We took a long walk tonight to go to a large bargain store. I bought some local sweets - don’t know what they are, but they looked exotic so I bought a variety of types. I’m going to eat one now.
Okay, here it is. It’s little ball of white doughy confection. It looks like window putty. It comes in a little white candy paper and all enclosed in clean cellophane with a tiny bit of Arabic writing on it in gold. Let me see if I can decipher the writing… I have learned all the letters of the Arabic alphabet, but I can’t always make them out. It looks like it says “Irwama” or something like that. Let’s have a little taste… Hm… not bad. I was kind of hoping that it would taste like Italian nougat candy, and in fact it does. But it has pistachios inside instead of almonds. Mm. Pretty good.
It sure was a long, hot, dusty, stinky walk to that store, so I’m glad something good came out of it. By the time I got home I was dying for a beer. I bought some Budweiser NA at the fancy foreigner’s grocery store yesterday. NA, sadly stands for “Non Alcoholic.” My supervisor says “All the calories and none of the kick.” But you know, it still tastes good. I’m on my second one now. I just had to open another. Beer sure is a funny drink. You know, it really tastes awful until one day you have a drink of it and all the sudden you like it. Maybe Kuwait will be like that.
I was in a bad mood tonight. I took a nap and woke up in time to join the bus for the Welcome To Kuwait reception for foreign teachers at AUK (American University in Kuwait). The lady who organized the program had scheduled a guest speaker who called and cancelled at the last minute, so she did the best she could and talked to us about teaching Kuwaiti children… it was kind of a drag, she didn’t have that much to say, but we did our best to be a polite audience.
Today I called the international clinic to make an appointment about my persistent cough and persistent back-ache. A chiropractor I saw before leaving PA mentioned that the two could be related, and it might indicate some kind of lung infection, so since I have medical insurance now I’m going to have it looked at. Kuwait employs a lot of people who speak English in various customer service jobs. You don’t always get real good English. You make a phone call and you hear the Arabic “chhashlllahmachhashlakan hummina hummina hummina” then “For English press two.” The girl answers the phone, a Filipino or something. She has an accent.
“Intearnational Kleenex, can I help you?”
“Yes, I made an appointment with Dr. Iman for the 18th because I know she’s on vacation, but I’d like to get an earlier appointment, even if it’s with a different doctor.”
“I’m sorry, madame, Dr. Iman is on vacation.”
“Please don’t call me madame. I’m a man.”
“Oh. I am sorry.”
“Do I sound like a woman?”
“Yes.”
“Oh… that’s embarrassing.”
“I’m sorry. Dr. Iman is on vacation.”
“I know. Can I cancel my appointment on the 18th and see another doctor please?”
“Yes, madame. What is your name?”
I told her my name and she made another appointment for me on Saturday. I think the doctor I’m going to see is Egyptian. I hope he’s good. My assistant told me to boil chunks of ginger and make a tea for the cough, and you know it really works pretty well, but it only lasts a little while, and the back pain doesn‘t really go away. I have been blaming it on the block of cement mattress I have in my apartment here, and maybe it will turn out to be nothing more than that.
Tomorrow I might try to get to the cathedral for mass. My assistant, the ginger tea recommender, is a Roman Catholic from Goa, India. She told me about seeing the relics of Saint Francis Xavier when his body was exposed for the faithful some years back. She says it was so wonderful to see him. I was rather appalled, but her sweet, devotional faith moved me. “Jon, you must go to mass while you are here in Kuwait,” she tells me. “Kuwait is a very hard place to be. You must go to mass while you are here.”
I think she’s right. I think I need to go.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
hot fun in the summertime
It's 118 degrees outside right now. If it were 118 anywhere else I know, people would be panicking. Here, they just go about their business. I myself am starting to adopt a ho-hum attitude regarding the heat. A day or two after I arrived, I saw a construction worker out digging a building foundation in the intense oven heat with a shovel. The idea of toiling in this heat just boggles the mind, but you see them doing it.
One afternoon I walked home with my coordinator who lives in my building, and I didn't have a hat. I was worried that I was going to end up with burns on my head, but I was okay. If you spend hours inside in the air conditioning, it's actually kind of a rush to go through the sun and heat for a short while. It's sort of like those polar bear club people who jump into icy water in January. It's a feeling of being very daring. Of course the people who work out in the heat have none of that, they just suffer. But at least Kuwait provides public drinking water in big tanks on practically every street.
I went out to tell our shuttle driver that we were going to need a little more time before getting a ride home, and there was a distressed little bird on the sidewalk. I picked it up and put it in the shade where a water sprinkler was sending a fine spray into some planted greenery. (Yes, I did wash my hands immediately afterwards - don't want to get bird flu). Very little could survive here without drastic environmental manipulation. Desalinization of salt water from the Persian Gulf (called the Arabian Sea here, because the Arabs don't like Persians) and gargantuan airconditioning systems enable this city to exist.
