Together Time

(Written November 2011) The fact that my husband and I can now claim that we have managed to get lost in Egypt, England, Tanzania, Italy, and now Kuwait, not to mention countless states in the U.S., has quite possibly elevated us from our mere “Getting Lost - Professional” status, to “Getting Lost - Master”.  We’re awaiting the judges’ final decision.

Now, in general we don’t mind getting lost.  It’s truly inevitable, even with all of the gadgetry available.  And moving to a new city, let alone new country, pretty much ensures that we’ll spend a few weeks, or more, getting lost.  For example, this past Saturday we made the simple mistake of turning left, when we should have turned right, trying to attend a brunch we’d been invited to.  We knew something was amiss when we were told to look for the villas on the right, but all we saw was the Arabian Gulf.  “Do they live on a houseboat?” I asked.  “They must be close to the border of Iraq, considering the distance we’ve traveled,” muttered hubby.  We were both wrong; and after a 90-minute drive that should have taken us 12 minutes, we corrected our mistake, bade farewell to the border guards and finally found the house.

The previous weekend we had taken my husband’s new boss and his wife, who had just arrived, out to a large supermarket we’d been to twice.  Coming from the boss’s neighborhood (a new area for us), however, spun us completely in circles, but after driving in a few more circles and tacking on an hour-long side-jaunt to the airport and back, we finally made it. 

We were told when we arrived in Kuwait that it really wasn’t possible to get truly lost, “You just might find yourself not where you want to be.”  Well, we have been doing a bang-up job of repeatedly finding ourselves where we don’t really want to be.  An added frustration is that Kuwait City is relatively small.  I have heard and read several comments that Kuwait itself is just a little smaller than New Jersey, so driving around Kuwait City, would be like navigating Trenton – eventually you should get it.  We’re still waiting. But in the meantime, despite our lack of bearings, we’re doing our best to look at all these driving adventures as “together time,” with periodic bouts of the crankies and some irrationality thrown in for fun. And next time we'll bring brownies for the border guards.

Deranged Moments and Lessons Learned

(Written October 2011) So I am slowly settling in to life as an expat again.  I’m trying to set up some type of schedule or routine, which will ensure that I shower daily.  I ventured out yesterday in a taxi to a new grocery store because I heard they had some higher-quality cat food.  They had a few cans, which I grabbed, but otherwise it was a little too posh for my comfort level, and my initial intention of grabbing some fresh veg for dinner was quashed when I saw their broccoli was $7 a head.  All in all, the cat food, some bread and juice cost me as much as the taxi there and back – about $14.  But at least I showered.

I then spent an hour in the afternoon doing some tree pruning and “picking up” the yard.  In hindsight, I should have reversed these activities, as the heat of day was peaking around 96 degrees while I was out huffing about.  I started by trimming off some of the smaller branches from the trees that interfere with our gates.  This was all well and good, until I got a little too ambitious and snapped the scissors in half on a thicker branch.  So, feeling the pruning moment had passed, I decided to check out the sidewalk area that wraps around two sides of our corner villa.

We have two gates, one for pedestrians and one for cars.  We primarily use the car one, so as I walked out of the pedestrian gate, I was surprised to see that the sidewalk on this side of the house was littered with all matter of, well, matter.  There were broken concrete blocks strewn about, dead leaves piled up from our trees, miscellaneous paper trash, an old tire, dried palm leaves, and a broken kitchen trash can complete with trash.  So I started by dragging all the big stuff around the corner to the driveway, where we put our trash out (which is picked up seven days a week, thank goodness).  I dragged the trash can, adding bits of paper trash along the way.  I rolled the tire up the sidewalk and around the corner.  Then I lugged the concrete blocks over to the small palm trees along the road, and stacked them up.  I dragged all the dried palm fronds around to the pile, all the while trying not to stab myself with their four-inch spines.  The highlight was probably when I had to drag a large rotting wooden pallet, using a broom as a tether.  I then started sweeping all the sand and dust into the road, hoping the entire time that no one came running out of their villas to admonish me.

As I worked, I looked around at our neighbors’ sidewalks; they were relatively spotless and trash-free (we do have one neighbor a few houses down who has an interesting collection of ever-changing living room suites displayed on his front lawn, from wicker, to fabric, to wooden – he’s either remodeling, or eccentric, only time will tell).  The other thing I noticed, was that no one was out and about.  Other than the steady stream of cars going by (why are there so many cars driving through a neighborhood?), I was the only human out.  I do realize that as the “lady of the house” (which brings to mind calling cards, smelling salts and hoop skirts), the last place I should be is outside sweating profusely and lugging about old tires.  Never in Kuwait would you see anyone but a housekeeper or gardener out doing manual labor.  I’m sure my behavior was quite scandalous and I hope I have not ruined my husband’s reputation as a manly man unable to control his sadly deranged wife.

