Easter Sunrise and Noah’s Ark
Today is the most beautiful day in the church year, Easter Sunday. Mary and Mary go to the tomb where Jesus was laid, only to find the 2 ton stone rolled away from the entrance, and angels waiting there, telling the women that Jesus was not there, that he had arisen. If you have been reading this blog for any time at all, you will know that it delights my heart that women were the first to know, and that Jesus, resurrected, appeared first to a woman. In the Bible, she tells the men and they don’t believe her. LLOOLL.
It is a glorious Easter morning:
As part of her Easter greeting today, a friend sent the following, which I love. Since all three traditions, Jewish, Christian and Moslem, celebrate Noah (Noh) I thought I would share it with you.
Noah’s Ark
(Everything I need to know, I learned from Noah’s Ark. )
ONE: Don’t miss the boat.
TWO: Remember that we are all in the same boat!
THREE: Plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark.
FOUR: Stay fit. When you’re 60 years old, someone may ask you to do something really big.
FIVE: Don’t listen to critics; just get on with the job that needs to be done.
SIX: Build your future on high ground.
SEVEN: For safety’s sake, travel in pairs.
EIGHT: Speed isn’t always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs.
NINE: When you’re stressed, float awhile.
TEN: Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.
ELEVEN: No matter the storm, when you are with God, there’s always a rainbow waiting.
Have a great day, a blessed day, Kuwait.
Bees and Bee Keeping in Kuwait
Also from the Kuwait Agrifood Website – who knew? Who knew there was a family in Kuwait working to build a viable honey-production culture? I came across this accidentally, and love the site.
Growing up, i remember hearing that people with allergies should eat local honey, it helps build resistance (don’t ask me, I’m not a doctor!) and, in addition, we are all trying to shop and live more locally, so having Kuwait honey is – to me – way cool.
Have you seen honey from this farm in the markets? Can you tell me where?
Established in 1996 as a small apiary with 1-15 hives. A year later the apiary was supported with 5 hives imported from Al Yahya Company in Egypt which appeared to be a good start and was of distinguished quality and quantity. That encouraged us to invest in this field and plan to take it as a side job
Ever since that time the apiary grew year after another till the number of hives reached 300 in the year 2002 and it greaw rapidly in the following year till it became 700 hives distributed in different areas of Kuwait
Our production is divided into 3 Seasons. We produce 4 different kinds of honey: These are Cidar honey (main products) lasts from 10/9- 10/11 every year. The second season includes 2 products: flowers honey. (Rhanterium epoposum) and spring honey i.e. flowers of inhabited areas this lasts from 10/3-10/5 every year. The third season started in 10/5- 10/7 and is mainly kina honey
We bread a good kind of bees internationally well known: Crinoboly and Italian, both are originated from AlYahya Company- Egypt. We are producing Italian queens of a very good quality able to adapt with Kuwait environment. A test is being implemented in our apiary upon which we will decide whether we will be able to fill our needs and the needs of local market
We have a specialized team who know how to choose good places, provide wooden hives, import bees and settle it inside the wooden hives and carry out all necessary care such as follow up, supervise, feeding and honey cultivation
FAHAD BIN AJAJ Apiary
Jaber Al-Ali Suburb 7th – block 1 – Street 5
7911796-7192738 7192738 – 7911796 – Tel
e-mail: hunyQ8@yahoo.com
William Dalrymple: The Age of Kali
Having read and loved In Xanadu: A Quest by William Dalrymple, and having received recommendations by friends who say they read ALL of William Dalrymple, I started on this second book, The Age of Kali. I didn’t like it, not one bit. I am proud to say I read it all the way to the end, because often if I don’t like a book, I will say to myself “I don’t need this!” and toss it, but I didn’t, I stuck with it. I am proud because it isn’t easy to stick with a book you don’t like, and I didn’t like this book.
In Xanadu, Dalrymple was wryly funny, hilariously funny, and most of the humor was directed at himself. In The Age of Kali, there is nothing funny.
The Age of Kali is a series of interviews and adventures in India and Pakistan. The author did these interviews and took notes (some are published in slightly different forms as magazine articles) over a period of ten years and then strung them all together to form this book. There is little or no linkage from one to the other. They are grouped geographically.
