the attitude of the majority of Kuwaitis is ‘what happens happens for a reason’ and ‘if i die its for the greater good’.  i understand that this is their religious belief and I cant knock them for having such strong faith in something but after what i saw last night personally i wish they kept this happening for a reason attitude safely locked behind closed doors.

this what happens happens for a reason attitude is mot present on the roads. it seems many drivers leave their home with the reasoning that ‘if i drive like a mad man whilst on my phne, with my two year old child sitting on the dashboard and my five other children jumping around in the back of my brand spanking new sparkly landrover and if ihappen to crash into someone else doing something similar and we all die…well so be it. It is what is meant to happen to me.’

I drove past a car crash yesterday, which at first glance looked like something you would drive past on the M4 every day and not really question it but at closer inspection you can see a dead body next to one of the cars covered by just a small blanket. noone had tried to move the body and i was informed later that this is the custom/law in Kuwait. The body can not be touched, whether it is alive or dead, by anybody untill the police arrive. So if by a small miracle you manage to survive the crash, then the bets are on that you would probably be dead by the time the police arrive at the scene, after having to weave their way through the eight lanes of traffic (there should only be four but if the Kuwaitis want to get somewhere they wont think twice about turning the pavement into a lane).

Maybe this all seems so odd and alien to me because I come from a country where you cant even eat an apple and drive at the same time without the chance of being stopped by the police….and now I’m in a country where you can have a small monkey in a pink dress jumping about on your lap whilst driving and nobody will bat an eye lid. Seriously. It happened. Saw it with my own eyes.

found yesterdays lecture quite amusing and unlike any other journalism lecture we’ve had yet. however in the seminar i did feel slightly like our freedom of speech rights were taken away from us when nearly everything we said got attacked by this ‘socratic method’.