Sometimes even the powerful air conditioning systems can't keep up with the heat. I joined the gym at the Holiday Inn, and I found it to be just a little too warm for a good work-out. The swimming pool there usually has coolers, but they are not working, so the pool is like a hot bath. I swam a few laps, but when you start to warm up from the exercise you just don't want to keep going. Hopefully they'll get that fixed. The gym membership was a bit of a splurge, and I'm not sure I'll get my money's worth. Can you believe people go there and sit in the sauna? I just have to laugh when I even think about it.
The heat at night is very different from the daytime heat. The wind starts blowing, and it's a very hot wind. It feels like a hair dryer. When the sun's shining intensely, the heat doesn't surprise you, but when it's dark out, you don't expect it to be so hot. Night time is when the skinny little stray cats come out of their hiding places and go scrounging for scraps in the dumpsters. They're never very big - kitten size. They're feral, of course, but you sense they know they come from a domesticated breed and once had a symbiotic relationship with people. They don't run immediately when you stop and look at them. They look back, momentarily confused, perhaps from some leftover feeling that tells them people will give them food. Or maybe people really do give them food sometimes, like we do with squirrels and pigeons, but I don't think there's a whole lot of that.
The speaker at the AWARE Center (Association for Western - Arab Relations and Exchange) told us that the women wearing those black-from-head-to-toe burkas aren't any hotter than the men in their white dishdashas. She postulated that black fabric forms a more shaded space and the sun doesn't penetrate, so the women are enjoying the shade as they walk around. Not sure about that one. Many of them wear gloves to cover their hands and put black gauze over their eye slits. Rumor has it that many of them wear Victoria Secret type sexy clothes under those robes. It wouldn't surprise me.
One afternoon I walked home with my coordinator who lives in my building, and I didn't have a hat. I was worried that I was going to end up with burns on my head, but I was okay. If you spend hours inside in the air conditioning, it's actually kind of a rush to go through the sun and heat for a short while. It's sort of like those polar bear club people who jump into icy water in January. It's a feeling of being very daring. Of course the people who work out in the heat have none of that, they just suffer. But at least Kuwait provides public drinking water in big tanks on practically every street.
I went out to tell our shuttle driver that we were going to need a little more time before getting a ride home, and there was a distressed little bird on the sidewalk. I picked it up and put it in the shade where a water sprinkler was sending a fine spray into some planted greenery. (Yes, I did wash my hands immediately afterwards - don't want to get bird flu). Very little could survive here without drastic environmental manipulation. Desalinization of salt water from the Persian Gulf (called the Arabian Sea here, because the Arabs don't like Persians) and gargantuan airconditioning systems enable this city to exist.
Sometimes even the powerful air conditioning systems can't keep up with the heat. I joined the gym at the Holiday Inn, and I found it to be just a little too warm for a good work-out. The swimming pool there usually has coolers, but they are not working, so the pool is like a hot bath. I swam a few laps, but when you start to warm up from the exercise you just don't want to keep going. Hopefully they'll get that fixed. The gym membership was a bit of a splurge, and I'm not sure I'll get my money's worth. Can you believe people go there and sit in the sauna? I just have to laugh when I even think about it.
The heat at night is very different from the daytime heat. The wind starts blowing, and it's a very hot wind. It feels like a hair dryer. When the sun's shining intensely, the heat doesn't surprise you, but when it's dark out, you don't expect it to be so hot. Night time is when the skinny little stray cats come out of their hiding places and go scrounging for scraps in the dumpsters. They're never very big - kitten size. They're feral, of course, but you sense they know they come from a domesticated breed and once had a symbiotic relationship with people. They don't run immediately when you stop and look at them. They look back, momentarily confused, perhaps from some leftover feeling that tells them people will give them food. Or maybe people really do give them food sometimes, like we do with squirrels and pigeons, but I don't think there's a whole lot of that.
The speaker at the AWARE Center (Association for Western - Arab Relations and Exchange) told us that the women wearing those black-from-head-to-toe burkas aren't any hotter than the men in their white dishdashas. She postulated that black fabric forms a more shaded space and the sun doesn't penetrate, so the women are enjoying the shade as they walk around. Not sure about that one. Many of them wear gloves to cover their hands and put black gauze over their eye slits. Rumor has it that many of them wear Victoria Secret type sexy clothes under those robes. It wouldn't surprise me.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
blah, blah, blog
Disclaimer: Don't know much about geography, and I'm not an expert on anything Kuwaiti, so as you read, please pardon my ignorance, and don't quote me on any of this. Thank you for your interest.
