Night # 19 - Cleaning Day

It is Monday again.

I cleaned the windows in the apartment. Boy, they were dusty all right. I don't think I ever looked such mess from cleaning windows. There is this thing I like about the windows over here... they open inwards and so they make cleaning so much easier. I only hope that there won't be a sand storm so soon, I would only want to do such cleaning only twice a year :)

Night # 18 - Lunar New Year Day 1

I got lazy :) Didn't do much except to doodle a little on my chinatown drawing. Oh, did I mention that I got hooked onto one of those Escape games online. Not too bad for a lazy Sunday.

Night # 17 - Chinese New Year Eve

The day looks beautiful today. The sun's out, the sea is calm and blue.

Going to be busy in the house today. Do some cleaning and prepare for the steamboat tonight. It is quite impossible to get chinese stuff here. I was asking the existence of a chinatown over here but looks like it doesn't exist yet. Perhaps if I have the time, I will comb through the 400 over channels of cable to see if there's any chance of a chinese programme :)
_____________________________________________________________________

Tried my hands at making dumplings, skin included. That took me 2 hours! But surprising the dough was easy to manage as compared to the one for the egg tarts. Chicken was used to substitute the pork (since it is not available here). I think the dumplings look rather cute :)

We used the frozen crabsticks, fish and the tofu that we found in the other sultan centre for our makeshift steamboat. The fresh prawns were extremely sweet.

So I think our feast was not too bad, considering our constraints over here.

Happy Chinese New Year everyone :)

Night # 16 - Crashing Waves

The weather for these couple of days have been unusual. The sea is normally calm and quiet but since yesterday its waves have raised and crashed onto the shores continuously. It is accompanied by constant wind (weather forecast says wind is going at 24 km/h but we are near to the coast so it may be stronger.

I am going to the Fish Souk (market) today at Al Kout. Going to take advantage of the cold weather and walk there. Planning to get some prawns and chicken for the new year's eve dinner tomorrow.

The walk took me 15 min shy of 2 hours. It was a long but relatively easy walk because it was always by the main road and traffic was light. I took a few photos along the way. Like the left one below, it is a newly built house somewhere near to where we are. I call it a castle. There are houses like that in quite a few places here. Bigger ones too.

In contrast, some parts here can be like the one on the below right as well as the bottom left. Open vacant spaces until they come up with some ideas on how to develop them (I guess).
























I know when I saw this place (photo on above right) I knew I am closer to my destination. It was getting cloudy and there are signs of rain coming and the wind was picking up. Thank goodness I brought my umbrella along :)

Night # 15 - Eggy Tarts

Weather: Strong winds and cloudy

Our neighbour invited us over for dinner today. So I am going to try my hand at making egg tarts and bring them over. As far as I can see they looked kind of frothy... like those milk froth that you find on top of the coffee. Hmm... will definitely take a photo of it (before M reminds me again).

The pastry was testing my patience ... I kept thinking that clay was alot easier to manage than this pastry.

Anyhow, the pastry tasted not too bad though I couldn't figure why the egg custard was like sagging and shrinking as the tarts cooled down.

Night # 14 - Pottery Discovery

Finally found someone who does pottery over here. Heard from the supplier that he's probably the only one who does it. Will call him tomorrow and check it out :) *crossed fingers*
___________________________________________________________________

He told me that he was going to move today to the city, to teach pottery in a school... So when he's done, we can go to the school to take a look and talk about lessons. Awesome. I am so excited.

Night # 13 - Day Out

Just wanted to show the difference when it is a day without sand storm. Still this is considered to be a cloudy and windy day but excellent for a day out.

I went to Al Kout today. Finally went to this place called Centrepoint. It is a shopping mall selling products ranging from furniture, household items to clothes. I must say I am quite surprised by stuff they have there. They are nice things. Price is another matter, but it is possible to buy interesting range of accessories either for self or the house here.

Around the area was this souk (picture on the left)... It is probably most women's dreamland and every men's nightmare. This is the Jewellery Souk. Wow. Imagine all the shops here selling nothing but jewellery. There is one in the city which is the Gold Souk. Now we got to see that :)

Took this outside the Sultan Centre (it is an established chain of hypermarket over here)... I was amazed at the opening hours. They are opened for 20/7. I wonder if it is the same for all the outlets or only this particular one. This has changed my perception of this place really.

