Adventures in Banking
Sometimes when I am faced with a difficult task, I just put it off. I put it off and put it off – it’s not such a bad strategy, really, as sometimes the problem can go away, or be overcome by events, or solves itself. Most of the time, I reach some point where I am required, finally, to deal with the problem.
I needed money. I had money in my bank, but I didn’t know how to get it. I called the bank to ask how to get money moved from this account to that account.
“No problem, habeebti (dear one),” the customer services lady said, when I explained my problem. Not only did she solve my problem, but she gave me a grin that lasted for the rest of the day. I’ve never had a bank employee call me “dear one” before.
When I would need money, I would go in to the Women’s Bank. It was cool – only women, no important men pushing their way in front. Sometimes we would drink tea as I sat at the desk and filled out the withdrawal form. It all worked fine until they broke off a separate Islamic bank, and I was banking with the non-Islamic side, so I had to use the regular bank.
One time, when I was withdrawing funds to pay for a trip, the customer at the next customer service desk looked just like Saddam Hussein. The customer service woman at that desk was explaining to him that yes, he had checks but he could only write checks for the funds he had deposited in the bank. You could see he got the part about having checks, and writing checks, but this part about funds in the bank to cover the checks – what was that? He looked puzzled, and fierce, and angry, and he argued with the woman, and thought she was messing with him.
Now, I needed to have my name listed on an account my husband had set up for me. After months of putting off the inevitable, including trips to the bank to actually get it done, only to find that branch of the bank was closed, we finally got to the right bank, together, and the bank was opened.
We explained to the receptionist what we wanted, a joint account. He looked at my husband:
“You want her on your account?” (the tone was disbelief)
(Husband nods)
“But WHY??”
(We look at him in astonishment.)
“No. It is not possible.”
(We drop our jaws.)
Then he pats my husband on the back, laughs (he was joking) and takes us to the place where this is done.
We go through the routine again, with the teller. Again, we get astonishment.
We are sent to an office, where paperwork is prepared. In actuality, my name will not be on the account, but I will have access to the account. I don’t know why. No one could ever explain it, other than that is the way it works.
Just to be sure, once my name is – well, not on the account, but allowed to use the account – I give it a try, to make sure it works.
At first, it doesn’t, but then the customer service guy comes by and tells the teller it is OK and voila! I have money! Later in the week, I will try it at an ATM to see if this really works. I’ve gotten cynical. It’s not Kuwait; I have had trouble using ATMs in my own little home town, too. It’s like ATM voodoo.
This bank has small vases of flowers everywhere; the flowers look fresh. There is a system, with taking a number and waiting your turn, and even the very important man who tried to cut the line is told, very politely, that he must take a number. I’m impressed. The bank employees are all very polite, seem to know their jobs, and although it seems our seemingly simple – to us – request is outside their norm, they work hard to accomodate us. All in all, I would give the customer service at this bank an A.
But best of all, I secretly like it that the customer service woman on the telephone calls me “dear one.”
“Hello! My Name is Heather . . . “
Every now and then, one of my readers writes to me. Most of the time, it is on an issue, and behind the blog we have a great conversation. (I learn so much from you, my readers.) 🙂
Occasionally, I will get one that makes the little hairs on the back of my neck rise up. I wish I had saved the one I got that started “Hello! My name is Heather (last name) and I live in (small-town) Iowa, and I would like your permission to share your (wonderful) blog with my friends.”
She went on to tell me a little about herself. I don’t know why – there was something about the letter that made me uncomfortable, and I have learned to trust those feelings.
I wrote to her and told her she was welcome to share my site, that anyone could visit, they were welcome. I didn’t share any personal details in return.
Her next e-mail coming back told me a whole lot about her life, and . . . it didn’t ring true. I don’t know why. When your instincts are telling you something is not right, you just MUST listen.
At the end, she asked who I really was, and where I was from and more oh-now-that-we’re-such-good-friends kinds of questions. Bingo. It felt like the whole thing had been set up to ask me that very question. I wrote back, as I always do, that I blog as Intlxpatr for a reason, and that I protect my anonymity.
Funny. I never heard from “her” again. I don’t believe a word she said, including I don’t know that I was corresponding with a woman, much less a woman named Heather.
Why on earth would anyone target me?
