My Kind of House Work
The last couple days, I have been in my own personal nirvana. I have spent more time in Home Depot and Lowe’s than in the last two years. We have a new house to work on, need some work contracted, can do some of the work ourselves. It is exciting – and also terrifying. You never really know how an idea will work out.
But this gets my juices going. I love getting my hands on hammers, putting in new closets, figuring out how to upgrade a dated kitchen, painting, even reupholstering. I love the flooring departments, with all the tile samples, wood flooring samples, and carpeting. I love to see what the newest kitchens and baths are using, and to read magazines about what works and what works better. I like a house with a custom feel, something like Susanka’s The Not-So-Big-House, available from Amazon for around $14.46, where quality of space and quality of materials counts for more than square meters.
And I like doing some of it myself. Sometimes in the middle of it all, I stop and think “what am I doing???” but at the end, I usually feel SO satisfied, like I have really accomplished something.
If I had my “druthers”, I would probably buy an older home in good condition and change the floor plans, knock out walls, put in new bathrooms, and have a wonderful time doing it. Meanwhile, I am having a sample of all that “fun” right now. Wooo Hoooooo!
Roadhouse Grill
You’ve all been wondering what Adventure Man looks like. I finally was able to take a photo of him on a recent trip. This is what he looks like:
We parked next to a special parking spot and I took this photo, which I think is a total hoot:
Adventure Man’s Blog
“If I had a blog, I’d blog about this!” Adventure Man gasped as I held my hand over my mouth in shock.
That is, between whoops of laughter.
Adventure Man asked me if we were going to be on the flight out of Kuwait on which we had been booked. I had just talked with the KLM office in Dubai, seeking a little wasta, and I had been graciously but firmly turned down.
“We’re forked” I said, using a very vulgar word instead of ‘fork.’
“I thought you gave up saying any of those words for Lent?” he hooted.
“No, my goal was no swearing on the roads!” I countered.
And he just gave me that long look that said it all. It said “hypocrite.” It said “I think you’re missing an important point.” It said “bad words are bad words no matter where you use them.”
Adventure Man can get a lot of meaning into one long look. We’ve been married for a long time. He gets the same look from me now and then, the long look.
He had me; he was right, I was wrong.
I started snickering. He started hooting. I laughed out loud. He laughed louder. Soon I was writhing on the floor and he was gasping for breath. It’s good to laugh like that every now and then.
And he’s right. It’s not just on the road. Bad language is bad language and I want to clean up the entire act. I am really really glad Adventure Man doesn’t have his own blog.
Mouth Guard
Last summer, my dentist told me I needed a mouth guard to wear at night to keep me from clenching or grinding my teeth.
I’m a little cynical about what I think of as “dental fundraising”. There always seems to be something beyond teeth cleaning now that my teeth no longer develop cavities. Whitening? Special electric toothbrush? Gum treatments? Hey, lets dig out all those old fillings and replace them with gold? And then let’s replace the gold with porcelain? He is always pushing for something new.
And I think my husband would have said something if I were grinding or clenching my teeth.
But on my way down seventh ring the other day, as one guy whooshed by me doing 40 km/hr over the speed limit and the guy on my right zipped right through the RED light as if it weren’t there, and the Gucci sunglassed dame got right on my bumper even though the passing lane was clear as could be and I had a cement truck on my right, I noticed I was clenching my teeth.
For one thing, although I have not succeeded in my Lenten goal of not saying ANY swear words on the road, I am down to only about one per long trip. For example, I hardly ever swear on the way to go grocery shopping, just a short trip to the co-op.
It is only on the ring roads or the speedways that sometimes a bad word pops out before I can stop it. The exercise in NOT swearing has been good for me in that now I am very aware, even alone in the car, when a word just popped out or almost pops out. And down to one per trip and holding back the others – hey! – all this is good. The goal is still zero-defects. But I have to applaud my progress.
So I am thinking I should probably wear my mouth guard while I am driving, because that is where I am clenching my teeth. But I wish they also made one that would guard my mouth from those very bad words that want to come out.
TanUrEen in Fehaheel
A friend asked me if I had ever been to TanUrEen, in Fehaheel. Not only had I never been there – I had never even heard of it! When she took me there, I was astounded. I had driven by it a million times, and never even knew it was there.
TanUrEen is at its best at this time of the year, when you can sit outside in the gardens. The night we were there was very comfortable, not too cool nor too hot. This is the perfect time of year for a visit.
There are tables all through the gardens as you enter, in the “see and be seen” section, and then, off to the right, there are private cabins and to the upper right, larger family cabins, near the children’s play ground. Although any given evening there are a LOT of children, they are all behaving themselves (at least they have been when I am there) and there isn’t a lot of noise. For being near a major road, and in the middle of a city, it is a very quiet restaurant, even with lots of people, and if you get there early enough to choose a cabin, quiet AND private.
The food is Lebanese, with a concentration on mezzes and grills, but being Kuwait, they also have a good selection of fish and shrimp. I can promise you that both the grilled shrimp and the hamour are excellent. The mezzes are all freshly made, and, of course, they have their own baker, and the thin, hot, puffy bread is delivered to your table fresh from the oven. It doesn’t get any yummier.
The service is excellent, very personal, and the waiters are all in suits and ties. We find this a great place to go with friends, where we can enjoy one another’s good company and excellent conversation.
Above are the tables in the open garden area, where there is also a waterfall.
These are the cabins in the family section, open so you can keep an eye on the kids. There is another section of cabins that are more circular, more private, if you don’t have children with you.
Bad Laws Encourage Breaking the Law
Going to university in Seattle, I did a paper on Washington State “Blue Laws” and how they were repealed. In Washington State, they have some really cool ideas that encourage citizen participation – one is called the initiative, and the other is called the referendum.
