Maxx Adventure
Today, a break. Renovations are going fine, normal setbacks, above normal completion rate. Today, no workmen in the house and I run free, I am celebrating.
And how do I celebrate? Well . . . here I am at Barnes and Noble, where I can buy some wireless time to upload some photos, and oh yes, the new James Lee Burke / Dave Robicheaux novel is out so I had to buy that, too, for the next long plane ride.
Earlier, a trip to TJ Maxx. It is a TJ Maxx Home – I’ve never been in one of those before, and oh! what a thrill. I found a carry-on, just like the one I have only a little bigger and at HALF what I paid for the one I have now, and have loved, and don’t want to part with except that it is splitting in some places where I have had to pack it too full. 😦
And I also found what I was looking for. Remember I told you about the Misto, and told you where you could order one? I found it on the shelf at TJ Maxx, marked WAAAAYYYYY down. I love it. See if you can spot it.
I also thought of you when I saw this sign. Kuwait isn’t the only place with ambiguous, and very funny signage:
New Mansions in Mangaf (2)
Continued!
This house has a fortunate location, not so close to all the others. Watch in the next few photos – the houses are lovely, but only feet from one another along the sides. It means there will be some very dark rooms on the inside, unless they have a center courtyard, and few of these houses do:
Nice proportions, but looks dark inside:
A little bit close:
These are close, but there is no one right across the street looking in your windows:
Many have “For Rent” signs on them!
Al-Enezi praises MOE’s Decision
This is from today’s Kuwait Times.
Does this decision by the Ministry of Education, applicable to all the private schools in Kuwait, mean that no expatriates can be hired for any administrative or assistant teacher positions in any of the private schools, only Kuwaitis? Is this a part of the Kuwaitization program?
By A Saleh
KUWAIT: The manager of the national labor ratio at the Manpower and Government Restructuring Program (MGRP) Fares Al Enezi announced the preparations for a training course to qualify national laborers to work in administrative jobs and as assistant teachers in private schools.
Speaking at a press conference, Al Enezi praised the Ministry of Education’s decision on banning the hiring of expatriates in private schools as this move would help find hundreds of job opportunities for citizens.
Al Enezi stressed that the MGRP was ready to provide enough qualified national substitutes and he highlited that only 410 citizens currently worked in private schoools as compared to 1617 expatriates of various nationalities. Moreover, he noted that only 140 teachers worked ther versus 10,793 expatriates who worked there as well.
Soor Street
One of the earliest exploration trips I made in Kuwait was along Soor Street (Wall Street) because I wanted to see the old gates to Old Kuwait City. I could find most of them, but not all of them. Soor Street has continued to fascinate me – and I wonder if one day soon, it won’t be all new construction.
This is one of those buildings-with-a-twist going up; I think Tijaria Real Estate is calling it the Kuwait World Trade Center. I get the two companies confused, there is another company, Tijara, that built The Mermaid of Mangaf. I don’t think the companies are related, but they both do more interesting buildings than these:
Like why even bother? These are so boring you just want to look away.
The dumps on the left have about 10 men in every apartment; they hang their wash on any available fixture and shave on the balcony. I wonder how much longer these places will stand once the building on the right opens? I am guessing the owner of this prime property will also want to tear down the dumps and build something more high-rent.
Some of you have asked for photos of some of the older places in downtown Kuwait. There isn’t much “old” but there is older. The intense heat is hard on paint and hard on maintenance, so I am guessing these buildings are only about 30 – 40 years old.
Donna Leon Crossing Cultures
I’m in the middle of a Donna Leon read-fest. When I wrote the reviews the last time, I saw three books by her I had never seen – and I comb the aisles of Barnes and Noble when I am in the US, and Half Price Books, looking for titles by her. I am guessing some of her books haven’t been printed in the US, but I was able to find them from the UK Amazon.com.
The two latest books I have read by Donna Leon are timely. The first, Fatal Remedies, starts out being about Commissario Guido Brunetti’s wife, Paola’s crusade against the sex tours to undeveloped countries, her outrage against trips that allow grown men to exploit the poverty and need that the poorest of families will sell their own daughters and even young children to satisfy these men’s uncontrolled lusts. Her outrage leads her to a jail cell in her own husband’s precinct.
But just when you think you know where this story is going, it turns, as many of Leon’s books do, and tackles another subject, one very much in the eye of the news – falsified medications. There is a huge profit to be made, and huge wrongdoings in the medical supplies field, as expired medications are shipped to the most needy countries, and prescription and over-the-counter medications contain ingredients that are at best, harmless, and at worst – poisonous!
