One of the main aspects of Kuwaiti residential neighborhoods is that they all have a sort of uniform density. There is really only one thing you can build, a house on a 400+ m2 plot of land. This would be more than enough for a single family to live comfortably in, with a large garden and all the things that make it feel ’suburban’.

The problems arise when families feel forced to build larger homes to accommodate more people living in the same house; Kids get married and move into an ‘apartment’ above the house. In the past few years, most newly built homes have been designed as mini apartment buildings. This is because there is no other option. Land is so expensive that they can’t buy a house and they don’t want to move far away from their families.

What if we decided to create a residential block that has a varied set of dwelling types? Think of a generic residential area (something like Qortuba, Adailiya, etc). Most of them have a large complex in the middle, which is usually a big mess of shopping center, mosque, parking and government buildings. What if we demolished all of that and built a huge urban green park surrounded by several 15 to 20 floor apartment buildings? These would be well designed and sustainably built. On the ground plane, we could have shopping and entertainment and underground parking for all the residents. Imagine this being built in every major residential area in Kuwait.

Linked Towers, by Steven Holl

So who would live in these towers? I suggest that for the first few years, only people who already have family living in the same area be allowed to rent an apartment. This would give young couples an affordable option to live close to their family without having to alter their original house and still have the flexibility to easily move out in a few years. The active lifestyle afforded by having a dense cluster of towers around a park/entertainment urban plaza is also something that young people would love to be a part of. Another advantage is that everyone living outside the core now has someplace to walk to and visit that’s close by. As a result of the lowered density there will be far fewer cars lining the roads. Sidewalks can be much wider. We can plant trees to line both sides of every street to shade the whole thing and filter dust from the air. We can’t do that now because there’s no room. If we soak up the density from the entire area and concentrate it in the middle, we can make space for all of this.

We could even take this one step further and link all of these mini urban cores together with the metro. This would allow the people living in them to have the option of living a car-free lifestyle. They still own a car, but they don’t have to use it every day. People always say to me that only migrant workers would end up using the metro. This can be a very good solution to make it easy for Kuwaitis to find great value in using the system too.

We have been working hard to make your child’s neighborhood even better at JumpStart.com. Here is another exclusive JumpStart sneak peek at what is coming to your child’s neighborhood!

If your child’s real-life neighbor, cousin, or teammate is a buddy of theirs in JumpStart.com, the kids can now virtually run around together in the same neighborhood.

As of this Wednesday, your child will be able to select which of their JumpStart buddies’ houses show up in their online neighborhood. They can even pick which spot their buddies’ houses occupy, so they can live next door to each other!

AirEmerald, it's a pleasure having you in the neighborhood.

How do I add buddies to my neighborhood?

Kids can change up their neighborhood by clicking on the blue Neighborhood Builder kiosk.  This is where your child can change the buddies that appear at each house in their neighborhood.  To add a buddy to a house, have your child click on the buddy’s name on the displayed list of buddies and drag the name to the house slot he or she would like, replacing the JumpStart character or buddy that held the slot to the list of available buddies – sorry, Val 2.0!  Your child’s Jumpee will now be able to run up to their buddy’s house and say hello!  They can do this for all house slots in their neighborhood.

Your child can switch up his or her neighborhood by clicking on the blue Neighborhood Builder kiosk.

What do I do with the JumpStart characters and other buddies left over on my list?  Are these neighborhood changes permanent?

The buddies and characters your child does not place in their neighborhood will remain on the list of available alternate buddies, accessible through the Neighborhood Builder kiosk.  Kids can change the buddies placed in their neighborhood as much as they like, but they can not alter their friends’ neighborhoods.

The Neighborhood Builder interactive screen

How do I go to my buddies’ neighborhoods?

Have your child go into the Buddy Booth and click the name of the buddy whose neighborhood they would like to visit.  Once the buddy’s Jumpee name is selected, click the “Visit the Neighborhood” button at the bottom of the Buddy Booth screen, with the picture of a smiling house on it.  They will be able to go into their buddy’s neighborhood to see how it is decorated and who is living in it.  Your child’s Jumpee and all their buddies can run from house to house within the same neighborhood, enjoying the same neighborhood Funzone!

