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2 Months Gone, 2 Days Left

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Tomorrow night, or better day-after-tomorrow early morning, me and Dori will be leaving Kuwait for period of time further unknown. My previous hectic week trying to stampify my life didn’t work out in terms of successfully getting rid of any visa problems Dori had – eventually, it did nothing, except cost us several hundreds dinars and some weight on my side.


2 months ago I came into a flat buried under the sand after a huge sandstorm.

Dori is still illegal, now with fancy fine on her head, which will be dropped if we leave Kuwait before the 31st of June, which we intend to. In fact, the tickets are booked for 3rd; so inshallah we’ll get out before they go after out wallets.
It doesn’t end by that, however. I’ll have to try out some more running, more complicated, more unpleasant, and once again with dozens of stamps for every dust and sand I want to carry. Well, not literally, but you know – sea of stamps for other stamps for other stamps, so in the end of the day someone behind another stamp might give us the final stamp; Dori’s residency visa.
I’m not particularly delighted by going away so soon again, but can’t do – at least my parenst will see their beloved and so far only grandchild after a year and a half, which is quite a time, if you ask me. She refuses to speak Czech, sometimes speaks Arabi, but her favourite of all times stays English, which she exercises quite a lot.
So yay us, heaps of stress ahead!

Other than that, life’s going on as usual. Heat is omnipresent, clouds are sparse while clear blue sky is a daily bread. It’s almost 7 pm now and outside shade temperature is 45 degrees of Celsius and not really dropping. The sea got warm and often brings to my windows a wave of humid salty air, which makes us sweat on places before unknown; cats’re shedding hair with the speed of fur-balls placed in oven (mainly when I get carried away with fresh airing my room by opening windows; the AC isn’t designed for that so it doesn’t give a damn, really, and makes my room – favourite hangout spot for our kitties – quite hot). Keep on reading… →

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Springlicious

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Well, this is about to be the end of my visit of Czech, I managed – under a handful of stress – to get the stamping done with the last one happening like in an American movie, in the last minutes possible. But done, nevertheless. I have prayed, for the first time in my life, for the taxi driver I’ve picked up on Wenceslas Square to actually behave like a taxi driver – cut in front of others, run over slow walking people, go against the flow so to say, because I was in a dire hurry to get to the embassy before the counsellor casually walks out for the Friday night and leaves me with desperation and things undone standing in front of the closed building. I assume he understood my time limits from me nervously checking my Blackberry every 30 seconds for time, especially when we got stuck in a traffic jam (all right, he didn’t go over the walk path in that case), but he cut the road to the embassy building and went in wrong direction and over red lights just to get there. I swallowed my heart by then, but hey – the stamp is there, on the list. He also made me say “Sweet Jesus” after asking for the fare money ’cause he honestly and completely truly ripped the feathers of my chicken butt (almost 2 KWD a kilometre). He laughed, probably didn’t think a Muslim girl would say that.
Today I’ve finally got some time to get out on the well known clear and fresh air of the region I’m residing in, and snap some very quick pictures on the walk.
It’s right after winter so the nature is defrosting with occasional frost over the night still and some hoarfrost over here and there, but the smell indicates the spring coming, unstoppably.
Me and my mum strolled over the routes we used to take when I was younger, and reminisced a little, and wondered how much things changed in the past few years I haven’t been around the Czech Highlands much. Trees torn down for wood and not replaced, fields widened, roads disappeared, water gone dark and dirty from seasoning tourists swimming all pickled in creams and factors and perfumes, letting the water wash it off and keep it. From azure blue, transparent water in a past quarry I used to swim almost alone years ago, to dark blue, petroleum reminding liquid I wouldn’t touch with my bare foot now. God knows, it might dissolve me. Tax for civilization (read: city people and their trendy magazines) discovering the odds and ends only few kids and villagers used to know about in here.


The castle and museum in Kamenice nad Lipou, Czech Republic

In the fields beyond the little town

The long abandoned (and tourist found) flooded granite quarry

Tomorrow by afternoon I’ll be boarding a plane to Dubai again and hopefully arrive safely, as well on the second flight to Kuwait City. It’s spring there too, all right, with about 20 degrees difference between here and there, so lets see – it took me just a bit to get accustomed to the cold breeze in here again; but I’m afraid that as a winter lover I’ll have it harder getting back to the heat rails.
But hubby mentioned some trip to the sea so maybe I’ll just drop the heats behind my back and enjoy the endless blue amounts of salty water. We’ll see.

Also, I would like to thank to Míša a.k.a. Velchi for her superb hospitality and food and roof she’d share with me during my struggles in the stamp war, Prague fighting line. Delicious soup and scones and fun chat, thanks a lot! Hope to meet you again :)

