Ordering In

The Kuwait days are getting a little longer, the sun a bit more glaring, and I can't seem to keep the sand out of my shoes. Yesterday I walked around with a grain of sand under my toenail for about 40 minutes.

We don’t have Daylight Savings Time here in the Gulf, but the grayness of "winter," along with the occasional slightly damp day, is far behind us. Long sleeves are no longer necessary to keep the chill out, and have become a polite inconvenience that I don to take the bus or walk around Bneid Al-Gar. Soon they'll just be an annoyance as the days heat up.

My office's Lebanese editor and Bosnian marketer wear whatever they want, and don't worry about the length of their sleeves. But then, they don't take the bus. They have their own cars. Neither wears skirts that rise above their ankles, though. There are limits.

The editor and marketer recently decided to go halves on a mail forwarding account, and to order some clothes from the US.

"What's some good clothing sites, Marie?"

I'm no expert on this. I buy a lot of stuff off the internet, but my (lack of) financial status means I don't buy a lot of clothes. Period. Anyway, I like try things on before buying.

"Try Macys.com. And I hear bluefly.com had some stuff."

They nodded. The marketer intently studied VictoriasSecret.com.

I'm not sure if they managed to get around the requirement that many US-online sites have to have the billing address be confirmed, or if anyone cares that the billing addresses are in Kuwait. But if they did, there's one thing I'm a little worried about.

"Marie, what's is size 36 in American sizes?"

I'd found them an online size converter. But later I'd remembered that clothing sizes vary drastically from manufacturer to manufacturer in the US. I wear anywhere from a size 8 to a size 12 at home—and sometimes go as small as XS in shirts, though I'm an L in Spain—and I'm convinced that sizes have gotten larger to accommodate an expanding America, which would explain why I'm suddenly an 8.

I'm kind of glad I'll be gone by the time the American clothes arrive. It could be heart-breaking to watch them unpack all their new clothes.

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.

More Camels

For a different account of the camel races, check out Sven's blog.

Snack Down Memory Lane

I was looking through some of my old sites yesterday while uploading files (from the coffee shop, because I still don't have internet access at home).

And I found this photo that I took in Laos in 2000.

If you put any food on a stick, it becomes funny. But fried rat-on-a-stick is the weirdest food I've ever seen. I asked around when in Laos and was told that it was popular with some of the older or poorer people, but modern, young Laotians were not so fond of it.

What's your favorite strange food you've encountered while traveling? More importantly, can you put it on a stick?

Wine Whine

I've never been drunk. I've barely ever even had much alcohol to drink. I can probably count the number of beers I've had in my life on two hands, and I've only finished about two of them (more out of boredom than any desire to do so).

Herr Marlboro did teach me an appreciation for Spanish Rioja, and Turbo gave it his best shot by mixing me girlie drinks that had juice or Malibu in them. But alcohol never interested me much, probably because it was never really verboten when I was a kid. My older sister was not the best-behaved teenager, and because she could have gotten me pretty much any illicit substance, there was no attraction to it. Plus, she was such a behavior-nightmare that I turned out squeaky clean just to make life less hard on my long-suffering mother. Then when I got to college and watched everyone go crazy once they were out from under their parents' thumbs—well, I just rolled my eyes and went about my business. Which seems to have been seeing as many bands as possible and playing records on the community radio station, rather than studying, so it's not like I actually came out ahead due to my disinterest in alcoholic substances. But I digress.

So why is it that I cannot wait for British Airways to offer me wine in nine days?

Kuwait is a "dry" country. You can't get alcohol here through legal channels (except at embassies). You can't get bacon either, even though you can in some other Muslim countries, simply by going to the non-Muslim section of the supermarket.

Like most people, the way to make me want something is to tell me that I cannot have it.

So yeah, wine. For the first time in my life, when offered wine on an airplane, I'm going to say yes. And I'm going to enjoy drinking it.

I wonder if they'll serve ham sandwiches for lunch.

Run Camel Run

Twelve days left in Kuwait. That means it's time to get things done that I've been meaning to do since I got here.

My list of things I've been meaning to do here is short. I already found the post office, kicked personal distress, earned some money, and figured out the bus system. Aside from book-writing, that only leaves: Camel racing.

