Category: Information

So today I wore my Shake Shack t-shirt to the gym and on my way I took a picture and posted it on my twitter. To my surprise, one of my followers on twitter replied back telling me that Shake Shack will be opening in place of Le Pain Quotidien at Avenues. I quickly SMS’d my Alshaya insider to confirm and it turned out to be true.

Of course I was upset since I’ve been promoting Shake Shack ever since I first found out they were opening in Kuwait and instead of getting the information first from my insider, I ended up getting it from a twitter follower. My insider did tell me though that they were planning to have the branch open by end of the year and that I would get more information regarding that next week.

I also found out two more things, one is that they’re planning to open a second branch of P.F. Chang’s next to Al Corniche Club. My guess is they will probably open up where I Love Souk used to be located. Finally, I also found out that Pinkberry will be opening their Marina Mall branch before Eid next month. That’s everything I got for now.

A couple of weeks back one of the power plugs at home melted and started smoking. Luckily Nat was in the house at the time and smelled something burning and managed to turn off the plug before anything serious happened. A few days after that there was the fire incident that happened in my office building. Because of these two events I decided I should be “fire ready”.

I have a small fire cabinet in my apartment. I didn’t put it there, it came with the flat and it had 3 empty fire extinguishers inside which I never replaced or even threw out (they looked nice in the cabinet). I decided it was time I got them filled so I took the 3 empty canisters and headed to Rihab Complex in Hawalli. I had seen some fire supply stores on the first floor behind the video game stores and figured they would refill my canisters. Well, turns out although they do refill empty fire extinguisher bottles they wouldn’t refill mine since they were around 25 years old and so weren’t compatible with their machines.

So, I decided to get some new bottles. I figured they were going to cost me an arm and a leg but was completely surprised by how cheap the fire extinguishers turned out to be. There are two main types of extinguishers I found, powder and CO2 based ones. Both put out the same kind of fires but according to the salesman the powder one is cheaper but messier while the CO2 extinguishers cost more but don’t leave a mess. I ended up picking up two small 1KG powder fire extinguishers and one larger 2KG CO2 extinguisher from the shop pictured above. There are around 6 to 8 fire supply shops next to each other which means you can haggle on the price. The 1KG powder extinguishers cost KD2.5 each while the 2KG CO2 extinguisher costs KD8 (4KG powder costs KD8 as well), I picked three of them up for KD11.

So now you know where you can pick up fire extinguishers from and how much they cost so there really isn’t an excuse why you shouldn’t also be fire ready. I put one of the small extinguishers in Nat’s car since she didn’t have one (my car came with one) and I am now going to pick up a few more extinguishers this weekend for my parents home. Its better to be safe than sorry.

According to local blogger NicoleB there was an oil spill in Mangaf a couple of days back. I haven’t read about this in the news yet so I am guessing they’re trying to keep it a secret.

This morning when we went to the beach, I saw a bulldozer arriving and one car after another going to the beach. Getting closer I saw workers in coveralls walking along the shore, digging the sand and throwing stuff in the water to soak up the oil – I guess.

Some guys in a Pickup stopped beside me and told me not to let the dogs in the water, because there’s oil. But it’s not a problem. Mh. Right.

I checked the beach past Mangaf, direction Fahaheel. The oil was slowly arriving there as well.
I can’t find any news online and probably won’t at all.

Was down there this afternoon again, the workers were sitting on the beach. An oil spill response vehicle was there, two boats out in the ocean, but no action.

You can read her post [Here] and check out pictures of the spill [Here]

I passed by the new Lulu Hypermarket that opened up recently. The place is huge and I found a ton of stuff that I hadn’t seen before. I do all my shopping at Sultan Center since they have a lot of imported US and UK products but I will probably be adding Lulu to the list now. This is just an example of what I found at the first fridge once I walked in: Diet Coke “caffeine free”, Diet Coke with lemon, Diet Coke with cherry, Fanta Zero orange and Fanta Zero lemon, Sprite Zero, and Dr Pepper Zero. They also had a whole variety of Tropicana juices I hadn’t seen before (and for a reasonable KD1.600) and even the UK brand Innocent. I didn’t take any pictures after that fridge since there were “No Photography” signs everywhere (not sure why). I did manage to snap a picture of a strange fruit I found, hadn’t seen one like it before (pictured at bottom of post).

