Qurain Fest – Information Where?
Here is what bugs me. There is this perfectly wonderful festival going on. I only know because the newspapers print photos and stories – after each event. I cannot figure out WHERE the event is taking place, WHAT TIME an event will take place . . . these are perfect opportunities to go and learn something, to experience the culture, and we have no idea – in advance – where to go, how to find these things.
I would love to see this dancing!
So, if it is cultural, music and dancing are allowed? 🙂 Is it always just men dancing, or do women dance, too?
Isn’t this camel racing season? When are the camels raced? Where?
From Al Watan
Kuwaiti folk dancing troupe entertains audience
KUWAIT: As part of the Qurain Cultural Festival”s festivities, the Red Palace group, a folk dancing troupe, performed in Jahra on Sunday.
The performance, which was attended by Deputy Director of the festival Mohammed AlـAsousi, lasted for two hours. The dancers presented a wide spectrum of national and patriotic themes much to the enjoyment of the audience.
Head of the folklore group, Nasser Suleiman AlـFaraj explained that their participation in the event came as a result of the group”s strong belief in reviving an old heritage and folklore. He stressed that the past would always be relevant in the present.
Last updated on Tuesday 30/12/2008
Big Plans, No Action
Hmmm, let’s see . . . plans drawn up, billions allocated for renovation and restoration and blah blah blah and nothing happens. Good ol’ Kuwait? Nope! The tragic quagmire of post-Katrina New Orleans. You can read the entire article at The New York Times.
By ADAM NOSSITER
Published: April 1, 2008
NEW ORLEANS — In March 2007, city officials finally unveiled their plan to redevelop New Orleans and begin to move out of the post-Hurricane Katrina morass. It was billed as the plan to end all plans, with Paris-like streetscape renderings and promises of parks, playgrounds and “cranes on the skyline” within months.
But a year after a celebratory City Hall kickoff, there have been no cranes and no Parisian boulevards. A modest paved walking path behind a derelict old market building is held up as a marquee accomplishment of the yet-to-be-realized plan.
There has been nothing to signal a transformation in the sea of blight and abandonment that still defines much of the city. Weary and bewildered residents, forced to bring back the hard-hit city on their own, have searched the plan’s 17 “target recovery zones” for any sign that the city’s promises should not be consigned to the municipal filing cabinet, along with their predecessors. On their one-year anniversary, the designated “zones” have hardly budged.
“To my knowledge, I don’t think they’ve done anything to any of them,” said Cynthia Nolan, standing near a still-padlocked, derelict library in the once-flooded Broadmoor section, which is in the plan.
“I haven’t seen anything they’ve done to even initiate anything,” said Ms. Nolan, a manager in a state motor vehicles office who has painstakingly raised her house here nearly four feet. “It’s too long. A year later, and they still haven’t initiated anything they decided to do?”
The library still bears the cross-hatch markings made by emergency teams in the days immediately after Hurricane Katrina, to indicate whether any bodies were inside (there were none).
The city official in charge of the recovery effort, Edward J. Blakely, said the public’s frustration was understandable, but he suggested that bureaucratic hurdles had made moving faster impossible. Mr. Blakely said crucial federal money had only recently become available, the process of designing reconstruction projects within the 17 zones was time-consuming, and ethics constraints on free spending were acute, given a local history of corruption.
Cell Phone Terrorist
I have my own personal terrorist. Somehow, somewhere, he got my phone number. If I forget to turn my cell phone off, he calls at around 2 in the morning. If I just hang up, he calls again.
He called me last night, again. After two calls (I wasn’t awake enough the first time to think about turning my phone off) I did turn the phone off and first thing this morning, cup of coffee in hand, I called him back.
He answered, sounding very confused and sleepy, and maybe Bangladeshi.
“I think you have the wrong number,” I said, and hung up.
Fifteen minutes later, he called again.
“Wrong number,” I said, and hung up.
AdventureMan asks me why I don’t put the phone on silent. I guess I could, but I would probably forget to put it back on ring the next day. I could leave the phone in another room at night, and I probably will.
Just Bad English
I am adding a new catagory today called Just Bad English.
No, I am not going to troll your blogs looking for grammar mistakes or misspellings or unusual use of English. I have noticed that I am blogging in English, and that many of the Kuwaiti bloggers are blogging in their second language – that is tough enough without the Language Police lurking in the background, and that’s not my point, nor my interest.
If, however, you are writing for a newspaper, you are held to a higher standard, even if English is not your native tongue.
So tell me, in this article from the Arab Times Kuwait Crime News, how many people were arrested? What were they arrested for?
Meanwhile, a team of securitymen has launched a surprise inspection campaign in Ahmadi resulting in the arrest of two Kuwaitis wanted by law for various criminal charges and 105 jobless expatriates. The arrested individuals were referred to the concerned authorities.
I have another complaint. In the Kuwait Times, we often read of the police “suspecting” a car and pulling it over, or
“suspecting” some individuals and chasing them.
We don’t use “suspecting” that way.
There is suspicious behavior. People are suspected OF something – you can’t just look at a car and “suspect” it, you have to suspect it OF something – erratic driving? What made the police suspicious?
examples of good usage:
Police suspected him of being under the influence of drugs, and pulled him over.
He looked nervous, and police suspected him of being an illegal resident, so they asked to see his papers.
Police received a tip that a brothel was operating in Farwaniya, and based on that suspicion, raided the apartment, breaking down two iron doors in the process which gave the occupants enough time to escape through a hidden hatch in the back of the apartment.
A sharp eyes policeman spotted the car, which appeared to be one stolen a few nights previously. Suspicious that the driver was not the legal owner, they stopped him and interrogated him, and demanded to see his registration and residency papers.
