Category: Kuwait

A few days ago I got an email from Infiniti saying they wanted to lend me a brand new Infiniti G35 for a week so I could try it out. They just launched the new model recently and wanted to know what I thought of it. I just got back from the dealer awhile ago and I now have in my possession a dark blueish grey top of the line G35… and its fast. The car has a 3.5liter engine which pumps out 327HP with the help of dual air intakes. The thing has amazing acceleration.

I am going to take the car out again later tonight, at the moment I am really hungry and need to have lunch. For a larger picture of the car [Click Here]

www.infiniti-me.com/gsedan/

So I came in to work today on my motorbike and I was planning on parking my bike in the underground parking lot where I usually park my car but I was stopped at the entrance. The parking people told me I couldn’t park my bike inside. I was like why? I am still going to pay you. They were like they aren’t allowed to let bikers in because bikes are “light” and “small” and “anyone can come and carry them out”. They don’t want the responsibility for having my bike get stolen. I was like huh???

So now my bike is parked outside the entrance in front of the parking peoples office. I told them to keep an eye on my bike and they were like fine… which contradicts their earlier argument. Weird people.

Think Gumball but on a local level and you have Gulf Run 2007. From the first couple of pictures on the Official Gulf Run website I can see 2 Porsches, a Ferrari, 2 Nobles, 2 Lancers, a 350z, and a Corvette but in total there are 22 cars participating this year. The drivers will be heading from Kuwait to Bahrain where they’ve booked the Bahrain International Circuit for a full day. I didn’t get any invitation to participate this year (must have been lost in the mail) so for now I will just keep checking their site for picture updates. K.TheKuwaiti is participating in the race this year. [Link]

The newly released Ducati 1098s Superbike will be launched tomorrow at Applebee’s on the Gulf Road at 12:30PM. Its one of the hottest and meanest looking bikes at the moment.

I also just checked and it seems TriStar (the Ducati and BMW dealers) finally got their site up and working. They have pictures of their new and second hand bikes but I couldn’t find the prices anywhere. www.tristarkw.com

As some of you might have noticed I have a new sponsor, Waa7a.com. They will be replacing Al-Ghanim Automotive who had been with me since April of last year.

Waa7a is a restaurant database and review site. Its all user generated content so if there is a restaurant thats not listed you can add it and if there is a restaurant you want to rate and review you can do so. Someone for example gave Hard Rock Cafe a positive review which I disagreed with so I wrote another review that reflected my experience which was negative one. Its a pretty cool idea and should be even cooler once a lot more people start posting their reviews.

The site design and features are still being adjusted and fine tuned so if anyone has any feedback you can email it to them or leave it below in the comments. I am posting reviews there under the name “Mark” and so far I think I have only 5 or 6 reviews.

So if you feel like writing reviews and rating restaurants then check out Waa7a.com

We were supposed to get a real live snake today but for some reason we didn’t. On a positive not we did get a large stuffed mountain goat delivered to our office. We’ve named him Simon.

Its 12:15AM and a friend of mine just called me and told me to meet him downstairs. Turned out he had a midnight snack for me, a slice of chocolate cheese cake from Lorenzo. Yummy!

By the way they opened up the new branch outside Salhiya.

Tuesday me and my partner at work should be receiving an interesting package. A guy we know has a friend who has a 1.5meter long python and he is looking for a new home for it so we volunteered to take it. Should be fun having it in our office, don’t think anyone will want to piss us off. We are going to call the snake Jake after Jake the Snake from WWF if anyone still remembers. I will take pictures of Jake once we get him.

Yesterday I posted about the Missing Speed Camera on the Gulf Road. Well Ratlab have a picture of the camera on its death bed, turned out it was killed by a black Trail Blazer. Check it out. [Link]

The speed camera on the Gulf Road opposite Al-Shaab park is missing. Either it was removed which I doubt or a car probably crashed into it which what probably happened. Whatever the case, there is no camera there now.

I was supposed to ride to work today on my bike but I woke up and the sky was cloudy so I was like its going to rain. I checked three weather websites and they all said it would be cloudy but no rain. I looked outside again and I was like no its going to rain, so I came to work in my car. Now its nearly 12 and it still hasn’t rained. Where is the rain?

Early last month Nat ordered some Puma Satori Alto boots from Nordstrom for $250. They weren’t available in Kuwait and they were sold out on Amazon who were also selling it for $250. Around a week ago Athletes Foot got the boots and guess how much they are selling them for? KD59 which is $205! Thats $50 cheaper then US prices not including the shipping cost which was also another KD10. If only more places sold stuff cheaper then Amazon…

Someone in the forum is selling a brand new 60GB PS3 for KD250. Thats KD50 cheaper then the cheapest place I know of which is ClicknBuy. Here is the link to the post in the forum. [Link]

I am going to start off by saying I am not a fan of Wataniya. I have been an MTC user since 1995 and I am very loyal to the brand. So, when I was contacted by Wataniya to try out their new W-net internet router I wasn’t very thrilled because I would rather it had been MTC calling me. But I still went ahead and met with the Wataniya guy who turned out to be cool and a Nintendo Wii fan and he explained to me what W-net was and told me that Wataniya had hooked me up with a 6 month prepaid subscription. I was thinking worst case scenario if the connection turned out to be crap I could take the router to work and hook it up over there since my office lacked a wifi connection which annoys the hell out of me whenever I take my Macbook to work. After using the device for over 2 weeks I can say I am impressed.

