Category: Interesting

Yesterday a reader emailed me telling me that the Electrozan branch in Salmiya got shut down by the ministry. So I emailed my Electrozan contact to find out what happened and it turned out to be a license issue. Now the cool thing is that today they put up stickers on the door which you can see above.

The first message apologizes to the customers for being closed and explains why. The second message tells customers that if they take a picture of the door with the message on it and show it to any employee at another one of their branches they get a 5% discount.

I thought that was pretty cool since usually when shops get closed by the ministry no one knows why and rumors get spread. In this case they actually tell everyone why and offer a nice little discount in return.

OK be prepared for the best post yet on this blog…

I was talking to a friend of mine about Salmiya in the 80s and one thing led to another and I was telling him how strong a brand Tikka was back then. I was telling him about the “I like it spicy” guy (pictured above) and the Tikka commercials and how if you asked anyone who grew up in Kuwait back in the 80s they would remember the commercial and even sing you the jingle. It became a classic like the Pizza Italia and Hungry Bunny commercials.

Anyway I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be cool to find out who the “I like it spicy” guy was, what happened to him and how he looked like today? Well guess what… After a bit of research and digging around I found out who he was.

The actor who played the “I like it spicy” character was Galal Zaki. He wasn’t an actor, he worked in the ad agency that came up with the idea. Like Alfred Hitchcock, Galal liked to star in his own work and that’s how he ended up becoming the Tikka guy. the picture below is of Galal Zaki which I found on Google and is dated 2007. Although a lot older now you can still see some resemblance.

Today Galal Zaki is the CEO of Perception Communication in Egypt. He was also recently awarded the Rameh IAA Lifetime Achievement Award.

Update: Here is an old Tikka commercial. It’s not the famous one but its better than nothing…

[YouTube]

Update2: And here is the more popular one…

[YouTube]

[YouTube]

I just found out about EoS. Seems like they’re a cool local group that bring in international DJ’s to Kuwait and set up parties. They’re pretty organized with a website that contains information, pictures and even a blog. The video above is of one of their latest parties but check out their website for more details.

I guess this could be counted as an activity if you can get an invite? [Link]

Update: Wow, according to their DJ list they’ve even brought EL DJETTE to Kuwait!

A friend of mine told me they opened up a small ice skating rink in Marina Mall opposite Baskin Robbins in the food court. It didn’t make sense so I passed by Marina Mall earlier to check it out and to my astonishment there was a mini ice skating rink. There were three kids ice skating and I noticed a small stand on the side which rents out the skates. The place was very cold and the ice looked like ice but when I asked the employee there if it was indeed ice he told me it wasn’t. The floor was a wax like material that resembled ice and worked like ice. Didn’t know there was such a thing.

Graham who? Thats what I was thinking a few minutes ago when someone mentioned he was in Kuwait. After a quick google it turns out Graham is trying to visit every country in the world in one epic journey, without flying or driving. So far he’s already broken the Guinness World Record by visiting 133 countries within one year. According to his twitter feed and blog, Graham is now in Kuwait and he might be here for awhile because he’s kinda stuck.

Before he got here he figured he would be able to take a ferry to Bahrain the same way he was able to take a ferry from Iran to Kuwait (I didn’t think that was possible). Once he arrived to Kuwait he realized there weren’t any ferries to Bahrain so he applied for a transit visa to Saudi and he got rejected. He then tried applying for a Iranian transit visa but they also rejected him so now he’s trying to get a full proper visa to Saudi Arabia. I’m not sure if he has a plan D.

Check out his website [Here]
Check out his travel time line with updates [Here]
Here is a link to his twitter feed [Link]

Thanks Amber

The Discovery show Build it Bigger aired an episode featuring the Al Hamra Tower and I’m downloading it now from my favorite torrent site as I am typing this. The reason it featured Al Hamra Tower is because it’s the world’s tallest twisting structure and so makes it very unique. You can watch a snippet from the show [Here]

Thanks misz

Update: The full episode is on YouTube divided into 8 parts, here is a link to part 1 [YouTube]

A friend of mine spotted this falcon outside his window in Salmiya. He lives right next to Seef Hospital so I’m guessing it’s their falcon and they use it to keep the pigeons away but that’s just my guess.