(I made up all the above. Any resemblance to a case you may know is purely coincidental.)
I have also noticed that almost every suspect gives up his drug accomplices, pimp, fellow thieves, smugglers and drug stash after interrogation. I suspect Kuwait police have some extensive experience in encouraging these confessions. Most of these confessions seem to result in other valid arrests. Sometimes, I can believe, these confessions are made by people who are very very afraid. On the other hand, sometimes a confession elicited by fear of a lot of pain might be totally false.
How do you know the difference? What if someone experiences a lot of pain and confesses to a crime they did NOT commit? This means that an innocent man suffers and the one who committed the crime skates. This happens in every country in the world. (That is just a rant, not a language criticism, just a general question in my mind; how do we protect the innocent?)
A Matter of Centimeters
If it had happened today, with the wet, slippery streets, it could have been a totally different story. As it was, it happened yesterday, while the streets were still dry, thanks be to God.
On my way home from grocery shopping, there was this kid who cut in front of me, but he isn’t just driving, he is also on his phone (left hand) and talking with a friend, and gesturing (right hand) and his car isn’t staying in the lane. In fact, he isn’t paying attention to his driving at all, too much going on in his life I guess.
Traffic slows, the kid drifts left and into the left lane and that car, who was passing, honks. The kid gets embarrassed, or shook, I don’t know what, speeds up and cuts in front of the honking car, and cuts back in front of the car in front of him (also in front of me.)
At the same exact time, a bus pulls over from the right into the left lane, and the car in front of the kid slams on it’s breaks, we all slam on our breaks and I am also watching that land rover behind me coming up fast and praying he also slams on his breaks. In the end, there are six cars stopped within two seconds, centimeters apart – and not a single crash.
Thanks be to God. And thanks be to God we are not carrying guns in this country.
Take That, Paxil!
One of the blog sites which has been using my blog content to attract people to its pages is Paxil Online. Here is the comment I left on their page today:
You seem to be lifting the content from several of my blog entries. I do not want to be associated with Paxil, which is an antidepressant associated with violence, suicide and anti-social behaviors in young men.
The young men who shocked the world in Columbine both had taken antidepressants. The most recent mass killing in the US was also by a young man who had been on antidepressants. The use of antidepressants by young men must be closely monitored; the big pharmacological firms don’t want you to know how often these medications are associated with thoughts of suicide, hallucinations, violent and anti-social behavior.
I don’t think they will be lifting this content! 🙂
He’s Take-Away
This is for someone very special – hope it gives you a good laugh today.
YOU are dinner by candlelight; he’s take-away. 😉 OK, OK, he can redeem himself, but it has to be substance, not drama.
“Red” Vinegar
There is a vinegar used often for salad dressings, for marinades, for braising, called wine vinegar. It doesn’t have any alcohol in it, it is just vinegar, but usually in the Middle East you will find it called red vinegar.
So when I found it at the co-op, I grabbed it. It was dimly lit in there, but I could see that it was indeed red.
Can you see how red it is? Hmmmmm. . . . it’s sort of an odd color of red for wine vinegar . . .
In fact, the color is so wrong that I check the labels – and it is indeed, just “red” vinegar:
I’m not even going to use it. It’s not the same. It’s not the real thing. I don’t need red food coloring.
Ayb! Ayb!* Parking Hall of Shame
I am not outraged just because I passed up these two spots, both empty, once I saw the sign, which you will notice is in Arabic, English and just in case you can’t read, also in sign language. NO PARKING!
I am not outraged just because only about 20 feet from these two spots are also parking spots, it just means walking a few more feet in the hot sun, no, not rock star parking, but not like walking a couple hundred meters, either.
I am outraged because these were WOMEN. WOMEN! We know better! We have aging mothers and children, we sometimes NEED special treatment, but these women who parked here were both ample and able. Actually, in the first photo, I was so angry, I had the women as they got out of their cars, but I took a deep breath, and decided that would NOT be a good idea in case I ever want to go here again. They might beat me up! They might arrest me for insulting them!
But I am insulted. This is Ramadan, people are fasting, and it is hot hot hot, even though it is cooling down a little. Women faint, men get electrolyte imbalances, and people need ambulances. THIS is AMBULANCE PARKING.
There is something in each of us that believes in variations of Locard’s Exchange Principal where anytime two people come into contact they exchange some physical matter, no matter how small. On some level, when we say “what goes around comes around” we are applying the same physical properties to the spiritual world, and why not? Are we not taught that we are to treat our neighbors as we would want to be treated?
So my fear for these women who would park in an ambulance spot is that one day they would need an ambulance, and find that the ambulance cannot park because someone is parked in the ambulance spot. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
*Shame! Shame!
OJ Simpson Charged Again
And speaking of idiots, if you’ve committed a double murder and gotten away with it, why would you be so arrogant as to keep having run-ins with the cops? No matter how good the lawyers are that you hire, one day your luck runs out. With all my heart, I am hoping that this is the day for OJ Simpson.
God willing, your criminal arrogance will trip you.
The following is from CNN News, where you can read the entire story.
LAS VEGAS, Nevada (CNN) — Prosecutors on Tuesday filed numerous criminal charges against former NFL star O.J. Simpson and three other men in connection with an alleged armed robbery at a Las Vegas hotel last week.
The 11 charges include two counts of first-degree kidnapping with use of a deadly weapon; two counts of robbery with a deadly weapon; and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon.
Prosecutors say Simpson and his co-defendants — Walter Alexander, Clarence Stewart and Michael McClinton — committed kidnapping because they intended to hold or detain the two alleged victims using a weapon.
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