The appointed day came. Mr. Fixit was the designated driver, not that designated drivers are required in alcohol-free Kuwait. The morning was dusty, and we probably would have delayed it had not VIP Consultant been over from the States.

VIP Consultant, when he's not assisting Kuwait comic book companies or helping launch important magazines the define generations or some such thing, has some horses. I think he's a breeder. Anyway, he wanted to check out the camel races and he's leaving for home in a few days.

Information was scarce on camel racing, and no matter how many times our young marketing guy kindly tried to call the racing club (he speaks Arabic, I don't), he never got more out of the operator than "1:30."

The camel racing club isn't even on my Kuwait map, but the Lonely Planet Arabian Peninsula guidebook offered these directions: Drive out 6th Ring Road until you see the signs.

That would have worked fine if we hadn't been in the left lane when the Kuwait Camel Racing Club sign suddenly appeared on the right side of the highway. We sped by as VIP Consultant teased Mr. Fixit.

Unfortunately, there were no U-turns for about the next 20 minutes. We ended up somewhere near Iraq, out in the godforsaken desert where there weren't even oilfields. There was only flat desolate sand, with a few tents, some goats, and a chair dotting the landscape.

Okay, we weren't really in Iraq. None of us knew where the hell we were, but that's not surprising since three of the four of us were North Americans, with the fourth being Chinese.

Mr. Fixit had been counting exits (he's very resourceful) and he eventually got us out of the desert and back on the right road. We found the turn-off and went driving into the desert again. Just when I was convinced that we must have missed a vital turn, VIP Consultant said, "There it is."

We parked and went inside. Sven applied sunscreen, only to find that the grandstands were enclosed. (It's Kuwait; of course watching camels race would be enclosed and air-conditioned.)

A nice man in dish-dasha was in charge of a group of westerners. He took us under his wing. He was especially helpful once he saw VIP Consultant's horse breeder identification card and discovered that his name was Larry.

"We have a long history with men named Lawrence here in Arabia," quipped the nice man.

"That's El-Awrance," I muttered, but no one heard. Or cared.

The nice man led us and 30 other westerners out to the track, where we got to watch the camels up close. They were young, muscular camels, just two years old. They came loping down the track. Each camel had a small round robot jockey on his back. The robots seemed to mostly be small whipping machines, as they flicked the crops around on the instructions of men who raced along inside the track in cars. There were also men on camels trailing behind, but they were some kind of referees or owners and were not actually in the race.

"C'mon," said Nice Man. "Let's go see the robots."

He took us past a corrugated steel fence to where one man held a camel while the other unstrapped the "jockey."

It didn't look like much. Kind of like a cylinder with a sock monkey head.

We left after a few races. It was interesting and I'm glad we did it, but we were all covered in dust after just a few minutes out in the desert.

A Day at the Races

The Kuwait Camel Racing Club is out in the middle of the desert. Robots drive the camels.

Offline Again

The good news is that I didn't break the Internet by downloading and uploading too many megabytes.

The bad news is that there's actually something wrong with the physical Internet connection in my apartment.

Last night a nice man from building maintenance came into my place and tried very hard to fix my connection. I told him that my iBook worked fine, and that if he looked at the hub that he would see that only the green power light was on and none of the others, that the connection was obviously broken, not my laptop. I showed him how it didn't work when I circumvented the hub and plugged right into the wall.

He asked me how to run DOS on my laptop. After a few minutes of trying very hard to explain to him that there was no DOS on a Mac, I gave up and let him look at it. He loaded up IE since it made him more comfortable than did watching me hit "Reload" in Safari or Firefox. It was all really pointless and a waste of time but I know that everyone will always look for the obvious answers first, namely "Did the user screw something up?"

After he started to believe that maybe I wasn't the total idiot he had at first assumed, we went downstairs to the office PC. I plugged the ethernet cord from the office PC into my iBook, and of course got right on-line. He looked surprised. Also annoyed. We spent some time in other apartments, plugging in and unplugging until finally he was convinced that my laptop worked just fine, even though he still couldn't find DOS.

He took apart the ethernet connector thingy back in my place and it all looked fine. Now he thinks I need a new faceplate, or that maybe there's a problem up on the roof.

Sadly, there's no WiFi anywhere nearby.

