Category: Kuwait

Yesterday I purchased a Nokia 2600 as a gift to this guy who got us wasta for nats driving license papers. The phone cost KD29 (NEW) and it has a colored screen, polyphonic ringtones and even speakerphone. The guy rejected the gift! Not because he was nice but because he believed he deserved a better phone, he was hoping for a KD100+ kind of phone. Of-course I wasn’t going to get him one because the favor he did wasn’t that big. So now I am stuck with the phone, then while talking to nibaq we were discussing its features and I decided to turn the phone on. To my surprise the phone wasn’t half bad. It was quick, responsive and looks good. No bluetooth, no camera, no wap even. Still something about it just clicks with me. I keep telling people my favorite phone was the Siemens C55 which I purchased a few years ago for KD30. I guess this is like that phone except with a colored screen. So now I am keeping this phone. Nataly will be taking my Sony Ericsson T630 and we will be selling her T610. I will also be selling my Sony Clie UX40 PDA and using my Palm Tungsten instead. I will only store the numbers I use on the phone, like nats, nibaqs, tivo guy, parents etc.. All the other numbers I will still carry with me but they will be on my PDA. I am excited!

BusyNow got his PSP yesterday. As an EX-DS owner, BusyNow believes his PSP is much more superior. Click here to see his pictures.

Back in the days of the Sega Dreamcast, the coolest thing was the fact you could connect it to the internet and download game saves directly onto your memory card. Now with the Sony PSP I will be able to do the same. If you are fed up trying to beat the game or if you have problems trying to obtain money or a car in a Need for Speed for example, this way you will be able to download a save off the web, move it to your memorystick and use it on your PSP. You can download PSP saves from PSP-Vault.com.

update: Found another site with a ton of game saves also. GameFaqs.com, just click on the game you want and then on the link for gamesaves. [Link]

My Sony PSP has shipped, it should arrive in my US mailbox on the 4th via UPS and hopefully arrive in Kuwait by Thursday.

Nibaq yesterday left his Nintendo DS over at my place.. deliberately. He is trying to get me to like the DS and convince me that its a much better system then the PSP (yeah right). I tried playing wario ware on it yesterday, I found the fact that you could blow on the DS for some of the mini games interesting and original but other then that I wasn’t impressed. I find the second screen useless as it serves really no purpose and the touch screen is so uncreative since I have had it for ages on my PDA and the only good thing its for is clicking links on and not controlling a car. If anything the two screens actually make me a bit dizzy. So since my first experience with the DS, I haven’t gone back to playing with it again, neither has nataly who is busy playing Metroid Zero Mission on the Gameboy SP. Will I crave the DS today? We will see but I doubt. So far, it really sucks.

Starting today the free wifi you have been using at places like Jamaica Blue, Haagen Daaz, Le Notre and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf are not free anymore. Zajil wifi hotspots have gone commercial and are now charging KD1.5 per hour. The Zajil hotspots at the airport and on educational institutes will remain free.

Someone in the office is selling a brand new, still in the box wrapped in plastic 60GB iPod photo for KD180. Interested? Then leave a comment.

I have been trying to call them since 8:30 in the morning. I was calling them on 812000 and when it asks if I was a customer or not, I would choose No I am not. Then I would get the corny message that they would like it if I would join them, then the phone rings and no one picks up. So finally I got fed up after trying for over 2 hours to get a hold of someone. Now when I called I pressed 1 which is the option for if you are a BKME customer. Right away someone picked up. I asked them what the circle in the logo was, the lady answered a pearl. I said thank you and closed the phone.

So the sphere turned out to be a pearl like we all assumed in the first place.

Since my post the other day on the new BKME logo I have heard two definitions for the sphere. The first is that its not a pearl its the moon. The second definition is that its a crystal ball. Both sources for these answers were BKME employees. So I decided I will contact BKME myself and find out. I sent them an email 2 days ago and I didn’t get a reply. I called them up last night and believe it or not their customer support line works only during regular working hours! So since today morning I have been trying to contact them on 812000 but no one is picking up. If I was planning on being a new customer I would have moved on and looked elsewhere by now. I will keep trying to call and will post when I find out anything.

