Category: Information

I first heard about this from Marzouqs blog and today a friend of mine sent me this video from YouTube. The e-gate smart card basically allows you to go through the immigration process at the Dubai airport A LOT quicker. Once I watched the YouTube video on how practical the e-Gate card can be I was instantly convinced to get one. I travel to Dubai on average 5 times a year and this could save me a lot of time. It supposedly take 10 minutes and costs KD15 to get card which makes it even more enticing.

Here is the video showing the e-Gate (skip to 2 minutes). [YouTube]
Here is some more info on the e-Gate [Link 1] [Link 2]

Picture from Airport International

I’ve got a friend who is planning to open up a place at the new 360 Kuwait mall and he told me something that sounds very promising. What he was told by the owners of the mall is that they don’t want any brand or shop in the mall if it is already open somewhere else in Kuwait and supposedly the only Alshaya store will be Starbucks. If thats true it might make the mall pretty cool.

I just found out Cloverfield will get released at the movies here in Kuwait on the 24th of January. There shouldn’t be anything to cut from it so I will probably watch it here unless I find out otherwise. [Link]

Thanks Kuwait

Update: For some reason Cinescape has removed Cloverfield from the coming soon list. I guess it was a mistake from their side.

I was never too sure about the exact numbers but I just found this on the KNPC website:

Ultra (Green): 98 Octane, 90 fils/Ltr
Super (Gold): 95 Octane, 65 fils/Ltr
Premium (Red): 91 Octane, 60 fils/Ltr

[Source]

update: The reason I wanted to know how much octane is in what type of gas is because the manual for my bike recommends 98 octane while the manual for the Wrangler recommends 87 octane.

World’s thinest laptop…[Link]

Since I paid my traffic violation at the beginning of the month I have stopped speeding. I now cruise the Gulf Road going around 80-100km/h max but I guess its easier since I am driving the Wrangler instead of the Beemer. The Gulf Road car-cam must be catching a lot of people because the MOI has now expanded their coverage to include a second car-cam on my morning route. The original car-cam that caught me speeding 21 times was located just before McDonalds on the way to Kuwait City, the new car-cam is located just before Fuddruckers. If only it was possible to invest in these cameras…

Picture by T

I woke up today morning at 8:30 with a phone call from Stallion. He was on his way to come pick me up so we could go to the junkyard. I needed a seat riser for my Wrangler but not any seat riser, it had to be off a pre-2000 model because the one I had was one of the new ones which allows my driver seat to tilt forward. The pre-2000 models didn’t have that option and so had more empty space under the seat which would allow me to install my car’s amplifier in that space.

I was expecting the junkyard to be just one large unorganized place but it turned out to be this huge area made up of little small junkyards that were split up by car make or type. We drove around looking for junkyards that had Wrangler parts but there weren’t many. We found around 6 to 8 places that had Jeep vehicles but only 3 had Wranglers. After driving around from place to place we found what I was looking for BUT the guy would refuse to sell the seat risers without the actual seat.

Stallion using his great haggling skills tried to convince the guy to sell us the seat riser by itself but instead of convincing the guy to sell us the riser he nearly initiated a riot and the guy ended up refusing to sell us anything. I was sure we were going to get attacked by the Afghani workers there, I don’t know what happened because it all happened fast but it was a really short conversation that ended with Stallion and the Afghani worker shouting at each other and us walking out quickly.

We finally gave up on finding the seat riser without the seat so we took off back home. On our way we passed by Dunkin Donuts in Al-Rai since I had been craving Dunkin Donuts for a week now. It had be a long time since I had Dunkin and I had forgotten how good their donuts were. I took a lot of pictures of the junk yards which you can find by clicking continue below. It was a pretty productive morning.

I’ve always wondered what was the logic behind the name of some items at IKEA. They always have Scandinavian names but what do they mean? According to Wikipedia it turns out there is a format IKEA follows. Firstly most of the names are usually either Swedish, Danish, Finnish or Norwegian in origin. Secondly most of the names are based on a special naming system which IKEA has put in place and is as follows:

Upholstered furniture, coffee tables, rattan furniture, bookshelves, media storage, doorknobs: Swedish placenames

Beds, wardrobes, hall furniture: Norwegian place names

Dining tables and chairs: Finnish place names

Bookcase ranges: Occupations

Bathroom articles: Scandinavian lakes, rivers and bays

Kitchens: grammatical terms, sometimes also other names

Chairs, desks: men’s names

Materials, curtains: women’s names

Garden furniture: Swedish islands

Carpets: Danish place names

Lighting: terms from music, chemistry, meteorology, measures, weights, seasons, months, days, boats, nautical terms

Bedlinen, bed covers, pillows/cushions: flowers, plants, precious stones; words related to sleep, comfort, and cuddling

Children’s items: mammals, birds, adjectives

Curtain accessories: mathematical and geometrical terms

Kitchen utensils: foreign words, spices, herbs, fish, mushrooms, fruits or berries, functional descriptions

Boxes, wall decoration, pictures and frames, clocks: colloquial expressions, also Swedish placenames

via

oobject has a top 20 list of skyscrapers in the Gulf, nearly all of them are in Dubai but Kuwait’s upcoming Mubarek Tower made the list. My favorite is the Ras Al Khaimah Convention Center (Dubai UAE) pictured above which is designed by OMA and led by Rem Koolhaas. Its made to look like the Death Star from Star Wars. [Link]

New York Times must have been on something when they came out with this list of “53 Places to go in 2008” because they’ve placed Kuwait in position number 32! We beat places like Las Vegas, New York and London, thats just insane! [Link]

Thanks S!

I was researching zombies on wikipedia when I found information on something called zombie walk. Its an event where a large group of people dress up as zombies and then walk around city streets. A quick search on YouTube resulted in a ton of videos, the one above was taken in Toronto but if you follow the link you can find the rest on YouTube. [Link]

A friend of mine told me about this service so I called up Zain today and signed up to it. Basically the service sends you an SMS whenever you get a fine. To activate the service it costs KD3 and every time you get a traffic violation they send you an SMS with details on the violation and that SMS costs 250fils. If you want to sign up you need to call them on 107.

Before you get too excited this isn’t in Kuwait, its in Dubai. But, with cheap Jazeera tickets it still comes out to be pretty affordable. You could probably fly out in the morning, skydive and come back in the evening. The video above is of some guy skydiving and here is the link with more info and prices. [Link]

I just heard about Mishaal who is a local weather forecaster. Supposedly he is extremely accurate and is the next Oujeri and he is only 17. He has a website with his own forecast, will start checking it to see how accurate this guy is. [Link]

Picture from Q8ia Forever

I just found a video blogger here in Kuwait. It a girl, her name is Rashisha and she has tons of videos on YouTube ranging from her singing karaoke with her brother to videos of her taken while she is driving complaining about work. She also has a blog which I added to “Our Friends” section on the right. Lots of wacky stuff check her out. [YouTube Link]

update: Here is another local video blogger, a guy called Stan. [Link]