Life in a Dust Storm

Crossing the Line

2012-01-27T10:33:00.000-08:00

flashydubai.com

Went down to Dubai last night on flydubai. Cheap and cheerful. Took 80 mins. Arrived at terminal 2. Oh dear what a contrast with terminal 1. Long, long queue at passport control. Don't all the other queues seem to move faster than the one you're standing in? It took almost as long to get to the front of the queue as it took to fly there. Bonkers. So, mustn't dwell on the negative. But while we're on about queues, why is it that there is always some insensitive goon behind you, who has no awareness of personal space who constantly bangs into you. As soon as I had given him a mouthful of invective, in return for his blank stare, a child took his place and started swinging the sides of the barriers, into me! I swung my bag sharply into his head. He promptly stopped. I think his mother pulled him away from me, in horror.
I went to Dubai to run in the 10km race. Long story short, Dubai was looking fabulous. The day was perfect, could not be bettered. The morning was chill but not too much so. The organisation was breathtakingly good. The whole experience was so, so un-Kuwait. Stunning. These trips to Dubai always leave me deeply disappointed in Kuwait, where I have spent almost a quarter of a century. The race started in the shadow of the Burj Khalifa and was run with the Burj in sight, the whole 10km, out and back. What an astonishingly beautiful building it is, its sparkling silver cylinders fading in the seeming mist of the stratosphere.
The marathon departed and we lined up, 5327 of us. Fortunately, based on my estimated time, I was given a low number, allowing me to start near the front. And so, when the gun was fired, I was running. Some others, further back, took minutes even to cross the line.
I had predicted 45 minutes; a little optimistic, I knew. However, as often happens in a race, the very excitement and stimulation of it pushes us beyond that which we thought we could achieve. It went well; I was even able to finish with a spurt, crossing the line in 42mins 53secs. I know you're not interested but I was 3rd over-60 year old of 53, and 243rd overall of 5327.
We returned to the hotel, showered and changed and then beered and porked at the Irish Village. Then to the airport, Mihin Lanka, back to Kuwait. To shabby, half-hearted, ill-conceived, astonishingly rich, Kuwait

I Want Money.

2012-01-25T08:22:00.000-08:00

I am astonished and my daughter is chuffed as a pig in body waste. We set up a web site to help collect sponsorship for my London run and in a matter of days, it has attracted 260 quid! My aim is £3000, so there is a way to go and you can be part of that achievement.
http://www.justgiving.com/Colin-Wells1
Go on, click and give just a ~~large~~ small amount to help kids with cancer.
I too am collecting in Kuwait and together with the website I have pledges of just over £1000. Ain't that brilliant?

More of the Same

2012-01-24T08:28:00.000-08:00

recreateyourlifetoday.blogspot.com

Well thanks for the less than inspiring response, followers. What does one have to do to rattle the conscience of some people?
Anyway. You have read in the past of my less than inspiring experiences of running/walking events in Kuwait. Shocking. Well, putting all of that behind me and despite that I had sworn never to take part in another, I succumbed to the temptation of a 10km race on 21st Jan. Registered, donated to the charity and raring to go. There was a rumour on the eve of the race of a cold morning and the threat of dust. Around midnight the text message came through to the effect that due to "unsettled" weather, the event was postponed until further notice.
The morning dawned. It was damned cold, no doubt, and indeed there was a level of dust. But hell, races in the real world are run in sub-zero temperatures, blizzards, blistering heat, hailstorms and downpours. For God's sake! A bit of dust and a little chilly! WIMPS. That's it. Mark my words. Never again!

London

2012-01-19T08:32:00.000-08:00

http://www.justgiving.com/Colin-Wells1
As you will know I am running in the London Marathon in April, in aid of Clic Sargent, a charity which works in support of children with cancer. My daughter suffered for three long and painful years and is now clear and has been for six years. Please take a moment to click on the link above and consider making a donation. Thanks.

More Trivial Nonsense

2012-01-17T10:59:00.000-08:00

www.royalfamily.org

How's this for an enclave?
Suite 212 at Claridge's Hotel was ceded by the United Kingdom to Yugoslavia for a day, June 17th 1945 so that Crown Prince Alexander could be born on Yugoslav soil.