Update: turns out its a pearl

Just found the Kuwait Stock Exchange website. Didn’t know it existed. Its pretty easy and quick to use although not visually attractive, its practical. [Link]

Have you guys seen the knew BKME logo? Its depressing. How can a bank like BKME be so stupid I don’t know. I don’t blame the designer. The designer is crap, I am sure he knows that already. I blame the people at BKME who accepted such tragic work. My god, its a disaster! Firstly, before I start talking about the logo, lets talk about the 4×3 Mega’s on the road where the logo is on. You DO NOT use yellow type on a white background. Its very unreadable. They not only used yellow type on a white background, they used it on their outdoor ads!! If you are driving up to the ad on the street you will not see “Al Awsat” written in yellow until you slam into the ad. Its impossible to read when its in a newspaper yet alone an ad on the street 50 meters away while you are zooming buy in you car at 100km/h. Thats their first mistake. Lets talk about the logo. Is that a pearl? Come on, who was the genius who thought of that? Very creative. I am sure no one ever thought about it before (Note: I am being sarcastic here). Even Gulf Bank uses the pearl for their Dana account. Anyway, whatever, fine, go with the pearl, but at-least be a bit more creative about it. It looks like a shop that sells marbles for kids. Their logo really pisses me off.

You know what the problem is? People think being a designer is easy. People think anyone can be a designer. People think that if they take a course in Adobe Photoshop at some trashy institute in Salmiya they automatically are designers. Thats bullshit. If thats true then what did I do for 4 years at university? Why do designers go get their masters then their PhDs? Taking a course in Photoshop at an institute just means you now know how to use 5% of Photoshops capabilities. Thats all. We spend the first two years of university not being allowed to use any computers in our design work. They teach us that the computer is just a tool, its just a means to get what you have in your head onto paper. Thats all. So they spend the first 2 years teaching us about other tools like drawing, painting, silk screen printing, sculpturing, stencils and tons more stuff. Not only that but as a designer you need to be creative, and have taste, both things which many people lack. Why is GianFranco Ferre designing clothes and you aren’t? Why is Philip Starck designing everything from hotel rooms to sneakers and you aren’t? They got it you don’t, its that simple.

Anyway it doesn’t matter. BKME is the one losing here. The new Osoul logo even has a readability problem. Osoul in arabic can be read as Osoul or Osoud. The reason for that is the L in the end is not shaped correctly. The L could look like an L or a D. It goes both ways. Fine the majority will read it as an L but the fact that it might be read as a D is a problem. Now the logo is out and I am sure Osoul is getting comments about it. It could have been so easy to fix but it wasn’t. Below is just a mockup I did in 2 minutes of what could have been done to avoid this Osoul/Osoud mix up.

Osoul Logo

Osoul Logo Fixed

But anyway this post has become to long so I will stop. Its just very frustrating for me because these bad designers give us all a bad reputation and image. The client needs to be able to trust us and bad designers make this trust harder to form.

Just past by Marina Mall, on my way out I noticed a Honda Element waiting. Are Elements now available in Kuwait? The one I saw was grey with dark grey. Don’t know the Element? Then click here.

I was at my favorite flag site trying to get the exact colors of the Kuwaiti flag when I noticed something funny. The site lists the Kuwaiti flags from the begining till now. Check out Kuwait’s current flag! [Link]

Tivo Guy is back!! [Link]

I actually started 2:48AM so I can post pictures that didn’t make the cut on Miskan.com. This picture is from yesterday but I decided to go with the visually more attractive Caution sign. This fire is from near my house. A garbadge bin was set on fire and there were 2 cops standing near it waiting for the fire trucks to come. One of the cops saw me take a picture and called me over. When I went to him he asked me if I was a journalist. I told him no. He was like why are you taking a picture? I told him because its something interesting. I asked him if fire trucks were gonna come, he replied saying they were. Then he asked me if I want to take a picture of them. I told him I couldn’t since I had to leave. I said thank you and left. [large pic link]