Bye Now

Today we had my good-bye lunch at Mais Alghanim. Except we didn't.

It was a nice idea, until this week's book ran late. The plan was to leave the office at noon, but at one, we were still waiting on the dummy book to show up from the printer. And it wasn't the printer's fault… we'd first barely gotten the files in on time from Big Fancy Superhero Company in NYC, then barely gotten them to the printer ten minutes before we started demanding a dummy book. We were running a man down already, having stressed out our long-suffering EIC to the point where he was in the hospital having his heart checked.

One by one, people started to leave.

"I'm sorry, Marie, I cannot wait all day."

"I have a dentist's appointment at 2."

"The guys are teasing me, telling me Marie will never forgive me if I skip her good-bye lunch. Marie, is this true? I have to go home to my family."

"Fine, fine." I'd wave them on. The truth is that I can't stand huge group meals where you cannot hear anyone at the other end of the table.

I occupied myself by using my Skype phone to butcher the Spanish language while trying to make restaurant reservations for Barcelona.

"Habla Ingles? ... No? ... Damn ... uh here let me read this to you ... necesito una mesa para el siete de abril. Ocho. Si, si. Hah-veens, Mary. Gracias."

I may have booked a table. Or maybe I ordered a warm goat, as my pal Bobbie did once when trying to get a hairdryer in her room in France.

Finally, it got to the point where it would only have been Sven, Mr. Fixit, me, and Junior Art Guy from Oman.

"Okay, let's reschedule."

So instead of a big lunch on the Gulf Road, I had a turkey sandwich at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf before heading home for the "weekend" (Friday) to my internet-less apartment.

We'll try again in a few days. I'm not leaving Kuwait without eating some good Arabic food first.