Magnificent Concert
There isn’t much I ask of AdventureMan, he is busy supporting us and feathering our nest for retirement. When I ask, he is such a sweetie. I had asked about last night – there was a very special concert I wanted to hear. He took me, even though he had an early flight out this morning and hadn’t packed, hadn’t even picked up his shirts from the cleaners.
It was so totally worth it.
The Al Ahmadi singers did their “Holiday” concert at the SAS/ Al Hashemi Ballroom. It was wonderul, and moving, and a great way to get into the spirit of the Christmas season. I love that ballroom, it has so much character, even though the outer reception area smells a little moldy – what can you expect, right on the sea like that? The place is clean, and has an amazingly elegant feel, with it’s fabulously intricate wood parquet floors, it’s ship-light inspired chandeliers, it’s coffered ceilings, it’s heavy wood staircases to the upper deck/balcony. It has a great ambience.
Thanks be to God, in Kuwait, the Al Ahmadi singers can even sing excerpts from The Messiah, have readings about the meaning of Christmas, and celebrate the birth of the tiny baby Jesus. Can you see my great big grin? Even the memory makes me happy.
The orchestra supporting the chorus, under the direction of Joanna Kowalla, was also amazing. Very very good. Lucky Al Ahmadi singers, with such a great director, Richard L. Bushman. The soprano soloist, Vernica Grmusa, took our breath away with her excellence. The alto soloist, Jessica Olson, had a couple of really fun numbers, composed by the concert conductor’s wife, Harriet Petherick Bushman.
It was just the evening I needed, exquisite music, performed with spirit and excellence, in an atmosphere of joy. It was a total wow.
Just a couple reminders to people who may not have a lot of experience with attending concerts:
1) Turn off your cell phone. It is selfish and rude for you to be talking on your phone. I don’t care if your friend is lost, I don’t care. The conductor is making the SECOND announcement now about turning off cell phones; he means YOU. Everyone around you is glaring – can’t you see? Turn off your cell phone.
2) If you are late, and if they allow you in anyway (in most places you have to wait until an intermission or pause) enter discretely and find seats quickly and SIT DOWN. The key word here is discrete. Most of us are excited about the concert and eager to hear the music. Your grand entrance is lost on us. We don’t care how good you look, we just want you to sit down. Waving to all your friends, attracting attention to yourself makes us want to kill something – watch out. It might be YOU.
In spite of my complaints, above, the concert was so overwhelmingly good that even these minor rudenesses didn’t spoil the overall joy of an evening particularly well spent. Bravo, Brava, Al Ahmadi Singers, orchestra and soloists!
The Big Fight
AdventureMan and I had a big fight last night; I made it worse because I wouldn’t fight. It only made him angrier that I laughed and walked away.
Too much information? Sometimes, most of the time, a fight isn’t about what it seems to be about. When you have been married a LOOOONNNNGGGG time, you learn, thanks be to God.
AdventureMan is jet lagging, and working too hard. He takes all his responsibilities so seriously. He needed to go to sleep. And that is exactly what he did. Right after dinner, he fell asleep. The Qatteri Cat (he told me this morning) knew something was up and took two of his babies in to AdventureMan to make things better.
We were both up early this morning, laughing. He came up with a wonderful idea for date-night tonight, one of my favorite restaurants, and then . . . (if we can stay awake) we are going to watch this:
I know ya’ll have seen it, but we haven’t, and it just came out on DVD last week in the US.
Sunrise 14 December
Every sunrise is different. This morning, the Gulf is glassy-smooth, there are thick clouds in the sky, so the sun can’t break through until it is already up, and the mood is entirely different from other mornings. Still no significant rain in Kuwait, but you can see a little hope as the clouds begin to thicken . . . maybe one day soon!
Dubai Rape Case Update
Here is an update on the case where the 15 year old French boy was kidnapped, taken to the desert and raped, and then the accused said it was consensual. The parents took them to court – and two have now been convicted; the third has yet to be tried. The doctor who examined this boy told the boy he was a homosexual, that there were no signs of rape. The parents were outraged, and pursued the case.