To get to Lulu you take the 40th and then exit on the 208 heading towards the Wataniya Airways airport. It’s located on the main road so you won’t miss it. Check out some more pictures below.

A reader emailed me an article in which Kuwait asks BlackBerry to block around 3000 porn sites so I went to myself what? I opened my browser on my BlackBerry and typed in playboy.com and hit go and guess what? It opened! Why didn’t anyone tell me about this before? I never knew I could access blocked sites on my BlackBerry.

Kuwait has asked BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) to block pornographic sites though will not suspend services like other Gulf states have threatened to do, a local newspaper reported Tuesday.

RIM has given “initial approval” to block 3,000 porn sites at the request of Kuwait’s communications ministry, the al-Jarida daily said, quoting a source it did not identify by name.

It said the Canadian manufacturer asked the ministry to give it until the end of the year to implement the block.

It’s also good to know that the BlackBerry service won’t be blocked in Kuwait. Here is a link to the [Article]

Thanks Deborah

If you have an iPhone and an iPad you will probably understand how annoying it is that you can’t share your phones internet connection over wifi to you iPad. Well now it’s super easy.

Visit www.jailbreakme.com from your iPhone browser and follow the instructions to jailbreak your phone and install Cydia. Shoul take around 2 minutes.

When done launch Cydia and search for the app called MyWi. It costs $20 but you can try it out for free for 10 days. Using MyWi you will be able to share your phone’s internet connection over wifi which you could connect the iPad to. Very easy.

We just had to evacuate our office building due to a fire on the 6th floor. We had to walk down from the 21st floor. Will post pics and more later.

Update: I’m back home now so I can post about what happened. Our office is on the 21st floor of Jawhara Tower behind NBK on Fahad Al Salem street. It was around 10:30 I think and I decided to go down to the grocery to get some water. I took the lift and when I got to the ground floor I noticed a small crowd of people gathered outside the lifts but I didn’t think much. I was on the phone with Nataly and when I walked out of the lift area into the main lobby I noticed more people gathered there and I started to hear the fire alarm. I didn’t know what was going so I told Nat I would call her back. I then called one of my workmates up in our office and told him it looks like there could be a fire in the building since the fire alarm is on and there are people downstairs. He asked me what we should do I told him I would come up and talk to him.

So I casually went back into the lift and headed back to the 21st floor. When I was passing the 9th floor I noticed it smelled like fire. I was like WTF? I got to our floor and I started to tell people there was a fire. We weren’t sure if we should evacuate because everything looked normal on our floor. No fire alarms, no smoke, no smell and nothing unusual. So we were thinking maybe it was just a false alarm when someone noticed the elevators area which I had just come up from was now starting to fill up with smoke. That’s when we started evacuating everyone.

The building isn’t fully occupied yet, I think out of the 26 floors only 10 are occupied. We started heading down the fire escape, it was a long way down and for most of it uneventful until we hit around the 10th floor. That’s when we started to notice a bit of smoke. When we got to the 7th 6th floor we noticed the smoke got a lot heavier and that on the fire was on the 6th 5th floor below us. I snapped the picture above which was of the poor building security guard trying to put out the fire.

We decided to cut across to the other side of the building and take the fire escape on the other side since I figured there should be less smoke and water there. When we crossed and got to the second fire escape we noticed it was filled with construction material. Large rocks, pieces of metal, foam, nylon bags… I wish I took a picture. We cleared some out of the way since there were people coming down that fire escape and the trash was slowing things down. There was a line of people going down the escape and it was moving pretty slow since there was a woman who seemed to be exhausted going down and we were all waiting behind her. Someone was helping her go down but it was still just very slow. By the time we got to the second floor I noticed one fireman coming up that fire escape and then finally we got out of the building.

