Commonly referred to as the "moth orchid", Phalaenopsis are one of the longest blooming orchids – they last from 2 to 6 months before dropping and have also been known to bloom 2 to 3 times per year once they have reached a mature size. Once the flower has dropped, if you cut the stem just above the node where the first flower bloomed, a new flower stem should emerge from the top node within 2 months! With Mum’s ”green fingers” and her tender-loving care, I’m pretty sure this pot of Phalaenopsis is going to be around for awhile.

Gardening had always been one of Mum’s favourite hobbies and I remember she loved orchids. And she loves Phalaenopsis especially. One of the things we first did after her stroke, once she was up to it, was to take her out to her patio and to her garden so she could see, touch and of course, talk to her plants. She enjoyed being out there. It was quite therapeutic, I could tell. Of course, she was also upset she couldn’t walk about and do the usual gardening activities because she was in the wheelchair. I’d tell her that that was one of the activities she should visualise herself doing along with the other things she enjoyed like cooking and going out with the girls.

When I called to wish her this morning, she said she liked it so much she has put it by her bedside. I was glad she liked it. It meant a lot to me. And I couldn’t wait to be back next week to spend some quality time with her.

For today, happy birthday Mummy..whatever with the past has gone, the best is always yet to come. And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years….I love you.

So we never switch off our mobile phones when we go to sleep. Wherever we are. In case a member of the family tries to contact us. In case there is an emergency.

Indeed such a call came. It was one of my brothers. And although there didn’t seem to be anything to worry about from the tone of his voice, I didn’t expect good news. He apologised then said “Mummy just had a stroke.” It was like everything blacked out for a moment. All I could manage was “Oh no!”

“Its OK,” he continued. “We managed to get her to the hospital immediately and she’s being attended to.” “I should go back,” I said. “No, wait, 24 hours,” he said. I called him back using Skype and got more information. I was shocked when he let me speak to Mum, but was thankful that she could speak. I cried quietly and assured her that I’d be back in a flash.

I was lucky that I had a Qatar Airways ticket on hand for a flight back to Kuala Lumpur exactly a month later. The morning was spent trying to change the flight date and thank God we were able to get seats for me and hubby on a flight the same day which got us back to KL the very next morning.

Hubby once asked me – why do you never switch off your mobile phone? He doesn’t ask me anymore.

In a region mistakenly known for its suppressed and deprived women, Sara Akbar, the special IWG guest speaker, stands tall.

At a time when the skies above Kuwait were overcast with dark smoky clouds spewing out of burning oil wells, left in the wake of the Iraqi invasion, Sara Akbar, then a Kuwaiti engineer, participated in the massive firefighting endeavour that ultimately doused the raging fires.

Strong, resolute, with a strict outer demeanour, Sara Akbar, the Chief Executive Officer of Kuwait Energy Company, belies the popularly held notion that Arab women are weak and suffering.

“She has been working in the oil sector for more than twenty-seven years. She is also a mother and has three children. Mrs Akbar was very active during the time of the Liberation,” said Karen Nauss Henry, President of IWG, introducing the guest speaker to the assembled guests who were from all over the world.

Akbar spoke of her journey which included her early experiences, her sudden propulsion into the spotlight after the Liberation and her later growth and development as a professional. “I will speak of the time when we spent days and nights to combat the fire which was the biggest man-made environmental catastrophe ever. Yes, there are volcanoes and earthquakes that rage destruction, but this was man-made, done by the troops of Saddam before they left Kuwait,” she recounted as the noted documentary ‘Fires of Kuwait’ played in the background.

“When asked if I look back at what happened twenty years ago with regret and sadness, I say, ‘I do not have any regrets because we as Kuwaitis learnt much from that catastrophe.’ Every dark day has a bright side and we have to remember the bright side of the catastrophe,” said Sara Akbar, an eyewitness to the disaster.

Sometimes she looks back at those days with  disbelief, at how an ordinary engineer did things which she normally would not have.