What this means is that citizens, just common, ordinary citizens like you and me, can gather support and signatures, and initiate proceedings to get a proposal on the ballot, in front of all the voters. They can also refer an existing law to the voters to get it repealed (made not a law anymore.) It’s hard work – but citizens do it all the time.
I just used my internet phone to change my car reservation, because KLM has “delayed” my flight by one night. I broke the law. It’s a bad law, and I am not by nature a law-breaking kind of person.
I also break the law by bringing in real vanilla flavoring when I enter Kuwait. Yes, it contains alcohol. I only use it for cooking, and I never serve it to Moslems. I have alcohal-free vanilla, too, that I use for when I cook for Moslems, but it doesn’t taste the same.
I probably bring in books and DVD’s that I am not supposed to, although I have never seen a list telling me what books might not be allowed. Most of my books are about ideas, and yes, ideas can be a dangerous thing.
Bad laws force normal law-abiding people to break the law.
(This does not apply to speed limits, which are good laws, and if they were obeyed, would save hundreds of lives in Kuwait every year. Think of every life as something precious, a resource, and you will see that disobeying the speed limits is like throwing resources down the drain.)
I know this entry is really all over the map, but I have all this angry energy and I don’t have anywhere to expel it. If I could, I would kick KLM all over Kuwait for what they have done. They have robbed us of one day with our son and his wife and I am really really angry. They didn’t even tell us, just changed the reservation. One flight was “delayed” 24 hours, so all the passengers on the next flight were also “delayed”. That’s not a DELAY! You cancelled a flight! And now you are going to have hundreds of angry passengers, angry phone calls, and people PO’d at KLM. Shoddy way to do business.
Outraged at KLM
I just checked reservations we made on KLM back in February. Someone in the KLM office here went into the system and changed our reservation for the next night. I have tickets – paid for – in my hand that say we fly the original date. Even if there were a legitimate reason – like no plane – to change our reservations and NOT TO TELL US is the worst kind of customer service.
This happened to me once before with KLM. I showed up at the airport and the man behind the counter took two hours to fix it. He was embarrassed. I was outraged. I am thinking it is a Kuwait thing; it has only happens to me here.
I checked online; it says the flight has no available seats. I think they bumped us thinking we wouldn’t make trouble. They have another think coming. I am mad, steaming mad. Angry enough to make trouble.
“Woh ist der bahnhof?” Revisited
Today, in the co-op I was looking for toilet paper, because we were perilously low. In the diaper section I found three women workers (when did women start working in the co-ops? I really like it!) who wanted to help.
“Ana ashuf . . .” I started off (I am looking for) but I don’t know how to say toilet paper, so I said “toilet paper”.
Blank faces. I’m trying to think of a way to say it in Arabic, roundabout, but all I can say, weakly is to repeat “toilet paper”.
Blank faces. But kind, patient, so I say it again.
The light goes on.
“Ah! Toi LET paper!” she says, with the accent on the second syllable.
“Yes!” I say, as she leads me there, continuing to correct me: “Toi LET paper, Toi LET paper.”
Djinns and Jewish Grandmothers
Two small nuggets from today’s Kuwait Times.
Black ‘Jinn’ Terrorizes Bayan Neighborhood
Kuwait: Terrified Bayan residents were unable to sleep last night from fears of being victims of an unknown creature, which attacked many of them.
Police said that they received several reports from residents of the creature, which they dubbed as ‘jinn.’ One complaintant said that the ‘jinn’ attacked his wife while she was praying; another said that his daughter had been attacked and strangled, while a third said that someone kept consistently knocking on his bedroom window but none claimed to have actually seen the ‘jinn.’
(Police captured a “ferocious black ape”.)
I love this second article:
Jewish Grandmothers Patrol Checkpoints in West Bank
Jerusalem: Hanna Barag remembers the day an Israeli soldier called her a Palestinian whore. She was 67 and she had just joined Machsomwatch, an all-women group set up to curb human rights abuses at military checkpoints in the West Bank. “It was at the Qalandia checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah,” Barag said, “and the remark at first struck me speechless. But then I asked him two questions: ‘Do you really think a woman my age has a chance at that profession? And would you say what you said to me to YOUR grandmother?'”
The soldier said nothing, but was embarrassed, and when Barag, who was born in Israel and describes herself as a Zionist, returned for another “shift” of watchdog duty a week later, the soldier was there – and apologized.
That was in the early days of Machsomwatch, set up in 2001 by three Israeli women who were alarmed by a spate of reports of beatings and abuse of Palestinians at the hands of Israeli soldiers manning checkpoints. . .
You can read the rest of the story here.
Little old ladies in tennis shoes, volunteering to guard the guards one night a week. . . changing their world.
Internet Phone Blockage
So far, my internet phone is still working. But I can no longer pick up messages; I had a work-around and the work-around is now blocked, too. I still have the connection, but I can’t connect with my internet phone service provider. Hmmmmm.
In Qatar, the problem was solved in less than a week, when ambassadors went to the Emir and protested that the ban on internet phones hurt the entire population. Does the government here understand that Kuwaitis have kids at school in the UK, the US, and are relying on these phone services, too?
My sense is that with the government currently in chaos, no one has the time to focus on this “small” problem. Nor the problem of increasing population and buildings vs. limited infrastructure – roads. water. electricity.
My Kuwaiti friends say that even 20 short years ago, Kuwait was paradise. I believe it, there is so much beauty here, so much natural richness. They say Kuwait was more free twenty years ago.
I know my focus on the internet phone service is selfish; there are bigger problems to be solved. Right now – it’s the one that affects ME!
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