Transition Sunrise
I was shocked when I looked at the five day forecast and saw that the high temperature for tomorrow is 80°F / 27°C. Holy smokes. Winter is over. 80° is about as hot as I can handle without A/C – around 80° in Florida, fleas eggs start hatching, and it is time to flea-proof the house. We don’t have the same problem with fleas here, probably due to the air conditioning, on most months of the year.
This morning’s sunrise is barely less murky than yesterday’s. The weather reporter says “light haze” but sometimes it says that in the middle of a heavy dust storm, so I don’t put a lot of credibility in what it says.
The days are getting perceptibly longer. In our neighborhood, when the meuzzin “chants” for the dawn prayers, it is not so hard to get up. We are blessed to have a tenor muezzin, who loves the morning call to prayer, and does it with great melodiousness and passion. It is a wonderful way to wake up.
Have a great day, Kuwait.
Tanker Sunrise
I can tell when the air is bad in Kuwait. I wheeze a little when I am lying down, and I wake up with a small headache. It’s such a shame – the weather is so beautiful, I want to go outside and breathe deeply. I have a feeling that might not be such a good idea.
It looks like another beautiful day in the most beautiful month in Kuwait:
As for the title, if you look at the photo closely, near the horizon you can see all the oil tankers lining up to get into the . . . um. . . er. . . tanker place.
Selfish Adults Damage Childhood
In a stunning and highly controversial report recently published in Britain, concludes that children’s lives in Britain have become “more difficult than in the past”, adding that “more young people are anxious and troubled”. Part of the controversy stems from the conclusions that part of what hurts children are working mothers, and fathers who leave their families.
Selfish adults ‘damage childhood’
By Mark Easton
BBC News Home Editor
The report says children’s lives are “more difficult than in the past”
The aggressive pursuit of personal success by adults is now the greatest threat to British children, a major independent report on childhood says.
It calls for a sea-change in social attitudes and policies to counter the damage done to children by society.
Family break-up, unprincipled advertising, too much competition in education and income inequality are mentioned as big contributing factors.
A panel of independent experts carried out the study over three years.
. . . . . . “Children with separate, single or step parents are 50% more likely to fail at school, have low esteem, be unpopular with other children and have behavioural difficulties, anxiety or depression,” it argues.
“Child-rearing is one of the most challenging tasks in life and ideally it requires two people,” the report concludes.
It also suggests that having many more working mothers has contributed to the damage done to children.
You can read the entire report on BBC News by clicking here.
This study is sure to cause a lot of dinner table conversations around the world – and Kuwait is no exception. Go read the report, so you can discuss it knowledgeably. 😉
I worked, and I wanted to work, while child rearing, but there was a lot of guilt attached. I needed to work, not so much for the money as for the stimulation, and I have a lot of empathy for mothers who find themselves in the same circumstances. I was really lucky – I was able to find professional positions with part time hours my entire working life, until it was no longer a consideration. I honestly don’t know that I would have been a better mother staying home. And yet, here I am years later, stunned and dismayed when I read this report, and still wondering if I was too selfish. The report says working mothers are selfish. The report says it really takes two parents to raise a happy child. The report says men shouldn’t leave their families. There enough guilt to go around to everyone. 😦
I’m interested in what you have to say; I ask only that you go read the article first.
GoogleEarth Map of Speed Cameras in Kuwait
From this morning’s mail, a most valuable tool for money-saving:
AdventureMan tells me in Doha, Qatar, there are now speed cameras everywhere, and the fines are HUGE. Like $2000 for speeding, and they have the picture to prove it. He also tells me the law is applied against everyone, from the highest to the lowest, so that there is a lot less speeding and weaving than we see in Kuwait. I wonder how it is going to work here?
I read in yesterday’s paper, in Jahra, a driver deliberately hit one of the cameras with his car! I wonder if the camera was able to capture the incident before its demise? (It said the culprit was arrested, I think.)
We were out in the Wild West last night (Fehaheel) and a police car was trying to get to a huge traffic snarl. He blurped and burbled, he shouted in his loudspeaker, and nobody let him in. There was no respect for the traffic police, no fear. People just looked after their own interests. Fortunately, it was all at a very low speed, as traffic was jammed tight. There WAS room to let the police car in, but nobody did. I wonder how it would have worked if he had a camera? Or started giving tickets?
