Three Turtles
My husband called; he leaves for work early. He saw THREE cars “turned turtle”* on his way to work. One was a huge water tanker that had been hit by an SUV; he said he can’t imagine anyone getting out alive.
The roads are wet and slick. Not matter that Kuwait gets ample rain in the rainy season, there are months and months worth of accumulated grease and oil on the highways, and people who don’t take the weather conditions into account.
Be careful out there. Please, please, slow down. Buckle up. And please, tell your children that the car doesn’t go unless they are buckled up, too. Please. Keep them safe. We know you are being careful. . . but there are others who are not.
*”Turned turtle” is what they say when a car ends up upside down.
Google Earth Hurts American Forces in Iraq?
This morning on the front page of the Kuwait Times is a story about American forces in Iraq finding GoogleEarth print outs of American bases and strongholds, so clear that those targeting these sites can see the difference between tents and barracks, and can get the exact longitude and latitude for targeting purposes.
Information is always a double edged sword. Information is information, in and of itself, it is neutral. How information is used makes it useful or harmful. And “useful” or “harmful” depends totally on where you stand.
So what do you think? Do you try to censor GoogleEarth when it hurts your side, and oppose censorship when it works to your advantage? Or do you say “hands off” and let the information serve all people equally?
Training Joke #2
(Sometimes the setting changes, but the end is always the same.)
Two best buddies were camping in Alaska. Lifetime friends, they set aside a long weekend every year to hike in the wilderness.
On the last night, a bear breaks into the camp and is working his way into the tent. One man starts putting on his shoes, while the other shouts “There’s no time to put on shoes, you can’t outrun a bear!”
His friend looks at him and says “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you.”
Alhamdallah for the Trip from Hell
Remember what my husband says? A good flight is where the number of landings equals the number of take-offs? Alhamdallah, I am safely arrived back in Kuwait and the safe landings equalled the take-offs.
Having said that, this trip back to Kuwait was not a trip I want to do again any time soon. It’s all small stuff. Small stuff adds up. (Sigh.) It gets old.
There’s a direct flight from Seattle to Amsterdam. Because I booked so late, I couldn’t get on it. I kept trying, KLM kept laughing and saying “it is BOOKED!” I made use of that “weather window” to drive to the airport a little early, hoping a seat might open up, someone might now show up. No such luch. Even as the flight boarded, I asked if there was any possibility of getting on and they just laughed.
No big deal. My flight to Minneapolis was just a little later, and it was uneventful, except for leaving late enough that I had to RUN from one end of the Minneapolis airport to the other to reach the gate for my Amsterdam flight, and it was a long long way! Most people were already on board, but I had an aisle seat and I was just happy to make the flight. This flight, too, was fully booked. I didn’t see a single empty seat.
And that was not good news. I was tired, so quickly fell asleep, only to awake to the sound of a flight attendant using her loud voice to say “Sir! Sir! Can you hear me? Can you hear me? If you can hear me, you need to respond!” and when the man sitting behind me didn’t respond she was about to call for medical assistance. At that moment, he vomited copiously all over himself and all over his seat. Pretty awful, awful for him, awful for everyone sitting around him. Ummm, remember when I told you there were no empty seats?
They did their best to clean things up. Oh well. Safe landing.
Boarded the flight to Kuwait in Amsterdam, uneventful, smooth . . . “hmmmmm, haven’t we been sitting here a while? We were supposed to take off half an hour ago . . .?” The pilot comes on and says the plane has been loaded with contaminated fuel and they are trying to figure out what they are going to do. Three hours after we boarded we are deplaned, given vouchers for dinner and a phone call and 50 Euro coupon toward our next flight. We are told to be back at 9 to reboard.
So I go once again for the upgrade – I really need more space to sleep, and I really need some sleep. I tried to use that fancy-schmancy 50 Euro coupon but the ticketing office said it is only good for booking a totally NEW ticket. Ah well, I paid 100 Euro to upgrade, worth EVERY centime. I was asleep even before the plane taxied down the runway for takeoff. My sweet husband was there to meet me at the ungodly hour we landed in Kuwait. The air was cool and fresh and smelled clean.
OK, OK, nothing major, just a lot of small annoyances. The number of safe landings equalled the number of takeoffs. Alhamdallah.
The Family Gathers
The flight from Amsterdam to Seattle runs around 10 hours – more or less depending on headwinds and tailwinds. Thanks to my almost-fully-flat seat, I was able to get about 6 good hours of sleep, just exactly what I needed to face immigration, customs, car rental and a drive through Seattle (four to five lanes of traffic in both directions) to a northern suburb.
It is COLD in Seattle – like the high is about one degree above freezing. It is also a damp cold that makes you shiver, and when the wind blows, it feels freezing. It is supposed to drop down below freezing tonight. I just hope it doesn’t snow again; driving can get problematic in the snow.
