New York girls and the Kite Runner

   I would like to start off by telling a story about a girl and some cheese.  I thought it was a funny situation, I hope you do as well.


   Last week I went to dinner with Sarah and Scott, a married couple I met at church.  Sarah is my age, Scott is a couple of years older and they've become my good friends since I came to Kuwait.  Oh yea, Sarah is from NY, not that its a bad thing to be from NY, but someone from TX would never make this mistake.

   So we went to dinner at Tumbleweeds, a "southwest" styled restaurant in Kuwait city.  Sarah orders some chili con queso and i ordered, i dont remember what they were called, something as an appetizer.  What I ordered was like the ingredients of an enchilada, but stuffed in little cup shaped chips.  Well, it was more like rice paper than chips, or that really thin stuff that's sometimes used to wrap egg rolls.  Its wasn't bad, weird, but ok.   So the waiter brings out the queso, my appetizer and shortly later our food which we enjoy.  Sarah hasn't touched the queso since it was brought out, which i thought was weird, but it didn't look like very good queso so i didn't say anything.  It had the look and giggle of cheese from a can, with a couple of pieces of pepper. 


   The waiter brings the checks right after Scott starts eating the queso.  Sarah looks at hers and tells the waiter she never got her chili and would like it taken off the bill.  The waiter then looks down at Scott with a confused look, which Scott and myself are also both giving Sarah.  But the chili con queso is right there was his reply and Sarah just looked confused.  It turns out that Sarah had thought she was ordering chili, with a little cheese sprinkled on top and not the great mexican dip chili con queso. I laughed for a while and promised Sarah that if they ever came to Texas, I would take them to a real mexican or tex-mex resturant and order some real chili con queso, or we could get some chili.



   I also finished reading The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini last night, and while a pretty sad book, i would say it was a worth while read.  Basically its about a guy who goes back to Afghanistan to try and makeup for his cowardice as a child.  His dad and himself fled Afghanistan and left behind those he had betrayed.  15 or so years later, he is reminded of his past and given the chance to make up for what he did.  Next up is Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, but i did just get in a couple of programming books about PHP, MySQL and Ruby on Rails, so who knows if i'll be reading or playing around with those.

After Kuwait...

I just finished reading A.W.O.L. on the Appalachian Trail and i've had to stop myself from doing any more research on the trip.  The book is a journal of a 41 year old engineer who went awol from work to hike the AT (thats what the hikers call it, saying appalachian trail over and over would get a bit annoying)

It took him 146 days to walk 2172 miles through the east coast of this great nation.  that's an estimated 5 million steps.  he had a small surgery to cut out an infection on his foot, and sprained his ankle requiring him to use an aircast for part of the trip. other than that, and some not too friendly bugs and storms, it sounded like an amazing trip.  so much so that im really considering doing it when i get back.  It starts in Georgia and goes all the way up to Maine.  He met some interesting characters, stayed in a lot of hostels and camp shelters, and went through a lot of shoes. 

i've already decided that if i hike it, im taking a hammock and avoiding shelters, hostels, and tents and a couple of pounds of weight.  im hoping i can find some friends from A&M or Camp Ozark that would be willing to hike with me. I will also be hiking the Lone Star Hiking Trail (130 mile hike about 2 hours north of Houston, TX) and likely heading out to Big Bend State Park to get a little training in, and test out all my equipment.

If I'm able to hike the AT, i will be very likely starting the hike about 2 years from now. I guess time will tell if its gonna happen.

Eat, Pray, Love.............?

I'm gonna try something new and start writing about more than my travels and life in Kuwait.  If you really care one way or the other, please let me know and I can create another blog where I can share my thoughts and beliefs and just use this one to keep people updated on my comings and goings.

My first blog doing this will be my review of "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert.   While I didn't love the book, it should be known it made the New York Times best seller list, and I'm pretty sure is being made into a movie.  So there are a large number of people who think highly of this book, if that means anything to you.

While this book is written well and has a lot of useful advice, it is ultimately a cheap band-aid for the many problems facing us today.  I found this book mostly useless because of how little she turns to Jesus and how much she turns to so many other options.  It's so easy to turn to the infinite list of man-made quick fixes, to take a pill to relieve the symptoms, while ignoring the root of the cause.


You can talk about love, peace, happiness, and self-reflect with eloquent speech all you want, but in the end, Jesus is King and man will continue to fail when we lean on ourselves.  When you understand the root problem that man is inadequate, you have to realize that anything man-made cannot be 100% perfect.  One broken gear in a watch will guarantee the time is always wrong.



Edit: So I talked to a friend who loves the book for reasons not applicable to me. It was good to her to see a woman stand up for herself and try to figure out life for herself. To go across the globe if that's what it takes.  I'm all for that.   I would like to make it known that the book was recommended to me from a christian friend and I read it like I would "Blue Like Jazz", or "Mere Christianity".  From my point of view, the book is rubbish.  If you are reading it to learn about a woman escaping a life forced on the her and rebuilding after a failed marriage, then that is a different story.  Considering I will never be in that situation, this book does little for me, it all comes down to where you are coming from and where you would like to go.

Sandstorm, working out and goats

Only three things to report, they may not be that interesting, but its all i got.

