Alas, employment!

I'd first like to apologize for abandoning my blog recently.  I've been so busy the last few weeks and I never felt like I had anything substantial to talk about since my daily life here is fairly mundane.  However, now I have a desk job with very few job responsibilities so I have a surplus of time on my hands to write.  Lucky you. :)

Yes, I am finally working.  My seven month job hiatus left me extremely bored and lazy so I decided to pick up a temporary job at Fiance M's work where I am replacing a girl going on maternity leave.  I am working at the Australian College of Kuwait in their business department and I am an Administrative Supervisor.  Therefore, I'm a supervising secretary haha.  All the secretarial work is done by the secretary under me and I basically do the special registration cases (for the failing students), make sure the senior students have their graduation requirements done, deal with sick notes, staff leave, etc.  It's a nice little buffet of administrative duties which I can glorify and expand on my resume to make it sound like something worthwhile.  But to be honest, I really enjoy the job.  I am working with foreigners (Australians, English, and Americans mainly) and it is nice to be back among my peeps.  I also really enjoy administrative organizational work so this job is fun for me.  Plus, my duties really only take up about 30 minutes of my day so I spend the remaining 7 1/2 hours facebooking, looking for new recipes, reading other blogs (baking blogs are my favorite), and talking to fellow staff members.  Pretty cool eh?  I'm not getting paid much (about $1500 a month) but I go and come with Fiance M so I don't have to deal with transportation and it covers my rent and gives me something to do with my life!

Speaking of the fiance, yesterday was Valentine's Day and it was the first Valentine's Day we've actually had together!  As they say here, bakeer!!! (which sarcastically means early or finally) Fiance M let me pick the place for dinner so naturally I chose Maki which is my favorite sushi restaurant since I haven't had sushi in so long.  When we arrived, there was a huge bouquet of white lilies wrapped in lavender and pink paper (my favorite colors and one of my favorite flowers) on the table waiting for me.  Apparently, the fiance had left work during the day and arranged this ahead of time.  If you know my fiance, you know this is quite an impressive task since it involves planning which he usually leaves for me to do hahahahaha.  But anyway, it was an amazing surprise and an amazing dinner and amazing day.

I've had quite a few orders for my sweet shop over the past month which has given me something to do and make some extra money on the side.  So many people have asked me to open a shop but I refuse because I don't want to stay here permanently or even for an extended period of time.  However, it has given me confidence that I do have a talent and I could pursue this when I finally get back to America.

Speaking of the land of the free and the home of the brave (yes, clearly I have more talent remembering lyrics than Christina Aguilera...which made headlines even here), we received an email from the Embassy last week.  Don't get excited.  The email said something like this:

"Dear Mr. _____,
Please send us a history of your travels for the past ten years.
Sincerely,
PIECE OF SH** Department of Doo Doo"

Well the ending was a little embellishment of mine but needless to say Fiance M has been busy this last week preparing the 176 travel entries that he has from three of his past passports (since it goes back to 2001 and Lebanese passports are renewed every 5 years).  We just finished it now and are waiting for final approval from our attorney.  Our attorney made a few edits and also told us that based on how much travel Fiance M has done in the past ten years, it is probably the reason why the background check is taking so long.  But I can't really think this is a bad thing because in the end, Fiance M did obtain visas from all of these countries and we have explained in detail the reason for each trip (harmless).  I just hope this is a sign that they are indeed working on our visa and may be closer to finishing the background check.

I was reading a magazine here at work yesterday and came upon an article about a champion bike rider who conveniently has the exact same name of my fiance and is also of Lebanese origin and also residing in Kuwait.  Also, there is a commercial on TV here of a guy who won a car from one of the local networks from Saudi Arabia with the exact same name as my fiance.  If there are two blatant forms of this in my face everyday, I wonder how many other men have the same name as my fiance which is causing such a ruckus.  Moral of the story....NEVER EVER name your child Mohammad....EVER.  We can't change last names, but seriously....his name is more common than the equivalent of John Smith or Jesus Garcia in Albuquerque.  BAHAHAHHAHAHA.

Devil Puppy is doing well.  He has been spending time alone and hasn't chewed anything so I see this as progress.  Furthermore I am working to break him of his barking habit...which is SO annoying when you are sleeping and he decides to hear something....anything which he deems as threatening.

Fiance M's nephew's first birthday was this past week which was fun.  I taught him how to blow out candles so that was really cute.  I made brownie cupcakes (a favorite of Boston Best Friend D and Fiance M) and they were a huge hit.  We bought him a little baby tricycle that he can strap into and he really enjoyed riding around on it.  He still doesn't know many words but sticks to "Bah," "Na (He calls his mom Nana, her nickname," "Ma," and "Mai" (word for water in Arabic).  The other day I was with Fiance M's mom and playing with the nephew and he spotted a banana (one of his favorite foods) and pointed at it and screamed...literally yelled "BAH NA NA" and Fiance M's mom and I looked at each other and couldn't believe he put that together.  So that was cute.  It also made me think of my sister...whom I used to rhyme her name with this fruit (which she never appreciated).

My birthday is coming up next week and Fiance M has made plans to eat with our friends at our favorite steak restaurant called Meat Co.  It is a South African high-end steak restaurant and all the servers and staff are South African and they play the bongos for your birthday so naturally we are excited haha.  I'll let you know how the bongo experience goes.

Well that's about all that happened in the last month (minus news about my little trip to Cairo during the beginning of the Egyptian uprising...which I'll post an entry for later).

Happy belated Valentine's Day to all of my friends and family and readers.

With love and peace from the Middle East,
R

It's 2011 and I'm Still Here!!! :*(

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas to all of my friends and family!  I have been so busy recently to write but I will try to update you on the past few weeks!

