News from Better Books and Cafe in Kuwait
I found this in my e-mail this morning, and I am happy to share it with you – another book store in Kuwait, and this one sounds like it has wonderful books.
I am only curious about one thing . . . they sent it to me by my real name. At my real-name e-mail address. . . How do they know me (she ponders . . .)?
News from Better Books and Cafe – Kuwait’s only used bookstore and cafe (don’t miss the contest!):
Collectible and Rare Books for Sale: 10 KD – 300 KD to include The Arab of the Desert by H.R. Dickson and 40 Years in Kuwait by Violet Dickson. Also, a book signed by President John F. Kennedy.
Return Policy: Return a book bought from us and get 1/2 purchase price back in store credit for your next purchase. Read, return and save.
Book Buying Policy: We give store credit for most books. Bring them in for evaluation.
Hours/Phone/Location: 10am-8 pm daily. Cell 66637351. Behind Al Rashid Hospital.
Directions:
Take 4th Ring Road to Salmiya
Past Highway 30
Past Fire Station on Right
At light – Amman Street – take right
through next light
See Al Rashid Hospital on Left
At Roundabout take a U-turn
Now see attached map
Look for RED/ORANGE door (photo attached)
TOASTMASTERS MEETINGS –
Desert Pioneers Club 2nd and 4th Tuesday 7.15 – 9.05 pm
Timbre Talkers 1st and 3rd Tuesday 7.15 – 9.05 pm
Capitol Speakers 1st and 3rd Saturday 6.30 – 8.30 pm
Bright Horizons 2nd and 4th Friday 9.30 – 11 am.
GAVEL CLUB MEETINGS Every Friday Night 5.30 – 7.30 pm.
In April, there will be Healing, Meditation, and Reiki classes at Better Books. Email jsshetty99@yahoo.com or call 99315825 for more details.
Better Books is now on FACEBOOK! Click THIS and ‘like’ us for regular updates – new arrivals, events etc.
Better Books sells 1 KD books on http://www.souq.com FREE DELIVERY
Contest from Better Books and Cafe:
Answer the following questions correctly and be among the first five correct email replies to receive 1 KD off your next purchase.
1. Who wrote 40 Years in Kuwait?
a. H.R. Dickson
b. Violet Dickson
2. What organization do ‘The Capitol Speakers, Desert Pioneers, Bright Horizons and Timbre Talkers’ belong?
a. Toastmasters
b. Gavel Club
3. What well known British saying adorns a red poster at Better Books?
a. Keep Calm and Carry On
b. When going through hell, keep going
Just return this email with answers to 1, 2, and 3.
Feel free to forward this email to your friends.
Here is what the entrance looks like:
If I were in Kuwait, I would be on their waiting list for copies of The History of Architecture in Old Kuwait City by Saleh Abdulghani Al-Mutawa, one of the most interesting books I read in Kuwait about how houses used to be built, why, and why modern architects need to pay attention to the lessons of the past.
Kuwait National Seismic Network
I don’t know why I am suddenly getting a lot of hits on an old post I wrote when we had an earthquake in Kuwait, and discovered that Kuwait was vulnerable. Somehow, we thought Kuwait was a low risk earthquake area. I thought about it a lot, on the 10th floor of my tower in Fintas, as I watched how other tall buildings were being constructed. 😦
If you need information on earthquakes and / or tsunamis in Kuwait, here is the best place to start: click the blue type
Alexander McCall Smith and The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party
Just back from a wonderful two day trip to Botswana, visiting my dear and beloved friend Precious Ramotswe, who owns the #1 Ladies Detective Agency. For her, I make an exception to the paperback book rule (buy paperbacks because hard covers can hurt you if you fall asleep and they fall over) and get on the pre-publication order list so that Amazon will send me the book as soon as it comes out.
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party arrived Wednesday night. My husband was expecting a friend, and when the doorbell rang I thought “oh my, he is really early!” but it was the UPS guy, who had left a book-sized package on my doorstep. I had just finished an easy but fun book (The Map Thief by Heather Terrell) and was at odd ends as to what to read next, and this was an easy answer. As my husband drank Arabic coffee and sweet sweet Arabic tea, and ate delicate Middle Eastern treats downstairs, I got to start The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party.