Spread the Word About These Upcoming Neighborhood Features!

All grown up and chic, Pix’s North Portland location has an upbeat fancy demeanor that’s dotted with monkeys and fuzzy red wall paper.

-pix website (images borrowed from pix website)

this past weekend, my husband and i drove the 3 hours to portland. our mission was to visit my good friend from high school, get to know his new bride, and see their new home. he was lovely, his bride was lovely, and their new home was lovely. and really, exceeded my expectations for a fun, relaxing weekend spent with old friends. little did i know that they were about to treat me to an amazing culinary adventure! i returned back to my city with an additional 3 lbs in tow. *sigh* but it was so worth it!

after arriving, we headed into the city and spent time at powell’s books in the pearl district. i swear powell’s is about the size of a macy’s with floor after floor filled with new and used books, as well as other quirky and fantastic odds and ends. then we had lunch at a fabulous irish pub that my friend’s wife used to study at when she was in school. her friendship with our server earned us a traditional irish bread pudding–on the house! we walked off our lunch by checking out her old neighborhood, which is blooming into another tucked away district, near fremont street. darling boutiques, stationary stores, and fun/delicious looking tapas bars are springing up everywhere. then our little walk brought us to pix patisserie. and i thought i’d gone to heaven.

pix is in a little residential neighborhood and looks unassuming when you walk up to it. my husband and i blew right past it until my friend and his wife called us back. but once we went into the place, i knew we’d hit on something special. pix has a pastry case full of the daily available pastries, turkish delight, macaroons, and chocolates. they have a full bar serving fancy drinks, and fun concoctions–like a chocolate stout/chocolate ice cream float–and a vanilla ice cream/framboise float, and a chocolate ice cream/cassis lambec float. trying, in vain, to reign in the calories, i ordered a kir royale–champagne and crème de cassis. my friend’s wife ordered the framboise float–it was delicious.

i had a ridiculously difficult time choosing what to order. but after a lot of eating and a large stout at the pub, i decided to go for something “light.” and i chose a delicious lemon tart. my husband ordered what is known as a “royale with cheese”–paying homage to pulp fiction, and my friend’s wife ordered the st. honoré–a delicious creme puff dessert.

the “royale” pictured above is a chocolate creme hazelnut dessert. while it looks like it has a hard shell, it is actually just extremely smooth creme on the surface, powdered with gold dust. pix describes it as: The Royale – Chocolate mousse blankets a crisp hazelnut praline filling and dacquoise base. Grab your paper Burger King tiara and indulge yourself! and the royale with cheese includes a slice of warmed brie cheese. which believe it or not, is a fantastic pairing.

the lemon tart was light and perfect–dusted with pistachios and powdered sugar. the crust was crisp and crunch–and a perfect compliment to my kir royale. the tarte au citron–as it is called–is described by pix as A French classic-luscious lemon curd in a crisp, buttery pâté sucrée shell.

my friend’s wife graciously shared one of her creme puffs with me–beyond words. the crunchy caramel was amazing with the creme and puff pastry. pix says of the st. honoré: One could find this gâteau in 1840 in France. 166 years later you can find it in Portland. Puff pastry, caramelized cream puffs, Grand Marnier pastry cream and vanilla bean crème chantilly…Wee! Wee!

being who we are, and loyal to our local chocolatier, we couldn’t resist a taste comparison, and took some chocolates home with us, and sampled them after breakfast the next morning. they were delicious, though i can’t bring myself to say they are better than theo–but certainly beautiful.

the spanish peanut was like the ultimate peanut/chocolate marriage. crunchy, rich, peanutty and wonderful, the peanut and chocolate were perfectly balanced and finished with glitter.

my favorite of the bunch, the ambrosia chocolate is, as pix puts it: Rosemary ganache and a port reduction nestle together in a geometric chocolate shell. as i put it, it was delicious. and unique, though the rosemary wasn’t overwhelming, and the port reduction was divine.

