Retrograde 4th of July
Alternate title: Every man needs a Kubota
As we were listening to the news and weather Tuesday night before going to bed, the weather woman was talking about a ‘retrograde’ storm system. She showed us on the map; normally our weather blows from west to east, but this storm was going to blow east to west, and then reverse and go west to east again. Going counter to the normal flow is ‘retrograde.’
Our entire holiday was retrograde. Which, for people like AdventureMan and I, is not too bad. It’s a good thing we married one another; we are not to good with same-same all the time, if things get too tame, we shake things up a little bit. It’s not good or bad, it’s just the way we are wired.
One of the first differences was that we weren’t leaving early in the morning to drive down Highway 98 along the beach road; we were picking up our adorable grandson, going to his house, and as soon as our daughter-in-law got off work we would hit the interstate.
It all went well; cloudy skies but light traffic, all was well until we left the highway headed south . . . and started hitting the “Roads Under Water” signs. We didn’t see any roads under water until the car in front of us hit what looked like a shiny spot on the road and went almost a foot deep. AdventureMan cooly slowed and drifted steadily through the lake in the road – and we thanked God to be in a vehicle a little higher off the ground than a sedan.
After the lake in the road, it started raining, a little sprinkling, and then a steady rain.
The temperatures dropped.
Here is what we had planned – dinner with family and friends, a day of fun and heading out for sun downers on the boat to watch the fireworks on the 4th. Heavy applications of insect repellant and sunscreen.
Here is what happened – the deluge.
Here is what was cool about the deluge – the temperatures were the coolest, 24 hours around the clock – that we’ve seen in a month. We could sit out on the screened porch looking at the bayou, listening to the rain fall – it was heavenly! No insect repellent needed. No sun screen needed.
Our hostess is a wonderful and creative cook; unafraid to try new recipes. Dinner after our rainy drive in: Red snapper, baked in a crust of crumbs with butter and parsley, so delicious. Green beans and mushrooms; so good I had them for breakfast another day 🙂 Holy smokes, desserts. The best pound cake ever, topped with peaches in their own juice and whipped cream, or chocolate red velvet brownies.
It was a fabulous lazy day. In the afternoon, our friend got an emergency call; friends whose husband was out of town were facing a flooding situation. Loading up his Kubota, he and AdventureMan went over and (manly manly) DUG A DITCH! getting all dirty and wet in the process, coming home with those grins that only activities like a good hunting trip, a successful fishing trip or digging a good ditch can create.
We had great plans that night to visit The Blue Fig (“They have mohammara!” my hostess said, knowing my weakness) but when we got there, it was closed . . . and, oddly every restaurant along that strip seemed to be closed. And side roads were flooded, more big lakes of water in the roads. It had rained so much and for so long that the runoff had no where to go.
Our little grandson fell asleep while we were searching for a restaurant that was open, and slept in my arms through dinner. I know this might be the last time; he is getting to be such a big boy, so I just treasured the time and listened to him breathe.
I know it may not seem like such a great holiday to you, but it was fun. We focused on conversations and laughed a lot. AdventureMan thinks every man might need a Kubota. We listened to the rain fall on the leaves, the roof, the bayou. We listened to the frogs celebrate the 4th of July. We really had a great time.
“It’s Just Like Living in Alaska, Mom . . . or Kuwait . . . “
My Mom was concerned; the temperatures are approaching 90°F in Seattle, and most of Seattle does not bother with air conditioning. At night, the temperatures go down into the fifties, cooling everything off, but the day time highs can be more than a little uncomfortable.
“How do you manage?” she asks. “I see the temperatures in (nearby) Mobile are in the 90’s almost every day.”
“It’s not that hard; it’s like living in Alaska – or Kuwait,” I tell her. “When it gets cold in Alaska, you dress warmly, you turn on the heat, you stay inside, and when you need to go out, you get into your car in the heated garage, go in your heated car to a heated store, and you come back home. You don’t spend a lot of time outside.”
