Kuwait Police: One Reason to Love Kuwait
Today I was caught up in one of the traffic stops. It figures. Usually they just wave me through, but last night going out for dinner with my husband, I didn’t want to carry a purse so I asked him to carry my Kuwaiti residence card. See what I mean about “it figures?”
So I confidently handed the policeman a copy of my passport page, my medical card and my driver’s license.
“Madam,” he said with concern, “your license has expired!”
“Oh no!” I said. “No! Not really?”
“Yes! It expires 1-1-07 and it 07!”
“Yes! It is still 07! So it is still valid!”
“No, madam, if you have an accident it would be a big problem! You must get a new license!”
“I will tell my husband right away so I can get a new license.”
Actually, the new license is in progress, and I knew I was taking a chance driving on the expired, temporary license. I just hoped I wouldn’t get stopped. Now I just hope the new, permanent license comes through relatively quickly.
But here is what I love. In the US, police aren’t always so flexible. I might have had my papers taken and not have even been able to drive home with my groceries. This guy was polite, spoke English well (even though by all rights, I should be speaking Arabic with him) and he was even sympathetic. He was on my side, even though I didn’t have the right papers.
My husband says “He knows you can’t be held accountable because you are a only a woman, and therefore irresponsible.”
I know my feminist side should be offended, but I just sit here grinning.
Fairytale House in Mahboula
In one of those minor twists of fate, the mystery mansion in Mangaf is featured in today’s Kuwait Times as the Fairytale House In Mahboula. My bad. It probably IS Mahboula; I get those M-words confused sometimes.
I tried to look the entire article up for you online, but it isn’t there. The Kuwait Times online is funny that way, some articles are there, some aren’t. If you want to find out more about the house, you’ll have to buy today’s paper!
The article says it is owned by Mr. Adel Al-Sadoun, and there is a full page story with several interior shots as well as a garden shot of the entire front of the house. Mr. Al-Sadoun is quite a collector, and his mansion houses several collectionsm and shows one photo of him standing next to a complete set of European body armor. It also says he is retired, but isn’t he the astronomer and weather predictor the Kuwait Times quotes when forecasting long bouts of hot windy weather, or whether there will be enough rain for a good truffle season?
The home was constructed in 1997.
Kuwait Road Hazards
Leaving a meeting today, I needed to run an errand. Within one half hour the following had happend:
1. I almost crashed my car. Three lanes of traffic going one way and I see a huge pothole up ahead in my lane. Bus over to the right with a little red car behind him. Van with two delivery people considerably behind on left – Check rearview mirror, plenty of room on the left, signal my intentions, begin to move left and the little red car behind the bus to the right swerves WAAAYYYY left – almost into me, while the car behind on my left SPEEDS UP! Between swerving quickly to avoid the little red car and then again to avoid the one that had speeded up, I was lucky to maintain control.
Comment: Potholes are dangerous. And what is it with these little drivers who would speed up to get IN your way, rather than maintaining their speed?? It was grotesque!
2. Minutes later I am passed by a very “cool” biker, he has a helmet, but his helmet is buckled on the back of the bike, and his vulnerable little head is bent cooly over the handlebars. Aha! Red light ahead, I will catch up with him and suggest the helmet goes on the head. But no, Mr. Cool goes right through the red lights! (This was a light where the red light was functional; he just felt it didn’t apply to him.)
3. What is the problem with the traffic light fund in Kuwait? Several times recently, we have seen lights where the red light is no longer functioning, only the green light is either on, or nothing is on, so if you know the lights, you know to watch for the green light and stop if it is not green. But what if you are in a strange part of town and don’t know the lights? It is easy to go through a “red” light that no longer shows red.
It isn’t that hard! This is a rich country! Someone is in charge, aren’t they? Isn’t anyone accountable for something so important as maintenance of traffic lights? Don’t the traffic police report lights that are non-functional? These non-functioning traffic lights are invitations to fatal accidents.
The Mysteries of Blogging
Every blogger will tell you – you can’t anticipate what your audience will love. There are pieces I labor over – mostly the travel pieces – and I get some comments, and the hits are steady over time, but nothing spectacular.
And then I will just jot off something in a hurry, and it will get hit after hit. When WordPress first came out with it’s snap-to feature, I wrote just a short blurb, and it gets several hits a day, even almost a month later.
But yesterday, all of a sudden, I started getting hits on Unexpected Pleasures a very abbreviated book report I wrote back in January on a book about belly dancing. If it were just one or two or three or four, I would have just thought it were a fluke, but it was 17, then 26, and finally 31 – in one day!
Most of the hits were coming from one referrer, and when I tried to check the referrer, it had some posts that were not public, so if she has mentioned my review, it is not visible to me. I wrote to Little Diamond who had reviewed the book, and she said she, too, had received a huge number of hits yesterday on that one obscure review.
