18.04.10-24.04.10:
My second week in Kuwait was a little more sedate than the first. I managed to pull some awesome shapes on the website… check out all the new features – GPS, playlists, passport photos, updated heroes, new forum, at-a-glance diaries, a checklist and a brand new forum. Phew.
Kuwait is… well, how can I put this…? Not the most Graham Hughes of cities. There’s no old stuff, the buildings are ALL concrete (as if there was a build-one-get-several-hundred-free offer on), there’s no booze (legally at any rate), you can’t kiss/dance/hold hands with the opposite sex (you can do all three with the same sex, that’s fine and not a bit gay in the slightest) and it seems that the only god worshipped around these parts is mammon – hanging around the shopping malls are literally the ONLY thing to do.
Ah, well, no – there is something else you can do, and that’s to drive like a maniac for no apparent reason other than you want to get yourself and everyone in the local vicinity killed. In souped-up sports cars, boy racers and spoilt rich kids race up and down the dual carriageways at arse clenching speeds, attempting to outdo each other as to who can produce the most mangled corpse.
The sad thing is that given the lack of sex, booze and rock n’ roll, this is the only way these kids (and they are all kids – not many make it to the age of 21) can blow off steam, strut their stuff and make their mark in the world. Death by channelled testosterone. Whoopee. But even the adults seem to be all to willing to join the choir invisible – you’ll see them cut you up – they’ll have no safety belt on, they’ll have their four year old kid on their lap and they’ll invariably be on the phone.
Oh, and those who aren’t driving sports cars are driving SUVs – you know those horrifically ugly Chelsea Tractor pollution-mobiles favoured by the lower orders that are 27 times more likely to kill you if they smash into you at speed? Yeah, them. Wonderful. The driving here is (in my humble estimation) the second worst in the world after Nigeria. The sad thing is that everybody tells me it’s the same story all over the peninsular.
The big news of the week was that the admiral Heitham went home to Preston and left me in the capable hands of Jannie and Ruban. On the Friday we went to Dominic’s for a house party were I met a guy from Chile who had lived in Nigeria for a few years and explained the way of thinking there in one clear sentence. Every day IS the last day of the world. Put like that, I get it – the corruption, the madness, the religiosity, the suicidal driving… it all kind of makes sense.
Now what’s Kuwait’s excuse?