My friends, there are crazy people out there, people who think differently from you and me. No matter how good someone sounds, no matter how trustworthy, this is a virtual world, not a real world, and if you gut tells you to beware – then listen. Listen to that gut feeling, listen to the hairs on the back of your neck, and listen to that uneasiness . . . something is not right.
Given enough time, most scams and cons just can’t keep up the deception.
I once worked for an organization which would give emergency loans. I was pretty good, and pretty fast at putting a loan together, and verifying that the loan was needed. One day, a man came in with a serious problem, and with him was his boss, verifying his need. He had all the right papers, too. I made the loan.
Not two months later his boss came in to me with a hangdog look and said “I have to tell you about (so-and-so).”
He had been dealing drugs and had serious problems. His boss had vouched for him. The guy was clean cut and articulate and knew how to present himself. He had all the right papers – and both his boss and I were totally fooled. The boss brought the guy in to apologize to me – he was on his way to jail and he would never repay the loan; I had to write it off. The con-man looked at me and apologized sincerely, and gave me one piece of really really great advice:
“The reason they call us con-men is because we are really good at what we do. We make you believe us.”
Con-men fail in many other areas of their lives – anything that requires consistency and a long term commitment. They can’t perform under scrutiny over time – it’s mostly wires and mirrors and smoke, and it all falls apart when it is examined too closely.
Con-men also create drama that make you feel YOU have to commit now. They have deadlines, and terrible consequences. When you feel that happening in your life, take a deep breath. Slow things down. When you feel unduly rushed, when someone is pushing you for a quick decision on a major issue – that is the time to SLOW WAY DOWN, to examine closely, to give a situation some time. There are con-men and con-women in every culture.
“Heather” – or whoever “she” really was – has agendas you and I can’t begin to imagine. She/He may need money (they often do!) or your connections. He or she may just like messing with people’s lives.
Listen to your instincts, and take your time. Take a deep breath, relax – YOU set your own timeline. Ask around, ask if anyone you know has had experience with a similar approach, especially on the internet. Protect yourself. Protect yourself. Protect yourself.
Bowen: Cruzatte and Maria
Peter Bowen’s tales of Montana in transition are an acquired taste. When I first started reading them, at my sister’s recommendation, I had a hard time getting past the dialect. The main character, Gabriel DuPre, speaks English differently; he is Metis, a mixture of French, Indian and who knows what, here before America was America, as he says “long time gone.”
You get used to it. It still makes me think he should be in New Orleans, speaking as he does, it sounds very Cajun, but you get used to it.
Peter Bowen’s Gabriel DuPre is another treat to myself (like Donna Leon.) Reading the latest book I bought, saved for just this time, a cold wintery January, brightened my outlook considerably.
The first book I read, Wolf, No Wolf had to do with environmentalists putting wolves back into the mountains where once they had flourished, but where now, for a couple centuries, people have been raising cattle. Guess what? Hungry wolves love cattle. It makes for some very hostile feelings.
That theme – local culture against intruding environmentalists – continues in this book, where DuPre is hired as a consultant on a film being made about Lewis and Clark. The locals in the Coronado area are no happier with all the film crews and tourists than the ranchers were with the wolves – and people end up dead.
In addition, DuPre’s friend Benetsee and his daughter Maria spend time together in the sweat lodge, and later, his daughter, Marie, sees a mound and is revisited by a vision she had. She tells her dad, DuPre, to dig, and he uncovers a trove of treasures cached by the Lewis and Clark expedition. Partly, it is the incursion of the spiritual and supernatural that I find so intriguing in these books; there is a reality, and then a greater reality, and they co-exist. Bowen makes it seem and feel entirely natural. I love it.
The book has some highly entertaining, laugh-out-loud moments, takes great pokes at the eco-tourist, and at the same time deals with some serious issues. We get to hear DuPre fiddle his old Voyageur songs, we get to hear what people are saying at the local bar, where cheeseburgers are the plat du jour. It is a great way to pass a winter’s day.
Leon: Friends in High Places
After reading two stinkers, I needed a read I could rely on for a good fix. I needed escape, mixed with good food, good clothes and some social awareness. I needed Guido Brunetti, Donna Leon’s Venetian detective, and his smart, savvy wife Paula, and his family meals of pasta with soft shell crabs and risi e bisi, his children, his disgust for the politics that impinge on his doing his job.
