Sunrise 26 April 2009
Last night, out for dinner, the air was not cool and refreshing. It was warm. The outdoor seating was thronged; for many, the temperatures are wonderful; for me, it is a little stale. Just the night before, we were outside and it was wonderful, still a tiny cool breeze now and then. Overnight, you can feel the inevitable approach of the scorching summer. It’s coming. It’s almost here.
Sunrise this morning was silvery. There are some fleecy little clouds up in the sky, but no, it doesn’t look like rain, only a little tease.
At 0700, it is already hot.
The pace is picking up, lists of things to do growing instead of shrinking . . . the pressure is on.
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.
Amer al-Hilal on Global Voices
Kuwait Community blogger Amer Al-Hilal has accepted the invitation to be one of the Kuwait desk editors at Global Voices, an aggregator followed by many who want to keep up with the blogging scene all over the world. An active and passionate blogging community member himself, Amer will be trolling the Kuwait blogs for interesting bits to compile.
Amer is a former Kuwait diplomat and a frequent columnist in the Arab Times. He has his own business – and a family – and still makes time to keep the blogging scene relevant and engaging. Alf Mabruk (a thousand congratulations!) on your selection, Amer, and many many thanks for accepting the responsibilitiies of promoting the Kuwait blogging community. 🙂
Sunrise on the Sparkling Water
I broke my own rules this morning. The Qatteri Cat started walking around and saying “Miooooow” around first-call-to-prayer time, and AdventureMan, who has a sweet soft heart sometimes gets up to feed him.
“If you get up to feed him,” I scold in my mean-mommy voice, “he learns that if he comes mioooowing at oh-dark-thirty that someone is going to get up and feed him! You have to ignore him!”
AdventureMan just looks at me sadly, that I could be so mean and cruel. He is a lucky man; he can get up, feed the cat and get back to sleep in like zero seconds flat. Once I am awake, I am awake.
So this morning, I ignored QC two or three times as he came in and said he was hungry, and then, around five, I took pity on him and got up to check his bowl, which was empty to the last grain of cat food. (Have you ever noticed how FOUL cat food smells??)
And since I was up anyway, I went to get a cup of coffee and saw – oh, I could see all the way to the horizon! Not a speck of dust, not a speck of haze! And the sun is coming up and there is a sparkle all across the Gulf!
I couldn’t resist the sparkle on the water:
So the Qatteri Cat gets a few extra snuggles today for getting me up to see this wonderful sunrise. It is a sweet morning, and I hope you have a wonderful day. 🙂
A New Day, a New Dawn
Good morning, Kuwait! Yes, yes, don’t ask me why, I don’t know, but when I got out of bed I could see the big red sun just rising above the horizon and I thought “just in time! I am awake just in time!” Even the Qatteri Cat was still drowsy and looking at me like I was crazy, but I love watching the sun come over the horizon, even if it means being up around 5 ayem.
The air is warmer today. This week is going to be WAYYY warmer. Aargh:
It is just psychological, but anything over 90°F is just HOT to me. Fortunately, I have lots of things I can do inside this week. 🙂
No Darkness at all . . .
It was wonderful waking up this morning – no alarm, just waking when I was ready. No wonder, I was falling asleep over my book by 9 last night, and around 9:30 I just gave up – sometimes sleep is just too inviting. I slept wonderfully, it feels so good to sleep well and soundly and wake up because you are ready to wake up.
When I pulled open the curtains, I gasped with delight! A glorious sunrise, a sunrise with sparkles and shadows and glints and rays. There is a fresh morning breeze, it is a little cooler today and the air is sweet and cool. The morning readings I do contain a line from 1 John: “In Him there is no darkness at all . . ” a line I love, and a line that I thought of immediately when I saw this amazing sunrise:
Now, over an hour later, the sky is full of heavier clouds, still sunny, but the glorious moment has passed, and I thank God for the small mercy of allowing me to see this beautiful new dawn and to capture it to share with you.
Have a great Monday, Kuwait! 🙂
Better Late than . . .
This morning’s sunrise, around 5:30 or so, dim and grey but sharp. Not much has changed. The sky is white with haze; you can’t see any blue, but there are also no clouds, it is all opaquely white.
I’m having a busy, and disconnected day. Lots going on. Sorry to shortchange YOU, but it is what it is.
Filtered Dawn
It’s not that haze we have been having that magnifies the radiance of the sun into a huge, pulsating ball hanging over the Gulf; today is a much more muted dawn, filtering through the grey layer of haze lying far out on the horizon. There is no surf, but minute wave action, visible but not elevated . . . it is a Saturday morning sunrise, no drama, respecting those who get to sleep in . . .
For those Kuwait students who check in, missing Kuwait, it is the time of year when people are picnicking in the local parks, dining outside at the Marina and Kout malls, and enjoying the pleasant warm nights while they can, before all is breathlessly hot.
