In Kuwait you tend to deal with a lot of strange people, especially when you interact with them in the Government Complex. Its like you are in a Mexican Standoff or between a bunch of Hyenas which are ready to pounce on you the moment you give them your back. Still I try to keep an open mind and assume the person in front of me isn’t evil and maybe even human.

When interacting with woman in Kuwait that I don’t know I try to be a slightly formal and not offensive, because I never know how they may react and usually it moves along fine. A few times over the past few months I get surprised by people who smile at me that I wasn’t expecting, like when I stop a car to let them cross they smile and wave, and I think “Thank you for being courteous”, I always stop for people crossing, men almost always thank, but a lot of women ignore you and think its shameful to interact with a man in anyway so I’m sometimes surprised when a woman thanks me or when she smiles I’m totally shocked.

I do understand that our youth are somewhat idiots and view a smile as an invitation to bother women, so sometimes I honestly can’t blame them because they don’t want to be harassed by young men who have no manners, so when they smile I am very pleasantly surprised and it does make people’s day. I always appreciate when men thank me for even the simplest thing, being cordial doesn’t seem to be at the top of people’s list these days. So seeing a woman smile at me for a very simple act really surprised me recently, I just got used to women having blank or angry faces in Kuwait when out in public and I am not out very much, so its refreshing to see people smiling.

(I think the Akita Dog above always looks like it’s smiling)