During the invasion Akbar and a small group of Kuwaitis managed to keep the oil company working with a small workforce. “In KOC we had 5,000 employees, but the invasion left us with just 50.” She spoke of the emotional trauma of witnessing the KOC being ransacked by the Iraqis and using the oil to feed their planes and tanks.

“My job for those seven months of occupation was to keep records of the events and to prepare a daily report for the government about all the activities that were taking place in the oil sector,” she said. Years later in 2003, after the Iraqi liberation, she recalled the Iraqi minister visited Kuwait for an OPEC meeting. During her meeting with the minister, she met two gentlemen who had accompanied him on the trip. “One of them had been my Iraqi boss for seven months at KOC during the occupation. He was shocked when I reminded him. He was the undersecretary to the Oil Minister in Iraq.” It is from him she found out that despite endeavours, Saddam’s government had been unable to find out the source of information being leaked out to the Kuwaiti government. “Thank God”, smiled the iron lady.

Sara Akbar’s story is a tale of personal courage touched with a sense of humour that allows her to smile at society and at popular perception which labelled her ‘crazy’ for her commitment and professionalism.

Sara told us that one  of the things she was involved in during the occupation was to “smuggle” expatriates trapped in Ahmadi to safe places in Kuwait city under the watchful eyes of the Iraqi forces. She said she begged for abayas from members of her family and friends all over Kuwait to help her do this! She also helped to “change their appearance” by helping them to dye their light coloured hair black.

Not for a minute during the occupation did she believe that the Iraqis would blow up the oil wells. Those still at work in the oil sector, regarded it as a threat used by Saddam to scare the Kuwaitis. “After all it was the craziest thing one could do,” she mused. On Feb 15 the discussion for withdrawal started. Three days later Akbar was at home when she heard the sound of gunshots. Being adventurous by nature, she immediately went to investigate and found the Iraqi soldiers shooting into the air as a mark of jubilation, as they were going to return to their homeland. “In the same minute I heard the explosions,” she said continuing the story.

“I looked back and I saw smoke in the air.” Akbar took her mother in the car and went to investigate the oil fields. “The more you went into the fields the darker it became. The darkness was unbelievable and the oil wells looked like flickering candles in the horizon,” said the lady who was traumatized by the sight.

It had not been an easy professional journey for Akbar. “All I wanted to be is a good technical engineer, so I put a lot of effort in training myself. I thought to be a good engineer, I should work in the fields and get my hands dirty.” She promptly approached the KOC management and told them of her desire to work in the fields. The response was as expected. Being a woman she was at a disadvantage, from social taboos and threats of bodily harm that might occur. She was refused permission, but Akbar persisted. Eventually she was given permission. The management tried to dissuade her with the timings which began at 7 am and got over at 4 pm. But Akbar continued determined. One day she was sent to an offshore well and was stuck in the site till late at night because of bad weather. When her replacement reached, he refused to get onto the platform, discouraged by the supposed dangers involved, despite seeing a lone Kuwaiti woman who had been at work at the same site for hours.

“For the next ten years, I worked on the oil fields, offshore and onshore, day and night, and the result of this work was that I knew the oil fields very well.

There were eight hundred wells and I knew every single one like the back of my hand. I had nothing in my life but my work and I loved it. I adored it,” noted one of the few women Chief Executives in the Gulf. It was the determination to help in the rebuilding of Kuwait that led a team of Kuwaiti engineers to approach the KOC management to help douse the fire. They were refused permission on grounds of experience.

But the team insisted and was ultimately allowed to join the firefighting mission. When they doused their first oil well they did it in the cover of the night, for fear of failure and inviting criticism. But by morning the team succeeded and proved everybody wrong. The team went on to control many oil wells after that, at times even dousing two wells a day.

Akbar spoke of the valuable lessons learnt from that catastrophe, of her belief that when Kuwaitis challenged can come together and overcome the biggest obstacle. “No matter what you do as an individual, nothing beats teamwork,” a mantra which worked well when she set up Kuwait Energy in 2005. With assets scattered around the world, the company has generated profits year after year.