Grabbed a quick Pepperming Mocha (I don’t know why they don’t do these in Kuwait, but they tell me there would be no market. How do they know? Have they ever tried it?) and headed for my Mom’s. One sister, her husband, and Little Diamond were also waiting for me there, Little Diamond’s sister, Precious Diamond (sometimes called Pregnant Diamond; she is due to have a baby any minute!) and my other sister, her husband and son came by a little later, and we all had dinner together.
Mom has asked me to make a kind of photographic tribute to my Dad for the service on Saturday, so we got out all the photo albums, collections, boxes and had a lot of fun going through and remembering all the good times with Dad. I have a stack of photos from different times in his life, and will take them in to get them copied, enlarged, etc somewhere where they can do it FAST. Little Diamond will help with the graphic design and Fonts – she wrote the obituary for the paper and did a truly masterful job.
Thanks to the sleep I got on the plane, I was fairly fresh . . . well, I did fall asleep for a while after dinner, but rallied and got another couple hours of work done.
I am guessing I will get a good night’s sleep and dive in to all the work that needs to be done tomorrow. With everyone in the family taking a part, it should all work out smoothly. I found the photo of me sitting almost on top of the mountain. I will see if there is a way I can blog it.
KLM, Bureaucracy and Customer Service
It is so easy to complain when you live overseas. We complain about Wasta, we complain about corruption – and all it takes is another trip out of Kuwait to see that it exists everywhere. Bureaucracies exist to encourage arbitrary decisions, bribes, and meanness to the customer.
But every now and then, you find a brave soul who stands up for right, who uses policy like a rapier against the lazy, and I met one of those this morning.
I am connecting in Amsterdam, and I have thousands and thousands of miles I never use. Mostly I have been booking flights on a relatively short term basis, and when your family needs you is not the time to be trying to dicker over free tickets, etc. So as I entered the business lounge, I asked the very nice woman behind the desk if an upgrade was possible for the next leg of the trip.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she checked this, she double checked that, and then said “you would have to pay 150 Euros to upgrade + 25,000 miles”. Piece of Cake. For a 10 hour flight? 150 Euros! Here’s my money.
No no, I had to go downstairs and pay. And downstairs, it is six, when ticketing is supposed to open, but they are very very busy ignoring the customers. They have coffee to get, greetings to exchange, water to distribute, computers to boot – no, no, ticketing open at 6:00 does NOT mean they are ready to serve the customer at six, only that they are in the general area at around six.
And they were not happy to have a customer. The counter lady gave me the same information as the lady upstairs – 150 Euros + miles, and then she took my ticket to the ticketing lady behind her, who gave it a glance and said no, it was impossible, my card was KLM and the ticket was on a Northwest flight. I said “You are partners! This card is supposed to work on all the partner airlines” and she said “no, the regulations say that your class of ticket cannot be upgraded on Northwest.”
I don’t usually let things get under my skin, but the sheer blatancy of her desire to get rid of me annoyed me. I said that this was not right, and not fair, and she shrugged her shoulders and smiled.
Smiled! Whew! I could almost feel the fire coming out of my ears and eyes!
Back upstairs in the lounge, I checked in with the same lady who had helped me before and told her what the ticketing bureaucrat had said. I was calm, but also very angry. So was she. “That’s just WRONG” she said, and got on the phone. 45 minutes later, she was still at it. She would verify all her information, call ticketing, and the ticketing lady would still say “No!”
Finally, I signed up for a shower, and washed away all the frustration while the dear lady in the business lounge continued to get people involved. By the time I came back out, fresh and sweet and clean, she gleamed in triumph! “You have your ticket!” she said, her voice triumphant!
So downstairs I headed once more to pay. The ticketing lady was totally snippy to me, taking her time, shaking her head in disgust, until I asked her name and wrote it down. Suddenly, she was all sweetness and light, and like magic, my new improved boarding pass appeared.
Al hamd’allah.
But here is what bugs me. I’ve worked many many jobs that required keeping customers happy. I am really good at it. I take pride in it. In the long run, I believe, good will pays the biggest dividends. And when I can make something good happen for someone, it’s like something good happens for me, too . . .
So what possible reason would people in roles where they interface with the public have for being rude? unhelpful? snippy? to take visible joy in saying no?
I can imagine that being an airline counter service agent at this time of the year, with all the delays and confusions, and abuse they have to take could be dis-spiriting. I can sympathize that they have to deal with people who all want special treatment. I’m just another person asking for an upgrade. But at the same time, doesn’t it make them feel worse to be rude and unhelpful?
Do you deal with the public? Are you ever rude? What pushes your buttons, what can make you rude to a customer? And as a customer, how do you handle a rude employee?