You know the books. They aren’t difficult to read, but while you are reading, you are transported to another world. Precious Ramotswe’s Botswana is not a world without problems, but the solutions to the problems are often found in softer gentler ways, ways that would seem counter-intuitive in our culture, but make total sense when you are raised in Botswana. There is a value placed on peaceable interaction, and maintaining relationships, on forgiveness, and going to extra mile. It’s a sweet world, and a great escape.
As usual, there are several intertwining plot lines with ingenious and unexpected solutions. I suspect that is what keeps me glued to this series – I cannot anticipate the solutions. That, and the gentleness of her outlook, the sweetness of life in Botswana, and the dignity and integrity of McCall’s primary characters.
I don’t know how McCall manages to keep the series fresh, but he avoids the formulaic and I find each book a treat. My favorite part of this book is how Mma Potokwane manages to wangle and invitation to Mma Makutsi’s wedding:
Mma Potokwane noticed the other woman’s uncertainty. “Yes,” she continued. “There’s that problem. And then there’s another problem. Problems come in threes, I find, Mma. So the next one – Problem number two, so to speak – is the cooking of food. You know what I find, Mma, it is this: the people doing the cooking never have enough pots. They say they do, but they do not. And right at the last moment they discover that there are not enough pots, or, more likely, the pots they have are too small. A pot may be big enough to cook your meat and pap at home, just for a family, but do not imagine that it will be big enough to cook for a couple of hundred people. You need big, catering-size pots for that.”
She was now warming to her theme. “And the third problem is the food itself. You may think that you have enough for the feast, and you may be right when it comes to the meat. People usually have enough meat – often rather too much, in fact. But they forget that after their guests have eaten a lot of meat, they need something sweet, and often they have made no arrangements for that. A wedding cake? Yes, but there will only be one small piece of that for each guest – usually not enough. So people find themselves wishing that they had had the foresight to get a supply of ordinary cake for the guests to eat with their tea. And where is this cake? Not there, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe glanced at Mma Makutsi; this was not the way to speak to a nervous bride, she thought. “I’m sure that everything will work out well,” she said reassuringly. “And if there are any problems, they will surely just be small ones – nothing to worry about.”
Mma Potokwane looked doubtful. “I hope so,” she said. “But in my experience, it never works out like that. I think it’s better to be realistic about these things.”
Mma Makutsi picked up her pencil to add something to her list. “You said something about pots, Mma. Where would I be able to get these big, catering-size pots?”
Mma Potokwane examined her fingernails. “Well, we have them at the orphan farm. Each of the house mothers has a very large pot. I’m sure that we could do something . . . ”
Run to your bookstore and buy The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party!
Anniversary and Punch List
It’s been a year since we bought the house. We had to have it entirely rewired before we moved in, and now, we are so glad we took that time and spent that money; the insurance companies have gotten more and more finicky about insuring houses in Florida. One of the newest causes for non-renewal is aluminum wiring, which is what we had taken out and replaced with copper wiring, not cheap, we can tell you.
We are so glad our contractor made that recommendation. For one thing, we sleep well at night, knowing the wiring is new and well-installed. For another thing, it was good to get it done while we had nothing in the house, and the workers had easy access to everywhere they needed to tear out walls, rewire, put back walls, etc.
Do you make lists? I have a list I made in November, and today I finished off the list. It had unfinished tasks going back to the move-in. You prioritize, you know? Even when you have accomplished the most important things, sometimes it is just too overwhelming to tackle the next thing so you take a break . . . and that break can stretch.
The little plumbing things are all done. Every single one. Wooo HOOOO. The final light fixtures are all up. Woooo HOOOOO! The outside watering system is working, woooo HOOO, and we have a guy helping us restart our lawn – wooo HOOOO!
It’s kind of like having a baby. If you think about all the things that need to be done before you do it, you might have second thoughts. It’s all-consuming, and it can be exhausting, emotionally and physically and financially. Just like having a baby!
And, now that I have come to the end of my punch-list, I would celebrate, except that new things are cropping up – the gutters, the drainage, the driveway, the air conditioning . . . nothing that needs to be done, no emergencies, but all which need some attention, some fine tuning, so that we are not dealing with an unexpected disaster.
It’s not like Trust Towers in Kuwait, where we lived in Fintas, or Al Fardan Gardens in Qatar, where we could just call the management if anything went wrong, and someone would show up to fix it. Now, we have to think about what we want, how much we are willing to pay, and we have to make decisions.
We are waiting for the air conditioning man to come. The electricians have told us that the inside and outside units (the expensive pieces) are fine; it is the thermostat that needs replacing, so we have to have the A/C people replace that. Meanwhile, I think I will sit back and enjoy our new light fixture.
