This guy walks off a plane and into Kuwait . . . could be the start of a great joke I bet but Im told that humor is not one of my talents. So I’m back in Kuwait for a few weeks, its 4AM on Tuesday and I can’t sleep. Honestly I’m thrilled to be here although it may not show on my face (social graces and projecting my inner feeling to others are yet more things crossed off my list of talents). The timing kinda sucks but then the timing is never right to leave your family for any period of time I guess.

The flight over was decent. Since my last trip out here United has started a non-stop to KWI from Washington DC. Used some miles to upgrade to business class and had a pretty decent 13 hour flight. The airport is the same, people seem the same, although this time immigration was different. Instead of just showing my ID and walking through with some Arabic numbers scribbled on the back of it I actually had to get a visa and stamp in my passport. This is a good thing I suppose because it seems to be mostly related to security at the places we’re working so I shouldn’t complain, but I will.

They have a ticket system like at the deli, push a button get a ticket, and wait for your number to be called. Push button, Im number 67, now serving, 6. They’ve got 8 people behind the counter, 4 of whom are actually working from what I can tell, 2 of them productively. Apparently the attitude of government employees is another of the similarities between Kuwait and US culture.

Yet another similarity is how locals know the system and are willing to exploit its weaknesses at the expense of others. You know how it is theres always someone who feels they don’t need to wait in line so they just storm right up to the counter and demand service, with very few exceptions they always get served mostly to avoid confrontation I think. And lest anyone thing Im speaking badly of arabs its not arabs I mean when I say locals, its anyone who knows the system here including a number of Americans I watched cut in line. The Americans had a methodology though, they would wait until someone didn’t show up for a number that was called then walk up just before they switched to the next pretending that they just realized it was their number up their. I watch two people with numbers over 90 go in front of me. For better or worse, probably out of fear of confrontation, I waited my turn. The wait wasn’t too bad, it took only slightly longer to get through immigration than it did for me to fly from Boston to Washington DC.

The ride to the villa quickly reminded me of the driving skills of the people of Kuwait. A warm welcome to the villa by Laveena, followed by friends and coworkers arriving shortly thereafter to watch the Indy 500 and I felt as if I’d never left.

Michale Jackson is a brown person?

So we're watching VH1 "Top Songs of the 80's" and Billy Jean comes in around 4. They show the video and the cover of the album and the following dialog ensues:

Mia : "Thats Michael Jackson!?"
Me and Maki : "Yes"
Mia : "he's the guy who sings that song Smooth Criminal that I like?" (she actually prefers the Alien Ant Farm cover but knows the MJ version)
Me : "Yup"
Mia : "Michael Jackson is a brown person?" (no disrespect meant to African-Americans)
Maki and I erupt into laughter.

I guess having grown up around Michael Jackson's eccentricity I've just kind of accepted watching him grow from the talented little "brown" boy he was to the disturbing nose-less whitish thing hes become.

So I saw this story in the news last week.

N.Y. Couple Faces Forced Labor Charges

By FRANK ELTMAN, Associated Press Writer

Wed May 16, 9:20 AM

MINEOLA, N.Y. - A millionaire couple were arrested on federal charges that they kept two Indonesian women as slaves in their swank Long Island home for more than five years, beating and abusing them and paying them almost nothing.

Authorities uncovered the alleged abuse after one of the women was found by police wandering outside a doughnut shop Sunday morning wearing only pants and a towel.

The story continues on in more detail about the abuse of these two women. This story reminded me of a news story about Kuwaiti diplomats from a couple months ago . . .

Servants: Diplomat Held Us as Suburban 'Slaves'

Three former servants are suing a Kuwaiti diplomat, alleging that he treated them like slaves in his suburban home in Washington, D.C. The workers are poor women from India, and they say the diplomat worked them for more than 15 hours a day. They also claim his wife beat one of them repeatedly.

More importantly though it reminded me of countless stories from locals in Kuwait about the abuse of servants. Servants are often treated like animals. I would say pets but first off most people in Kuwait dont keep pets and most pets I know are treated better than what Ive heard of servant treatment.

ECC's housekeeper (Laveena) has burn scars on her arms resulting from an incident with a previous house-mistress. I forget the details of how the initial burns happened, something about hot oil flashing in a pan when Laveena was awakened at some ungodly hour to make food for her employers. The scars however resulted not so much form the burns themselves as much as from the house mistress disallowing Laveena to keep the burns bandaged. This resulted in an infection at which point Laveena quit I believe. Of course in a country where servants must be sponsored to stay in the country you cant really quit your job. Laveena had to buy her freedom from her employer at the cost of a few months salary. Essentially the employer was holding her passport and refused to give it up unless she paid them. A friend of hers who's house-mistress would wake her when she was needed by poking her in the head with a hot curling iron. There are plenty of other stories just like this.

