Pics Plus

more likes:

+emails and blog comments from folks back home.
+my sisters taste in music. Turns out she likes Screamy music AND Justin Timberlake. More than just a coincidence...proof we are related.
+playing with my camera. If it isn't sandy tomorrow i hope to go out and take some photos of the house and street for the bliz-og

Me-no-likey...

-while amusing, the Kuwaiti hipster haircuts are super obnoxious. Even more so because its pretty safe to assume that the kids rocking those styles are real assholes. not just your everyday run of the mill jerk, but the super pretentious 90210 dipfucks. Lots of hairdos with fohawks, darthvader helmet, and neo mullets. They also walk around the mall with sunglasses on. Going out here makes me want to fight people. Like really..what would happen if i started a fight in the mall with a group of Ku-wipsters. i am pretty sure i would kicks ass.

ok, sorry to go off on a rant but i dont have anything against people with stylish haircuts, or styles but these people have hairdos..like ultra primped out, fanned, blown, teased, grease tipped, dyed and product laced. More product than personality. what makes it worse is knowing that its all for nothing. People dont talk to each other at the mall. As bad as it is in the US people not talking to folks they dont know its about a million times worse. My impression is that if you are a young person here and you do see someone you know you still don't go up to them and say hi. Its like, you go to the mall, with a group of people and stare at other people. and thats it. so pathetic. I really hope i find a group of people to play soccer with soon.

-Not being able to call folks back home. I would love to call you guys but my dads phone is the only one that can dial internationally. The only time that its really good to call you folks is late at night here and Baba is usually MIA in the PM.

-I am also getting sick i think.

ok..some more pics.















more proof we are related
















A photo i got of Lujain at the hotel















View of Bahrain from the hotel we were staying in.















One of the markets we visited in Bahrain. This was of the day we left.




















Lujain at the market















Baba at the Hotel















Mosque in Bahrain















Lujain and I looking tough

Right now i am at a cafe at Marina mall with my sister. a mall by the Gulf Coast. We are just chillin, grabbing some post lunch drinks. She is drinking mocha frapachino and i have a berry something or other without dairy. not that exciting. Today i had an "interview." I sat with the Corporate Social Responsibility manager at a company here in Kuwait. My cousin set me up with her to talk about future "employment opportunities." While i find the idea of corporate responsibility laughable I did appreciate my conversation with her. And it was nice of my cousin to arrange a meeting with one of his colleagues for me. We talked for about an hour and a half about our families and mixed nationalities (She is a Venezuelan Latina married to a Kuwaiti). Turns out she has a son named Meshari. We also talked about her job position and the idea of corporate responsibility. She regularly travels to Africa to places like Sudan, Uganda, Ghana, and helps assess the situations there, and makes recommendations on how her company can responsibly help the area develop. I think she also is involved in reviewing UN recommendations for development for her company.

well, cuz im pressed for time, lujain is finishing up the last of her whip cream, here are some lists;

Kewl stuff:

+the way my sister says cool, somewhere between cool and towel
+the weather, ohmygod i forgot what its like to be outside and not be shaking so hard your back hurts
+"Pride of Baghdad" Graphic novel by Brian K Vaughn. Its really good. A fast read but very worthwhile. It always upsets me to finish one of his books. The art is really good too.
+Joe Hill's "20th Century Ghosts." A collection of short stories. Really well done and unique. His voice and ideas are fresh, modern, but linked to old school horror writing. This collection comes across as very ranged but solid.
+The food. I get hungry just thinking about how good lunch was today. It is also relatively easy to ignore food with dairy and gluten.
+Seeing my grandmother, of course.
+i know it sounds lame but this ipod shuffle thing has really saved my ass a couple times. Beirut and Gnarles Barkley fit in really well here

Not so much...

-Driving in kuwait. Its exciting, but i now understand why coffee and tea with insane amounts of caffeine is so popular here. You cant just be awake and drive in kuwait, you need an ultra-awareness. You need to be able to smell the accident thats about to happen in front of you. I also got lost today for about 2 hours.
-The malls. its just a regular mall..with 10 Starbucks and two H&Ms.
-My arabic sucks

More soon.

Borders to Bahrain

Its all about cruising through Saudi Arabian desert to the tunes of my dad's collection of 70's hits. So surreal. There is nothing like looking at miles, and miles of open, sandy desert while the Beegee's scream stayin' alive. Well, at least yesterday it was, today it was all about sitting through hours and hours of customs and car trip while the rest of my family screamed at each other in Arabic. Luckily I had my shuffle with me...man that thing can be a life saver.







So, a couple days ago My father Baba, step-mother Khalti-Nabila, sister Lujain and I all piled into my dads car and we drove 4 hours through Saudi Arabia to Bahrain. All in all an amazing trip. I wish we had more time there, i wish i wasn't so jet-lagged, and i also wish i was traveling with folks whose idea of sightseeing isn't mall hopping. There is nothing more frustrating than traveling for hours just to find yourself in another mall that looks exactly like the one you left at home (except that people smoke in these malls). However, i do have to admit that one of the BEST MEALS OF MY LIFE i got in a mall in Saudi Arabia. it sounds rediculous but its true. I wish i had a picture of the place so i could put it up here but i was so delirious from how good it was it didnt dawn on me. It was soo god damned good that I worry for the mans soul who owns that place. How the hell did he make chicken and rice taste like that? I am sure there is a sketchy answer in there somewhere, and if there is i dont want to hear about it. The place is so good that people travel from Kuwait and Bahrain, hours, just to sit in a cafeteria, just like you would see in any mall in the states, and eat from this Persian vendor's wonderful, wonderful food.

