Summer's over

You know it’s the end of summer when:

• I don’t even bother to put the sun shade in the car window any more. The metal inside no longer gets hot enough to burn your skin.
• We can wait outside for the hour between school pick ups.
• We had a picnic in the park last week.
• The water parks have closed (mind you the temperatures were still in the 40’s when they closed, but that’s a Govt. tourism enterprise for you).
• The gardens are springing into life. We have grass outside our place now, and all the usual annuals such as marigolds, petunias, pinks, …
• The kids have to be in winter uniform at school next week!
• We went to a fashion parade last month and they were modeling winter clothes.
• We tell the 3 year old to guess numbers that start with 2 (sometimes 3) when we pass the temperature tower. Not numbers that start with 4. (There’s a building we pass on the way home that has the temperature displayed on it. As we approach everyone in the family guesses a number and we see who is closest.)

• The fact that it’s getting dark now just after 5pm.

Funny how, given the overcast days and the fact that the temperatures are dropping everyone is thinking of winter approaching. Those who have been here for the summer will probably wear winter clothes, just for the variation.

Influx of expats in Kuwait... well someone has to do the work!

For those interested in the population make-up in Kuwait…

Expat influx cuts Kuwaiti count; Asians outnumber all foreigners: study

KUWAIT CITY (Agencies): Kuwait's population rose 6.5 per cent to 2.645 million in the first half of this year, from 2.484 million at the end of 2003, the planning ministry said Tuesday. The Kuwaitis' share of the population dropped from 36.8 per cent at the end of 2003 - the year of the US-led invasion of Iraq that rocked the region - to 35.7 per cent by mid-2004, it said, quoted by the state news agency KUNA. Expatriates made up 1.7 million of the total population on June 30, an 8.2 per cent increase on 1.571 million at the end of last year. In 2003, foreigners rose 6.2 per cent from 1.479 million in 2002.

Asians, who number 987,000, made up 37.3 per cent of the total population and 58 per cent of all expatriates in Kuwait. Many of them work as maids and in menial jobs. Europeans numbered 9,000, Americans 12,000 and Australians some 1,000.
Africans totalled only 3,000. Illegal residents are estimated to be around 108,000 people. There are 581,782 Arab nationals in Kuwait, 405,000 of which are males. As to the workforce during the same period, the report said there are 1,551,000 people working, 1,160,000 of which are males. Kuwaiti workforce
totaled at 291,000 with 176,000 males while non-Kuwaiti workforce was 81 per cent reaching 1,261,984 people. Non-Arab workforce was at 907,000 with the Asian community having the lion's share. The European workforce was at 5,000 while the
Americans are at 6,000 followed by the Australians with 538.

Well thanks to John Howard’s unstinting support for the Bush regime, Aussies seem to be punching above their weight in world publicity-terms, and are now even given prominence in Kuwait’s population statistics. So there’s now about 1,000 Australians in Kuwait – I wouldn’t be surprised if half of them are kiwis! (we don’t really mind that our Aussie neighbours get all the attention, … no really).

But what's really astounding is that Kuwaiti's only make up 18.7% of Kuwait's workforce... and if you dig deeper you'll find that 90-95% of Kuwaitis draw a Government salary. Yet, my private sector employer has a Kuwaitisation target of 59% rising to 65% in 2007... and so with unrealistic targets, guess what happens.

Aaaagh... Eid at last

There so much good material to write about and yet there is so little time… maybe the Eid holidays will provide a good opportunity to have a blogging splurge. We’ve a number of activities planned for these Eid holidays though, given that we have decided to stay at home, rather than join the estimated 20% of the population that are leaving Kuwait for a break. Actually, the subject of the Eid holiday itself is a bit of a laugh… what a crazy situation, where you don’t know which days are officially holidays until the last minute.

Figure this one out. My employer, following the Government’s dictat sent the following memo yesterday…

On the occasion of Eid Al Fitter (sic), xxx will be closed during the Eid Holiday as follows:

- If the first day of Eid coincides on Saturday 13/11/2004, the xxx will be closed till Monday 15/11/2004 and work will be resumed on Tuesday & Wednesday 16-17/11/2004. The xxx will be closed again on Thursday 18/11/2004.

- If the first day of Eid coincides on Sunday 14/11/2004, the xxx will be closed till Wednesday 17/11/2004, and work will be resumed on Thursday 18/11/2004.

So we could have 3 days off, or 4 days off, depending on whether it’s deemed that they’ve we’ve feasted fasted enough… let’s hope it’s cloudy on Friday night. But why a holiday on Thursday instead of Tuesday, if the first day of Eid is decided to be on Saturday instead of Sunday?

And because I’m too lazy to write too much about the peculiarities of Eid, I’ll let Mahmood explain more about it here.

It’s probably not widely known outside the Gulf, that if you’re caught breaking the dawn to dusk fasting law, i.e., no one is allowed to eat or drink during daylight hours, you could be punished by spending time in prison, before being fined & deported. Of course, each year some poor labourer from the sub-continet is caught and made an example of. The ones that suffer the most are of course those that have the most to lose, those labouring in the sun all day for a pittance. Wait until Ramadan occurs in the 50 degree heat of July or August...

And of course, for most secular muslims, Ramadan is a time of changing the body clock, feasting at night, and consequently putting on weight, being deprived of sleep, turning up to the office for a few hours, but don't expect any real work to be done… I guess this is what you get with a state religion rigidly enforced, originating from the dark ages and which can’t be changed as this would challenge the rationale of a whole way of life.

For what it's worth I think fasting is a good concept (and God recommends it), but fasting as I understand it is refraining from eating. During fasting you should continue to drink water to purify your body... it's just plain unhealthy to go without water all day! Fasting, as with prayer, should be a personal experience with God, or shared with other believers - not something mandated by the state, or a public spectacle which only goes to show outward piousness. It's what is on the inside that counts to God, not what's on the outside!