30% Chance of Rain
Yesterday, Weather Underground for Kuwait forecasted a 30% chance of rain. I told my husband this morning that what it meant was that it rained about 30% of the day, not that there was less that a 50 – 50 chance of precipitation. It rained just enough to make the roads DEADLY. . . Cars skidding on built up oil all over the place. Kind of like the first snow of the winter in Seattle.
Today, Weather Underground says there is a 60% chance of rain, but so far I don’t see any. Uh oh, as soon as I wrote that, I saw a huge flash of lightening and heard an up close and personal rumble of thunder. Need to send this in and unplug! Is there an electrical souk in Kuwait where you can buy transformers and heavy duty surge protectors?
One of the reasons I love living here, however, is the colors. This is the color of a morning with a projection of 60% rain. Just look at those colors!
Record foreclosures hit mortgage lenders
This story is from USA Today and is related to an earlier blog entry on spiraling mortgage foreclosures. The reason it caught my eye is that no-where in the article does it mention that the top two states where foreclosures occurred are Mississippi and Louisiana, the two states most recently hit – and hit hard – by hurricanes. And the reason people are failing to continue mortgage payments are that in some cases, the houses no longer exist and either they had no insurance, or the insurance company found a way NOT to pay up.
This is a big story – the record foreclosures – and evidence how in every society, when borrowing money becomes too easy, people get hurt.
It is an equally big story when the insurance companies don’t pay up. I have been told by the company insuring my Florida house that they will probably not continue insuring me. It is hard to find a company who will insure your house against hurricane damage in Florida.
By Noelle Knox, USA TODAY
The reason many mortgage lenders are in trouble became alarmingly clear Tuesday. The Mortgage Bankers Association said more than 2.1 million Americans with a home loan missed at least one payment at the end of last year — and the rate of new foreclosures hit a record.
The problem is most severe for borrowers with scuffed credit and adjustable-rate mortgages. More than 14% of them were behind on their payments. And the worst is yet to come, the MBA said. At least $300 billion in subprime ARMs will reset this year to higher interest rates. Those borrowers face higher payments and a harder time refinancing.
Blindsided by the number of loans that have already gone bad, more than two dozen lenders have gone out of business or been purchased. New Century Financial, the nation’s second-largest subprime lender, has quit making loans and is edging toward bankruptcy protection.
“There’s been a stunning erosion of mortgage quality,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “It’s primarily in the subprime market, but the entire market is weakening … and that adds to problems in the housing market, and by extension the broader economy.” Retailers are already feeling the effect, he said, because homeowners tend to spend less when they fear their homes are worth less.
To stem their losses, lenders are ending 100% financing plans, requiring better credit scores and demanding more proof of a borrower’s income. The stricter rules are squeezing first-time buyers, as well as homeowners who want to refinance.
To read the rest of the story, and to see a state-by-state list of mortgage foreclosures, Click USA Today, here.
FEMA Calls Rebuilding Complete As New Orleans Restored To Former Squalor
This is from The Onion. Remember friends, The Onion is SATIRE. Please note the last line, and weep.
NEW ORLEANS—After an unprecedented 18-month cleanup and repair effort supervised by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and several state and local government bureaus, Undersecretary for Federal Emergency Management R. David Paulison announced Monday that the city of New Orleans has been successfully returned to its pre–Hurricane Katrina state of decay and deterioration.
“Our job here is done,” said Paulison, who was joined by Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco in a ceremony along the banks of the Industrial Canal. “Our beloved Big Easy has its soul back. The downtown shops are open and in full violation of code, the nightlife is alive with the sound of violence, and the streets are once again safe for poverty and vice.”
The $41 billion restoration of the city’s hallmark abandoned buildings, shacks, vacant lots, and standing trash piles was among the most complex and painstaking ever undertaken. Starting just four weeks after the August 2005 hurricane, workers recovered millions of pieces of flood-damaged debris, cleaned them of sediments and chemicals, and then replaced them where they were originally found.