So, after that we went to Bahrain, i secretly hoped to run into Michael Jackson but we had no such luck. The King of Pop must be celebrating the 25th year of Thriller somewhere else. Instead we spent the evening exploring Bahrain's Old Town, which is essentially an oldschool marketplace. after that we went back to the hotel for the rest of the night. The next day we drove around a bit, checking out the island and stopping in at a really nice seafood restaraunt before we left. We also stopped at another market long enough for Baba to get a parking ticket and for Lujain and I to walk around a bit on our own. This was my favorite part of the trip. Lujain on her own is really quite sweet and helpful, friendly and fun to be around. We joke around in English and she does her best to teach me Arabic without losing her patience or making fun of me too much. When we are around her parents its another story; there is alot more screaming and whining involved, conversations in Arabic I don't really follow (or want to). Of course they are the ones arguing, i really have no idea whats going on, and do my best to seem as neutral as possible. I know that some of this is natural, growing pains of a 10 year old but I cant help but feel like i am directly to blame in some way. There is definitely some jealousy issues going on. It sucks feeling like I am in a competition with my 10 year old sister for my fathers attention, I'm sure she feels the same way. I am glad that its not always like that though. Lujain and I on our own get along great. the other day we were reading together, playing pool, and when we are out she never acts up too badly. She loves Beirut (the band) and we have made plans to drive around the city and take pictures as well as find new places for us to go reading together. I am really looking forward to those trips, and like being an older brother for a younger sister. I think I'm good at it, i hope she thinks so too.
















So, what I learned about Bahrain:
-its an island
-the weather there is more humid than kuwait. so, this time of year its a bit cooler but more comfortable. Sumer time must really suck there.
-a decent amount of motorcycles.
-car accidents everywhere
-it is the closest place for me to go and get a legally alcoholic beverage.
-it has a much more metropolitan feel to it. Especially compared to where Ive been in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. More crowded feeling, more diverse, more things going on, more laid back. At least that was my impression. I would definitely go back.


Jetlag sucks. Alot. Its hard to sleep, its hard to be awake, and it fucks with your appetite big time. When trying to sleep, it feels like there is a string, a bass string along my spine that someone has plucked just once and it is just continuously vibrating. When my eyes are closed, and i am as still as possible I can feel these vibrations going off in my fingers, at my elbows, behind me knees and the tips of my ears. My palms tingle. I can hear my heartbeat too, but its a separate rhythm, more steady. Jetlag sucks.

(ok..really tired, lots of photos to put up but im too exhausted to spend the time to do it. Thanks to Lauren for giving me this awesome camera for Christmas which i used A BUNCH. All these pics were taken by me except for the one i have used for my profile. That was taken by Lujain.)

Oh bips..im in Kuwait

Yep, i made it. Its about 2 in the am here and im fighting off sleep so i can update this thing. Ive never kept a blog before, at least nothing more than livejournal, so i hope I can keep up with this thing while i am in Kuwait.

So, there is something unnatural about strapping myself into a giant metallic flying tube with wings and hurling yourself across time and space at 700 miles per hour , tens of thousands of feet up in the air, for several hours upon end. I just cant seem to put my finger on it.

-----Mars Volta Review----

So i woke up a couple times thinking i was going to die on the plane. Then i realized it wasn't the flight that was freaking my out but the massive amounts of Mars Volta I had been listening to. While their latest cd, 'Bedlam,' is a damn good one i have to admit it is damn creepy. And i did think to myself "why the hell did you bring this on a plane with you." Yep, for those of us familiar with the myth of the cd; ghosts powerful enough to last centuries and lure drug addicts from Texas to Israel to pick up an ancient boardgame at some yardsale pure madness, big enough to drive grown musicians to the brink of their careers and sanity.. and i decide to cram it all into my teeny tiny Ipod shuffle and listen to it for a couple hours isolated on a twelve hour flight. what was i thinking. And then with my earphones on i notice guitar riffs that echo each other perfectly going off in each of my ears, one about a quarter of a second behind the other, while the most punkyfunked out drums are blasting away at the middle of my brain and Cedric is being as hauntingly cryptic as he's ever been wailing about conventicles and sanctuaries and were those dogs barking?? im rewinding the songs and listening to them over and over again and im like...oh..thats why i brought it. Cuz I can listen to these guys forever, not know what they are saying, but still be wildly entertained by them. For better or worse nothing TMV has ever come up with sounds as dense as this Cd does. I cant wait to blast it in Kuwait and see what happens.

-----End shamelessly bad review of a CD I am too afraid to listen all the way to the end of-----

Ok..so Kuwait has been good so far. I have driven once and it hasn't been too bad. I only almost got into two accident which is great by Kuwaiti standards. The driving here is really insane, if i could buckle up twice i would. Stop signs optional, blinkers never used, 3 lanes turn into 2 without warning, roundabouts everywhere, gah..so confusing.

I got here just in time to see my Grandma off to Mecca for Umra (a pilgrimage to Mecca, but not Hajj) and i forgot how happy it makes me to see her. She is such a sweet old lady, i wish we could communicate better. I love how it feels like she has a million important things to tell me but doesn't seem to be in any rush to tell me them. And she seems so ok with how awkward I am at just about everything here...which is reassuring. Like, around her its ok that i don't know the language, the customs, understand the rules about kissing old people on the cheek and how many times and which order or who to pour tea for or anything. At the same time her presence commands custom and formality but with a smile and pat on the shoulder or a hug excuses it all. sorta like how she is my grandma i know i should call her "Mama'oda" and I do, but i also know its ok with her that i pronounce it horribly wrong. Grandmas are awesome.

Not too bad for a first post. Hopefully there will be more to come.