TeaGirl – Final Entry in the Great Kuwait Market Magic Challenge
. . . Just under the wire, Teagirl sends in five spectacular entries from her archives. These are wonderful photos, TeaGirl:
Look at the composition on these photos – TeaGirl has the eye of a painter. I would love to know how you got that poster-effect in the second photo. Every face is beautiful in these shots; I would call the collection The Dignity of Work. Lovely photos, TeaGirl.
Wooo HOOO, ShoSho! The Great Kuwait Market Magic Challenge
Watch out! Ya’ll have some serious competition! ShoSho sent these in, and she blew me out of the water. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wait till you see:
How does she do it? Look at those colors, look how saturated they are!
My friends, I remind you, the deadline in January 31st. You still have this one week to get your entries in.
I am heartened by the number of cameras I see down in the market – whether you enter or not, you are down there, taking photos and enjoying the sights and sounds and smells and tastes of a Kuwait national treasure.
Even the way the vegetables and fish are arranged shows artistry and an eye for beauty and composition. Look how ShoSho captures the colors and textures of the Sadu woven goods and carpets. Wow. Wow. Wow.
Send your photos to Intlxpatr@aol.com. If you send them, I will print them. 🙂
(ShoSho, you set a very high standard to beat!)
Mubarakiyya Food Court
Several people have asked where the Fatayer Man is in Mubarakiyya.
Here is what the area looks like:
Here is a GoogleMap of the area (isn’t this amazing? Isn’t GoogleEarth amazing? I can’t believe such great technology is give to us for free. I wish I were smarter, I wish I could put arrows on the map, and stars, but I can’t figure out how to do that . . . yet!
You will see three lines of white running parallel – those are covers over the walkways in the main part of the souks. There are others, but this is the heart, where they sell vegetables, meat and fish. You walk straight down one of them until you get to the open court – you will see a mosque. In the GoogleEarth photo, you will see a round gold circle – that is the dome.
Just below the mosque, in the photo, you will see restaurant seating areas. The one closest to the entrance to the “food court” is the Malik al Saj, or King of (a particular type of) Bread; it is written on a great big blue Pepsi sign, and there are lots of waiters there eager to seat you. The food is fresh, and very good.
Now look at the map again. You will see more seating lower in the photo, over to the left. It is just around the corner from the other restaurant areas. This second area is where the fatayer man is. Just go down around that corner, peek into the restaurant areas until you see him hard at work, and then sit in the area just in front of where he is working. If you order tea, in this cold weather, they will bring you a pot with a charcoal heater, to savor while your fatayer is baking.
You can find these tea-heaters in the souks, too, but don’t use them inside, because they need charcoal, and using charcoal inside is a really bad (as in fatal) idea.
Words you need to know if you are not an Arabic speaker:
Chai – tea
fatayer – a breakfast bread filled with “jibn” (cheese), Halloumi (salty cheese) zatar (thyme-sumak spice mix) or jibn/halloumi wa zatar (cheese/salty cheese with thyme-sumak mix)
shish taouk – marinated, grilled chicken on a skewer
semak – fish (some of the fish served is amazing)
mixed grill – mixed grill 🙂
Happy eating! Go while the weather is cool and wonderful!
Villa Moda Sale
I was out goofing off with a bunch of girlfriends when one said “Let’s go to the Villa Moda sale and see what they’ve got in today.”
These are my bestest friends. I’m the driver. They are all excited. We go.
It is in a building I have always been curious about, that great big building on Gulf Road in Salwa, south of Bida’a circle, the one that has palm trees growing out of it. I have always figured it was a wedding hall or something, and wondered what it looked like inside, so once I got my friends all OOhing and aahing and arms loaded with things to try on and all the Manolo Blahniks, I snuck off and took some photos of the interior, which is sort of Middle-Eastern done by Disney:
All this was just the basement! Literally, a bargain basement, some items marked 90% off. Women were leaving with armloads of clothes, shoes and accessories.
I would love to get a glimpse of the upstairs. 🙂
Bu Yousef: Fancy a Date? Great Kuwait Market Magic Challenge
Woo HOO, Bu Yousef! This is one great photo! I can almost taste the date, but even better – I love the gleam on the vendor’s face! More, please, Bu Yousef!
DaisyMae: Number 1 Entry in the Great Kuwait Market Magic Challenge
DaisyMae is our first challenger, with recent photos from the souks. Woo Hoooo on you, DaisyMae! Thank you for showing us the markets through your eyes.
WHO is next? Is it YOU? 🙂
The Great Kuwait Market Magic Photo Challenge
OK my friends. You know how this works. There is no great prize, except the thrill of the hunt, and the sharing with those who share your passion. And before we go on, I want to give credit to Yousef, at Some Contrast who took some truly fabulous photos at the Souk Mubarakiyya last week and wrote up a delightful article about it.
Today, the Great Kuwait Market Magic Photo Challenge kicks off. I would limit it to Mubarakiyya, but if I did, I might miss the magic YOU see in the Sharq market, or one of the fish markets or . . .
The weather is gorgeous. The lighting is fabulous. Go forth and capture the magic of the market. Send your photo to me and I will publish it here. Or you can publish it on your blog and tell us in the comments section of this blog entry, if that is your preference. The deadline will be January 31st, and I will post a poll so we can all vote on our favorites.
