Category: Kuwait

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

I just got info that the Villa Moda sale starts tomorrow. The last one held in May basically cleared out the store within two days so if you want to buy something you got to make it there early tomorrow morning. They open at 10AM and expect it to be really crowded. Everything is 50% off.

Today I met with a person from Wataniya. They wanted me to try out their new W-Net router based system so they hooked me up with a device and a 6 month subscription plan.

It runs on the HDSPA network and right out of the box on a busy Thursday night I am downloading at 51.6kb. I will post more pictures and details after I play with it some more this weekend. So far this Internet connection seems as fast as my Qualitynet 512 DSL connection.

(IMAGE REMOVED AT THE REQUEST OF AFL)

Today morning Rayboy posted in the forum on how while walking his dog in a public park he found a dalmatian dog that was locked up in a small cage all alone and freezing to death. Once he got home he called both PAWs and the Animal Friends League of Kuwait (AFL) to get some help.

The AFL ended up organizing a “Seek and Rescue” party later in the day. Their mission was to see the state of the dog and if possible contact the owners. If the owners were not found and the dog was in bad shape, they would then break the lock and take the dog.

The AFL arrived at the location and found that the dog was in really bad condition. After desperately trying to find the owners they took the decision to break the lock and free the dog. They then took the dalmatian to their animal shelter in Wafra where the dog is now being taken care of.

I think thats just an amazing story. To have a group like the AFL here in Kuwait who actually take action when an animal is being abused is really amazing. I really hate people who get pets but then end up treating them like shit. Locking up a beautiful dog like the dalmatian in a public garden in this weather in a small cage is just horrible. I imagine the dog would have remained in the cage even during the summer. Thank you AFL for freeing the dalmatian.

If anyone would like to find out more about the AFL, donate to the AFL or even adopt one of their pets then you can visit their website animalfriendskuwait.org

Just passed the House of Parliament today morning and noticed high fences were placed alongside the roads in front of the parliament building plus there were a ton of cops parked and walking about. Riot trucks and buses were also parked including the large one that fires water and has a huge pole with a camera mounted on top. I couldn’t see any demonstrators though, I guess they are planning on coming by later.

Here is a video from the demonstration today again outside the House of Parliament. The demonstrators are requesting that every Kuwaitis debts be dropped. Today around twenty percent of the demonstrators were woman. The last demonstration it was around twenty percent high school kids. [Video]

Sounds like gunfire, should be fireworks but I couldn’t find any trace in the sky. Anybody here or see anything?

When paying with a credit card or Knet card at Sultan Center you might have noticed that once the transaction goes through the employee swipes your card into their computer and your credit card number and other information gets dumped into their system. Cajie a reader of the blog sent them an email complaining about this, here is what he sent them:

I have been a frequent shopper of Sultan Center for quiet some time. However, I have become increasingly concerned about your procedure of scanning and storing customer’s credit card numbers in your sales system. This is a highly risky and unacceptable IT process, especially for such a leading retailer such as Sultan Center. Other leading merchants store only the last 4 digits of the credit card for verification purpose, which is just fine. It is my strong recommendation that your systems be reconfigured not to store sensitive customer data – especially in these days of increase rise in electronic fraud.

To his surprise the MIS manager at Sultan Center called him on the phone and assured him they made changes in their system to protect the customers financial data. After the phone call they sent him the following email with more details:

It was a pleasure talking to you over the phone, and we are really glad to have your comments and suggestions which will help us service our customers better. I would like to assure you that our Point of Sales system doesn’t hold or store the Full Credit card details, in fact this was rectified longtime back based on our Internal Audit department report. Now the transactions which are stored in our systems will only carry the last four digits of the credit card number XXXX XXXX XXXX 9021.

I hope that you are satisfied with this and Please don’t hesitate to contact us or me directly for any further queries. Wish you a very pleasant time in our stores and everywhere else.

It still doesn’t make me comfortable having them scan my card but at least now I know the information they do keep from the scan is very minimal.

Looks like Yan Yan have a guerrilla campaign going on. Ok maybe not. Its only one poster I saw on a wall outside a supermarket but still its a pretty cool poster. The best part is the tag line which is “The Fun Dip-Stick” (closer look).

Here are two definitions of Dip-Stick taken from UrbanDictionary.com all though I know it simply as another word for idiot:

1. Dip Stick
One who’s brain capacity is less than a long thin piece of metal used to check oil levels.

2. Dip Stick
The usage of fingers during sexual activities to gage the moistness of a woman’s vagina.

Now thats pretty cool.

Was talking to some friends today and I remembered the Bony sign at the zoo so I figured I would reshare it with everyone. Here are more pictures taken at the zoo in case anyone is interested. [Pictures]

Kuwait’s first short film festival at Shaab park.
Date: Wednesday, December 13th and Thursday, December 14th
Price: Tickets are for free.

Below is the running order of the movies from the festival. Book your tickets at [email protected]

Sweden is famous for their meatballs so when IKEA started making and selling shawermas I was eager to try it.

First time I had the shawerma in the new IKEA branch at The Avenues mall I didn’t like it. They mixed vegetables with my shawerma and I hate places that do that. The vegetables which is usually made up of onions and some green stuff (I don’t know what its called) over powers the chicken flavor. So next time I passed by IKEA I ordered the shawerma plain with just garlic.

How was it? Its edible.

The biggest problem I had with their shawerma is the bread. I think there is too much bread for the shawerma. The solution I would recommend is to either increase the quantity of chicken in the bread or decrease the size of the bread itself. The chicken tasted good and the garlics presence was felt but not over done. If only they weren’t so stingy.

Final score I settled for was 3 out of 5. The shawerma costs 250fils which is great specially since the place is extremely clean. They also have an offer combo, coke plus shawerma for 350fils. The location is crap, no one is going to drive up to IKEA just for their shawerma of course. Overall its not bad for their first try. I just hope they start filling up the bread with more chicken.