For one, I had related to a friend before, this place showed me what is customer service. We were browsing through the aisles and initially weren't intending to buy anything (yah right... who ever survived shopping at the supermarket without any purchases?) Gradually, we were taking a few things off the shelves and were carrying them around. One of the staff approached us and gave us a trolley. That was such a thoughtful act. I was so impressed... Maybe because very rarely I see that back home.

Anyway, I took some more photos of the place from the top of a viewing "tower" (it's too short to be a tower really) It was a lovely view with lots of wind...

Night # 12

The weather has cleared...

Monday shall be a cleaning day. Clean the apartment, the floor etc. I think I really need the vacuum cleaner. I swept the floor, mopped it and at the end went through it again with a "magic mop". The tissue of the "magic mop" is still brown from the sand/dust :-S

I am contemplating to do a little walk today with my camera... Let's see if I do feel like it later.

Night # 11 - Still Sand Storm

The sand storm is continuing today. I had intended to take a walk to Al Kout but will not do that in this weather. Probably will do my walk on the treadmill downstairs later.

Today's visibility looked worse than yesterday's. Hopefully it will clear up later in the day.
__________________________________________________________________

Caught up with some news online and I found out it was some thing like 8 degree celcius today. Despite the heating at home, it still felt cold and particularly in the kitchen as there are gaps in the windows which allowed the cold wind in.

So I decided to snuggle up at the dining table in the living area and catch up with a bit of drawing. It's going to be an old scenery of the Chinatown. Will see how it's going to turn out. :)

Night #10 - Sand Storm

Today's weather: Sand Storm

There's strong wind everywhere. It brings up the sand and coats everything with a layer of sand. Visibility is also much poorer. The otherwise beautiful blue sea looks grey and foggy today.

It is a good day to stay indoors and make chocolate chip cookies :)

Night # 9

This place got to have the Best Pruned Trees ever.

These perfectly well shaped trees never failed to impress me. They aren't the only ones in the city. Other well pruned trees can be found along the well developed roads in the city as well as equally impressive pruned hedges.

Talking about creating labour opportunities.

Today we went to Dasman looking for the pottery studio. The entire complex was closed when we got there but we saw some shops carrying pottery tools. I was naturally disappointed at not being able to find out more about doing pottery here but this is at least a good venue to start asking and looking. Will definitely come back again on another day.

We later went back to the awesome supermarket. Guess what, I found tofu! Tofu was packaged differently here. It's packaging is like the packet drink and non refridgerated. Will take a picture of it when I have decided how to cook it.

Night #8

I have missed my entry last night again. I was engrossed in trying to fix the layout of this blog but didn't manage to. So I changed another template. Oh well....

___________________________________________________________________

Yesterday, a friend brought me out for shopping. We ended up at the Iranian souk (local term for a bazaar) which has an interesting range of fabric stuff to furniture and wood carvings. I ended up buying some some potted indoor plants. Will see how well they take my abolutely not green fingers.

We also went to this supermarket in Salmiya. It was awesome. It is perhaps like our local Cold Storage but so much bigger and the range of products was huge. I didn't get to walk through the entire place since I didn't need any groceries but I will keep that place in mind for the next outing.

The locals here generally start their day early (like 6-7 am) and most of the offices will close around 1-2 pm. So lunch for them will be only at 3 pm and dinner will be at 10 pm. It is interesting to see that in the morning the shops are usually empty but places and traffic will start packing in the afternoon. I have never stayed up later than 9 pm to see how busy the nightlife is like over here but I was told it can be quite happening.

Anyhow, this is a photo taken from our place at 7 am.

Night #7

I have been here for a week already!

I went to the gym in my bermudas today. I haven't seen any women using that place in their shorts and I thought I should play it safe. So I made sure that my shoulders and knees are covered.

It is more like a Science Lab than a gym to me cos it isn't enclosed like most gym. Gave me the impression like it is a set up for some science experiment and scientific findings.