An exclave, on the other hand, is a territory legally or politically attached to another territory with which it is not physically contiguous

2012-01-17T10:36:00.000-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org

Yesterday, casually browsing, I looked at a map of Oman, as a side product of my curiosity about the Trucial States, I think. It's true, I am nothing if not trivial and random.
I homed in on Fujairah, one of the afore-mentioned but my attention was drawn to Madha, just inland, which appeared to have a national border around it. Ok. But within that was another national border. How very odd, I thought. And I still do. Madha is an exclave of Oman, in UAE, with an exclave of UAE, Nahwa, inside it! The British were sorting out that particular area at the time and no doubt cobbled it together to please this emir and that sultan. But really, how odd. Next time I travel to Oman and UAE, I will make a point of driving through those exclaves. It will bring me a warm childish pleasure.

I'm Just Going Outside and May Be Some Time

2012-01-14T10:12:00.000-08:00

people.tribe.net

I know it is astonishing, but at 14 degrees last night, dressed in a t shirt, a roll neck sweater, a shirt and a wool overcoat, with a silk scarf, I attended a birthday party on a roof in Salwa. There was even a 'snow machine'. As guests arrived they walked out on to the roof through a commendable attempt at a blizzard. Very UK. But hell, that's what I ran from. Whether the 'snow' affected my sensation of the Arctic, I don't know, but it was perishing on that roof. My hands were blocks of ice; not helped I guess by holding a gin and tonic on the rocks. There were some people, better upholstered than me, in no more than a shirt. Had they hailed from the Midlands, they would have accused me of being nesh. Nesh or not, I legged it back to the warmth of my flat.
People quite naturally think of the Middle East as hot. It is. In summer. But make no mistake, in winter it can be bleak.

The End is Nigh

2012-01-12T07:45:00.000-08:00

http://www.scienceagogo.com

Tempus really does fugit. Increasingly so it seems, as one approaches the end. Ha! Thought I'd start on a high point, to satisfy the expectations of the 'anonomii', that pair of ne'er-do-well stalkers.
So, the legs have now come in to line and are doing what they were bought for. Two weeks of running and all is well. Though we know, don't we, how tempting it is to fate to suggest that all is well. Anyway I don't believe in all that superstitious nonsense. Ouch. A twinge.
So, two weeks today it's off down to Dubai to run in the 10km race associated with the marathon. Should be a gas. Then early April, a half marathon in Jordan, part of the Dead Sea event and two weeks after that, London, which at times I held at arm's length, in doubt.
The London I am running in aid of Clic Sargent, the charity which cares for and provides holidays for children suffering from cancer. So if you would like to sponsor me, hey, go ahead.

Kilroy Wasn't Here

2012-01-10T06:40:00.000-08:00

turbosquid.com

I have posted before about the graffiti in the tunnel under the Fahaheel expressway. Recently it has proliferated with such offensive content it is quite uncomfortable to run its gauntlet. God knows how the women who use it every day feel. One piece threatens death to all single women, another to sodomise the entire great Satan that is the US of A. Most are full of hatred of one thing or another.
While in Thailand for 16 days, I saw only one solitary sprayed word, on a wall near a Buddhist shrine. The word? LOVE

Nothing Else?

2011-12-19T00:32:00.000-08:00

web2txt.co.uk
Is that all there is?
I have realised in the last few days as I searched online for sad lost-love songs how much I remember of the music my father played at home. Not for a moment that he played much melancholy stuff. Far from it. He loved the big bands, Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, the crooners, Bing, Frank and others, and the ladies, Ella Fitzgerald and especially Peggy Lee. "The Folks Who Live on the Hill" used to make his eyes mist over. Probably still does.
I stumbled upon her timeless classic, "Is That All There Is?" the other day. I recognised it immediately and yet I can't see it as a song my father would play, often at least. Perhaps I am wrong. But it was lodged in my brain from somewhere as a profoundly poignant lyric. It sums up pretty well the way I am thinking now, along with, in a confusion of emotions, Annie Lennox's finest song, a beautifully desperate, pained question, "Why?" With no answer.

Aah! Forky Wert!

2011-12-18T11:08:00.000-08:00

An anagram of twelve plus one? Eleven plus two!
Freaky or what?

Serenity

2011-12-18T10:44:00.000-08:00

alloilpaint.com

Strange isn't it how one's perception and memory of an incident; the delivery of a comment; a sequence of events, can differ so utterly from that of another, who experienced the same event. Who said what to whom, the reporting of words said or unsaid, apportioning blame; the tone, the intent.
Passions intervene, desire imposes curves on the straightness of truth. Denials, accusations, anger and lies, lies, lies. We embelish and crop to suit our purposes.
Some serenely maintain the highground but rectitude is not their preserve. There are many truths. Those who, hurt, spit accusations and bile possess no less truth than the aloof. You are not right because you say you are right. He not wrong because you say he is wrong. There is none more likely to be clouded in their recall and perception than one possessed by passion. Passion for all its power and pleasure is not a trustworthy ally of truth.

