Mermaid Fabric
One of the things my friend and I were seeking on our Souk Quest was mermaid fabric. My friend has a grand daughter who loves to be The Little Mermaid, and I knew that the exact right fabric existed in the souk, I had seen it and didn’t have any excuse to buy it.
We found it. It is perfect – sea green, and shiny scales:
Doha is full of wonderful fabrics for dress-up.
Home Foreclosures: The Storm That’s Yet to Come
This is just an excerpt from a much longer article I found on the AOL Money and Finance Site which you can access to read the entire article, and find others like it, by clicking on the blue type.
Experts are saying that there is a turn-around. I believe it, I also see the improving signs, but the wreckage will remain, and may even get worse, for some time to come in the real-estate markets.
Home foreclosures move up-market as discounting pushes prices down
Lita Epstein
A greater number of foreclosures are hitting the high-end real estate markets in 2009 as price discounting continues to throw more and more properties underwater. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy: As some homeowners see their homes’ values drop below the balances due on their mortgages, they give up trying to save their homes.
Zillow’s chief economist, Stan Humphries, found that while high-end markets accounted for only 16 percent of foreclosures in 2006, by July 2009, 30 percent of foreclosures hit the top third of homes. “That means that top-tier homes make up almost twice the proportion of foreclosures as they did just three years ago,” Humphries wrote on his blog.
Foreclosures are no longer a primarily subprime problem. While in 2006 about 55 percent of foreclosures came on subprime loans, in 2009 subprimes represent just 35 percent of foreclosures, another 35 percent are in the middle tier and 30 percent are in the top tier. The primary contributing factor is higher delinquency rates in Prime, Alt-A and Option ARM mortgage products.
According to the Amherst Security Group, this problem won’t go away any time soon, because:
• Loans are transitioning into delinquency/foreclosure at a rapid pace, but moving out at a slow pace;
• Cure rates are low. In other words, fewer people are paying their past-due amounts and getting back on track.
• Loans are taking longer to liquidate. In other words, the length of time between the start of the foreclosure process and the point when the lender gets control of the property is growing.
The Amherst Mortgage Insight report notes that there are currently 7 million homes in a shadow market — homes that are either in delinquency or in foreclosure, but not yet on the market. This number translates into 135 percent of a year of existing home sales, which means that whatever numbers you’re seeing now about homes sales, they don’t truly reflect the storm that’s yet to come.
Shifting Weather Patterns
Last week, we had our first days under 100°F/38°C.
Last night, AdventureMan shivered and moved close to me.
“I’m cold” he said pitifully, putting his cold feet up against me.
It’s OK. I’m used to it. He is often cold, and I radiate heat. We pile the covers up on him and I sleep with just a sheet. I can’t sleep if I am too hot.
“There’s another quilt out on the loveseat” I tell him, referring to a piece of furniture about twenty steps away.
“Will you go get it for me?” he asked, his voice quavering.
We’ve been married a long time. I’m on to his tricks.
“No,” I laughed, “If you want another blanket, you have to go get it.”
“I don’t want to leave the bed,” he complained, and snuggled closely to me to absorb my heat.
This morning, at 0700, it is not even 80°F. Wooo HOOOOOO! There is still some humidity, but the afternoons are balmy, and there are evenings you can sit outside and drink coffee. Wooo HOOOO, my favorite season – Outside Season!
Too Much Food
AdventureMan and I have lived more years outside our own country than inside it. We have lived on-and-off in the Middle East for more than 30 years. You’d think we would know everything by now, but we are still delighted to discover new things and to learn from the culture in which we are living.
Our Kuwaiti friends were good about letting us peek inside the culture, telling us stories of family life “before oil” and Kuwait traditions. Like women aren’t supposed to eat too much when they to to someone’s house for dinner or the people will say “do you think she has never seen food before?”
On the other hand, it is shameful not to provide enough food, so you always prepare way more than the group invited can possibly eat, like in ten years.