You can read the entire BBC Story HERE.
Emiratis jailed for raping youth
A court in Dubai, in the UAE, has jailed two men for 15 years for the abduction and sexual assault of a 15-year-old French-Swiss boy.
The men, one of whom is HIV positive, took the teenager to the desert and raped him at knifepoint.
The victim’s mother, Veronique Robert, says the authorities lied about the defendant’s medical status to hide the fact that Aids is present in the UAE.
“Fifteen years is nothing for someone who knew he had Aids,” she said.
A lawyer for the family said they would appeal against what they saw as a too-lenient sentence. A juvenile court is trying a third suspect in the same case.
The defence had claimed the victim had consented to sex and had lied to the authorities.
Treatment missed
Ms Robert has been campaigning to change the law in the United Arab Emirates to recognise homosexual rape as a crime and for more openness about HIV and Aids.
Shuw’i: Night and Day
By day:
At false dawn:
I can only hope they are having a fantastic catch for the upcoming holidays; imagine, The Big Eid and Christmas falling in the same timeframe. How wonderful!
Bloggers Changing the Face of News in the Middle East
“So are the “new media” – blogs, websites, chatrooms – now becoming the only truly independent media in the Arab world?”
This article is from today’s BBC News in Depth:
New media dodge Mid-East censors
By Robin Lustig
BBC radio presenter
It’s never easy writing about media freedom.
Even in countries where there is no official censorship, all reporters know there will always be some restraints on what they can say – editors need to be persuaded, owners need to be kept happy, the law has to be obeyed.
Where there is official censorship – where, for example, it is a crime to “bring the government into disrepute” or to publish material which “insults the dignity of the head of state” – the problems are all the greater.
No freedom is absolute, yet some media are a great deal freer than others.
In the Arab world, in general, the media have been heavily politicised.
Governments have tended to control the main media outlets – the main daily newspaper, the main TV and radio networks – and where independent media have been allowed, they have often been owned by opposition parties or by businesspeople with clear links to political organisations. (The establishment of the Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV news station was a rare special case.)
But then, one day, along came the internet. And it was as if someone had blown open a few million doors.
Egyptian successes
Now, everyone can write – weblogs, or blogs, were born, giving everyone with access to the internet exactly the same opportunity to write and publish as the most powerful media tycoon.
You can read the rest of this article by clicking here, on BBC News.
Band of Boats
It must depend on when the fish are running; there is a band of boats a few hundred yards off shore, the shuw’i , the old fashioned kind of fishing boats. Late in the afternoon, they are easier to see than in the morning, where the haze obscures them. Best of all, early in the morning, before the sun rises, they form a necklace of bobbing, flickering lights, and, for some reason, it makes me feel warm and secure to see them out there.
(Some things don’t have to be rational, they just are what they are.)
The description of the shuw’i at the Science Museum along the Corniche:
While the weather is so perfect for walking, and for being outdoors, visit the Science museum on the Corniche. The old boat exhibit outside is totally FREE, and a fabulous peek into Kuwait’s past, which, every morning and night, I am reminded, carries on to the future – the historic shuw’i are still in use, as are the larger jalboot.
Back to Gas Tanks
Remember when I printed the e-mail about how the handle of the fuel pump on your dashboard points to the side of the car where the tank is, and it wasn’t true?
Ever since then, I have been conscious of checking the dashboard.
I had a rental car in Seattle, and again, the fuel tank was on the opposite side of where the fuel pump on the dashboard showed, BUT underneath it, I saw some lettering “Fuel tank on the left” and an arrow pointing left. And sure enough, the fuel tank was on the left.
Here is what is funny. When I got back to Kuwait, and I was starting up my car, I looked at the fuel gauge and noticed the fuel pump – and underneath was the same lettering – “Fuel tank on the left” with an arrow.
I had never noticed it before.
Now I wonder if it is on all cars. Will you take a look at your dashboard, check the fuel gauge, and see if there is lettering or an arrow or some indication where your fuel tank outlet is?