At six o’clock this morning, it is lovely:
And this is what the week is going to look like:
Have a great day, Kuwait.
“Kuwait Will Work it Out”
Some ambassadors, in my humble opinion, are just weenies. They go to all the dinners, they shake hands with important people, they mouth polite phrases and the party line, and some barely connect with the country where they are assigned. No one can accuse the current American ambassador to Kuwait, Deborah Jones, of being a weenie. This woman is a lion. And you get the feeling she loves what she is doing, and that she is truly connected with issues and activities in Kuwait.
”Kuwait will work it out”, stresses U.S. ambassador
Dina AlÙ€Mallak
Al Watan; you can read the entire article by clicking on the blue type, here.
KUWAIT: “Kuwaiti people are wellÙ€educated and know themselves well enough …. They don”t need someone coming from outside to fix their machine. We look forward to the lively debate that is to come,” said U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait Deborah Jones on Wednesday.
In a roundtable open discussion with a group of journalists from the Kuwaiti media, U.S. Ambassador Jones underscored the U.S. relations and aims locally and in the region. She also discussed such topics as the local elections, President Barrack Obama”s goals, and the Kuwaiti detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Excerpts:
How does the U.S. administration view the recent political developments in Kuwait?
Jones: Obviously Kuwait is a sovereign country; we take that word, “sovereign,” very seriously. Kuwait is not one of the 50 states. On the other hand, I don”t think that it is a big secret in the world that the United States is a big believer in democracy Ù€ representative democracy Ù€ and participatory governance.
The best way to ensure peaceful transition and growth, as countries grow, because governments are organic and we think that democracy Ù€ representative democracy Ù€ is what helps countries to grow and develop, and avoid violent transitional episodes.
We have always supported Kuwait”s democratic traditions, which we believe are deeply embedded in your diwaniya tradition and others, such as participatory governance. We describe the process here as being vibrant and a little bit complicated. We support that, given the alternatives. Politics is about building capacity and ensuring that there is growth and access to resources.
When political gridlock leads to stagnation, no one benefits of course. So, democracy is about a couple of things Ù€ it”s about representative government. It”s also about respectful rule of law and respect for institutions.
We feel pretty confident that Kuwaitis are going to work (it) out. There is a lively debate and you all have an important role to play as a free press, in responsibly reporting on what you hear, and contributing to that democratic dialogue, which is often noisy. I was going to use the word cacophony, which means a clash of sounds. We are used to this in the United States; we are used to having a lot of noise that comes when the various branches of government interact.
You can read the entire article HERE
Rape in Kuwait – the flip side
By now you know a lot about who I am – what I laugh at, what I treasure, and what makes me break out in a storm of fury. Rape is one of those issues; the sheer entitlement that goes with stripping another human of choice and violating flesh as if the victim were nothing more than a piece of meat, it energizes me to a white rage, whether the victim is man, woman or child.
And then . . . and then . . . there are very strange cases of reported rapes in Kuwait that I have a hard time imagining exactly what happened here. I am not being flip, in a flippant sense; I am perplexed. We sometimes get so little of the story, and once you have a key piece of information – which we often never have – things make sense.
This is from today’s Kuwait Times:
Minor Raped
Police said a minor girl told Salhiya police that while she was sitting on the beach, a young man approached her and told her that he belonged to a well-known family. He then took her to an apartment in Sharq where he raped her before returning her to the same area. Later, another man approached her and took her to another apartment and raped her as well. She provided police with their mobile phone numbers. The case is under investigation.
Does this not sound peculiar to you? For one thing, is she sitting alone on the beach? Does she know these men? She goes with them – alone? By choice? Twice, with two different men? They give her their phone numbers?? To me, there is a lot of information missing in this report. It sounds like a very strange case of rape. I almost wonder if the minor has a mental incapacity, but it doesn’t say that.
Man, Woman arrested
A police patrol traveling in Sulaibiya recently suspected a young man and woman as they were driving. (Note to self: remind Kuwait Times that you do not use “Police suspected. . ” without specifying which behavior they found suspicious) Police asked to see their civil IDs and discovered that the young woman had run away from home one month ago. During interrogation, she confessed that the man and his three friends had raped her several times in a flat. The case is under investigation.
The following one is not about rape (nor am I sure the above cases are about rape) but is a case that makes you go “hmm. . .. what??”
Runaway Woman
A Filipina woman recently told Sulaibikhat police that she abandoned her sponsor’s home in Bneid Al-Gar before going to her Pakistani friend’s flat in Doha. Two months later, the woman became pregnant. She then reported the matter to the police.
She went to the police and said “I am a runaway, and I am pregnant” knowing she will be charged with absconding AND with immorality, maybe adultery? Knowing she will go to jail? What, exactly, is she hoping to gain? What is she reporting?
The crime news is full of mysterious glimpses, and we rarely know the rest of the story.
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