Sara Akbar is a professional Kuwaiti woman who is a role model for women around the world. But her definition of success also includes a happy family life. In her determination to have a successful career she avoided getting married, for the first ten years. Later, she gave in to the long standing proposal. With a husband based in Bahrain, it was not easy to maintain a balance, but she did it. Hers is one of those rare instances of perfect partnership, where she asked her husband to seek retirement and move to Kuwait where she had a successful career. The mother of three children she attributes her happy family life to her extended family and husband who have always been a support. Behind most successful Kuwaiti women, there has been strong maternal presence and support, and Sara Akbar was no expectation. She recalls with fondness the important role played by her mother in helping her reach her goal.

The story of Sara Akbar is a fascinating story of the determination of a Kuwaiti woman to leave a mark and to contribute to her country’s success, something she has achieved in large measures.

From Kuwait’s Arab Times, by Chaitali B. Roy

I had seen the academy award-nominated documentary “Fires of Kuwait” and I had seen a woman among the firefighters, I wondered what she was like.

Now I was proud to have met her and heard her story.

Bravo, Sara, you did good!

Savour it, Rohaizan!

When I call friends now, the first question many ask me will be, “Are you in Kuwait?” Sometimes I’m tempted to say, “Well, no, actually, I’m calling you from Timbuktu!” The other question I frequently get is, “When did you get back?”, and always I will ask in return, “From where?” I really can’t blame them because I was hardly in Kuwait last year.

Well, travelling in 2010 hasn’t begun, that’s why I’m feeling this way. This is the “calm before the storm”. It has hardly been quiet though because I’ve taken the time to see friends, do things around Kuwait, and the house and of course there’s the studio activities. And the diet and exercise regime.

Also ticking stuff off the to-do list. Not that I’ve come to the end of the list, but I’m getting there. Once the travelling starts, there will be a halt, so I’m making sure I keep the momentum going now.

Of course, I have just added “Wipe dust off the suitcases” to the list of high priority items…

But just as I thought I had finished, I’d discover another box of books. And another. And another. I must have “found” five boxes of books tucked away in the built-in cupboards in the study. All because we didn’t have enough space to put all of them out. Well now we have and now they can come out of their hiding place!

I managed to arrange the books in some kind of order – I chided hubby that we needed librarian skills to arrange our books! Anyway I did the best I could to arrange them so that we could find what we were looking for whether they were language study books, self-improvement, management and “mumbo jumbo” stuff, dictionaries, travel guides, coffee table type books, history or novels. I reorganised a few times but I think I got it right now! Lucky for me there are bookshelves in my studio now, so my art books happily have a home of their own.

We decided to put our tables facing each other so I face hubby and the books and hubby faces me and his world map on the wall..great inspiration eh? I want to read more and he wants to travel more…LOL

The team was very professional, very organised, neat and tidy. They didn’t work super-fast like the guys in Malaysia when they were installing the study furniture, chest of drawers and laundry room furniture – they seemed much more conscientious and friendly too!

And another thing – a key difference actually – in Malaysia, IKEA only delivers and assemble furniture but they will NOT install anything on walls or ceilings. You’d have to arrange that yourself as I did. Here in Kuwait they do everything for the same fee.

The guys took exactly two and a half hours to assemble and install everything. I was pleased that everything fit exactly where we wanted them to be and that we still had a lot of space to move around in the room! I was quite worried that it might be a bit tight.

We cleaned up after they left. I sent the maid home because she had been around all day…

This was hardly the end of the project. More like a new beginning. Tomorrow I start filling the book cases with our collection of books and hubby will put all the electronics where they belong, well at least my workstation, before he left on a business trip to Egypt.

For now, its time to go out and celebrate hubby’s birthday.

Happy birthday to the man in my life!

And so it entered my long list of resolutions for the year. More like my to do list now.