Here is what I like and admire – this man achieves the most amazing interviews, many times just by asking the right person at the right time. He insinuates himself, asks easy questions, and then sticks in a hard question. He doesn’t seem to flinch from putting himself in danger, and he doesn’t stand on respect when asking his questions. I admire that he went difficult places, interviewed difficult people, and wrote the interviews up without fawning over the celebrity status of his interviewee.
What I don’t like is that he doesn’t seem to like anybody very much. There are no funny anecdotes. By the end of the first interview, I began to get an impression that he doesn’t like India very much (and I believe that is NOT true, as he lives part-time in Delhi) and that India is not a place I want to visit. He interviews corrupt politicians, descendants of the moghuls, Benazir Bhutto – and her mother, Imran Khan (the cricket player) and many others. In each and every interview, he maintains a distance that tells us he doesn’t like these characters very much.
Here are some quotes from early in the book:
These days Bihar was much more famous for its violence, corruption and endemic caste-warfare. Indeed, things were now so bad that the criminals and the politicians of the state were said to be virtually interchangeable: no fewer than thirty-three of Bihar’s State Assembly MLAs had criminal records, and a figure like Dular Chand Yadav, who had a hundred cases of dacoity and fifty murder cases pending against him, could also be addressed as the Honorable Member for Barth.
As he interviews Bihar politician Laloo Prasad Yadav:
I asked Laloo about his childhood. He proved only too willing to talk about it. He lolled back against the side of the plane, his legs stretched over two seats.
‘My father was a small farmer,’ he began, scratching his balls with the unembarrassed thoroughness of a true yokel.
OK, that was funny. I had to read it aloud to AdventureMan. One of the things that still unnerves me living here is that the men are always touching themselves – something so totally forbidden in my culture as to be simply unthinkable.
In his section about Pakistan:
These people – the Pathans – have never been conquered, at least not since the time of Alexander the Great. They have seen off centuries of invaders – Persians, Arabs, Turks, Moghuls, Sikhs, British, Russians – and they retain the mixture of arrogance and suspicion that this history has produced in their character. History has also left them with a curious political status. Although most Pathans are technically within Pakistan, the writ of Pakistan law does not carry in to the heartland of their territories.
These segregated areas are in effect private tribal states, out of the control of the Pakistan government. They are an inheritance from the days of the Raj: the British were quite happy to let the Pathans act as a buffer zone on the edge of the Empire, and they did not try to extend their authority in to the hills. Where the British led, the modern Pakistani authorities have followed. Beyond the checkpoints on the edge of the Peshawar, tribal law – based on the institutions of the tribal council and the blood feud – rules unchallenged and unchanged since its origins long before the birth of Christ.
When I read this, I think of recent headlines about the problems Pakistan is having maintaining order, fighting the status of “failed-nation”, and the chaotic administration of tribal “justice.” The old ways have endured – but as we learned in Three Cups of Tea, there are villages where villagers are eager to have modern schools, eager to educate their daughters, and they, too, are victims of the fanatics who burn the schools and throw acid on women attending school.
The author is told, time and time again by Indian citizens, that India has entered The Age of Kali, “the lowest possible throw, an epoch of strife, corruption, darkness and disintegration.” The book reflects the darkness, corruption and disintegration the author found. I only wish there were some moments of relief, of lightness, hope or humor to encourage the reader on his/her way, but the documentation of this lowest throw was relentless.
Brilliant Sunrise, 5 Apr 09
Goooooooooooood Morning, Kuwait! 🙂
It is going to be another gorgeous day in Kuwait. Don’t let this “heavy fog” deter you. When I got up, the sunrise was so bright, I couldn’t see the sun, it was refracted all over the sky. I was only able to get the shot by focusing on the reflection of the sun on the water.
It is going to be a fantastic week – sweet warm days and cooling off evenings, perfect for sitting outside and drinking coffee, visiting with friends – and a little later in the week, a chance of more rain:
AdventureMan and I saw Journey to Mecca yesterday, along with about 500 others living in Kuwait. The movie is still packing people in! The audience was about 3/4 full with children, and I thought “oh this is going to be great, crying children and people talking on their cell phones.” I was SO wrong. Although the movie theater was full, I did not hear a single phone, I did not hear a single crying child – the movie held us all spellbound. We loved the movie, and we loved seeing it in the IMAX theatre.
(There are special headsets for non-Arabic speakers, with the dialogue in English. We didn’t know; they just spotted us as probably-non-Arabic and handed us the headsets.)