Guido Brunetti follows the money, and exposes the cheats.
In the second book, The Death of Faith, the issue – corruption in the church – comes close to home, as Brunetti’s daughter gets a low grade from her religious education instructor for asking questions, logical questions, about the dogma of the Catholic faith. Leon also tackles the issue of the order of Opus Dei, the same mysterious order featured in The DaVinci Code, an order that does exist, but about which solid knowledge is murky. What is known is that the order, in jihadist fashion, seeks to establish the Catholic church as the supreme guide to behavior on earth, it’s own version of sharia law to be the ruling principle in every country.
This is an anethema to Commissario Brunetti, and to all thinking Italians who savor the separation of church and state. He asks the eternal question – who decides? Who decides what behavior is acceptable, what questions are allowable? Religious belief, or the lack of it, is so very personal – this is a very timely issue that all nations are struggling with. Religious rule? Secular rule?
Underlying all the Donna Leon books is the sweetness of daily life with Brunetti’s family, his beautiful and principled wife, his teenaged children, the food they eat, the family discussions they have, the flowers he brings home and the strength of the connection they have with one another. The Venetian setting weaves its own magical thread through every novel, as we ride with Brunetti in the vaporetto on the canals, as we sit with him in a local bar for a quick coffee – or something stronger – and as he walks the streets from home to office, or to talk with a witness.
And last, but not least, the utter corruption in the Venetian system reminds us that veniality is not restricted to the United States, or to Kuwait, or to Nigeria, or Italy, or to any one country, but wherever man seeks to impose order, the chaos of corruption must be slowly and surely overcome by the building of an honest bureaucracy, people like you and me, serving in seemingly hopeless situations, but doing our best, day by day, like Guido Brunetti, to build a better world for our children.
FBI Tries to Fight Zombie Hoards
The title got my attention. This is from BBC News and you can read the whole story here.
FBI tries to fight zombie hordes
The FBI is contacting more than one million PC owners who have had their computers hijacked by cyber criminals.
The initiative is part of an ongoing project to thwart the use of hijacked home computers, or zombies, as launch platforms for hi-tech crimes.
The FBI has found networks of zombie computers being used to spread spam, steal IDs and attack websites.
The agency said the zombies or bots were “a growing threat to national security”.
Signs of trouble
The FBI has been trying to tackle networks of zombies for some time as part of an initiative it has dubbed Operation Bot Roast.
This operation recently passed a significant milestone as it racked up more than one million individually identifiable computers known to be part of one bot net or another.
The law enforcement organisation said that part of the operation involved notifying people who owned PCs it knew were part of zombie or bot networks. In this way it said it expected to find more evidence of how they are being used by criminals.
“The majority of victims are not even aware that their computer has been compromised or their personal information exploited,” said James Finch, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division.
Many people fall victim by opening an attachment on an e-mail message containing a virus or by visiting a booby-trapped webpage.
Many hi-tech criminals are now trying to subvert innocent webpages to act as proxies for their malicious programs.
Many bots are used to send out junk mail or spam
Once hijacked, PCs can be used to send out spam, spread spyware or as repositories for illegal content such as pirated movies or pornography.
Those in charge of botnets, called botherders, can have tens of thousands of machines under their control.
Operation Bot Roast has resulted in the arrest of three people known to have used bot nets for criminal ends.
Paris Hilton in Jail Video
A friend sent me this link this morning, and I died laughing. I don’t like Paris Hilton, I don’t like the vacuous life she leads, and I wouldn’t post this at all if it weren’t very cleverly done.
And, of course, it is Thursday, and many of you will have the time to waste on a good laugh:
Rules of Engagement
As you know, I am from a very close, very funny family. Earthling, my nephew, just got engaged.
We’ve all been waiting. Almost from the beginning, we knew this girl was THE ONE. We almost always know. They announced their engagement by sending a series of photos of a hike they took near Google Valley in California, including the photo of the bride-elect and her new ring. We are dancing for joy, that these two dear people have found one another and are committing their futures to one another.
And – the bride-to-be has started a blog called Rules of Engagement. She is a very funny, very clever writer, and will take you step by step through the travails of an American style wedding.
Enjoy!
Tire Killer DeFanged
My husband is willing to bet that too many people ignored the sign and then got mad at the Holiday Inn when their tires shredded! The teeth are gone, but the sign remains:
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