I heard they were forced to change due to a trademark issue with another place called LuLu. Awkward.

Thanks Rob

Strange subject I know but the bathrooms at The Prestige section of Avenues Phase III are probably the nicest bathrooms I’ve ever seen in any mall. Every stall is a bathroom by itself with its own sink, bidet, large mirror and of course the toilet. They’re clean and I don’t think get much foot traffic unlike all the other bathrooms in Avenues which are generally horrible (but still way better than Souk Sharq and Marina Mall). So if you’re ever at The Avenues and want to use the bathroom, head to The Prestige ones.

Muji will be opening to the public in Avenues Phase III this coming Saturday at around 5pm.

Over a year ago the owner of 965 Flowers contacted me wanting me to write about his website. It’s basically a website similar to 6alabat except instead of ordering food you order flowers. I’m not a flower kind of guy so the website really didn’t interest me at all. I then kept getting emails from him every few months and even phone calls but I still wasn’t interested and it was kind of getting annoying. But, one thing he did achieve was implant the website into my head so I wouldn’t forget it.

Finally the day came where I needed to send flowers and 965flowers.com popped into my head. The website has 10 flower shops listed which combined means I had hundreds of different flower options to choose from with a lot of different prices. After painstakingly hunting through all the thumbnails I finally found what I wanted and ordered it. I placed the order around 9AM and asked it to be delivered between 11AM and 2PM of the same day. At 12:18PM I get a confirmation email telling me the flowers were delivered.

So yeah it works and I thought it was easy to use and practical. Only thing I would have liked is the ability to view all the flowers from all the stores on one page since it was pretty annoying going into every store one by one and then flipping through pages and pages of thumbnails. Other than that I had no issues at all.

Here is the link to the website if you want to check it out. [Link]

Update: Based on my feedback they’ve now added the option to view all the flowers from all the store at the same time, but you’re still limited to viewing just 15 thumbnails at once.

Mr Babu is a website that belongs to a friend of mine and I think it’s an interesting idea that should make shopping much easier for a lot of people. It’s an online shop but the way it works is different from other local online shops. Mr Babu is connected to a bunch of international online shopping databases and when you search for an item on their website it will find it for you, convert the price to Kuwaiti Dinars, add a shipping fee to Kuwait and then displays the price. You then place an order and they’ll get it for you. The price you see on their website is the price you pay for the item including shipping to Kuwait. There are no extra hidden shipping costs or anything of the sort.

I ordered the Bug-A-Salt (video above) from their website and since they had some local stock it was delivered to me the next businesses day. Most items though will take a week or more similar to when ordering using Shop & Ship or Borderlinx. The website is still in beta so it’s running a little slow but other than that its working fine. You can check it out [Here]

Update: In case the website isn’t working here is an explanation from Mr Babu:

We are overwhelmed by the traffic generated by your post which caused our site to crash (as you mentioned being in Beta stage we learn a thing everyday). Our team is working on the issue and will resolve it very soon. Thank you for using Mrbabu

If you want to order an iPhone 5 the easiest and most likely the quickest way right now is to get it from the UK Apple store. The UK Apple Store sells the iPhone 5 unlocked and you can ship it to your UK Shop & Ship or a UK Borderlinx mailbox. You don’t require a UK credit card, any local Kuwaiti card would work.

Price wise the 16GB costs around KD240 but then you would also have to add the shipping price to Kuwait and the 5% local tax both Aramex and Borderlinx are charging. It doesn’t come out very cheap in the end but if you’re in a hurry this is the best way to go about it and it’s what I did last year.

This year though I’m not in a rush to get it and instead I’m going to wait either for the US store to start selling the unlocked versions (they sell them cheaper than the UK) or for Viva to get them early like they did last year.

Here is the link to the iPhone 5 on the UK Apple Store. [Link]

If you order stuff from Amazon and ship it to your Aramex Shop & Ship mailbox, you are probably aware that Amazon taxes you. Well as a customer based outside the US you aren’t supposed to pay tax and so Amazon allows you to get a tax refund. All you need to do is prove the package was shipped to a freight forwarder (Aramex in this case) and that the final destination was outside the US. Sounds complicated but it isn’t. This is all you need to do to get a tax refund.

1) Once your package arrives to Kuwait request an airway bill from Aramex
2) Then, email the airway bill (as a PDF) to tax-exempt@amazon.com with your Amazon order number
3) That’s it. In under 24 hours Amazon will reply back confirming that they’ve received your documents and that you will get a tax refund to your original payment method within the next 2-3 business days

How cool is that? And how much do you love me right now?

I passed by Marina Mall tonight since I had read they were opening tonight. But when I got there I noticed the shutters were still down but the lights were on inside and I spotted some employees. So I made a few phone calls and managed to get a tour around the store and take some pictures.

First off, the place is HUGE. I was expecting it to be big but not this big. It’s like a giant supermarket filled with sporting goods. The store is located in Marina Mall where Virgin and a bunch of other smaller shops used to be right across from Cinnabon and The Athletes Foot.

Decathlon is a French brand and most of their stores have 18 different sections but the one in Kuwait will be missing two, climbing and hunting. The other 16 sections in the store are the following (taken from their website):

– Camping
– Running
– Cycling
– Fitness, Dance, Martial Arts
– Swimming
– Surf Sports
– Boating
– Diving
– Teamsports
– Racket Sports
– Horse Riding
– Walking
– Golf
– Roller, Skate, Scooter
– Fishing
– Target Sports

I really loved the place and can’t wait to go back once they open which will hopefully be tomorrow night (Tuesday). They were supposed to open up tonight but due to a technically difficulty they’re now aiming to open by noon tomorrow. If anyone is looking for a watch with a heart rate monitor I spotted an affordable one there for KD12.5.

Avenues Phase I and II combined have around 400 stores in total. When Avenues Phase III is completed before the end of the year it will double the total stores to around 800. So Phase III is going to be another Avenues stuck to the current Avenues which will make it pretty huge.

In comparison, Dubai Mall has over 1,200 stores.

Photo Source

Borderlinx is a service in which they provide you with a US and UK forwarding mailbox so you could shop online. It’s similar to Aramex’s Shop and Ship except Borderlinx works with DHL. One of the major complaints about Borderlinx was the fact you had to pick up the packages yourself but now that’s no longer the case since they’ve just started delivering. Plus, while Shop and Ship keep increasing the prices, Borderlinx recently announced a price cut and some of their shipments are now %30 cheaper. If you don’t have a Borderlinx account you can sign up for one from [Here]

Hopefully Aramex will react by reducing their prices or improving their shipping speed.