Scary Sunrise 20 January 2008
When I got up this morning, the sky was all pink, the water was all pink, it was a world of pink haze, very beautiful. Within moments, the light had shifted, the pink haze was gone and the sun began to rise, very dramatically, lighting up the clouds like you see on the ceilings of Renaissance chapels.
But wait! What is this? The sky is lit, the clouds are illuminated, but the brilliance of the sun is having a hard time breaking through the sludge hanging just over the horizon. I have a bad feeling, whatever it is that is strong and thick enough to block the sun, we are also breathing it.
It’s about 5°C warmer at 0800 than the last few days, with forcast of clouds and possible rain through Wednesday.
Sunrise and Widget
I wasn’t sure there was going to be a sunrise this morning, when I woke up and the sky was full of clouds and DARK! At around sunrise (I can check on Weather Underground Kuwait when that is going to happen) I started clicking. When I looked at my results, it looked like two different mornings, but it is all today, Saturday, January 18th, 2008.
Will we really have a sunrise?
I guess so! (5 minutes later)
I hope you have all noticed the new weather widget on my closest right hand column, giving the current temperature in Fahrenheit and Centigrade. After more than a year of blogging, it occurs to me that other people using WordPress have widgets from outside WordPress, so there MIGHT be a way. (Yeh, I’m slow, but I’m slow.) Now that I have figured out how to do that, I am getting all excited about maybe changing format. (Maybe around June; I have a list of things to get done first. 😉 )
Party Planning
I was idly contemplating a party, and wondering if I should think about Mardi Gras (think Jambalaya, bread pudding, and honky-tonk beads) or Chinese New Years (order in a bunch of Chinese Food, hang up some good luck signs, and some Rats – this will be the year of the Rat) and I thought I would check the dates.
Holy Smokes! Gras! Mardi Gras is February 5th, Lent starts February 6th and Chinese New Year starts February 7th!
Celebrating Chinese New Year on a Thursday night is cool (Thursday night in Kuwait is like Friday night where the weekend is Saturday/Sunday) but not so cool when everyone has just started fasting and spiritual examination. Lent is not like Ramadan; Lent is more spare, it’s introspective, it’s kind of like Danish modern, less is just LESS!
(I think I had better go for Mardi Gras.)
If YOU want to celebrate Chinese New Years, Here is where you can find out about what you need to eat for Good Luck in the new Chinese year like when you eat noodles, don’t cut them because long noodles signify long life, a whole fish signifies togetherness and abundance, and whatever you do, don’t eat tofu, which is white, and unlucky, signifying death and misfortune!
Very Orange, Very Pink
Haven’t driven down the Gulf Road to Fehaheel for a while, so when I did I found two eye-shockers. The first one is in Fehaheel, not directly on Gulf Road, but visible from the stoplights headed north. Believe me, my friends, this photo does not do justice to the incredible Pepto-Bismo PINKNESS of this building. It is a shocker:
Then, just across from the Hilton Hotel is this very very orange beauty. To emphasize the orangeness (and it is a very brilliant orangeness!) they are painting the white trim a very brilliant turquoise-blue. The effect is . . . amazing.
Please. Take a drive. These photos are washed out compared to the utter brilliance of these colors.
Sunrise 17 January 2007
A few days ago, I was taking a photo of the sunrise and my best camera broke. It has one of those auto-focus lenses, and now it doesn’t whirrrrrr. . . . it goes click click click clunk and I get a message “system error.”
Luckily, I have a second camera, almost as good, but the truth is, I really love the best camera, so I’ve been a little off on taking photos for a few days as I mourn the demise of my favorite. I suspect it would cost me more to have it fixed than to buy a new one. It was expensive when I bought it, but cameras better, smarter and faster, with greater capacities have come out since then at lower cost.
Meanwhile, I will use the second best until I can get my hands on another BEST.
Sunrise in Kuwait, temperature 0° C. / 32° F, yes, folks, that is FREEZING, but the forecast for the coming week is warmer, and even (WOOOO HOOOOOO!) RAIN!