As I understand it, this is the last "weekend Thursday" in Kuwait. Until now, Kuwait has had its weekends set up to include the day before the Moslem sabbath, and the sabbath day itself. That was Thursday and Friday. I didn't even know that the work week went from Saturday till Wednesday until shortly before I arrived. I guess it's the same in Dubai, probably all over the Middle East. But Kuwait will be switching this weekend. From here on out, the weekend will fall on Friday and Saturday instead. I heard the government decided to switch it because of something to do with the stock market, and that makes perfect sense, since money is the whole point here in Kuwait.
I have been in Kuwait since Aug. 19th, and today is the 30th. The jet lag is over, the unpacking is done, the euphoria is over, and I'm fully engaged in my teaching job. I already feel like everything I can say about Kuwait is already cliche, because I've been making the same comments as the other new teachers have been making for the past 11 days, and the teachers who have been here for three or five or seven years seem to be making the same comments as well.
In a nutshell, Kuwait is strange place, a "boil" of teeming humanity in the most unlikely and inhospitable of natural environments imaginable. Mother Earth must have had a crazy idea when she gathered a full tenth of her biomass muck that would turn into oil reserves into a spot that would become a tiny nation of feuding desert tribes, eventually the most outrageous rags-to-riches story in the history of the planet. I was recently told that a mere forty or fifty years ago, the Kuwaitis were sword-bearing tribesmen, and that all their clan warfare persists today in the form of vicious family feuds. Kuwaiti culture, I was told, is a revenge-driven culture. Who knows if that's true, but it is something I will probably not forget hearing. I suspect that if it is true, it is quickly evolving into something else. There is tremendous wealth here, and I think managing their money is the full time job of many Kuwaitis.
Today the new hires went for medical tests and fingerprinting, and when I got back to school I told my assistant that to me it felt like an experience of apartheid. I had to explain to her that apartheid was the system that existed in South Africa in which ethnic communities were segregated and treated with blatant, unhidden racism. When we got to whatever facility it was where the medical tests were being done, there were hundreds of south Asians, I would guess mostly Indians, waiting. Hundreds. We arrived, Canadians, Americans, Brits, Australians, and (ironically) South Africans, on our little shuttle bus and were ushered past every one to the front of the line. It feels weird to have this undeserved priviledge. My assistant told me to be thankful to God for my good fortune, and I said, "Should I really thank God for an unfair advantage?" She agreed with me when I said it like that. The poor people here feel glad, I'm told, to have a chance to work and not starve. Regardless of how little they are paid or poorly they are treated, they are probably seriously better off than they would be in their home countries. Personally I find that I get great pleasure from giving them tips. A quarter KD (Kuwaiti Dinar) for a waitress or a driver results in such gratitude, it makes you feel like Santa Claus. It's a little twisted, I think, to bask in the satisfaction of doing a good deed for such a cheap price. It's Marie-Antoinettish. But I'd rather be guilty of that than not tip. The Kuwaitis do not tip. This I was told by the one Kuwaiti man with whom I have had a real conversation. The conversation was, incidentally, in Japanese. The world has always been strange, but it's getting stranger, isn't it?
I hesitated to do a blog for a number of reasons. First, I didn't want to take on the commitment. I figured once I started I might feel obligated to keep it up after I got tired of doing it. Secondly, it's very hard to say anything to everyone -- think about it. We all have complex lives with all sorts of interpersonal connections and relationships. You talk about different things with different people with whom you share different aspects of your life. Blogs are very public. Whether you make joke or express a personal concern, you are literally holding it out for the world to see. And that brings me to the third reason for hesitation. I have grown up in the United States, where free speech is enshrined in the constitution and much taken for granted. Here in Kuwait, it is possible to get oneself in hot water for saying the wrong thing. Shortly after arriving, I read in the Kuwait Times that a reporter had been arrested for his blog in which the Emir of Kuwait was insulted... and it wasn't even the blogger himself who wrote the insult - it was someone else who left a comment!! Both of them were arrested. The reporter was released after a couple days in jail and a public outcry from Kuwaiti citizens. So you see, self-censorship is necessary here. I will have to be cautious. To be fair, it's not just because of the freedom of speech issue. I wouldn't like it if someone talked about me in his/her blog, regardless of whether it was positive or negative. But it makes me wonder how long life as we know it will continue with our sense of having a right to privacy. So, even though I will feel like telling family and friends at home about my new teacher friends and new students, things will have to remain very general, out of respect and consideration.
Though it is not a workday, the school is going to be open today for teachers to prepare for the first day of classes on Sunday. I'm going in to work on curriculum and lesson plans. So far I've had very good feedback about my ideas, and I think I'm going to have a successful time with my job. My fears about the professionalism of the school have been abated. Though my school serves students with learning disabilities, it has an excellent reputation here. I recently learned that I'm going to have one of the grandchildren of the royal family in one of my classes.
