Category: Kuwait

I passed by McDonald’s today for a quick bite to eat and noticed they had spring rolls on the menu. I hadn’t had McDonald’s since before ramadan so I don’t know how long they’ve been serving them but I decided to give it a shot.

It’s very rare for a fast food place like McDonald’s, KFC, Hardees or Burger King to introduce an appetizer and have it succeed. The only successful appetizer I can think of is the popcorn chicken at KFC. With that in mind and with the fact that chinese food is the last thing I would think of finding at McDonald’s, I proceeded to order my spring rolls with caution.

I know this might sound crazy, I know that my taste buds can be screwy sometimes and I know the Chinese are going to hate me for saying this but… the spring rolls at McDonald’s weren’t bad at all. In fact they were pretty good. I’ve tried nearly everything that McDonald’s in Kuwait ever introduced to their menu and this is why I know to always expect the unexpected with them. When they introduced their Mushroom and Swiss burger I expected it to be the best burger they’ve ever created and it turned out to be the worst burger ever.

The spring rolls comes with a sweet chili sauce which is actually a big part of the reason the spring rolls are good. The price is also good, 550fils for 6 pieces. In the end, these spring rolls are not the best spring rolls in the world. They are not even close to being the best spring rolls in Kuwait but compared to what other fast food places are offering like the crappy Hot Rods at KFC or the overpriced cheese sticks at Burger King, these spring rolls are the best appetizers being offered at the moment and best value for money. I give them a 3.5 out of 5.

A few months back I noticed a new sports store was opening up in place of where Boushari was located in Salmiya. I was pretty excited because I thought it was a new franchise opening but then I found out it was just Sport Corner and I lost interest. Sports Corner was already open further down the street near Thuraya Complex and I didn’t like the place so I wasn’t expecting this new one to be better. I even got invited to the launch of the new store but I wasn’t interested.

Tonight though I decided to go in and it was pretty impressive. The store is 4 floors and although I don’t think the floor space is as big as GoSport, its still pretty packed with stuff especially in the basement. The ground floor is dedicated to Adidas, the second floor to Reebok, the third floor is Champions and the basement is packed with weight lifting, exercise equipment, bikes, punching bags, rackets and just a ton of stuff. The place is worth a visit if anything just so you know whats available in Kuwait in terms of sporting gear. GoSport still caters to a wider range of sports while I would say Sports Corner has a larger variety of weight lifting and exercise equipment.

The Kuwait Flour Mills started producing a new type of burger bun. Or at least I think its new since I never spotted it before and its still not listed on their website. The new bun is similar to the buns used at places like Burger Boutique and Johnny Rockets and doesn’t come with sesame seeds on the top. By the way you have to check out the Kuwait Flour Mills website, its really strange. They have an online shop which doesn’t seem to work, they have a section called “Attractive Corner” and they have a weird flash intro. On the bright side, its cool they have a site. [Link]

A reader in the forum reported seeing a meteor on the first day of Eid over Kuwait and managed to take some pictures. I’ve never seen one live before not even a shooting star so I am kinda pissed I missed out on this. You can see the rest of the pictures in the forum. [Link]

Update: And here is a video of it! [YouTube]

Thanks Fattboa and q8h2o

OMG this is hilarious! They even have a small shopping cart icon to click on when you find the maid you are looking for. [Link]

via Q8SWS

Last night was the launch for the movie theater at Avenues which I think its the largest one in Kuwait. According to their press release there are 11 theaters in total including 2 VIP theaters. The ticket for the VIP theater costs KD6, has only 22 seats, personal service and electric lazy boys with built in massagers. Although the theater launched last night, it will officially open to the public on the first day of Eid. Ahmad Helmi will be there also for the premier of his new movie but I’ve never heard of him so I don’t know if thats a big deal or not.

Also I was reading yesterday on Hilaliya’s blog that the movie The Kingdom is banned from playing in Kuwait. I hope that doesn’t turn out to be true because I was looking forward to watching it.

A friend of mine asked me if I could post this job vacancy ad:

We are looking for two persons to join our retail operation (he or
she) for the following positions:

APR Development Coordinator
To coordinate and communicate with Apple Middle East & Europe on the apple center development and implementation, a lot of reading on guidelines and implementing them, doing some casual marketing, follow-up with me on the latest development, training the apple centers employees on the latest technologies form apple and marketing techniques .. etc.

Designer
To design and create in house flyers, brochures, booklets, merchandising .. etc for our apple center operation. Helping in the design of our web page.

