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!

Too bad if you get caught up in an Auto accident

So now it seems as those all those minor bumps & scrapes that are part & parcel of owning a car in Kuwait are going to have to go unrepaired, until someone makes a good go at it and you feel it's worth the bureaucratic hassle of getting a police report & making an insurance claim. This in the Arab Times recently...

'Insists on police documents before repairing cars wrecked by accidents'

KUWAIT CITY: Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad was recently quoted as saying according to a decision issued earlier car mechanics and garages are forbidden from carrying out repairs on cars damaged by accidents unless such car owners produce documents issued to that effect by a police investigator or a police officer, reports Al-Watan daily. The decision also says vehicles involved in accidents outside the country should be proved by official documents issued by the country where the accident occurred and the same must be authenticated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before the vehicle is sent for repairs.

What a scam. I try and avoid this type of institutionalised time-wasting as much as possible as I don't have the patience. Pity those that get bashed on a trip through Saudi... The same article goes on to say...

Meanwhile, Al-Anba daily said the General Traffic Department (GTD) carried out surprise inspections and issued citations to 411 garages for violating GTD rules and regulations. The daily also said the GTD collected KD 19 million from traffic violators and this year the figure is expected to reach KD 25 million. The daily added the GTD has collected KD 13 million until end June 2004.

So, quick back of a cigarette packet calculation... (bad metaphor, I don't smoke), that's KD10 (about $35) for every man, woman & child living in Kuwait. Given the number of actual drivers in Kuwait then it's more like KD25 each. If you have lots of wasta then you're probably not going to pay anything anyway, so that drives up the per capita contributions of those that probably can least afford to pay...

Given the amount of crazies on the road and the lack of action by police to stop them.... just a thought but, traffic violations are probably Kuwait's second largest income earner... and it has the potential to be so much more! So forget about encouraging Tourism or other ways of diversifying the economy away from its total dependence on oil... let's keep on employing Kuwaitis into the police force and get them out in those squad cars that are typically gathering dust in carparks. Let's really put Kuwait on the map as the highest per capita income earner from traffic violations... and we'll have the added bonus of cutting down on traffic related accidents and deaths!

Now if we can only deal with the Ministry of MisEducation and get agreement that all schools don't really need to start at the same time each morning, leading to traffic jams during the school run. Wishful thinking perhaps.

IKEA opening in Saudi

This story is a few days old now, but wow, talk about desperation. I know IKEA is popular, but the cheap pine furniture isn't worth dieing for...

Three die in Saudi shop stampede

IKEA employees carry an injured man out of the furniture shop. A stampede of hundreds of shoppers in western Saudi Arabia has left at least three people crushed to death.
A Saudi man and a Pakistani man were among those killed, officials in the port city of Jeddah said.
The incident occurred after shoppers rushed into a branch of Ikea to claim a limited number of credit vouchers being offered to the public...

...One shopper among the crowd said barriers had broken and security guards were unable to cope. He likened the scene to crowds at a rock concert and said he'd never seen anything similar in the country before...

Given that there are no rock concerts in Saudi, maybe an IKEA store opening is a good way of letting off steam after all.

Trapped & Hopeless in Kuwait

Just came across this article in the Kuwait Times.

By Muna Al-Fuzai: It happens every day somewhere in Kuwait. A 'cleaning worker' comes up to you, greeting you in a low voice and with a shy look, asking you to give him money. Now, you have to choose between contributing to the physical and psychological suffering this poor soul will endure in the event that you do not give him any money, or giving him a few fils, or a dinar or two. Yet, you know that he will have to collect more than you can give just to pay the KD 10 minimum demanded daily by the money collector who employs him...

I was unaware of this phenomenen in Kuwait, but it ain't surprising. As Muna says later in the article, hopefully publicity of this problem will help in leading "... concerned authorities to intervene and end this horrid practice, which is an affront to Islam and to Allah Himself." Rather than having an indigenous poverty issue, what makes Kuwait different to other societies is that here, the poor are imported to further exploit.