I am happy to report that Goodman’s Sweet Shop (my entrepreneurial baking adventure here) was very successful at the bazaar I participated in on December 24.  Not only was my booth profitable, but I was able to gain new clients who really loved my recipes J.  Another great thing was I was able to understand and speak enough Arabic (Kuwaiti and Lebanese) to conduct my business when I needed to!  This was such a proud moment as I have struggled with these different dialogues but finally had my aha moment where they all came together.

After the bazaar, Fiance M and I headed into the Kuwaiti desert for an event hosted by a local restaurant here.  It was nice to experience the desert (tents, sheesha, food, and music) without being SO authentic like my adventure a couple weekends ago.  During this desert outing we were with a Kuwaiti friends family and we ate on the ground in tents with our hands, we sat around the campfire singing Arabic songs (clearly I did not participate in this), and rode ATVs (buggies).  This is where women and men sit in separate tents and it looks like a freaking National Geographic film.  Nice to experience once for a few hours but I was really over it after being outside in the dry, skin-chapping, cold desert wind all day and into the night. 

So after the few hours in the desert, Fiance M and I went to his mom’s house for a Christmas Eve dinner.  Unfortunately Fiance M failed to understand that this was the “big Christmas celebration” that his mom had been planning for me so not only did we show up late (because Fiance M didn’t think it was a big deal) but we were not dressed up as we thought the celebration was the following day.  His mom was a little pissed but I wasn’t up for any sass after being exhausted from the week of full days preparing for the bazaar, not seeing Fiance M at all because he had so much work during the week, and overall pissy-ness from being stuck in this Godforesaken country with not a public display of Christmas anywhere during Christmastime.  Anyway, everything turned out fine and it turned out to be an amazing evening.  I was so impressed by how much Fiance M’s family and friends cared about making this holiday special for me.  Everybody brought me gifts, prepared a yummy Arabic (yeah that’s a first Christmas cuisine experience), and danced the night away for a Christmas celebration.  It was sooooooo special to me and really meant so much.  Not to mention Fiance M’s mom surprised me with a beautiful Hermes scarf which I am soooooooooo stoked about.  And good job Fiance M for actually listen to me blabber about how amazing Hermes scarves are (riveting conversation for him I’m sure) enough to tell his mom to get me one hahahaha.

After the Christmas Eve festivities, Fiance M returned to another busy week of work and I returned to another busy week of sleeping until noon, cleaning up after Devil Puppy (who has now lost his canines and his adult ones are growing in…awwwww), and watching endless hours of CSI, ER, and CNN. Fantastic….I know. 

So then New Year approached.  Fiance M’s mom wanted to go to Bahrain or Qatar for the weekend so we could get out of here and party but last-minute tickets were too expensive and not worth the lack of planning for New Years.  No one was looking forward to celebrating here and New Years was looking pretty bad.  Have no fear though, the Mini-Martha in me (yes, that’s a Martha Stewart reference to those who don’t know me as well) decided to bring my party planning passion to these party poopers.

I decided that instead of another gathering full of Arabic meshewee (grilled meats with bread, hummus, salads, etc.) which we eat at literally every gathering, I decided to switch it up.  I planned a make-your-own pizza party and made pizza dough and got toppings for everyone to assemble their own pizza.  While we waited for the pizzas to bake we snacked on veggies and onion dip and an antipasto platter that I put together.  And for all my American readers, I even found Hillshire Farm Lil’ Smokie sausages (a Christmas tradition from my childhood) that turned out to be everyone’s favorite here.  Hahahaha oh God Lil’ Smokies.  I also made a fabulous coconut cake that was pretty with the sparklers on top for the midnight slicing.  Again, we danced and threw confetti and even had some smuggled in Stoli vodka that spiked my pink lemonade punch well J.  It was such a fun night and everyone really loved the food and the atmosphere.  Not bad for a Kuwaiti New Years.

FIance M’s mom is very into horoscopes and astrology as many of the people are here and told me that she’s going to miss me so much when I leave and I jokingly said “Well, don’t worry, who knows when we will leave” and she responded with “It’ll be soon, I know it.”  Then she proceeded to tell me about how this year is going to be a really good year for me and how everything I want is supposed to come true.  Nice horoscope J.  Now let’s let that astrology work now, shall we?

I am doing another bazaar on January 15 so I will be busy preparing for that and Fiance M is really mad about gaining 15 kilos or 30 pounds since he’s been back in Kuwait so we are going to start P90X again this week.  Since we’ve  had our own apartment and I’ve been cooking healthy food instead of the normal fare at his mom’s (full fat everything, 75% of everything is deep fried), I’ve lost about 5 kilos or 10 pounds so I’m not complaining.  But alas, the little baby wants to start working out so I’ll do it with him and maybe Devil Puppy will join as well.

Ok so I’ve been too busy to have any Kuwaiti adventures that piss me off enough to write about.  Maybe it’s my new outlook of trying to be more positive for the New Year (don’t worry, I’ll never lose my sass), or maybe it’s my Rapunzel-like life where I’m trapped in my tower waiting for my prince to rescue me hahahahah (not quite, but I can be dramatic since I have the time now J) so I haven’t had much Kuwaiti interaction to write about. 

I hope everyone’s holidays were full of family, friends, and great food and I look forward to spending time with all of you this year (I hope so!).  I also look forward to receiving the damn visa (which by the way we were told by the Department of State that it is currently undergoing background checks from twenty one different agencies so we just need to continue to wait until it is done) to see all of you lovely people!  I hope everyone’s New Year is full of happiness, prosperity, and progress!

With love and peace from the Middle East,

R.