The project involved refurnishing our study but first – transferring a group bookshelves including a workstation to my studio. We affectionately refer to these bookshelves as the “Clarendon” stuff. They are solid wood “very country” furniture which we bought for our study in the UK when we first got there. In Dubai, it served as the furniture in my very large studio. Here in Kuwait, I don’t exactly remember why, but they went back in the study and I had all kinds of loose furniture in my small studio.

Since we got our new Macs last year, hubby had also got us new, larger monitors and we both agreed they didn’t exactly go with country-looking Clarendon. Not only that, we had been adding on all kinds of loose furniture from around the house as the need arose. It was an interior decorator’s nightmare. The room was a mess and since we spent a lot of time in our study, we also agreed it merited a revamp.

We decided on a contemporary look and where better to get them from than IKEA eh? I convinced hubby that we should complete the project before the end of January. So on Friday we went to IKEA and bought all the furniture we needed for the study and booked the delivery and installation for Tuesday.

It was truly deja vu as the last time I did this was last year in KL when I was furnishing our study at our new apartment there…

Yesterday morning, hubby surprised me by starting to remove all the books (and we have a lot of books!) and everything else from the Clarendon shelves.

And so began the big move. I worked with our twice-a-week maid to move my desk and other stuff out of the studio. After a quick clean up, we started moving the Clarendon to the studio. Piece by piece. Until our study was completely empty. Except for the TV and the built-in cupboards.

I spent the evening arranging all my projects in their new old home and everything looks nice and country now. Like a studio should be.

Now all we had to do was wait for the IKEA team to deliver and install the new furniture.

I kid you not.

People, I am talking about the Arabian edition here – not the UK edition, not the US edition. Harper’s Bazaar Arabia. This is the same magazine that is sold in Dubai, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar. It is not available in Saudi Arabia, for obvious reasons. Ergo one would assume that the photographs and articles would have been sufficiently screened so that they’re “Arabia-appropriate”, so to speak, given the conservatism associated with this region.

No, its not good enough for Kuwait. Every magazine is individually “censored” for décolletage especially, and whatever else whoever with the black tape deems inappropriate – for its women readers!

Can you believe these pictures?

No décolletage here…just a bit of leg…oh, and not even any hint of bare skin showing through a lacy bodysuit.

It looks like someone already tried to have a go removing the tape here BEFORE I even bought it!

It makes us laugh so hard when we  imagine a bunch of people sitting in a room somewhere in Kuwait armed with black tape or stickers viciously obliterating every copy of these magazines. I can’t help wondering – do they use men to do this? Or do they use women? Do they have specific guidelines or do they just slap the tape wherever they like?

I repeat – this is a fashion magazine for women!

I wonder if they slap on the tape because some women who buy the magazine might actually find it offensive. Or is it to discourage men from buying the magazine? Would men really buy a fashion magazine to ogle at female body parts?

Anyway..let me just be grateful that I can still remove the tapes and enjoy my favourite fashion magazine. Previously they used black markers and I didn’t bother buying them. I’d just get them from a news stand at some airport outside Kuwait.

Anyway, here’s the result of my “entertainment”….

You can see that I didn’t do so well on some of the pages this time.

Well, you can’t blame a girl for trying, can you?

Would it come as a shock to you to find out that Bahrain was voted number eight among the world’s top ten Sin Cities in 2009? Well, it shocked me.

From Al-Arabiya:

Making the list of the Top Ten "Sin Cities" around the world may not be good news for Manama, Bahrain’s capital, as police launched a crackdown on prostitutes in the city following its listing by a western men’s magazine as the party hub of the Middle East for its vibrant sex and alcohol industry.

Police in Bahrain rounded up 300 prostitutes and pimps in Manama [...] as Bahraini religious authorities called for a crackdown campaign on debauchery after the capital made the cut as the eighth most sinful – and the only Arab – city in the world…

Even the New York Times reported that “prostitution is rampant in the hotels and nightclubs, and the streets are filled with massage parlours. Bahrain is a destination for sex tourism”. So you really have to be careful where you go in Bahrain, lest you ended up in the wrong place with the wrong people!!