Now that I am home I am thinking of all the mistakes that occurred like why didn’t the fire alarm go off in the whole building? If I hadn’t gone down to the ground floor by coincidence I wouldn’t have heard the fire alarm and I wouldn’t have been able to warn people upstairs. Also usually when there is a fire the elevators stop working and all automatically go down to the ground floor. The elevators in our building actually allowed me to go up to the 21st floor during a fire! Thirdly the fire escapes contained a lot of items in them which made our escape hazardous and slowed everything down. The security guards although were being brave to try and put out the fire shouldn’t have been doing that, if anything they should have been helping people get out. They didn’t have any masks on or proper gear and I am sure they are all now suffering from smoke inhalation. Hopefully they all made it out ok. I didn’t experience that much smoke and I am already blowing out black sooth from my nose. Because they also had the fire escape door open when they were trying to put out the fire, that resulted in the whole fire escape filling up with smoke and making things dangerous for the people escaping.

This all brings me to my final question. The other day the elevators weren’t working in my apartment building so I took the fire escape down. It was dark so I used my phone to light up the way and there were a ton of obstacles in the way which made it very difficult for me to go down. Who can I call to complain to so they can come and check our buildings fire safety? I am sure it’s illegal to fill up the fire escapes with garbage. Below are some pictures I took with my iPhone of the fire in our office building.

Update2: Sorry just proof read what I wrote and noticed a bunch of spelling mistakes and grammar errors. Didn’t have time to do that earlier. Also the fire turned out to be on the 5th floor not 6th.

Every night as part of my diet I am allowed to only eat grilled food and veggies. After the gym the most convenient thing for me to pick up is grills from either Turkish Grill, Kebabji or Villa Fayrouz Express. I usually call them from the gym parking lot and by the time I get to them the food is ready for me to pick up. Recently Kebabji increased their prices which annoyed me since their main competitors offered more for less. I decided to put up this post in hopes of someone from Kebabji reads this and realizes they need to go back to their old pricing.

Below are the three restaurants with some figures I took so I could compare them. The weight of the meat was calculated by placing just the meat on a digital scale and not the whole box. I ordered the exact same dishes from the three restaurants, grilled tikka meat and a side of tabbouleh.

Turkish Grill
Grilled Meat Tikka Cost: KD2.000
Pieces of meat: 15
Weight of meat: 175grams
Tabbouleh Cost: 600fils
Weight of tabbouleh: 272grams
Telephone: 25752565

Villa Fayrouz Express
Grilled Meat Tikka Cost: KD1.950
Pieces of meat: 19
Weight of meat: 196grams
Tabbouleh Cost: 850fils
Weight of tabbouleh: 508grams
Telephone: 25755527/32

Kebabji
Grilled Meat Tikka Cost: KD2.390
Pieces of meat: 12
Weight of meat: 66grams
Tabbouleh Cost: 950fils
Weight of tabbouleh: 295grams
Telephone: 1861616

I took the liberty to plug the figures above into a table for easier comparison. I highlighted the best prices and weight in green while I used red for the worst prices and weight. As you can see Villa Fayrouz Express surprisingly came out to be the best deal. I said surprisingly since between the three it’s actually the least fast foodish. Kebabji on the other hand didn’t fare too well. They had the most expensive prices and the least quantity.

Update: Thanks to a tip from a reader called Environmental, it turns out I can get the grilled tikka from Turkish Grill at half the price. You need to order the grilled meat tikka with “no service” and then the cost amounts to just 850 fils! You don’t get bread, veggies, pickles, hummus or a fancy box, just the meat wrapped in aluminum foil. Now the strange thing is I counted the pieces today and I got 25 pieces of meat, that’s 10 more from the regular which strikes me odd but hey I’m not complaining. That’s over a 50% savings, not bad at all. Below is a picture of the “no service” tikka.

If anyone from Turkish Grill reads this I have one comment, please install a Knet machine at your Salmiya branch. I don’t carry any cash with me most of the time so when I don’t have cash I usually head over to Villa Fayrouz since they accept Knet. There are no Knet machines on my way from the gym to your Salmiya branch.

