See you soon cabrones!

I am only 24 hours (and 3 suitcases) away from going away!

It won't be that big a change though, I'll go from this:

To this:

Hahaha I'll be back before you (and I) know it! Enjoy the summer everyone, I'll be posting the highlights of our Mexican vacation in August incha allah!

Fight the heat (and recycle your old Keffiyeh!)

Hello everybody and sorry for not posting so frequently these days... You know, not much going on, many people leaving on vacation, some leaving for good (Florencia and Anelise, miss you already!), and the rest of us getting ready for our vacation, finishing things off so we can enjoy our well-deserved holiday!

It's getting so hot and humid here, and in many other parts of the northern hemisphere - I heard some parts of Europe will get high temperatures in the coming days, and Mexico must be as hot as usual - so I thought I'd bring you something useful for once, so useful it could save you from a sunstroke!

Typical story: you go out for a nice walk on a nice sunny afternoon, and you're just out the door when you realize you forgot your baseball cap / trendy Panama hat / romantic straw hat / charro hat (?!). Well, it's too late to get it now, you'll be fine! And then once you're in the middle of Saint Jean de Monts beach / Chichen Itza ruins / the Sahara / a petanque court, you desperately search for shade, but there isn't! What to do???

That's the moment to turn your keffiyeh (or any other large fabric square) into an improvised, efficient hat! (the Bedouins use it; is it a good enough reason to suppose it's efficient?)

Cool, uh?

You can wrap it in different ways: in the above picture, the triangle point is left longer at the back.
I will show you how to wrap it completely. 

Fold the fabric square in two, in order to obtain a large triangle. Then position the triangle point facing down on the back and fold the upper part on your forehead.

Take one top edge of the triangle and start twisting it while you wrap it around your head.

Once you wrapped it around your head, tuck the end under the wrapped fabric.

Take the other top edge of the triangle and do the same: twist, wrap, tuck

Done!

Now you can travel to the Arab world and just fit in ;)

A world away?

The Saudi youth:

- have Blackberrys and use Facebook and other social networks

- study for a degree; many of them go to American or European universities

- watch American series and Japanese mangas

- care about how they look and love shopping

- enjoy going out with their friends

- like love stories (even though there aren't so much, they dream about the few ones they've heard of, like this 

woman falling in love with her driver and marrying him, or this other one who ended up marrying the doctor she worked with at the hospital)

- are tired of stereotypes:

Scary local animals

Oh, I'd love to be writing about local spiders, deadly scorpions and poisonous snakes (actually not, since it would mean I had met them outside the reassuring glass box of a zoo!). But I'm only talking about panthers. Well, the smaller species. They're also named cats. 

For some reason, for the second time (a small thought for Gatito the Brazilian garbage eater), a kitten found my porch a nice place to live. Well, technically, this time the kitten's mum found my porch a nice place to give birth. So the new mum and her baby kitten have lived in the corner of the house's entrance porch for a couple of days now. (Which grants me the blessing of seeing a black cat every morning as I go out - no regrettable consequences so far) Anyway, as I went out this morning the baby kitten was on its own, looking very sweet, so I thought I'd just take a picture when I'd get back. But that was without allowing for its overprotective mum!

These pictures were taken with zoom, a good 5 meters away from the panther cat. No animal was hurt during the photo shoot, so please don't call the WSPA.

My friend Carole used to say that her black cat Fifi was a panther; today I finally understood why.
Beware of cats, they're hiding a wild panther within!

I don't know if I can use my front door now, I'm actually scared that Overprotective Mum might jump at my face for just looking at her baby kitten...

In Kuwait this weekend, there was...

... a system breakdown at the border, causing quite a long wait

... a first-class Japanese restaurant on an artificial island

...  a modern tower being built to watch a yacht marina 

... traditional boats in a traditional harbour

... dull buildings under construction

... German shoppers

... some date harvesting going on near a huge mall

... a birthday celebrated on a boat

... a mosque under construction in the dusty desert

... an ice-cream seller along the highway

... lots of camels looking to cross the border illegally

Where are you spending the weekend, and what is there around there? 

Roasting on low heat

Here's the weather forecast for the next 10 days in Ad Dammam (the largest city in the Eastern Province, about 40 minutes from where we live):

(The windy part is actually worse: it's like when you receive a current of hot air in the face in the sauna)

Let's try and look at the positive side of such a weather:

You jump straight into the pool without even thinking about it: it will feel nice and warm, whatever the time of day (or night!)  

Downside: the water can get so hot it won't even feel nice

You never need to check the weather outside to know how to dress in the morning.

Downside: you still have to think before getting dressed: are you going to a cold air-conditioned place? Will you have to keep your abaya on? (if so, you usually dress very lightly underneath, but then if you go to a Saudi friend and have to take it off, you have to make sure you're properly dressed!)

You don't need to wait outside the shower until the water gets warm: even the cold water is already warm as it comes out of the tap. 

Downside: it also comes warm out of the kitchen tap, so if you want to clean vegetables or unfreeze fish, it will start cooking!

It's very easy to follow the doctors' recommendations and drink 3 liters of water a day (sometimes I even drink 4 without even noticing). 

Downside: this water has got to come out somehow!

When working out at the gym, you sweat so much it makes you feel good about your effort. 

Downside: it's just an illusion!

See, nothing's perfect! Wherever you are, try and enjoy the weather, may it be cold or hot, rainy or sunny, cause one of these days you might just end up missing it! (although I don't miss the rain of my native Vendée yet!)

Living in the 15th century...

... of the Hijri calendar! As many Muslim countries, Saudi Arabia uses the Islamic calendar. Unlike our Gregorian calendar, it is a lunar calendar which has twelve months of 29 to 30 days, which add up 354 or 355 days per year. Since the lunar year is 11 or 12 days shorter than our seasonal calendar, the months don't correspond to the seasons, which is why the month of Ramadan is not always the same period of the year. This year is especially bad: it will fall in August, the hottest period of the year! 

We're currently in the year 1432 of the Hijri calendar. Luckily, in most places and on most papers, the date is indicated as per the Gregorian calendar, since that's the system used for business. And most families have a dual calendar at home, like this one (click on the picture to enlarge it): 

A dual calendar of this year: Gregorian and Hijri calendar

A Kuwaiti newspaper indicating the date according to both calendars