Candle Lights
One last photo from my trip to Seattle. I love Christmas light, and this one was SO creative! They must have used several hundred lights to create this candle, the full size of their house:
Hussein Hustle, Montezuma’s Revenge, Etc.
The holiday season, and holiday travelling, is a peak time for food poisoning illnesses. Here is some information, and some reminders, from BBC News: Health on how you can avoid getting – and giving – food related illnesses this season:
Food Poisoning
What is it?
It’s estimated there are more than 9 million cases of gastroenteritis each year in England. For an increasing number of people, it’s due to food poisoning, something that’s preventable.
Gastroenteritis describes symptoms affecting digestion, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and stomach pain. Food poisoning is the type of gastroenteritis caused by eating or drinking something contaminated with micro-organisms or germs, or by toxic substances produced by these germs.
These illnesses are often accompanied by fever, muscle aches, shivering and feeling exhausted.
What causes it?
Micro-organisms enter the body in one of two ways:
In the food – the food isn’t cooked thoroughly, so the micro-organisms aren’t killed off, often the case with barbecued food.
On the food – the person preparing the food doesn’t wash their hands before handling the food, for example.
Campylobacter infection is the most common cause of food poisoning seen by GPs. It likes to live in milk and poultry.
Other common causes include salmonella, listeria, shigella and clostridia. Some take a few hours to cause symptoms, others a few days. Serious infections with E.coli are, fortunately, uncommon.
How can I prevent it?
Always wash your hands thoroughly before preparing food, after going to the toilet and after handling pets
Keep kitchen work surfaces clean
Make sure food is defrosted completely before cooking
Keep pets away from food
Ensure food is cooked thoroughly before eating. Meat shouldn’t have any pink bits
Serve reheated food piping hot
Keep raw meat and fish covered and store at the bottom of the fridge
Store all perishable foods at 5°C (41°F) or less
Keep raw food covered up
Rinse fruit and vegetables under running water before eating
Throw away any food that’s past its use-by date, doesn’t smell right and/or has fungus on it
The Big Fight
AdventureMan and I had a big fight last night; I made it worse because I wouldn’t fight. It only made him angrier that I laughed and walked away.
Too much information? Sometimes, most of the time, a fight isn’t about what it seems to be about. When you have been married a LOOOONNNNGGGG time, you learn, thanks be to God.
AdventureMan is jet lagging, and working too hard. He takes all his responsibilities so seriously. He needed to go to sleep. And that is exactly what he did. Right after dinner, he fell asleep. The Qatteri Cat (he told me this morning) knew something was up and took two of his babies in to AdventureMan to make things better.
We were both up early this morning, laughing. He came up with a wonderful idea for date-night tonight, one of my favorite restaurants, and then . . . (if we can stay awake) we are going to watch this:
I know ya’ll have seen it, but we haven’t, and it just came out on DVD last week in the US.
Sunrise 14 December
Every sunrise is different. This morning, the Gulf is glassy-smooth, there are thick clouds in the sky, so the sun can’t break through until it is already up, and the mood is entirely different from other mornings. Still no significant rain in Kuwait, but you can see a little hope as the clouds begin to thicken . . . maybe one day soon!
Michael Malone: Handling Sin
Have I told you (only a hundred times?) that our family loves books? We buy them, we discuss them, and we pass them around. The one I am about to review came from my son, who got it from the wife of his wife’s father. Heee heee heeee, figure that one out!
Have you ever read A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole? As soon as you start reading Handling Sin, you get the same impression; this book is whacky, and will probably be an underground cult favorite. The author of Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, committed suicide – or so we are supposed to believe. I am not so sure. Handling Sin sounds SO like it, and they both heavily feature New Orleans.
Right off the top, this books starts out weird and keeps right on going. It opens with our hero, Raleigh Whittier Hayes at a Civitan (social and civic works group, kind of like diwaniyya) meeting at the local Chinese restaurant in Thermopylae, North Carolina, where his fortune cookie at the end of the meal says “You will go completely to pieces by the end of the month.” Raleigh sells insurance, he runs and watches what he eats because most of his family gets diabetes; and Raleigh likes order. When we meet Raleigh, he’s not all that likable.