I do pretty much the same thing I did in Qatar and Kuwait. I get up and do my devotional readings, and on some days I go to my aqua-aerobics class. on other mornings I volunteer. If I need something, I stop at a store on the way home. Sometimes, I clean house, or do laundry. We often go out for lunch, from the air conditioned car to the air conditioned restaurant and back 🙂 In the afternoons, I quilt or I read, or I quilt and I read.
AdventureMan grew up in the South, he is comfortable with the heat and the humidity. He works out in his gardens; once the temperatures go over 80° I rarely even visit the gardens, maybe when October comes and the temperatures drop. Yesterday morning I looked out as the sun was rising over the gardens and all I could see was swarms of insects rising. I don’t think they were mosquitoes, they looked like little no-see-up kind of things, all speeding around in the rising sun. I don’t do insects, the same way I really don’t do heat and humidity.
The Qatari Cat loves the heat. Part of his daily routine is to eat, then to go into the garage and sleep on one of the cars. It’s like an oven in the garage; it must remind him of living on the streets of Qatar when he was just a tiny thing. He is no longer a tiny thing. When we have international guests over for dinner, they always ask to take photos of him; he has grown to be a very long, tall cat, kingly but gracious.
Yesterday morning, as I headed out, there was a hint of – well, it was not coolness, but it was just not blasting me with heat. It was a respite from the relentless heat. I don’t begin to think it was a hint of winter to come; the summer torment has really just begun and is unlikely to end before late October, but I treasure even a hint of “not a blast of heat.”
AdventureMan asks me if I miss Seattle. Not so much, really, traffic has gotten so bad there, but I miss the climate. I feel energized by the cool mornings, even rain doesn’t bother me. I love the sound of the wind whistling around, I love taking a walk along the waterfront after lunch or dinner. I don’t find it at all surprising that diabetes is associated highly with countries with hot climates; heat makes you lethargic, inactive, all the things that encourage sloth.
Torrential rains are forecasted for this 4th of July weekend; in Pensacola there is a possibility they will diminish just in time for the fireworks. Hmmm. Heat. Humidity. Mosquitoes . . . I love fireworks . . . weighing my options 🙂
Arabs wary of expressing their opinions online
Fascinating study results published in Qatar’s Gulf Times:
Northwestern University in Qatar has released new findings from an eight-nation survey indicating many people in the Arab world do not feel safe expressing political opinions online despite sweeping changes in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
From over 10,000 people surveyed in Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan and the UAE, 44% expressed some doubt as to whether people should be free to criticise governments or powerful institutions online.
Over a third of Internet users surveyed said they worry about governments checking what they do online.
According to the report, “The implied concern (of governments checking what they do online) is fairly consistent in almost all countries covered, but more acute in Saudi Arabia, where the majority (53%) of those surveyed expressed this concern.”
The study – titled ‘Media Use in the Middle East – An Eight-Nation Survey’ – was undertaken by researchers at NU-Q to better understand how people in the region use the Internet and other media. It comes as the university moves towards a more formalised research agenda and is the first in what will be a series of reports relating to Internet use.
The survey includes a specific chapter on Qatar, the only country where those surveyed regarded the Internet as a more important source of news than television. “We took an especially close look at media use in the State of Qatar – a country with one of the highest Internet penetration rates in the Arab world—and internationally,” said NU-Q dean and CEO Everette Dennis.
These findings follow a preliminary report NU-Q released last April that showed web users in the Middle East support the freedom to express opinions online, but they also believe the Internet should be more tightly regulated. “While this may seem a puzzling paradox, it has not been uncommon for people the world over to support freedom in the abstract but less so in practice,” Dennis explained.
Among other findings, the research shows: 45% of people think public officials will care more about what they think and 48% believe they can have more influence by using the Internet.
Adults in Lebanon (75%) and Tunisia (63%) are the most pessimistic about the direction of their countries and feel they are on the ‘wrong track.’
