Third party perspective part 1

I'm gettin really quite lazy as a blogger and slightly losing my edge on the funnies at the moment, but there are some good funny people out here in the desert including one other science teacher, who for now I will call simply, the Limb. Todays blog consists purely of bits of his email home. Take it away Limbo!

Another update from the land of sun, sea, sand and camel shite. There has been a noticeable drop in temperature during the last week and you can actually wait outside for the bus to school without dropping dead from heat exhaustion. It is still 30 degrees during the day and the heat has now been replaced by dust-storms called the shamal, blowing down from Northern Iraq. Visibility is reduced to a few hundred yards and the air is choked with flying sand and dust. This lasts for about a month.

I’ve never seen so many accidents and crashed cars on my way to work. There must be dozens each week due to the appalling driving of the Kuwaiti’s. You often see tankers overturned on their side and cars smashed in at the front. I thought I was a lunatic on the road! This coming Saturday we have an extra day off at the weekend – it is called Ishmaa, no doubt celebrating the birth of some Kuwaiti or Arab arsewipe.

The days at school go so quick, it’s quite incredible. I seem to blink at school and the day’s over. I think it’s a combination of enjoying teaching again, an early start (6.30am for the bus to school) and short lessons (only 40 minutes each). Before you know it it is the middle of the week.

Last Wednesday night, myself and Andy (one of my colleagues in the Science department) went to Fahaheel, an area of Kuwait which is a rabbit warren of backstreets and markets. He was intending to buy a sword! We went to this one shop that sold swords, flick-knives, batons and virtually every weapon known to man. Quite amazing. I picked up this stick and it pulled apart in the middle, each half had a knife jutting out of the end. The owner said he would give me a good deal seeing it was my first visit to his shop but I declined. I thought better of walking in Fahaheel with Andy and a huge sword attached to his back.

We then hunted high and low for this DVD shop where I had brought a pirated copy of Lord of the Rings for about £2.00 and tried to take it back as my computer didn’t play it for some reason. We had been wandering and browsing for almost 5 hours and were just about to call it a night when we found the shop. Even the exchanged video didn’t work. The previous week I took another DVD back to this little Arab squirt in Fahaheel and said that it didn’t work. I said to him “give me another one like that and you’ll get a serious beating”. He squinted through his glasses not knowing what the hell I was talking about and said “beating?” I replied “beating, yes, very bad”. So much for pirated films.

Whilst in Fahaheel, we visited a fish market which was really amazing, selling all types of fresh fish having been caught that day in the Persian Gulf. I saw 2 fish which I had not seen before and asked the guy “what sort of fish are they?” to which he replied “big”. I could feel my right eye starting to twitch – God help us I thought. We then made our way round to several opticians so Andy could browse and collect some glasses he had ordered.

I have bought a superb pair of Police sun-glasses (wraparounds) for £70. You’d pay over double this in the UK. I said to the optician “I need to look like David Beckham”. Why they doubled up in fits of laughter, I’ll never know. There was this really cool poster of Beckham wearing exactly the same pair of glasses as I’d just bought. The optician then very kindly gave me the poster as well! (mischief- that was me that asked for it by the way - Oh and Limbo is a fat bastard in case you're wondering on that comment)

This week has been the beginning of after-school clubs. I run the faggot Games club. It’s my sort of club – all the kudos of running a club with none of the work; “choose a game, sit down, shut the fuck up and start playing – see you in one hour”. Andy tried to run the laughable Science club. Only 4 turned up and it really was a display of Frank Spencer incompetence. He hadn’t planned anything and tried to do this completely pathetic experiment to this group of boys. He was blowing in this tube for over 4 minutes and nothing happened. It was hilarious to watch and one of the lads gave him the suggestion as to what he may have done wrong. It was a master-class of academic incompetence.

Andy is so small he could easily pass for a sixteen year old, even though he’s twenty four. I was teaching in the class and this lad kept coming in to ask for equipment and I asked him who the teacher was, knowing it was Andy. He said he didn’t know. I said “is it a little Chinese squirt”? He replied “yes sir, the one who looks like he works in McDonalds”. I told this to Andy and he cracked up. One of the Maths teachers, Danny, is going to send a pupil down to Andy’s lab next week to ask for a Big Mac with side order of French fries.