If you think Kuwait has “wasta” (doing business by connections, influence, calling in favors), you aint’ seen nuthin’ till you’ve seen how Byzantine Venetians operate.
Friends in High Places opens with Commissario Brunetti lying on his couch re-reading Anabasis when he receives a visit from a building inspector, who determines that the apartment he owns, on the very top of a building in Venice, was probably built illegally – there are no plans or restoration approvals on file at the bureaucracy regulating residential buildings in Venice – and may have to be torn down.
Wouldn’t that be a shock? It’s a shock to Brunetti and to his family, just as it would be to us. We learn all the ins and outs of housing codes, the impact of becoming part of the EEC, and how the clever Venetians devise ways around the codes, all while Brunetti is investigating one murder – and then three other murders.
It is a VERY satisfying book. I will share with you a lengthy quote from Friends in High Places as Guido and Paola discuss how to deal with the problem:
At no time did it occur to him, as it did not occur to Paola, to approach the matter legally, to find out the names of the proper offices and officials and the proper steps to follow. Nor did it occur to either of them that there might be a clearly defined bureaucratic procedure by which they could resolve this problem. If such things did exist or could be discovered, Venetians ignored them, knowing that the only way to deal with problems like this was by means of conoscienze: acquaintances, friendships, contacts and debts built up over a lifetime of dealing with a system generally agreed, even by those in its employ, perhaps especially by those in it’s employ, prone to the abuses resultant from centuries of bribery, and encumbered by a Byzantine instinct for secrecy and lethargy.
I am sorry to tell you that the only copy of this I could find on Amazon.com cost $99.98. I must have bought this one in England, where, I promise you, it was the normal cost of a paperback book.
I will warn you in addition, I was looking forward to reading a second Leon novel, Quietly in their Sleep, only to discover when I started that I had already read it, as The Death of Faith. The books published by Leon in England are often retitled for the American market. Leon fans, beware!
Inheritance of Loss
Most of the time, if I don’t like a book, I won’t even bother telling you about it. This book, The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai, is an exception for one reason – it IS worth reading.
Inheiritance of Loss showed up on the book club reading list for the year, and I ordered it. I read the cover when the book came, and it didn’t sound that good to me, so I read other books instead. The next time it came to mind was when a friend, reading the book, said she was having trouble with it, and asked me if I had started it. This friend is a READER, and a thinker. It caught my attention that she would have problems reading a book, so I decided to give it a try.
This is a very uncomfortable book. The characters live in the shadow of the Himalayan mountains. The most sympathetic character is a young orphaned girl, sent to live with her grandfather. With each chapter, we learn more about all the characters, how they came to be here, what they think, what their lives have looked like.
The author of this book has a very sour look on life. She has snotty things to say about every character. You can almost feel her peering around the corner, eyes slit with evil intent. She is that vicious neighbor who comes by and never says anything nice about anybody, and when you see her talking with your neighbor, you get the uneasy feeling she could be saying something mean about you, and she probably is.
The book covers a wide range of topics – Indian politics, Ghurka revolts, English colonization, Indian emigration to the US and UK, everyday vanities and pride in petty things, how people destroy their own lives, how people can be cruel to one another, oh it’s a great read (yes, that is sarcasm).
At the same time, this vicious unwelcome neighbor has a sharp eye for detail. You may not like what she is telling you, but you keep listening, because you can learn important tidbits of information from her. In my case, I learned a lot about how life is lived in a small mountain village in India, the struggles of illegals in America and how class lines are drawn, ever so finely, when people live together. I learned a lot about the legacy of colonialism, and the creep of globalization. This unwelcome neighbor has a sharp tongue, always complaining, and yet . . . some of her complaints have merit.
I don’t believe there was a single redeeming episode in the book. There was not a paragraph to feel good about. I am glad to be finished with the book – but, yes, I finished it, I didn’t just set it aside in disgust, or give it away without finishing.
Here is the reason I am telling you about this book – as uncomfortable as this book is to read, I have the feeling, upon finishing, that ideas and images from this book will stick with me for a long time. I have the feeling that it contributes to my greater understanding of how things work, how people think differently from other people, and on what levels we are very much the same.
Here is an excerpt from the book, at a time during which the Judge is a young Indian, studying in England:
The new boarding house boasted several rooms for rent, and here, among the other lodgers, he was to find his only friend in England: Bose.