Sometimes, I am just slow. My niece, Little Diamond, had recommended a book called Travels with a Tangerine: From Morocco to Turkey in the Footsteps of Islam’s Greatest Traveller, but it was not until yesterday that I got it – that Ibn Batuta was from Tangiers! Sometimes, I am just slow . . . sometimes I can grasp subtleties but the obvious escapes me totally.
You can buy this book from Amazon.com for a mere $10.17 plus shipping. Yes, I own stock in amazon.com.
You can also probably find it at the Kuwait Bookstore, that amazing store in the bottom of the Al Muthanna Mall, near the Sheraton Circle downtown.
What Dreams Mean
Today on AOL heath: I was reading this article out of idle curiousity until I came across my own dream – below. I had college exam dreams for years – I had dropped a Shakespeare class but somehow it hadn’t been registered so I had to take a final I was not prepared for.
Later in life, one night I woke up groping the bed, scared my husband to death, and when he asked what was the matter, as I desperately searched the sheets, I said “I’m looking for the baby!” I was a brand new mother, and for me, it was very stressful.
Now, most of my really bad dreams come when I have a move coming up – panicked dreams of the movers arriving and I an not ready, or a flight to catch and I have not packed. Recently, I had a dream where I was stressed over not being ready for a flight and the airline called and asked me “Are you coming? We are ready to close the gate!” and (although I was not packed) I said “I’m on my way! Hold the plane!” and I woke up gasping.
It never occurred to me I would see my worst nightmare in print. Go Here read through and tell me if you see yours. . . What’s your nightmare?
Theme: unpreparedness
The dream: “I’m back in high school and don’t know which classes I’m supposed to go to, so I end up missing one — usually Mr. Westerman’s world religions class. I become terrified about not knowing when the tests are, then finals come around and I wake up completely freaked out!” — Lori Huffman, 31, Houston
Variation: You’re rushing to catch a flight but haven’t packed or can’t find your ticket. A new mother may dream she can’t find her baby.
What it means: Dreaming about something you’ve already accomplished (i.e., graduating from high school) can mean you’re scared to make mistakes in an area where you usually succeed. “Perfectionist people tend to have these sorts of dreams,” says Kramer. One explanation is that you may be tying your self-worth too tightly to how you perform at work. If you usually spend hours fretting over an upcoming event or presentation, give yourself a set time to prepare and then force yourself to put it out of your head. “The outcome doesn’t change by agonizing over it,” assures Nezu.
Clever Solution: When Men Refuse to Salute Women
That gives me a huge grin – for every subordinate who refuses to salute a female superior officer, she gets an extra KD50 in her paycheck! This is a very clever solution.
Kuwaiti policemen refusing to salute female officers
Published Date: April 02, 2009
KUWAIT: Only shortly after the graduation of the first batch of female police officers, a large number of their male colleagues have put the Ministry of Interior (MoI) in an awkward position by insisting that they will refuse to salute any female officer, no matter how superior her rank to their own. The male officers cited local social values, cultural norms and traditions to justify their stance, reported Al-Jarida.
The ministry must now decide whether to strictly implement the law and force these officers to perform their duties in a professional manner or to take the policemen’s concerns into account and accept their refusal. A recent fatwa issued by Dr Ajil Al-Nashmi which stated that saluting a woman is contrary to local and tribal traditions, is believed to have aggravated the situation, making the male officers’ determination to accept no compromise on the issue even stronger.
One MoI official said that the ministry is considering the options of paying female officers an additional KD 50 on top of their wages for every salute which male colleagues refuse to give them or imposing administrative penalties on the male police officers in question.
56,660 Kuwait Car Accidents: 2008
This is a totally breathtaking statistic. Kuwait just isn’t that big. That is more than one thousand car accidents, every week, in Kuwait.
We had three accidents in front of my house this morning. One included a school bus. Thank God, there were no children on board.
I would love to see a statistical breakdown on age groups, nationality, whether speed was involved, and whether the person was using a mobilephone while driving when the accident occurred.
One of my readers reported she had been in a car accident shortly after her arrival in country. A car going too fast rear-ended them. In almost every country in the world, if someone hits you from behind, they are charged, immediately, with following too closely and inattentive driving. You are supposed to be driving carefully enough to anticipate the car in front of you slowing down. Here, after six months, and several trips to the police station, it was determined that her husband was at fault. Unbelievable.
She adds that thanks be to God, no harm came to the infant traveling in the front seat of the car that hit them, on his mother’s lap, or they would have been liable for that, too. Unbelievable.