Marketing Executive
To help in the marketing of Apple products in Kuwait and coordinate Apple special events.

If interested send an email to [email protected]

How many people received the following SMS yesterday?

Love and date !!! Call me now: 002434200061

Taken from the Little Treats website:

Pink Ribbon Awareness
It’s Breast Cancer Awareness month. we will be donating our profits from this line to Kuwait’s Cancer Association. Join us and be part of the community!!

You can order the cupcakes by phone or visiting their store in Wataniya Complex, Salmiya.

https://www.littletreats-q8.com/

The Choowy Goowy website has been redesigned. It’s now flash based (urgh!!!) but the site does look much better than it did before. They have all their latest cookie flavors listed including our Mark & Nat oreo cookies. So check out their website and leave any comments or feedback on the new design below. [Link]

I thought a lot of people knew about this already but I am still getting emails from people telling me they tried ordering an iPhone from the Apple Store but that its asking them for a US shipping address.

What you need to do to order an iPhone from the Apple Store or any electronic item from Amazon for that matter is to set up a US forwarding mailbox. Basically its a mailbox thats located in the States and anything that arrives in it will get forwarded to your address here in Kuwait.

There are four companies in Kuwait that offer this service and I’ve tried all four of them, my favorite and the one I use the most is U Shop We Ship. The main reason I prefer it over the competition is the fact that signing up to their service can be done online and all payments for the shipments can also be paid online. This makes things really practical. Items usually take 3 to 4 days to arrive to Kuwait once shipped from your US mailbox.

I know a lot of people have tried ordering iPhones from the Apple Store and have had their shipments canceled. I don’t know why thats happening and why it works with some people and not with others. I myself have ordered 3 iPhones with the last one around 10 days ago and I haven’t had any cancellations yet. I’ve also received the iPhones quickly without paying any custom fees. I don’t have any advice or tips on how to avoid getting your order canceled, I guess it could be random thing.

update: To find out what firmware you have on an un-activated iPhone do the following dial *3001#12345#* and then push “Call”

If you see 03.12.06_G then your firmware is 1.0.0
If you see 03.14.08_G then your firmware is 1.02
If you see 04.01.13_G then your firmware is 1.1.1

A bunch of 16 year old girls put together a horror walking game in their school carnival last year and because it turned out to be a blast they decided to set up a larger version at Shaab Park so it could be experienced by more people. They’ve rented a hall at Shaab Park and the game which they’ve called “Crime Scenes” will be running for the first three days of Eid (13, 14 and 15th of October) from 6 to 10PM.

The game is the girls creation and they put everything together themselves, it’s also the first time a game like this has been set up in Kuwait. The downside to all this is that due to the fact that the young girls are running the horror game themselves, they are only allowing boys under 10 and women of any age to participate in their game.

For more information you can check out their ad [Here]
and a YouTube video [Here]

Last month HSBC sent out a memo noting that they recently seized an unusually larger number of counterfeit KWD 20 notes. They have a PDF file explaining how to spot a counterfeit which you can download by clicking this [Link]

Thanks John!

A friend emailed me while I was in Beirut asking if I could help him out with something. For awhile now he’s been pondering what Banak really is and what its called in English. He did a bit of research online and all he found was another blog that was asking the same question. So does anyone know the answer?

Picture taken from COLoriya

For those of you who don’t know, Marzouq, Khalid, Bader and myself will be participating in this years Red Bull Flugtag which will be held at Marina Waves next month. Our team is called Imperial27 and we are planning to kick some major ass.

Our plane should have been done by now but getting stuff cleared from customs in Kuwait is really a big hassle specially since its Ramadan now. Well the guys (Khalid actually) managed to clear two boxes a couple of days ago which contained some parts we needed for the plane. We ordered them from Renault which although sounds really cool the parts themselves are actually pretty boring looking, they are part of the system that will be propelling our plane off the ramp. Problem is we (cough cough Bader cough) measured one part wrong and now it won’t fit so we are trying to find a solution. Once everything is sorted and put together it should turn out pretty cool.. if our theory and calculations turn out to be right that is.

The Imperial27 website is also nearly done and should be ready by next week. It will be located at www.imperial27.com and we will launch the site by revealing our plane there so in case we couldn’t finish putting our plane together by then we will have to push back the launch of the site. We are also trying to see if we could do a live broadcast of the revealing but we have some minor glitches that we need to work out. Anyway will keep everyone posted with any updates.