QueWait a Minute Mr. Postman

So we're chillin' in Kuwait now. We're staying with a friend at his palatial apartment. The view is amazing but I don't think I want to put photos up from it. If I were staying longer I'd get a better feel for how many bad/dangerous people are really around - I don't want to give them an easy target. Suffice it to say that while typing this I can look up over the top of the screen and out in to the Persian Gulf. There are a cargo ships and dhows (sp?) bringing in more stuff for the Kuwaitis to buy. Holy cow it's expensive here. I guess most everything will seem expensive compared to Armenia, but even Dubai wasn't outrageous. We ate at a Johnny Rockets a few days ago and four burgers and a couple orders of fries was $40 US. Oh yeah - it's priced here for people who and rich - not well off, RICH. My friend Chris' business here is economics and he says that the Kuwaitis are so sickeningly rich that it's difficult to put yourself in their mindset. Two, maybe three generations ago Kuwaitis were either pearl-diving or herding camels. It wasn't an advanced society and then they started simply pumping money out of the ground. I'm most certainly over-simplifying but the evidence is all around of the nuvo-riche lifestyle. Ferraris, Maseratis (LOL! MS Word thinks that should be Macerate), Porsches, and of course the common grocery-getter Mercedes and BMWs abound.

And they're BIG! I mean American big. Huge. Big, weeble-wobble ninjas. I realize now why they like American cars as well as the exotics. They're cheap too so I guess you can get a couple extra cars that are comfortable for fat butts. The lifestyle appears to be extremely sedentary. Up at ten or eleven in the morning, hang out eating fast food (it's everywhere and I fully plan on seating Burger King, MacDonald's, AND Hardees at least one time each), go to "work" which I'm told is just a way to keep busy and collect your absurdly large check from the gubment, and then home to nap away the hot afternoon. People don't really start coming out in force on a social level until we're getting ready for bed at nine or ten PM. They might not have as much oil as the other countries in the Arab world, but they also have WAY fewer people so it gets spread around in larger chunks. We'll go out later today and I'll report back with some photos and actual interaction with Kuwaitis. Well actually I highly doubt they'll hang out anywhere that M and I can afford to eat. :)

Oh! Dubai is the shit.