Category: Kuwait

From the Arab Times:

The above photo was taken Jan 5, 2007 of dead horses right outside the gates of the Ahmadi Governate Equestrian Club. Their location is approximately 200 meters from the front drive and across the street from the International Veterinary Hospital on 306-Wafra Road. The horses did not appear to have been shot, but either euthenized on the spot or dumped there by the Equestrian Club staff.

The first set of dead horses can be found approximately 50 meters from the roadside and very close to campers. They are easily seen from the road. The photographer counted 14 carcasses; some appeared fresh and others had been there for quite some time. One of the horses still had it’s ankles bandaged and was obviously cared for at some point in time. The fresh carcasses appeared to be young horses approximately 2 to 5 years in age.

Not only is this a gastly sight for anyone unfortunate enough to see, but highly unsanitary. Animals feeding off these carcasses can easily spread disease throughout the country.

Reason I posted this is because whenever we leave the vet over there, Nat tells me she sees dead animals on the side of the road and I tell her thats not possible and she must be seeing things. Turns out she was right…

Thanks Amerab

I am going to be meeting Shark of Kuwait tomorrow night for coffee and I will be interviewing him for the blog. Anyone have any questions they want me to ask him?

K.thekuwaiti just posted about Virgin at Marina Mall and how they are overcharging by up to 9 times the actual price of some of their products. NINE TIMES! I am curious to know if they are even allowed to sell grey market products which they are currently doing. Check out his post by clicking [Here]

I had the best chocolate cheese cake ever today. I was at Lorenzo having lunch when I decided to try their dessert. I heard a lot of good stuff about their cakes but I am usually too full to have any. Today I still had room after I finished lunch so I decided to order the chocolate cheese cake.

Its the best chocolate cheese cake I have ever had. Its also not too expensive. The whole cake costs KD7.500 while a large slice costs I think KD1.750 but its sooo worth it. I mean I would easily pay KD10 for the whole cake without thinking twice.

I actually heard Lorenzo supplies cake to a lot of places in Kuwait. Starbucks for example get their oreo cheese cake from Lorenzo. Speaking of Starbucks, has anyone noticed how terrible their cookies taste a the moment? It seems they changed their cookie supplier and the new one just sucks.

Anyway back to the chocolate cheese cake, if you are a cheese cake fan you HAVE to try it. It easily gets a 5 out of 5 stars. Lorenzo is located across the street from Sheraton in Kuwait City but by end of the month they are moving to Salhiya near Johnny Rockets. You don’t have to have lunch there to have their dessert, if you go into the restaurant the cakes are located on the right hand side. They also have chocolate marble cheese cake and chocolate pie which I want to try the next time I go there.

Just got back from the bloggers meetup at Dunkin Donuts. It was pretty cool and lots of fun. Saw a lot of bloggers there including Nibaq, K.thekuwaiti, Forzaq8, Maze, Toxy, Deera guy, Blue Booze BloBoz, Stallion, iDip, Exzombie and more. All very cool people.

I just had the most expensive shawerma I have ever had in Kuwait. I tried this new shawerma place that opened near Restaurant Street (Share3 al Mata3em) called Shawermer. I had just left Sajj House because they were packed and was heading to get shawerma from Dodo when I saw this place and decided to try it out.

When I walked in I noticed they had two large shawerma skewers (one meat and one chicken) laid out horizontally over a charcoal grill. That grabbed my attention, I thought it was pretty original since I had never seen a shawerma skewer laid out like that. So I proceeded to order two chicken shawermas and a coke. The cashier then tells me he wants 900fils. I was like how much is one shawerma? He tells me 400fils. I was like “fuckin A” this is either going to be one really large sandwich or one unbelievably amazing shawerma.

So I stood by the horizontal shawerma skewers waiting to see how the chef was planning on cutting it up when I noticed some guy at the other side of the kitchen taking already cut up shawerma from a metal container and placing it into my sajj bread. I was like what the fuck? The shawerma isn’t even freshly cut!? I was like whatever, lets not judge anything before trying the shawerma. The guy finishes heating up my two shawermas and puts them in a bag and gives it to me with a small 250ml can of Pepsi (I really hate these cans!). I leave the place, go out into my car and decide to eat the shawermas there while they were still hot.

