Friday, February 24, 2006  Boom Oopsy  "Peshawar, right?"  The
pleasant man--in sandals and shalwar kameez--who had just plowed
his Nissan pickup truck into the back of our rental car nodded
with delight at the Professor's guess.  The Professor has some
secret method of divining a person's home region just by looking
at the person. Okay, I thought, maybe it's the fact that nearly
every Pakistani in Bahrain (prounouned Bah-hrain with a mild
break between the syllables) is from Peshawar. And if someone is
in a shalwar kameez, it's a safe guess is that they are from
Pakistan. I have one myself from when I visited Pakistan, and
use it as pajamas at home.  The flight from Kuwait to Bahrain
had taken only an hour. It would have taken me the same amount
of time to commute from downtown Jersey City to The Professor's
Columbia area digs in the mid-90s. The Professor was waiting for
me outside Customs.  Bahrain seemed so mild compared to Kuwait,
which has to be because it has a quarter the population and is
tiny—only 3