Amer Al-Hilal Steps Up to the Plate
He eyes the pitcher. He swings the bat! He connects! He hits the ball out of the park!
OK, OK, sometimes I carry an analogy too far. But seeing our fellow blogger Hilaliya: A Kuwait State of Mind on the front page of today’s Arab Times, taking a swat at the recent ban on internet phone services made me feel like dancing.
He encourages all of us to raise the cry against this ban, a ban which is unenforceable (think of all the IT people running around Kuwait who know just how to get around this blockage) and counter to the best interests of the state of Kuwait. As Amer says – Kuwait needs a Minister of Communications who looks toward the FUTURE, and makes policy decisions for the long term good of the state and community, not one who barely comprehends the new technologies and is unwilling to go with the times.
You can’t hold back technology. The genie is out of the bottle. So how can you use the new technologies to better serve the needs of the wealthy state and its inhabitants?
Intlxpatr: The Name
People keep asking about my name: Intlxpatr. There’s a part of me that wants to keep quiet and let you think it has some deep mysterious meaning. But no, here is the truth.
I didn’t really intend to start blogging as soon as I did. I wanted to think about it, and part of that is exploring the environment, right? So I would look around the hosting sites, and I ended up being asked questions almost immediately. At first, adreneline pounding through my system, I signed back off, thought about it a while, and then signed back on. They wanted commitment; I had cold feet.
I wanted a clever name, but it seemed to be that all the names I liked were already taken, or just not right for me. Even the blog name, which isn’t particularly clever, was a “just for now” sort of thing, I always thought I could go back and change it later. Here There and Everywhere just stuck, and has grown more and more appropriate as I write about all sorts of things. I never much liked boundaries!
For the blogger name, I wanted something unlikely to be duplicated. And something that wouldn’t give me away. Intl – international, xpatr – expatriate. So dull, so simple. . . so vanilla. And, as it turns out, so annoying to people who have to type it . . .
There is a little bit of a joke in the name. . . but I am going to maintain SOME mystery. Anyway, I know it isn’t clean and simple, but it’s who I am. At least for now.
Warning to Egyptians
Please, please, somebody else read this and tell me what it means. From today’s Kuwait Times:
Informed souce at the Ministry of Communications revealed that the closure of websites of companies that offer illegal international telephone call service was successful because the number of international calls from Kuwait and coming to Kuwait from other states increased following their decision.
On the other hand, the Egyptian ambassador to Kuwait Ahmad Abdullah warned Egyptian expatriates in Kuwait against violating the Kuwaiti laws expecially following a number of complaints were filed against Egyptian citizens of cheating residents with providing illegal residence permits and driving licenses. The ambassador asked all Egyptian expats to avoid this kind of illegal actions because the expats who commit such crimes will be deported from Kuwait, reported Al-Qabas.
My comment: Excuse me? How are these two paragraphs even related? How is banning telephone calls successful due to an increase in the banned telephone calls? And for what will Egyptians be deported – using an illegal phone? Providing fake residencies? Fake driver’s licenses? All of the above?
Manshar Mall: Rotana Hotel Open
One day it was not open – and then it was! I haven’t seen any announcements for the Rotana, but it is indeed open for business. There are signs all over Fehaheel indicating the Rotana Hotel’s whereabouts, but those have been up for months.
And – the Villa Moda signs are back up, indicating they will be opening soon. Interesting. Wonder when “soon” will be?
Last but not least – Al Kout and Al Manshar appear to be related, at least architecturally. Why have they not connected the two with a walking bridge from the top floor? Crossing that road is deadly! And parking in the Al Manshar Mall parking lot is severely limited.
And why so much security? There are security guards everywhere, and they are very very firm (my big smile did not sway them) about NOT taking photos.
The very cool thing about Al Manshar Mall is that there are a lot of small shops; it has a very souk-y feel about it, and they aren’t the shops you find in all the usual (ho hum) malls.
And there is a small but very very busy Chili’s.
Raise Your Voices
My blogging friend Hilaliya raised HIS voice in an article entitled Kuwait ‘Ministry Of Communications’ Attempts To Extort Internet Users and found an elaborated article on the Ministry of Communication ban. You can read his rant, and go to the Arab Times article by clicking here.
It FEELS Personal
A good friend who is also a psychologist often talked about how things FEEL personal even when they are not.
