First off I want to verbalize some thoughts that have been circulating through my head this week. This trip to Kuwait has not been as intimidating as I thought it may be. I have never really felt out of my comfort zone at any time and I have never felt like we were in an awkward situation or bad part of town. In fact, I find myself somewhat forgetting that I'm actually thousands of miles away from home. Kuwait is such a modern place and we have yet to really see many "traditional" Middle Eastern places. The places we visit are similar to most places in the US, mainly because they exist in the US. However, there are obvious differences you'll notice. Logos and signs in Arabic, people in traditional clothing, and also the race and ethnicity of the average person you'll see on the street are the only things that really make this place different. I guess that's an obvious statement but what I'm really saying is that there are more similarities than differences. People here still stare at their iPhones whenever they're eating lunch with each other just like we do back home.
Anyways, today we began with a tour of the Kuwait News Agency. The most notable part of this tour was scoring a free coffee mug, pen, and book from our tour guide. KUNA is similar to the Associated Press in that it is a news wire service. It's much smaller and younger than the AP but it is an integral component of the media infrastructure in Kuwait and the gulf. KUNA is a state run agency so there are no opinion editorials published there. KUNA does have sports, business, and politics editors along with several other categories. We walked around the editorial room and there are some images below in my slideshow. Our guide in the editorial room was Adnan Aljadi, an editor who has been with KUNA for more than 20 years I believe. He is also an alum of San Jose State so he was happy to hear me say "Go Spartans."
After visiting with Mr. Aljadi we visited the photo archives and spoke with Mohammed Abdullkhaleq, the head of the photo archive and a veteran photojournalist. He discussed some of the agreements KUNA has with agencies such as Reuters and also spoke about his experiences on the ground as a photojournalist. When he was younger he covered events such as Kosovo and Rwanda and recently traveled to Turkey to take photos of Syrian refugees in the country. He said that he plans to spend his retirement traveling and taking photos for fun. Next we talked with the head of informational technology and found out thathis gentleman was an alum of SMU in Dallas. He said "y'all" several times without a hitch and said that he's "more Texan than Texas." He's a Kuwait native and returned home when the job opportunity arrived. We then visited the news archives and ended our tour of KUNA with a quick visit to the index room. It's fascinating to see how newsrooms operate in different places. The only newsroom I'm truly familiar with is the Arkansas Times from when I worked there. Their editorial room only has 4 or 5 people working in it, albeit some of the better investigative journalists and long form feature writers in the region. I've also briefly been through the newsrooms of several of Little Rock's local television stations when I was interning for the Halter campaign in 2010. KUNA has hundreds of employees and dozens of editors on staff but they are the official wire service for an entire country.
Immediately after the tour of KUNA we went to a fairly high-end shopping center which had several places worth mentioning. There was a one room radio station which we could only look at through the window (photos below), a book store, a bakery which specializes in chocolate-covered strawberries (of which we bought a dozen), a bakery which specializes in wedding cakes and candy (we got some free samples), and several restaurants. I was eager to explore the bookstore but it primarily had books in Arabic. However, there were several cool books to look at such as Arabic versions of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm. The store did have several books in English from the usual supermarket novelists such as Baldacci, Grisham, Patterson, and Koontz. It did not have any English language books focusing on Kuwait so my quest for knowledge continues.
Early this evening we were on a Skype call with Dr. Bowman and a room full of parents of potential ASU students back in Jonesboro. Because of this Skype call we wore our official A-State polos all day, and at breakfast this morning a woman approached us. She is a native of Dubai and a graduate of Oklahoma who worked for Acxiom in Little Rock for five years. She said she's been to Conway, Russellville, and Fayetteville but not Jonesboro. Either way, it's still a small world. She moved back to Dubai and is currently in Kuwait on business and just happened to be staying in our same hotel and eating breakfast at the same time on the day we were representing our school's logo. It's cool how that happens.