Placid Turmoil

2011-12-09T05:50:00.000-08:00

Tonight is the definitive Christmas party. Every year, very good friends invite guests to their exquisite house, to dine, drink, gossip and, if the mood takes, dance. 3,000 miles from England they create the quintessential Christmas atmosphere; a vast tree, with tiny white lights and red and green decorations, low lighting and warmth which belies the cool outside. The bar is manned by men in black with white gloves who serve gin and tonics et al (real, no ersatz crap here), the food, Marina Hotel, the best I have tasted here, the linen is linen. The cutlery heavy. The wine French, the mood mellow.

Where There's a Will There's a Way

2011-12-07T02:43:00.000-08:00

goodart.org

I was devastated to find out my wife was having an affair but by turning to religion, I was soon able to come to terms with the whole thing. I converted to Islam and we're stoning her in the morning.

Emptiness

2011-12-06T11:00:00.000-08:00

wine-flair.com

As the bottle fills your glass, it learns of its own emptiness.

2011-12-05T09:46:00.000-08:00

It is always one's virtues rather than one's vices that precipitate one into disaster. Rebecca West.

Encouraging, given the circumstances.

2011-12-05T04:31:00.000-08:00

rtmulcahy.wordpress.com

Turmoil. Sometimes events take over. We think we are in control but as we are all reminded intermittently, we are not.

The Wrong Kind of Snow

2011-11-27T08:07:00.000-08:00

en.wikipedia.org

I had been planning Christmas at home, in the bosom, etc. It was with some reluctance, as, aside from the self-evident attractions of Yuletide England, I had become worn down by the extreme cold and damp. What have the Romans ever done for us? Well, there is pleasure in a biting frost on a pre-Christmas day, in town, doing the inevitable shopping for the last few gifts under a crystal sky, ones breathe condensing and dispersing. The welcome offered by a pub, warm from a coal fire, in which one peels layer after layer and settles amongst other shoppers with a pint of something glorious. And back out into the cold, the air nipping the cheeks. Finding the perfect present for the children, the wife, the parents, is rarely done before darkness and not without some dark thoughts, mostly about the woman blocking access to the the silk scarves with her eaten-all-the-pies bulk. The cars and buses slowly push their way along streets turning white with the first snow of the winter. Exhaust rises, hovers and falls in deceptively elegant swirls. Snowflakes float and judder on the breath of the world, and settle. And after the trudge through the thickening snow and the diminishing wallpaper noise, one arrives home, the door opens and one is enveloped by home and family.
I shall miss all of this. My plans changed, not of my wish but it seems of my hand and I shall be in the sun, far from Blighty and family.

Irriguous, Gelid Times.

2011-11-27T07:21:00.000-08:00

sugarlessdelight.blogspot.com

Kuwait has begun its descent to British summer temperatures. Yes we have plummeted to the sub 20s. And it comes as a shock to see the way my body has accustomed itself to the prevailing heat. I felt a shiver and pulled the radiator from the a/c room. I left it on when I went out and returned some hours later to a beautiful warm glow. The temperature outside, declared by my car, was 17.5. And there we are. In London, in such rare circumstances, usually in July, young bloods head for the parks, tear their clothes off and prostrate themselves. But here, we shiver. The Kuwaitis claim to love the cold but rarely have to sustain themselves in the bleak streets of London for more than an hour, wrapped in camel hair coats and Kashmir scarves, briefly beyond the air-conditioned comfort of an off-Oxford Street hotel. Rarely if ever have they leant into a driving gale off the Arctic blasting down an Aberdeen street. Rarely have their nose hairs become white with frost and their eyebrows knitted with ice. I believe if they had, they would become a little less keen on the near-zero.

2011-11-11T11:44:00.000-08:00

concierge.com

Really not happy. Contrary to my blithe belief that I would depart Thailand the day after seeing the Loy Krathong celebrations, when palm-leaf boats containing candles, flowers and incense are launched in thanks for the very water which caused such devastation in this year's monsoon, on checking my itinerary, I found that I had to leave that morning. Above is what I would also have seen, hundreds of lanterns carrying away bad luck. Magical. Another time. Now I am back in the furnace, which has gone out now that winter is upon us and the temperature has plummeted to a mean 20C. Ugh.

