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.)
“I’m Not Cool Enough to be a Mac Person”
LOL. Found this on the Seattle Time’s Website.
Finally, found it on youTube. This is Microsoft’s swipe against the PC vs Mac commercials, released yesterday.
Honored Guest
In every country where I have lived, we have felt like honored guests. This week, I have been truly honored, my blogging friend Hilaliya has asked me to be an occasional guest blogger on his revamped blog, now featuring a Kuwait Blogging Diwaniya. Pretty cool, huh? I have to admit it, I have a smile from ear to ear.
The revered blogger Don Veto led the way with an article yesterday, and I jumped in today.
In honor of my ear-to-ear smile, it’s called Smile for me Baby – Let Me See Your Grill but fair warning – it’s political polemic, about parliamentary gridlock, so you will see a grittier side of Intlxpatr.
Recycle in Kuwait
This just made my heart flutter. Eshda3wa had mentioned I needed to visit Al Ahmadi to see the lights, and she was right. I had so much fun; all of Kuwait should decorate the way Ahmadi decorates – lights everywhere!
But here is what made my heart truly flutter:
Recycle Bins! In Kuwait!
“When they first brought them,” my friend told me, “I thought ‘oh yeah, Kuwait, well maybe it will work for a week or two’ and so we gathered up EVERYTHING in the house and loaded the bins so we could get rid of them, but actually, they have been picking up regularly, right on schedule.”
WOW.
I have heard there is a new recycle company that will pick up for free. Who are they? How do we contact them?
Update June 2011 – two new options listed in the comments section, companies providing recycle services in Kuwait. 🙂
Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World
I’ll admit it, I was looking for a quick read, and after resisting this book for months, I picked it up. As much as I love cats, I am not that much into cute, nor am I particularly sentimental, and I don’t like having my emotions manipulated. Just one look at the adorable cat on the cover told me it was going to be one of those slick, fairly superficial feel-good kind of books.
See what I mean? Just look at that cover. Look how that cat just looks right into your eyes. This book is going to suck you in.
This book was a surprise. Yes, it was touching. Yes, it was about a tiny little kitten who almost died, stuffed in a below freezing book-return box in an northern Iowa country library in the middle of one of the coldest nights of the year, and yes, he ends up living in the library for almost 20 years and brightening the life of the people who come into the library. Yes, Dewey is adorable, and funny, and loveable. Yes, the book is an easy read.
It is also, surprisingly, an uncomfortable read. It is not overly sentimentalized. It is also the story of a woman, Vicky Myron, who grew up on one of the northern Iowa farms, and she tells us about the quality of a life that is no longer available in America, how the safe, secure, intertwined family life of rural Iowa has greatly disappeared. The hard times we are working our way through in 2009 is an echo of hard times suffered in rural America, as small farms are gobbled up by the more efficient super-farms, owned by conglomerates, not by families.
She tells us about her physical struggles with a disastrous childbirth, and its two year aftermath, and she tells us about how her marriage to a lovable alcoholic died, almost without her being aware it was dying. She doesn’t spare herself, as she discusses her problems, as a single mother, on welfare, trying to get a college education and raising her daughter, who couldn’t wait to move away from her. She talks about her challenges remodeling an old cement reading library into a modern, airy information resources center serving the town and the surrounding community, at the same time she is working on her Masters in Library Science. She describes her challenges dealing with the town bureaucracy. It is not always comfortable, or feel-good reading. It takes the book out of the superficial, and gives you something to think about.
Intertwined in all of this is Dewey Readmore Books, the cat who comes to live in the Spencer, Iowa, library, and who is eventually featured on TV shows around the world. He responds to requests that he pose, that he perform, he seems to know who needs a little love and is quick to give it – he is a great main character. For me, some of it was also uncomfortable, kind of a stretch – like that the cat would be in the window waving to her every morning when she came to work. Well . . . maybe . . . I’ve almost always had cats in my life, and few have every shown such consistent loyalty. Cats are . . . well, cats. It’s the way God made them. 😉
What I love is that this book is about libraries, and the amazing (mostly) women who run them. These librarians have had a huge influence on my life, and the life of AdventureMan, challenging us to explore outside our boundaries and supporting our aspirations, recommending new ideas and new ways of serving their communities. Librarians are part of the backbone of America.
I read this book in just a few hours. It just isn’t that complicated or challenging; it is an easy read. It has been a #1 New York Times bestseller, and copies of the book are still selling strongly. It currently ranks #105 in all time book sales on Amazon.com – can you imagine how many books that must be? The book is sweet, but #1? I can only imagine so many people are buying and reading it because it looks like 1) a Feel-Good book and 2) an easy read.
NonStomped Roses
Thanks be to God for a sweet husband. He knows I love white roses, and that’s what he got me, with one mischievous red red rose stuck right in the middle. 😉
There is a shop in Kuwait we love, Au Nom de la Rose, where the flowers are always fresh, and beautiful, and put together naturally. AdventureMan says on Valentine’s Day, they were SO busy, but that the man in front of him, holding a bouquet, was trying to get a discount.
(whine! whine! whine!) said the man in front of him.
“Sir! This is not Mubarakiyya! This is fixed price! And you have already paid, why are you asking now for a discount?” said the polite but very very busy and professional manager. LOL!
We asked the manager how she liked working in Kuwait. (I am telling you this because her response was so totally unexpected, and delightful.)
“I LOVE working here!” she said. “The woman I work for, who owns the store, is wonderful to work for. I love my job, and she trusts me.”
She also gets paid a decent wage, and she gets paid on time. This is one of the happiest women I have met in Kuwait.