WOO HOO on you, Kuwait photographers.
I have a thing about bread, so here is what inspired this post:
This man, in the Mubarakiyya food court near the mosque, makes fatayer that I think are to die for. You can sit outside in the warmth of the Kuwaiti morning, and sip a little tea with mint and one of these fatayer (we like halloumi and zatar) will more than take care of your morning treat. 🙂
For about one month of the year, being the man who puts the bread in the oven – it’s done by hand, for those of you who don’t live here – must be a joy. The rest of the year, I can’t begin to imagine . . .
This is a more modern oven, but it still looks like something out of Hansel and Gretel, doesn’t it? (Hansel and Gretel is one of many particularly gruesome “fairytales” children in the West are raised with. There are many horrifying tales – read the Grimm brothers. Wicked parents, wicked stepparents, a horror filled life for children.)
Back to the topic – go forth, Kuwait, and show us what you see in the markets!
The Apple Store Christmas
Just before leaving, we make one last stop at the Apple store; AdventureMan needs a tune-up. All the Apple employees have on shirts with Christmas related sayings, very clever, wish I could remember a few to share with you.
In an instant, AdventureMan has an appointment, and with another instant, the glitch is fixed and we are on our way.
Love their display windows:
The other stores at the mall may look a little ghost-town-y, but not the Apple store (although this is NOT busy for the Apple store):
The air is crisp, to say the least, and no relief is in sight. Guess it’s time to get on back to Kuwait, where the temperatures are above zero F. 🙂
One Step Down
It was a real eye opener, being back in the USA. AdventureMan had an interesting observation, something he learned a long time ago in a sociology class. It has to do with dining in restaurants. When a guy eats his lunch out every day, he goes to one kind of place, and then when he takes his family out for a meal on Sunday, he goes one step up, takes them to a better restaurant than he would go to every day.
As we travelled in different parts of the United States, what we saw was just the opposite – one step down. People we know still have jobs, still make their house payments, still have the same income. The PERCEPTIONS however, are very different. People are nervous, maybe even a little worried about their jobs. They are not FEELING as prosperous as they felt last year, or the year before. They are spending less. They are going to eat out, but will eat out at that one-step-down restaurant, and not the higher priced restaurant.
As we Christmas shopped, we saw HUGE differences. The Macy’s and the Dillard’s and the big delightfully fancy stores are like ghost towns, and for good reason. They have drastically cut back on their inventory. Where you had to fight your way through the crowded racks a couple years ago, there is a lot of space this year. I didn’t see anything very exciting in terms of fashions or shoes. The Targets and the Fred Meyers (a Pacific Northwest chain) were packed with shoppers, prices were cut, and products were flying off the shelves.
A newspaper article said that what people are buying are . . . appliances. Things people really use – toasters, mixers, etc. The big difference is, they are insisting on appliances in COLOR – carmine reds, blueberrys, greens – chartreuse seems to be big this year, for Christmas, for clothing, and for decorations. Even for Christmas cookies. Chartreuse and pink are this year’s Christmasy red and green. Total hoot. But when people start drawing back from spending, they buy practical things – in fanciful colors. I remember reading once that when times get tough, lipstick sales soar. Women will spend on something small to make themselves feel good, and lipstick does the trick.
The trip was a real eye opener. AdventureMan has sticker shock. I just laugh. I think Kuwait is expensive! AdventureMan doesn’t buy groceries. I remember one time we were together at the Co-op and he couldn’t believe what we were spending on milk – but what are you going to do? Not buy milk? I have always used powdered milk for baking, but with the Chinese thing, I even worry about powdered milk.
Are you going through sticker shock? Are your spending habits changing? Do you eat in restaurants, or are you eating more at home?
Trinity Collection in Pensacola
We were talking about low sales-resistance . . . this is not about being in Kuwait. This is about my lack of resistance to buying beautiful jewelry!
As we were driving around in Pensacola, I spotted The Trinity Collection. There is a lot of very mediocre jewelry out there, but I had seen the Trinity ads earlier, and they had caught my eye.
“AdventureMan! Pull over! Pull over! It’s the Trinity Collection!” and I’m fighting him for the wheel so he can turn right and park and I can run into the store.
VERY smart store. So many beautiful things, AND a seating area for guys like AdventureMan.
I can’t blame Kuwait. I have found beautiful pieces in Kuwait. (Hint to any blogging friends who want to honor me with jewelry – look in your grandmother’s old collections! I love the old stuff, and the original Gulf pearls, and those tiny tiny pearls and gem pieces that the Qatteris are buying up for their museums.)
(Just kidding, by the way. DO NOT bring me jewelry! I can’t accept it!)
Anyway, I also found wonderful pieces in this beautiful shop, full of gems, and employing several original jewelers, who specialize particularly in religious jewelry, but also other beautiful pieces.
If you get to Pensacola – this shop has a lot of variety, in goods and in prices, and many exquisitely crafted jewelry pieces. This shop is worth a special trip.
Recent Comments
intlxpatr on Shampoo Ginger tigerbutterya0c5ff1d… on Shampoo Ginger intlxpatr on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… John on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… intlxpatr on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 