Category: Kuwait

Placed order with Papa Johns at 8:30. Promised would be delivered within 45 minutes. Called back at 9:20 telling them pizza hadn’t arrived yet, they told me within 10 minutes. Called back at 9:35 telling them pizza hadn’t arrived yet, they told me they will check on it and get back to me. Called back at 9:45 telling them pizza hasn’t arrived yet even though I called twice. They transfered me to manager who told me he will call back in 2 minutes. Its been 5 minutes and no call back yet and I need to leave the house.

update: called back at 9:55, spoke to manager again told him he had told me he would call me back in 2 minutes and he hadn’t. He told me he spoke to Salmiya branch manager and he is probably trying to call me now and he is getting a busy tone. I told him no I have call waiting if he was trying to call me I would know. I told him I need to know when my pizza will get here because I need to leave. He was like if you have to leave I can’t do anything about it. So I was like then cancel my order, he was like fine. What the hell, what lame customer service is that.

Then a few minutes later I get a phone call from the Salmiya branch manager telling me my pizza will be late. I told him why didn’t you call me half an hour ago when the call center manager told me you would call me. He was like I had to call the driver. I was like you need 30 minutes to do that? I was like anyway I canceled my order. He was like ok and I closed the phone.

I would never order from them again. Why?
– They should have been apologetic instead of blaming it on traffic
– Its Thursday night and they know there is traffic so why tell me 45 minutes in the first place
– After my first call they should have called the driver and found out how long he needed
– After they told me they would call me back they should have called me back
– At the very least they should have offered me the pizza for free, its been over an hour and a half and the pizza is going to be cold anyway
– The two managers I spoke to were not friendly enough

I just got an SMS from Choowy Goowy saying that on the occasion of Valentines they have a special jar. If anyone is interested in sending cookies on Valentines the last day to place your order is February 11th. To order call them on 2626559 or 2620011.

I just got back from the Mercedes SUV experience awhile ago. The event is being held near the ice skating rink parking lot.

So I am parking my car and I spot a Mercedes G-Class doing a climb decent. I was thinking wow they actually have the G-Class here. For those of you who don’t know, my favorite SUV is the G-Class and my favorite SUV list actually goes something like this (notice they are all boxy):

1- Mercedes G-Class
2- Land Rover Defender
3- Land Rover LR3
4- Jeep Wrangler

So I get into the main tent and sign up for a ride in the G-Class and then head over to the car. Once I got close I realized this wasn’t the regular G-Class, this was the freakin 500HP AMG version! This was like the motherload. Sadly I wasn’t able to drive the car today because they had professional drivers taking the guests around the track BUT, I was promised by my Mercedes contact that once the event was over and the car cleaned up I would be able to have it for a test drive. When that happens be sure I will post about it here.

Me and a friend at work both purchased some pimped out RC cars from Fantasy World. I got the Mercedes G-Class and he got the Dodge Charger. We built like a makeshift ramp in the office and we were flying the cars off it. The cars although costing only KD8 are pretty responsive and fast.. for their size. My G-Class out performed the Charger in everything except when it came to making donuts but thats because the Charger has a longer wheelbase.

Just saw the new license plates live, it looks kinda boring.

I got an email today from Hilton Kuwait Resort inviting me and Nat to a a live “chocolate show” done by one of the world most famous chocolatier, Pierre Marcolini on February 11th. The day will start off at 12PM with lunch at the Teatro Restaurant, this will then be followed by a live chocolate presentation by chef Pierre Marcolini at 2:00PM in the Song Bird Cafe where we can eat all the chocolate that we can eat.

The live chocolate presentation is open to the public and you will be able to buy and try a variety of chocolates. I have never been to a chocolate event so it should be interesting. You can view the ad for the event by clicking [Here]

I was on the Gulf Road yesterday driving towards Salmiya when I saw a bright flash light go off around a 100 meters in front of me. The speed camera just before the gas station and Texas Chicken was installed again over the weekend…

A friend of mine just told he saw an ad for KEMS (Zajil) in the newspaper saying that you can get an 8MB DSL connection for only 8KD. For more details you have to visit their stand at InfoConnect. Anyone know anything about this???

update: I just called Zajil and this is there offer.

