Kuwait Scene

Here's another painting done on a box like room. I had posted one before in October. My Kuwaiti friend tells me, these indeed house Electricity Metres. Like the water dispensers of Kuwait, these paintings too are a standard feature in Kuwait.

Ship at sea

This is the place we go to for our evening walk. It's near the Shuwaikh Port. Chanced upon a cargo ship passing by and clicked a pic with my cousins cell phone.

Learn English

Arabic is the national language and most Arabs don't speak English very well. The Government too works in Arabic. Many offer English learning classes to Arabs and people of all communities who want to learn English.

At the Petrol Pump

Stopped to fill Petrol/Gas. Rarely will you find pumps that are too crowded. Petrol is 0.60 fils per litre. That comes to US$. 0.219 / UK GBP 0.109 / Indian Rs.8.70. Yup! It's pretty cheap in the land of black gold!

Chicken Shop

This is the outside of the Chicken Shop that I had posted yesterday.

Chicken & Duck

The Chicken seller was delighted when I requested he pose for the pic. I also saw a lonely duck among the chickens.

Happy B'day, Baby Jesus

This is the crib of the Holy Family Cathedral, Kuwait.
Happy Christmas to you and your loved ones.

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday, dear Baby Jesus,
Happy Birthday to you.

Happy Christmas ~ 2007

HAPPY CHRISTMAS, ALL MY ONLINE FRIENDS


Baby Nikita, enjoying her first Christmas Eve

Happy Eid Al-Adhaa

We have 6 days holidays for Eid Al-Adhaa. In India, we call this Eid the, "Bakri Eid", literally meaning, "Goat Eid".

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Celebrated yesterday in Kuwait, this Eid is for the memory of prophet Ibrahim (Abraham to the Christians) who, for the love of God, was willing to sacrifice his son when a voice from heaven stopped him and permitted him to sacrifice a ram instead.

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The feast re-enacts Ibrahim's obedience by sacrificing, usually sheep, but also camels, cows, and goats. The family eats about a third of the meal and donates the rest to the poor.

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Needless to say, Mutton costs a BOMB this week!

Fruit Sellers

This is a summer photograph. Fruit sellers selling mangoes from India in the city. If they see cops coming, they pack up in record time and disappear. This photograph wasn't clicked by me. It was clicked by a visiting consultant in the office. (I've forgotten his name!) If you, Mr. Kuwait-Visitor-who's-name-I-have-forgotten sees this, please email me and I'll credit you for the pic.

All that glitters

Visited the gold souk (market) in the city to buy a small gift for a friend. This huge gold set with a very Indian design caught my eye. It must be costing a bomb. Most probably, a bride to be would buy it.

Mosque

A mosque near the Minstry of Chambers (I had posted yesterday). There are many, many... many,...... many Mosques in Kuwait. Infact every 800 meters you will find a Mosque. Some are really beautiful.

5 times a day the Mosques call the faithful for prayers. When you are new to Kuwait it's very disturbing (especially at 4 am!) but you get used to it evenually.

Al-Tijari is the Commercial Bank of Kuwait. This board tells us if we go left we'll get to a branch of the Commercial Bank.

Ministry of Chambers

The Ministry of Chambers and many private offices are in this building. I don't know what that orange thing sticking out from the top is.

Junior!

Here's another water dispenser that looks like the Water Tanks, a picture of which I had posted on Friday.

Liberation Tower

The Liberation Tower is the tallest structure in Kuwait and the 10th tallest tower in the world.

Construction of the tower commenced before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and construction resumed after Saddam's forces were expelled. Upon completion in 1993, the tower was renamed the Liberation Tower, symbolizing Kuwait's liberation from Iraq.

The tower contains a revolving restaurant and observation platform (in the first disc-shaped pod; now closed to the public for security reasons), and also houses radio and other telecommunications offices. The structure stands at 1,221 ft at its pinnacle.

Kuwait City

This is Kuwait City.