The Door Into Summer
We had a cat, a street cat from Tunisia, named Cinnamon. I had taken our son to see a movie and when I got home, my husband looked funny. You know, a wife can tell. I said “what’s up?” and he gave me those big innocent Bambi eyes that tell you for SURE something is fishy, and he said “Nothing!”
Just then, we could hear loud loud miowing at the back door, the kind only a kitten can make, the kind that attracts attention. We went to the back door and there was this tiny little kitten, barely old enough to be away from her family, and she is stuck between the screen door and the back door.
“How very strange!” I said, looking accusingly at AdventureMan, who continued to try to look innocent.
“She looks cold!” he said. “Maybe we had better bring her in!”
Later he confessed, he has found her wandering around alone, wet and miowing in our backyard and had been feeding her while we were at the movie, then put her in the back door so we could “discover” her. He wanted to keep her. We already had one big cat, but we had wanted another, and here she was.
She was my Door into Summer cat. She still had all her wild instincts, even though we adopted her at such a young age. Once, in Germany, I found a dead hare on my steps, with it’s throat torn out, an offering from Cinnamon – but the hare was at least twice her size! She was always bringing us offerings of a dead nature; she was a born huntress. One time when AdventureMan got out of bed, he stepped on what he thought was a rolled up sock, but it moved! It was a badly wounded mouse!
Cinnamon hated winter. We lived in a house with a lot of doors, and when it would snow, she would go from door to door, asking us to open so she could go out. When the bitter cold with the biting wind would hit her face, she would back into the house and head for the next door – always looking for the door she remembered, the one which led out into summer.
moar funny pictures
I used to read a lot of Robert Heinlein. His books are SO politically incorrect, so sexist, he was an old engineer, but man, could he write. His writing takes you WAAAYYY out of the here and now, and makes you stretch to think in new ways.
He wrote a book called Door into Summer, in which he wrote about another cat:
“…While still a kitten, all fluff and buzzes, Pete had worked out a simple philosophy. I was in charge of quarters, rations, and weather; he was in charge of everything else. But he held me especially responsible for weather. Connecticut winters are good only for Christmas cards; regularly that winter Pete would check his own door, refuse to go out it because of that unpleasant white stuff beyond it (he was no fool), then badger me to open a people door. He had a fixed conviction that at least one of them must lead into summer weather.”
The Door into Summer – Robert A. Heinlein
You can read about Robert Heinlein on Wikipedia and you can find many of his books still in publication on amazon.com.
Kuwaiti Women, Minors from Cradle to Grave
In an article in today’s Kuwait Times sure to raise discussions throughout Kuwait, staff writer Ahmad Al-Khaled brings up the laws requiring Kuwaiti women to have a husband /father/ guardian present to apply for a passport and other legal papers:
Published Date: January 15, 2008
By Ahmad Al-Khaled, Staff writer
KUWAIT: The issue of gender equality under the law has come under fire of late after an exasperated Kuwaiti woman wrote to a local Arabic newspaper telling the tale of her frustrated quest to renew her passport and was told the law required her to be accompanied by her male guardian. “It is frustrating that we are not considered equipped to act as our own guardians in 2008,” said a middle-aged Kuwaiti wife and mother of five, Um Talal, who read the woman’s letter describing how she was denied the right to renew her passport unless her husband accompanied her to the ministry.
While Kuwait is a Muslim nation, Kuwaiti law is not solely Sharia based, although it uses Sharia as a primary source of legislation according to the Constitution. Adult-aged Kuwaiti women are required under the law to be accompanied by their husband or father to renew their passports. If their father and husband are deceased or should they be divorced from their husband, they may be required to provide authorities with proof of their male guardian’s death or proof of their marital status.