My first reaction was what the hell!? This shawerma had the worst tasting garlic ever. Like way worse than Kurdo’s garlic which I used to count as the lowest of the low when it came to garlic. Now out of the blue Shawermer was able to smash the charts with this absolutely horrendous tasting garlic. I didn’t know what it tasted closer to, cough medicine or tooth paste. Actually what am I saying, I would rather have cough medicine mixed with tooth paste and kitchen soap over a spoonful of this garlic.

So I finished up my two sandwiches and just sat in my car bewildered at what this place was thinking charging people 400fils for a shawerma that tasted like something you can find under your kitchen sink. Then I looked around and noticed the place didn’t look like it was doing any good which is a good thing. It was a Wednesday night and every other restaurant on the street was packed and this place was empty which put a smile on my face.

Final score, half a star out of a possible five. Like Shoo? Shawerma, it gets half a star because if there was a nuclear holocaust and all the food in the whole world got infected with radiation and Shawermer miraculously had radiation free shawermas, then I wouldn’t mind having one.

There will be a blogger meetup tomorrow at 5:30 since its the first Thursday of the month. The difference this month from other months is the meeting will be held at Dunkin Donuts in Salmiya. Thats a much cooler venue then the previous one which was Second Cup in Kuwait City plus its a lot closer to my house. Whoever changed the location a big thank you! I haven’t been to a bloggers meetup yet but I will tomorrow.

The weather in Kuwait actually feels colder then Lebanon although the temperature there is lower. I went to the beach yesterday with Geo and although I had a sweater and jacket on I still froze my ass off. Geo didn’t seem to care though, he was actually playing in the water most of the time.

Nat quit her job before we left on vacation, she starts her new job today. I think she will be posting about it in a bit or something. I start work again on Saturday so I need to take advantage of today and tomorrow. Maybe I will pass by the Zoo…

It’s 6:15AM and I am getting ready to leave my house. Everything is packed just need to shutdown my computer. Will try to post from Lebanon, it might mostly be pictures will see.

I spent all day today getting some paperwork done. First I went in the morning to get my motorbike driving license. I passed the test like 2 weeks ago but I never got around to exchanging my learners permit for the actual license. When I got to the place in Jabriya it turned out I had a lot of papers missing, so I had to go back home, get the papers and drive back to Jabriya. The whole process took over 2 hours but I now have my motorbike license.

One thing I found strange is I now have to separate driving licenses, one for riding and one for driving. The new redesigned license has icons in the back for riding, truck driving, car driving etc.. and they mark under each what you are qualified to operate. I figured they would print me out a new card stating I can drive a car and ride a motorbike but instead they printed me a card that says that I can ride a motorbike. Now I have two licenses which are exactly the same except for the little marking in the back. It would have been more practical to just combine the two in one card.. weird why they don’t do that.

Later in the afternoon I had to go to this other place in Shuwaikh to transfer my car into my name. I just finished paying the installments for it and I had to meet a mandoob (the person who does the paperwork) there to transfer the car in my name. That operation also took 2 hours. It would have finished a lot sooner if the employees actually came to work on time. My mandoob had to wait 45 minutes in line waiting for the employee to come in. When the employee finally arrived the line was super long but he didn’t seem to care, he sat down, ordered his tea, spoke to his friend on the phone and THEN started signing the papers. Mandoobs have a lot of patience.

So now I am home, my flight to Lebanon leaves early tomorrow morning so I am packing my bag. We are going for 6 days but Nat is taking practically all her winter and summer clothes. Whenever I say anything about it she yells at me telling me girls are not like guys and she can’t just take just 2 t-shirts and a jeans. “She has to be prepared for any scenario”.