This week I almost made my first major cock-up. I was in Lab 3 and came out into the corridor singing “oh, give me a smile ring-piece”. I had just got past the ‘smile’ bit and had my hand on the door of the prep room (or so I thought) and then realised I was about to enter a class of upper-band year 10 pupils taught by the Head of Science. CHRIST ALIVE!

Yesterday, I got a taxi to the Sultan Centre to pick up some OHP pens. The taxi-driver said his name was Banu. Two other guys were already in. One introduced himself as Binu. I thought “mmmmmm, who’s the other one – Benny?” Banu, Binu and Benny. They reminded me of the Three Stooges in the sixties – Larry, Mo and Curly. I never did learn the name of the third dude as he never spoke a word of English but sat grinning inanely like some retard in the back of the taxi. (We now call this lot Pinky and Perky...mischief)

So there we have it - life is still a bloody good laugh - i hang out with Limbo, Ed, Si and Vicks and Mo and Sarah and I have a laugh. And it's bloody hot.

Watch this space...

New photos posted

Sorry but really there is nothing to take pictures of in Kuwait except car crashes and erm...me. The Kuwaiti tourist industry leaves much to be desired - well actually it's non-existent. Photos are posted at the usual place http://photos.yahoo.com/sally500uk

Undercover bars and gay beaches

Alcohol is illegal here. So is homosexuality. Therefore they don’t happen.

Bollocks.

Now I’m not gay or ‘owt but only yesterday I was at the house of a friend pickling my liver in dilute ethanol, when she told us all about the strange gay habits of Kuwaitis. Mentioning in passing to a local Arab how bad women had it here, he replied “You should feel more sorry for the men”

Then it was explained that, though sleazy Arab guys will sleaze up on any slightly exposed piece of female flesh that was only because they are massively sexually repressed. As a result it turns out that homosexuality is rampant on the underground circuit, only not in name and obviously nobody talks about it.

You see, as it turns out, in Kuwait you are only gay if you are TAKING it up the bum. I guess that’s what they mean when they say it is always better to give than to receive. From my apartment I can see the Gulf, and it seems that on the beach just down the road from where I live, gay men congregate regularly for that popular COCK-TAIL known as Sex on the Beach. Think I might be avoiding that one then.

Other than the one really low moment in my life, where I had been without the loving touch of a woman for more than 5 years and decided that I would like to try to be gay, gayness has never really appealed to me. I know I look like a queer end faggot some nights and many have suggested that I try a bit of brown-loving action to give some lucky man a good time with my tight arse, but I’m not gay.

And outlawing gayness has not made me want to change my mind.

It seems however that this is not always the case with prohibition, as any student of 1930s America knows. It seems that that is the case with alcohol and pork here.

You see, out here hanging out with ex-pats I’ve noticed one thing that I consider to be definitive proof that banning stuff is pointless.

Everyone has alcohol. No matter whether they drink or not at home, everyone has alcohol and it seems that most Kuwaitis homes are even better stocked for alcohol than ours. I personally don’t drink that much at home but out here, with it being impossible to get you find yourself wanting a pint in the midday sun and a bag of pigs arse. People make mental notes to smuggle in pork sausages and bacon and to fill up Platypus bags with Malibu so they don’t get seen on the customs x-ray monitors.

All those illegal pleasures which really cause us no harm become sought after underground pleasures and the government becomes an unpopular overlord for its efforts. Perhaps they should read Tao Te Ching

The more prohibitions you have,
The less virtuous people will be.
The more weapons you have,
The less secure people will be.
The more subsidies you have,
The less self-reliant people will be.

Therefore the master says:
I let go of the law,
And people become honest.
I let go of economics,
And people become prosperous.
I let go of religion,
And people become serene.
I let go of all desire for the common good,
And the good becomes as common as grass.

Kuwait is a lovely place so far as much as I may appear to mock otherwise. It’s bloody hot and I understand little of what I see and hear around me, but all the teachers have gone out of their way to be friendly and helpful so I’m happy. I will perhaps need to spend a little more time chillin with the locals, which I tried today, down at the beach. No I wasn’t down at the beach looking for gay sex at the time!

I tried speaking to these 2 random guys down there but to no avail as we both could not understand a bloody thing the other was trying to say, though what what I could figure out Abdullah and his friend were down there collecting sand to bring home to feed their chickens. They loaded up two bags of sand each onto the backs of their Mercedes 4x4s and drove off. Very strange.