His dying father takes off, leaving a message for Raleigh that he needs to do seven (crazy-sounding) tasks and meet him in New Orleans at a specific date and time, having accomplished these tasks, otherwise he won’t go back to the hospital for his cancer treatments.
His big fat best friend, Mingo Sheffield, insists on coming along. His wife, Aura, just laughs and tells him he needs to loosen up a little when he starts complaining about his Dad’s quest, and begins her campaign for mayor. His nice, safe structured little universe is flying apart, his twin teen-age daughters are out of control, reality as he knows it has just taken a big crunching shift and Raleigh is out of his element.
Perfect! It’s those times of maximum discomfort that we begin to achieve our maximum potential, isn’t it? If we stay in our safe little world, we aren’t challenged to grow, to think new thoughts, to see things from another perspective.
Handling Sin has a series of events that are at the same time heart warming, serious, and side-splittingly funny. I laughed out loud so many times reading this book, as our hero and his friend and all those he picks up along the way find themselves in the most outrageous and unlikely adventures, and learn what they are capable of (OK, for all you grammarians, do not end your sentences in a preposition, do as I say, not as I do!) I would not be at all surprised if this book were made into a movie, it is so much fun. As you rock along, Malone also deals with serious health issues, racial issues, family issues, political issues and law and order. You laugh, you cry, you learn a little and you laugh again. It’s a great read.
This was my back-up book on my flights back to Kuwait, and worth the weight – it’s a kind of big book. AdventureMan can hardly wait to get into it; he had started it but allowed me to read it while he caught up with his jet lag. Who knows who we will pass it along to when he finishes? It’s that good!
Dubai Rape Case Update
Here is an update on the case where the 15 year old French boy was kidnapped, taken to the desert and raped, and then the accused said it was consensual. The parents took them to court – and two have now been convicted; the third has yet to be tried. The doctor who examined this boy told the boy he was a homosexual, that there were no signs of rape. The parents were outraged, and pursued the case.
You can read the entire BBC Story HERE.
Emiratis jailed for raping youth
A court in Dubai, in the UAE, has jailed two men for 15 years for the abduction and sexual assault of a 15-year-old French-Swiss boy.
The men, one of whom is HIV positive, took the teenager to the desert and raped him at knifepoint.
The victim’s mother, Veronique Robert, says the authorities lied about the defendant’s medical status to hide the fact that Aids is present in the UAE.
“Fifteen years is nothing for someone who knew he had Aids,” she said.
A lawyer for the family said they would appeal against what they saw as a too-lenient sentence. A juvenile court is trying a third suspect in the same case.
The defence had claimed the victim had consented to sex and had lied to the authorities.
Treatment missed
Ms Robert has been campaigning to change the law in the United Arab Emirates to recognise homosexual rape as a crime and for more openness about HIV and Aids.
Band of Boats
It must depend on when the fish are running; there is a band of boats a few hundred yards off shore, the shuw’i , the old fashioned kind of fishing boats. Late in the afternoon, they are easier to see than in the morning, where the haze obscures them. Best of all, early in the morning, before the sun rises, they form a necklace of bobbing, flickering lights, and, for some reason, it makes me feel warm and secure to see them out there.
(Some things don’t have to be rational, they just are what they are.)
The description of the shuw’i at the Science Museum along the Corniche:
While the weather is so perfect for walking, and for being outdoors, visit the Science museum on the Corniche. The old boat exhibit outside is totally FREE, and a fabulous peek into Kuwait’s past, which, every morning and night, I am reminded, carries on to the future – the historic shuw’i are still in use, as are the larger jalboot.
Stop Honor Killings.com
I used to send out e-mails to close friends about my adventures travelling and living in “exotic” places. When you live your entire life in one place, the smallest things that may seem trivial to you are interesting and different to those who have never been to your country. I would get letters back saying “you don’t know me, you don’t even know the person who shared your e-mail with me, but (that person’s) former wife is related to one of the people you sent the e-mail to . .”