X'mas fun for kids

Little children (6 to 8 year olds) presented a cultural program on the occassion of Christmas in the Catholic Church, Kuwait. That's Mother Mary in blue and St. Joseph in brown. Cute, aren't they?


His Lordship, Bishop Camillo Ballin, MCCJ, the Bishop of Kuwait, wishing 8 year olds at the Christmas Cultural Program held for them.

Water tanks

Water tanks in Kuwait. Clicked on a mobile phone. Driving at 100 kmph, a little difficult to juggle the steering wheel and the mobile phone! At night, blue lights light them up. There are many like this all over Kuwait.

Kitty, kitty coming

Master of all I survey! Kuwait is filled with cats. You will rarely, if never, see a dog, but you will always see a few stray cats checking you out.

Tiny black dots

Look! Look! Those tiny black dots are actually sheep.

Microsoft Error

This is a government building with a big electronic board on it that used to show us the temperature. It now shows us the total electric & water consumption of Kuwait, updated constantly. But, look! Microsoft did it's thing here too! Heh! Heh! They did solve it in 5 minutes, but I was lucky I chanced upon it to click it.

3 horses

There were 3 horses in the Chalet. We couldn't ride them and were too afraid to pet them. The white one, the caretaker told us, is quite crazy. Yet, he looked saner than my ex-boss. (That's another blog post in itself!)


When I aimed to click this pic, he stomped his feet, swished his tail at a frantic pace, and flared his nostrils (in this instance, the horse, not the ex-boss. The similarities, though, were astounding!). Quite rude of him to show me his behind. Obviously I'm not his type! Methinks he needs a training course on how to treat a dishy lady (if I say so myself!) with a camera!

To eat or not!

On the way to the Chalet, we came across these boards. My Kuwaiti friend explained that the green area is allowed for the camels to graze and it is not allowed in the red area. I guess they may have put green and red boards or flags around. I'm not sure. We see a lot of cows on Indian roads but it's really fascinating to see camels, with that proud and mighty smirk on their faces, grazing like the world belonged to them!

Well, do you know why camels have that proud look? My brother once told me, that it is said, Allah has 100 names but man knows only 99. The camel, it seems knows the 100th name. That's why that superior, know-it-all look!

Portico

This is the portico of the Chalet (I had posted yesterday). It was pleasant sitting there in the morning with a hot cup of coffee. The air was pretty nippy. This portico is an extension of the living room.


This is the path to the right of the portico leading to the beach. The guy is the caretaker of the Chalet. He had 4 or 5 cats constantly following him.

Chalet

Went to this Chalet (110Kms away from the city) over the weekend. Weekend hols in Kuwait are on Friday and Saturday. It's overlooking the beach but it was too chilly to enter the water.

All property in Kuwait is owned only by locals. Expats can only rent out accommodation.

The left most window is one of the bedrooms, the middle windows is where the swimming pool is, the right top window is the living room, and on the ground floor (with the small tiled roof) is the game room. It has two snooker tables, a fooseball game, and a table tennis table.

Zain Girl

Zain provides Mobile voice and data services in Kuwait and in many Middle East and African countries.

This pretty girl has been causing a lot of accidents, with her distracting looks, according to many of the guys in my office. I guess once there's an accident, the guys use their Mobile phones and this serves Zain's purpose in putting this attractive girl on their hoardings! The end justifies the means!! :-)

Recycle

Saw this board on Recycling while driving by in Ahmadi (It is 40 Kms away from the city). This is the first time I have seen something about segregating waste in Kuwait. I haven't seen any such boards in the City.

In Kuwait, most people keep their waste in plastic bag and place it in a bin outside the door and every morning the building watchman (called a "Haaris") takes it and places it outside the building in bins provided by the Muncipality. Nobody has ever told us to segregate anything.

Personally, I put glass, plastic and paper in one bag and everything else in a different bag. I have seen the garbage guys sift through all the garbage to pull out glass, plastic and paper so I do it to make life easy for them. Not a fun job sifting through garbage at 3 am in the morning... hell... at any time of the day!!!