Small-time bribery & corruption

From Bahrain's Gulf Daily News, 18th August, comes this classic snippet of news.

Motorist jailed for bid to bribe inspector

MOTORIST has been jailed for a year for trying to bribe a vehicle inspector to declare his car fit for the road when it was not. The Indian man, aged 30, will be deported at the end of his sentence.

He denied the charge but was convicted by the Lower Criminal Court, where he was also found guilty of failing to transfer the ownership of the vehicle into his name.

The defendant was arrested at the General Directorate of Traffic vehicle inspection centre in May this year. He had taken his car in for another inspection after it was failed earlier because of several faults, the court heard. But he had not fixed the faults and instead tried to bribe the inspector with BD20 to clear it anyway.

The man, a cold store worker, told police that the inspector asked for BD20, which he thought was the inspection charge. He said he at first said he only had BD5, but when the inspector insisted, he gave him BD20.

But the inspector said the man followed him into his office and offered him money after he told him to come back when he had fixed the car. "He gave me BD5 and I did not reply to him," said the inspector. "Then he gave me BD10 and I told him BD20 and I would sign the paper. He put BD20 in my pocket and I immediately informed my superiors."

Hold on here, if a Vehicle Inspector asks for BD20 to sign the paper, isn't that asking for a bribe, ... surely there is an admission of guilt here by the Vehicle Inspector! If accurately reported, this is a good example of the way the legal system operates in Bahrain. Cynics might say that if the Vehicle Inspector was an ex-pat, and the motorist Bahraini, the outcome would be very different.

I guess this also shows how difficult it is to stamp out corruption when you have one person's word against another's.

Movie addict

Can a Kuwaiti reader help me understand what's with Ali Bebhehani? Is the Arab Times so desperate for Letters to the Editor that it prints everything Ali has to say about movies he’s watched? It's not even a review of movies... it's just ramblings about movies he's watched in the past. Given that the editor, Ahmed Jarallah seems to not be too afraid to print his or other musings on controversial topics, can’t he do better and print some of the other letters/emails he receives? Who’s paying who the favor here?

Talking movies, we’ve bought a stack of DVDs recently from Carrefour in Dubai and an ex-pat reducing their collection. I’m not usually one to see a film more than once, but buying is a lot more attractive these days with original DVDs (not the dubious copies easily available locally for KD2) more reasonable than going to a Kuwaiti cinema, with the added bonus that the film hasn’t been cut to pieces by the censor. For those unfamiliar with censorship in Kuwait, kissing & hugging or any outward indication of love is out, let alone sex scenes; whereas the more violence the better! Then there are some films like Fahrenheit 9/11 (offensive to Saudi royal family & our friends the American regime) or Passion of Christ that don’t have any sexual connotations but are banned altogether.

If you ever wanted to see what the rest of the world thinks of movies I just came across this article in the NZ Herald which provides links to all the websites out there that provide movie reviews.

The perils of hashing in Kuwait

Forget about dodging the landmines, it seems that one of the hares has trouble evading eager locals whilst setting the run for the Hash. As reported in the Arab Times...

Woman detained: Police recently detained a Canadian woman for four hours for allegedly possessing heroin and released her after apologizing for their mistake, reports Al-Anba daily. Records indicate, the woman was arrested after an unidentified Kuwaiti man informed the Operations Department of the Interior Ministry that a blonde woman jogging along the main road in Riqqa had thrown some white powder every 50 metres.

The white powder in question is flour, which is used here to set the run. If you're unfamiliar with the running club with a drinking problem, you can find more info here.

An all-women industrial city?

Meanwhile in the Magic Kingdom, we hear that Saudi authorities are planning an all women industrial city…

Saudi plans women's city
Published: 13 June 2004, Gulf Daily News

RIYADH: Saudi authorities have approved the establishment of an all-women industrial city that will host training centres and employ approximately 10,000 women at more than 80 factories, the city's main investor said yesterday.
Hessa Aloun, who runs an investment company and is also a member of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce, said that a Chinese and a Malaysian company have already signed agreements to start training programmes that will kick off in early 2005.
"I wanted to have a place where there would be training centres for women, next to factories and companies - a fully-fledged industrial city for women," said Aloun.
The city will be built about 10km from the centre of the Red Sea port city of Jeddah.

