Category: Information

When paying with a credit card or Knet card at Sultan Center you might have noticed that once the transaction goes through the employee swipes your card into their computer and your credit card number and other information gets dumped into their system. Cajie a reader of the blog sent them an email complaining about this, here is what he sent them:

I have been a frequent shopper of Sultan Center for quiet some time. However, I have become increasingly concerned about your procedure of scanning and storing customer’s credit card numbers in your sales system. This is a highly risky and unacceptable IT process, especially for such a leading retailer such as Sultan Center. Other leading merchants store only the last 4 digits of the credit card for verification purpose, which is just fine. It is my strong recommendation that your systems be reconfigured not to store sensitive customer data – especially in these days of increase rise in electronic fraud.

To his surprise the MIS manager at Sultan Center called him on the phone and assured him they made changes in their system to protect the customers financial data. After the phone call they sent him the following email with more details:

It was a pleasure talking to you over the phone, and we are really glad to have your comments and suggestions which will help us service our customers better. I would like to assure you that our Point of Sales system doesn’t hold or store the Full Credit card details, in fact this was rectified longtime back based on our Internal Audit department report. Now the transactions which are stored in our systems will only carry the last four digits of the credit card number XXXX XXXX XXXX 9021.

I hope that you are satisfied with this and Please don’t hesitate to contact us or me directly for any further queries. Wish you a very pleasant time in our stores and everywhere else.

It still doesn’t make me comfortable having them scan my card but at least now I know the information they do keep from the scan is very minimal.

Kuwait’s first short film festival at Shaab park.
Date: Wednesday, December 13th and Thursday, December 14th
Price: Tickets are for free.

Below is the running order of the movies from the festival. Book your tickets at [email protected]

Just a small peak into The Avenues mall. Maybe I should email Mabanee and see if they would let me go in and take some shots for the blog.

Went Christmas tree shopping tonight. Found a gorgeous Nordmann Fir tree which we ended up getting. The place I went to just got the trees two days ago, he had a couple of cheap Norway Spruce trees but the majority of them where Nordmann Fir. I forgot what the place is called but its up in Al-Rai, on the 4th ring road where all the plant stores are located. He has a couple on display outside but the rest are all inside. Prices range from KD45 and up, depending on the size of the tree.

Wow I suck. This is a flash game where you try to guess the location of a country. Press start to begin. I scored a 44 in my first run. Africa just confuses me. [Link]

update: I got 74!

Here is some interesting information regarding the Kuwait national squad. It was written by ilbaasha and edited by me.

Why is the Kuwait national team called Al-Azraq?
Al-Azraq refers to the period of time at the start of February when it becomes extremely cold after few days of warmth and people start to wear winter clothes again. This is the last chance of getting rain in Kuwait and it indicates the start of the end for the winter season.

The national team mascot is Haydoo the camel; the word is used as a “sit down” order to camels according to the Kuwaiti accent dictionary.

Why and how was Haydoo used as the mascot?
Back in October 1981 Kuwait was playing a world cup qualifying match in Oakland, New Zealand where the Kiwi fans had signs reading “Go Back to your Camels!” which they were waving as the Kuwaiti team came onto the field. Kuwait won that match 2 goals to 1.

When it was the home game later that year, 100 camels were brought on the pitch before the match to show that Kuwait was proud of its past.

Kuwait ended up qualifying to the 1982 world Cup in Spain and was the first Arab country from Asia to ever qualify. A Spanish newspaper later claimed that the Kuwait national team will be late to the World Cup because they would be “traveling on the backs of their camels!”. So, the Kuwaiti Football Association decided to use a camel (named Haydoo) as their mascot.

Unlike the newspaper had predicted, the Kuwaiti team ended up arriving early. Too early actually and no one, not the journalists or the locals knew that the Kuwaiti team was even in Spain! To attract attention, the head of the Kuwaiti Football Association told a French journalist who there to cover the arrival of the French team that “The Kuwaiti team would withdraw from the competition unless they were allowed to bring their mascot.” Within hours the hotel was packed with journalists wanting to find out more about the mascot

The Spanish authorities and the hotel manager finally allowed the Kuwaiti team to bring their camel as long as it was left in the backyard of the hotel. The head of the Kuwaiti Football Association then called the minister of sport in Morroco to send a camel as soon as possible to Spain. He also ordered a T-shirt to be made for the camel. This hype and the Camel mascot helped make Kuwait’s presence extremely felt by the locals and journalists.

Haydoo, has been the mascot for the Kuwaiti national team ever since.

