Spit for Brains
From today’s Kuwait Times:
Idiot Apprehended
A drug-user was caught thanks to his own stupidity after pulling over to gawp at a traffic accident scene on the Salmi Highway. Police at the scene were suspicious of his demeanor and asked to see his ID card. on producing it, police found a piece of hashish stuck to the back. He has been referred to the relevant authorities.
I am just quoting this. I don’t make this stuff up.
But did you notice – the Kuwait Times has made a major improvement; the police suspected the idiot’s demeanor. They used to say the police “suspected” the idiot, but did not say what drew their suspicions – this is a major breakthrough. Also, red handed was only used once, and it was used very cleverly:
Prostitutes, Punters arrested
Four Asian prostitutes and three of their customers were arrested ‘red handed’ when a vice squad team raided a brothel in Hawally. The officers acted after receiving a tip-off from an informer about the goings-on in the flat. The three customers confessed to paying KD10 each for the women’s services. All have been referred to the relevant authorities.
First, wooo hoo, Kuwait Times, for the ‘goings-on’ – the crime news has seriously taken a jump in the grammatical direction. 🙂 Second – 10KD??? It occurs to me that these women could be earning a lot more doing manicures and pedicures, and have a much less dangerous life at the same time.
Horseback Riding Camp
“Whatever you might have heard from your kids” the camp director started, and AdventureMan and I looked at one another with concern, “it is just rumors. The counselors did not have a big drunken party, and we have the situation under control.”
We hadn’t heard anything. We were there to pick up our son and his best friend from Horseback Riding Camp. They were eight years old and this was their first time away. We had dropped them off a mere week before, at the clean clean little chalet camp in Southern Germany, where they would learn to ride and take care of their horses.
“So, son,” AdventureMan starts with that casual voice grown-ups use with their children when about to launch an interrogation, “tell us about the camp!”
We were driving back, and wanted to get a campers-eye-view of the week. Our eight-year-old son was exhausted and not very talkative; it was only during the following week that most of the details came out.
He hated horseback riding. He hated taking care of horses. The instruction they got was minimal to non-existent. Most days they missed their horse riding lessons because the counselor overslept. The kids got up and got their own breakfast – cereal – until the milk ran out, and then they ate it dry.
Horrors. We had done everything right. We had checked the camp references, had visited and inspected the camp before deciding to send him there, had met the counselors – horrors! In fact, our son enjoyed the week, but mostly because they had a TV, and no supervision. They spent most of the week watching TV.
In the following years, he went to other camps – adventure training camp, karate camps, Space Camp (that was the best organized) and then became a camp counselor himself, teaching karate. Our most graphic memories as parents, however, are of picking him up at horseback riding camp and learning how loosely organized and supervised it was, compared to what the brochure said and the inspection visit promised.
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.)
“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!
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