Doesn’t Kuwait need a call-in, or e-mail in place where you can take photos of traffic things happening and report violators, like those guys who think they own the emergency lanes when traffic is backed up, or who think the handicapped spots are for them (one told me “but when there is no one parking there, anyone can use it!”) to use – it would be so nice to be able to take a photo and send it in to the authorities and to believe that something would be done about it.
Empty Nests Make for Happy Marriage
LLOOLL. To everyone’s great surprise, the results found the empty-nest marriages are HAPPIER than families with children. I think the message is HANG IN THERE! The study found that marital happiness plunged with the first child, and went further south with each addition. Children take time and attention, the more, the more chaotic. The study doesn’t say don’t have children, it just says there is a great satisfaction to having children who successfuly transition to adulthood.
This compilation of studies is reported in today’s New York Times. Clicking on the blue type will take you to the entire article.
The study is important because it tracks the first generation of women to juggle traditional family responsibilities with jobs in the work force. In the empty-nest study, researchers compared the women’s marital happiness in their 40s, when many still had children at home; in their early 50s, when some had older children who had left home; and in their 60s, when virtually all had empty nests. At every point, the empty nesters scored higher on marital happiness than women with children still at home. The finding mirrors that of a report presented last year at the American Psychological Association, tracking a dozen parents who were interviewed at the time of a child’s high school graduation and 10 years later. That small study also showed that a majority of parents scored higher on marital satisfaction after children had left home.
While the Berkeley researchers had hypothesized that the improvement in marital happiness came from couples’ spending more time together, the women in the same study reported spending just as much time with their partners whether the children were living at home or had moved out. But they said the quality of that time was better.
“There are fewer interruptions and less stress when kids are out of the house,” said Dr. Gorchoff, at Berkeley. “It wasn’t that they spent more time with each other after the children moved out. It’s the quality of time they spent with each other that improved.”
She notes that the lesson from the empty nest may be that parents need to work to carve out more stress-free time together. In the sample studied, it was only relationship satisfaction that improved when children left home. Over all, parents were just as happy with children at home as in the empty nest. (What happens when adult children move back home, their job prospects having evaporated in a brutal economy, has not been extensively studied.)
“Kids aren’t ruining parents’ lives,” Dr. Gorchoff said. “It’s just that they’re making it more difficult to have enjoyable interactions together.”
Big Blob Sunrise
Good morning, Kuwait!
We almost missed the sunrise this morning; the sky is full of cloudy haze and when the sun came up, there was just this big bright mass, you could hardly tell where the sun was. A few seconds later, the diffusion ended slightly and I grabbed a photo, but my camera had a hard time figuring out where to focus.
I am not complaining. We need rain. We need rain desperately. We had such a terrible time, last year, when so little rain fell and every small wind picked up soil and whirled it around. When I came to Kuwait, over three years ago, I remember thinking how GREEN it was here, compared to Qatar. So many trees! Even in the desert! Now, I fear for the greenery, I fear for the water table. Kuwait needs rain. Maybe it’s time to organize another big prayer for rain, like they did just before the rains last year?
Ok To Marry 10 Year Old Girls – Saudi Arabia
This is just sad. I’m sorry, a ten year old girl is that – a girl. Any father knows that. She is precious and innocent, and still playing dolls and make believe. Few girls are even menstruating at 10. No girl, at 10, has the emotional and physical maturity to enter into a marriage. And this is the SENIOR Saudi Arabian cleric speaking? I’m sorry, this makes me sick to my stomach. It’s just wrong.
You don’t leave a ten year old alone – you get a babysitter. A ten year old belongs in school, a ten year old belongs with her mother.
This is from today’s Al Watan, right on the front page.
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia”s most senior cleric was quoted Wednesday as saying it is permissible for 10ـyearـold girls to marry and those who think they’re too young are doing the girls an injustice.
The mufti”s comments showed the conservative clergy’s opposition to a drive by Saudi rights groups, including government ones, to define the age of marriage and put an end to the phenomenon of child marriages.
“It is wrong to say it’s not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger,” Sheik AbdulـAziz AlـSheikh, the country”s grand mufti, was quoted as saying.
“A female who is 10 or 12 is marriageable and those who think she’s too young are wrong and are being unfair to her,” he said during a Monday lecture, according to the panـArab AlـHayat newspaper.
AlـSheikh”s comments come at a time when Saudi human rights groups have been pushing the government to put an end to marriages involving the very young and to define a minimum age for marriage. In the past few months, Saudi newspapers have highlighted several cases in which young girls were married off to much older men or very young boys.
Though the mufti’s pronouncements are respected and provide guidance, the government is not legally bound by them.