Update2: It turns out Kebabji have a savings meal which gets you an extra skewer for around 200fils more. Below are the new updated details. Check the following link for more info on this [Link]

Kebabji
Grilled Meat Tikka Cost: KD2.595
Pieces of meat: 18
Weight of meat: 105grams
Tabbouleh Cost: 950fils
Weight of tabbouleh: 295grams
Telephone: 1861616

And here is the updated chart:

Gallup World Poll surveyed thousands of people and then came out with a list of the happiest countries in the world. Kuwait came in at 23rd, the second Arab country on the list, the first being UAE which came 20th. Lebanon came in at 73 while Togo came in last and Denmark first. For the full list click [Here]

Thanks Nancy

Getting an iPhone 4 is pretty simple but you need patience since the iPhone 4 is currently in short supply and can take up to 3 weeks to be delivered. To order an iPhone 4 you also need the following:

1) Local credit card
2) Aramex Shop&Ship account (not sure if it works with others like DHL)

Then what you need to do is go to the UK online Apple Store which is located at the following link address:
https://store.apple.com/uk

Once there click on the iPhones and then select the iPhone you want and check out. If you never ordered from Apple before you will have to create an account. Put your US Aramex mailbox as your billing address as your Kuwait base credit card address and then put your Aramex UK mailbox address as your shipping address. The UK iPhones are officially unlocked.

I placed my order on June 25th for a black 16GB iPhone 4 with a black Apple iPhone 4 Bumper. I paid the following:

iPHONE 4 BLACK 16GB 424.68 GBP
IPHONE 4 BUMPERS BLACK 21.28 GBP
——–
VAT 17.5% 78.04 GBP
——–
Final Amount (VAT included) 524.00 GBP

I paid with my NBK credit card and according to my bank statement the amount I paid in Kuwaiti Dinars was 236.570.

My iPhone 4 shipped on July 9th and arrived to my Aramex mailbox on July 15th. It showed up in my Aramex mailbox the same day and then shipped from the UK on July 16th. I received the iPhone today July 21st after being held in customs for 3 days.

The Aramex shipping charges were KD5.750 and that included the customs clearance fee. This was only for my iPhone 4, my iPhone Bumper is still held in customs. On a side note when the iPhone arrived it was unopened. Not just the actual iPhone box but the larger box the iPhone came inside had not been opened neither by Aramex nor customs.

I also passed by Zain and picked up a micro-sim card which you need for the iPhone 4. The sim card cost me KD5.

If you have any questions ask it below. Regarding antenna and reception problems, I believe this was blown out of proportion by the media and as Steve Jobs said it’s not a problem and 0.5% of the 3 million iPhone users have had reception issues. Many popular phones have similar reception issues which you will never have to experience if using the phone normally. If you have any questions regarding antenna problems click [Here]

Update: Some examples of phones that have a similar antenna issues
Samsung Galaxy S
Palm Pre
Google Nexus One
Google Droid
Nokia E71
Blackberry Bold

According to Arab Times:

Head & Shoulders in danger’
The Ministry of Health (MoH) might get the ‘Head and Shoulders’ shampoo removed from the market, in case it is proven that the shampoo contains carcinogenic substances, reports Al-Hurriya daily. A Qatari newspaper, Al Sahrq, recently published a report stating that research revealed the presence of ‘Deuxan’, which causes cancer, cirrhosis and kidney fibrosis, in the shampoo. The newspaper had warned the general public against using the shampoo and indicated that it will be withdrawn from the markets.

I’ve actually been using Head & Shoulders for years but just yesterday for some odd reason I decided to try Clear (pictured above). It’s actually pretty good, smells great and instead of burning your eyes like Head & Shoulders, Clear actually has this strange cooling effect.

Thanks xboclibe

They’ve closed down the Italian restaurant (Italo’s) that was located in the area on top of GAP over looking Lorenzino and there looks like a lot of construction taking place there. I wonder if that’s where Shake Shack will end up? I guess it could although there would be a problem. The way Shake Shack works is you wait in line to order your burgers and then you go find a place to sit. Originally the Italian restaurants kitchen was located to the side near Mango which means if they apply the same Shake Shack system here then you will have a line of people waiting in the main passage way causing a lot of traffic. But, the idea of having the seating area separate from the kitchen and main ordering area works like Shake Shack. I guess we will have to wait and see.

This does go against what I previously had heard which is that they are planning to open Shake Shack in front of PF Chang. The restaurant will be built where the elevator currently is and the elevator shaft will be used for the ventilation (kinda like a chimney). The seating will be in the open.

Update: OK so it seems Italo’s Cafe was closed down to make way for Cafe Meem. BUT, they had to give up the kitchen location next to Mango. So now I am assuming the space next to Mango that was used by Italo’s as their kitchen is now going to be the second Pinkberry location.

