I saw my first Kuwaiti sunrise since I arrived in April and was so jetlagged I would wake up at 3am, unable to fall back asleep. The sun comes up around 4:45am so it’s high in the sky before I usually get outside to go to work. A friend had a birthday party last weekend and after a long night of Charades and Truth or Consequences (I wish I was kidding) the sun was almost up when I got home. So I grabbed my camera and the top photo is the one that turned out the best. When I first looked at the photos on my computer, I thought it looked more like a tropical sunset than a Middle East sunrise.

Last week on Monday, I got done eating dinner, stepped outside, looked up at the moon and saw what I thought was a bright star right by the moon and the second picture was what I saw. (In August, the Earth will be closer to Mars than it has been in about 60,000 years.) It looked like the mirror image of the Turkish flag with the star on the wrong side. Speaking of Turkey, did you know that in 1928, a law was passed there to make it illegal to use the letters Q, W, and X?

I can say that I’ve been waterskiing in the Persian Gulf. I was in Abu Dhabi on Saturday and Sunday (I would say the weekend but everyone works here on those days) and the hotel I stayed at offered waterskiing for about $20. The boat looked decent and it had a 135HP outboard motor so I didn’t think it would be a problem. It was pretty windy and there were whitecaps on the water. The driver thought I was crazy for going skiing when it was that choppy but I figured it would be my only chance to waterski this year so I had to take advantage. Unfortunately, 30 seconds into the ride, the motor died. This happened 3 times and finally we gave up. Hopefully I’ll get back to Abu Dhabi when they have their boat fixed. Besides waterskiing, I didn’t have any free time. We did drive by the biggest mosque I’ve ever seen, the Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Mosque. I haven’t been to the Taj Mahal, but I was with someone who has and they were more impressed with the mosque, even though the Taj was built over 350 years ago.

From the local newspaper…”Pakistani Sorcerer in Police Custody (June 19, 2007) Kuwait: Hawally police arrested a Pakistani expatriate in connection with sorcery in which the man would cast spells for a fee of KD 3000 (US $10,800). Police raided the man’s flat and the ‘sorcerer’ threatened to harm the police by using his magical powers but police still arrested the man (how brave) and he was referred to the authorities. During interrogations, he confessed that he executed over 70 magical spells and mostly Kuwaiti and expatriate women were his customers.” Along those same lines, I heard that an astrologer predicted the cyclone that hit Oman a couple of weeks ago. It’s very rare for cyclones to hit in this area so the police arrested the astrologer but later let him go. The reason…the cyclone didn’t do too much damage. Strange place, the Middle East.

I am looking into places in the area to go on vacation. I am planning a trip to Jordan to see Petra, the setting for the last scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Dubai, and Egypt. If you know of any other good places to visit, shoot me an email.

I am friends with this Italian guy who last week started telling me about a machine he invented to wash dogs. It’s similar to a car wash but on a smaller scale. He sold the drawings and specs to a business man who has since franchised the idea and I guess they are all over Italy and Spain, though I have never seen them. He had a bunch of pictures and it looked like a pretty simple machine. I’ve looked on the internet but couldn’t find anything. This guy was pretty passionate about his invention though. If anybody is looking for an investment opportunity, I can put you in touch with Guillermo.

Fardin, Navid, Adam, Yosef

Well, a full week in Kuwait is hardly as exciting as a single day in Korea. At least that’s what it seems like. My excitement for the week would have been meeting up with my friend, Captain Eric Raasch, a Marine helicopter pilot who was in Kuwait but has since left. I mentioned him in last week’s entry. He was stationed at an airfield about 2 hours northwest of me, living in an air conditioned tent, if the AC was working that day. He couldn’t leave the airfield and I could not get a hold of the right personnel quickly enough to get an access badge. It would have been great to meet up with a friend from home, 5000 miles from home.

Two of my Iranian friends are going back to Iran Thursday. Their one year work contract is up and they have decided not to renew it. So I tried to throw a going away party for them at my apartment. Unfortunately, the female guests showed up after 11pm, which I learned is the cutoff for women to enter the hotel property who are not wives, sisters, or mothers of the registered guests. I had a very heated discussion with a short man in a long white robe about this rule but finally gave in. We moved the party to another apartment but learned similar rules apply there. Every apartment building in Kuwait has a security guard. Besides keeping the building free from criminals, he holds the role of the religious police. He makes sure the residents aren’t bringing in women they aren’t married to, aren’t drinking alcohol, no parties, etc. Kind of like the high school atmosphere I have written about before. Luckily, Fardin, the guy that lives there, pays his security guard the equivalent of $20 a week to “wash his car.” Fardin didn’t go into detail about what would happen if we were caught, he just said it wouldn’t be good for him. But for me, because I’m American, it would be ok. Which is nice but I don’t think I’ll try to find out.

Hope you have a great week.