finally we sampled the blue cheese truffle, which was rich, and good, but a little over the top for me. we also sampled a rochet, hazelnut and chocolate, which was good, but extremely rich and almost hard to handle!

the ambiance, delicious food and delicate drinks made for a wonderful experience at pix pasisserie! a real find–it’s a wonderful place to meet friends and chat, read a book alone, and just luxuriate. the food is fantastic, but the atmosphere is not overly formal–as my friend’s wife put it, when we were young, we might go to the ice cream parlor as an activity, and now that we’re adults, this is exactly the kind of place we would come instead! it is like the adult version of an ice cream parlor. the atmosphere is local, the music is quirky and modern. and who can resist the desserts! next time i will sample the macaroons and the turkish delight!

check out pix patisserie!

http://www.pixpatisserie.com/

A few weeks or so ago, this person pulls in front of me to go around another car. Not a huge deal, except for the fact that I’m in the fast lane trotting at about 67 mph when she pulls basically right in front of me where I almost tapped her into next year! She was in the middle lane behind a car going 55 mph while she was going about 58 mph. She couldn’t wait until I flew by her or slowed by 3 mph for a bit.

I hate asshole drivers like this. Needless to say, I had my digital camera with me and snapped a photo of her ass for all the blogosphere to know she’s “la stupida.”

So, if you see her, don’t physically harm but do mentally anguish by driving by her while honking and flipping the bird.

For point of reference, this is heading west on Highway 183 aka Airport Freeway in Bedford, Texas. The overpass you see is the Euless Westpark Way/Murphy Drive and the exit to the right is the 183 to Hwy 121 ramp. See map.

Some clothing labels we encounter here at the cleaners look like they’ve been abroad to far-off, exotic places. We see care instructions in nearly every language and the labels keep growing longer and longer to accommodate all the do’s and don’ts of caring for the garment.

Someone cleverly tried to create a “universal” care language using pictures instead of words. The outlined figures look like they were carved on a wall in pre-historic times and remind me that it should be so easy “a caveman could read it,” but I still receive a lot of confusion from our customers regarding these symbols.

I’ve included this chart developed by The Soap and Detergent Association in today’s blog as a reference guide for your laundering needs. Feel free to keep it handy so the next time you have a question about how to treat your garment, you’ll have this “language guide” to help you out.

The symbols I consider to be the most important are the “X” and the “O.” The “X” is there to tell you NOT to treat a garment in a certain way, so anytime you see it drawn through a symbol, please heed it’s warning. The “O” is to indicate “dry clean only,” something that when not followed can end in the destruction of your favorite garment.

The dots inside the wash water indicate which temperature you should wash your garments in. The right temperature is a crucial part of cleaning your clothing while keeping the fabric intact. Hot water can fade your clothes or make them bleed color onto your other garments. Water that is too cold won’t destroy bacteria (like that found on bedding), nor will it do the best job removing stains. When trying to save electricity, many people set their wash water to COLD and wash every load with that setting.

Consider that if cold water won’t remove stains or bacteria as effectively a warm or hot water (with garments that are manufactured to handle the heat), that you may be losing money in other ways, such as shortening the life of your garments and fabrics.

Do you read care instructions when doing laundry? Have you encountered these symbols on your clothing’s labels?

One of titty bars gentlemen’s clubs over in the nearby suburb of Glendale had a sign up the other day offering topless gift wrapping. Go in for a lap dance and get your wife’s presents wrapped. I guess that’s one way of drumming up business in a down economy.

Remember about a month back when I posted about the wonderful blog neighborhood I’ve created for myself ? Well, I meant to get to this sooner but the hustle and bustle of the holidays got the better of me. I was strolling in my neighborhood the other night, enjoying the lights and decorations you’ve all put up and I wanted to share with you a few more of my wonderful neighbors.

