Category: Interesting

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

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]

Here are 26 urls from A to Z. These are the first sites that appear in Firefox when I type a letter:

A – Autoblog
B – Blind Melon
C – CNN
D – Digg
E – Engadget
F – Applenova Forums
G – Gmail
H – Hotbot
I – iToot
J – Joystiq
K – Kottke
L – Lebanese Forces
M – MacRumors
N – NBK
O – NBK Online
P – PowerPage
Q – Qualitynet Unwanted
R – Real Hot Stuff
S – Socialitelife
T – TorrentLeech
U – U Shop We Ship
V – Virb
W – Naharnet
X – XE Currency Exchange
Y – YouTube
Z – zDistrict

update: Just to make things clear. In some browsers when you type a letter in the address bar you get a drop down list of your most visited sites starting with that letter. the above list is my most visited sites per letter on my Mac at home. Yours will be different. This list is just to share with you some sites some of which you might not know of.

I don’t know how many cookies exactly I had today but I know I had toooooo many. Final results are in though and here are the cookie rankings:

First Place: Oreo Cookies
Second Place: White chocolate chunks cookie mixed with Nutella
Third Place: Plain cookies with a Nutella core

The results were based on my personal favorites and the reaction of fellow employees

Today morning on my way to work I noticed there was a demonstration outside the House of Parliament. I don’t know what they are demonstrating but I hope they are trying to legalize alcohol.

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.

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

So me and some friends from work were leaving Souk Sharq at 2 after lunch to get back to the office when it turned out the cops had closed all the exits. The cop told us no one would be allowed to leave the Souk Sharq parking lot for around an hour because the Doha Asian Games torch was passing by on the Gulf Road.

So we parked the car and just hung out next to the cops on the side of the road. Nibaq was with us since he had met up with us for lunch. We just hung around chilling for like 15 minutes before we noticed a bus and an Hummer stop by us and drop off a guy with an unlit torch. Then a few minutes later down the road we noticed a huge convoy coming closer slowly. Nibaq had a camera and he took some pictures of what we saw. Basically there was some guy running with a lit torch and all the cars around him were driving slow and cheering him on. Once the guy got to the other guy with the unlit torch, he passed on the flame and then the other guy started running. It was basically a torch relay but it looked like they were dropping guys off every 100 meters.

After they passed, the Gulf Road remained closed for another 30 minutes. It was crazy, most of the people at Souk Sharq wanted to get back to work but like us they were just stuck there for a full hour. Finally at 3PM they opened the roads and we drove back to the office.

The shot above was taken by Nibaq, he also took more shots which you can see by clicking [Here]

Today me and Nat had our motorbike license test. I will talk about what happened in a separate post but for now I want to focus on the written exam. If you are planning on getting a driving license or riding license you need to pass a written exam. Problem is the written exam is just a mess. Other then the fact that the English half the time makes no sense, Nat spotted a bigger problem.

Nat and I were taking the written exam at the same time in the same room. So, they gave us different tests which contained different questions. I ended up passing the test with 3 wrong answers while Nat passed with just 2 wrong answers. After we left we were comparing our tests when Nat noticed that one of my questions didn’t have a right answer. If you look at the picture above or the larger version located at the end of this post, you will notice that the correct answer to the sign on the left is “Road Narrows”. Problem is the 3 answers I was given to choose from were wrong. No matter what I would have answered I would have gotten it wrong! Its as if they wanted me to fail! Anyway I might scan the whole test later and post it online. For now here is a larger picture of what I am talking about. [Picture]

I found the easiest way to order flowers today. I needed flowers for Nat and I didn’t have time to pass by this place near my home so I searched online and found a site called Q8Flowers.com. They had a decent variety of flowers available, they accepted Knet and best of all they had same day delivery. I sent her the bouquet called Soul Mate which is a mixture of pink and purple roses. It turned out to be pretty cool and large. Here is a link to the site. [Link]

I am also reading many positive comments regarding ClicknBuy. Seems they are quick to deliver and very cheap. Its pretty cool seeing all these local e-commerce sites starting to pop up.

K.theKuwaiti conducted a survey on Kuwait ISP’s by asking people what provider they were with, how much they were paying and what download speed they were getting. Using the results he plugged them into an Excel sheet and calculated which ISP gives you the best bang for the buck.

So what is the best deal? Turns out its Qualitynet followed closely by Zajil. Fasttelco came in last. For a more detailed analysis check out K’s post. [Link]

On my way to work today as I was passing Souk Sharq on the Gulf Road I saw a few police cars parked on the side and an ambulance. They were parked on the curb near where all the old wooden fishing boats park and it looked like something bad had happened. There was a large crane also parked and I figured something must have gone wrong. So I parked my car and walked towards the crowd. As I was passing the police barrier to get to the other side two cops stopped me and asked me if I was “joumhoor” meaning crowd in Arabic. I used my Miskan technique and just pretended I didn’t speak a word of Arabic, pointed towards my camera and then towards the sea. They were like OK and they let me stay in the restricted area.

Anyway turns out they were salvaging a boat that had sunk. Their were scuba divers in the water and it seems the ambulance was there just in case anything goes wrong. I snapped a few pictures and then left back to work.

Lots of information on calling shotgun but surprisingly no mention of the “shotgun breaker”. [Link]

In Saudi Arabia, it is considered polite and a sign of friendship to hold hands when walking. This does not have the romantic connotations it does in the West.

Ah that explains it… [Link]