Rac

Saw this upturned car (Rac if you read it backwords... my own silly P.J. Ha! Ha!!) on my way home from work. Scenes like this are a plenty in Kuwait. Wondering how they managed to get the driver out of this one.

Waiting

Went to the Airport yesterday to see off a relative and saw a bunch of hotel drivers holding cards with passenger names. Looking at those guys waiting .... and waiting.. I remembered a French Proverb, "People count up the faults of those who keep them waiting”!!!!

Thought it made a nice shot. Unfortunately, I zoomed to click and the lighting was not too good.

Bakala

This is a corner store or kiosk or, as they call it in Arabic, a "Bakala". ("Bak" rhymes with "Luck", so it's pronounced Bak (as in Luck) -aah-laa) Mostly run by Iranians or South Indians, these `bakalas' have everything you'd need in an Emergency or if you are just too busy or lazy to drive to the Government Cooperatives or private Malls.

Traffic woes

Clicked this pic on my way home from work. It's not as bad as it looks, though. We were still moving at 20Kph!! ;-)

To answer Red Ink (based on his comment), although this is the way to the Airport, it is not always busy. Kuwait has a lot of traffic on her roads in the morinings, mid-afternoon (lunch crowd) and evenings (8:30 pm).

Hyderabad Daily Photo wanted to know why some cars have yellow/orange number plates. These are Taxis. The Police car number plates are black. Ordinary folks like us have white number plates.

Most signs are bilingual. Inspite of that, I manage to successfully get lost very often. The speed at which we have to go (minimum 80kph) doesn't give us much of a chance to change our minds or our lanes.

Many institutes have Arabic classes. There are no government programs, as far as I know, that teach Arabic on a free for all basis.

I'm lovin' it

No dearth of McDonald's in Kuwait. I don't eat it as often as I'd love to. Ooooh! I'm lovin' it!

Lantern

Isin't this water dispenser pretty? It's not operative yet. I guess once they complete building the villa, they will arrange for the water supply for the water dispenser too.

As requested by Ann (in the comments), I checked with a Kuwaiti friend what the writing on the dispenser meant. She told me that it says, "This water is free for all people. From a dead person (his name is written). So when people drink from this water they pray for him....."

Thanks to Ann, I learnt something new too.

Buy for CRY

CRY organized a cricket tournament for the kids. At the side they had stalls with various activities such as a drawing competition for kids, books for sale, houseold items for sale etc. The amount collected would go to CRY.

Photographs courtesy, Wilson! (As I was in India last week.)

Another water dispenser

I really love the water dispensers of Kuwait. Look at this one. It's a replica of the Kuwait Towers.

I had missed posting a few days as I had travelled to India.

Sharq Mall

The Sharq Waterfront mall. It comprises an entertainment complex, 12 restaurants, a retail complex with the biggest brand names in clothing, shoes, electronics etc, speciality arcades, a food court and a marina.

Kuwait Towers

The beautiful Kuwait Towers

The main tower is 187 metres high and serves as a restaurant and water tower. It also has a revolving Viewing Sphere . The third tower houses equipment to control the flow of electricity and illuminates the two bigger towers.

Bottle

Look at this water dispenser. Even if you are not thirsty (which is rare in the desert), you will feel like having a cool drink. This one, though, does not seem to be operative judging by the plastic bag that has been stuffed so rudely near the taps. This one is not positioned outside a villa. It's on a busy street in a place called Hawally.

Sail away

There are various paintings done on small, box like rooms. This one is outside a school (in Abu Halifa). Makes the surrounding a little colourful in the otherwise beige, sand filled country. I don't know what's inside .... Electricity meters I presume.

Abhijeet Sawant

A photograph from my files. This cute fellow is the 1st Indian Idol Winner (a la American Idol). His name is Abhijeet Sawant.

I clicked these photographs (105 photographs actually!) at the Indian Republic day show organized at the Al-Shaab Leisure Park in Kuwait, on the 26th/Jan/2007.

Have you been to any celebrity shows in your country?