Two Months and Still Learning
This is another anniversary of sorts – around now I have been blogging for two months.
I’ve been reading the Kuwait blogs for more than a year. I knew I was moving here and I wanted to know what it is like. I could get lots of hard information on web sites, but I wanted to know the “feel” of the place, and once I started reading blogs, I was hooked.
Somewhere along the way, I was tempted beyond my ability to resist to comment – I think it was when 1001 Kuwaiti Nights then ZinZin, asked if anyone out there was reading her blog. . . and her blog remains one of my favorites to this day. Then Jewaira wrote a story about vampires, and I found myself making an analogy to those of us who float around watching, but not participating – it’s kind of like being un-dead. The last straw was when – I think it was Erzulie called those who read without commenting, without blogging “floaters”, which has a very disgusting connotation. . . and all those factors came together, and I figured that yes, it is a big risk, but I don’t want to be a “floater.”
Went with WordPress, and man, am I glad I did. There are some NASTY people out there! They would fill my comment section with totally disgusting stuff were it not for the Spam catcher!
It took me a while to figure out the mechanics, but it’s been fun, it’s been a growth experience, and it’s been therapeutic when going through some tough times. Only after I had been blogging for a month did I tell anyone I was blogging – the first one I told was my husband, then my son and then my niece. Slowly, slowly, I have been telling my friends. Pretty much they are all shocked, and then delighted. As you know, my niece Little Diamond also now has her own blog.
I have my own reasons for blogging – and one of them is to get down in writing some of what I experience. One thing I learn every day is that when change comes, it can come in a flash, and everything changes. You learn to survive. You learn to celebrate RIGHT NOW what can be celebrated, and you learn to celebrate the small things.
Having expressed those lofty ideals, at first I got hooked on statistics – was anyone reading? Here is what I learned – that the posts I spend the most time and energy on often get very little immediate response, but get good response over time – the trip reports, the book reviews, some of my cross-cultural stories. What gets HUGE readership on a one time basis is pure fluff – my all time high came when I published the e-mail forward about cell phone usage and cancer. Second was The Mermaid of Mangaf. Third was when someone ranted at me. Go figure! I’ve learned my lessons. I have about 100 faithful readers a day, and I am content with that. No! No! They are NOT all my relatives! 🙂
In the meanwhile, I want to thank you for including me in the Kuwait blogging family. I read your posts; you brighten my days and you always give me new things to think about. Right now I am following The Ultimate with her translation of Killa Matgoog’s analysis of the current political scene in Kuwait. It’s information and analysis I don’t find so clearly written in the press. I’m enjoying blogging, and you are giving me wonderful help and feedback. Again, thanks for making me feel at home.
High 21/69
What a glorious day! I was out on the balcony and it was COOL! The visibility is relatively good, whatever that stuff is that hangs over the Gulf is has retreated and there are real clouds in the sky. . . what a great day!
I checked Weather Underground, and the high temperature expected for today is only 21C/69F – thats like a huge drop from earlier this week. Does anyone know what causes a major shift in the weather like that here? I see the temps will go back up to the mid-80’s within a few days, but what bliss! This “crisp” air! Wooo Hoooooo!
We Never Saw it Coming
Tomorrow, November 9th, is a very special anniversary for me. The night of November 9, 1989, I was in a car with three other women, escaping from our cold-warrior duties. We were on our way to the border towns of West Germany for some shopping in the crystal factories. We really needed the get-away.
We had a drive of several hours, and on the way, we noticed the strangest thing – an unusually heavy numbers of cars coming FROM the border, and most of these cars were POS – old, slow, rusty, spewing black smoke, made of fiberglass – but full of people. The West Germans only drive new, shiny cars – where were these cars coming from?
We turned on the radio, and learned that the Czechoslovakian border had opened. When we got to our little gasthaus, we sat in the common room and watched, spellbound, as young people danced on the Berlin Wall. It was the most amazing, stunning sight you could imagine.