The work, however, did not proceed without controversy, often grinding to a halt as preservationists quarreled in court over which sections of rot, toxic chemical compounds, PCBs, bacteria, and pathogens predated Katrina.
Despite the bitter disputes, Blanco declared the restoration project an “unqualified success,” and invited the estimated 200,000 New Orleanians who still reside outside the city to return.
“We’ve done our best to ensure the city is as well off as it was before Katrina hit,” Blanco said. “It’s all back—the same abandoned cars, the broken bottles, the spent shotgun shells, the rat colonies, even the used diapers on the front lawns. People of New Orleans, welcome home.”
The most impressive progress was made in the Ninth Ward, the lowest-lying and most devastated section of New Orleans. Due to severe water and mold damage, the difficult decision was made to gut or tear down a majority of the neighborhood’s houses, then laboriously reconstruct them to their previous dilapidated condition seven feet below sea level. Many returning residents, including custodial worker and father of four Stanley Gibson, 41, expressed shock at the success of the rebuilding efforts, saying he “never dreamed in a million years [he] would be going back to that place.”
“Before the storm, I lived paycheck to paycheck in a run-down two-bedroom house,” Gibson said. “I never thought I’d see that house again, but here it is—same sagging roof, compromised foundation and everything. Someone even found my car and put a quarter of a tank of gas back in it.”
As part of the citywide restoration efforts, downtown medical facilities that flooded during Katrina, such as Charity Hospital, were drained, repaired, and meticulously under-funded based on past financial records and other historical evidence. Hospital officials said the facility could be ill-prepared for overcrowding by uninsured and indigent patients as early as next week.
Public schools were fully reopened last Monday after being stocked with outdated textbooks and refurbished chairs for every student to share.
Even New Orleans’ world-famous French Quarter was given a much-needed boost, with the flood-related detritus covering Bourbon Street cleared and replaced with discarded plastic beads, vomit, and used condoms.
“It’s like nothing has changed,” said Covenant House director Michelle Beauchamp, whose organization received FEMA funds to rebuild and reopen a homeless shelter. “The workers rebuilt all 25 rooms exactly as small as they used to be, and soon we’ll be ready to serve New Orleans’ 10,000 homeless men, women, and children again.”
Residents noted that the same attention to detail could be seen in the levees and floodwalls, which were restored by the Army Corps of Engineers to their “classic” pre-Katrina condition.
Despite FEMA’s official declaration of completion, not all facets of New Orleans squalor have been restored. City officials say the return of New Orleans citizens is essential to the survival of the city’s crumbling economy and renowned 25 percent poverty rate. And in a sharp and historically inaccurate contrast, federal aid continues to flow into the city, preservationists say.
After several years of bureaucratic restructuring and appointee shuffling, FEMA assured New Orleans residents that it, too, has regained its former level of quality.
“If another hurricane hits New Orleans, we will be just as prepared to help as we were before Katrina,” Paulison said.
Report: Humans ‘very likely’ cause global warming
This morning, CNN reports that humans are very likely the cause of global warming. No kidding.
This week, an unexpected storm killed 19 in Central Florida. Global warming is said to be creating stronger, more dangerous hurricanes in the Atlantic. This has had a personal impact on us – we bought a house in Florida this year, only to receive word shortly after buying it that hurricane insurance would be almost impossible to get in the future.
We are planning to make the house as hurricane-survivable as we can, but very little can survive the direct impact of a max force hurricane. It is a terrifying event, and makes a believer out of the non-spiritually oriented.
We really have no idea how far along the process of global warming is, or if it will accellerate beyond our ability to undo the damage we may have done. Or . . . is this just another in a long series of cycles of weather change?
Story Highlights
• Scientists release a 21-page report strongly linking humans to climate change
• Report scientist: Evidence of warming on the planet is unequivocal
• Scientists predict global temperature increases of 3.2-7.1 degrees F by 2100
• Sea levels could rise between 7 and 23 inches by the end of the century
(CNN) — Global warming is here and humans are “very likely” the blame, an international group of scientists meeting in Paris, France, announced Friday.