Sometimes a lot of the food goes to waste, but I have also discovered these wonderful plastic bags and tin trays found in every supermarket in the Middle East. What doesn’t get eaten now – gets eaten. I admit it, I am a lazy wife. I don’t like cooking big meals when it is just the two of us, so I love being able to pull something out of the freezer and have it all heated up and fresh for dinner.
It also makes me feel very ecological to have food in the freezer, ready to fix, and to know that not a lot went to waste. We are learning from our son and his sweet wife, and all the young adults in our family, who are WAY more ecologically aware than we ever were, and we thought we were pretty good, the generation who invented recycling.
AdventureMan used to bring home people for dinner, mostly guys from out of town in town for a short time who needed a home-cooked meal. We always had food in the freezer, something I could pull out on short notice.
One time, I made beef burgundy. When I went to serve it, I looked for the cheesecloth bundle of spices and couldn’t find it. I looked and looked, and then I figured I must have taken it out earlier and forgot I’d done it. Then, during dinner, one of the men had a very puzzled look on his face – he was chewing on the spices ball! I was SO embarrassed, but they all just laughed, thank God.
Driving Safety to Improve in Kuwait
I used to read a lot of science fiction. I can’t always remember the stories, but sometimes the concepts stick with me. I remember one story about a guy who gets to the future to discover nobody is as bright as they are in our time. One of the things they do to prevent the not-so-bright drivers from hurting themselves is to make the cars very rubbery and very slow, but the cars all make whoooooshing noises like they are going really really fast, so all the drivers are happy.
Kuwait loses a lot of young men, particularly, but also young women, to car accidents. Many pedestrians in Kuwait lose their lives, some stepping right in front of cars.
From today’s Arab Times: Kuwait
Strategy needed to counter hike in Kuwait’s road accidents: minister
KUWAIT CITY, Oct 11: Making our roads safer is in the interest of the nation’s progress as most of the deaths in traffic accidents involve youngsters and children, who are the future of our nation, said Kuwait’s Minister of Interior Sheikh Jaber Khaled Al-Sabah on behalf of HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah at the International Conference on Traffic in Kuwait Sunday.
The conference, held under the patronage of the prime minister at Holiday Inn Hotel, was organized by Kuwait Society for Traffic Safety, and was attended by delegates from the US, Turkey, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan and other countries. Some of them also gave lectures. The Deputy Minister of Interior of Ukraine, Brigadier Oleksandr Savchenko, was a special guest at the conference.
The interior minister stressed the need for strategies to tackle the crisis of increasing road accidents in Kuwait based on the experiences of countries that have successfully handled the issue. “The lessons learnt from the conference must be implemented in Kuwait and all the government departments must cooperate with one another for bringing about positive changes in this direction.”
He also urged people from all walks of life to contribute to make roads safer “as it is the responsibility of the whole community.”
In the key note address, the chief of Kuwait Society for Traffic Safety said that road accidents in Kuwait have taken away more than 300,000 lives in the past, and caused severe disabilities. “The average age of those dying in accidents is 20. Between 1995 and 2008, more than 5000 people lost their lives in traffic accidents in Kuwait.”
Giving further statistics, he noted that 2.5 percent of Kuwait’s GDP is lost in accidents, “while in countries like the US it is only 0.1 percent of their GDP.
“According to WHO’s report, there are over 2 million accidents taking place every year, incurring losses to the tune of $2 billion.
“Kuwait Society for Traffic Safety will be soon launching a five-year program in Jan 2010 to bring about a change in the attitudes of people towards driving.”
Prof Fernand Cohen of Drexel University, USA, was the first speaker at the conference. He spoke on the topic, “How much can technological advancement increase traffic safety?”
He began by saying that the issue of traffic safety begins with man’s attitude. “To change traffic safety, we have to address that issue first.”
Prof Cohen said that technological advancement can reduce traffic accidents by up to 32 percent. He based his arguments on reliable studies in the field. “When you compare this percentage against the total number of accidents in the US every year, 5.8 million, it makes a significant difference.
