Category: Kuwait

I’ve had my eye on the Sonos digital music system for awhile now but I never bought it because I simply don’t listen to music at home. Today while I was at Alghanim Electronics I saw the device in person for the first time and it actually looks as pretty as in the pictures.

I don’t know how long they’ve been selling it for since I don’t frequent Alghanim, but the Sonos was priced pretty expensive at KD436. The newer and larger bundle on Amazon costs only KD288.

Baskin Robbins have a new milkshake called the Crunchy Shake. What makes it different from the regular shakes is that they blend a waffle cone with it so that while you are sipping your drink you get to taste the tiny bits of waffles. In theory it sounds good but my experience wasn’t.

First you get to choose three different flavors of ice cream for your shake. That is the fun part since you have a large variety to choose from but I went with the safe route and just chose chocolate mousse for my drink. The employee then took my scoops, dropped them into a blender with milk and a large waffle cone and then turned it on.

The flavor of the drink wasn’t that bad, the waffle cone bits actually do make a difference. The problem I had with my drink was that it was too liquidi, it was as if the employee put too much milk and not enough ice cream. That ruined the shake for me and after drinking half of the cup it just became really gross. I don’t know if this is how the shake was meant to be but I didn’t like it. Final score is a 2 out of 5.

There are three other teams that I know of who have also been accepted to Red Bull’s Flugtag.

Rampurple’s team got accepted. They will be called B Toons.
Patrick Semaan’s team got accepted. They will be called The Phoenix.
MacaholiQ8’s team got accepted. They will be called Dragonfly Team.

Any more bloggers involved??

Last night I had dinner at the Al-Muhallab Seafood restaurant at The Palms hotel in Bida’a. Since it was a business dinner and I didn’t pay the bill, this isn’t going to be a full review meaning I won’t give it a score at the end.

The restaurant is located right at the back of Palms and I imagine during the day you could most probably see the sea. They tried to make the restaurant look Kuwaiti but I didn’t feel it. When you first come into the place you go through an old wooden door which leads you to believe you will be walking into an old Kuwaiti house but once you are in the place opens up into this large cold space and it just kills the mood. I found the place too bright and not very cozy. The place should have looked like Oum Habib but instead you are greeted with a high ceiling, and old Kuwaiti artifacts hung around the walls in very Fuddruckers and Chilis style.

Now on the other hand, the food was really delicious. We chose a couple of hamours, lobsters, crabs, shrimps and zbeydi and then had them grill it for us. When the food arrived the waiters cut up the fish and served them to us which made dinner more enjoyable. The grilled shrimps was my favorite followed closely by the hamour.

Its a pity the place wasn’t designed nicer, thats the biggest let down. Even though the food was good I doubt I would go back. For me the atmosphere of the restaurant is as important as the food, they compliment each other and in this case the food was much better then the restaurant.

You can check out the Al-Muhallab Seafood website by clicking [here]

In June I posted about how a group of us applied for the Red Bull Flugtag which is going to be held in November at Marina Waves. Well today we got word that our application and plane design got approved.

Our team is called Imperial27, in remembrance of Imperial Airways which was the first airline that flew in and out of Kuwait back in 1927. The team will be composed of lead pilot and magician Nibaq, accompanied by conspiring engineering extraordinaries Marzouq, Mark and K.

The Kuwait Airport website has been redesigned. It’s pinker and more girlish now! [Link]

I just heard that Virgin in Marina Mall is closing down and that Bershka will open in its place.

During lunch break we usually go out have lunch at Souk Sharq but every now and then we go do something like ice skating, rock climbing (Marina Waves) or bowling. Today we wanted to see if we could actually go, jet ski and come back to the office in under an hour. The result? It’s doable!

I first used Google Maps to find out what beaches near our office rented jet ski’s. I found two beaches on the map that looked like they had jet ski’s parked on the sand, the first was right next to Fridays (TGIF) and the second next to Le Notre. We decided to head to the one next to Firdays. At 1PM we left the office (we’re situated near Muthana complex), took the first ring road and headed out onto the Gulf Road. There wasn’t any traffic so we were there in under 10 minutes. We parked the car and headed towards the beach where we spotted the jet ski place with around 10 jet skis parked. Half an hour of jet ski is KD7.5 so we took two and headed out to the open sea.

The weather was amazing and the water was soooo refreshing. The whole experience was surreal especially since it all happened during our lunch break. We were able to go, jet ski, quickly clean up and get back to the office in 1 hour. This is definitely THE summer lunch break activity of the year. Easily beats ice skating. Next up… wakeboarding!

Taken from a Burger King poster.

Fantasy World are selling a bunch of Transformer toys but the highlight has to be the large Optimus Prime action figure. They are selling it for around KD37 but on Amazon its being sold for $65. I’ve seen the same model but the limited edition Japanese version (metal) in Muthana Complex for KD80.

The Ministry of Information Interior has a competition to find the best driver in Kuwait. You can apply online and the grand prize is I think KD250.
To qualify you need to:

1) Own either a car or motorbike
2) Not have gotten any traffic violations between 07/31/2006 and 01/07/2007
3) Not have had any car accident between 07/31/2006 and 01/07/2007

To enter the competition visit the MOI website. [Link]

I am Am I the only one who finds this competition funny? Funny or not I am still going to sign up.

update: Imagine if the cops start recruiting drivers…

“Hi, sorry to pull you over but we’ve been tailing you for the past 30 minutes and we’ve noticed your driving skills are unparalleled. We would like you to consider signing up to the “Role Model Driver of the Year” competition because we think you have a strong chance of winning. What do you say?”