They had similar inadequate clothes, similar forlornly empty rooms, similar poor native’s trunks. A look of recognition had passed between them at first sight, but also the assurance that they wouldn’t reveal one another’s secrets, not even to each other.
. . . Together they punted clumsily down the glaceed river to Grantchester and had tea among the jam sozzled wasps just as you were supposed to, enjoying themselves (but not really) as the heavy wasps fell from flight into their laps with a low battery buzz.
They had better luck in London, where they watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, avoided the other Indian students at Veeraswamy’s, ate shepherd’s pie instead, and agreed on the train home that Trafalgar Square was not quite up to British standards of hygiene – all those defecating pigeons, one of which had done a masala-colored doodle on Bose. It was Bose who showed Jemubhai what records to buy for his new gramophone: Caruso and Gigli. He also corrected his pronunciation: Jheelee, not Giggly. . . .
This it was that the judge eventually took revenge on his early confusions, his embarrassments gloved in something called “keeping up standards,” his accent behind a mask of a quiet. He found he began to be mistaken for something he wasn’t – a man of dignity. This accidental poise became more important than any other thing. He envied the English. He loathed Indians. He worked at being English with the passion of hatred and for what he would become, he would be despised by absolutely everyone, English and Indians both.
I consider this a review, and not particularly a recommendation. I read the book, I finished the book and I learned from the book. I didn’t like the book. I recommend it only as a challenge, for people who like to read and stretch their minds in new directions.
Salary Belongs to Husband?
Muna al-Fuzai had a column yesterday in the Kuwait Times entitled Kuwaiti Women Accept Discrimination. (You can read the whole article by clicking on the blue type.)
In this article is one small paragraph that sends shivers down my spine:
A religious Islamic ruling was made recently to approve the husband’s right to take his wife’s salary because the time she spent outside was his own and thus he is entitled to take her salary, which she has worked so hard to earn.
It doesn’t sound to me as if it has the weight of law – like the first question I ask is:
• “do all Islamic religious rulers believe this to be true, or is this one guy’s opinion?”
• is it possible for this ruling to receive enough support to make it law?
• if it becomes law in Kuwait, does this law apply to all people living in Kuwait, or just to Kuwaitis?
This, to me, is a very scary ruling.
I’ve been married to AdventureMan for a long time. We’ve always discussed finances together, and we’ve both agreed on how to allocate our money and salaries. Sharing is very different from my earnings being controlled by someone else, no discussion. Or maybe discussion, but not necessarily.
But I am not Kuwaiti. If you are working, have ever worked, or intend to work, how does this ruling strike you?
Freecycle
There was an article within the last few days in the Kuwait Times about Freecycle but this is not the recent article. It was the only article I could fine, from April 2007. The important thing is that it exists, and that setting up a Kuwait freecycle would be of benefit to many.
In the expat community, we do a lot of Freecycle on an informal basis. When we come, people help us out with things, and when we leave, we pass our things along. Sometimes we sell them, but often as not, we give them away and would love for them to fall into the right hands. We all hate waste.
(Oh my gosh! I just went to the Freecycle Website and found the Kuwait group and it has 122 members! Holy Smokes!) Click on the blue type and you can join the Kuwait group, too!
Don’t throw it away, someone might want it
Published Date: April 25, 2007
By Pete May
Our houses are full of them: old computers, fax machines, video players, fridges in the garage, vinyl records, unwanted armchairs – things we don’t want but still work. Research by gumtree.com reveals the British dispose of over £5.6bn worth of usable household items a year, including 1.35m working fridges and freezers, and 2.6m sofas. People out there want our redundant stuff – but how do we find them? A few weeks ago, I tried to shift a 10-year-old Apple Power Mac and a similarly ancient (in computer terms) Mac laptop. Both worked, so to throw them in a skip would have been wasteful and created toxic waste (computers can contain heavy metals and chemicals). I’d checked the likes of Computer Aid International (computeraid.org) and the Community Recycling Network (crn.org.uk). Both accepted PCs, but the words “10-year-old Apple Mac” resulted in polite rejection.