As I understand it, this is the last "weekend Thursday" in Kuwait. Until now, Kuwait has had its weekends set up to include the day before the Moslem sabbath, and the sabbath day itself. That was Thursday and Friday. I didn't even know that the work week went from Saturday till Wednesday until shortly before I arrived. I guess it's the same in Dubai, probably all over the Middle East. But Kuwait will be switching this weekend. From here on out, the weekend will fall on Friday and Saturday instead. I heard the government decided to switch it because of something to do with the stock market, and that makes perfect sense, since money is the whole point here in Kuwait.
I have been in Kuwait since Aug. 19th, and today is the 30th. The jet lag is over, the unpacking is done, the euphoria is over, and I'm fully engaged in my teaching job. I already feel like everything I can say about Kuwait is already cliche, because I've been making the same comments as the other new teachers have been making for the past 11 days, and the teachers who have been here for three or five or seven years seem to be making the same comments as well.
In a nutshell, Kuwait is strange place, a "boil" of teeming humanity in the most unlikely and inhospitable of natural environments imaginable. Mother Earth must have had a crazy idea when she gathered a full tenth of her biomass muck that would turn into oil reserves into a spot that would become a tiny nation of feuding desert tribes, eventually the most outrageous rags-to-riches story in the history of the planet. I was recently told that a mere forty or fifty years ago, the Kuwaitis were sword-bearing tribesmen, and that all their clan warfare persists today in the form of vicious family feuds. Kuwaiti culture, I was told, is a revenge-driven culture. Who knows if that's true, but it is something I will probably not forget hearing. I suspect that if it is true, it is quickly evolving into something else. There is tremendous wealth here, and I think managing their money is the full time job of many Kuwaitis.
Today the new hires went for medical tests and fingerprinting, and when I got back to school I told my assistant that to me it felt like an experience of apartheid. I had to explain to her that apartheid was the system that existed in South Africa in which ethnic communities were segregated and treated with blatant, unhidden racism. When we got to whatever facility it was where the medical tests were being done, there were hundreds of south Asians, I would guess mostly Indians, waiting. Hundreds. We arrived, Canadians, Americans, Brits, Australians, and (ironically) South Africans, on our little shuttle bus and were ushered past every one to the front of the line. It feels weird to have this undeserved priviledge. My assistant told me to be thankful to God for my good fortune, and I said, "Should I really thank God for an unfair advantage?" She agreed with me when I said it like that. The poor people here feel glad, I'm told, to have a chance to work and not starve. Regardless of how little they are paid or poorly they are treated, they are probably seriously better off than they would be in their home countries. Personally I find that I get great pleasure from giving them tips. A quarter KD (Kuwaiti Dinar) for a waitress or a driver results in such gratitude, it makes you feel like Santa Claus. It's a little twisted, I think, to bask in the satisfaction of doing a good deed for such a cheap price. It's Marie-Antoinettish. But I'd rather be guilty of that than not tip. The Kuwaitis do not tip. This I was told by the one Kuwaiti man with whom I have had a real conversation. The conversation was, incidentally, in Japanese. The world has always been strange, but it's getting stranger, isn't it?
I hesitated to do a blog for a number of reasons. First, I didn't want to take on the commitment. I figured once I started I might feel obligated to keep it up after I got tired of doing it. Secondly, it's very hard to say anything to everyone -- think about it. We all have complex lives with all sorts of interpersonal connections and relationships. You talk about different things with different people with whom you share different aspects of your life. Blogs are very public. Whether you make joke or express a personal concern, you are literally holding it out for the world to see. And that brings me to the third reason for hesitation. I have grown up in the United States, where free speech is enshrined in the constitution and much taken for granted. Here in Kuwait, it is possible to get oneself in hot water for saying the wrong thing. Shortly after arriving, I read in the Kuwait Times that a reporter had been arrested for his blog in which the Emir of Kuwait was insulted... and it wasn't even the blogger himself who wrote the insult - it was someone else who left a comment!! Both of them were arrested. The reporter was released after a couple days in jail and a public outcry from Kuwaiti citizens. So you see, self-censorship is necessary here. I will have to be cautious. To be fair, it's not just because of the freedom of speech issue. I wouldn't like it if someone talked about me in his/her blog, regardless of whether it was positive or negative. But it makes me wonder how long life as we know it will continue with our sense of having a right to privacy. So, even though I will feel like telling family and friends at home about my new teacher friends and new students, things will have to remain very general, out of respect and consideration.
Though it is not a workday, the school is going to be open today for teachers to prepare for the first day of classes on Sunday. I'm going in to work on curriculum and lesson plans. So far I've had very good feedback about my ideas, and I think I'm going to have a successful time with my job. My fears about the professionalism of the school have been abated. Though my school serves students with learning disabilities, it has an excellent reputation here. I recently learned that I'm going to have one of the grandchildren of the royal family in one of my classes.
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