It is a total mystery. No comments, just people peeking in. I don’t know what they are looking for. I don’t know why that one entry interests them. It is a blogging mystery.
Mangaf Mansion
Every time I see this house, I grin. I love it that someone has the money and the imagination to build exactly the house he wanted, and that he did it knowing he would probably get criticism. He built it anyway. Good on him.
Doha Souk Transport
As a young military wife, it was hugely shocking to me when people felt sorry for me that I had to move all the time. Yes, it is painful being far away from family. And yes, it is painful leaving good friends. But in expat world, we all leave sooner or later, this contract ends, this posting leads to another – and some of us are just wired to need the stimulation.
My husband walks into each new posting with credentials – people know what he has done and accomplished, he has “gravitas.” I get to seek out the drycleaner who won’t ruin my clothes, the man who sells the best tomatoes, and to try to get the heating fixed when no one wants to talk to a woman, and to try to find the roads that will get us where we need to go. In short, I am staff.
And, in spite of all my griping, I got the life I was meant to have. I love the variety, I love the shock of finding others think differently, perceive differently, and my own assumptions are challenged. And I love taking photos.
Here is one of my favorites – these wizened old men are always available to carry your excess and heavy packages, and this man was hired to carry the two adorable boys and “nanny” them as mom went from shop to shop. I asked permission before shooting the photo, from a man I assumed to be the father, but the mom came swooping out, asking what I was doing. Fortunately for me, the man calmed her down and all was well.
Better Faster Smarter Solution
My husband jokes that when I have a sore throat, it is the beginning of a common cold, but when he has a sore throat, it is a rare tropical disease and he should be babied and coddled and have tea and soup brought to him, and warm washcloths, and we should speak in sweet soft voices in case he is breathing his last.
Last night I had a tickle. My husband, God bless him, knows that what makes me all better is miso soup, so I had miso soup for dinner last night.
Today, I think I have the rare tropical disease kind of sore throat. It was just a tickle yesterday, but by night I was in the grips of a no-kidding, no sleeping sore throat and stuffed nose, coughing, and feeling rotten. I feel like something the Qatteri Cat dragged in.
I rarely get sick. I don’t have time to get sick now. Please, dear readers, share your top “get rid of a cold” solutions, and do it NOW! I need your help!
Mystery Back Again
Several months ago I posted a photo of a . . . something . . . out in the Gulf. I can’t figure out what this is, what it is doing. It is a large sturdy raft with mechanical equipment. It is visited several times a day by a couple different serious looking modern fishing boats – maybe coast guard boats. I can’t really tell.
It may be a dredge, as it is in shallow water and has all those tubes connected to floats. Or it may have to do with fishing. I don’t see any sand coming up, nor do I see fish. This is a great mystery to me. (Idly musing . . . )
I keep hoping one of you will recognize it and tell me what it is. Otherwise, the comment section is open for idle speculation.
Breakfast at Paul’s
It’s a great thing, being a grown-up. A lot of the things that were hard and fast rules as you are raising children get thrown out the window once it is just you and your husband once again.
When I was little, I remember Saturday nights. We would have hamburgers with all the trimmings, and watch a favorite TV show while we ate. It was the only night of the week we could eat in front of the TV.
There was a price to be paid, though. My mother would never allow a bottle on the table. There were special small bowls for the mustard, ketchup, relish, sliced onions, tomatoes, lettuce, etc. Putting condiments IN the bowls was no big deal, but I hated spooning the ketchup back into the narrow necked ketchup jar.
I will never forget my horror visiting my parents home with my son, and seeing a ketchup bottle on the table. I couldn’t believe it! I said “we were never allowed to put a ketchup bottle on the table when we were growing up!” and my Mom just laughed and said “now that we have raised you correctly we can do as we please!”
I totally get it. Now that it is just my husband and me, we also break the rules. We go out to eat more often. Sometimes we stay up late, even on a work night. Sometimes we leave a mess in our project room. I heard my husband tell the cat “Mom is going on a trip and we won’t even have to make the bed!” We’re easier on ourselves and we are easier on one another.
But best of all, when my husband wants a strawberry tart, even for breakfast, he can have a strawberry tart. He loves the ones from Paul’s. We don’t have breakfast there often, but we always enjoy it when we do.
Mobissimo
Have you heard about Mobissimo? It is one of the best sites for comparing airfares from one place to another. I owe this to a good friend, now working in Afghanistan. He makes his reservations through Mobissimo and shared the information with me.
You can include multiple destinations, something many of the travel sites don’t handle well, and you can see where you would be connecting and how long that connection will be.
I don’t always book through Mobissimo, but it is usually my first stop to get a glimpse of price comparisons and connections.
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