Here There and Everywhere

Expat wanderer

No Fone No Fine?

From today’s Arab Times, a dilemma for police enforcing the new no-mobile-phone-use-while-driving-law:

Mobile-user leaves cops baffled; Porn decoder seller nabbed
KUWAITI CITY : Police are reportedly confused because they don’t know what to do with an Egyptian motorist, reports Al-Watan Arabic daily.

The man was talking on a cell phone while driving and when he discovered police were chasing him, he threw out the cell phone from the car window.

When police stopped him they failed to find the cell phone. The daily added the man might have realized that he would be fined KD 50 while his phone cost KD 15 and the sim card KD 5 so he decided to get rid of the phone.

May 13, 2008 Posted by | Crime, ExPat Life, Humor, Kuwait, Living Conditions | 12 Comments

Abandoned Baby

This is for my friend, Mrm, or Mirim the Mirim, a blogger friend with a fiendish eye for the sublime and the ridiculous. She hasn’t blogged for a while and I am concerned about her absence. I am hoping this photo, dedicated to her, will lure her back into the blogging world.

Actually, AdventureMan spotted the baby sitting on a garbage bin, but it was I who whipped the camera out and shot a photo.

Who would abandon this beautiful baby?

May 9, 2008 Posted by | Blogging, Cross Cultural, Entertainment, ExPat Life, Humor, Interconnected, Kuwait, Living Conditions, Photos | 17 Comments

LOL Cat for Today

This one had me howling – it even looks like the Qatteri Cat, who thinks he wants to be outside . . . probably for the same reason. Poor QC vaguely remembers a time when he lived outside. He doesn’t remember the bad parts. 😦

Kuwait isn’t a good place for a cat who lives outside.

cats
more cat pictures

May 7, 2008 Posted by | Community, ExPat Life, Family Issues, Humor, Kuwait, Living Conditions, Pets | 8 Comments

Today’s Grin

You may have seen these before, but they never fail to crack me up – things people have actually said in the courtrooms:_

___________________________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?

WITNESS: No, I just lie there.

____________________________________________________________

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?

WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?

WITNESS: I forget.

ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you
forgot?

_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that
morning?

WITNESS: He said, ‘Where am I, Cathy?’

ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?

WITNESS: My name is Susan!

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in
voodoo?

WITNESS: We both do.

ATTORNEY: Voodoo?

WITNESS: We do.

ATTORNEY: You do?
WITNESS: Yes, voodoo.

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his
sleep,
he doesn’t know about it until the next morning?

WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

____________________________________

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-one-year-old, how old is he?

WITNESS: Uh, he’s twenty-one.

________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?

WITNESS: Are you shitt’in me?

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?

WITNESS: Uh…. I was gett’in laid!

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: How many were boys?

WITNESS: None.

ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?

WITNESS: Are you kidding? Your Honor, I think I need a different
attorney. Can I get a new attorney?

_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?

WITNESS: By death.

ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?

WITNESS: Now, whose death do you suppose terminated it?

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?

WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.

ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?

WITNESS: Guess.

_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a
deposition
notice which I sent to your attorney?

WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on
dead
people?

WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people. Would you
like to rephrase that?

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK?
What school did you go to?

WITNESS: Oral.

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?

WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.

ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?

WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table, wondering why I was doing
an
autopsy on him!

____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?

WITNESS: Huh….are you qualified to ask that question?

______________________________________

— And the best for last: —

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for
a pulse?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you
began the autopsy?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?

WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.

ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive,
nevertheless?

WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and
practicing law.

May 6, 2008 Posted by | Humor | , | 10 Comments

That’s Very Different!

A grin today from the FAIL Blog. This one had me helpless with the giggles.

Even some English speakers have problems with why this is funny – the word they meant to use on the news captioning was “evacuating.” The word they used has a very different meaning.

April 28, 2008 Posted by | Education, Entertainment, Humor, Just Bad English, News | | 6 Comments

The Cat and the Table

humorous pictures
see more crazy cat pics

When I saw this today, on ICHC, I just had to laugh.

Our son has a cat. Our son has a sprayer. The cat gets on the table, where he knows he is not supposed to be. Our son yells “Gordon! Get off the table!” and Gordon settles down. Our son jumps up and gets the sprayer, and Gordon watches. Our son sprays. And sprays. And sprays. If you get right up close to Gordon and spray under his tail, he will get up slowly, annoyed, and saunter off the table. He takes his time. He wants you to know you are annoying, but you don’t scare him. He wants you to know that you are NOT the boss of him.