____________________________________________________________________

This was the dinner I prepared. That rock looking thing in the foreground is the chicken. Saw this in a recipe book and thought it would be interesting to try to cook the chicken wrapped up in the pastry.

I am beginning to see how much I have missed not having an oven at home. There is so much that can be done with the grill and oven :)

Night #6

I feel fat.


I think I better go to the "lab" downstairs and burn some fats tomorrow...

Night #5

I realised a few things today.

No. 1:

There is hardly anything to do when ALL the shops are closed. Some people here were caught surprised that none of the shops are opened including McDonalds (it usually opens for 24 hours by the way). When was the last time in Singapore that all the shops and offices were closed? Maybe we should have that just for a day.

No. 2:

Women don't need to queue over here. They are allowed to walk right to the front and they will be attended to. I wonder if the status of women here is that bad.

No. 3:

You can have a telephone line in the house but you aren't suppose to use that for international calls. You will need to subscibe and pay for such service. Hmm... perhaps this is a better way to control overseas call usage.

No. 4:

The long crack in the house (running from the ceiling to the floor) is caused by the movement of the apartment block. It is a newly built block so it is natural that it is still somewhat shifting. (the maintenance guy actually said that!)

No. 5:

Middle East has the skinniest crossiant I have ever seen. I am sure it used the same amount of flour and butter.

Night #4

Today the country is in mourning. All shops are offices are to close for 3 days.

This is quite a sight. Even places like restaurants, shops are closed for these 3 days. We went to this supermarket and bought the groceries that we probably need for these 3 days. Met a neighbour who mentioned that he may try to get to Dubai and take a small holiday since nothing will be opened.

I think I have never seen anything like this.

Night #3

Made some pineapple tarts today. Looked kind of ugly and I used pineapple jam instead of the real pineapple so the liquid was all over the place. Well considering that I had no weighing machine, no mesurement cups, the taste wasn't too bad.

This reminds of how I had taken certain things at home for granted. I was so used to be able to do some stuff because resources are readily available. Even little things like the peeler, rolling pin are important. Then it all of a sudden occurred to me that I have no chopsticks over here... wonder if it is cheap to buy them... I wouldn't want to pay $6 for a pair of chopsticks.

Anyway, I shall try to write my blog for #4 tonight. This is the second time in the row that I wrote my Night entry in the day... Sigh... I have no excuse.. :)

Night #2 - Traffic

Kuwait has impressive looking roads and highways. I think the roads are named similar to the ones in China - First Ring road, Second Ring road and so on... The exits aren't that easy to figure out though, at least for me. They use numbers like 30, 40, 50 to indicate the exits and I thought they were the speed limits... but then I realised no one drive at that speed over here.

Generally people drive fast on the roads here... It is pretty often to see drivers changing lanes or entering the highway disregarding safety. I think I held my breath a few times during my ride to Ikea. I think it will be a while before I consider driving around here.

Night #1

Today marks the beginning of my middle eastern experience.

Its sandy and cool winds greeted me. It is indeed a pleasant time to visit this place during winter as compared to the scorching and glaring summer. In fact if I may compare at all, the weather was a lot more pleasant than my few encounters with people along my way here.

For a start, my flights to Kuwait was a "bumpy" one. I was initially bumped around by quite a number of people on the plane, particularly my neighbour. Don't get me wrong, I found her to be a nice lady, but she had this thing about putting her jacket on and off during the entire 7-hour flight, and never for once failed to elbow me in her struggle with her jacket. As I tried to inch myself away from her, I found myself bumped by the few people who were pacing up and down the aisle... Arghh.... Generally I realised the idea of personal space is non existent here. They stand close to you even if you are of the opposite sex. I found this "invasion" intruding my personal space and very very uncomfortable.

The concept of queuing is often observed to be not practised by the women. It was interesting to observe that they seemed to have special privileges to be able jump in front of everyone else and ignore the attempted protests.

Besides those, I am very glad to be here. It has been a long time since I had a nice long break. This is a opportunity to seek other challenges and try new things. Currently my challenge is to stay awake and try to overcome my jetlag. Till next time then...