“Basic safety features like seat belts and airbags have all become a standard feature in our cars, and have contributed to making our cars safer. But we have to go beyond that.”
Estimate
The professor mentioned studies estimate that deaths due to traffic accidents in the US will go down to 25,000 by 2020. “In 2004, the total number of road kills in the US was 43,000.
“We are moving more and more towards hybrid navigation system in car involving man-machine interaction. The car will make up for the shortfalls in the driver.
The professor said that the new technological approach to making roads safer must have a preventive rather than a punitive approach. “The focus should be crash avoidance technology. There should also be ‘Psychological Impact Technology.’
The emerging technologies, he noted, “looks at solutions such as a visual or audio alert signal for corrective action to avoid an imminent crash. There could be measures to make the car intervene and apply brakes when needed.”
Under crash avoidance technology, the professor presented technologies such as blind-spot detection, which provide greater visibility to drivers. “Rear view cameras can eliminate threat to pedestrians, children or animals while a car is backing.
“Lane Departure Warning can tell you if you are too fast to change lanes. It can prevent you from wandering out of lane.
Monitors
“The Wake-You-Up feature monitors a driver’s eyes, heart rate and other factors and gives a signal if the driver shows a tendency to fall asleep.”
He also touched upon other technologies such as sensors to indicate approaching vehicles, monitors to check tyre pressure, adaptive headlights that turn when the car is negotiating a curve and rollover prevention systems among others.
The professor then discussed technologies that can be incorporated on the road to make driving safer: warning signs prior to the red lights to warn cars to slow down; sensors at red lights to measure the speed of an oncoming car and prolong the duration of the signal if need be to allow a speeding car to pass; and encouraging drivers to drive at a particular speed, which would allow them to have green lights at every signal.
Some of the other topics handled during the conference were: The Lebanese Experience in Traffic Awareness; State of Road Safety Research in the US; Traffic Strategy for Kuwait.
By Valiya S. Sajjad
Arab Times Staff
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
In my book club last year, one of the themes that continued to arise as we read books from many cultures was how we are perceived by the people we hire to help us in our homes. In The White Tiger, a Man Booker Award Winner, the main character lucks into a job working for a family as a driver. We see the people for whom he works from the inside, their sweet acts and all their flaws. We see how callous they can be, and, ultimately, how the driver takes his revenge and becomes his own boss. (Not one of my favorite books, but then again, I’m still thinking about it a year later, so there is something to be said for it.)
In Half of a Yellow Sun we saw an entirely different relationship (in a book I totally loved, BTW) between employer and employee, but it shared with White Tiger the aspect of employer as seen from the eyes of an employee inside the house who sees the family and all its interactions intimately.
The Help, a surprise best seller, does the same to 1960’s era Mississippi. A recent graduate from Ole Miss (University of Mississippi) starts interviewing the maids from local households, any maid that will talk to her. At first, no one will talk with her, but after traumatizing racial clashes, one by one, they share their stories. Just interviewing the maids, just the maids sharing their stories, is enough to bring on serious consequences.
First, the book is riveting. I have a million things I really REALLY need to be doing, and I can’t stop reading. There is something about peeking into your neighbors house, seeing how they behave when they think no one is looking, that appeals to the voyeur in each of us.
Second, these women are taking serious risks. I am on the edge of my chair with each reading, hoping nothing bad happens to them.
Third, there is something that makes you squirm, it is the old “wee giftie” that shows us the worst in ourselves as others might see us; our own hypocrisies, our condescensions, our patronizing acts, how cruel our charitable acts can appear through the eyes of others, and how callous we are in the end towards those who take care of us every day.
It has rocketed onto the best seller list, now the #6 best selling book on Amazon.
If your book club is looking for a book to read that will get you talking and keep you talking for a long time, this is one of the best.
