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.
U.S. Continues Proud Tradition Of Diversity On Front Lines
Funny in a very sad way . . .from The Onion. Note the Kuwait dateline – folks, this is satire, one of the bleakest forms of humor.
CAMP COYOTE, KUWAIT—With blacks and Hispanics comprising more than 60 percent of the Army’s ground forces in Iraq, the U.S. military is continuing its long, proud tradition of multiculturalism on the front lines of war. “Though racism and discrimination remain problems in society at large, in the military—especially in the lower ranks where you find the cannon fodder—a spirit of inclusiveness has prevailed for decades,” Gen. Jim White said Monday. “When it comes to having your head blown off by enemy fire, America is truly colorblind.”
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.
Blue Light Special
Back in the United States, there is a store, K-mart, that from time to time makes an announcement:
Attention, K-mart shoppers. We have a blue light special for the next fifteen minutes on (vacuum cleaners/ school supplies / men’s clothing / holiday wrapping / . . .ad infinitum) on Aisle whatever.
So when I saw this at the local co-op, I just had to grin:
Stormy Weather
This was taken minutes ago, through my dust encrusted window. For my non-Kuwait readers, although we have rain throughout the winter (and winter does get cold here, down to almost freezing at night) the “rainy season” is late March – April. We have had truly spectacular thunder storms, amazing lightning, and rainy days.
Even on the rainiest day, the sun breaks through at some point in the day. We are already beginning to feel hints of the heat to come. The rain, combined with the heat, makes it increasingly muggy. Most of the year, it is dry, not terribly humid, even living at the coast.
But my windows! You would think that the rain would wash them clean, but no! The rain carries dust, and my windows are streaked and caked! You can see it if you look at the darker part of the clouds – but you grab the shot you can when you can, and although this one is flawed by the dust, I love the contrast of lights and darks.
“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.”
30% Chance of Rain
Yesterday, Weather Underground for Kuwait forecasted a 30% chance of rain. I told my husband this morning that what it meant was that it rained about 30% of the day, not that there was less that a 50 – 50 chance of precipitation. It rained just enough to make the roads DEADLY. . . Cars skidding on built up oil all over the place. Kind of like the first snow of the winter in Seattle.
Today, Weather Underground says there is a 60% chance of rain, but so far I don’t see any. Uh oh, as soon as I wrote that, I saw a huge flash of lightening and heard an up close and personal rumble of thunder. Need to send this in and unplug! Is there an electrical souk in Kuwait where you can buy transformers and heavy duty surge protectors?
One of the reasons I love living here, however, is the colors. This is the color of a morning with a projection of 60% rain. Just look at those colors!
Mosquito Magnet
I am a mosquito magnet. Adventure Man and I go to Africa almost yearly, on safari, sometimes walking, and we love it. But oh, the price I pay! Two or three times a day, I have to tend my wounds – putting antihistimine creams on my bites, which swell and throb and itch until it nearly drives me crazy.
In Tanzania last year, I had no sooner put some serious DEET on when a TseTse fly landed on me and bit me – right where I had just sprayed the repellent!
So every step scientists take to develop a repellent which will truly repel, I applaud.
Mosquitoes Target Exhaled Breath
The mechanism mosquitoes use to zero in on their targets has been discovered by scientists in New York. It is already known that the insects are very sensitive to carbon dioxide in exhaled breath.
Now a team led by Rockefeller University has found that they sense the gas using protein receptors in the structure extending from their jaws.
Writing in Nature, they say the discovery could aid the fight against insect-born diseases, such as malaria.
Read the rest of the article at BBC Health News.
I’m not ready to stop breathing! But maybe they could develop a gum I could chew that would mask the carbon dioxide I exhale?
The Kuwait Church Souk
In Kuwait, as in most of the Middle East, in the shopping areas, shops that sell the same kind of goods are grouped together. “Souks” in the traditional shopping areas are small stalls, or open displays, thus all the vegetable vendors are grouped in one area, the perfume dealers in another, the cloth dealers in another. It is handy – when you go looking for something, if one shop doesn’t have it, another surely will.
I remember once looking for masonry screws in Doha; when the first stall didn’t have it, he left his stall – and all his merchandise, unprotected – and took me to his friend, who did have them. Sometimes a stall owner will send a helper to another store, and return with the item you are seeking.
Even some of the large malls seem to group similar vendors in the same spots. In Saudi Arabia, I remember entire floors devoted to shoes, or to abayas, or to accessories, or cloth and tailors.
So it gives me a big grin to go to churchin Kuwait on Fridays.
Friday mornings are sleepy in Kuwait. It’s a day off for the majority of the population, and Moslems go to the mosque for Friday prayers around noon. In the middle of downtown Kuwait, however, even early on a Friday morning, there is a hive of activity – at what we call the “church souk”.
It’s really a very clever concept, and also one that tickes my heart. In one area are many many churches. They are all Christian, and range from congregations of mainly Indian men, to Phillipino families, Nigerians, Chinese, Western, Baptist, Evangelical, Catholic, Orthodox, at least one congregation which has live musicians playing loud, joyful hymns and then more staid and traditional congregations.
I’ve often wondered how all these different congregations manage to work out a schedule – there must be at least 10 – 12 different meeting locations – for sharing the chapels, for managing the time needed to get people seated, and then to clear up and get people out again. It’s exactly these kinds of little bureaucratic quibblings that can stir up a hornet’s next of problems between “like minded” believers. If there are problems, the church leaders seem to work them out without acrimony. I wonder how they do that?
In my heart, I believe this is how we were meant to worship – and although our worship has different styles, it delights me that we all – hundreds of us, if not thousands – meet in the one area, every Friday, and have the freedom, here in Kuwait, to worship each in our own style. That’s a very powerful freedom.
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