The Gulf Road – Kuwait City (from Marof39)

It isn’t really that bad in Kuwait in the summer time, traffic gets lighter in August, it is easier to get around, fruits and vegetables become plentiful and cheaper, and people spend more time at the beach, enjoying its usual summer activities.

Kuwait has a very strange peculiarity that you don’t see anywhere else in the world; most of our beach front from Salmiya all the way to the southern border – more than eighty kilometers long – is locked out to ordinary people save for very few areas here and there, the rest is occupied by chalets owned by Kuwaiti citizens and, in some cases, by a handful of small scale resorts – with horrendous prices, mind you; for a short family vacation, what the Brits call a “bucket and a spade” holiday. The odd thing is that these chalets remain mostly closed and empty during summer and you see miles and miles of dark or dimly lit chalets along the coast.

What is left of the sea front in a country that prides itself of its past as a seafaring nation is a stretch of coastline that has been reclaimed and developed for enjoyment of the rest of the population, this area is called the ‘Gulf Road’ or the corniche. More and more locals spend their summer days and nights (as well as Friday afternoons) frequenting it with their families and friends, laughing, playing, swimming and most importantly cooking their meals.

In Kuwait we make a big fuss out of cooking, especially when it comes to roasting kebab and grilled meats on the beach. This alfresco grilling causes people annoyance for no reason. Critics claim the rising blue smoke reminds them of the Red Indians, some say the smell is nauseating, some say the family man who is usually in charge of cooking isn’t particularly tidy, leaving a mess of trash afterwards, this in spite of signs that clearly state “NO GRILLING” (it seems Kuwaitis like to do the grilling only in the National Assembly (our Parliament) .

What do we expect when we squeeze two million people on a stretch of sand that is less than 16 kilometers long? There are not enough car parks (people used to park on the pavement – even though we put up these hideous concrete balls to prevent them from parking there – so now they just park on the main road instead).

Beach life on weekends is all about barbequing and grilling anywhere in the world, east or west the best nation for beach barbequing culture is Australia: they placed grills along all their popular beaches so the holiday makers or beachgoers wont have trouble cooking their own food; they even gave these grills a cute names like ‘barbies’ (“put another shrimp on the Barbie, mate”).

Of course as I previously mentioned our ‘No Grilling’ signs are prevalent all along the beach. Kuwait needs to remove these signs and build grills and let the fires roar, spreading the heavenly aroma for all to share – what is a beach without a mess?

Have a great summer.

Summer in Kuwait – Somewhere Off Abu Halifa

With the short rainy season behind us and the shorter spring almost over, we look forward with much trepidation to summer time here in Kuwait with its usual super heat and mugginess. Although if you have arrived in Kuwait in winter, you would think the cold so severe it would last forever (you probably rushed like everyone else to purchase some new electrical portable heaters).

We had a nasty cold snap last year too, the market ran out of portable heaters, people travelled to their chalets or farms to get heaters and bring them home – we also heard of people travelling to Saudi Arabia to purchase oil heaters (a very popular item in Kuwait – since many people here even with central air-conditioning abhor central heating because they wake up suffering from throat dryness, headaches and fall ill).

Surprisingly, we learnt the Saudis themselves came to Kuwait to look for the same type of heaters because they ran out as well.

As for myself, I ended up scavenging the heater from the driver’s room since he was away on his leave, lucky devil.

Of course the big hot summer will be upon us in no time and we will miss the cold, its memory long gone; we will start complaining about how stifling the heat is, and questioning what the heck we are all doing here when everyone is drifting to a cooler climate.

The big deal this summer is the decision by the Ministry of Education to delay the start of the school year to coincide with the end of the holy month of Ramadan, adding more inanity to our educational system. Indeed, many have seized this opportunity and are planning to spend the month of August and first half of September outside Kuwait, like they used to do many moons ago when Ramadan was during the summer season (tickets to Lebanon a favorite destination for a lot of the locals are already sold out for that period).

It would be funny as hell if the Lebanese expatriate community remained in Kuwait (because airline tickets are sold out) while the Kuwaitis travel to Lebanon for the summer.

We only hope that the protagonists in Lebanon remain calm and the Israelis don’t start another war to ruin the tourist season there.

فى خضم الأجواء المحلية الملبدة والمناخية المتقلبة كان لابد من وقفه نستعرض فيها المواضيع الدارجة على الساحة ونحاول أن نعطي هذه المستجدات حقها قدر المستطاع ونكون بذلك قد ركبنا الموجة وتزلجنا مع المتزلجين فى عالم التدوين والذى يغلب عليه مواضيع الأكل وأنتقاد المطاعم , ومواضيع الحب والغرام أو السياسة والأنتخابات

قد بدأ الموضوع الأول بصورة لوليمة فاخرة لشخص ما وعليه بالعافية , هو اللى أستمتع بالوجبة و نحن اللى أخذنا السمعة بأننا أهل سندويش, بس خيرها فى غيره

