and then came dessert, oh my. The tables – separate stations for meats, stuffings, vegetables and salads – were groaning, but then again, there were many many people to feed. My Southern husband was in heaven, eating all the foods I don’t know how to make and never dreamed of making.
The very best part of Thankgiving was the visiting. It was like one great big diwaniyya, with people in the kitchen and living room, people way out back shucking oysters and peeling shrimp, loads of ice tea all made up, sweet, unsweet, Splenda, lemondade . . . young people playing football or running around. . . it was a very sweet family day, beautiful weather, you couldn’t order a nicer Thanksgiving, and we were so delighted to be included.
“Seriously Bad Men”
AdventureMan and I are on a beach, and enjoyed one of the most magnificent sunsets we have ever seen, absolutely painterly, and I took lots of shots to share with you only to discover I don’t have my card reader/uploader little stick, so I have to wait until I can share them with you.
AdventureMan is having so much fun he has worn himself out, and today he came down with a bad cold. He spent some time napping while I spent some time out on the balcony, enjoying the sun and the crashing waves. When it came time for dinner, we decided some nice hot soup and hot tea would help him feel a lot better. Went down to the car, and our car is blocked by a huge white SUV, left running, doors locked, no driver.
For a minute we thought we were back in Kuwait.
There were three guys standing outside the office to the hotel, smoking and chatting (think Hank Hill) and we asked them if the car was their’s, and they said “No, it is the POLICE. There are some seriously bad men they are after, with guns!”
After about fifteen minutes, a couple beefy cops came by and one moved the car and parked it legally. We went and had a very delicious dinner at a Japanese restaurant where, when we told the owner we live in Kuwait, he said “Salaam A’aleikum” which astounded me, but he said he was Canadian-Japanese, and grew up with Arab immigrant kids. I love America.
On our way home, we stopped at a Publix, a very wonderful food market, where we picked up some green tea and coffee and bananas, just a little something to have in the room, and we also picked up some Thanksgiving bundles – how cool is this? Publix puts together grocery bags of Thanksgiving foods for the poor and needy, and has them on a stand by the check-out stands. You pick them up, pay for them, drop them in a bin and some needy family gets food for the holidays. They make it so easy to donate. We have so much for which we are thankful. I love this place.
When we got back to the motel, the cops were still surrounding the room (not in our building) where the seriously bad guys were holed up, and now, a couple hours later, there are two great big slow moving helicopters patrolling the beach area with huge spotlights, evidently trying to spot them on the move or something.
One of the bad buys is “SWAT trained” we were told.
The locks on our doors are not very serious locks. I am just hoping they catch them and go home so I can listen to the crashing of the waves in peace.
December Great Kuwait Holiday Challenge
Yes, I know, we are not even totally finished with the Great Kuwait Sand and Surf Challenge, but the holidays are coming – this year for many of us at the same time, with the big Eid and Christmas both falling in December.
If you are celebrating, be sure to have your cameras with you. This next challenge is more inclusive – The Great Kuwait Holiday Challenge is coming up next!
How To Turn Kuwaiti Youth Into Law Breakers:
Lord, have mercy! Who doesn’t know that the quickest way to get young people to want to read a book or watch a movie is to BAN it?? It’s just human nature! So you take smart, tech-savvy young people and FORBID them to watch YouTube, or hey! even better – block it – and watch how fast they find a way around every attempt to block it.
There are a lot of sayings that come to mind – like “That train done left the station” or “Like getting ketchup back in the bottle” – you might as well ban water from running downhill.
Lawyer to file case against ministry over failure to ban YouTube
Al Watan staff
and agencies
KUWAIT: A leading Kuwaiti lawyer Mubarak AlـTasha has said that he intends to file a case against the Ministry of Information for not blocking the Web site YouTube or at least blocking infamous clips that are considered as insulting to Islam and the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH).
The lawyer said that since the ministry failed to carry out its promises, a law suit will be filed against it in order to ensure that this is legally binding, and added that the Kuwaiti Constitution protects freedom of expression, press and publication however such freedoms should not in any way insult Islam.
He added that the State needs to uphold the Constitution and respect it since law 70/2002 issued by the Information Ministry states that internet providers should not promote or encourage pornographic, indecent and antiـIslamic material.
A few months ago local newspapers reported that the ministry ordered local Internet service providers to block the Web site over clips that could offend Muslims.
“Since the Web site displays the Quran in the form of songs sung with the oud … and displays disrespectful pictures of the Prophet Mohammed … please proceed with immediate effect in blocking the Web site http://www.youtube.com,” read a copy of a memo obtained by Reuters.
However, following the circulation of this memo, the ministry went back on its decision and the site was subsequently not banned.