Two Photos
I have a photo of my Dad and me when I was only five or six months old. I am in my snow suit, with a big hat on my head. My dad has lifted me high on his right hand, high above his head, and I am oblivious to the danger, and out of my mind with delight – you know how babies are. I have a look on my face of delerious happiness. I am almost as high as the mountain in the background. I am – almost literally – on top of the world. My Dad is young and thin and strong. He was a great skiier in those days.
The second photo is of my Dad and my Mom, on a visit to Germany, only eight years ago. Dad was 80. They flew to Germany and rented a car to visit us, and to tour some of their old haunts from their own ten years of living in Heidelberg. He and Mom crawled up on the fountain at Deidesheim to stand behind the bronze costumes for a photo. Their faces are effused in smiles; they are still young in spirit if not in body, and having a wonderful time.
In recent years, my Dad was less and less able. His big project every week was to program the video recorder to record two tapes a week of prime time American television for my husband and I – we would watch it whenever we wanted and had time. He was known at the post office as the man who came in twice a week mailing these videotapes to us, and he loved it that he was so well known by the folks at the post office.
Dad died last night. He was 88. I’ll be going back for a short time. Dad, I know you’ve gone to a better place. Alhamdallah.
Rape in Kuwait
This is a very difficult post. Rape is a terrible subject. Coolfreak in his blog IheartKuwait wrote a heartbreaking post about a young woman raped recently in Kuwait, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
Rape has been the subject of several editorials in the Kuwait Times. Rape of children, abduction and rape of young women, abduction and rape of domestic servants, rape of domestics on the job site, abduction and rape of young men. . . rape is prominent DAILY in the crime column. Rape is epidemic in Kuwait, so common that people seem to think that there is nothing that can be done.
People can wring their hands. People can moan about how wrong it is. But what is being done for the victims of rape?
In California, volunteers put together rape crisis centers. At first, these centers were totally staffed and funded by volunteers and volunteer fund raising. The volunteers, with their own funds, established a 24 hour hotline, with an answering service, that rape victims could call and reach a rape counselor.
Counselors would accompany victims to the hospital, explain procedures, and explain the victim’s options. Counselors would help the victim on the long journey to feeling safe once again, and to feeling some remnant of control over their lives.
Members of the rape crisis centers created education programs, and worked with both police and hospitals to establish procedures working with rape victims. Police were counselled on how to work with the traumatized victims, and police worked with the crisis workers to create new, enforceable laws against the rapists. It was the beginning of the victim advocacy program that is now common in most western countries. Most law enforcement agencies now have paid staff to work with crime victims en route to criminal procedings against the “perp” and subsequent counselling. Victims can testify at parole hearings against probation.
Rape is an outrage – against the individual, and against the community. Rape is less about sex than about power and humiliation. Have you noticed when serial rapists are caught, they turn out to be pathetic losers? They carry a huge burden of inadequacy combined with feelings of entitlement. The most appropriate penalty is their exposure through the court systems, and imprisonment, with those who, like themselves, think like predators.
But we must do what we can do to help the victims, to provide them with counselling and resources to speed their recovery. To create strong laws which protect the community by keeping the predators off the streets. To create procedures where evidence can be gathered and stored, and DNA samples compared so that offenders can be charged, and tried, and convicted.
Hats off, by the way, to the young man Coolfreak with the courage to first blog about this outrage. I find his blog brave and creative and refreshing and amusing and stimulating. Check it out.
Today’s Kuwaiti Hero: Sheikh Nassar Al Mohammed
Today’s Kuwait Times has the following story:
No One is Above the Law
No one is above the law, even if he happens to be the son of the prime minister. This is exactly what the Prime Minister, Sheikh Nassar Al-Mohammed said to the Assistant Undersecretary for Traffic Affairs, MAJ GEN Thabet Al-Muhanna and the accompanying traffic delegation when he received them in his office.
The reception was held to express gratitude to the Highways Officer, Lt Khalid Al-Hajery and his assistant, SGT Mohammed Al-Rasheedi who issued a traffic citation to the prime minister’s son when he was returning from a reception.
The patrol stopped his son and issued him a citation for tinting the vehicle’s windows, before letting him off.
When Sheikh Nasser came to know about it, he also sent the car to the traffic department to impound it, as the citation required the car to be impounded as per the law. (emphasis mine)
Comment: You always get the feeling there is more to the story than appears in the paper, but if this one is complete, it is pretty cool. This is leadership by example. Wooo Hooooooo.
Dining Out: Souk Mubarakia
This is for Skunk – he recommended the outside restaurant at Souk Mubarakia, which also happens to be one of our favorite places to go.
Does anyone know of a restaurant around here with an old Kuwait theme – like where they have private small rooms where you sit on the floor, like a small majlis?
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