“The evidence for warming having happened on the planet is unequivocal,” said U.S. government scientist Susan Solomon, who also is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“We can see that in rising air temperatures, we can see it in changes in snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere. We can see it in global sea rise. It’s unequivocal,” she said. (Watch scientist Susan Solomon deliver the grim news on global warming )
In a 21-page report for policymakers, the group of climate experts unanimously linked — with “90 percent” certainty — the increase of average global temperatures since the mid-20th century to the increase of manmade greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Fossil fuels like methane and carbon dioxide trap heat near the surface, a process known as the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is a natural phenomenon, but human activities, like the burning of fossil fuels, can pour enormous volumes of these gases into the atmosphere, raising the planet’s temperature and destabilizing the climate. (Watch what happens to our planet when manmade emissions get trapped in the atmosphere )
The report found it was “likely” — “more likely than not” in some cases — that manmade greenhouse gases have contributed to hotter days and nights, and more of them, more killer heat waves than before, heavier rainfall more often, major droughts in more regions, stronger and more frequent cyclones and “increased incidence” of extremely high sea levels.
The report noted that 11 of the last 12 years have ranked among the 12 warmest years on record with the oceans absorbing more than 80 percent of the heat added to the climate system. Add in the melt-off of glaciers and sea ice and sea levels are rising.
The IPCC predicted global temperature increases of 1.8 to 4 degrees Celsius (3.2 to 7.1 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 and sea levels to rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 and 58 centimeters) by the end of the century. (Watch how rising sea levels could affect San Francisco )
“An additional 3.9-7.8 inches (10-20 centimeters) are possible if recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues,” the report stated.
The group will meet again in April to discuss the socioeconomic impact of climate change.
Defining ‘likely’
The IPCC was established in 1988 to study climate change information. The group doesn’t do independent research but instead reviews scientific literature from around the world.
The United Nations-sanctioned group was formed by the World Meteorological Organization and U.N. Environment Program.
The group’s goal is to produce “a balanced reporting of existing viewpoints” on the causes of global warming, according to its Web site.
The panel’s reports are influential references for policymakers, scientists and other climate change experts.
Friday’s release is the beginning of the panel’s first major report since 2001. The rest of the report is due out later this year.
The 2001 report found that the 1990s were “very likely” the warmest decade on record. It also said that most of the observed warming over the last 50 years was “likely due to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activities.”
The authors defined “likely” as between 66 percent to 90 percent probable, and “very likely” as a 90 to 99 percent.
Renewed concern in U.S.
Friday’s report comes amid renewed debate in the United States. (Full story)
In his State of the Union address, President Bush called for the use of more environmentally friendly technologies to “confront the serious challenge of global climate change.”
It was the first time he has discussed the issue in a State of the Union address.
The White House has said Bush’s proposals would stop the growth of carbon dioxide emissions from cars, light trucks and sport utility vehicles within 10 years.
Leaders in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and Senate held hearings on climate change this week. (Full story)
CNN’s Peggy Mihelich and David E. Williams contributed to this report.
Please Be Careful Out There
In Seattle, rain is common. Just a little rain, like today, is no big deal. In Seattle, we don’t have air full of sand, and then just a little rain, so it’s a whole new ball game.
I didn’t think it would be dangerous out driving today. I had two meetings; I had no idea I would see so many accidents. This one scares me. I hope the people got to the hospital OK.
Please, friends, be careful out there today. Get home safely.
Pacific Northwest Day
Brrrr. .. .. Weather Underground: Kuwait tells me it’s 54 F / 12 C out this morning, but from my window all I can see is a lot of fog, whitecaps on the waves, and a steady cool breeze blowing. Am in in Kuwait? Or am I back in Seattle? This is a very Seattle kind of day.
A friend and I went to lunch yesterday, sat outside in a beautiful garden area eating mezze and grill . . . the weather was perfect. Warm, sunny, without being hot. It’s such joy to be able to eat outside, in the fresh air. Later in the day, I needed a jacket, and this morning . . . well, maybe the sun will burn some of the fog off and we will have another gorgeous day.