You can listen to the Haydoo song (its Arabic with some English). The file is in Real Audio format. [ Download Song]

Update: Here is the video

I just found a video on YouTube to probably one of the coolest moments in the World Cup ever. Back in 1982 when Kuwait was at the World Cup a very controversial incident took place. Kuwait was losing 3 goals to 1 when the French team scored the 4th goal. The Kuwaiti players thought they had heard the Russian referee blow the whistle before the goal so they stopped playing. After the goal was scored Sheikh Fahid Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah who was president of the Kuwait Football Association came down to the field and demanded the referee cancel the goal. He was furious and was yelling at his players to get off the pitch and go home when finally the referee gave in and canceled the goal. That was the only time in the World Cup history where someone other than the referee made the decision to cancel a goal. The referee later had his international refereeing credentials taken from him.

In the video the incident takes place like after 1:10 minutes.
Here is the link to YouTube

Today morning another demonstration was taking place outside the House of Parliament. This time though the crowd was a lot larger and more organized. Crowd barriers were also place alongside both sides of the road in front of the parliament building. While sitting in my car I watched the large crowd which surprisingly included a lot of high school students cross the road while yelling out their demands. I am not sure but according to their banners I think they want the local government to drop all the personal debts of Kuwaitis. I shot a short video of the demonstration which you can watch by clicking [Here]

ps: here is a higher resolution picture of the one above if you want to attempt to read what it says on their banners. [Picture]

I like David Lynch a lot but I wouldn’t have him in the #1 spot. Takashi Miike should be wayy up higher in the list, at least ahead of Michael Moore. What is Michael Moore even doing on this list and where is Terry Gilliam? [Link]

Just found out about this new blog by 3baid called the Kuwait Paper Dump. The idea behind the site is to create a sort of archive for all the paper leaflets, brochures and take-away menus you find on your doorstep or on your car windshield for example. It would have been cooler if he set it up on WordPress since then we could search through the leaflets using tags or a search engine. [Link]

On my way home tonight I decided to pass by the Al Zayanni dealership to check out the new Bugatti. Turns out the Bugatti left Kuwait two days ago and is now in Saudi Arabia. I asked the salesman if anyone purchased the Bugatti, he told me there was one guy who was interested but nothing is final yet. I asked him if the Bugatti was going to come back to Kuwait, he replied telling me if the guy who was interested in the car buys it then you will see it again in Kuwait. The price of the car was exactly KD400,000. The money would be payable directly to Bugatti. I think Al Zayanni just lent out their showroom to Bugatti who I am guessing are touring the Gulf trying to sell the cars.

I passed by IKEA earlier tonight, the new one which is located at the Avenues Mall. It IS huge, very huge. I really liked the new place, the whole mall although still closed looks massive. The most noticable update at IKEA has to be the restaurant, its now around 4 or 5 times larger then it was before. Actually what am I saying, the whole place is like 4 times larger. Its now a really long walk from the beginning till the end.

I had dinner at the IKEA restaurant, Chicken Masala with Rice. It was pretty good but to help paint a picture on how big the new IKEA is, by the time I got to the exit I was hungry again and ended up ordering food from the snack stand near the exit. The new snack stand by the way is a huge improvement over the old one. Other then corn, ice cream, and hotdogs they now have shawerma. I decided to order one just to try it, I would probably give it a 3 out of 5, still need to pass by and try it one more time before I can give my final score though.

The biggest change in the new IKEA is that you now have to pick up your packages yourself just before you get to the cashier. You enter this huge warehouse like room and its just shelves and shelves of packed goods. Someone told me IKEA did this to bring down the prices of the products by 10%. Whatever their reason I know many people will not like the fact that they now have to do manual labor. I took a picture of one of the shelves which you can view by clicking [Here]

Overall I think its a really great improvement. Although I really liked the old IKEA I think the new one is better in every way.

Marzouq posted pictures and prices of the PS3 and Wii in Rihab Complex. As you can imagine the prices at the moment are extremely high.

Sony PS3 60 GB (Jap Version)
Price: 450KD

Sony PS3 60 GB (US Version)
Price: 750KD

Nintendo Wii
Price: 250KD

1KD = $3.45 / €2.68

Both GAP and Banana Republic will be opening up at the new Avenues mall early next year. Although I am not a fan of either of them but at least they are new brands in Kuwait.

zMacShop got the new iPod Shuffles in stock. They are selling them for KD35 each. I pre-ordered mine from Amazon 2 weeks ago and I am still waiting for it to ship.

update: clicknbuy are also selling the shuffle for KD35. Mac&More were selling the shuffle for KD35 but they ran out of stock. Mac City on the other hand is selling the Shuffle for KD43.