I'm all for equality of the sexes, but this is plainly a stupid idea. What is Aloun thinking of? Another large-scale sweatshop for Asian female labour? Surely, Aloun's not thinking that Saudi women want to, or will be allowed to, work?

Dame Silvia in Kuwait

Dame Silvia Cartwright (NZ's Governor General is the Queen's representative in NZ for those unfamiliar with NZ’s political set-up), was in Kuwait for 3 days after attending Reagan's funeral in Washington. Thankfully, I managed to get an invite to a reception at Bayan Palace to meet Dame Silvia. Very nice lady… My darling wife even made a point of filling Dame Silvia in on the fact that slavery is alive and kicking in Kuwait…, but I didn’t expect that this subject would make it into Dame Silvia’s subsequent speeches. She did get a write up in the local rag though.

Kuwait Times 15th June 2004
Cartwright praises Kuwaiti women

KUWAIT: Governor General of New Zealand, Silvia Cartwright, emphasised in two separate press interviews yesterday that Kuwaiti women are capable of playing their role in all domains. Interviewed by Al-Rai Al-Aam daily, Cartwright indicated that Kuwaiti women could occupy important ruling posts like the women in her country since Kuwaiti women are well-educated and are ready to fully participate in public affairs. She noted that the aim of her visit is to boost the distinctive friendly bilateral relations between Kuwait and New Zealand. She added that she had hoped to visit Kuwait for a long time. She also hopes that this visit will further develop bilateral relations. Cartwright praised the talks she held in Kuwait, saying they were very useful because they covered the trade exchange, what her country could offer the region and how New Zealand could cooperate with Kuwait in the future. Meanwhile, the New Zealand official told Al-Anbaa daily that her country hopes that peace and stability would be achieved in Iraq and that New Zealand asks for UN participation in spreading peace in Iraq. She pointed out that groups from New Zealand are carrying out humanitarian missions in Basra, like providing water and food although her country is not a member in the international coalition in Iraq. Cartwright clarified that New Zealand has a neutral stance towards the international disputes, such as the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. She praised and supported the international reform initiatives in the Middle East as they guarantee the democracy, hoping that the countries of the region seriously consider the reform.

So let's see if this message helps in a country where women don't have the opportunity to vote.

Kia ora from Kuwait 

Kia ora from Kuwait

Finally, I have got around to something I should have done a long time ago - a means to keep family and friends all around the world informed on what we're up to, and give them and others some of the daily fun and hassles of living in Kuwait. (And to tell it like it is).

Kuwait has got to be one of the weirdest places in the world. This is a country (or in effect one city) of 2.5 million where the rich/poor divide could not be more pronounced, and where the oil-induced riches have been able to pretty much corrupt a people in the space of a few decades. I know this is a gross generalization, and I know Kuwaitis that are educated and have lived in other parts of the world and see Kuwait for what it is - a pretty screwed up country - and wonder what can be done to change things for the better. Mostly though, educated Kuwaiti's resign themselves to the fate of their country, and using their material wealth, manage to escape for several months of the year to more pleasant places.

The institutionalised religion in these parts gives an outward appearance of piety, but there is an internal moral corruptness and the absolution of responsibility for external circumstances. (You could probably say the same thing about those from the West though). As my Muslim Palestinian colleague says to me in a taxi the other day after a rant about how screwed up Kuwait is (he has only recently come back, having lived here in its heyday, the 1980's, pre-Iraq invasion ... "You know, Kuwait and Saudi have the highest concentration of mosques per capita." I don't think he got the connection that I immediately made in my mind. Unfortunately, Kuwait and Saudi are not very good advertisements for Islam.