Child Labor

He said he was nine. The denied he was here last Tuesday at 9, a school night. When he realized I'm interrogating rather than buying, he evaded by saying it's turning green. It's gonna be green now. شبت خضرا. Then he ran to the other side of the road.

Child labor in Kuwait. How long before someone puts a stop to it? Are these kids being sent by their parents? Are they copying all the other kids who are doing it and easily winning their parents' approval to do that? How is it even legal? They close the 'baqala' in our neighborhood (and other hoods of course) but this, they endorce ... Go figure!!!

Is there a Charles Dickens in Kuwait?

Analysis of a Blogger's Block

This can't be a writer's block because I can't claim to be a writer. Lately my blogging has diminished. I can find two main reasons for that:
1) There hasn't been anything interesting going around in my life lately.
2) I am becoming really busy.
3) Blogging no longer interest me.

Now to analyze these point:
1) assumes that what I have been rambling about previously was interesting. Searching through my recent blogs I found some on my trip to Albuquerque (that can't be interesting), my KG report (like who cares), the ugliest collage ever of some breakfast item ... you catching my drift? Lack of interesting things to write about has never been the case.

2) busy? but i manage to find time to go out, to watch lost, to teach, to watch desperate housewives, to chat aimlessly with friends ... so again, busy is not an excuse here.

3) I can't analyze three, because if you have been a careful reader you'd notice I said I can find two reasons for that, not three. So reason three does not exist.

Here now (and not 'here boy', my sister's not so loyal old cat) A post is made. Enjoy and good night.

Week One

Week one started last Saturday. My classes seem promising so far. I'm not very crazy about segregated classes, especially of girls only, so that one is already my least favorite. Too soon to judge of course, but my first impression is very promising so far.

Officially week one was last week. But since I was away and missed Saturday and Monday*, my students assumed I won't show up Wednesday as well.


* I spent Monday in London. Arriving at the hotel at 8:30 am, leaving it by 9, I took the Bakerloo line to Piccadilly Circus and walked from there to the fascinating National Gallery where I enjoyed the fastest tour ever inside a gallery, arriving 9:30 and leaving by 12:



After that I walked to Westminster Abbey, stopping for a quick picture of Big Ben:

Another fast tour, this time of the Abbey, lasting less than 2 hours.

By 3 pm I was starving so took the famous London taxi towards Harrods knowing that if I go there hungry, I'd shop for food and thus satisfy my need to buy something at Harrods, and at the same time not burden my budget by buying something from Harrods. So it was Pizza from their Pizzaria. Delicious.

By then I was totally and completely exhausted from lack of sleep ( I took a 5 hour sleep in the airplane getting there, but that was far from enough), so I took the underground again to the hotel for a nap.

Waking up, I took the Bakerloo line again to Piccadillly for some gift-shop hopping before going in for a fascinating night of Mama Mia:

London Baby :)

**Bader Ben Hirsi, director of The English Sheik and the Yemeni Gentleman, just left a comment on my blog of that title. Check it out if interested.

Albuquerque - Day 4

Picture taking was to its minumum today. This is my rendition of the San Felipe de Neri that I had on my February 5th post.

The church is in OldTown. I wasnt impressed with OldTown. Its not very old. Our Mubarakiya has more of an old look to it. Shops repeated same old Native American merchandise.

Later went to watch The White Countess. A bit on the dull side though it has some interesting moments. I don't really recommend it.

In 9 hours I head to the airport, so I better get some sleep now.


Albuquerque, 13 February, 1:05 am

Albuquerque - Day 3

Hippie Town (Madrid) on the way to Santa Fe

Nedra Matteucci Galleries - Santa Fe

Sculpture Garden at Nedra

Lunch at Santa Fe

Loretto Chapel - Santa Fe

And thats all for today :)

Albuquerque, 10 February, 10:12 pm

Albuquerque - Day 2

Touring the city in the morning, my camera captured the following:

Casino in the middle of the desert. This is no Vegas, folks.

Winery: I was tempted to bring in a bottle of chocolate sauce with a hint of Cabernet. Would go perfectly well over some ice-cream or pie, or even as pancake syrup.