Here is what I love. AdventureMan and I are so often on the same track. We wanted traditional – a crystal chandelier – but we didn’t want elaborate, we wanted simple lines, not a lot of embellishment. When we found this, we both knew it at once – welcome home, new light fixture!
And here is one other thing we love. Through our contractor, we met the best people. The plumber is good, and thorough, and honest. The electricians are good, and hard working, and serious. They are all knowledgeable professionals, people we can trust.
The electrician didn’t want to charge us. He said these were leftover tasks from last year. We insisted – a year later, this is on us, not on them. We fiddled around a whole year looking for what we wanted; it’s not fair to not pay after a whole year.
Sometimes we just feel so blessed, having come to this broad and spacious place, Pensacola.
UWF Festival on the Green
Thank you, EnviroGirl! I would go to this festival just because the poster for it is so gorgeous!
Celebrate spring with a visit to the University of West Florida campus during the 11th Annual Festival on the Green on Friday and Saturday, April 1 and 2. Come be a part of Pensacola’s rich history and diverse culture by experiencing a fine arts show, hand-made crafts, music, live performances, a book sale, food and Saturday’s children’s craft festival from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. This year’s festival will include a Run with the Dogs 5K and 1 mile fun run and the grand opening of UWF’s Olympic-size swimming pool. Festival on the Green is a FREE and FUN way to spend the weekend. For more information, view the Festival Schedule.
There is a wonderful schedule, which you can read for yourself by clicking here. It includes food, arts, crafts, a book sale, a senior fest and more!
Jaco’s on the Pensacola Waterfront
“Where do you want to go for lunch?” asks AdventureMan.
Sometimes I tell him “you choose!” but not today. “Jaco’s” I reply.
“Where is Jaco’s?” he asks, and I tell him it is down by the Pensacola pier. I have seen it, I have wondered about it, and every now and then I hear it mentioned in passing by some friend or another. I want to give it a try.
The minute we walk in, we love it.
First, there is this great place to sit outside, and if it is a little cool, they have these heaters, like they use in Kuwait and Qatar in cool weather, so people can still sit outside. Outside is beautiful, because you are right on the Marina, right on the water.
We got there just in time. Following us, the teeming hoards decended, and we were glad we had ordered and been served while it was still relatively quiet. Jaco’s has definitely been discovered.
The food is great. What? You thought we only ate barbecue? No, we love barbecue, and we seek it out mostly because for lo, these many years, we have been seriously barbecue deprived, it’s not so common in the Arabian Gulf countries to find good ol’ American barbecue.
Nor is it common to find food this good, this well prepared, in Pensacola. Everything we ordered, we loved.
We started with the spinach soup:
And then I had Antipasto platter, and AdventureMan had a ‘flatbread pizza’, which we found is a whole lot like an Alsatian ‘flammekeuchen.’ Oh Yummmmmmm.
I forgot to take photos of dessert – I had a berry dessert and AdventureMan had a cobbler, again, both yummmmmm.
We love this place. We plan to go there frequently.
We had been recently to another restaurant I will not be reviewing. It thinks a lot of itself. They start you off with ‘the water service.’ I had the ‘most adventuresome’ meal on the menu, the terrine, and it wasn’t all that great. It was just OK. Others at my table had similar experiences, except for the one who ordered the common hamburger, who said it was a really, really good hamburger. It means well; the first time I ate there I had a delicious risotto, but the dessert was only so-so, not worth the hyped up description. We won’t go back.
We will be going back to Jaco’s. Jaco’s is fun, unpretentious, with great, fresh tasty food, a view to die for, good service and a lot of happy patrons.
AdventureMan’s New Talents
This has been a great month for AdventureMan.
He knew what he wanted. He thought about it, planned it, sought out resources. He now has three photo shelves in his office, where he can display a changing round of photographs. He bought the lumber, tacked on the trim and mounted them on the wall, all by himself.
All these years he has worked so hard – he has never had the time for a fun project like this, and he just sits there and grins that something he was able to do himself can give him so much satisfaction and happiness. Retired, maybe, but still learning new skills, scaling new mountains.
Last night, he baked his first pork tenderloin, and then roasted up some asparagus with an olive vinaigrette sauce. Oh, yummmmm. Still growing, still developing new skills, it is so much fun.