BTW, Laveena makes roughly $500 a month. This pay rate was a significant increase over the rate she was paid to be scarred for life. Many servants work for 1/3 of that amount in much worse conditions. Laveena went home to India last month for a short vacation, her first time home, her first time seeing her family, in five years. In those five years her sister had a son, and her family built a house with the money Laveena has been sending home. A house with plumbing and a roof (things her family didn't have when she left for Kuwait). Even knowing Laveena, hearing the stories first hand, seeing the scars I still cant comprehend this kind of existence.

Yes it does grow . . .

Reef tanks are kinda like children. One day you realize how much they've grown without you even noticing it. From time to time I take pictures of the tank, usually when Im thinking of cutting something into pieces to sell off. Since it's BRS auction time I was thinking of fragging (reefspeak for fragmenting or cutting something into a bunch of pieces) the mushroom leather so I took some pics in preparation for posting at the BRS website. So as I was looking at the pics of the leather I was about to take a razor knife to, I started comparing the pics of the tank from January until now and was quite pleasantly surprised.

This pic above is of the left side of the tank. The left side of the pic was taken last week. The right side was taken on January 11th. I knew the stuff was growing but didn't realize how much it had grown in just 4 months.


This next picture is not the best but its of a colony of two SPS corals that I got from my good friend Dawn. The purple-ish stick looking coral is an acropora that has been very successfully propagated around Boston for quite some time. The original frag of it came from the New England Aquarium reef tank (that sounds alot cooler than it really is). I dont know the name of the greenish coral with big brown polyps in the back. Its a rather average SPS coral, not that cool in coloring, but it grows well especially under moderate lighting. The growth on this is far more than I expected given the lighting and lack of consistent calcium supplementation.

In the end I decided not to frag that leather and instead moved the brain to the other side of the tank to give the leather room to spread its wings. At some point though I will frag it though. That's one of the focuses of the BRS and things I enjoy most about reefkeeping. Trading and selling captive bred corals helps reduce stress on wild reefs. Every coral in the ECC Reef is "aquacultured" (aka grown in a tank). Even the two clowns are captive bred, born and raised in Rhode Island . . . they don't have that half Boston, half Long Island accent though.

The ECC Office Reef

I had this sudden urge to start blogging again. Spent a lot of time revamping the layout, adding widgets, etc. Then couldn't think of what the hell I had wanted to write. So I figure I'll try and prime the pump with something about the office "fish tank."

We'd been talking about putting an aquarium in the office since back before I left for Kuwait. We held off pending an office move that happened the week after I left. So upon my return the discussion resumed. admittedly I wasn't that excited about the idea at first. I had been before but when faced with actually trying to plan it I was concerned about long term maintenance. I got over it though.

I have a few years experience in the hobby and a few friends who have gone on from hobbyist to LFS owner (thats Local FIsh Store). So working with my friend Mike at Aqua Addicts, we ended up with a 75-gallon tank. Since its in the lobby of the office we budgeted a little more on the tank side of things to get a nice maple finish stand and canopy. Mike got me almost everything else we started off with except the light fixture. The light fixture came at a bargain deal via the annual Boston Reefers Society auction. So in October 2006 it finally got set up:

• 75-gallon All-Glass tank, stand and canopy
• All-Glass Model 2 Sump
• EuroReef RS80 Skimmer
• MagDrive 9.5 return pump
• Aquactinics 5x54W T-5 light fixture
  
• apprx. 80lbs of new Tonga live rock

After a month of listening to "I thought it was going to be a fish tank not a rock tank" I moved my pair of percula clown fish from my 29-gallon at home into the office. They certainly appreciated the room to breathe. Since we were on an accelerated startup schedule thanks to constant harassment from office-mates within the next couple weeks the tank was fully stocked with coral and rock from my 29g and some new fish from some LFS and one online order.

Now that the tank has been up over 6 months it pretty stable and looks decent. We lost quite a few fish in the beginning (too much too soon I guess) which I'm not proud of. There is a small but persistent algae problem, particularly on the right side of the tank where flow isn't as good as I'd like it. But given the limitations of it being in the office I think it turned out damn good.