Statue at Botanic Gardens and Aquarium

Movie of the day: Brokeback Mountain. Wonderful story. Very much worth watching. Don't think they'd show it in Kuwait but oh well, long live piracy :)

Albuquerque, 9 February, 10:37 pm

Albuquerque - Day 1

After a restless night in bed, I finally woke up and headed to register and collect conference material. Around 12, and after chatting with this and that, my stomache started to protest, reminding me that I have been neglectig her (or is it him?) for the last 21 hours. Happily, I followed my stomache to a cafe where she ordered me soup and sandwich. We were both happy and decided to take a nap after such a satisfying meal to make up for last night's restlessness.

Alas, the nap lasted longer than expected and by the time I was up I could only catch the last session of the day, one against Spivak's Subaltern*. No harm done. I can still enjoy the rest of the night, maybe catch a movie. When lo and behold, here I am acting the role of the speaking subaltern as soon as I open my mouth with the words: 'Kuwait, I teach at Kuwait University.' Question upon question came tumbling on my head: do you wear burga' at home? do you date? do you have alcohol? do you eat meat? do you breathe? do you sleep? do Kuwaitis have 2 ears, 2 eyes like us Westerners? I submitted to these questions, like I usually do, by telling them 'No, No bother at all, ask away'.

When the subaltern in me satisfied herself by speaking, I decided to shut her up by taking her to a good-old American thriller. I mean heck, we Kuwaitis can watch thriller too, can't we?

I wasn't thrilled, neither was my muted subaltern, nor my grumpy stomache. Other than a beautiful house, the movie** had nothing. Why is it that thrillers always come with a beautiful house? Are we not to fear and pity those who live in projects? Such an Aristotelian mentality***!!

On the way back to the hotel, a mere 5 minute walk I spotted this and the blogger in me said: 'hold on here, let me entertain my blogging community with the first picture of Albuquerque downtown' I indulged, here's the result:

Church at 3rd and Tijeras.

And now me, stomache, subaltern, blogger and all are tucked in bed hoping to catch more sessions tomorrow.

*Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak" basically argues that no, she/he cannot speak, since speech utilizes the hegemonic colonial discourse which makes them speechless to begin with. So by speaking the language of the west, we become Westerners and thus our words are not those of the subaltern anymore.

**Movie: When A Stranger Calls.

***Aristotle tells us that the best tragedies are those with noble heros.

Albuquerque, 9 February, 1:19 am

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Leaving to Albuquerque, New Mexico this Tuesday. It's gonna be one hell of a trip. 3 flights, a total of 21 hours to get there. I hope Panadol night does the trick and puts me to sleep for at least 6 hours of my 9 hour Frankfurt/Chicago flight. Of course knowing me, the thing that is most likely to keep me up is my getting really really cold in those damned airplanes. Stacking up on layers of clothing won't help either, it'd only make me uncomfortable.

Now enough whining. I plan to spend a full day and night in London on the way back, so should be arriving home totally rejuvenated. I hope :/

San Felipe de Neri, Albuquerque.

Westminster Abbey, London.

My Multicultural Breakfast

picture's ugly but have to rush so don't have time to edit:)

Items on my breakfast table:

French white cheese
Kuwaiti milk
Swiss via Turkish chocolate powder
Danish butter
German Philadelphia cheese
American honey
Australian Kraft cheese

روضة بلقيس

You know you're old when you KG report turns yellow :)

Deciding to finally make some sense out of the mess I call my den, I came across this interesting piece of evidence.