When I first opened the package I found the Quick Start Guide which involved 11 steps on how to setup the connection. I ignored the guide, turned on the router and connected to it via wifi on my Macbook. Thats it, I was connected to the Internet. Its a lot easier then 11 steps.

The Wataniya router works on the HSDPA network which is a 3G mobile protocol. Currently 3G isn’t covered everywhere in Kuwait so if you don’t have 3G in your area you will end up connecting onto the much slower EDGE network. So if you want to take full advantage of W-net you better hope you live in a 3G zone. I live in Salmiya and I have 3G here.

The most impressive thing about the W-Net connection is the download speed. I have a 512 DSL connection by Qualitynet and I usually download files at around 63 KB/sec. With W-net on the other hand I download at around 107 KB/sec which is nearly twice as fast as my DSL connection. The upload speed is slow though at around 15 KB/sec where as my Qualitynet hits around 35 KB/sec.

Loading websites feels slower on the Wataniya connection. When I type in a URL its always quicker to load on my Qualitynet connection. I thought it was because of the connection latency but I pinged mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com on both my Qualitynet connection and the Wataniya connection and the results were very close so I don’t know why the lack of acceleration.

Qualitynet
PING mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com (66.199.240.42): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=0 ttl=45 time=321.393 ms
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=1 ttl=47 time=305.564 ms
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=2 ttl=45 time=325.444 ms
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=3 ttl=45 time=356.846 ms
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=4 ttl=45 time=376.722 ms

Wataniya W-Net
PING mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com (66.199.240.42): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=0 ttl=45 time=306.380 ms
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=1 ttl=47 time=327.925 ms
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=2 ttl=45 time=383.964 ms
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=3 ttl=45 time=295.931 ms
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=4 ttl=45 time=472.001 ms

For the geek users, you can customize the settings of the router to your liking just as if it was an ordinary router. It originally came set with the IP address 192.168.1.1 but my network runs on 192.168.0.X so I just logged in to the router settings and just changed stuff like turning of DHCP and changing the routers name. The router has an Ethernet port so you can connect it to the regular network or directly to your computer in case you don’t have wifi.

The price of the router plus Wataniya data line is KD135. The monthly charge for the connection is KD28, or KD300 for 1 year and KD565 for 2. I don’t know if you can order a different cheaper router off the web and use it with the Wataniya data line, I guess it could work.

Would I give up my DSL connection for W-Net? No I wouldn’t. I upload a lot of stuff all the time and 35 KB/sec is slow for me yet alone 15. I also browse the web a lot and like it when pages load instantly. The W-Net connection reminds me of my previous Shownet connection (which was Satellite based). It has a high top speed but slow acceleration meaning when browsing websites you don’t really feel the connection is fast only when you start downloading files do you notice it.

Would I recommend the W-Net connection? Yes in certain situations. For example in my old place in Salwa I couldn’t get a DSL line setup because the phone network in my street didn’t support it. My only option was a Satellite/Dialup combo which sucked. If I was still living there then I would definitely get W-net. Also for people who can’t get phone lines for one reason or another or for people who simply want an Internet connection wherever they go (camping, challet, anywhere with a power outlet) then this would also be a good option.

Am I going to take the router to the office? Nope, whenever I have files to download I just switch over to the W-Net connection and download them. Its really convenient having it because its cutting my download time in half. Anyway if you have any questions regarding W-Net just leave a comment below and I will try to answer it.

www.wataniya.com

My building has underground parking, 3 floors of it to be exact. The last floor is divided in half, half parking spots and the other half storage areas. Two days ago I noticed that some workers were emptying the storage rooms. I didn’t think of it much until today while snooping around through the boxes the building janitor spotted me and told me I could take whatever I wanted because they were going to throw everything out tomorrow. I was like cool and went upstairs and told Nat about it. A few minutes later we both went back down armed with two Maglite’s, a swiss army knife and camera.

There were a whole bunch of boxes lined up everywhere just filled with books, toys and electronics. We started going through them one by one and as we found stuff we just filled them in the trunk of my Wrangler.

I found a whole collection of National Geographic magazines from 1967 all the way till the early 80s. I found an excellent condition Apple II, a excellent condition NES with the gun and the Super Mario Bros / Duck Hunt cartridge. I also found a clean SNES, a box full of DC comics cards, and a couple of cool books including a copy of Stephen Kings The Shining dated from 1977. My trunk is full of vintage treasures and I need like a shopping cart or something to help me take them upstairs. I even found a pristine condition ALGOL computer programming book dated 1968. I hadn’t heard of the ALGOL programming language up until two hours ago.

Anyway, this weekend I am probably going to pass by IKEA get me some new shelves. For now, I got junk in my trunk. I love this stuff..