This morning, after opening the gates for hubby to leave for work, I decided to water some of our trees while I was out and the weather was a cool 82 degrees.  As I turned on the hose, I noted our front porch area was covered in dust from a mini-sandstorm we’d had the week prior.  My attempts to brush the dust off with the ancient yard broom I found, had been less than successful.  So I figured I should hose it off properly; which I did, with great gusto.  Unfortunately I found that the slope of the marble at our front door wasn’t sufficient enough for the water to run off down the step, so I continued hosing generously, then dropped the hose to water some trees, while grabbing the ancient broom to swish the water off the porch.  All was accomplished and I finished watering the trees and went inside.

As I entered, two of our cats, Chuckles and Louie, were sitting on the dining room rug looking at me as if to say, “It wasn’t me!”  I looked down to see a huge lake of water across the marble floor heading in to the living room.  Apparently our front door needs some sealing.  So I grabbed some towels and started mopping up, all under the watchful, but not helpful, gaze of Chuckles and Louie.  I managed to soak it all up and ran to the laundry room with an armful saturated and dripping towels.  Then I went to my “fix it” list, and under “broken light above stove” added “seal front door”.  Never-ending fun in the life of an expat.

Oven one; Julia null

(Written October 2011) Well, I’ve been bested by our oven.  And it’s not even like I was trying to make a vegan tofurkey feast or anything.  It was a damn frozen pizza that I managed to scorch into charcoal.  And this pizza, unlike our first, even had degrees in Celsius, so my only conclusion can be that we have a super-sonic Easy Bake oven (and yes, I did follow the instructions correctly).

Previously, we had discovered that it cooks things incredibly fast.  Roasting eggplant in a regular oven can take a good 20-30 minutes.  But in ours, it’s done in 10.  You have to just sit in the kitchen and watch, because you can’t just set the timer and walk away.  It’s proving to always be done far earlier than expected (lesson learned, at the cost of one decimated pizza).

Part of the problem is that we’re still figuring out the symbols on the dial.  There are three dials, the left is degrees in Celsius (from 0 to 250), the middle is the timer, and the right is the oven settings.  The one we’ve tried with success is labeled “pizza” and seems to work for most things.  My husband managed to confirm that the light bulb-looking one does nothing more than turn the light on (and unlike the original Easy Bake ovens, does not appear to be able to cook a chocolate cake).  The remaining nine symbols are a variety of squiggles, dots, little fans or clover, and parentheses that have fallen on their side and look like burger buns.  So I guess I’ll just have to throw in some eggplant and cook a batch with each setting to see what it does.  For now, I’ll throw everything in under “pizza” and will sit on the kitchen chairs with Chuckles (his latest favorite spot to sit-in-wait) and we’ll just watch the water boil, so to speak.

This issue with new appliances and fixtures, continues to vex us throughout the house.  It took us two weeks to figure out that each bathroom has a switch for hot water.  Now, when we first arrived, this wasn’t an issue, because the cold water was so hot it was all you needed.  But with the drastic drop in temperature a few days ago (it dropped below 100), we did find that we could use a little hot water.  My husband figured it out by hitting all of the five switches outside the bathrooms and tracing their use.

That’s another thing.  For some of the rooms, the accompanying light switches are not actually in the room you want.  So you have to backtrack into the hall, turn the light on, and resume entry.  Our downstairs bathroom has the handy feature of having all the switches on the far side of the first room.  So you have to walk into the dark double sink area, turn on the switch, and then continue into the half-bath.  And if you want to turn on a table lamp, make sure you’ve turned the plug on.  Each wall socket has its own on/off switch.  And if you have need for a power strip, then you have the socket on/off switch, plus an on/off switch for each plug on the strip, and then the appliance switch.  Great fun for those with a switch-fetish.  This is the same for the washing machine, the dryer, the fridge, the dishwasher, and the oven, or “cooker” as it’s called on the switch.  It took me a befuddling few minutes to figure this out with the washing machine, until I wandered back into the hallway and saw two suspicious switches.  I flicked both until I figured it out.  Then I went and grabbed my handy Dymo label maker and labeled one “washer” and one “dryer” for the next tenants (aren’t I kind?).

I have great faith that by the time we leave we’ll have it all figured out to perfection and will cease in the torching of various frozen dinners, and will only take two attempts to use an appliance.

