2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003
Back in March I posted that P. F. Chang’s China Bistro will be opening up in Kuwait. Well I just found out that it will be opening up in December at Avenues in the same location the H&M’s male store was located opposite to Al Forno.
Note: Alshaya are the ones who are bringing P.F. Chang to Kuwait.
I don’t know how old the video is above but I think its pretty new. It’s taken at the Cheverolet dealer and it’s of the new 2010 Camaro. Not a fan of yellow. [YouTube]
I passed by Tilal Complex tonight to check out the new Tamiya store. They opened up in Tilal back in December 2008 but recently they moved to a larger store on the first floor. I was expecting the new store to be bigger than the previous but it turned out to be like 10 times bigger and looked amazing! Seriously I was in shock. It was very nicely organized, they have stations in the back where you could go and build your car, they even rent tools. They also have a painting room with exhausts for the fumes, a small photography studio where you can take pictures of your car and my favorite section, the spare parts! They have hundreds and hundreds of parts occupying the whole right side of the shop. What I used to hate about their old store was the fact that you had to know what part you wanted and then ask the salesman to get it for you from behind the counter but now I can just browse and find parts and accessories myself.
I really really love their new store and I highly recommend anyone that is interested in radio controlled cars or plastic models to visit it. They’re located on the first floor of Tilal Complex, opposite their older store. Oh and they have this HUGE space right by the shop where they are currently building a race track.
Here is a link to their website [Link]
Their phone number is 22256707
Last week I posted about my problems with Qualitynet and since then they’ve contacted me a number of times to see how they can solve my problem. Tonight they finally sent over the head of corporate support with a small KD5,000 device to see if they can fix my problem.. and they did!
The picture above is the readout on the devices screen before he fixed it while the one below is after. They were able to double the speed my line can handle from 1.5MB to 3MB. So will I be leaving Qualitynet? No I won’t. They read my blog and they care that I stay happy which is fantastic for me.
Last time I took out my radio controlled cars out was back in February when the weather was good and my brother took the picture above. Since then my cars have been hibernating due to the bad weather. But, I just took my Tamiya Lancia out with the upgraded Super Stock RZ motor and was having a good time until the stock electronic control unit (ECU) overheated. And thats when I remembered what I liked about these cars. I like upgrading the different parts and I like the fact that when something breaks I can fix it.
This season I think I want to get the Tamiya Unimog although I am still dreaming of the Mammoth truck but its just too expensive. The Tamiya dealer My Toy has also opened a larger store in Tilal Complex which I still need to pass by and check out. They’ve also set up a large race track in the basement for people to race their cars on. This RC season should turn out to be a lot of fun.
I was sitting at home all cozy watching tv when Nat calls me up on her way back from the gym. She had spotted a dog near our house playing with a cat by the side of the road and she was worried the dog might run into the street and get hit by a car. So I put on some shorts, got a towel, dog bowl and leesh and then waited for her to come home so we could go together in the Wrangler to rescue it.
When we got there it turned out what she had thought was a cat was actually another dog. They were both medium sized dogs and when they saw us they started barking and wagging their tails as if they were happy to get some company. They were playing on the grass near a puddle of water on one of those islands that are located near intersections (see picture below) and they seemed to be very friendly. When we got close one of the dogs came up to us and we started petting him but the other one kept his distance. I went back to the car to get a leash and the other dog that was keeping his distance crossed the road behind me and then ran off towards some buildings and disappeared. Nat was still petting the other dog and so I was able to get close and put the leash on him and then made him cross the road where we fed him some treats and gave him some water. We called Animal Friends and arranged a drop off location but as we were about to take off the car wouldn’t start. My Jeeps battery had died (I had just done a full service a week ago in which I would think they would have checked the battery condition at least).
Its always an awkward position to be in when the car doesn’t start but now I had a dog with me which made things more complicated. Luckily I was in my neighborhood so I called up this car electrician who is located near my place (thats what I love about Salmiya everything is near my place) and he came 5 minutes later and jump started my car. I then had to drive to his place and swap out my car battery while the poor dog waited in my trunk confused and scared with all these things going on around him. Finally around midnight I was able to get to the Animal Friends drop off point and hand them over the dog.
As always I would like to remind everyone that Animal Friends is a non-profit organization and they need donations to be able to keep rescuing all the animals. If you would like to donate click on the following link to find out how. [Donation Link]
This is a pretty messed up incident. A British soldier in civilian clothing got ambushed by five guys in Kuwait City and then held captive. Luckily he managed to escape by jumping out of a first story balcony. [Article]
Update: According to Al-Rai newspaper the British government is denying this incident took place. Here is the article (it’s in Arabic). [Article]
I passed by McDonalds tonight and tried out their Brownie Sundae and I didn’t like it. The brownie sucked, it was cold, hard and didn’t taste that good. Luckily I was at the Avenues McDonalds branch which is right next to Choowy Goowy so I passed by them and picked up some freshly baked brownies and added them to my sundae instead (pictured below). Much better!
Update: Forgot to add a funny incident. I asked for a Brownie Sundae and a bottle of water at McDonalds and the guy asked me if I wanted fries. I was like dude I am asking for a Brownie Sundae not a burger!