I don't exactly know why I chose to remove the rest of my name. I'm probably still pretending that my blog identity is still a mystery :)

Kuwait's emir has died

Kuwait's emir, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah, has died at the age of 77, state television reported on Sunday.
The announcement was made in a statement from the royal court carried by the television in the tiny Gulf state, a key U.S. ally and OPEC member.
The emir, who suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2001, was the 13th ruler of a 245-year-old dynasty which has ruled Kuwait since the Anaiza tribe, to which the al-Sabahs belonged, migrated from the Arabian hinterland.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq in 2003 and U.S. calls for change in the Middle East, the ruling family had come under intense pressure from both Islamists and pro-Western liberals to loosen its grip on the government and share power.
Kuwait, a founder OPEC member, enjoys one of the world's highest standards of living, despite its reliance on oil exports, unpredictable oil income and huge losses from the 1990-1991 Iraq occupation.
The Gulf state sits on one tenth of the world's crude oil reserves, or 95 billion barrels.
Used as the main launchpad for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Kuwait hosts up to 30,000 U.S. troops and some 13,000 U.S. citizens live in the country.
Kuwait, which a population of about 2.2 million, has cracked down on Islamists opposing the U.S. military presence there. Diplomats say radical Islam is taking hold among Kuwaiti youth.
In December, a Kuwaiti court sentenced to death six suspected militants linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda for bloody attacks in the country.
The six were among 37 Islamists on trial as members of the "Peninsula Lions" group believed to be linked to al Qaeda in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Yahoo New

The Perfect Dress

Jennifer's wedding day was fast approaching. Nothing could dampen her excitement - not even her parents' nasty divorce. Her mother had found the PERFECT dress to wear and would be the best dressed mother-of-the-bride ever!

A week later, Jennifer was horrified to learn that her father's new young wife had bought the exact same dress! Jennifer asked her to exchange it, but she refused.

"Absolutely not. I look like a million bucks in this dress, and I'm wearing it," she replied.
Jennifer told her mother who graciously said, "Never mind sweetheart. I'll get another dress. After all, it's your special day."

A few days later, they went shopping and did find another gorgeous dress. When they stopped for lunch, Jennifer asked her mother, "Aren't you going to return the other dress? You really don't have another occasion where you could wear it."

Her mother just smiled and replied, "Of course I do, dear. I'm wearing itto the rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding!"


just something to keep my avid fans busy while I continue playing with my template.

Thanks to Shuroq's "try Wordpress, they say it has good templates" and Jackie's "need any help with templates I can hook you up with a few websites with nice templates," I am now addicted to the maze they call html :)

Fun with Template

I'll be working on my template for the next few days, trying out new things, so bare with me.

I leave you to rest here in the meantime:

I wanted this as my background. If only I can remove the dog it'd be perfect.

I hate sending such emails :(

I think you plagiarized your paper. I'll give you your two options:
1) Admit plagiarism. Earn an FA for this course. Case closed.
2) Deny plagiarism. We sit together and you convince me that you actually wrote it. Bare in mind that once you deny plagiarism but I actually prove you wrong, an FA is no longer the only result. If we discuss the paper and you fail to prove it to be yours, I report you to the dean and you suffer the consequences, which might entail your failure in the whole term.

Let me know what action you want to take.

Happy New Year

Last day of class today. A visit to Kaifan to collect mail and students’ paper (and apparently to argue with students about their grades not being well-deserved – their argument: they deserve more; my argument: they deserve less :)

I choose a marag 3adas lunch over going out in order to be faithful to my New Year Resolution to watch my expenditures. Ha-ha. I find myself laughing as I write this. Let’s see how long that lasts.

So now, 17 papers to correct, probably in a second or third version (when even really interesting papers lose their spark), and 10 more papers to correct for the first time, which means I have to struggle with sentence structure and language before I can even attempt to understand the thesis.
Wish me luck.

I’m not liking this coming Eid: two best friends are going away, one on vacation, another for a longer period. I’ll miss them tremendously. Two brothers also leaving with their wives so their kid will spend the vacation at their in-laws, making for a really quiet house at my mom’s.

I used to like Kuwait University

After finding this in my mailbox yesterday I came to accept that this is how things are. Whether I like it or not, our esteemed colleagues/administrators seem to think that it is the business of an academic institution to instill religious beliefs into its students. We might as well shut down the faculty of arts and transfer our students to Sharee3a.

Am I to expect a dress code soon? And will that apply to students only or does it also cover teachers?