There were signs this was coming. No one seriously believed it really would happen, and happen so fast and so dramatically. The American government was pouring millions of dollars into Germany to renovate housing and offices and services, assuming the status quo would endure for the forseeable future, and American forces would be there a long long time. A mere fifteen years later, American presence had decreased dramatically, entire bases have closed, those renovated offices and houses turned back over to the Germans. Whoda thunk?
The reunification of Germany has been painful, continues painful. The integration of the former Soviet states into the European community moves at a snail’s pace, but it moves. It’s a new Europe, one currency, goods traded freely, young people from all countries free to move and work in other European countries. It’s an amazing new world.
The frustrations of getting the political system to work are mitigated by the occasional tipping point when the world changes in a heartbeat, and the people dance on the Wall.
Thanks to Wikipedia for sharing appropriate photos!
The Hem of His Garment
With one of my good friends, our conversations almost always veer to spiritual issues. If I am ever about to do something that a little voice tells me I might not want to do, I call her. I say “this is the situation, this is how I am thinking about handling it, but I want to check with you . . .”
She will always tell me the truth. She will say “hmmmn . . . why don’t you sit on that idea a couple days first?” or “sounds like the right thing to do, even if you think you might be doing it for the wrong motives” or . . . I may not want to hear it, but it will be the best truth she can give me.
She never repeats my confidences to others, and I trust that right or wrong, she will give me the best advice anyone would give. Friendships like that are priceless.
So this weekend, we were discussing how we can ALL be saved, i.e. how we will make it to heaven/paradise/jenna. Our book says we’re the only ones who are going to be there, and that unless you believe exactly the way we believe, sorry, you’re out. Most holy books say the same thing – this is the true path, and if you follow it, you’re in. If not, you’re out. It seems like a great cosmic gamble, with your soul and life everlasting at stake.
My friend told me about another friend of hers, a Native American woman, a wise woman, a very spiritual woman. One of her friends died from a virulent, fast-spreading cancer, and the Native American woman dreamed of her. In her dream, her friend appeared, radiant and shining and bright. The woman asked her friend “what is it like on the other side?” and her friend said “It’s SO BIG! We had NO idea! We were barely touching the hem of His garment!”
It’s just a dream. Just a vision. . . and yet, it sticks with me, I find myself taking great comfort in this story. I want us all to be there.
Lisey’s Story: Stephen King
Mostly I wait for books to come out in paperback, so that they don’t hurt me if I fall asleep while I am reading (!), but for a few authors I will make an exception. One, James Lee Burke, I told you about in a previous post He Had Me From Hello.
My most recent exception was for Lisey’s Story, the newest novel out by Stephen King. It’s a departure from Stephen King as we know him, and yet, there are resonances and echoes of earlier writings. Stephen King is brilliant at capturing the terrors of childhood, and the diaphanously thin membrane separating reality as we know it (not that we agree on what “reality” is! 😉 ) from the “otherworld”. In the Dark Tower series, the otherworld was where all the bad things were created and passed over to this side through leaks, places where the membrane holding worlds apart thinned and even disappeared.
This book is covered with flowers, bright pink and fushia and purple peonies, lupin and daisies, shading into blacks, whites and greys at the top, so that the holleyhocks are only faintly blue. It’s a very odd cover for a Stephen King book, but this is a very odd book. Early reviews say it is about as autobiographical a book by Stephen King as he has ever written, and I believe it. Stephen King writes what he knows – from Misery, written shortly after his nearly fatal accident as he was walking along a road near his Vermont farm and was hit by a van and nearly crippled for life, to this one, Lisey’s Story, in which we spend a lot of time in a dead author’s writing loft in an old barn in – you guessed it – Vermont.