If you have hired help in the house, I double-dog-dare-you to read this book. (OOps, sometimes the little Alaska girl in me pops back out!) Fair warning, though, once you start, you won’t want to put it down.
LOL Cats Really Made Me Laugh
I was such a bad mother. Here’s the problem. Life doesn’t come with instructions. You get faced with new situations, you just have to do the best you can. You might think your parents know a lot, but we are just like you – sometimes we are over our heads.
The first time we moved to Florida, our cats got fleas. The whole house got fleas! We had to give the cats flea-shampoos and we had to flea-proof the house.
Here’s where I was a bad mother. I made our son shampoo the cats. We did it as a team, but he was the one who had to stand in the shower and do the actual shampooing. I was the one who caught the second cat and held her while he shampooed the first cat (it was a walk-in shower with a door that shut, so once inside, the cat couldn’t get out) and then I towel-dried the totally-freaked-out cat while my son shampooed the second cat, etc.
My son – my hero. There is a part of me that still feels guilty for making him to the shampooing. It’s because we didn’t have the chain mail:
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
Live Longer: Marry an Educated Woman
From today’s BBC Health News comes an important discovery for Men’s health – men who marry educated women live longer. Educated women live longer. Who a man marries matters more than his own education. You can read the entire article by clicking on the blue type, above.
This study does not say you need to marry a Swedish woman. . . you need to marry an educated woman!
Educated women ‘aid long life’
A university education is important to longevity, the study suggests
A well-educated woman positively influences both her own and her partner’s chances of a long life, Swedish research suggests.
A man whose partner had only a school education has a 25% greater risk of dying early than if she had had a university education, it suggests.
The authors say educated women may be more likely to understand the various health messages their families needed.
The findings are based on a study of 1.5m working Swedes, aged 30 to 59.
The study, in the journal of Epidemiology and Community Healthcare, says that in the case of men, it is their income and social status that affect women’s lifespan.
The researchers looked at data from the 1990 Swedish census and followed up information on causes of death, including cancer and circulatory diseases like heart disease and stroke from the cause of death registers up to 2003.
University education
A woman’s education and social status were more important for a man’s life chances than his own education, the findings indicate.
Read the entire article HERE
Maid Builds Mansion with Elderly Employer’s ‘Gift’
This is a sticky situation – not a new situation, it is timeless, and not unique to Kuwait – it is everywhere. People with elderly parents need to pay attention; the elderly can be so vulnerable. He may well have given his caretaker the money. His poor 108 year old mother!
Maid coaxes elderly sponsor to sell home, buys villa with cash
KUWAIT CITY, Oct 3: Police have arrested a Sri Lankan housemaid who allegedly duped a Kuwaiti man in his 70s, and lured him into selling his home, reports Al-Watan Arabic daily.
It is reported the woman, who was working for the old man, induced him to sell his home, and then took the money from him. She is said to be worth about KD 120,000. She has also built a mansion in her home country.
A security source said the man’s mother, who is about 108 years old, and his family have lodged a complaint at the police station. However, the maid claims the man had given the money to her of his own free will.
Role Reversal?
“Oh AdventureMan, I was SO embarrased!”
I had just finished telling him how while doing a major grocery shopping, I got to the front of the check-out line and realized – I had the wrong basket! How could that be? Where had I picked up this basket?
I headed quickly back to the dairy area where I had desperately been looking for sour cream; the shelves empty and looking like Florida-when-a-hurricane-is-on-the-way. A very nice gentleman said “I think you have my basket” and I apologized profusely. He was very kind. He said “Your basket is over there,” and pointed, and he was exactly right, there it was.
AdventureMan laughed and said “You have really gone to extreme lengths to meet new men! Maybe I need to keep a better eye on you!”
I agreed.
“In fact,” I said, “We could go the whole route, and I could just stay secluded in our home, and at the end of your very long working day, after driving through the grid-locked-going-home-traffic in Doha, you could stop by the aisle-packed grocery store and do a major shopping for me!”
We both laughed. Isn’t going to happen.
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