The main event tonight was GUST's graduation ceremony. Our friend Ali Najim, the radio host, was the emcee and called the names of the 723 MBA, BA, and BS graduates from Spring and Summer 2013 at GUST. Several of the speeches were in Arabic but the university president gave an English speech and so did a student. The ceremony was approximately 2 and a half hours but I was not really keeping count. I was super hungry and ready to grab some food and we did so afterwards at a special reception at GUST. My dinner consisted of lamb, rice, hummus, salad, strawberry juice, coca cola, and chocolate cake tonight. Upon finishing dinner we returned to the hotel and started watching scary movies again. Our hotel only has a few channels in English. My roommate prefers to watch scary movies on FX but when he’s out I’ll usually turn it to CNN International or BBC. Tomorrow we visit the Kuwait National Museum, IMAX, and several cafes. I’ll have an update after our adventures. The slideshow below has 20 photos from throughout our day today
Anyways, today we began with a tour of the Kuwait News Agency. The most notable part of this tour was scoring a free coffee mug, pen, and book from our tour guide. KUNA is similar to the Associated Press in that it is a news wire service. It's much smaller and younger than the AP but it is an integral component of the media infrastructure in Kuwait and the gulf. KUNA is a state run agency so there are no opinion editorials published there. KUNA does have sports, business, and politics editors along with several other categories. We walked around the editorial room and there are some images below in my slideshow. Our guide in the editorial room was Adnan Aljadi, an editor who has been with KUNA for more than 20 years I believe. He is also an alum of San Jose State so he was happy to hear me say "Go Spartans."
After visiting with Mr. Aljadi we visited the photo archives and spoke with Mohammed Abdullkhaleq, the head of the photo archive and a veteran photojournalist. He discussed some of the agreements KUNA has with agencies such as Reuters and also spoke about his experiences on the ground as a photojournalist. When he was younger he covered events such as Kosovo and Rwanda and recently traveled to Turkey to take photos of Syrian refugees in the country. He said that he plans to spend his retirement traveling and taking photos for fun. Next we talked with the head of informational technology and found out thathis gentleman was an alum of SMU in Dallas. He said "y'all" several times without a hitch and said that he's "more Texan than Texas." He's a Kuwait native and returned home when the job opportunity arrived. We then visited the news archives and ended our tour of KUNA with a quick visit to the index room. It's fascinating to see how newsrooms operate in different places. The only newsroom I'm truly familiar with is the Arkansas Times from when I worked there. Their editorial room only has 4 or 5 people working in it, albeit some of the better investigative journalists and long form feature writers in the region. I've also briefly been through the newsrooms of several of Little Rock's local television stations when I was interning for the Halter campaign in 2010. KUNA has hundreds of employees and dozens of editors on staff but they are the official wire service for an entire country.
Immediately after the tour of KUNA we went to a fairly high-end shopping center which had several places worth mentioning. There was a one room radio station which we could only look at through the window (photos below), a book store, a bakery which specializes in chocolate-covered strawberries (of which we bought a dozen), a bakery which specializes in wedding cakes and candy (we got some free samples), and several restaurants. I was eager to explore the bookstore but it primarily had books in Arabic. However, there were several cool books to look at such as Arabic versions of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm. The store did have several books in English from the usual supermarket novelists such as Baldacci, Grisham, Patterson, and Koontz. It did not have any English language books focusing on Kuwait so my quest for knowledge continues.
Early this evening we were on a Skype call with Dr. Bowman and a room full of parents of potential ASU students back in Jonesboro. Because of this Skype call we wore our official A-State polos all day, and at breakfast this morning a woman approached us. She is a native of Dubai and a graduate of Oklahoma who worked for Acxiom in Little Rock for five years. She said she's been to Conway, Russellville, and Fayetteville but not Jonesboro. Either way, it's still a small world. She moved back to Dubai and is currently in Kuwait on business and just happened to be staying in our same hotel and eating breakfast at the same time on the day we were representing our school's logo. It's cool how that happens.
The main event tonight was GUST's graduation ceremony. Our friend Ali Najim, the radio host, was the emcee and called the names of the 723 MBA, BA, and BS graduates from Spring and Summer 2013 at GUST. Several of the speeches were in Arabic but the university president gave an English speech and so did a student. The ceremony was approximately 2 and a half hours but I was not really keeping count. I was super hungry and ready to grab some food and we did so afterwards at a special reception at GUST. My dinner consisted of lamb, rice, hummus, salad, strawberry juice, coca cola, and chocolate cake tonight. Upon finishing dinner we returned to the hotel and started watching scary movies again. Our hotel only has a few channels in English. My roommate prefers to watch scary movies on FX but when he’s out I’ll usually turn it to CNN International or BBC. Tomorrow we visit the Kuwait National Museum, IMAX, and several cafes. I’ll have an update after our adventures. The slideshow below has 20 photos from throughout our day today