Normally, Gordon is just the nicest cat you could ever hope to meet. He just has a thing about the dining room table.

April 25, 2008 Posted by | Character, Family Issues, Humor, Hygiene, Pets, Photos | 11 Comments

Come Back!

Law n’ Order Man! EnviroGirl! Come back! Come to Kuwait! We’ll make it worth your while!

Actually, in Kuwait, “coming soon” does not actually mean coming soon. There was a restaurant “coming soon” at The Palms, and we waited. And waited. The sign was up for months, and the restaurant never came!

We’ve heard there is also a Borders Books coming to The Avenues Mall – but we aren’t holding our breaths!

April 22, 2008 Posted by | Community, Cross Cultural, Eating Out, ExPat Life, Family Issues, Health Issues, Humor, Kuwait, Living Conditions, Marketing, Shopping | 14 Comments

Flea Infestation

Here’s the problem. Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual. OK, OK, we have our holy books, and they give us character guidelines. I am talking about specifics here, when life hands you those lemons, how do you make lemonade? Specifically!

When we move to Florida, we thought we were in Paradise. We had a house with a big pool, surrounded by shady trees, families of racoons, beautiful gardens – what’s not to like?

Paradise came with chamaeleons, lizards, cockroaches, even in the best houses. And fleas. We had to learn how to deal with them.

During our first and only flea infestation, at first we blamed the cats. Being a terrible mother, I asked my son to help, and he went into the walk in shower (No! Not naked! He was wearing swimming trunks!) to bathe the cats with anti-flea shampoo. I would get the cat trapped, put the cat in the shower, he would shampoo them, let one out and I would hand him the next one. Both cats loved him the best; he had chosen them from the litter.

When I saw this photo on LOLCATS, I really had to laugh.

Humorous Pictures
see more crazy cat pics

Just so you will know, the solution is to take the cats to the vet and have them treated for fleas professionally. While the cats are at the vets, pour 20 Mule Team Borax over all your carpets and in all your upholstered furniture, let it stand overnight, and vacuum it all up. After you vacuum, bring the cats back. It really works. The borax creates a saline environment in which the fleas (and cockroaches) can’t survive, but it doesn’t hurt pets.

April 9, 2008 Posted by | Adventure, Character, Cultural, Entertainment, Family Issues, Florida, Health Issues, Humor, Living Conditions, Pets, Relationships | , | 14 Comments

Election Year Joke #2

Thank you – you know who you are – for starting my day with a laugh-out-loud election year joke:

 

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his

herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. 


The driver, a young man in aArmani suitGucci shoes,RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, ‘If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?’  
    
Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, ‘Sure, Why not?’
 

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebookcomputer,connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resoluti on photo. 

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany ..

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilotthat the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email o n his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. 
 
Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-Tech Miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, ‘You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.’
 

‘That’s right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,’ says Bud.
 

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.  
   
Then Bud says to the young man, ‘Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my ca lf?’
 

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, ‘Okay, why not?’ 
 
‘You’re a Congressman for the U.S. Government’, says Bud. 
    
 
‘Wow! That’s correct,’ says the yuppie, ‘but how did you guess that?’  
  
‘No guessing required.’ answered the cowboy. ‘You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew,to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don’t know a thing about cows…this is a 
Herd of sheep. . . .


Now give me back my dog.

April 9, 2008 Posted by | Character, Entertainment, Humor, Joke | 5 Comments

Hold Your Calls, Save Your Life

Actually – not a bad slogan. Pithy, personal, memorable.

00mobilephoneban.jpg

Found this in yesterday’s Kuwait Times. Was it also in the Arabic language newspapers? Doesn’t say anything about the fine . . . . the newspaper announcement leads us to believe they are serious. The fine of 5KD (about $20) remains laughable. Nonetheless – if you use a mobile phone while driving, you will become a CRIMINAL after May 1! 😉

No one is going to hate this law more than AdventureMan. Sometimes he calls me when he is driving just to see if I will hang up on him. He tries to talk me into talking with him. I have always said I don’t want to hear his last words being “Oh ____!”

April 4, 2008 Posted by | Bureaucracy, Community, Crime, Entertainment, ExPat Life, Financial Issues, Health Issues, Humor, Living Conditions, Marketing, Social Issues | 11 Comments