When we were booking the trip, hubby was very careful about where we stayed and where we will spend our new year’s eve – to make sure we were not in the midst of the “wrong company” so to speak. Things can and do get rowdy. That’s why he booked the Ritz.

Our new year’s eve with Tosin and Andrew was fun – our meal at The Plums was “exotic” to say the least…haute cuisine you might say and then it was off to the Ballroom to count down to the new year. It was a long time since we’d been a “do” like this and certainly never in the Middle East.

There was nothing untoward, mind you, it just felt a little weird seeing Arab men in their dishdashas and women in their abayas and niqabs among the crowd. Not many, but there were.

It wasn’t rowdy at the Ritz, just your usual new year’s eve thing with balloons being released from the ceiling at midnight…auld lang syne…and lots of noise. Very typical.

On new year’s day we had dinner with a couple of friends from Kuwait at Mezzaluna. The restaurant is set in the open courtyard of an old Bahraini house in Adilya, the “bohemian” part of Bahrain where, in the last few years many of the old townhouses had been turned into art galleries, cafes and chic restaurants. It was quiet there and the food was good. Again, haute cuisine!

Then we thought we’d find a place to sit down and listen to some music and that was when it became difficult! To find a place which we would be comfortable in.

The “right” place, yet happening? Was there such a place in Bahrain?

We spent a bomb on taxis, going from one place to another. Yes – taxis cost an arm and a leg in Bahrain. Mind you it was triple that before the government made taxi meters mandatory. Taxi drivers could charge you whatever they wanted then!

The "Sky Bar" at the Radisson was not what they said in their web page. A local played live Arabic music. Everyone there was Arab. The place stank of stale cigarettes and looked really dodgy, if you know what I mean. So we left. The “concierge” sent us to the Phoenicia Tower – which was well known for something else, but he assured us it was a decent “happening” place!

Hmmmm…it was an adventure! Two clubs on the same floor. One “sin-city” type. One for “normal” people. We go inside the latter, TaBu, which seemed to be pretty decent. It was decorated totally in white. We had our cokes, listened to the music for a bit and decided to leave soon after because our friend had a bad tummy.

We didn’t need an excuse but we felt it was time. We took separate taxis and 15 minutes later, I was glad to be back at the Ritz.

The lobby was quite amazing. It was still very festive with fresh poinsettia on coffee tables and a gigantic Christmas tree in the colours of the Bahraini flag. Nice touch I thought. Bahrainis celebrated their national day on 17th December and a lot of the festive decor in the city had been done up in red and white.

The lobby was dark with its black marble floors and I loved the centrepiece with the white marble star. We took this from the atrium balcony outside our room. I wondered if the six Saudi gentlemen were discussing the evening’s plans or just waiting for their wives.

The bedroom…of course I ooohed and aaahed all the way. A door to the right of the bed leads you to the walk-in closet with a huge full length mirror, chest of drawers, hanging cupboards. Even had an ironing board and iron. Although I’m wondering, if you stayed at the Ritz, wouldn’t you rather send your stuff down for pressing instead?

Opposite the bed, a sitting area and a full-sized desk. No free internet though in this part of the world. Only in Europe and South America have I experienced free internet in the rooms.

There was a Nespresso machine in the room which hubby had told me about before. This was where he first discovered Nespresso many moons ago and he had told me it was quite a challenge to figure out how to get coffee out of it! LOL

The bathroom was large but I have to admit, I’ve been in better. This had only one sink and the wall mirror could have been larger. We discovered later that the hot water regulator in the shower cabinet did not work – thankfully there was a second shower in the bath! But they fixed it soon enough and that was good considering it was new year’s day.

This is NOT a review, people, but all said – even though it WAS the Ritz, my vote still goes to the Golden Well hotel in Prague for the best overall experience so far.

That’s the difference between a 5-star city hotel and a 5-star boutique hotel I guess. The overall experience.