On Sunday, the governmentـrun Human Rights Commission condemned marriages of minor girls, saying such marriages are an “inhumane violation” and rob children of their rights.
The commission’s statement followed a ruling by a court in Oneiza in central Saudi Arabia last month that dismissed a divorce petition by the mother of an eightـyearـold girl whose father married her off to a man in his 50s.
Newspaper reports said the court argued that the mother did not have the right to file such a case on behalf of her daughter and said that the petition should be filed by the girl when she reaches puberty.
Responding to a question about parents who force their underage daughters to marry, the mufti said: “We hear a lot about the marriage of underage girls in the media, and we should know that Islamic law has not brought injustice to women.”
The mufti said a good upbringing will make a girl capable of carrying out her duties as a wife and that those who say women should not marry before the age of 25 are following a “bad path.”
“Our mothers and before them, our grandmothers, married when they were barely 12,” said AlـSheikh, according to AlـHayat.
There are no statistics to show how many marriages involving children are performed in Saudi Arabia every year. And it’s also not clear whether these unions are on the rise or whether people are hearing about them more now because of the prevalence of media outlets and easy access to the Internet.
Activists say the girls are given away in return for hefty dowries or as a result of longـstanding custom in which a father promises his infant daughters and sons to cousins out of a belief that marriage will protect them from illicit relationships. ـAP
Last updated on Thursday 15/1/2009
I have a friend who says the mufti needs to come back in his next life as a young girl in Saudi Arabia. I think it might give his thought processes some clarity.
25 Reasons to Drink Green Tea
I am a great believer that one way to stay well is to stay away from clinics and hospitals, where bad germs lurk, just waiting for the next victim. I am always looking for natural remedies, and science is finding that many times, old natural remedies work for a reason. Like chicken soup when you have a cold, like the benefits of drinking green tea.
I don’t know that green tea works in every way this article says it does, but there are enough benefits, and enough scientific research showing that it improves bodily functions, that I regularly imbibe.
Green tea has increasingly become a very popular drink worldwide because of its immensely powerful health benefits.
It is extraordinarily amazing what green tea can do for your health.
And if you’re not drinking 3 to 4 cups of green tea today, you’re definitely NOT doing your health a big favor.
Here Are The 25 Reasons Why You Should Start Drinking Green Tea Right Now:
1. Green Tea and Cancer
Green tea helps reduce the risk of cancer.
The antioxidant in green tea is 100 times more effective than vitamin C and 25 times better than vitamin E.
This helps your body at protecting cells from damage believed to be linked to cancer.
http://www.finegreentea.com/green-tea-cancer.html
2. Green Tea and Heart Disease
Green tea helps prevent heart disease and stroke by lowering the level of cholesterol.
Even after the heart attack, it prevents cell deaths and speeds up the recovery of heart cells.
http://www.finegreentea.com/green-tea-and-heart-disease.html
3. Green Tea and Anti-Aging
Green tea contains antioxidant known as polyphenols which fight against free radicals.
What this means it helps you fight against aging and promotes longevity.
4. Green Tea and Weight Loss
Green tea helps with your body weight loss. Green tea burns fat and boosts your metabolism rate naturally.
It can help you burn up to 70 calories in just one day.
That translates to 7 pounds in one year.
http://www.finegreentea.com/green-tea-weight-loss.html
5. Green Tea and Skin
Antioxidant in green tea protects the skin from the harmful effects of free radicals, which cause wrinkling and skin aging.
Green tea also helps fight against skin cancer.
http://www.finegreentea.com/green-tea-skin.html
6. Green Tea and Arthritis
Green tea can help prevent and reduce the risk of rheumatoid arthritis.
Green tea has benefit for your health as it protects the cartilage by blocking the enzyme that destroys cartilage.
http://www.finegreentea.com/green-tea-and-arthritis.html
7. Green Tea and Bones
The very key to this is high fluoride content found in green tea.
It helps keep your bones strong.
If you drink green tea every day, this will help you preserve your bone density.
8. Green Tea and Cholesterol
Green tea can help lower cholesterol level.
It also improves the ratio of good cholesterol to bad cholesterol, by reducing bad cholesterol level.
http://www.finegreentea.com/green-tea-and-cholesterol.html
9. Green Tea and Obesity
Green tea prevents obesity by stopping the movement of glucose in fat cells.
If you are on a healthy diet, exercise regularly and drink green tea, it is unlikely you’ll be obese.