56,660 car accidents in 2008 alone
Staff Writer Al Watan
KUWAIT: Head of the Traffic Safety Department Bader AlÙ€Matar has warned that the number of annual traffic accidents is on the rise. An estimated 56,660 car accidents and 410 cases of accident related fatalities occurred in 2008. AlÙ€Matar added that the United Nations reports that car accidents claim more than 1,300,000 fatalities around the world each year, most of whom are young men.
Jazeera Customer Service
“Hello! Hello! Do you speak English?”
“Yes, my dear, I do! How can I help you?”
“I am trying to book a flight to Larnaca!”
“What date?”
“I’m flexible. I am trying to book for April 16 to April 23, but when I try to book, they tell me that no flights are available for that day! I have tried every day in April and May! How can there be no flights?”
“One moment, my dear.” (sound of typing and clicks and humm of distant voices)
“The first flight will be in July!”
“Oh no! It shows that Larnaca is a destination NOW!”
“No, my dear, the first flight will be in July. July 4th!”
“No, no, I don’t want July, thank you. How about flights to Salalah? I get the same message!”
“Yes! Yes, my dear, we have flights to Salalah! I can book it for you now! What dates?”
“Do I have to connect through Bahrain?”
“No, no, flights direct from Kuwait.” (sounds of typing, clicking, voices humming . . .)
“How about those same dates – April 16 – April 23?”
“The first flight will be in June!”
(Me, laughing) “It’s a little HOT in Salalah in June! I was hoping for something in April!”
“No, no, my dear, the first flight will be in June!”
“Thank you!” (I hang up laughing. I may not like the news he gives me, but his undisturbable good humor gives me a huge grin.)
Gardening Leads to a Longer Life
Back when The Fonz was still blogging, he ran this free test from REAL AGE which I took, full of pride because I lead such a healthy life. Man, did I get a bad surprise, the first of many. First the REAL LIFE people told me my body was one year OLDER than my real age because I don’t like to exercise, and then at my annual physical, my doctor looked me in the eye and said I had to make some changes.
I have. I’ve made some changes. One of the changes is I don’t take tests like that any more!
But REAL AGE doesn’t give up on me. They send me helpful newsletters every week, and I have to admit, they really are interesting, and they really do help me stay on track, like eating oatmeal and drinking green tea.
Today they talk about a hobby that lengthens your life – gardening:
The Hobby That Leads to a Longer Life
A hobby is more than a way to pass the time. It may be a way to get more of it.
Know which hobby has probably added years to the longest-lived people in the world? It’s gardening. Okinawans — whose men typically live to age 78, women to age 86 — have a long tradition of working with soil.
Flex Your Green Thumb
The benefits of gardening reach body and soul, according to Dan Buettner and his book The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest. “It’s a source of daily physical activity that exercises the body with a wide range of motion and helps reduce stress,” he writes. So, as the ground thaws and the seed catalogues start arriving, make a pact to plan — and plant — a plot this year.
Grow for Years
It’s not a coincidence: There are lots of other wonderful side benefits to gardening besides the body and mind boost. Here are the other garden goodies Buettner notes in his book:
A veggie-packed life. Okinawan centenarians eat a plant-based diet, often incorporating vegetables that they grow.
A bit of sun. Vitamin D, produced by the body when it’s exposed to sunlight, promotes stronger bones and better health. Vitamin D also helps your body fight cancer.
A dash of spice. Mugwort, ginger, and turmeric are staples of an Okinawan garden, and all have proven medicinal qualities.
Older Okinawans are active gardeners and walkers. Walk your way to a healthier, fitter life.
Word Lovers: New LOLs from the Washington Post
Thank you, KitKat, for your always great contributions:
Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternative meanings for common words.
The winners are:
1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle (n), olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that, when you die, your soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.
The Washington Post’s Style Invitational also asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
Here are this year’s winners:
1. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
2. Foreploy (v): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of having sex.
3. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
4. Giraffiti (n): Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
5. Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
6. Inoculatte (v): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
7. Hipatitis (n): Terminal coolness.
8. Osteopornosis (n): A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
9. Karmageddon (n): its like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.
10 Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
11. Glibido (v): All talk and no action.
12. Dopeler effect (n): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
13. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.
14. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
15. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you’re eating.
And the pick of the literature:
16. Ignoranus (n): A person who’s both stupid and an a$$hole.
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