Respondents were far more likely to agree (61%) than disagree (14%) that the quality of news reporting in the Arab world has improved in the past two years, however less than half think overall that the news sources in their countries are credible.
Online transactions are rare in the Middle East, with only 35% purchasing items online and only 16% investing online.
The complete set of results from the survey is available online at menamediasurvey.northwestern.edu. The new interactive pages hosting the survey on the website have features that allow users to make comparisons between different countries, as well as between different demographics within each country.
Dennis confirmed that the research report is the first in an annual series of reports produced in collaboration with the World Internet Project; one of the world’s most extensive studies on the Internet, in which NU-Q is a participating institution.
NU-Q and WIP signed an agreement earlier in the year, providing a global platform for the current research.
Lamborghini Aventador: Qatari Royal’s £350k supercar towed in Knightsbridge
LLOOOLLLLL! Great story, thanks John Mueller!
Little cross cultural problem going on . . . no license? No registration? No problem, you know my uncle, right, the Amir of Qatar . . . LOL!
Batman wouldn’t stand for it: Police peer inside the garish car’s doors (Picture: SWNS)
It’s hard not to notice a bright purple Lamborghini with orange trim. So the driver of this £350,000 supercar was asking for trouble when he went for a spin without a front numberplate.
Police spotted the infringement and impounded the vehicle after its 24-year-old owner – thought to be a member of the Qatari royal family – was unable to produce evidence that he had a driving licence or insurance.
Crowds gathered as the 220mph Aventador was towed away in London’s Knightsbridge.
Arab playboys descend on the wealthy neighbourhood each summer in costly cars flown from home and often hit trouble for lacking the correct papers.
The mean machines are a draw for petrolheads but the roaring engines annoy residents.
Off we tow: The Lamborghini Aventador is loaded onto a truck (Picture: SWNS)
Dozens of onlookers gathered to photograph the scissor-doored supercar, which has been customised by a Japanese tuning company.
One fan said: ‘It is great when the wealthy foreign tourists come over to London every summer as you always see these amazing supercars.
‘The Lamborghini looked like something out of Tron, it was absolutely stunning.
‘Hopefully there was just some confusion over the correct paperwork and it will be back on the road
UPDATE:
First it was carted off on the back of a truck, then it faced the crusher, now glow-in-the dark Lamborghini is ticketed in Mayfair
- Police impounded £350k supercar after owner failed to produce documents
- But he was slapped with ticket just hours after retrieving it from police
- Purple Lamborghini Aventador customised to glow in the dark
- Owner believed to be Nasser Al-Thani, 24, of Qatar’s ruling family
PUBLISHED: 04:49 EST, 5 July 2013 | UPDATED: 14:32 EST, 5 July 2013
He was only a hair’s breadth away from seeing his beloved £350,000 supercar crushed to a pulp after it was seized by police for driving offences.
So you might think the owner of this glow-in-the-dark Lamborghini would be a bit more careful next time.
But within hours of retrieving his purple sports car from the Metropolitan Police, he found himself on the wrong side of the law again after being slapped with a parking ticket.
Americanah and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Rushing from one meeting to another yesterday, I had just an hour – but during that hour, Terry Gross was interviewing one of my favorite authors, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie does GREAT interviews. She is funny, and educated and insightful; she can talk about painful topics and make you laugh and cry with her. That interview was a blessing on my day.
I started reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie when I was in Kuwait. A good friend approached me and asked me to form a book club. LOL. This is a friend I can’t say no to. Every introverted bone in my body was screaming “NO! NO!” and I smiled at her and said “Yes.”
God is good. He laughed when I said “yes” and through the book club, introduced me to authors I might never otherwise read. The club was made up of many nationalities, and we read books from everywhere, unforgettable books. We read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie “Half of a Yellow Sun.” Once you read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, there is no going back. I wonder if I will be able to hold out on Americanah until it comes out in paperback?
This is from the National Public Radio website, so you can actually listen to the interview yourself, should you want to get to know this delightful author a little better.