Recently I noticed that when I sleep for over 9 hours I wake up with neck cramps and a sore ear. It turned out my pillow had become too hard and with the way I sleep was causing me neck pains. Nat suggested I get Tempur pillows so I did a quick google to find a local dealer and landed on Some Contrast’s blog. He had found and gotten Tempur pillows from a place called The Bed Boutique in Tilal Complex. Since I was planning to pass by the Tamiya dealer there anyway, I decided to drop by and see what they had.

The shop has pillows, quilts and mattresses. They had a few brands the most popular being Tempur and Temprakon. Now one reason I felt like coming to this store was because Some Contrast posted they had a small private room (pictured above) in which you could try the pillows which is what I ended up doing. I got around 4 different types of pillows and tried them while lying down which is much better than just trying to feel the stuff in your hands. In the end I ended up getting the Temprakon Ergomagic which is a very comfy pillow (picture and details on their website). It’s a down pillow with a three layered core, one layer is a comfort foam which provides support for the head and neck, the other two layers are foam inserts which are used to control the height of the pillow. If the three layers combined are too high for you, you remove one of the inserts. If it’s still too high you remove another insert. Very practical.

Nat on the other hand got the same pillow as Yousef from Some Contrast which is the Tempur Symphony (pictured above). I tried it and also it was very comfy I didn’t think it was high enough for me since I like high pillows. The Tempur material feels very organic since it takes your shape and molds around it. I tried the Tempur mattress and it felt like the bed was alive since however you moved it slowly takes your form.

Anyway if you’re interested, The Bed Boutique is located at Tilal Complex. Their phone number is 22256171.

Update: Was just reading about the brand Temprakon on their website and it’s even better than I had thought. Their pillows and quilts are made with NASA’s OUTLAST material which is used in the NASA space suits. They’re the only manufacturer in the world allowed to use the OUTLAST material to make pillows and quilts.

I got an email from a tipster (which was confirmed by another source of mine) telling me that Alshaya have acquired two new food chains to bring into Kuwait. The first chain is called Potbelly Sandwich Works which sells submarine sandwiches similar in style to Subway except supposedly better. The second chain is called Texas Roadhouse which specializes in steaks and has a western theme. I hadn’t heard of these two places until a few moments ago but I guess most of you will be glad the two chains are not burger joints. On the other hand I am still trying to find out some kind of information regarding the status of Shake Shack.

I was also told by another source that Pinkberry will not be opening in the Casamaroc location at Avenues like I had previously mentioned since the owner has refused to sell the place. But, they will still be opening a second branch of Pinkberry in that area.

I’ve already posted about the Zinio magazine app on the iPad before (pictured above) and about how great it is and if there was only one app I could have on the iPad that would be it. Sadly though, not all my favorite magazines are available to subscribe to on Zinio… or at least not available yet. So what’s the solution?

You’re going to have to download magazines illegally.

Magazine subscriptions are cheap with the majority costing around $10 a year and I’ve already subscribed to over a dozen but the ones that aren’t available in Zinio I just download pirated copies of the magazines for free.

To do that you need two things, a PDF reader on the iPad and links to sites that post those magazines for you to download.

PDF Reader
I use GoodReader (pictured above) on the iPad to read my PDF magazines. The reason I went with GoodReader over other PDF readers is because it’s cheap, it handles large files extremely well and also because it has a ton of features. Some of the cool features are the ability to upload files into GoodReader directly from your web browser on the computer over wifi, the ability to drag and drop files into GoodReader from iTunes and the ability to download files from the Internet directly into GoodReader via an internal browser. Not only that but you could take a bunch of files, zip them up, upload them into GoodReader and then unzip them within the app. The only downside to GoodReader is the extremely ugly app icon.

Magazine Sites
There a ton of sites but the ones I use the most are the following: World Mags, Get Magazine and Magazines Download. Now just an FYI before you click the links, those sites also have PDF’s of certain magazines that are banned in Kuwait so close your eyes when you see them.

That’s all there is to it. Most of the magazines available in Zinio are also available at those sites as well but, since subscription fees are very cheap on Zinio I would highly recommend you subscribe to them instead.