So I tried Freecycle, an online forum where people give away and pick up unwanted stuff, free of charge. It has 4,009 communities worldwide and, according to its online counter, 3,401,532 users. I joined my local group and tentatively posted my message: “Offered: Power Mac with printer and Powerbook laptop, bought in 1997 but working fine, need to be collected.” Within three hours I’d had 30 replies. Suddenly my Macs were seen as a valuable resource. Jenny wanted the laptop for her 11-year-old son who was “a Mac fanatic”, while Julie wanted it for her soon-to-be daughter-in-law; Ben needed computers for his charity in Zimbabwe. It wasn’t easy to decide whom to give them to.
Freecycle etiquette dictates that you don’t necessarily give things to the first emailer – and you must reject anyone you suspect wants to sell the goods. I opted for friendly sounding people who could collect immediately: Andy, who’d been on disability benefit for three years, and Ruth, a cash-starved student. Since then I’ve used Freecycle to shift two fax machines, a Zip drive, an office desk, a child’s desk, a malfunctioning Hoover, some kitchen shelves, a washing machine and my local vicar’s sofa bed. Our fridge-freezer went to a woman with cancer who was on a special diet and needed it for her store of juices. Our rubbish was helping someone fight for life. Then I visited SwapXchange, which offers items to swap from all over the country via its website (swapxchange.org). I exchanged a juicer and a Kenwood mixer for a bottle of organic wine apiece.
(Read the rest of the article by clicking on the BLUE Kuwait Times type, above.)
Pass it along. . . !
Fresh Start
I always get a burst of energy between Christmas and New Year’s. Truly, for me, new hope has come into the world. It doesn’t have to be rational, it’s just the way it is for me. I get all kinds of old messes cleaned up, I sort, I organize, I throw out or I hem/mend/ cut down to make something useful once again.
It made the dark months of winter pass more quickly in Seattle and in Germany, where many days go from black to dark grey and then back to black again. Here in Kuwait, with all the sunshine, it is just so much easier. Every day dawns in blues and pinks – how can life be bad when a day starts so beautifully?
There is one sharp sword hanging over me – taxes. *gnashing of teeth* I am pretty good about keeping receipts all in one place all year, but taxes for xpats can be complicated, and our tax guy sends a worksheet – like 14 pages – for us to fill out every year. It really isn’t that hard, but I dread it.
Over a year ago, the US government changed the way expats are taxed. Even worse, they snuck it in as an amendment, I think to a military appropriations or budget bill, and no one was aware of the implications until it was a done-deal. It is a nightmare. In one year, we went from qualifying for refunds to owing a burdensome debt of taxes. Aaarrgh.
I have a list of projects I want to do this year, some challenging, some just fun. Some projects left over from previous years I want to get done once and for all. I see 2008 as a great luxury, all those days, an entire year, stretching out before me in which I can get these things done. Woooo Hooooooo!
Mom’s Rosemary Tree
One of my philosophies – no, no, don’t run away, this isn’t all that deep – is that things have a way of working out. No matter how too horrible everything can get, things work out, this passes, and in today’s hurried, bustling, transitory world, even the worst events fall into oblivion much of the time.
Mom phoned with a request – Lowe’s was having a sale on Rosemary trees, only $8.97, could we get one for her? She likes to have a sweet smelling Rosemary tree outside on her balcony. We went to Lowe’s immediately, first thing in the morning, and . . . they were already gone! There were more expensive ones – like double the price – but all the on-sale ones were already gone. Honestly, there must not have been very many to start with.
(You are probably asking why I didn’t just go ahead and buy it for her anyway. It’s not allowed. She gives her daughters envelopes of money and when we buy things for her that she has asked for, we have to pay from out of that envelope, or she won’t ask us anymore; it’s a matter of pride.)
From that day on, I kept an eye out for Rosemary trees (just maybe 16″ high), Home Depot, Fred Meyer, some of the larger local floral shops – nothing, or double what she wanted to pay.
Then, on my very last day in Seattle, I took Mom to Trader Joe’s. We all like Trader Joe’s, who carried foods and candies and cookies and wines that other more conventional grocers don’t carry. Mom needed to stock up for all her Christmas guests and Christmas entertaining. And there – for only $8.64, not even on sale, was the perfect Rosemary tree. It smelled divine. Here it is, safe in Mom’s basket:
“Marionette . . . or Moron?”
This was sent by a good friend, 8 minutes by Keith Olbermann, ending with “Mr. Bush, you are a bold-faced liar.” This is from his December 6th broadcast.
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