2011-10-22T09:20:00.000-07:00

conversation.which.co.uk

So Gaddafi got it. Makes me laugh how indignant some people get about the fact that he got a bullet in the gut or head or wherever it transpires to have been. He must have expected it. No one could be so deluded as to expect impeccable decorum from a baying mob, seeking revenge for a lifetime in the hands of a lunatic. Better to be done with him. Unmarked grave, no chance for pilgrimages by other looneys. Far more important than that is how the fledgling 'democracy' will gel or crumble into tribal rivalry and warfare.
Went to al Kout this afternoon, to sit outside by the Italianate colonnade and watch the water fountains play. The automatic doors from the cafe leading onto the patio were not working. On asking why, on this, the finest day of the year, 29 degrees, clear, distinctly blue sky, gentle breeze, the doors had been immobilised, I was solemnly informed that outside there was 'too much air'.
Last time I was in Thailand a girl in a bar was wearing a T shirt emblazoned with "I CAN'T STOP LOMEING YOU". I couldn't help a wry smirk. She asked why. I pointed to the shirt and indicated the misspelling. She said, "Yeah, what?" I said, "The spelling of LOVING". "Yeah, lomeing, I can't stop lomeing you. What's wrong with that?"
I turned back to my beer.

2011-10-21T08:29:00.000-07:00

Holden 1969 Australia

Mitsuoka Himiko autoblog.com

Weissman autofiends.com

Temperature's dropped to a beautiful 25 in the early afternoon, the 'corniche' was heaving with family groups which made not leaving a trail of slaughter as I rode my bike along the coast cycle track rather difficult. There was a blustery wind and frisky waves tried to crash onto the rocks.
An impromptu gathering of Ford Mustangs in a car park, lined up Le Mans style, muscular young men lounged on grass admiring their metal, the most boring sports car ever made. In 1971 the United States Congress recognised mustangs (wild horses), as "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West, which continue to contribute to the diversity of life forms within the nation and enrich the lives of the American people".

automotive-car-blog.blogspot.com

This is Ford's epitome of that?
Check out those above. The Holden, made 42 years ago. Yes, forty-two years. In Australia. Yes Australia. America, is the Mustang the best you can do, forty two years later? Shelby Cobra? Yup that'll do it. Italy is a given. Japan and Germany are doin' OK. The Weissman and the Mitsuoka make your heart race. The Mustang causes not a flutter.

Why the Hell Not?

2011-10-21T07:40:00.000-07:00

news.bbc.co.uk

Why are there no spearmint flavoured crisps? You may well react: Don't be ridiculous! But why not spearmint? We have bacon, and beetroot, and salt and vinegar, and prawn and a thousand others, so why not?
Now that's trivial.

Kuwait Modern

2011-10-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

Bharat Rajagopal

This is not trivial.
Exhibition time is upon us. Every year at the end of October, students' work is displayed at Dar el Cid, not 300 metres up the road from school. The space is large, daunting, but each year we fill it with drawings, paintings and sculpture of astonishing quality. Part of the reason we can do that is that together the two of us teach 24 classes, each of 25 students, from year 7 to 9. Quick calculation: 600 kids. On top of which, two year ten IGCSE classes, two year 11 groups plus Year 12 and 13. It takes two weekends to set it up and it opens on the evening of Thursday, after the speech day (evening), all the guests and their glowing, award winner children stroll up Street One, to the opening. No ceremony, walk around, chat and eat canapés. A nod and smile from the director and approving words from the head teacher and we know we have done it right. The following week is a procession of children up and down the road, so that all the kids can see their work.
It's a high point.

West Meets East

2011-10-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

romanianmonasteries.org

I was back at the embassy last week, been three times now in as many weeks. That's as many times as in the last ten years put together. It seems they have finally heard the disgruntled murmurings of the Brits, about how it's easier to get into the US embassy for a cold drink, hey, it's easier to find Osama than to get into the embassy. Except of course if you are a brown-nosing "businessman" associated to the British Business Forum, with all its back-scratching camaraderie. They have even embarked on a series of school visits, to answer questions from concerned ex-pats. The only question most of them will have is, "Why can't I get into the bloody bar more often?" Mustn't be churlish. Admittedly, they would have quite a lot of Brits to cater for, should they be so welcoming but it ain't half galling when you meet a Hungarian or Romanian, of whom there are relatively few, who are in and out of their bar like it's a corner shop.
"The Carpathians" has a ring to it. The Carpathians. Just remote enough from my consciousness to be mysterious. Brown bears, lynx and wolves still lurk, which sets it aside from other ranges, although the Appalachians have a few black bears, mostly distracted by leaping salmon but otherwise they're limited to salamanders and ground-hogs, which don't count. Although Romania has the highest share of them there Carpathians, it is in the second league for peaks, barely reaching 2,500 metres, which is disappointing to say the least. Cluj-Napoca is thereabouts if that's of any interest. Somehow I doubt it.