وحتى يستمر زخم التدوين ومسايرة الأحداث المحلية ونجرب حظنا بالتدوين باللغة العربية الأم فأقترحت على نفسى أن أحاول أن أكتب فى مواضيع جريئة محلية مثل الحب والغرام حيث لهذه المشاعر سوق طويل عريض فى الفضاء الأفتراضى وربما أكون أول من أكتشف ظاهرة جديدة ليكون لى السبق التدوينى فيها ونصبح من الرومانسيين حالنا من حال الباقين , ونحاول أن نمحو تهمة الجفاف العاطفى الشديد المتهم بها الجنس الذكورى المحلى( ولو أن الكويتى أنفع ) الأ أن الهجوم المستمر على شخصيته بدون مسوغات فى كثير من المدونات قد صبغ هذه الشخصية المتميزة بنعت غير مطابق للواقع دون أى مبرر

وفعلا صدق حدسى وبعد البحث االسريع فى أعداد الجرائد المحلية توفقت الى قراءة عدد من المقابلات الشخصية مع أشخاص معروفين فى المجتمع كمسؤلين سابقين أو شخصيات رسمية وهم يتكلمون عن مسيرة حياتهم وأنجازاتهم فى مناصبهم وبعد الأسترسال فى المقابلة تتحول الأسئلة الى الحياة الأجتماعية للمسئول والى السؤال الكلاسيكى الذى لابد منه وهو” كيف تعرفت
“على شريكة حياتك

وهنا تبدأ سلسلة المفاجآت و خاصة بعد أن يكون القارئ قد شبع كلام رسمى مقنن ودبلوماسى وأذا بالجواب على هذا السؤال التقليدى يغير من نمط المقابلة فيقلبها رأسا على عقب فالغالبية من الذين تمت معاهم المقابلات تنفتح قريحتهم ويعترفون ويتباهون بأنهم تعرفوا على زوجاتهم بالصدفة طبعا – والصدفة خير من ألف ميعاد – ويسمى زوجته بأسمها الذى عادة مايكون رقيق ومماثل لأسماء الممثلات العربيات أيام أفلام الأسود والأبيض وليس بكنيتها أم فلان . ويزيد بأن الزواج قد تم بعد قصة أعجاب وحب متبادل .ياولد

هذا والكويت تعتبر بلد محافظ ولم يكن هناك هذه المولات الجميلة أو الهاتف النقال أو الأنترنت أو الأنفتاح فى المجتمع وهنا تطقنى البوهة لهذه التصريحات الجريئة وأفكر بما أن مسؤلينا السابقين لديهم هذه العواطف الجياشة والأحاسيس المرهفة فلماذا الغالبية من المواطنين والمقيمين يحسون بالأحباط والكآبة واليأس .هل لعدم توصيل هذا الحب لنا أو لعدم مشاركتهم لنا بالعواطف والبوح بها فقط بعد مغادرة المنصب الرسمى لأن المدام راح تقرأ المقابلة وياويله أذا ماطلعها جولييت العصر الذهبى للكويت . وعاشت الرومانسية الرسمية .مع تحياتى

“Look I am a Blogger! Here’s proof – a picture of my sandwich!”

Somehow, Amer the owner of this blog is convinced that I can put together a useful post which will be hosted here. The gentleman has left it open to what topic I would like to address, which is kind of him and very Democratic.

I tried to dodge the issue of blogging for sometime now and protested that I only type with two fingers, which is rather silly of anyone to comment on their fingers because even with a single finger you may cause a lot of mayhem – as witnessed many times over in fights caused by the simple gesture of pointing. This discussion whether to blog or not took place on the pages of Intlxpatr’s blog – She is one kind lady who also posts on this ‘Diwaniya’.

I had to think of how to get out of this fix rather quickly, lucky for me we were commenting on a post concerning abused ‘poor guest workers’ here in Kuwait (You always have to say ‘poor guest workers’ otherwise you don’t sound liberal or kind hearted enough, although the ‘poor guest worker’ was a party to the corruption to begin with when he/she paid bribes to come over).

So quickly I hit upon a scheme that will save me from this troublesome task. It is very simple; I will just have to hire a poor foreign laborer who can do the blogging for me.

When you think about it, it really does make sense. The poor soul will earn extra dinars for his services, the job offers flexible hours so the hired hand can blog from his office during working time, which means he takes revenge on his employers while he lines his own pockets. The Rent-A-Blogger idea also unleashes the talents that we were promised here in Kuwait when we hired the guest workers to begin with but have not yet discovered hidden talents – a quick proof of that is how many million of Expats came to Kuwait or the Gulf area and wrote a worthwhile book that made it on any best seller list anywhere in the past 10 years – or lets make it easier in the 20 – 30 years? Answer is none!.

Another compelling reason for hiring a surrogate blogger that’s it doesn’t conflict with a tradition long established in the local printed media, used by talentless hacks who want to be famous by hiring ghost writers to write up some hefty articles in their name; this is quite popular with some ladies who want to be looked upon as ‘poets’ or ‘novelists’.

Although the Rent-A-Blogger will be instructed not to write anything relating to politics, sex or religion, should anything go wrong with the blog, then simply I will dump everything on the head of the poor sod and hopefully get away with it.

Now if you think what I said is horrible then I am afraid I have more bad news for you: surrogate or ghost laborers have extended their services to the ‘local Art scene’, many so-called painters are hiring them to do paintings for them, not one or two paintings but a whole exhibition. I have this bit of information from a local starving artist who is living now on cigarettes and pistachios only.