DAGGERO: April 2009 Archives
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.
