Category: Kuwait

[YouTube]

And in case you missed it, the Hungry Bunny commercial. [Link]

Thanks Feras!

note: If you didn’t live in Kuwait pre-1990 you will not get this

The Windows Gaming Championship should have started on May 10th (yesterday) but the custom PC’s the organizers had ordered were not cleared by the Kuwait customs. The event has now been postponed till May 17th and 18th. Here is a message from the organizer:

Dear All, Please accept our sincere apologies but due to a technical problem, we haveto postpone the Windows Gaming Championship Kuwait event until next week. The event will take place on Thursday 17th and Friday 18th May, on the ground floor of Sharq Market Mall, near Zara and Next from 1pm – 10pm on both days.

With many thanks and best regards,
Louise Hickman

For more information visit the official tournament website. [Link]
Here is the website of the Gulf Gamers. [Link]

Thanks Yousef

Nataly came home today to find her Apple MacBook in the hallway being chewed on by Geo, or dog. I don’t know what got into his head today but for some reason he took the laptop from the living room and started chewing it. Luckily it seems he only chewed the case since the screen is still working and so is everything else meaning it shouldn’t be too costly to fix (I hope). I still don’t understand how he managed to pick up the laptop off the table and drag it to the hallway…

I got the following email from Cinemagic:

Dear All,

You are invited to attend “Short & Sweet”, Cinemagic’s weekly screening event. The events will take place at the Cinemagic Courtyard in Bait Lothan, Salmiya, on Wednesday 9th of May, and will run between 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

This week we will be screening “Children of Heaven“, a 1997 Iranian film that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1998.

It deals with a brother and sister and their adventures over a lost pair of shoes, while also touching upon the more serious subject of the political situation in Iran as well as class differences between the rich and the poor and daily urban life.

In 1998, the film was the first Iranian film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but lost to the Italian film Life Is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni.

It was successfully shown on numerous film festivals and won awards at the Fajr Film Festival, the World Film Festival, the Newport International Film Festival, the Warsaw International Film Festival, and the Singapore International Film Festival. It was nominated for the Jury’s Grand Prize at the American Film Institute’s festival.

For its part, Cinemagic Kuwait, is organizing these events as part of its efforts to contribute to the development of an internationally competitive Kuwaiti audio-visual production industry, partly by bringing the filmmakers and audiences together and by Increasing the public’s interest in – and appreciation for – the art of filmmaking.

As always, attendance is free of charge and you are encouraged to invite guests. Seating is limited, so make sure you come a little early. Snacks and refreshments will be served.

Yazan Al Ghazzawi
PR & Marketing Manager
Kuwait Cinemagic

Tel: (+965) 574 3253
Cell: (+965) 722 2416

www.cinemagics.com

I passed by the jewelery exhibit tonight at the Mishref fair ground to check it out since my cousin who recently came in from Thailand had a display there (ZoRaB). On the way in to the exhibit I found a huge shawerma stand outside so I went up to a guy there and ordered myself two shawermas. The guy turns to me and tells me these shawermas are not for sale, they are for management upstairs! I found that strange, actually not really that strange since this is Kuwait but still, a fancy jewelery exhibition and the management upstairs have their own shawerma stand right outside?

So I walked in to the exhibit hall and right at the entrance the Kuwait Customs had a display. Again this felt out of place but I figured I would get closer and check it out. I have to say, its one really strange display. The backdrop of the display had a collage of pictures from their most famous drug busts I think. There were also a couple of pictures of alcohol busts, you know the very cliche 200 bottles of red label on the floor and 3 Bangladeshis posing behind them. Now the cool part was the magic section. They had a display of magical items they had caught, its seriously the silliest stuff. There was a horse shoe, some rings, a few rocks and a lot of handwritten notes. I think those were curses or something. On the far left they also had some pharmaceutical items (they looked like adrenalin shots) and three fake DVDs. I still don’t understand why they had a display set up at a jewelery exhibition, maybe for comical relief.