Expat Adjustments, Again

(Written October 2011)  

As an ex-pat, adjusting to life overseas in a new place goes in waves.  There’s the initial shock and excitement (possibly fear, depending on the locale).  Everything’s new, you have to learn where the light switches are, how to use the oven, and get used to new sounds (I was all flummoxed one night recently when I heard a thwup, thwup sound and could not place it – turns out it was just my husband walking up our marble stairs in his slippers; another time I heard a repetitive knock, knock, knock and finally figured out it was Louie the kitten racing along the marble floors with his gimpy knees hitting with each inchworm-tug).

Then there’s the neighborhood and getting around, finding shops and stores, maybe do a bit of wandering to see what’s in walking distance.  In our case in a suburb of Kuwait City, we have a handful of American fast food restaurants, including KFC and “Bizza Hut” – there is no “p” in Arabic – and an odd shop that sells fruit, vegetables and eggs (that’s it).  Next I'll start to wander out beyond our neighborhood and see what the city has to offer and figure out just how we’re going to shape our life for the next few years.

When we were in Cairo, it came down to how much can you cram in?  In three years we did a lot, a lot more than most people, and still we left with some un-finished things on our “Fun things to do” list. (Because of the revolution and subsequent evacuation, I never did make it to St. Catherine’s monastery on Mount Sinai, nor to the beach resorts of Dahab or Sharm el Sheikh. Lesson learned? Don’t leave things until the end, you can watch all your DVDs your last few months when you’ve seen and done everything else.)

In Kuwait, things will be a little different.  We were forewarned to bring “hobbies” with us, because there was not a lot to do.   So, being semi-professional dilettantes, we came fully armed.  My husband always has his language interests, and can forever add to his growing collection of sentences in German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and the ever-popular Latin.  Which is ever so helpful when we need to say, “No, I don’t need a blood transfusion,” in a variety of situations and countries.  He also just added electric guitar to his musical interests (which will look very nice leaning against the wall with the acoustic guitar and the three ouds we already own).

For my hobbies, first and foremost is writing.  Well, that’s not true.  First and foremost, when it happens, will be adopting a child and figuring how to be a mom.  I figure that’ll take up most of my time.  But in the interim, between writing, reading “how to be a mom” books, some photography (though Kuwait has barely a smidge of the amount of interesting things to capture compared to Cairo), and checking out what Kuwait has to offer, I’m sure I’ll be able to keep myself busy.

Kuwait may not have the tangible 4,000-year-old history that Egypt offered, but it has about 4,000 different clubs/classes/courses in which we can partake.  I just got the monthly expat e-magazine for October and of the 49 pages, there are piles upon piles of things to get you out of the house.  There are salsa, tango and reiki lessons, classes in Arabic, French, Spanish, Italian, as well as a request for a Chinese-speaker to help someone learn English.  We can join scrapbook clubs, or writing groups, take scuba lessons, or join a multitude of mommy-and-me activities.  We can attend a Ceilidh, which is a Gaelic gathering and dance (attire is “Scottish/smart casual” – do they make pinstripe kilts?), see a showing of “The Winter’s Tale” at Kuwait’s Shakespeare Theater, or even RSVP for Thanksgiving sponsored by the Canadian Embassy (eh?).  We can rent a Harley for a day, join in an expat yacht-share, or even join the Filipino Badminton Association (though I’m not sure if there’s a nationality requirement there).

If nothing there strikes our fancy (imaging you’d have to be a chronic agoraphobic to not find anything), we can always just join the throngs and head to the mall.  Even then, we’ll have to decide which mall to go to as there are dozens.  I’ll save the mall assessments for another time, since I’ve only been to three in my first two weeks, and I don’t feel I have a fair impression of them yet.  But needless to say, mall-walking could be a daily activity here with few repeats.

The two biggest issues for us here in Kuwait will be 1) deciding what we want to do/be/try, and 2) getting off our butts and doing it.  Inertia has a heavy pull, so therein lies the first battle.  Now, where was that yacht-sharing ad?

Cupcakes in Cairo

So we've had a few birthdays lately and my desire to play with cupcakes beyond penguins has taken over.

Now, they're no "Martha" cupcakes, but they tasted good and looked... well... colorful.

The first batch were supposed to be pink flamingos, but the laffy taffy I used to mold their necks and heads slowly fell over, so within 15 minutes they were all napping flamingos. I did try to place a fez on one or two, but with the extra weight they were definite nappers.

My next endeavor was camels -- it really was inevitable. So I used Twinkies (even though their not vegetarian, which just meant I didn't eat any) for the heads and humps, and if you look closely, each camel head has corresponding two hump-cupcakes behind it. Yes, I had some color issues (how do you make beige, or rather, how do you make a second batch of beige to match the first??).

Anyway, I'm sure there will be more cupcake antics to come. Until I flit to my next hobby, of course.