I’ve noticed, while commenting on other blogs, that we DO seem to run in the same circles, in the same neighborhood, if you will. And I just want to say, especially at this time of year, how grateful I am to have you all as neighbors and friends. Thanks for sharing your ideas, opinions and thoughtful posts. Thanks for your interesting, funny and kind comments. Thanks for visiting me, for welcoming me to the neighborhood – I still feel a bit of a newbie. I enjoy our time together and look forward to seeing you whenever we all sign on!

Maureen at Island Roar is the big sister I never had. She’s warm. She’s funny. She has kids just a bit older than mine so I can learn from all of her mis-steps and successes. Her youngest daughter and my oldest would be more than cousins – they’d be great friends and mischief makers. And the fact that they live just around the block from each other would make for some sleepless nights on my part. But Maureen would calm me down, just after gently chewing them out, of course – as only a favorite aunt can do. Holidays would always be brighter with Maureen around!

Faemom lives just down the street. Our boys are around the same age and we have great fun during the playdates. And then she blogs about the same playdate and I crack up because she’s noticed something and re-told it in a way that makes it seem fresh all over again. She’s insightful and wise. She finds humor in the simple, beautiful moments of our lives. Her life is about to get that much richer because she’s expecting and I’m just so excited and happy for her. We’re going to have to have a bloggy baby shower for her!

My dear friend at Burp and Slurp is a young student at the local university. She is a beautiful spirit. I love the stories she tells before sharing her food adventures. She is wise beyond her years. With a love of photography and good food, she shares wonderful recipes using ingredients that help me to stretch my culinary talents. My taste buds love to hear when she’s in town!

Country-Fried Mama is who I visit when I need a dose of reality. And although I’ve been in the south more than half my life now she’s who I turn to when I’m perplexed my some of the eccentricities of this beautiful place I call home. She makes me laugh. She makes me pause. But her love of her family is what I like most about her.

There you have it. Four more neighbors in my favorite neighborhood. I hope you enjoy visiting them as much as I do!

A young couple moved into a new neighborhood.

The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside.

“That laundry is not very clean”, she said. “She doesn’t know how to wash correctly.  Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.”

Her husband looked on, but remained silent.

Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments.

About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband: ”Look, she has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this.”

The husband said, “I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.”

And so it is with life. What we see when watching others depends on the purity of the window through which we look.

Houses represent neighborhoods, community and diversity.

Here are a few shots for the family and friends in NY! See, I wasn’t exaggerating!

Here are some better ones!

Homeowners Associations

The Pursuit of Petty Politics

If you feel your life does not include enough layers of government, miles of red tape, or armies of bureaucrats, you must consider forming a Homeowners Association in your neighborhood.  An HOA is the lowest rung on the long ladder of political entities, the bottom feeder in the vast sea of bigger, more bloated fish looking for a way to expose their teeth in an effort to control their own little corner of their ocean.

 When one is fortunate enough to purchase one’s own house, especially in tough economic times, one does not customarily commit to the expense with the thought, “I can’t wait to devalue the neighborhood and my own home!”  However, HOAs are customarily formed with the paranoid expectation that a homeowner is going to do just that.  HOA board members fear that their neighbors are not capable of maintaining their property without said board members’ vigilance and enforcement of their personal aesthetic.  Many members of an HOA board join specifically to push through a personal agenda, ruffle the feathers of their neighbors, then resign when they’ve gotten what they want.

 Studies have shown that, in a homogenous society, most people wish to conform to the norm.  If you look at a bell curve of members of a society, you find that the vast majority cluster in the middle, desiring to belong to their group, and appear “normal.”  On either side of the curve, you will find the 2-5% who march to the beat of their own drum.  Some do not necessarily try to buck the norm, they merely enjoy their own subjective taste.  Some are oblivious to what’s around them.  Some cannot afford to, or do not care to, “keep up with the Joneses.”   

 HOA board members swim around their neighborhood sea, like a sleepless shark, watching for prey to descend upon.  When they find a neighbor who falls into the 2-5% outside the norm, or any neighbor who does not meet their subjective standard,  the HOA attacks with warning letters, intrusive phone calls, threats of fines, executive session meetings behind closed doors in which they devise devious plans of action to bring the offender into line.