Now until February 9th they have a special 3 in 1 deal. When you sign up for their DSL connection you get a free dial up connection AND access to all their hotspots in Kuwait. Here are their prices:

256KB DSL + Dial up + Zajil Hotspots = KD96 a year (KD8 per month)
512KB DSL + Dial up + Zajil Hotspots = KD179 a year (KD15 per month)
1MB DSL + Dial up + Zajil Hotspots = KD349 a year (KD29 per month)

You can get more info by calling them on 820820

I think the 1MB connection for KD29 is a really good deal and add to that free access to the hotspots and it makes things a lot more interesting. I am really tempted to swap over from Qualitynet to Zajil now.

note: The Zajil Hotspots can hit up to 8MB thats why they are saying 8KD for 8MB.

When you are going to permanently mark government property at least get the spelling and grammar right.

Today I had to wake up at 5AM because I had a photo shoot at 6 in the morning. Once the shoot was done and after having a quick breakfast at Krispy Kreme, me and a friend decided to head to the Friday market.

Last time I went there was over a year ago and things have changed condierably since then. The place is cleaner and more organized then before. They seriously sell the strangest stuff there, you can find anything including used deodorant cans.

After walking around for around 40 minutes I spotted a guy with a ton of vintage video game systems. He had a ton of video games for the SNES, NES, Megadrive and MegaCD. He also had some video game consoles, Sega Genesis, Sega 32x, Sega MegaCD, Sega Saturn, Atari Jaguars, NES systems, a Panasonic 3DO and a NeoGeo. They weren’t all in the best of shape plus I had most of them so I wasn’t really interested in any of them for my collection. Then I spotted a NeoGeo game. The guy noticed I was interested and told me he had more pointing to under the table. I looked down and was like fuuucccckkkkk…. There were around 15 NeoGeo games just pilled up there.

A quick history on the NeoGeo. It was released in 1990 and back then it was priced at $650. It was one of the most expensive video game consoles and each game used to cost over $200 and most of the time over $300. Finding a brand new NeoGeo console today is very difficult, the last time I saw a brand new one online they were selling for $1200. Luckily a few years ago I got my brand new NeoGeo for less then $300.

So back to my story. The guy wanted KD5 for every game. I told him the prices were too expensive but he then pointed to the original price tags on the games.. KD75, KD60, KD65 etc.. I told him yeah they cost this much back in the 90s. I offered to give him KD10 for the 15 games. He said no and so I left. 30 minutes later I came back and decided to haggle with him. In the end I ended up getting 11 NeoGeo games (I had the other 4), a NeoGeo joypad and 2 Atari Jaguar consoles all for KD14. I have an Atari Jaguar but I accidentally ruined it a while back and needed a replacement. He didn’t know if the 2 systems he had worked so I decided to take both of them.

When I came back home I quickly started checking the NeoStore for prices of the games plus checked the price guide and it turns out I walked away with over $700 worth of NeoGeo games, the most expensive being Aggressors of Dark Kombat which is selling for $149 at the moment.

The DailyStar newspaper, Kuwait edition is now online. [Link]

A Jazeera Airways pilot left the following comment regarding my previous post on the Kuwait Airways crash landing:

Ok the replacement plane is one to fly passengers back its not a charity, you do have a return flight you have to make. They aren’t giving Kuwait a free plane. Secondly, that plane is repairable unless there is structural damage or the cost to repair is too high, and crash landings or gear being stuck is a common problem, has nothing to do with the age of the aircraft. There is a manual release on gear, this breaks open the gear doors locks and releases the hydraulic system which is why the gear doors are hanging down like that. Finally, the use of emergency slides is a crew discretion, in a situation like this they would probably fear hydraulic fluid catching on fire or any other substance around the plane, pilots can’t tell what is going on outside thus they want to clear the plane as quickly as possible, remember they can’t tell whats going on behind them. From my view, Good job on handling the situation.