Damn, I’ve always been pronouncing chipotle wrong… [Link]

Burger picture above which has nothing to do with the link or post was taken by pouryourheartintoit. Looks delicious. [Picture]

The Boston Globe as usual have a great display of photographs, this time the subject is record setters. The one pictured above had the following caption:

Egyptian Mohammed Ali Zinhom, 25, attempts a new Guinness World Record for doing push ups on the 2 fingers of his right hand only, in front of the historical site of the Giza Pyramids, Egypt, Monday, March 8, 2010. Zinhom recorded 46 push ups in 49 seconds. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Here is a link to all the photos and the records. [Link]

It took a lot of my time but I finally finished my very own iPhone app. I actually launched it last week on my twitter page but I didn’t officially announce it since I wanted to get some feedback and fix any bugs that I might have missed first. Good thing I did since I spotted a silly bug the first day it got released and quickly released a version 1.1 update a couple of days later. Now the version has gone up to 1.2 and I’ve been able to introduce a few nifty features which I felt helped round off the app and make it launch worthy.

Originally when I went about creating the app I didn’t know what the use would be. Already the blog was very viewable on the iPhone because of a plug-in I had installed that formatted the site to work perfectly on the iPhone so if my app did the same thing it would be useless. I kept thinking about what else I could do and bit by bit I started adding stuff to it that made it more useful. Here are the things you can currently do with my iPhone app:

– Check my latest posts
– Check the latest comments on my blog
– Check the latest posts in the forum
– Check my twitter
– Check my YouTube channel
– Check latest posts on Safat
– Check latest Kuwait news from Arab Times
– Check the weather via the Kuwait Meteorological Center (contains more details than the default iPhone weather app)
and my favorite…
– Get the latest traffic updates via #q8traffic on Twitter

These are just the features I have currently but hopefully will be adding more stuff down the line. If you want to download the iPhone app search for 248AM in the app store or click the following [Link]

In the post below I was just testing to see if I could broadcast live footage and it worked! For the people who were able to catch my live act I was just broadcasting video of my dog sleeping on the floor so you didn’t miss out on much. I got this idea for live broadcasting from P0ach and wanted to see if there was an easy way to do it and it turned out there was. I signed up for a free account on ustream.tv and downloaded the iPhone app for Ustream called Ustream Live Broadcaster and thats it. All you need is your iPhone’s 3G connection or WiFi and you can broadcast live video from anywhere to the blog. So next time I witness a fire or fight I can just broadcast the video live for everyone to watch. Pretty cool!

I recently purchased a Garmin GPS device from Amazon, it was a really good deal costing me under KD40 with shipping to Kuwait via Aramex. I know most of the roads in Kuwait but every now and then I need to go somewhere I haven’t been to before and a GPS device would come in handy. Turns out its actually a lot more handy then I was expecting since a forum user (Burhan) made me realize I could use the device as a radar detector.

All you need is a Garmin GPS unit and the following file which you need to download and copy onto it [POI File]

What this file does is tell the GPS unit where all the speeding and red light cameras are located. When you get near a radar camera the device alerts you with a beep. If you’re driving below the speed limit you get a gray box alerting you of the camera ahead and just a single beep. If you’re driving over the speed limit you get a red box alerting you that you’re speeding and the device beeps frequently until you either pass the camera or drop your speed below that roads speed limit.

It’s very cool and practical and it cost me under KD40. If you’re interested in the same device I have which is pictured above, its called the Garmin Nuvi 255 and it’s available on Amazon for around KD30. [Amazon Link]

I passed by Discovery Mall with some friends from work to have lunch and noticed they had an archery section set up. Turns out for this month only you can go and shoot arrows at fake deers, beavers and bears. The setup is pretty nice and the price is KD1 for 6 arrows. Discovery Mall is located right next to the ice skating rink.

Just found out about this site called Chat Roulette and I love the idea. It’s a very simple, you go to the website and it will randomly connect you with someone else to chat with. It’s not just typing chat but you also share video and audio. No bells and whistles just a simple navigation system to flip between the thousands and thousands of people there (it was over 30,000 when I was checking it out). Try it out, its pretty cool. [Link]

Note: If you see anything not rated PG just click on the “Report” button to report that person and end the video.

It seems a Kuwait Airways landing caused quite a bit of commotion last month when it landed pretty hard at the Heathrow Airport in London. Someone managed to capture the whole incident on video and posted on YouTube which you can watch above. [YouTube]

Thanks Ahmad!