 What they don’t do is understand the studies which have shown that:  the most effective way to help someone become “normal” is through positive reinforcement.  Instead of warning letters when they do something wrong, send a nice note when they’ve done something right.  When a neighbor paints their house, put a nice note in the newsletter inviting other neighbors to drive by and see how great it looks.  Someone has installed new landscaping?  Inform them and other neighbors of the improvement, and advise them where they can get similar plants.  This sends the message to a neighborhood of what the “norm” is. 

 The neighborhood newsletter is one of the most effective ways of communicating neighborliness.  Instead of threats and recriminations, it can include helpful tips, congratulatory remarks on the personal successes within a community, recipes, a board could even work with a business to include discount coupons in the newsletter, so that everyone wins.  A newsletter can be an instrument of information that neighbors actually look forward to, rather than a chiding treatise that people throw away unopened.    

While most neighbors wish to enjoy quiet peacefulness away from petty politics, and are apathetic about their HOA, when an unreasonable board pushes too hard, join forces with other neighbors to push back.  Attend board meetings and insist upon being on the agenda, raise your issues at the meetings and in writing.  Hold mini-meetings at your neighbors’ homes to solidify your issues.  Create your own newsletter to disseminate among the entire neighborhood.  Post your issues, or dates of your meetings in common areas (mailboxes, clubhouse, etc.)  Form a group to sign petitions throughout the area.  Be as tenacious as the board is.  It takes the power and might of a whale to overtake the sharks.     

“Ybor’s dangerous. Ybor’s dirty.” Well guess what, fuckface, I think you’re dirty. And when you’re texting on your iPhone while driving your Beamer around Hyde Park, you’re pretty dangerous yourself. I’m not gonna lie: I was out at Gbar one night many months ago, and my best friend – who is a heterosexual male, by the way – was leaving the club. Instead of being a good friend and walking him back to his car, I let him walk by himself. I mean, no big deal right? He walked down an alley to take a piss and was jumped…dick in hand. The punks didn’t steal anything – they just beat him down and left him. So, yeah, Ybor can be a bit dangerous, so here’s a lesson: walk in groups at night, and don’t pee in the street. Done.

Ybor is also fucking fascinating. Walking down the street on any given night is like watching a movie with hundreds of characters. And when I say characters, I mean characters. I always tell people that I can feel my ethnicity change depending on what part of Seventh Avenue I’m walking down. I fucking love that about Ybor. You can hear T-Pain and Taylor Swift within ten steps of each other. Then there are the hole-in-the-wall bars that are more fun than any establishment with a strict dress code: ladies – tits out, short skirts, tall shoes. If you’re wearing a perfume that is made by a celebrity (excluding Sarah Jessica Parker and Elizabeth Taylor…I just don’t see it being their market) then you get extra points. Guys – your shirts must have some sort of bedazzling, embroidery, or embellishment. Your hair must be spiky or cut low with clean edges. Again, celebrity fragrances are a plus, and sunglasses inside are pretty much a home run. Really, I’m not that much of a hater — I need to shake my ass as much as anyone else — but I prefer the places that I can go meet people and have conversations.

I just moved to Ybor not too long ago, and I’m still discovering its awesomeness. Walking the street in the daytime feels like you’re walking through a movie set: the look and feel of the buildings, the little boutiques, tattoo shops, bars, record stores, people with pets eating pizza al fresco – it just feels alive. The other day I decided that I’d walk the unbeaten path and went down every back alleyway I could find. The results surprised me.

Graffiti is prevalent in any city; especially a busy, cultural city. I’m not going to say that the street art I found in the back alleys was particularly pleasing to the eye, but it was attractive in another way. If I had to estimate, I’d say that 82 percent of the art I saw had a positive message attached to it. You call it defacing government property, I call it inspiration. And it didn’t end with the spray can. Ybor is home to many creative types: artists, musicians, and people that just want to say something. There are these stickers I found around the city that are obviously done by the same person. They’re all hand-written or stenciled images on white postal labels. The first one I ever saw said “Polar bears are highly irresponsible animals.” It was so random and hilarious. Then I started seeing these stickers all over the place.