If someone makes an interesting comment on a blog I follow, sometimes I follow that comment, which I did today. On the blog of a person I don’t follow, from a comment from another blogger I don’t follow, I found this fascinating website:
Stop Honor Killings.com
Here is what I would describe as their mission statement:
INTERNATIONAL: International Campaign Against Honour Killings
Posted by Ginger on Wednesday, September 05, 2007 (12:56:46) (187 reads)
Over 5000 women and girls are killed every year by family members in so-called ‘honour killings’, according to the UN. These crimes occur where cultures believe that a woman’s unsanctioned sexual behaviour brings such shame on the family that any female accused or suspected must be murdered. Reasons for these murders can be as trivial as talking to a man, or as innocent as suffering rape.
I’ve lived in countries where honor killings happened, and we knew about it. It would be in the paper. We saw it in Jordan, in particular, where there is now a huge effort to put an end to the killings, and in Qatar, where it was never in the paper, but the kids would tell their teachers about it, and word travels fast in a small country.
I never hear a word about honor killings in Kuwait.
Is that because there aren’t any?
Expiration Dates
Thank God for other bloggers. Simply Stinni, in addition to having some drop-dead fabulous recipes, often has good little tips for shopping in Kuwait. One reminded me to check expiration dates, something I just don’t even think about doing.
As I was preparing for a party, I needed some cream cheese for a dip. When I checked the expiration date, this is what I saw:
From August 2007 to May 2008? Horrors! I am aghast. What kinds of preservatives would you have to use to give cream cheese such a long shelf life??
There must be some local equivalent, a very mild soft cheese that I could use. You know I love buying local, buying fresh – help me out here. What can I use in place of processed cream cheese?
Three O’Clock Musings
Part of the problem is that for a few days I am totally on my own – without AdventureMan, my life is more free-form. So if I fall asleep at 7 p.m. who cares? As long as I get seven hours of sleep, it isn’t a health issue, is it? Does it matter when you get your sleep? I awoke shortly after I went to sleep however, my bed was shaking – was it just me? No, my bookstand was also rattling, and it went on for what seemed like a long time. Got my adrenelin pumping, but maybe it was just my imagination, not an earthquake. It FELT like an earthquake.
AdventureMan calls at 9:00 pm, we talk, we say goodbye and I read until 10, but am able then to go back to sleep. And then, at 2:30 am, I am wide awake. I didn’t sleep all day yesterday, but neither did I go out – most of the day I was feeling that dopey-almost dizzy headachy kind of feeling when your body knows it is supposed to be sleeping. Not a good time to be out on the road. 😉 I don’t want to endanger my Kuwaiti friends!
So I make myself stay in bed, but I can hear a roaring sound. Is someone pouring gravel, because that is what I think I am hearing? After a while, because I can, I get up and make a pot of coffee, close the kitchen door so the Qatteri Cat can’t come in, and go out on the balcony. No traffic, but I can still hear that roaring. I look out – and it is the pounding surf, I am hearing, one of my most favorite sounds in the world. There is a chilly wind, it seems to be coming from the east, and the pounding surf. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.
AdventureMan and I laugh – we both relish our time on our own – but only for a short time, and then it gets old. We talk a couple times a day or more on the phone; it isn’t the same. We have such great conversations, when we are in the same room together, or even the same city or the same country! I wonder what my life would be like without him, and I can honestly say it would be calmer, less complicated, quieter . . . and that I would miss him terribly.
He tells me his life would be more chaotic – empty refrigerator, clothes on the floor, that without me (nagging) to remind him of things, his life falls apart on the domestic front. I believe it!
I think I get over jet lag faster, though, when he is around to provide my life with greater structure. I WANT to get back on local time, but I succumb to temptation when he is not around, I take the easy way, I don’t make so much effort to adapt. I have to admit, three o’clock in the morning is MY time. I’m not the kind of night-owl who wants to stay up this late, but I love sleeping early and getting up this early, as long as I don’t have anywhere to be or anything to do in the next few days that requires my attention. At three in the morning, the world is mine!
*shares the sound of the pounding surf*
The Qatteri Cat follows me around, so happy to have his house-companion (me) back. We watches for me to sit, and if I have been running around (doing inexplicable things like unpacking, doing laundry, etc) he complains, after all – who wouldn’t rather be snuggling up with the Qatteri Cat? When I sit to blog, he snuggles as close as he can and does his singing purr . . . it’s a normal cat purr, but with the added element of cat joy; it sounds like he is singing and purring at the same time. Life is sweet.
Is it it just me, or is the internet running slowly?
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