I experienced my first kuwaiti sandstorm this weekend.  while a very mild one on the local scale, not being able to see beyond 100 yards due to sand is a storm to me. 

as i mentioned a few weeks ago, im working on loosing the small gut i grew when i first got here.  While pretty crappy, there is a bench press and some dumbbells downstairs and i've been taking advantage of them.   I haven't maxed out since high school, but im gonna boast a little and say i can still press 255 lbs, which i think is really close to my max back then.  i might have been able to lift 5 or 10 more pounds, but that didn't feel too safe considering i was lifting by myself at 3:30am.

I also saw some goats on the side of the road.  I have noticed one guy and about 20 goats a few times on the side of the road near the base, but considering we were really out of town and there was at least 30 yards between the road and fence of a sand field, i didn't seem to weird.  this time was really wierd because he wasnt on the side of the road.   i was driving under an overpass using the uturn lane, and saw the guy between the uturn lane and the raised freeway.  there was a 30 ft wide and maybe 70 ft long patch of sand and grass for the goats to enjoy.  This just caught my attention because it was in the city at 5pm, and those goats had to cross a road at some point.  i also talked to a guy one day who had a friend who hit a camel in Saudi Arabia.  not only did he have to pay a few thousand for the camel, but he had to pay thousands more to compensate for the camels that the hit camel would have made.  just thought that was crazy considering in Texas we just worry about how much its gonna cost to fix the truck.

Avatar and watching a movie in an islamic country

I made a run north tonight to run some errands, and ended up checking out the 360 Mall in kuwait.  Overall I was disappointed, not only did it not have any resturaunts i was interested in, there were no starbucks. The Avenues Mall has 8 starbucks.  While im not a huge fan of starbucks, there seems to be a correlation between how many starbucks a mall has and how much i like it.  The Avenues Mall also has an Ikea, and a Super Walmart like grocery/electronics store, and another huge electronics store.  Oh yea, and a dip-n-dots, but the 360 Mall has a Marble Slab Creamery, so i'll call it a tie on frozen treats.

Anyways, I also ended up watching Avatar in 3D, which was pretty cool, i had already seen the movie, but it has great special effects and great special effects look even better on a 60 ft screen.  Not sure if i've mentioned this before, but if you watch a movie with anything more than a boy and girl sharing a quick kiss, and you happen to be in an islamic country, be prepared for editing.  I watched Sherlock Holmes with greg and becca a while ago and i remember them cutting out a couple of minutes during a scene involving Rachel McAdams in lingerie, and ending with holmes on the bed in cuffs.  No warning, no blackout, just like that the picture changed, the dialog is different and you're thinking, man, that conversation didn't really have an ending.

It was funny to be that they cut out a couple of scenes from Avatar.  Luckily i have already seen it so i didn't miss anything, and i noticed every edit.  Jake and the blue chick 'mating' -cut     Jake and the blue chick laying in hammocks talking - gone.   What was weird, and i dont know if this was for islamic reasoning, or trying to shorten the movie, but there was also a few dialogs cut out.  Like when the soon to be chief first meets Jake, the second half of that meeting was cut.  As were a few other conversations.  It was weird to me.  Oh yea, the first scene i mentioned was cut, the second was actually blacked out.  When i say black out, i mean a black shadow rose up from the bottom of the screen because it was obvious someone in front of the projector was putting his hand in front of the lens.   I had to laugh out loud during that one, as did a few other people there.  It happened once more but i forget during what scene.

Old Pics

I just remembered I haven't posted some of the pics i've taken so in case you're interested, here are a few:

Here is the middle of one of the malls really close to where i live.

Entrance to the other mall (its across the street, not sure why so close)

Same mall as the first pic, from the other side.

One of the boxes i shipped here.

another box, pad shipping appropriately

Getting Used to It

I'm happy to report that im finally getting used to night crew enough that I dont need 3 large coffees to stay focused the whole time.  I only had one large coffee tonight, have one hour more to work, and im not feeling more drained than i should considering im working in a large, empty building which is way to warm for my comfort.  I have always hated the situation where when its 50 degrees outside that someone thinks it wise to set to heater to 80 degrees inside.  While it may feel great at first, why not just the inside temp at an understandable temp.  I just dont understand most people.

On a separate note, I have decided to lose some weight for Curtis' wedding.  While I dislike the idea of new years resolutions, I have resolved to lose the gut i have developed since arriving in Kuwait, and then some.  My dislike is not because new years resolutions are a bad idea, its just that people are generally lazy and people should evaluate their actions and lifestyles much for frequently than once a year.

I personally hate running, but I love the relief, sweat and strength it brings.  I feel relaxed, and mentally detoxified after I run a few miles, assuming I can push myself that far.  I'm also really, really lazy and if I don't push myself, or provide adequate reward, I wont do anything.  I can look back on my college days and I can't say I worked out very much compared to high school.  I used to work out for at least an hour, and didn't take a lot of breaks.  I can't say I've followed that regiment recently.  I also remember keeping track of everything so I've decided to try that again.  For now on, I'm going to report my weight and how much I've worked out at least once a week in hopes that in publishing my results, I can publish my success. 

We shall see.