The jewelery exhibit itself was kind of dull but I am also not really a jewelery person. The exhibition ends today (Monday) so if it is your kind of thing maybe you should check it out, the customs stand itself is worth the trip.

Virgin Megastore is open again and I think this time around they are taking censorship to the extreme. I think thats what I would do if I was them, I would want to show people how ridiculous censorship can be. The CD cover above is of the Buddha-bar CD, they’ve censored the Buddha’s face!

update: I have been told censoring the Buddha is not something new.

American University of Kuwait which is located in Salmiya is having a carnival/open-day this Thursday from 10am till 5pm.

I am at the airport now waiting for a flight to Dubai. Originally we were supposed to leave on the Sri Lanken airlines flight at 7:10 but that got delayed till around 9:30. Problem is there is a soccer match tonight and me and my partner are supposed to watch it at the Double Decker pub in Dubai. We tried getting on the Emirates airline flight which takes off at 6 but it was fully booked and in the end there was only 1 seat left and they gave it to this guy who had like a gold skywards card or something.

I am now sitting in Starbucks just waiting for our late flight. We are going to miss the soccer match which I was looking forward to watching…

I finally picked up my car today from the BMW dealer but before I picked it up I got taken backstage to the garage and given a short tour plus introduced to a few people.

Overall I found the employees backstage to be a lot friendlier and more interesting then the people they have in the front dealing with customers which is kind of ironic. They told me they had received calls from various people around the world regarding my email and post (thanks to everyone who told me to email BMW in Germany and Dubai). The workshop manager told me no case ever grew to this proportion and that next week a delegation is even coming to Kuwait to check on the problems.

I told the workshop manager I was positive they weren’t coming because of my complaint alone but because they had been receiving a lot of complaints from many people. I also told him I wouldn’t have even sent out the emails or posted what I posted had there been friendly and good customer service.

Anyway they fixed the car and didn’t charge me for it and now its running perfectly so I am happy.

A large collection of old and new Egyptian movie posters. I don’t know whats funnier the posters or the names of the movies translated to English. [Link]

Thanks Holla

I started watching this documentary/movie called The Last Flight to Kuwait which talks about the British Airways flight 149 that landed in Kuwait just as Iraq was invading back in 1990. I don’t know how accurate it is but it looks like its based on facts.

There always was a conspiracy surrounding the reason the BA flight landed in Kuwait. According to Wikipedia the flight landed after the invasion had begun but according to the documentary it landed just before. In any case, the documentary talks about the reason the plane landed in Kuwait which was because there were eight MI6 (the British secret intelligence service) agents that the British government wanted to position in Kuwait. It sounds very plausible especially since there is no other reason why BA didn’t cancel the flight like every other airline that night.

If you can manage to get a hold of the movie its definitely worth watching. The movie is a combination of real footage from the war, reenacted scenes and interviews with some of the passengers and crew of that flight.

The weather today is really gross. I rode in on my bike in the morning and later at lunch I had to ride back home and it was just awful. Its not only really dusty but at some points on the Gulf Road the air becomes really hot for some reason and it just makes things disgusting. It was terrible, I think riding season is nearly over.

Toilet paper found at Sultan Center. Not as funny as Ass Sizes but still funny.

Today I got some brownies from Choowy Goowy to work. I had tried them before but this was the first time I got them to the office. I let everyone try a bite and everyone simply loved them. They are really good and aren’t too sweet so they don’t feel heavy. It comes with either caramel or chocolate dip but I prefer the caramel. The packaging is nice and 2 dozen brownie bites will set you back KD5.500 but keep in mind they are brownie bites meaning the pieces aren’t very big. If you want to order some you can call them on 2626559.

Picture above taken by RA-1

I just got a phone call a few minutes ago from the BMW workshop manager. He was very sincere and apologized about how my radiator leak was handled and they want to now fix the car at their cost. They are sending a tow truck to pick up my car from the other garage.