Last updated on Monday 24/11/2008
Somalia: Pirates – and Dumping
This is a report from BBC News. I published a piece previously on Somalia on March 11, and blogger Shafi said the following:
“When wealthier nations align their fleet of vessels at Somali coast to fish illegally (estimated at around $6 million as the article says) and dump toxic waste in some parts of the water, aren’t they doing a greater evil and a major harm to the shell-shattared country and her people than the pirates for whom piracy is itself a survival method?”
The statement caught me totally by surprise. I went looking to see if it was true, and it was.
Shafi has a fascinating blog, and if you have some time, go take a look. Meanwhile, I am happy to see glimpses of a fuller picture coming forth in the news:
Ex-Somali Army Colonel Mohamed Nureh Abdulle lives in Harardhere – the town closest to where the hijacked Saudi oil tanker, Sirius Star is moored. He tells the BBC, via phone from his home, that the town’s residents are more concerned about the apparent dumping of toxic waste than piracy.
The Harardhere-born military man advises the town’s elders on security matters and is in his fifties.
Somalia has been wracked by conflict since 1991 – when its last national government was forced from power.
The super-tanker is close to our coast. It is a very, very long ship. Some time ago we had our own problems of piracy in our town but that has not happened lately.
The people who have been hijacking these ships in our seas are not from our region. We do not know any of the guys on the super-tanker and they haven’t made any contact with us.
You know, our problem is not piracy. It is illegal dumping.
These problems have been going for sometime and the world knows about it. The Americans have been here in the region for a long time now – they know about the pollution.
Instead, no, the world is only talking about the pirates and the money involved.
Mysterious illnesses
Meanwhile, there has been something else going on and it has been going on for years. There are many dumpings made in our sea, so much rubbish.
It is dumped in our seas and it washes up on our coastline and spreads into our area.
A few nights ago, some tanks came out from the high sea and they cracked it seems and now they are leaking into the water and into the air.
The first people fell ill yesterday afternoon. People are reporting mysterious illnesses; they are talking about it as though it were chicken pox – but it is not exactly like that either. Their skin is bad. They are sneezing, coughing and vomiting.
This is the first time it has been like this; that people have such very, very bad sickness.
The people who have these symptoms are the ones who wake early, before it is light, and herd their livestock to the shore to graze. The animals are sick from drinking the water and the people who washed in the water are now suffering.
TimesOnline ran an article on Somalia after the tsunami, and the contaminants that had been washed ashore:
“The current situation along the Somali coastline poses a very serious environmental hazard not only in Somalia but also in the eastern Africa sub-region,” the report says. Toxic waste was first dumped in Somalia in the late 1980s, but accelerated sharply during the civil war which followed the 1991 overthrow of the late dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Local warlords, many of them former ministers in Siad Barre’s last government, received large payments from Swiss and Italian firms for access to their respective fiefdoms.
Most of the waste was simply dumped on remote beaches in containers and leaking disposable barrels.
Somali sources close to the trade say that the dumped materials included radioactive uranium, lead, cadmium, mercury and industrial, hospital, chemical and various other toxic wastes. In 1992, Unep said that European firms were involved in the trade, but because of the high level of insecurity in the country there were never any accurate assessments of the extent of the problem.
In 1997 and 1998, the Italian newspaper Famiglia Cristiana, which jointly investigated the allegations with the Italian branch of Greenpeace, published a series of articles detailing the extent of illegal dumping by a Swiss firm, Achair Partners, and an Italian waste broker, Progresso.
The news is so much more complicated than it appears. How do we stop all these wrongful, hurtful things? Do not we have a responsibility toward the poorest nations? If we – meaning the richest nations – don’t stop this dumping now, is there not every chance in the world that it will come back to haunt us?
GKS&S Challenge: You Can Do Better!
See, it’s my challenge, I make up the rules, and wow. I am so glad I did. The first challenge came because I truly could not find a decent sunset photo, and you showed me they exist, and you showed me they could be totally WOW.
The second challenge, Sand and Surf, is because I love Sand and Surf, and I am so glad I cannot compete (it’s my contest, remember? Like it would be dirty pool for me to compete, and how would you know if I won fair and square, or if I used wasta with myself?
So just to encourage you, I am going to show some of my favorite sand and surf photos, but now that I have seen yours, I know that these are not particularly good, I just like them. YOU can do better. It’s OK with me. 🙂
Here is sand and surf and everything I love on Mnemba Island, a CCAfrica camp, off the coast of Zanzibar:
Here is a scene I found here in Kuwait:
Here is another shot from Kuwait . . . well there is surf . . .
Here is a shot from another favorite place I visit, Oman, near Sur:
Here is a shot taken in Seattle:
And here is a shot from the Oregon beaches with a little bit of everything – sand, surf, sunset and even a dancing dog:
Have a great weekend, Kuwait.