• When your best friend betrays your deep dark secret to another friend because she lacks self confidence and it made her feel important for a couple seconds
• When your young wife sleeps with your brother because after two babies she wants to feel exciting and attractive and young again
• When your brother uses drugs again, after you paid for rehab and he swore up and down he would never never use again
• When your father divorces your mother and leaves her to raise the kids alone
• When your oldest friend in the world stops returning your calls and communicating with you and you later learn that she if fighting a losing battle with cancer
• When your aging husband buys a small red convertible and turns you in for a younger model, too, because he wants to think he’s hot
• When your internet phone service is declared illegal and gets shut down to spare “government wastage”
In every case above, the situation has more to do with personal issues than with you, but man, it sure FEELS personal. The fact that is doesn’t have to do with you is almost insulting, because the impact can be so painful.
And so it is with internet service. This morning, I was missing internet service for a while. It happens sometimes, but rarely longer than three-four minutes. This time it went on and on. Of course my first reaction is “oh no! Am I being penalized for having written about internet phone service being blocked???” But no, this time it wasn’t all about me. It was just an outage, and – for now – just temporary. Alhamdallah!
But this policy is going to impact on all of us painfully. Please, please raise your voices. You know better than I do where it will be the most effective. It’s important that we be able to communicate with our family and friends in a reasonably priced way. The internet phones don’t hurt anybody. Let’s keep them legal.
Internet Phones Blocked in Kuwait
Watching the news lately, I became more and more uneasy as Indian telephone service providers – evidently clandestine – were raided with frequency and shut down. All these men want is a few minutes chatting with their families, without paying an arm and a leg.
We’re all in the same boat.
In a tiny little article in the Kuwait Times yesterday, they announced that ALL internet calling services would be blocked. Those that are not already blocked soon will be.
I had heard rumblings from friends, phones not working, etc. We all subscribe to Vonage, or Skype, or one of the myriad internet phone services; it’s part of what makes living and working in Kuwait DO-ABLE.
This last year, with my father dying, the phone was my lifeline. Because it has the same area code as my family, my Mom felt free to call me anytime and give me an update on how Dad was doing. When I know we are going back for a visit, I can get on that phone and make dental appointments, schedule a doctor’s appointment, harangue my bank when they have made a mistake.
I don’t even have a private land line into our dwelling. There is a phone, but it goes through the desk where the guard doesn’t really understand English that well. All my calls come through my cell phone . . . OR the internet phone. The price of the service was well worth it in terms of my peace of mind, and my mother’s, and my sisters. Our son feels free to call us when he chooses – it is a Godsend.
The land lines here are notorious. I am outraged. The international call rates are extortionate, and the call quality is horrorific.
When we lived Qatar and the internet phone services were blocked, the major international companies in town all went to their ambassadors and had them formally protest to the government. The ambassadors made the case. And the ban was reversed.
Please. If you are Kuwaiti, use your wasta. If you are a guest-worker here in this country, protest to your Ambassador, and ask her or him to get involved, to take this to the highest levels. This ban on internet phone services hurts the morale of ALL people here in Kuwait who have family in other parts of the world. It makes Kuwait look greedy and mean-spirited, and we all know that is not the true nature of Kuwaitis.
Mortgage Crisis Spirals
(My comment: Belief in promises of “easy” money cause problems all over the world. Eventually, there is always a price to pay. Meanwhile, the current crisis presents buying opportunities to those who have saved and wisely invested.)
Mortgage Crisis Spirals, and Casualties Mount
from today’s New York Times
By JULIE CRESWELL and VIKAS BAJAJ
Published: March 5, 2007
Even in affluent Orange County, Calif., the growing wealth of executives and brokers in the booming mortgage industry was hard to miss.
For Kal Elsayed, a former executive at New Century Financial, a large lender based in Irvine, driving a red convertible Ferrari to work at a company that provided home loans to people with low incomes and weak credit might have appeared ostentatious, he now acknowledges. But, he says, that was nothing compared with the private jets that executives at other companies had.
“You just lost touch with reality after a while because that’s just how people were living,” said Mr. Elsayed, 42, who spent nine years at New Century before leaving to start his own mortgage firm in 2005. “We made so much money you couldn’t believe it. And you didn’t have to do anything. You just had to show up.”
Just as the technology boom of the late 1990s turned twenty-something programmers into dot-com billionaires, and leveraged buyouts a decade earlier turned Wall Street bankers into Masters of the Universe, the explosive growth in subprime lending turned mortgage bankers and brokers into multimillionaires seemingly overnight.
Now an escalating crisis in the market, which seemed to reach a new crescendo late last week, is threatening a wide band of people. Foremost are the poor and minority homeowners who used easy credit to buy houses that are turning out to be too expensive for them now that mortgage rates are going up, but the pain is also being felt widely throughout the business world.