So, yes, maybe there is some crime. And, yes, there are some homeless people — one in particular that I see all the time wearing the same dirty business coat, with four years of mat clumped on his head, that I feel may secretly be Jesus — but what city doesn’t have those things? Maybe we should just listen to the hoodlums a bit more and start doing something about it rather than shitting on the city for thriving. Or you can just Google “how to avoid a bum” on your Windows-capable cell phone.

December 10, 2009

[To see the blog at Creative Loafing, click here.]

http://thatsnotimportant.wordpress.com/2009/12/09/tiger-woods-condoms-not-that-important/

The above link to a comment, I wrote when I should have been in bed, should read as the comment below!
This is a media that lives well by telling us what they wanted us to know. Now they need a victory for the people that control advertising. Success is assured, when the person sin, or commit a crime and can be easily separated from the rest of the Pack. NOW, the people are growing tired of receiving unwanted news, and the media is failing and folding daily, and will continue until 75 percent is gone, over the next ten years.

Finally, today, now the media is focusing on Tiger woods and his performance on the golf course. His behavior, health, interaction with the fans and playing or not playing by the rules, covered in detail. All the rules, written and unwritten, requiring everyone to follow as we live our life, work and play. As I live by the rules to the best of my ability and receive, both, praise, and sometime criticism, from friends and foes alike. I have never had anyone said to me you get too much sex or you are not good in bed, or as one reporter asked a woman answering questions about Tiger Woods, and that question was about the size of his penis.
The media is “good at that,” know maybe, better yet, “bad at that” giving us the approved information, that conform with their goals and ongoing agenda. Tell us about the sex, tell about the failed relationships and the deals that went wrong never reporting about the deals that are successful and ongoing. However, if the media is aware of sex in a public place, reported it.  As I became aware, and would wonder why the news papers never gave the big headline, on the front page, at the top of the page, to the story about the boy who lived in the neighborhood from birth to high school graduation and never went to jail and never been suspension from school.  But when some students at that same school, cut, shoot or kill someone, it’s on all the news, starting on the front page of morning and evening papers.
In this country we are all capitalist (well most of us) and understand the need to earn a profit. Speaking for myself, the media, can earn a profit, as long as they don’t publish lies or information and images that offend the most. For instance, articles or pictures about sex, have no redeeming social value. The reason, everybody engages in some form of sex some time. And there is no reason for you to watch me and I have no need to watch you. The very reason, sex is private and not for public entertainment.

Our little part of Brighton is pretty treacherous when it snows and so it was a ‘local streets’ dog walk this morning. There was no way I was getting the car out. The roads turn into ice rinks and there are lots of steep hills so better safe than sorry. Let’s hope it clears soon and we can get back to the woods.

I noticed a few cars and vans had been abandoned on icy street corners as drivers had thought better of it -leaving their mobile numbers in the wind screen just in case their vehicles were in the way.

I took Georgie and Jessie out separately thus avoiding falling *** over **** if one of them saw something exciting on the other side of the road. As it was, they were pretty good and took it steady, leaving me to focus on keeping upright as we walked on some rather steep and icy pavements.

Jessie wore her red Cesar Millan backpack to give her something else to focus on and I took her out first to get rid of some of that energy.

Georgie came with me to our local churchyard and she LOVED it. She mostly rolled around in the snow and ever so often took off, running in large circles scooping up the snow in her mouth. Pure joy!

And I’ll finish with a few miscellaneous pics from this morning. First a gorgeous wire fox terrier we met who was enjoying the snow as much as Georgie. If her owner visits this page – I’ve forgotton your dog’s name – sorry!

I just liked this cool car!

And finally a little sparrow feeding on our patio – thank you to Joan for the ‘feeding platform’!

For more gorgeous pics of dogs in the snow visit our website. If you have a priceless dog photo of your own enter our December competition.