You still have time to get your photos in. The contest will close this coming Saturday, and the poll will go up, insh’allah, the same day. (Are you thinking of ideas for the next one? I am! 🙂 )
Sharing Faith
Several years ago, a woman put a book in my hands and said “I got this for you because I think you will love it.” It was kind of a shock; I didn’t know this woman all that well, but she knew me better. I loved the book, and I ordered a workbook to go with it, and I loved doing it. It was a forty day study called The Purpose Driven Life.
If you think I am trying to convert you, I’m not. Just as this woman wasn’t trying to convert me. The Purpose Driven Life is all about trying to make your walk in faith more meaningful. It starts with the premise that each one of us is uniquely created, and has a unique function to fill. The book has changed how I live my life. Intrigued? Go read the book!
I also subscribe to their daily e-mail, and today it was all about gaining wisdom from reading THE BOOK, learning from our own experiences and those of others:
Write down the major life lessons you’ve learned so you can share them with others. We should be grateful Solomon did this, because it gave us the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, which are filled with practical lessons on living. Imagine how much needless frustration could be avoided if we learned from each other’s life lessons.
Mature people develop the habit of extracting lessons from everyday experiences. I urge you to make a list of your life lessons. You haven’t really thought about them thoroughly unless you’ve written them down. Below are a few questions to jog your memory and get your started:
So what?
What has God taught me from failure?
What has God taught me from a lack of money?
What has God taught me from pain or sorrow or depression?
What has God taught me through waiting?
What has God taught me through illness?
What has God taught me from disappointment?
What have I learned from my family, my church, my relationships, my small group, and my critics?
It felt like a jolt of electricity going through me when I read those questions. Sometimes, I think I am not very bright; sometimes I don’t even learn from my own experiences and mistakes! As I read these questions, I started thinking how the financial crisis has energized us and changed our plans. We thought we would have a hunk of money to work with when we retire, and suddenly that hunk has shrunk! Meanwhile, we are instigating all kinds of new strategies to make our money go farther. You would think it would be depressing, but the truth is . . . we are having fun! I’d forgotten the thrill of the hunt; getting items for good prices, finding substitutes . . . and the questions above reminded me that at one time we knew a lot about stretching money.
AdventureMan is a great cook, and truly, if we ate fewer meals out, we probably wouldn’t have to worry about our waistlines. I used to bake all our bread, when we lived in Tunis, and only had access to wonderful baguettes. I even baked English muffins, my favorite.
Every one of the questions he asked today reminded me of a lesson I had learned . . . and then kind of let go. I didn’t exactly forget, but now all these life-lessons are fresh again!
You don’t have to be Christian, or Moslem, or a even a believer to think about these questions. Take a look at the questions and see what YOU have learned from life’s circumstances.
Where do YOU find wisdom?
First Female Police Class Graduates
Congratulations to the first class of female police academy graduates! I remember when women were first integrated into the US Military, my husband was assigned one of the first female lieutenants in Europe. I remember him saying, a year or two later that many of his best soldiers were women. I expect that that it will take some getting used to in Kuwait – just as it does in any country – and that the country will be the better for it in the long run.
These brave women have had the courage to break a barrier. God bless their work!
Al Watan staff
KUWAIT: The Support Authority at the Ministry of Interior held an open day on Wednesday for the parents of the first group of female cadets who joined the police academy this year. The event was held under the patronage of Undersecretary for Training and Education Brigadier Sheikh Ahmad AlـNawaf AlـSabah.
Brigadier Yusuf AlŮ€Mudhika welcomed the parents and sponsors of the event and said that Kuwait is grateful to the Kingdom of Bahrain for “making this dream a reality.” Bahrain has provided Kuwait with muchŮ€needed expertise in this field as it has already established a police academy for female cadets.
AlـMudhika explained that the new training for women has been designed to conform with Islamic teachings, customs and traditions and that the female cadets have proved to be as efficient and punctual as their male counterparts. He also referred to the curriculum and their daily timetable and said that their uniform has also been carefully selected to suit the cadets and that military accessories are being used to give a professional and disciplinary appearance.
He also mentioned the CCTV cameras within the academy and said that the parents had toured the cadets” dorms and shown satisfaction with their daughters” daily activities and their living quarters.
Last updated on Friday 14/11/2008
The Feast of St. Martin, and St. Martin’s Goose
I’ve always loved St. Martin’s Day because the children of the villages in Germany gather with laterns and walk the cobbled streets singing a song “Laterne! Laterne! . . . .” There is usually someone dressed in a large red cloak who rides a horse, as St. Martin.