Large companies that bought subprime lenders during the boom, like H&R Block and HSBC, are now scrambling to sell them or scale back their exposure. Many investors are also likely to suffer: Wall Street firms made billions in fees, commissions and trading revenue from packaging and selling subprime mortgages to them as bonds.
New Century has emerged as a poster child for the lenders that rode that boom to the top and are now in free fall. The company disclosed on Friday that federal prosecutors and securities regulators were investigating stock sales and accounting errors. The latter could jeopardize billions of dollars in financing for the company, which issued $39.4 billion in subprime loans in the first nine months of last year.
Weakening home prices and rising default rates have rocked the subprime business. But for those who cashed out before the market turned, the ride up was particularly sweet. The three founders of New Century, for example, together made more than $40.5 million in profits from selling shares in the company from 2004 to 2006, according to an analysis by Thomson Financial. They collected millions of dollars more in dividends, salaries, bonuses and perks.
The company said in a statement yesterday that the founders were “still significant shareholders,” noting that they collectively owned about 7 percent of the company at the end of last year.
New Century’s stock price, which seemed to mirror the trajectory of the subprime business, peaked at nearly $66 a share in December of 2004 and traded in the $40s most of last year; on Friday, it was trading at $11 a share after the market closed. In a series of sales from August to November, two of the company’s founders sold shares for an average price of about $40 a share, for a total profit of $21.4 million.
It is not known whether the stock sales by the founders are among the sales being examined by federal investigators. Some of them had been part of scheduled stock sales that are often used by executives to diversify their portfolios. But some of the sales occurred on the same day that the executives entered the plans. A New Century spokeswoman, Laura Oberhelman, said that executives declined further comment.
You can read the rest of the article by clicking here.
Bringing in the Harvest, Kuwaiti Style
Fresh seafood is one of the great blessings of living in Kuwait. Visiting Fehaheel with a friend one morning, I was delighted to see a boat docked, and fish being loaded into trucks.
You have this old old style boat, and everything they are doing is state-of-the-art in terms of hygiene. The fish are all iced as soon as they are caught, and transported with more ice. Some of the fish is delivered straight to the fish market in Fehaheel, where auctions are held almost daily.
I am only missing Kuwaiti shrimp, which is now out-of-season, to protect the shrimp production for future needs. I am willing to sacrifice for the long-term greater good, and besides, I can still find fresh-frozen Kuwaiti shrimp in my local co-op.
Yesterday I had a new treat – hammour kufte. Have you tried it? I saw it at the Sultan Center, and decided to try it. I sauteed it gently, not sure how it would respond, until it was cooked almost through, then flipped it and cooked the other side. Total WOW. I am a believer! If you haven’t tried it, you are in for a treat. How can anything taste that good AND be good for you?
(Segue) Have you visited the Al Kout Mall in Fehaheel recently? I often take visitors there – it is SO different from Marina Mall and Sharq Mall. There aren’t the bands of teenage marauders there, children are kept under control by their caring parents, and the cafes and restaurants along the fountains are busy day and night, mostly with families and quiet people, not the people who are more concerned with being seen. The stores often have things that are already shopped out at the other malls. There is a serenity in the architecture, and the way it incorporates the waterfront location, and a feeling of everything coming together as it ought.
Sometimes I am the only Westerner I see, outside the Sultan Center.
I took a friend there who had lived in Kuwait a long time ago. She was astounded when I took her there. “This is FEHAHEEL?” she exclaimed. She was in wonder and in shock. She remembered Fehaheel as being at the end of the earth, and a dangerous place to be.
It can still be a dangerous place to be, on a Thursday or Friday night, in competition for a parking place. It will get worse, once the Rotana Hotel opens in the Manshar complex. And the signs for the Villa Moda at the Al Manshar Mall are now disappeared – is Villa Moda NOT coming to the Manshar Mall?
Party Busted
Wouldn’t you love to know the rest of this story? I sure would! From today’s Kuwait Times:
Detectives arrested a group of over 40 Kuwaiti and Western students of private school who were enjoying themselves at a private party in a very luxurious apartment in Salmiya, said security sources. Officials added that some neighbors heard them arguing in the building’s parking area about who would be allowed in and who would not be; for not contributing in the party’s expenses. An hour later, the apartment was busted and the strangely dressed young people (in devilish costumes) were arrested along with the building’s security officer who rented them the apartment.
My comment: Sounds to me like these kids have too much money, and too little sense, a la Risky Business. These are school kids??? And what were the costumes?
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