10. Green Tea and Diabetes
Green tea improves lipid and glucose metabolisms, prevents sharp increases in blood sugar level, and balances your metabolism rate.
http://www.finegreentea.com/diabetes-and-green-tea.html
11. Green Tea and Alzheimer’s
Green tea helps boost your memory.
And although there’s no cure for Alzheimer’s, it helps slow the process of reduced acetylcholine in the brain, which leads to Alzheimer’s.
12. Green Tea and Parkinson’s
Antioxidants in green tea helps prevent against cell damage in the brain, which could cause Parkinson’s. People drinking green tea also are less likely to progress with Parkinson’s.
13. Green Tea and Liver Disease
Green tea helps prevent transplant failure in people with liver failure. Researches showed that green tea destroys harmful free radicals in fatty livers.
http://www.finegreentea.com/green-tea-liver.html
14. Green Tea and High Blood Pressure
Green tea helps prevent high blood pressure.
Drinking green tea helps keep your blood pressure down by repressing angiotensin, which leads to high blood pressure.
http://www.finegreentea.com/green-tea-and-high-blood-pressure.html
15. Green Tea and Food Poisoning
Catechin found in green tea can kill bacteria which causes food poisoning and kills the toxins produced by those bacteria.
16. Green Tea and Blood Sugar
Blood sugar tends to increase with age, but polyphenols and polysaccharides in green tea help lower your blood sugar level.
17. Green Tea and Immunity
Polyphenols and flavenoids found in green tea help boost your immune system, making your health stronger in fighting against infections.
18. Green Tea and Cold and Flu
Green tea prevents you from getting a cold or flu.
Vitamin C in green tea helps you treat the flu and the common cold.
19. Green Tea and Asthma
Theophylline in green tea relaxes the muscles which support the bronchial tubes, reducing the severity of asthma.
20. Green Tea and Ear Infection
Green tea helps with ear infection problem.
For natural ear cleaning, soak a cotton ball in green tea and clean the infected ear.
21. Green Tea and Herpes
Green tea increases the effectiveness of topical interferon treatment of herpes.
First green tea compress is applied, and then let the skin dry before the interferon treatment.
22. Green Tea and Tooth Decay
Green tea destroys bacteria and viruses that cause many dental diseases.
It also slows the growth of bacteria which leads to bad breath.
http://www.finegreentea.com/green-tea-tooth-decay.html
23. Green Tea and Stress
L-theanine, which is a kind of amino acids in green tea, can help relieve stress and anxiety.
24. Green Tea and Allergies
EGCG found in green tea relieves allergies.
So, if you have allergies, you should really consider drinking green tea.
http://www.finegreentea.com/green-tea-allergy.html
25. Green Tea and HIV
Scientists in Japan have found that EGCG (Epigallocatechin Gallate) in green tea can stop HIV from binding to healthy immune cells.
What this means is that green tea can help stop the HIV virus from spreading.
Sunrise and Forecast
Good morning, Kuwait, it is another gorgeous day. It didn’t get quite so cold last night (couldn’t see my breath as I breathed out, could you?) and there is not a cloud in a sky. Put on your sweaters, go out and take a walk! This is perfect weather! And it will last this entire week!
The sunrise this morning is almost identical to yesterday’s sunrise. Oh Kuwait, go forth and take advantage of this great weather!
Never-Ending Sunrise 2 Jan 09
Good morning!
We stayed up late last night watching movies. At my normal time this morning, I woke up and told myself I could go back to sleep, but . . . sleep didn’t come. I don’t know how it works for you – I am a morning person. Once I am awake, I am awake. And it was just about time for a sunrise, so I joined the Qatteri Cat in the living room, and took a photo of a very grey, very cold, day.
I thought yesterday was WARM. I had headed out, all bundled up for winter, with AdventureMan, and we were both warm almost as soon as we got in the car. I had to take off a layer as we ran our errands. Late last night, seeing our guests off, we were both shivering in the cold – the weather changed so quickly.
Here is what it looks like this morning:
Here is the dawning at 0630:
Just 15 minutes later, a whole new sky:
And another 15 minutes it looks like an artist took paintbrush to the sky, giving it highlights and depth and color:
My cholesterol actually came down this year – it wasn’t high, but it was rising. Eating the dreaded oatmeal and more vegetables, less meat seemed to help. When I just can’t stand the thought of another bowl of oatmeal, I fix myself a bowl of Kashi with blueberries, which, for my US viewers, costs around $11 – $12 a box – not a large box – here in Kuwait. I save it for special occasions. 😉
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