I assume all this means I won't have Internet access at my apartment anymore since I'm leaving in a week and a half. Maybe I'll get more work done. But it is going to mean I'm a lot less available than I have been and probably means some wasted time commuting to coffee shops with WiFi on Fridays. I guess if anyone really needs to find me, they can use this cool thing called a telephone.

Residency Limbo

Sven cannot legally drive in Kuwait. Neither can our staff writer. In fact, one of our mandoubs, whose job responsibilities include driving, cannot drive in Kuwait.

But I can drive in Kuwait.

It's about residency. I'm not trying to be a resident. I'm just a temp, floating through Kuwait as I do through life, not trying to put down roots or fit in. My status here is questionable—not an official employee, not a resident, but certainly not a tourist. I'm a "Visitor." So I'm allowed to use my US driver's license.

The others are all stuck in the red tape of applying for residency.

I haven't tried to learn the rules about residency, because after being here for two-and-a-half months, I'm leaving in 14 days. Until you achieve residency in Kuwait, you just hang around stuck in limbo. Near as I can figure, applying for residency involves staying in the country for a certain number of weeks (an area that Sven keeps blowing it on since he has so many business trips to Europe and New York, poor thing), then being subjected to a battery of medical tests and a huge amount of form filing, which involves getting all the right stamps from all the right people, and filing eight passport-sized photos. Our staff writer has gone on two form-filing expeditions over the last week, only to be thwarted by some sort of elusive stamp both times.

I don't drive here, of course. The maniacal speeding and bad traffic did put me off a bit, but the truth is that I don't drive because it would have cost me $340 to rent a car for a month (KD 100). I'm supposed to be here to earn money, not to increase my grocery-shopping convenience. Plus, I don't mind taking the public bus, though most people do have a weird bus-phobia here. "It's just not done," I've been told. Funny, the hundreds of people I see on the buses don't seem to know that.

The public bus took me to work in the mornings when our offices were near Dasman Palace. Now that we are out in the car wash district, I go to and from work in a mini-van rented by the company. It goes first to Salmiya, picks up Junior Art Guy, Sven, Office Helper, Receptionist (sister of Office Helper), then comes past Bneid Al-Gar to fetch American-Whatever-the-Hell-I-Do AKA me. We swing by CanIndian Staff Writer's in Sharq (where Sven spotted a man walking a pigeon last week), and then head to Al Rai. It takes forever and has a distinctly Groundhog Day feel to it. "Oh, you guys again. Didn't we do this yesterday?" Yes. And the day before that. And the day before that. Sometimes I tease the boys, but I never succeed in making them cry. Other days, they try to goad me into teasing them but I'm too bored to bother, and I just stare out the window while Sven handles any necessary teasing.

Last night, I had the mini-van driver drop me off in Salmiya. The Internet in my building is still broken, so I wanted to use the WiFi at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. I took the bus home from there.

And the police stopped the bus.

The policeman berated the bus driver, then started moving down the aisle asking passengers for something. The sweet Indian woman next to me whispered "I.D."

I pulled out my New Jersey driver's license. Slowly. Maybe if I made it inconvenient, he'd get tired of waiting and move on.

The policeman waited. He looked at my license.

"Kuwait identification?"

"No," I said firmly. "Tourist."

He nodded and moved on. I immediately thought how stupid I'd been. There aren't any tourists in Kuwait. And if there were, what the hell would they be doing on the bus going to Bneid Al-Gar?

The policeman checked everyone else's identification and left the bus. As soon as the bus doors closed and we pulled away, my seatmate looked and me and broke into a huge smile.

"Tourist?" She laughed and laughed.

Googling Oneself

Okay, it makes sense that if you type "Marie Javins" into Google, you find me.

And it makes sense that if you google "No Hurry In Africa," you find me.

I can see why the following searches will lead you here:

city bus Kuwait

airarabia

Kuwait

But these searches also bring you to me, and I think they are kind of a stretch:

the illnesses of malealea

sexy pvc jpegs

yellow greasy fluid leaking from Volvo

The last one is completely bizarre. I have certainly never written anything about yellow greasy fluid leaking from anyone's Volvo.

But my favorite? Go to Google Images and type in (without quotes):

gorilla butt

You get to MariesWorldTour.com. I'm so proud.