Crock-Pot!

We bought a crock-pot!

It's very nice: stainless steel with a black interior and big enough for eight people to have their stew and eat it too.

So, if you have any favourite crock-pot/slowcooker recipes, feel free to email them to brentandrosalee@hotmail.com!

B&R

Missin' the Danish cheddar, all right!

It would seem that the whole furor over those comics of Mohammed is dying down... apparently only 60 or so folks showed up at the last demonstration in Syria.

Thankfully, though, we've been spared most of the tension here in Kuwait, as folks here are somewhat more tolerant of westerners, even of the blonde & blue variety who have been having a rough go in certain other countries 'round these parts. Some of our students have been fairly vocal and local stores have boycotted Danish products, but it has been largely quiet around here. In my Media class, it has provided the fodder for some good discussion about the media's role in all of this, and the students have made some headway towards developing their own critical view of the coverage so far.

Of course, a prominent Calgary magazine is about to publish eight of the catoons--including the one with the infamous turban-bomb (ouch!)--to further the discussion. Free speech is a wonderful right, but the original reprinting and now this re-reprinting smacks of fire-fanning.

Someday we'll be able to enjoy cheap, quality Danish cheddar again... the Ilchester variety just isn't the same.

B&R

P.S. I know, I know, cheese isn't the real issue here...

Semantics...

We've had a number of our preconceptions challenged since we moved to this part of the world. Being from the west, after all, carries its own baggage that is often labelled "open-mindedness." However, most folks who make the trip over here do, to varying degrees, have to acknowledge one thing about themselves before they arrived: ignorance. Frankly speaking, we knew very little about Islam or the Arab world.

I was reading The Toronto Star this morning and stumbled across the term "jihad," a most oft-maligned term in western media. To we folks from the west, jihad means holy war and a crusade against occupying forces, conjuring up images of suicide bombers and televised executions.

Well, our definition needed some expansion, it would seem, and mine came from a most unlikely source: a local carpet dealer.

Hussein travels all over this region--Afghanistan, Turkey, Iran, Yeme, Oman, etc.--searching out carpets (which are often mistakenly narrowed to the term Persian rugs) to sell here in Kuwait. He has a few teacher-clients in the city, as he is honest and fair in his pricing of the fine wares he sells. Every so often, he will have a carpet-seminar, where folks can learn about carpets, and how to gauge the weave, materials, etc.

He told a story of a small village in Afghanistan that reputedly received a visit from the prophet Muhammed many years ago. Mohammed was very impressed with the village and its hospitality, and was particularly taken with the local weavers (the village had--and has--a reputation for weaving some of the finest carpets in the region). He recognized the value of what the people were doing, and charged the people in the village with the task of making carpets as their sacrifice to the cause of Islam: their jihad.

The western media has distorted the true meaning of the word, it would seem. Jihad is a sacrifice made in the name of Islam that can take many manifestations. Holy war is merely one of these forms of jihad, and a rare one, at that: most Muslims choose other forms of jihad in their pursuit of their faith, everything from charity work to auto-mechanics.

I suppose carpet-weaving, however, doesn't sell many newspapers or commercials...

I'm glad I had that preconception challenged. Ask me about a few others...

B(&R)

Steelers win...

...not that I'm a huge football fan, or anything, but I was glad to hear that the Pittsburgh Steelers won Superbowl XL. You see, I owned a yellow and black steelers toque way back when, even before I knew what the NFL was. Sentimental favourite, I guess you could say.

So for sports fans, living overseas has always been an exercise in time-zone-Bingo. The Superbowl took place at 6pm EDT on Sunday, which translated to 2am Kuwait time. There were quite a number of our colleagues planning to wake up for the game--of course, who actually made it out of bed is another story--and watch it until the wee hourse of the morning. I'm not a big enough football fan to deprive myself of sleep, and I slept right through the game. However, I can recall waking up early in Korea to take in an occasional NHL game as well as Canada's gold-medal hockey performance at the last olympics (yay Canada!).

So I guess we'll see whether I decide to do the wakeful-thing when the Stanley Cup playoffs come around. Go Leafs? Sens?

Happy Islamic New Year!

Cool, eh? We get to celebrate twice.

So happy Islamic New Year! Muslims officially go by the lunar calendar, so new year's is calculated according to that standard. As a result we had a long weekend, which is always nice.

We didn't, however, see much celebration, for a couple of reasons: first, Kuwait is still officially in the 40-day mourning period for the late Emir and thus public celebrations are haram, or not acceptible (some friends had to sing very quietly in a restaurant for the birthdays of Rosalee and Rhonda, a colleague); second, and perhaps more interestingly, that many muslims prefer the solar calendar, which means that dates and such are more predictable. In fact, many of our students don't even celebrate the Islamic New Year, and focus on Dec. 31 instead. This could be, of course, another example of Kuwait's insatiable appetite for things posh and western, or a sign of a changing world in general.

But happy new year anyhow... again! Rosalee an I continue to wish for our loved ones a happy and prosperous 2006.

B&R

P.S. The picture is not a sign that we are converting to local flavour; Rosalee had to cover her head for a recent tour of the Grand Mosque. However, she does, I must say, look rather fetching in a hijab...