Today, he is going out to explore what kind of kayak he wants to buy. 🙂
You Can’t Take it With You
I awoke this morning from the most horrible dream, and it’s a dream I have had often, but this time, there is no reason. I am packing boxes. I have a deadline. I have a lot to pack, I am feeling very anxious, and I keep getting distracted from my packing. Soon I will have to go, and I haven’t accomplished what I meant to accomplish.
This dream is a very common dream for someone who has moved 31 times in her life, who had packed boxes and suitcases and never missed a deadline. Never once have I left a box with someone else to mail for me. I’ve had these anxiety dreams so many times, but never when I am not facing a move.
So I felt depressed, and I felt anxious this morning, wondering what my dream means. Does it mean that I am thinking about my mortality, and distracted by my attachment to things? Does it mean that I need to be clearing up and organizing my life so I can depart? Or is it just a remnant anxiety, like those leftover dreams about having to take a college exam you haven’t prepared for?
For me, the cure for depression, anxiety and morbidity is action. We hit the water aerobics class this morning and she worked us so hard we both fell asleep this afternoon. I got some tomatoes (not the Black Krim, which I have not yet found) and basil potted, and some weeding done. Depression gone. Anxiety gone. Inklings drift across my consciousness, but I sweep them away like cobwebs.
In Search of the Seminole Pumpkin and the Black Krim
The big box stores are full of plants, some of which will grow in Florida, and some of which are nothing but heartache. They SAY these plants are all zone specific to our area – it’s a big fat lie. Many of the plants they sell will last a short while, but were never meant to grow here.
I planted a lot of seeds last year, and got tomato plants of many varieties, but only one actually produced fruit, a golden drop tomato. I bought plants, and one plant, bought from a local gardener at an annual gardener’s fest, produced copiously – the Black Krim. We tried growing crook neck squash and zuccini, but one day our plants looked healthy and fabulous, and the next, they would be withered and broken, eaten from the inside by some boring insect. Literally boring, not figuratively speaking.
At a meeting this week (which I am so glad I attended) the director of the local Manna Food Pantry program was telling us about the Manna community gardens, and he mentioned a squash that will grow, the Seminole squash or pumpkin.
I’ve spent two days touring nurseries and open markets to see if I can fine one. One nursery had heard of it but said you usually see it later in the season, you plant it like in July so that you will have first fruits in September.
The rules for gardening are so different in Florida. I am learning, but it is all counter intuitive, except that in Kuwait gardening was similar – people yearned for October, when you could set out plantings and hope they would not be destroyed by the heat.
Bougainvillea is an exception. You would think it would grow beautifully in this heat and humidity, but I am told that the cool winters kill it off. It doesn’t really get that cold for that long, but it seems it is cold enough and long enough to kill bougainvillea, which breaks my heart. I love the flamboyant lushness of bougainvillea.
Meanwhile, we will be planting other zone-hardy plants, and we will see what works. If you see a Seminole Pumpkin / Squash plant for sale, let me know, will you?
Tonight the full moon will be closer to the earth than at any other time for many years to come. AdventureMan and I are heading out with a little picnic to watch the moon rise from a tiny park we know. 🙂
You Must Not Be From Around Here
When I got back to Kuwait, I had to regain my driving courage all over again. I remember growing up, when we would go to fairs and carnivals, where I loved to ride the bumper cars. We were all aggressive; we wanted to win. It never occurred to me that there would be countries where people would drive real cars that way. Touch wood, I never had an accident in Kuwait, and I learned how to drive aggressively but somehow stayed safe.
Driving in Pensacola is a piece of cake – most of the time. Suddenly, we have some TRAFFIC. There are cars on the road from all over, never fewer than two or three in every car, usually dressed in beach gear, and full of high spirits. It is Spring Break. People are flocking to the gorgeous white beaches of Pensacola, spilling out of the lively beach restaurants, and even some of the restaurants in downtown Pensacola. College students, families (local schools are also on spring break) and the snow birds are filling our roads, not entirely sure where they are going.
In one of our favorite nearby restaurants, we saw some college age kids come in, and then another group, all greeted familiarly by the owners, and then their tables were joined so they could all sit together – locals, back home from university for Spring Break.
It’s a sweet time of the year. The weather is in the high 70’s, cooling down at night. We have the a/c off, we keep it off as long as we can.
Recent Comments
intlxpatr on Give to Those Who Ask ExpatAlien on What Country am I Living … intlxpatr on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Michelle on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Cathy on No Grown-Ups in Charge Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 