‘Americanah’ Author Explains ‘Learning’ To Be Black In The U.S.
When the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was growing up in Nigeria she was not used to being identified by the color of her skin. That changed when she arrived in the United States for college. As a black African in America, Adichie was suddenly confronted with what it meant to be a person of color in the United States. Race as an idea became something that she had to navigate and learn.
The learning process took some time and was episodic. Adichie recalls, for example, an undergraduate class in which the subject of watermelon came up. A student had said something about watermelon to an African-American classmate, who was offended by the comment.
“I remember sitting there thinking, ‘But what’s so bad about watermelons? Because I quite like watermelons,’ ” Adichie tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross.
She felt that her African-American classmate was annoyed with her because Adichie didn’t share her anger — but she didn’t have the context to understand why. The history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was not taught to students in Nigeria. Adichie had yet to learn fully about the history of slavery — and its continuing reverberations — in the U.S.
“Race is such a strange construct,” says Adichie, “because you have to learn what it means to be black in America. So you have to learn that watermelon is supposed to be offensive.”
Adichie is a MacArthur Fellowship winner and author of the novels Purple Hibiscusand Half of A Yellow Sun. Her new novel, Americanah, explores this question of what it means to be black in the U.S., and tells the story of a young Nigerian couple, one of whom leaves for England and the other of whom leaves for America.
The title, she says, is a Nigerian word for those who have been to the U.S. and return with American affectations.
“It’s often used,” she says, “in the context of a kind of gentle mockery.”
Saudi Arabia Welcomes Friday-Saturday Weekend
From Doha News:
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has issued a royal decree to change the country’s weekend to Friday-Saturday, effective June 29, state news agency SPA reports.
The move, which puts KSA in line with the rest of the GCC countries, was made “for the sake of putting an end to the negative effects and the lost economic opportunities” due to the difference in workdays between the nation and the rest of the world, Riyadh Bureau reports.
It will apply to all government bodies and monetary agencies, including the central bank and stock exchange, SPA said. But schools and educational institutions will maintain the Thursday-Friday weekend until the beginning of the new academic year.
According to Riyadh Bureau:
The change will align banking and business days with most other countries in the region, as well as being closer to the workweek of international financial markets and businesses. Oman was the latest GCC country to shift its weekend to a Friday start last May.
KSA, Qatar’s giant neighbor the west, has been mulling a shift for more than five years, but didn’t move forward previously due to resistance from religious leaders.
“So There We Were, Two Naked Guys in the Shower and . . . . “
LOL, no, no, this is not going where you think it might go, but it got my attention, too!
AdventureMan was in the locker room with one of his exercise/aerobics buddies, cooling down from his water aerobics class when this story started, and was sharing the story with me later, at lunch, as we exchangin details of our mornings.
“. . . And he asked ‘do you know what today is?’ and I said ‘Yes! It’s the 63th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War,” AdventureMan responded.
Guy talk. Guys discuss their combat experience in different wars. Combat is so intense, it imprints memories the way childbirth does in women, or a huge traumatic event, like the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, or 9-11, or the Kennedy assassination, or the Tsunamis that hit Japan and washed entirely over the Maldives – experiences when the earth beneath your feet shifts, and things you once took for granted are shaken forever.
Who said guys don’t connect? AdventureMan has another old friend he needs to get in touch with today, to tell him he is thinking of him; Korean War veterans are largely forgotten in the tallying of combat in our country.
Pensacola is a wonderful place to be a military veteran. There is a Veteran’s hospital, and veteran-friendly policies at the clinics, commissaries and BX/PXx. Today we had lunch at Mellow Mushroom, where every Tuesday they give 20% off to all active duty and retired servicemen and women. Home Depot and Lowe’s give 10% off on every purchase, even plumbers, electricians, contractors, banks, theaters and many stores often give military discounts. And they thank us for our service. :0
To those of you who served in the Korean conflict: Thank you for your service.
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