Yasmin Farms, Kuwait
“But this is just as good, madame.” the produce manager was telling me, but I’ve tried this spinach, and it’s NOT!
“The spinach from Yasmin Farms, which I bought here, has the BEST taste,” I told him again, “please, please, tell me when the Yasmin Farms spinach will be delivered and I will make a special trip to buy it. It isn’t like the others, it’s better.”
This is some of the best tasting spinach I have ever tasted:
I wonder what else Yasmin Farms grows?
Grown in Kuwait!
“Madame,” he shook his head sadly, “I think there is no more spinach from Yasmin Farms this year.”
I love fresh spinach. I love it in salads. I love to cook it just a little, with garlic. I love to cook it just a little, with soy sauce and tahini. I love to cook it and serve it with a little bacon. I love to use it in dips. I love to use it in vegetarian lasagne. I love to use it in cassaroles. I even use it raw in sandwiches.
Spinach is one of the joys in my life, and the spinach from Yasmin Farms is back in the Sultan Center, for only a short time. I bought so much – we will be eating spinach and more spinach! 🙂
I also found Kuwaiti artichokes! We cooked them up last night, and they were nutty, and delicious.
Back in October, something happened that changed my life unexpectedly. I was visiting Fonzation and he had a post on How Old Are You Really? You take this test. It is a long test. Then, a couple hours later, they send you your results, how old your body is, given your health history, your family health history, and your habits.
OK, here is a truth I am ashamed to tell you. I felt pretty confident I am younger than my real age.
So I took the test, and came out two years older than my real age because I don’t get enough exercise. It really hurt my feelings. And then, because you have to give them an e-mail where they can send the results, they started sending me a little newsletter telling me little hints that would help me lower my real age, and they were mostly hints I could incorporate into my life easily. Things like telling me that artichokes – which I love anyway – have a huge amount of fibre. So last night we had delicious, fibre-filled KUWAITI-grown artichokes. What a treat!
Both AdventureMan and I are really trying harder to live healthier lives. We ate breakfast this morning (neither of us likes breakfast) and he had oatmeal, a very special oatmeal that my best friend sent from Seattle, and I had a healthy oat-y granola, and we both had blueberries in our cereal. Blueberries are amazingly good for you – I have learned from this health newsletter. (Breakfast is a lot easier when you are jet lagging, wide awake at three and have some time to kill before going to work.) Skipping breakfast is another thing that is bad for your “real” age, as it turns out.
This test is not like “what kind of flower are you,” which is fun, and frivolous and gone from your mind two days later. Two months later it is still having an impact on us. Visit his site and take this test. And then RUN to the Sultan Center and buy some Yasmin farms spinach!
Stop Honor Killings.com
I used to send out e-mails to close friends about my adventures travelling and living in “exotic” places. When you live your entire life in one place, the smallest things that may seem trivial to you are interesting and different to those who have never been to your country. I would get letters back saying “you don’t know me, you don’t even know the person who shared your e-mail with me, but (that person’s) former wife is related to one of the people you sent the e-mail to . .”
If someone makes an interesting comment on a blog I follow, sometimes I follow that comment, which I did today. On the blog of a person I don’t follow, from a comment from another blogger I don’t follow, I found this fascinating website:
Stop Honor Killings.com
Here is what I would describe as their mission statement:
INTERNATIONAL: International Campaign Against Honour Killings
Posted by Ginger on Wednesday, September 05, 2007 (12:56:46) (187 reads)
Over 5000 women and girls are killed every year by family members in so-called ‘honour killings’, according to the UN. These crimes occur where cultures believe that a woman’s unsanctioned sexual behaviour brings such shame on the family that any female accused or suspected must be murdered. Reasons for these murders can be as trivial as talking to a man, or as innocent as suffering rape.
I’ve lived in countries where honor killings happened, and we knew about it. It would be in the paper. We saw it in Jordan, in particular, where there is now a huge effort to put an end to the killings, and in Qatar, where it was never in the paper, but the kids would tell their teachers about it, and word travels fast in a small country.
I never hear a word about honor killings in Kuwait.
Is that because there aren’t any?
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