Au Nom de la Rose has more than one location, but the one we go to is next to Chocolat, next to Tumbleweeds, in that stretch of stores and restaurants near Bida’a circle. Expensive. Worth every fils. 🙂
No sunrise today. I can’t even see the sea. Whatever this is socking us in today – fog? sand? it is not orange, but it is THICK.
The Doha Museum of Islamic Arts – first visit
It’s Friday afternoon, and I can hardly believe it. We are here. Now THIS is my idea of a romantic getaway – please! Keep your chocolates (although I do love chocolate!) and your roses, keep your long lingering dinners and fabulous wine, but take me someplace where I have really wanted to go, and I will be your slave forever. You da man, AdventureMan. You know how to win my heart. 🙂
It is a glorious day and the museum has just opened. There is a huge parking lot and little carts ferrying the older people and women with small children to the entrance, but it is a nice walk, not a hard walk. Families are streaming in, and (gasp!) admission is FREE! You have to go get a ticket; I guess maybe that is how they keep track of admission statistics, but this beautiful museum, floating out over the gulf, all white and clean and gorgeous, filled with priceless objects of art, it’s free? Amazing.
We decide to start with the Beyond Borders exhibit, a special collection of art that integrates Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions in an art collection. There are so many pieces that make me gasp in awe. I see one, and I can’t resist, the camera is out of my bag, I see others snapping photos with cell phones, but I know the rules . . . hmmm. But there is nothing posted here saying “no photos!” I ask the guard if I am allowed to take photos and he tells me “You are welcome, madame, all through the museum, you may take photos.”
I am in total shock. All through the museum? I can take photos?
Here is the piece that moved me so much that I gathered up the courage to ask. It is a Madonna, painted in Aleppo, Syria, I believe, and it has an Quranic sura written in her halo:
The museum is my oyster, and my battery is dead. I didn’t bring another. Some things happen for the best, and I tuck my camera back in my purse and AdventureMan and I try to absorb what the Doha Museum of Islamic Art has to offer.
It is an impossible task. There is SO much. Not everything is well documented, and then there are sections which are amazing. There is so much to learn, and so much beauty in this museum.
If I had to choose my favorite thing of all, it would be some tiles from Kashan. In an earlier post, commenter Daggero mentioned that the word for tile used in Kuwait is “kashi” and now I know that it comes from these tiles, made in Kashan around the 1300’s (Gregorian calendar) which were famed for their intricacy, their interlocking designs, and their high quality. There are also Iznik tiles in the museum, which are thought to be greatly influenced by these tiles from Kashan.
I had no idea, but the tiles just blow me away. I would love to create some tiled rooms back in my Seattle house, with reproductions of some of these amazing star shaped tiles. For me, that was the highlight of this trip. I know there will have to be many more – this museum is filled with treasures. Free – for all the people. And yes – the gift shop is awesome!
3baid, Today’s Sweetheart
Have you seen the Friday Kuwait Times? If not, run right out and buy it now, or go to the blue link where it says Kuwait Times. There is a FULL PAGE story in the Friday Times on PaperDump, the eco-friendly blog where all kinds of menus, schedules, telephone numbers, etc. are stored, saving paper.
You can go to PaperDump by clicking on PaperDump, although most of you already have it stored on your blog favorites. I learned, reading the article, that they get 10,000 hits a DAY. Now that is public service.
Wooo HOOO, 3baid, you are getting just a small portion of the recognition you deserve for the great public service you are making, donating your time and energies to this valuable service. Woo HOOO!
Pecking Order
There is so much labor here in Kuwait, and often, they do so little. I cannot imagine what it would be like to have a job, for example, sweeping the parking lot at the Avenues Mall, but I think, being who I am, I would push hard to get all the garbage and trash picked up, and the lot swept. It’s a job. It’s what I am paid to do. I would find hanging around, pretending to push a broom just too boring.
I can only guess that so many do so little because they are paid so little. It’s a kind of passive-aggressive way of getting back at your employer, who may have you bunking with 10 other men in one room, sharing one bathroom, trying to cook food on one hot plate. Men end up killing each other in these situations, as you might imagine.
What astounds me most, in Kuwait, is how some sort of pecking order develops, and you will have one person supervising one person. Or, as in this case, two people supervising one person.
One person fixing the bricks, one person watching him do it. That does not seem like a smart use of human resources to me.
GoogleEarth Map of Speed Cameras in Kuwait
From this morning’s mail, a most valuable tool for money-saving:
AdventureMan tells me in Doha, Qatar, there are now speed cameras everywhere, and the fines are HUGE. Like $2000 for speeding, and they have the picture to prove it. He also tells me the law is applied against everyone, from the highest to the lowest, so that there is a lot less speeding and weaving than we see in Kuwait. I wonder how it is going to work here?
I read in yesterday’s paper, in Jahra, a driver deliberately hit one of the cameras with his car! I wonder if the camera was able to capture the incident before its demise? (It said the culprit was arrested, I think.)
We were out in the Wild West last night (Fehaheel) and a police car was trying to get to a huge traffic snarl. He blurped and burbled, he shouted in his loudspeaker, and nobody let him in. There was no respect for the traffic police, no fear. People just looked after their own interests. Fortunately, it was all at a very low speed, as traffic was jammed tight. There WAS room to let the police car in, but nobody did. I wonder how it would have worked if he had a camera? Or started giving tickets?
Doesn’t Kuwait need a call-in, or e-mail in place where you can take photos of traffic things happening and report violators, like those guys who think they own the emergency lanes when traffic is backed up, or who think the handicapped spots are for them (one told me “but when there is no one parking there, anyone can use it!”) to use – it would be so nice to be able to take a photo and send it in to the authorities and to believe that something would be done about it.
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