I turned the air conditioning off back in November – I want to see how long we can go before we have to turn it back on again. I want a beautiful LOOOOONNNGGG Spring.
High expected of 68 F / 20 C – yep, that’s spring, sometimes even summer, in Seattle.
Mom called last night – she says Seattle is very very cold this winter, lots of snow, and very very cold. She has gone back to her exercise classes now, to get stronger for some trips she has coming up. She tries to keep busy. She misses my dad.
Weather Underground
We all have routines that get us through the things we do every day, things we do almost without thinking. You get up, you take care of your morning ablutions, fix some coffee, and then, in my case, you check e-mails, read the day’s selections from the lectionary, check the blog, and check the weather.
Part of my routine is Weather Underground. I like it so much, I added it to my blogroll, over there to the right. When I click, I get Kuwait Weather, first thing, but over on the left are all my favorite cities where I have family and friends – Seattle, Pensacola, Doha (Qatar), Mfuwe (Zambia), Colorado Springs, Zanzibar . . . all at a glance. With one click, I can see what the weather will be there, too.
And for any other city I’m travelling to, I can just type it in and it will take me there.
When my son was getting married, I could check the weather for many years back to see how hot it generally gets on that day in that city – it gave me a range for which to pack.
I’ve tried a lot of other weather sites, but this one has the things I need. It’s part of my daily routine. You can find it here.
12 Rules to Help you Enjoy Life in Kuwait
By Meshary Alruwaih, Staff writer, Kuwait Times with his permission.
(Actually, even better than with his permission – because it never showed up on the online KT, I had to ask him to send it. And because my computer doesn’t read the file he sent, my husband had to run it off, and I am having to enter the whole thing the old fashioned way, by typing. So any garble, any mis-spellings or wierd grammar is mine, not his.
If you haven’t seen this article, I would love to hear your impressions. I found it very matter of fact. What do you think? Is his experience your experience?)
Life in Kuwait can sometimes be pretty boring. No matter how biased one can be in favor of one’s homeland, it’s always beneficial to acknowledge the limitations and deficiencies of it. Such acknowledgements serve as a gate to self-criticism, which is a necesary prerequisite to making recommandations and offering solutions as to how to improve the experience of living here.
This article provides basic recommendations on how to enjoy your life in Kuwait. The lack of development in all aspects of life in Kuwait has meant that people here – Kuwaitis and expats alike – have a harder time and less options for enjoying life than their fellows in other neighboring countries like Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. I mean, as Kuwaitis, we are stuck here, but for the expats, why would you come here if you could be in Dubai or Doha instead?
Returning from the US, I’d been hoping for a myore dynamic government attitude towards turning Kuwait into an open society, business hub, financial centre, and all the other meanlingless promises we have been hearing for so long. Going by their words, Kuwait is supposedly always on the brink of turning into a vibrant, go-ahead society, where different types and varieties of activities and exciting new venues are always just about to evolve.
Having pretty much given up on all those governmental promises, I’ve formulated some suggestions and rules of my own for helping to enjoy life in static Kuwait, apparently frozen in it’s very own time warp, so here they are:
1. Follow Politics. Do not miss political intercourse in Kuwait. All political actors here have their special sense of humour, whether comical lies and promises by ministers, or stupid proposals by MPs. It gets even funnier when people take to the street to protest, you get women dancing, swearing at ministers, and all kinds of amusing slogans.
2. Don’t get involved in the Kuwait stock market. Do not let your life become dependent on colors, today green, tomorrow red. Rational economic and political order is missing in this country, which is reflected in the market. But let’s face it, it’s always fun to watch how people react to instantly making or losing moeny when it’s not your money.
3. You NEED (Wasta) connections. You cannot enjoy your life in Kuwait without having Wasta. You will certainly need to renew your driving license, get a job for your visiting younger brother, extend his visit if he cannot find a job; these simple procedures will turn into pure suffering if you do not know someone who can help facilitate the process.