And on a separate but related note: دعاء الركوب? Am I still at Kuwait University or is it now some religious institution? A colleague of mine was enraged because I asked my colleagues to consider the implications of these ads by leaving a note in their mailboxes. His/her argument was that I was thrusting my beliefs on them. Isn't the university administration thrusting its beliefs on students when it starts circulating religious messages in any form or shape? It's a university for god's sake, a place of learning. Can't we keep it as just that?
I have a big issue with calling our ministry of education وزارة التربية والتعليم, I don't accept strangers to be in charge of my children's 'tarbiya.'

The Fog

DONT WASTE YOUR TIME!
We didn't even have nachos or popcorn to distract us. I should've gone to see Ornina. The 3 hours spent on King Kong were much more worthy.

Saddam's trial is becoming quite a show. Funny in the beginning but getting on my nerves now. Get it done with already.

Our departmental lunch went well last Wednesday. But maybe not for the waiters at Biella. The poor souls, their service is already bad as it is, imagine having to serve a table of 6, no 10, no 24 who first asked for separate checks (you're joking ma'am, right?) then took over an hour to decide what to order. Of course yours truly totally forgot about that lunch and had lunch with her family at 2 only to have a colleague call and remind her of the department lunch at which time she helped herself with more lunch :)

So what's new in the blog world? I haven't been very blog-friendly lately. What did I miss?

Scars ... grudges ... and chicken

How long does it take for the scars of abuse to disappear? Do they ever go away? Whether it is child abuse, spouse abuse, or even strangers’ abuse, being in an abusive relation or witnessing abusive relationships seem to leave a permanent scar even if that scar is only obvious in one’s lack of inner strength, strength that usually enables us to deal with our shortcomings once we know their roots. Someone dear to me once told me I’m an adult now and should stop using childhood trauma (the term might be an exaggeration here) to justify my adult weaknesses. That person must have a deep reservoir of inner strength. I’m glad they do. But I don’t.

I am one to hold grudges. Even when I try not to, I can’t seem to help it. I have a really bad memory but when someone hurts me I can’t seem to forget. Maybe I forgive, but I almost never forget. Could that be why I don’t remember much from my childhood other than the times I was hurt? My only memory of the book fair that is held in Kuwait every year, and that I am sure was a yearly pilgrimage of my family, is of a dirty old man harassing me. I was fourteen back in the days when fourteen year old girls were actually girls. Or maybe I was just too buried in my sleazy romance novels to notice my bodily desires :). Up to this day I do not enjoy a trip to the book fair as much as I would want to. I even remember what I was wearing that day. Me. The one who wouldn’t remember what she ate for lunch yesterday or what she was wearing for work this morning.

People who lose their temper scare me. They actually scare me no matter how big or small they are. They scare me even when I know they have no intention of harming me. They scare me even when I know they can't hurt me. They scare me simply by heading towards me while they're angry. It's an instant irrational flash of fear that is/can not be explained or even contemplated. A very short glipse into darkness that is quickly chased away by my rationality. But chased away or not, it existed. For that blink of an eye it existed. Before my mind could register it my feelings took hold of it.
How chicken am I?

No Comment

I am a [female] university student ...

and my appearance suits my university.

I learn ... I discuss ... I debate
We compete in loving our university

No Comment. Hell. Please Comment. Please help me understand. Please tell me I don't work for this institution.

Both posters are displayed in Kaifan (داخل الحرم الجامعي)

Thank you cameraman N.M.

مهرجان القرين الثقافي

Last night (Thursday night) I went to Mishrif for a night of music with Ssassa, an Oriental Gypsy band. I haven't been going to many cultural events lately and I thought it's time to get back in the game (Going to Movie Week at Kaifan doesn't count). The music was so lively that it was hard to resist the urge to dance at times. A lebanese friend who was in our group was tempted to get up and do her share of dapka on those tunes. It was an extremely festive mixture of Greek, Turkish, Kosovan, and Macedonian tunes.



I don't know how many more of these qurain events I would want to attent though. I didn't check all their schedule yet.


On a separate note, did winter cancel on us this year or what?