I spent 2 hours trying to upload this video onto YouTube with my 1.5MB Qualitynet connection and I couldn’t. Finally was able to upload it by connecting my Mac to my iPhone’s 3G connection. Took around an hour but at least its finally up. Anyway this is the final cut of the new Wataniya Airways commercial which we shot 10 days ago in Beirut. I uploaded the 720p version so make sure you click the HD button or click the following link for the best resolution. [YouTube – HD]
I am really getting frustrated with my Qualitynet connection. It’s like every week they have some kind of major problem and their DSL connection either crawls to a halt or just stops working completely. Currently I can barely load websites because the connection is so bad. I am trying to call qualitynet support but they keep hanging up. After around 9 or 10 minutes being on hold the music stops and I think someone is finally going to pick up when they end up hanging up on me. This happened 3 times now. Last week they had issues and the week before that. Qualitynet are you reading this? This is frustrating!
Anyone else having problems with their internet provider?
Update: Ok I am definitely changing providers. I just had my worst experience with customer support in my 3 5 year history with them. I finally got through to customer support and a guy picks up. I tell him I have a major issue with my connection. He goes uhum. I am like yeah its been like this since 5pm. He was like is this Patrick? I was like WTF? No I am not Patrick. I then proceed to give him my DSL phone number and he then replies you have a problem with your internal building line. I was like dude are you reading random notes off your computer screen? The building line problem is a completely different issue, yesterday the engineer was over trying to see if I could install 4MB and the internal line issue is that the building gets 4MB but by the time it gets to my apartment the max is 2MB. He then proceeds to explain to me I can only get 512kb. I was like what are you talking about? I was using 2MB until a month ago and up until 5 minutes ago I was on 1.5 what do you mean I can only get 512kb? Anyway long story short he had to be the most incompetent customer support person I had ever dealt with. In the end I ended up closing the phone with him and calling them back up again to talk to another support guy. Everything is back to normal now finally.
Update2: Called Kems (Zajil) and spoke to a guy who sounded like he was asleep. I asked him a few questions and he answered but he didn’t sound too confident. He told me if want to get 2MB for KD200 I need to act now because their offer expires on September 5th. So I need to make my decision in the next couple of days if I want to move either to Fasttelco or Kems. Kems I think would be more practical since our new office is going to be located right next to their head office which makes it easier in case I need to pass by them.
Update3: Qualitynet just called me and told me my problem is my internal building/house wiring and because I was a loyal customer they would send a technician to swap out the whole wiring at their expense. I told the guy that I live in a huge complex and it’s not possible to swap out the line or I would have paid for it myself. I told him I had been using 2MB for 8 months and 1.5MB for like 2 months and yesterday I was told my line could only handle 512kb. He insisted to send someone over so I agreed. Will see what happens.
Update4: Well just an update, I don’t think I will be moving over to Kems. Ever since my post multiple people have been calling me from qualitynet to see what problems i have and trying to solve it. They even offered to rewire my phone line throughout the building! Qualitynet reads my blog and they want to keep me happy so that’s more than enough to convince me to stay with them.
Back in July I posted about Amigos that was going to open in place of Arby’s at Avenues. Well they’re now open and as you can guess they serve Mexican food like nachos, burritos, fajitas and tacos. They’re located in the Avenues food court opposite Choowy Goowy.
Back in May I posted that Alshaya was opening up Pinkberry at the Avenues. Looks like the location is going to be opposite Dean & Deluca in Avenues Phase 2.
I know this is a bit late but I just passed by the Oum Kalthoum exhibit at the 360 Mall over the weekend and thats why I decided I would post about it. I am not a big Oum Kalthoum fan neither do I know much about her but the exhibition is definitely worth visiting. The exhibition space is huge. I was expecting a small room but it turned out to be gigantic. Its also very nicely put together, very tasteful and there are a lot of things to see. There is even a small cinema like section with a large projector where you can sit and watch Oum Kalthoum perform on screen. If you haven’t passed by the exhibit yet you should. Its free and its located on the ground floor of the 360 Mall.
The Hummingbird Bakery is one of my favorite dessert places in London so when I heard they released a cookbook I ordered one right away from Amazon. Since I have a lot of free time during Ramadan I will be baking a lot more and today I started off with an Apple Pie.
I passed by Sultan Center to pick up my ingredients around 3PM but it was a huge mistake. The supermarket was packed and everyone there was shopping in large quantities. My favorite line I overheard today was a daughter telling her dad “but that’s a lot, we don’t need that much” and then the dad replying “it’s Ramadan so it’s fine”. That’s why the 10 items or less line was practically empty and why I was able to leave so quickly without waiting in the humongous lines with people who had carts filled to the brim with food.
Anyway back to baking. The cookbook has a lot of pretty pictures and instructions for baking but they really don’t take you in great detail through the process. Since I hadn’t baked an Apple Pie before I used a Betty Crocker cookbook from the 70’s that had step by step pictures which helped out a bit specially when it came to putting the bottom crust in the pan without ripping it (you fold it twice so its a triangle and then you put it in the pan and unfold back into a circle).
According to the cookbook you’re supposed to bake the pie at 170degrees celcius for 30-40 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. It took me 1 hour and 30 minutes to get the crust golden brown! Next time I will be increasing the temp up to 180 to try and speed things up a bit. The result though was an extremely delicious tasting pie. I had only one minor issue and that was with the bottom crust and top crust separate while baking on one side of the pie but its a minor quibble which I should be able to solve next time.
So far the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook looks to be working. If you want to order it, it’s available on Amazon for around KD5. [Amazon Link]
Previously: My favorite cookie recipe
