Pyramid Mosque and Gulf Road
My friend and I were driving by this mosque when she sighed.
“We used to think this mosque was huge,” she said. “You could see it from far away. Slowly, slowly, it just disappeared.”
The mosque is now surrounded by tall buildings, and, indeed, if it weren’t for it’s unusual shape, you might barely notice it across from the Holiday Inn, while driving on Gulf road. There are all kinds of buildings along Gulf road, apartments, hospitals, office buildings. They are doing amazing things, twisting glass and concrete spires up into the heavens. The pyramid mosque is dwarfed by these towering buildings.
We also saw these amazing signs along Gulf Road:
If there were one or two, I would not have taken a photo, but there are like EIGHT of these, four on each side of the road, and a lot of flashing lights. I checked the red sign – remember my Arabic is basic – and I could see two “mamnuas” (forbidden) but I didn’t see “foto” or “suraa” so if it says “no photos” will someone please tell me right away so I can take this photo out?
Sunrise and Splotches
It’s a teeny bit hazy this morning, but the sun rose bright over the water, there is just a tiny bit of ripple on the otherwise glassy surface of the Gulf (cleverly sidestepping whether it is the “Arabian” Gulf or the “Persian” Gulf).
It is a mere 86°F / 30°C at 0730 and not expected to break 100°F.
Yesterday, AdventureMan and I had a late lunch, noticing as we entered and left the restaurant how beautiful the weather is – even though it is hotting up, it was comfortable enough outside, still bearable, even enjoyable. Not for much longer (sigh!)
Until I can get my rain-splotched windows cleaned, I will have the splotches you see . . . I can’t open the windows to shoot out for fear the Qatteri Cat will jump out!
Not your Kuwaiti Dust Storm
This is from Thursday’s Arab Times. Although it is not new news, it contains information I didn’t know – that the sand, full of allergens, was not Kuwaiti dust, and we can expect another storm Tuesday and many through the summer, due to lack of rainfall.
Storm you can ‘taste’
KUWAIT CITY : The sandstorm that raged in parts of Kuwait Wednesday afternoon was carried by Southwesterly winds blowing from North of Saudi Arabia and South of Syria and Iraq at speeds of 55 km/hr, says Musaed Al Hammad, head of Mirzam Observatory. He was talking to the Arab Times soon after his observatory conducted studies on the storm. Musaed said “In Kuwait City and Ahmedi the wind speed was 36 km/hr. The visibility in most parts affected by the dust storm was about 100 m, while in the Kuwait City it was reduced to zero. The sandstorm forced airport authorities to divert incoming flights to neighboring countries, operations manager at Kuwait International Airport, Issam Al Zamel told a news agency.
. . . . . . .
Mirzam Observatory sent samples of the dust to a laboratory, and tests revealed that the dust particles were not from the deserts of Kuwait, and contained cement particles and allergy-causing germs, the astronomer said.
Musaed added breathing in such particles is potentially risky for people prone to bronchitis and other respiratory illnesses. “This finding could open new vistas in the treatment of allergies in Kuwait. “Dust storms arising out of Kuwaiti deserts are usually very slow and linger for a long time, unlike the one that hit Kuwait like a flash on Wednesday. “The visibility was reduced to very low levels because as the storm arrived in Kuwait the wind lost steam and the dust particles gathered in the atmosphere,” Musaed noted. . . . .
As the rainfall was scant this year, all wind conditions in summer will likely turn into dust storms, Musaed said. “So we can expect more dust storms in the future.” Mirzam Observatory has forecasted another dust storm next week on Tuesday. “However, it will not be as bad as Wednesday’s. The dust storms in future will be much milder.”
Lightness of Being
We prayed for Kuwait today. At great length, we prayed for your elections, for your leaders, and that wisdom and wise choices will prevail.
(I am sure you will be glad to know that we didn’t interfere in any way by praying for any specific candidates!)
In the sermon, our priest talked about God and his glory, and the WEIGHT of his presence, and I was really listening, but that was a new concept to me.
Jesus talks a lot about the Kingdom of Heaven, and one of the things he said, sort of one of those mysteries, is that he says the Kingdom of Heaven is all around us “if you have the eyes to see.”
When you think of God, what do you think?
I don’t think of weightiness, although the weight of my own sins might weigh on me. When I think of God, and when I think of the Kingdom of Heaven being all around me, I close my eyes and envision sparkling lights surrounding us, lights we can’t see, and energy, boundless energy, enough energy to create paths and opportunities we don’t even know exist. I think all we have to do is to believe, and to breathe, and we breathe in the Kingdom of Heaven, that he feeds us just by our believing.
All of a sudden, the very irreligious idea of an old computer game – one of the very earliest – came to me. Do you remember PacMan?
Mostly PacMan existed to eat energy dots. He would eat all these energy things and gain energy and win or not, I don’t really know, I never really played it because AdventureMan and LawAndOrderMan hogged the computer all the time to play the early games.
So where do ideas like this come from? Maybe the creator of PacMan had a vision and got part of it right, maybe if we have the eyes to see, maybe we gain sparkling spiritual energy from the Kingdom of Heaven surrounding us? Maybe prayer is like one of the magical tools you find in these games that opens doors, that allows something to happen that wouldn’t otherwise happen.