And another point sure KU customer service is crap, but trust me the people in Dubai are an outstanding team, they try their best, I’ve personally seen them in action a few times. The hotel situation is not up to them, you can’t find 50 hotel rooms in a busy traveling season in seconds or hours, and also do you think Dubai has a lot of empty top notch hotels. Upper management is corrupt in KU not the people who are holding the fort in the stations abroad. And yes KU has lost its touches around 2001/2002. They now officially suck.

Here is the new MTC-Vodafone TV commercial for the new e-GO internet device. The commercial hasn’t been released yet on TV, so this blog is the first place to broadcast it.

A friend of mine yesterday told me that a Kuwait Airways plane “crashed” in the UAE and they were trying to cover up the incident. I didn’t believe him because you can’t cover up an aircraft crash. Anyway today it turns out there wasn’t a crash but a Kuwait Airways plane had to do an emergency landing because the landing gear failed to open. I will definitely never be flying with Kuwait Airways again.

Now two things grabbed my attention in the article. First, UAE offered Kuwait a replacement plane. I found that really strange because its not like Kuwait is broke and can’t afford a new plane. They must have looked at all the aging Kuwait Airways aircraft and gotten the idea Kuwait can’t afford to get a replacement and decided to donate one to us…

Then near the end of the article I also read about how Kuwait Airways later dropped the passengers off in Dubai with no hotel reservations or anything. I mean come on. When a plane crash lands and passengers get hurt and are forced to evacuate the plane, its a very traumatizing experience. At least, at the very least other then the million apologies to the passengers and the extra free air miles and cash for all the trauma they endured, at the very least put them up in a hotel. According to the article, Kuwait Airways just dropped off the passengers on the side of the road without offering to put them up in a hotel. The passengers are now planning to sue Kuwait Airways and I hope they end up winning.

Morale of the story, never fly with Kuwait Airways.

[Link to article]

Just got back from the Kuwait Advertising Arab Awards, it was better then last years event but it was still extremely poor. The way the categories were divided and the way the ads were nominated didn’t make any sense. Our agency submitted work to some categories for example but during tonights event those categories didn’t exist. I heard the same feedback from other agencies who participated, everyone was just confused to what the hell was going on. The actual presentation of the awards was also a mess, they couldn’t get the TV commercials playing right (how hard is it to press play and pause) and the woman announcer had the most cheesiest one liners. The event was also supposed to start at 7PM according to our tickets (which had a major mistake btw), but according to their website the event was supposed to start at 7:30PM but in reality the event actually started at 8. There were also less agencies participating this year probably because after last years fiasco no one wanted to be involved with the KAAA.

On a positive note the stage looked good, BUT it was a near copy of the KREA awards. Compare the picture above to the picture [Here]. Notice the starry backdrop?

Anyway my agency ended up collecting the most awards (I think), with a total of 12 bronze, silver and gold trophy’s but it really doesn’t mean much since the KAAA doesn’t have any credibility internationally. One of my favorite TV commercials ever which was created by our Beirut office won a Gold in the food category. The version of the ad they played wasn’t the one I liked though, it has a different soundtrack and editing so I figured I would share with everyone the version I like which I uploaded to YouTube a while back. The commercial was for the product Zwan, if you haven’t checked it out you can by clicking [Here]. And thats it basically, I got to see a lot of old friends and I got to wear a suit so everything else didn’t matter much. Hopefully next year I won’t go.

update: here is another review of the event [Link]

update2: Just found out that they canceled one of our categories because we were the only ones who entered it. So according to the KAAA logic if you are successful and have no competition you can’t win. Now lets play along with that for a moment, how about you call us and tell us that you canceled that category, at least then we could have told the client not to come to the event. No professionalism whatsoever.