4. When June comes, get out as fast as possible. It’s oven-hot, and there is neither water nor electricity, do not come back before September.
5. If you do follow rule number four, do NOT use Kuwait Airways. Truly a horrible experience!! (My note – see previous article on Kuwait Airways here.)
6. Friendships? If you are a Kuwaiti, make friends with expats; if you are an expat, make friends with Kuwaitis. The interaction and exchange of views and insights are fun.
7. Visit a diwaniya. At least once a week even if you don’t like it, it’s important. It’s where you achieve Rule #3.
8. Do not watch Kuwaiti football. Do not watch Kuwaiti football league as it is extremely weak and very boring. And definitely do not support Kuwait National team, as you will end up suffering all the ills in the world. The Gulf Football Championship is coming up soon; don’t say I didn’t warn you.
9. Join one of those health clubs or spas. Well, if you can afford them, of course. They are nice and you will enjoy your time there, but they are ridiculously expensive.
10. Movies: forget about cinema in Kuwait. The Kuwait Cinema Company is months behind its counterparts in the west and even those in the region. Get smuggled DVDs from one of those places in Hawally or Salmiya. Sorry, IPR guys!
11. Starbucks: Make peace with Starbucks, you have to like it, they are everywhere, and chances are you will end up in one of them, so accept the fact that Starbucks is a part of your life.
12. Read Kuwait Times – every day! It will keep you up to date on local politics, provide funny stories about not-so-smart criminals, give you material to discuss with your Kuwaiti and non-Kuwaiti friends, and it can easily be found in any Starbucks. Oh, and you get to read my column twice a week!
(Meshary@kuwaittimes.net)
My comment: There’s a fine line between tongue-in-cheek and telling it like it is, and I think the column writers at the Kuwait Times are very brave in their reporting life here as they see it. I disagree with number 4 – when everyone else leaves, it is so much easier to drive here! I haven’t had any major electrical outages. And honestly, there is some major infrastructure work – and planning – that needs to take place here yesterday.
Having said that, I usually do leave for a while in August! It can get HUMID!
Search Engine Terms Challenge
Little Diamond, now en route to her home in Beirut, posted yesterday on blog search terms and her mystification at how some people end up on her blogsite when what they are really looking for is something else entirely.
I have found the same experience. I think the search engines must scan words, and no matter that they are in posts months apart, maybe even years apart, if you have written enough, your post may qualify. For example, if in November, you wrote a diatribe against porn, and in January you wrote an entry about stars you can see in the evening sky, then someone looking for “porn” and “star” is going to end up on your blog (equally mystified!)
So here is my challenge. Take a look at your statistics and tell us what terms people used to find your blog today (or yesterday.) To start off, I will share mine:
+wordpress +snap
choosing a wife
what are the political issues in france
do i have to refrigerate leftover peca
“how do feeds work”
here there and everywhere
my+way+hemingway+tshirt
wherever you go
sugar cookies evaporated milk cream of t
good pirates
Spicy Foods Kill Cancer
Sadu House
divinity candy
rosette irons history
locard\’s exchange principal and its imp
tunisia love marriage
Larry Steward – secret santa
milton on freedom of thought
Zoe Oldenburg Ansiau et
Zambia expats life
african lion poop
Of course, my hands down favorite is the last one! Check your search engine terms, and post here in comments or on your blog. It’s a dull rainy day – let’s have some fun!
Three Turtles
My husband called; he leaves for work early. He saw THREE cars “turned turtle”* on his way to work. One was a huge water tanker that had been hit by an SUV; he said he can’t imagine anyone getting out alive.
The roads are wet and slick. Not matter that Kuwait gets ample rain in the rainy season, there are months and months worth of accumulated grease and oil on the highways, and people who don’t take the weather conditions into account.
Be careful out there. Please, please, slow down. Buckle up. And please, tell your children that the car doesn’t go unless they are buckled up, too. Please. Keep them safe. We know you are being careful. . . but there are others who are not.
*”Turned turtle” is what they say when a car ends up upside down.
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