As Lisey’s Story opens, we learn that she is the widow of an author (an author a whole lot like Stephen King) who has made a fortune writing fantasy/horror books. As the book unfolds, we walk with her through her devastating grief, bitter anger, and the endless exhaustion of trying to clear out her husband’s study. Every time she tackles the task, she is distracted by vivid and disturbing memories, memories she has tried to keep deeply buried because of their troubling implications.
King is writing on multiple levels. On one level, it is about a widow coming to terms with the death of her life partner. On another level, it is about a woman who doesn’t know her own strength and who comes to understand more about herself and about her relation to the world, and to her family of sisters. We’re there. We walk with her. If you’ve ever had sisters, you will particularly appreciate King’s treatment of how sisters relate to one another, and how that relationship both stays strong and loyal, and also evolves as sisters become adult people facing adult crises.
Throughout the book are whispers reminding us that the dead are all around us, leaving hints and reminders that their reality, too, is only a thin membrane away from our own.
And, on the most obvious level, King is writing about a boy and the source of his nightmares, the same source of his healing powers, the real life nightmares that haunt us all, and how with bravery and goodness and tools we don’t even know we have, we can triumph over evil.
Stephen King taps into the child within us all. He knows the terrors of our childhood, and he knows that evil gains power from the ability to terrify. Stephen King believes good can triumph over evil – when good people band together, evil can be beaten. In every book, there is a moment when one has to make a choice to stand against evil or be crushed by evil, and while his heroes and heroines are flawed and human – they are good, and they choose to stand against the evil. They may come out scarred and bloody, but they also come out triumphant.
It may not be great literature, but it’s a fine read. Stephen King’s books also are great vocabulary builders. He uses unusual and precise words to paint his word pictures.
Weekend Rumors: Kuwait
Just before Ramadan started, there were all kinds of rumors flying around about an upcoming change in the weekend. Normally, this is just fluff stuff, but I remember reading it in the newspaper, too, giving it a little more substance than just buzz.
Has anyone heard anything recently? Is a change of weekend to Friday – Saturday still in the works or is it blown out of the water by the newer and graver rumors?
Bloggers and Productivity
A teeny note found at the bottom of page 36 in the October 9th
-
New Yorker
(yeh, I’m a little behind in my reading . . .)
“A report last week by Advertising Age Editor at Large Bradley Johnson noted that about 35 million workers – or one in four people in the U.S. labor force – spend an average of 3.5 hours, or 9% of each work day reading blogs.”
I’m not all that great in math, but wouldn’t 3.5 hours of a work day be more than 9%? Depending on whether you work a fairly standard seven – eight hour day, that would be nearly HALF your working day. They must have meant 9% of the work week . . . still, significantly cutting into productive working time.
Sweet, Sweet Luxury
My husband whisked me away for the weekend yesterday, a break we both need badly. We arrived early, checked in, had lunch in an old favorite restaurant, and took a driving tour around Doha, our former home. Whew! Little Doha is all grown up! Continuous building of high rising towers on the Corniche, huge road building and traffic improvement program, and of course, amazing new construction for the upcoming Doha games. We joked that we would love to have had the contract just for the signage for the games – they are awesome, and they are everywhere.
(I forgot to bring my photo-uploading-stick – I will upload some photos when I get back.)
And then, back to the room, to continue enjoying the sweetest luxury of all – time alone together. Just for today, no dinners with friends, no planned activities – we have the books and magazines we have been intending to read, there is a spa and great masseuse here, but best of all – just time together, time to catch up on all the little conversations we haven’t had time to have, time to dream a little about the future, time to give thanks for what we have.
Today, we will attend services in our former church, meet with old friends for brunch and then again for dinner. These are the friends who walk through the tough times with one another, who laugh together and cry together, and who know where all your skeletons are hidden – friends you can trust, friends who wear well over a lifetime. Tomorrow, a big charity bazaar and an evening event. In between – more time together. Thanks be to God for the luxury of time and for our good friends!
Doha Dhow and Skyline Before
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