“Why should we be required to offer such proof. It is insulting to be treated as if we Kuwaiti women are in need of guardianship. Shame on the government for continuing to allow such a law to remain in the books,” said a 30 something Fala Jassem. “It is not Islamic to treat women poorly, we are not children! Shame on anyone that calls this law Islamic,” said 65-year-old Bedour Bader.
While Kuwaiti women speaking to Kuwait Times were staunchly against the law, Kuwaiti men were divided with some going so far as to call the law a necessary requirement to keep their women protected. “It is a husband’s duty to act as a guardian for his wife. We must lead our families and this includes the wife,” said 53-year-old father of four Abdullah Nasser.
You can read the rest of the article HERE.
Lapsang Souchong
When I was in college, my aunt sent me a box of Lapsang Souchong tea. Winters were long and cold, rainy and windy, and lapsang souchong has a very smokey taste. Often as I was studying, I would have a cup next to me to warm me from the inside, but also because I was so totally addicted to the smell, which is like that of a wood-burning fire.
I checked lapsang souchong on Wikipedia, and this is what they say:
Lapsang souchong is a black tea originally from the Mount Wuyi area in the Fujian province of China[1], sometimes referred to as Smoke Tea. The tea leaves have been withered over pine or cedar fires, pan-fired, rolled and oxidized before being fully dried in bamboo baskets over burning pine.[2] The result is a smoky, robust tea with an overriding scent and flavour of wood smoke, which dominates the flavour of the black tea itself.
The name in Fukienese means “smokey sub-variety”, and is a variation of the older WuyiBohea tea.[3] In popular legend the tea was created during the Qing dynasty when soldiers camping in a tea processing company delayed the drying of the tea leaves. After the soldiers had left, the workers sped up the drying process by hanging the tea leaves over burning pine wood. [4]
Lapsang souchong from the original source is expensive, as Wuyi is a small area and there is increasing interest in the tea. [5]
the Wikipedia article on lapsang souchong (which you can read for yourself by clicking on the blue type) also says lapsang souchong is “an acquired taste.”
They are right. It is strong, not at all refined. I haven’t seen Lapsang Souchong on the menus anywhere in Kuwait. It is beginning to appear on a menu or two back in Seattle, where tea shops are plentiful and tea is widely appreciated.
I fixed some for a friend who dropped by the other afternoon, and revelled in the smokey scent that lingers, even this morning, in my clothing from having brewed it up.
I wish I had a fireplace!
(It is 2°C this morning in Kuwait (36°F) at 0800, and tonight is expected to be even colder than last night.)
Favoring Co-ed Schools
Fascinating defense of integrated classrooms in today’s Arab Times, entitled Students Will Be Made More Comfortable under Co-ed written by Kuwait University student Dalal Nasser Al-Otaibi.
I learned how American Universities became co-ed, and why. (I had no idea; you grow up thinking these things are a given.) This article must have been used as a paper for a class, as it is well documented, cites sources, etc.
Baked Apples – So Simple, So Good!
Cold weather is the perfect time for baked apples. Apples are good for you, cinnamon is good for you, the smell as they are cooking is divine, and the heat from the oven is welcome in these cold winter evenings. 🙂
I slice a little bit off the bottom for the apples, so they will sit flat in the dish – not too much, just a little:
Use a knife to take out a cone from the core, then use a melon-ball maker to scoop the seeds out of the center of the apple. Don’t go through the bottom if you can help it. If you do, it’s not a big deal, but try not to.
Mix up about a cup of brown sugar with about 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and some small pieces of real butter – you can use a fork to break the butter up and mix it into the sugar. It doesn’t have to be well mixed, some lumps are OK, you just want small pieces of butter.
Stuff apples with cinnamon butter, pack firmly into each apple cavity, and top with a small pat of butter:
Bake at 180 degrees C. or 350 degrees F. for 50 minutes.
This is how they look coming out of the oven:
Put each apple into a bowl, spoon sauce over apple, then top with a big dab of whipped cream:
This whipped cream is whipped with confectioner’s (powdered) sugar and a drop of vanilla flavoring. YummmmmY!
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