I cannot tell whether I were more pleased or mortified to observe in those solitary walks that the smaller birds did not appear to be at all afraid of me, but would hop about within a yard's distance, looking for works and other food, with as much indifference and security as if no creature at all were near them.











There was a shrilly chaotic noise on my window and I saw around five small birds fighting over something -- or maybe lynching another bird who must have done something wrong. After the short fight, two birds stayed perched outside my window (because the mirror is one-way, the birds hardly noticed that I'm standing almost an arm reach away from them). One flew away but this one bird stayed for a good three minutes. Sometimes he (don't ask me how I knew that the bird is a he...I'm just guessing) would look sideways towards me perhaps sensing my shadow or silhouette on the window. This is the nearest I can get to a free bird, and it's so cool.

He snuffed in every corner, in the barn, in the cow-shed, in the henhouses, in the vegetable garden, and found traces of Snowball almost everywhere. He would put his snout to the ground, give several deep sniffs, ad exclaim in a terrible voice, ‘Snowball! He has been here! I can smell him distinctly!’ and at the word ‘Snowball’ all the dogs let out blood-curdling growls and showed their side teeth.















The highway to Wafra Farms is almost deserted until you reach a roundabout where you'd see lines of private farms with huge green and farmhouses. It's a surprise that in the middle of a desert, the Kuwait farmers manage to produce edible crops and decorative plants (more of a latter, really). I noticed that most of the boxed vegetables (except maybe for the green veges and tomatoes) being sold in Wafra Farms are not locally produced. They're priced lower than in the city market because Wafra Farms is the distribution center of veges in the Eastern part of Kuwait.

Flank me with your lances; and ye harpooners, stand there with your irons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may in some sort revive a noble custom of my fisherman fathers before me.

Yet, those forlorn-looking fishermen, mildy eyeing us as they passed, said not one word to our own look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail was being heard from below.















I took these photos near the Messillah Beach in Kuwait. Every afternoon on Fridays and Saturdays, Kuwaiti youths and families frequent the place to fly kites. There was a noticeable absence of kites that particular afternoon because of the downcast sky due to a mild sandstorm. This man, small fishing net on his shoulders, caught my fancy and I clandestinely took his photos while he was on his way to fish.

Confession: I did a blog -- way back before my being absent from blogosphere became habitual -- and it's about writing sort of a two hundred worded shorts about anything and everything. After writing a score of shorts -- which amounted to something like a little more than two thousand words total, I stopped. It wasn't easy. But it's a challenge.

I'm revving up now. It may take more months for me to totally get this blog back on the road (or sphere or net or wherever) and this is actually just a test while I'm working on facelifting Isladenebz, and boy is it really hard to write two hundred words when I've really nothing to say except I'm revving up (and did I already say that?).

I’m rolling my eyes now…

It’s way past my bedtime and it’s been five days straight that I’m sleeping beyond my 11pm-ish schedule, but hopefully before the clock ticks the 11th hour, I’d manage to come up with exactly two hundred words (which incidentally include a, at, and, I, etc).

I’m a cheat I know, but hey, a man’s got to do when he has two hundred words to say. There. I finished it.

(201 words total excluding this line).

The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down...out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards, as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there...

But soon the steeples called good people all to church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and with their gayest faces.











Either we're being sentimental of home (or perhaps of the tradition itself) or we're inherently religious that for nine mornings, Pinoys in Kuwait didn't mind the biting cold at unholy hour of five attend the first-ever Simbang Gabi at the Our Lady of Arabia Church in Ahmadi, Kuwait.

During workdays, most Pinoys go straight to the office after attending the morning mass.

These photos were taken on the last day of the Simbang Gabi - 24 December 2010.

(Come to think of it: our Muslim brothers do the same in their mosques -- unceasingly for 365 days a year. Their fajr prayers start at the first thin ray of light every morning).