Sorry, RevQ8 if I got a little off topic here, I honestly was listening as you gave your fine sermon! Sometimes, the mind will go where the mind will go (and I guess mine is going fast . . . 
)
It’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
You know how good you feel after you’ve been sick? All of a sudden, you realize just how GOOD it feels just to be normal, not to ache, not to have a sore throat, not to be tired and woozy?
Getting up this morning was that kind of feeling.
WOW. It’s a beautiful NORMAL Kuwait kind of day. We had a humungous thunder storm last night, I know, because I heard it and got up to see it. It was off in the distance and I was too tired to wait for it to come my way, so I went back to bed. I can tell this morning that it rained here, though, too, because my windows are all splothchy.
It rained! It rained! Here are my splotchy windows:
Today, you can see the horizon. There is a haze in the sky, but it is a normal, high haze, cloud like, not the kind of dust haze that fills your nose and makes you cough. You can see the water, and it sparkles. Ahhhh, it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful normal Kuwait day.
It’s 86° F / 30° at 0900 – yep, I’m up a little later this morning; that’s what happens when you get up in the middle of the night to watch a thunderstorm. 😉
Feedback
As I am chatting on the phone with AdventureMan, he brings up the blog.
“I don’t get it,” he says, “You get like fifty-seven comments on any article about the Qatteri Cat, and you get NO comments on a perfectly wonderful article like the Lemba and their DNA link to the lost tribes of Israel!”
I just laugh. I’ve gotten used to it.
“Months from now I will get a letter from some academic who has been looking for that article and can’t find it,” I tell AdventureMan. “And months from now, that article will still be getting hits while the Qatteri Cat entry is long forgotten.”
Chatting with my Mom on the phone, this morning, she mentioned how she was working out in the water these days, trying to build strength in her legs and knees and hips, and how when she gets discouraged she thinks of the entry on The Magic Bullet and how she really does feel better and have more energy when she finishes. I’m so proud of my Mom. She is 84, living on her own, and had one of her old best friends as a houseguest this weekend, and they attended a fashion show in which my sister Sparkle was modeling. They had a great time. I can only hope to be as fit and active as my Mom when I am her age, and, God willing, still living on my own.
This morning I got an e-mail from Kuwaiti Woman / Dirty Dinar letting her regular commenters know she is back in the blog world once again. I am so glad she wrote to us – I had deleted her from my list of favorites when so much time went by without an entry. Her blog is about the great adventure of learning to manage your own money. She is a very courageous woman, lets us in on all her failures as well as her successes, and because she does not spare herself, she is totally addictive. Who hasn’t had to make tough financial decisions from time to time that blow the budget?
These feedbacks – and the wonderful, additive feedback of your comments – are what keep this blogger going.
Yes, I am having fun. How cool is it knowing your own Mom copied out the recipe for Penny Carrot Salad? How cool is it learning that there are Arab wolves in the desert, and that they are in danger of extinction because they are interbreeding with feral dogs ( R’s comment on Total Crack Up) This blog has made me feel connected in Kuwait, and connected to like-minded people around the world.
I still protect my anonymity, and at the same time, I have a realistic fear that I am getting closer and closer to the day when one of my good friends will look at me sharply and say “I think you are blogging. Are you Intlxpatr?” I don’t know what I will do when that happens. I’m not a good liar, and why would I want to lie to a friend? I just don’t know how long I can expect to keep my identity a secret.
FORECAST for MiYaFuSHi
WeatherUnderground says it is CLEAR today. Here is the Kuwait Airport forecast for today:
Sunrise 1 May 2008 SSDD
As an Army wife, I was exposed to a lot of rough language through the years, and as I got up this morning and looked at the “sunrise” I had this thought: Same (stuff) different day.
The haze gives me a little headache; I don’t know if it is from the glare of the sun bouncing off all the particles, or whether the particles themselves are headache inducing. The haze seems to be increasing, and I wonder if we are in for another sandstormy day.
I am happy to say that yesterday, as the sandstorm went on, I saw more and more motorists stopping and waiting until the storm had passed, and fewer and fewer idiots driving fast and laying on the horn to warn everyone to get out of their way. Idiots!
Here is today’s sunrise, on May 1, 2008:
It’s 81°F / 27°C at 0730 on a Thursday morning.
Update: LOL, I just looked at yesterday’s photo and it is almost exactly the same.
Sandstorm Blowing In
I was back in the project room, making the best use of the day’s light – and Kuwait truly has great light – when all of a sudden, it was as if I had just put sunglasses on. Big orange sunglasses, blocking out a good half the available light.
Here is what it looks like where I normally take the sunrise photos:
Here are more views:
Looks Like Yesterday
I know this photo looks just like yesterday, but it is different. Today, the clouds are not so heavy on the horizon, and they are heavier overhead. Visibility is lower.
Now here is where I get confused. At 7 in the morning, it is 90°F / 32°C. The high temperature for today is only supposed to reach 93°F / 34°C. If it is this hot at seven in the morning, how can it only go three degrees higher?
More haze. I can barely see the water today.
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