5,000 Real Estate Deeds Missing
The Kuwait Times website seems to be down so I can’t link directly to them, but this is at the top of the crime news on yesterday’s page 5:
5,000 Real Estate Deeds Missing
Kuwait: An owner of a real estate office registered a complaint with the Khaitan police claiming that 5,000 real estate deeds were stolen from his office’s locked-up drawers. However, both the owner and the police were baffled because the thieves could have carried off furniture and other valuable items, but preferred to steal the deeds instead. The case was handed over to special detectives who immediately launched an investigation.
This seems to me like the deeds were the target of the break-in. Aren’t deeds registered somewhere? So like even if these paper copies are stolen, can’t they be replaced? What would somebody gain by stealing these deeds? Can they claim the properties? Can they claim the properties were transferred to them? Can they hid transfers that someone doesn’t want disclosed? This sounds like a great mystery to me!
While You Were Sleeping
It’s not that I’m that good, that obsessive, that I would get up every morning to photograph the sunrise. No, AdventureMan has to get to work, I have projects I am working on – AND there is the Qatteri Cat.
His little pea-brain doesn’t know it’s Friday morning. All he knows is that his food dish is empty. He goes around the house, pulling over the trash bins (they are small, they don’t make a lot of noise) and then he scratches at boxes and closets, thinking somewhere there might be food. I am guessing it goes back to some deep instinct, looking for food, from his street days.
I had forgotten to fill his dish last night.
I was so tired, I kept falling asleep over my latest Donna Leon book. Finally, around nine, I turned out my light. When the Qatteri can started sniffing around, pulling over trash cans, opening cupboards (what you hear is thump. thump. thumpthumpthump as he tries to paw it open) and scratching at boxes, I was mostly ready to get up, even though it wasn’t quite six.
Good thing! Cold, clear morning, no sand, not a cloud in the sky and just look at that sunrise:
It is 46°F/8°C this morning. There is a wind, and it feels colder.
Sunrise 21 February 2008
This morning, the sand storm is gone, but there is still a very stiff breeze, keeping everything cool. It is 9°C / 48°F at 7:00 in the morning.
I don’t know if it has anything to do with the lunar eclipse, but as I got up – about an hour ago – I saw one of the lowest of all the low tides I have ever seen in Kuwait. I was tempted to go out on the beach and look for shells, but I don’t go on the beach alone, and I don’t have any dogs to protect me. The Qatteri cat has tried the leash – we call it ‘taking the cat for a drag,’ and he just isn’t fierce enough to protect me.
Kuwait has a LONG weekend! Friday and Saturday are the normal weekend, Monday and Tuesday are Liberation Day and Kuwait Day, so the government also declared Sunday to be a holiday, giving a nice 5 day break. The sandstorms have gone, at least for now, and it looks like it is shaping up to be a beautiful weekend.
God Laughs
So I think I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Lent was beginning and I was giving up all cursing in the car, as a kind of practicing some spiritual discipline kind of thing.
What I didn’t tell you was that I had this sneaky strategy all planned out – I had all kinds of projects lined up at home, and I didn’t really intend to be on the road much during Lent, and I thought that not putting myself in temptation would help do the trick.
I always get tripped up when I make those kinds of strategic decisions toward spiritual disciplines. Strategic and spiritual don’t always blend too well.
What happened is this – suddenly I have found myself on the road more than I ever thought. On the road every single day. Running from one thing to another. And not just my familiar treks either, but some challenging driving, new places, and with people in the car.
The pressure is on. The very worst day of all, I just had to give God a great big grin and thank him for the opportunity to really, really practice my spiritual discipline. The car is full of people, I am on a strange road, sand and dust are blowing everywhere, the competition for my road space are on their way home with their kids in the car, the highways are packed and people are hungry and all I can do is laugh, because I sure can’t curse.
Dust Storm Sunset and Sunrise
This is what it looks like in a dust storm. Imagine fog, but fog that cakes on your face and makes it grainy, that gets in your eyes and up your nostrils. Dust that gets in your ears, dust you can taste. Your skin dries out like an alligator and there is a coating of slick grit on the road.
It’s a driving challenge. Visibility is low. But people are driving more slowly, at least along the roads I drive, so I am actually enjoying the experience. It’s kind of an adventure.
This is how it looked late yesterday afternoon:
And this is the Dust Storm Sunrise this morning:
Kuwait View
This is for people who lived in Kuwait a long time ago – like pre-invasion – and still think of Kuwait as a sleepy, spacious little city. It is taken from near the Marina Mall, a mall that has an overpass across Gulf road to take shoppers to the Marina Crescent, a collection of many restaurants with indoor and outdoor seating.
This is a view looking north, toward Kuwait City:
This is a view looking south:
Sunrise 19 Feb 2008
“Not with a bang, but a whimper. . . ”
That tiny tiny bright speck you see is the sun fighting to shine through the clouds. It was only there for one brief moment – then gone! Maybe we will have rain today?
The gasp of brightness brought to mind T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Hollow Men (by clicking on the blue hypertext, you can go to a great website where it explains all the references in the poem.) Although it was written in 1925 – almost a century ago – it has a very modern feel to it. Your challenge for today – read the poem. Those with more time or interest – go to the website and read the references.:
The Hollow Men
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us – if at all – not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer –
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Struggling Sunrise 17 Feb 08
This morning, the sun had a real fight going just to break through the thick haze on the horizon. WeatherUnderground: Kuwait calls it a “light haze.” The temperature, at 0700 is one degree Fahrenheit LESS than Seattle at 8:00 at night. It feels COLD again!
43 °F / 6 °C
Light Haze
Slight Haze
The weather forecast for Kuwait today is “slight haze.” You’ve seen what normal sunrises look like. This is “slight haze.”
For Mom
I wanted you to see how the Amaryllis are doing. I planted them back in January, and they are just now showing signs of life. The red one that is blooming has another bloom you can see which will also flower. The white Amaryllis is just now sending out a shoot. I kept them outside, out of the direct light, and they are doing great!
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