I just lost a bet in the office. Someone said McDonalds delivered and I said no. Turns out they do! Their delivery number is 2472221. Weird.

update: added their delivery flyer

Last month I went down to Beirut to film an MTC-Vodafone commercial and yesterday it was finally aired on TV. I just uploaded it on YouTube if anyone wants to watch it.

[YouTube]

I couldn’t mention this before because I didn’t want to reveal too much but we managed to find and get the rights to the old Kuwaiti song “Everything OK“. Many of you might recognize it since I posted about it awhile back.

If you didn’t see the pictures from the making of
you can click the following links:
Egypt – Day 1
London – Day 2
India – Day 3

Tonight I passed by the recently opened Burger Bar in Kuwait City. I got there and found the two parking spots in front of the place empty so I parked my car and got down when the Holiday Inn security guard came up to me and told me I couldn’t park there. Since Burger Bar is located adjacent to Holiday Inn downtown, the security guard told me I wasn’t allowed to park in the two empty spots outside the restaurant. He told me I had to park across the street. I thought that was strange but wasn’t in the mood to argue and just went back into my car and parked on the other side.

The place from the outside looked like a Japanese restaurant and when I looked through the windows I saw what looked like Japanese waiters. I thought to myself this must be the wrong place, even Nataly was like “Mark this looks like a Japanese restaurant”. Once we walked around to the main entrance we saw the Burger Bar logo and realized we were at the right place. We walked through some dimly lit candles outside (very Japanese-ish) into the restaurant where we were greeted by waiters dressed in red silk clothing and black bandannas which again was very Japanese-ish. The place was empty except for one table with two men so we sat down wherever we wanted. We had two choices for seating, what looked like long benches or one of the booths, we chose the booth since it looked more comfortable. Our table was the smallest in the restaurant and I think it could easily fit 8 people. I don’t know if they were made for extremely overweight people or they believe that people eat in packs like hyenas but whatever their reason, it felt really awkward having the whole table for just me and Nat. The music that was playing was loud and guess what genre… it was country music. So, so far the place looked Japanese, had Japanese looking waitresses dressed in Japanese like clothing, playing country music and serving burgers. Pretty strange combination but I was like whatever, its “different”.

We got the menu and I decided to order the mozzarella fries for starters, the mushroom burger for my main course and a junior cheese burger for Nat (junior = slider). The waitress asked me what I wanted to drink and I told her Pepsi. She then replied saying they didn’t have Pepsi. I looked at her surprised thinking to myself what the hell, no soft drinks?? So I asked her what do you mean you don’t have Pepsi? She was like we don’t have Pepsi only Coca Cola. I was like god damn woman I thought you meant you didn’t have any soft drinks! Pepsi, Coke whatever its all the same.

The food arrived a while later and was fairly disappointing. The fries firstly weren’t that great, there was only a small portion of mozzarella over them and they weren’t even melted right. The burger had a strange flavor to it. The actual hamburger bun was great but the meat tasted like “kafta”? I am not sure what but it wasn’t very burgery.

Overall I wasn’t impressed. The mushroom burger was for KD2.500 and that was one of the cheapest burgers on the menu, the majority were around KD4 and KD5. The fries I believe were super expensive costing KD2.700 and they were sooo not worth it. Nats slider cost 750fils which is slightly more expensive then Burger Boutique which brings us to the question, is Burger Bar in the same league as Johnny Rockets and Burger Boutique? Hell no. Final score 2.5 out of 5. Although the Japanese Cowboy look is strange, the design of the place is still pretty cool. Other positives are lots of parking spaces across the street and the fact that you don’t have to call 4 years in advance to book a table is a plus. Food is lousy though but might be worth a visit just to check it out.

For lunch I passed by Shatea Al Watyia, a small Kuwaiti restaurant located behind Casper & Gambini in Kuwait city. The restaurant is in an old Kuwaiti style home which goes well with the menu which is based on traditional Kuwaiti food.

The inside of the restaurant is divided by regions, since we were a large group we sat in Fintas which was a private room with enough seating for 8 people. Flipping through the menu there are a lot of dishes to choose from ranging from machboos to grills. I decided to go with the Mourabian which is a rice and shrimps dish.

We first got the starters which were made up of a variety of dishes including sambousak, yerish and a lentil soup. The sambousak was so so, but the yerish was pretty cool. It was my first time trying it and I honestly forgot whats it made from but to me it tasted like a chilidog’s chili which is pretty cool. The lentil soup was also really great.

The main course arrived soon after that and the quantity was huge. Last week I was in Ta’al and ordered the shrimp curry which disappointingly came with 8 pieces of tiny shrimps. In comparison at Oum Habib the Mourabian had at least two dozen tiny shrimps and the rice portion was gigantic!

The general atmosphere of the place was quiet and the staff friendly and fast. I don’t know how packed the place gets in the evening but I imagine its even cooler when filled with a lot more people. The prices are also really cheap. The soup was KD1, the appetizers around KD1.500 and my main dish was just KD3.500. Thats a really good deal for what you are getting in return. The shrimp curry at Ta’al for example was KD5.500 without rice. Good food, great prices and good service, final score is a 4.5 out of 5. I would definitely go back there again.

update: Erzulie decided to edit my review since my vocabulary is limited to three words “good” “cool” and “amazing”. If you want to check out her interpretation of my review [click here]