Anyway, I am checking the site statistics and I might hit 100,000 unique users for this month by tonight. Thats 5 days ahead of schedule, pretty cool.

note: thats not my real date of birth in the picture, its their own creation.

I don’t know when this happened but you can now pay for your traffic violations online. Thats pretty cool. [Link]

Thanks Vampire

Saw a picture of poster on Hanan’s blog taken in Kaifan today. Basically the poster tells Muslims not to wish Christians a Merry Christmas. Now while checking Digg I also found an article by the Herald Tribune on this issue, about how some Muslim extremist are telling people not to wish Christians a Merry Christmas. I found this all very depressing. If Muslims are being advised not to wish us a Merry Christmas then I doubt they will be legalizing alcohol anytime soon…

Here is a link to Hana’s blog with the poster
Here is a link to the Herald Tribune’s article

Anyone noticed Marina Mall still has the Ramadan decorations up where the water fountain is? I asked a friend why they hadn’t removed it yet and he told me he heard that Marina Mall hadn’t paid the suppliers yet for the decorations and so the supplier decided he wouldn’t remove the decorations until he had gotten paid. Whatever the case, I found this years decorations not very tasteful anyway and its a shame they have the fountain covered up at the moment.

I was parking my car outside Sultan Center in Salmiya when I first spotted this place. Its located in the backside area near the clinic and because of the name I felt I had to try their shawermas.

After I was done shopping I put the bags in the trunk of my car and walked over to Shoo? Shawerma to order some food. I ordered two chicken shawermas with no pickles and a coke. Total price? 800fils. I was like “fuckin A” this must be some seriously good shawerma if they are charging 350 a piece for it. So, I picked up my two shawermas and headed to the car where I started eating them.

After my first bite I turned around and told Nat this was a 2.5, but the more I ate it the more I hated it. The shawerma was really bad, like really bad. It tasted really greasy and the garlic flavor was no where to be found so there was nothing to cover up the god awful taste of the chicken. It was so bad that once I was done with my first shawerma I threw the second one away. I had NEVER done that before!

Now if this was any ordinary crappy place selling shawermas for 200fils then I might expect something this bad, but 350fils for a shawerma, thats the big league, fuck that, thats the super league. Most top scoring shawerma places charge 300 fils for a shawerma and this joint was charging 350 for the worst shawermas I have ever had. Even the Pepsi can was the small 250ml one, who still sells these, even Bader Al Badoor sells the 330ml Coke cans!

So super high price, small Pepsi can, and most importantly the worst shawerma I have ever experienced in my life earned this place half a star out of a possible five. It only got that half star because if I was stuck in the desert with no food except for their shawerma then I would consider eating it.

Got up at 9, gave Marzouq a call and woke him up. We decided to meet at Marina Crescent at 9:45. I got dressed and left the house at 9:15 and to kill time I rode all the way to the end of the Gulf Road passed Kuwait City and then came back down Marina Crescent to wait for Marzouk.

Once he came he was like we are going to Hilton in Mangaf. I was like sounds cool and we headed out. After a quick stop for gas we hit the Fahaheel expressway. It was my first time on a highway so I was pretty excited.

The roads were practically empty and the weather was just amazing. Since the expressway is just a long straight line I opened up the throttle to see how fast I could go. I hit 170KM/h before I decided to go back down to the our cruising speed of 140KM/h. The bike could easily have flown past 170, I was only in 4th gear (out of 6) and the more throttle I gave it the more the bike would pull away. In the end I decided to throttle down because the wind resistance was just too much. The speed cameras all didn’t seem to be working today. I tried to get one to fire (no front license plate on bikes) but none wanted to go off.

After getting to Hilton we decided to head back to Marina and have breakfast. The road back was pretty quick and when we finally got to Marina it was a lot more packed. We parked our bikes and had breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien. First thing we ordered was hot chocolate to warm us up a bit. That was quickly followed by a bread basket and omelets.

It was 12PM by the time I got home.I am off work now for 2 weeks starting tomorrow so I think I will be riding every morning. Its really a lot of fun.

Picture by Marzouq