Ramadan, Moving and Such

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The month of Ramadan is in the middle, we’ve finally got used to its own specific rhythm in Kuwait, full of not doing much things (unless really very utterly necessarily needed) during the light time and trying to get everything done after iftaar. Iftaar or fatoor is a special dinner during the fasting month of Ramadan, made usually big and stuffing, it’s a first meal of the day during this time and whole families are gathering for it’s occasion, day by day, the whole month; to wait for the adhan – and in case of Shias wait another few minutes after the muezzin announces the prayer time – and with that break the fasting and enjoy the noisy, vivid meeting of parents, children, grandchildren, spouses and relatives. Needless to say that already crazy people get much crazier, especially drivers, trying to speed up as much as possible to get the first bite; blinkers not working, lights not being valid for them and speed bumps serving as launching pads for shooting the cars to the moon, as many people plainly ignore them and literally fly over them. Kuwaiti speed bumps are big, and the cars suffer.
Than all the cacophony leaves to pray and get again together at a tea, desserts and tons and tons and tons of traditional sweets, watching TV, chit chatting and being really loud once again. People come and leave till the time of suhur, which could be best described as a Ramadan late-dinner-early-breakfast, small meal and drink before the morning prayer comes and starts the whole fasting round again.
All that is happening in a pretty narrow time period, iftaar in Kuwait starts roughly quarter to seven in the evening, and my husband’s family gets suhur between the midnight and two o’clock in the morning, with fajr being shortly after 4 am. I’m not personally sure about till when Sunni sisters and brothers drink or eat, but we’ve got into the custom to end all the meals about half an hour before the adhan sounds, to be sure we didn’t invalidate our fasting.
Sometimes I just feel like Alice in Wonderland, this being my first Ramadan in an Islamic country and getting around this many members of family is exhausting – I’m quite a lone wolf and these meetings get really big and loud. But it’s interesting and fun experience, so different from our very quite, starving days in Britain, where the day is impossibly long and the country doesn’t change it’s tempo for the month unlike here; here the shops and malls and offices change their working hours to much shorter during the forenoon, noon or very early afternoon, and than re-open again after the evening prayer and keep open much longer till the night, ten, eleven, even longer. It makes it possible to make the fasting more pleasant for most of the people, and especially now when the Holy Month comes during the summer time, which is really hot, makes the thirst manageable even if you got some of the errands running.

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We’ve finally moved to our new flat in Rumaithiya, painted and mostly furnished, with only small things left to bring and hang and sort. As we’re still in the struggle with officers and judges regarding some officialities, we’re not entitled to a house helper yet, so it’s up to me to run through the flat and clean till I think that I won’t ever need a treadmill because I burn so much fat just sweeping, wiping, vacuuming and polishing the seven rooms and five bathrooms, taking about four hours a day to do it (and I feel partially sorry for the house keeper, because our high fibre carpets are damn resisting all the good intentions, as well as our uber-comfortable soft and fluffy sofas, which have that kind of material that not only catches all the dust and dirt and hairs, it attracts them and gathers them on purpose, I firmly believe). But, eventually, she gets paid for that.
Our two cute tomcats from Beyrouth breeding station are on the way as I’m typing this entry, flying from Prague to Frankfurt and than from there to Kuwait, and I keep on thinking of them and wishing and praying that they survive their very long and exhausting route in tact, safe and sound, and we’ll welcome them either during this night or by tomorrow morning. Inshallah they will be all right, keep them in your minds, please!

podpis

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Urban Kuwait

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Some of the less glittery part… I’ve noticed the utter difference among certain housing areas, especially closer to the centre of Kuwait City, which is filled by flat units, there’s a huge contrast in between newly built housing and old, usually unmaintained buildings which at best look as rubble and abandoned, but actually accommodate poorer families.
Be it that the actual owner of the building doesn’t have the money to maintain them, or lets them decay on purpose, hoping for the families living there to finally give up and move out, so he can sell the rubble as land for much more money (one-time boost, though) than it would yield being a tenant building in the long run – these patches of land are mostly gathered, or if big enough, cleaned and on the place are build a new, shiny shops.

housing
Or, perhaps, a new, bigger, better and more expensive skyscraper filled by flats from the bottom to the top, but no more in the financial range of these poor families, which are time to time forcefully pushed out.
Most of the actual Kuwaitis seem to live in suburban areas in houses, villas, sometimes the houses accommodate very few flat units, depending on the size and number of floors. Our flat is, for example, in a house of three stories, taking the whole floor, all the 270m square. Nothing unusual in Kuwait; people in here really love to have it big. The flats closer to the city centre or in it are usually occupied by working foreigners, at least as I’ve been told. Foreigners can’t legally own any land in Kuwait (or houses, in other words).
Actual Kuwaiti gets either government housing, patch of a land to build on with a small government donation for the building process, or a flat in these suburban areas; if he asks for it. The process of getting this big boost in life takes several years though, and it’s not instant at all.
podpis

Strange Tastes, Extraordinary Order and Mist around the Angel of the North

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Misty

I’ve always wondered what tastes can people from other countries get; what do they like and what do they eat and what won’t they ever put in their mouths. Interesting topic, unfortunately only a little bit tied to the country of origin, more to the person him/herself.
Me and Abood got some of ‘our’ tastes though; and they are, indeed, strange for the other one. I’ve got used to the fact I make sometimes for the breakfast bread with strawberry / blueberry / blackberry jam and toast cheese. Weird, isn’t it? I mean, I would never, ever combine sweet marmelade with salty cheese in one meal! Odd taste.
But… than I’ve remembered that I got my own weird thing to eat, at least in the eyes of my husband, and that is bread with butter and leek. Yeah! You read right; I might not bite on onions as my brother does, but I stuff fresh leek in my sandwich. So I guess we can call it fifty fifty. Me and my contraception sandwich (you can imagine the breath after that, right?); and Abood and his saltsweet toast. Oh yeah, sometimes I also heat up the cheese for it, so it will be melty. Yummy!
Keep on reading… →