Something else happens on St. Martin’s Day – it is the beginning of goose season! There is only about one month, in Germany, when you can eat this speciality, St. Martin’s Goose. It is baked, served with a very fatty gravy (sounds horrible, but it is delicious), red cabbage and potatoes. You can get a quarter goose, a half goose or you can go as a group and have an entire goose feast. The smell of roasting goose is yummy, and the goose itself, when well prepared, is succulent and tasty.
Here is how to roast a St. Martin’s goose:
Preparation: 1 hour
Cooking: 1/2 a hour by kg
Ingredients (for 6 persons):
– 1 goose of 6kg approximately
– 500 g of chopped pork – 1 egg – 4 shallots
– 1 small stalk of thym
– 200 g of crumb of bread (or gingerbread!)
– salt, pepper, nutmeg, parsley
– 100g of walnuts and chopped hazelnuts
Mix the various ingredients of the practical stuffing. Stuff, and let it gild on all the surface in its fat of goose, in the owen. Put then the goose in the oven and cook in its own juice (half an hour by kg). It came from This Website on European Cultures.
The stuffed goose uses surrounded with purée of chestnuts or with whole chestnuts cooked in a little broth then in the juice of the goose and accompanied with a Riesling of Moselle region.
Here is the story of St. Martin by James Kiefer from the Lectionary.
(I’ve always wondered why St. Martin tore his cloak in half, and didn’t give the whole cloak to the begger, since he probably had on warm clothing underneath.)
MARTIN OF TOURS
BISHOP AND THEOLOGIAN (11 NOV 397)
Martin was born around 330 of pagan parents. His father was a soldier, who enlisted Martin in the army at the age of fifteen. One winter day he saw an ill-clad beggar at the gate of the city of Amiens. Martin had no money to give, but he cut his cloak in half and gave half to the beggar. (Paintings of the scene, such as that by El Greco, show Martin, even without the cloak, more warmly clad than the beggar, which rather misses the point.) In a dream that night, Martin saw Christ wearing the half-cloak. He had for some time considered becoming a Christian, and this ended his wavering. He was promptly baptized. At the end of his next military campaign, he asked to be released from the army, saying: “Hitherto I have faithfully served Caesar. Let me now serve Christ.” He was accused of cowardice, and offered to stand unarmed between the contending armies. He was imprisoned, but released when peace was signed.
He became a disciple of Hilary of Poitiers, a chief opponent in the West of the Arians, who denied the full deity of Christ, and who had the favor of the emperor Constantius. Returning to his parents’ home in Illyricum (Yugoslavia, approximately), he opposed the Arians with such effectiveness that he was publicly scourged and exiled. He was subsequently driven from Milan, and eventually returned to Gaul. There he founded the first monastary in Gaul, which lasted until the French Revolution.
In 371 he was elected bishop of Tours. His was a mainly pagan diocese, but his instruction and personal manner of life prevailed. In one instance, the pagan priests agreed to fell their idol, a large fir tree, if Martin would stand directly in the path of its fall. He did so, and it missed him very narrowly. When an officer of the Imperial Guard arrived with a batch of prisoners who were to be tortured and executed the next day, Martin intervened and secured their release.
In the year 384, the heretic (Gnostic) Priscillian and six companions had been condemned to death by the emperor Maximus. The bishops who had found them guilty in the ecclesiastical court pressed for their execution. Martin contended that the secular power had no authority to punish heresy, and that the excommunication by the bishops was an adequate sentence. In this he was upheld by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. He refused to leave Treves until the emperor promised to reprieve them. No sooner was his back turned than the bishops persuaded the emperor to break his promise; Priscillian and his followers were executed. This was the first time that heresy was punished by death.
Martin was furious, and excommunicated the bishops responsible. But afterwards, he took them back into communion in exchange for a pardon from Maximus for certain men condemned to death, and for the emperor’s promise to end the persecution of the remaining Priscillianists. He never felt easy in his mind about this concession, and thereafter avoided assmblies of bishops where he might encounter some of those concerned in this affair. He died on or about 11 November 397 (my sources differ) and his shrine at Tours became a sanctuary for those seeking justice.
The Feast of Martin, a soldier who fought bravely and faithfully in the service of an earthly sovereign, and then elisted in the service of Christ, is also the day of the Armistice which marked the end of the First World War. On it we remember those who have risked or lost their lives in what they perceived as the pursuit of justice and peace.
Veteran’s Day Sunrise
This is for you, AdventureMan, your own Veteran’s Day sunrise.
To anyone who has ever served in a nation’s armed forces. We salute you. Today and every day, we honor the service you gave to your country.
If you talk to any Kuwaiti veteran of the Gulf War and Liberation in Kuwait, you will learn that even a very short time in service can be a transformational experience. Those memories are vivid, and last the rest of your life.
Have a great day, Kuwait.
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