Category: Kuwait

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]

Ok, so I am at the barber today getting a haircut and shave, when he tells me his wife back home just had a baby.

Sounds normal right? Yes, except for the fact that my barber just came back from his vacation 2 months ago. His vacation was for 3 months. 2 + 3 is 5. Say my dates are wrong, say he has been here for 3 months now and his vacation was 4 months which isn’t true but lets go with that. Thats still 7 months and last I heard it still takes 9 months to get a baby.

Strange.

My favorite orange drink since highschool has been Sunkist. I started drinking it back in highschool because it was cheap at only 50fils. Since then, Sunkist has become the only orange juice I drink. For some reason though I always thought Sunkist was a 100% local product. But just now I was reading the label and it said “Under license from Sunkist Growers Inc; USA”. So I googled Sunkist and quickly found www.sunkist.com. Then I found this which I found funny:

Sunkist products have a long history in several Persian Gulf States. Besides being a major juice brand, Sunkist is the market leader in juice drink cups in the Kuwaiti market.

Ofcourse they are gonna be the market leader, their are no other juice drink cups in the market! hehe, anyway, Sunkist still rules!

I think my Sony Ericsson T630 is dying. This past week while talking to people on my phone I was hearing crackling sounds. Yesterday while talking to Nibaq he told me he was also hearing the crackling sounds on his side. So yesterday night I went into the “Service Tests” menu (From main screen press > * < < * < *) and I did the mic test and as I had expected all I was hearing was the crackling sound. Seems the mic on the phone is fucked. Now I don't know what to do. I am soo bored of all the phones in the market. I don't like Nokia, I hate the samsung brand, siemens are interesting but the phones they have which I like don't have bluetooth. Motorolla also have interesting phones but even the ones with bluetooth don't work with my mac and pda the way they should. So that leaves Sony Ericsson. My past 4 or 5 phones were all Sony Ericssons. They work best with my Mac (isync) which is the most important thing I look for in a phone. But there is no SE phone that interests me now. The S700 is cool but big and expensive. The P series I dislike because of their Symbian Os. That leaves me with the K700, which is probably what I will go with. I think I should be able to find it for a decent price now. If it turns out to be more then what I want to pay I will definitely find a second hand like new condition one for a lot cheaper. I am so bored with phones...

A while back, me and Nibaq were talking about the days of Qhate. We were talking about the different roles each of us played in that blog and how those days seemed so far away. Then I realized something, Qhate was me, him and rampurple. Each one of us now has his and her own blog. We have all gone solo and each has his own separate project going on. We have become like the group New Edition. What if 3 of us decided to come back together into 1 blog?

So I am checking my stats today for Miskan.com and I notice that a lot of people are coming from Josh Rubin’s Cool Hunting blog. So I go to his site and to my surprise there it was, a post about Miskan!!! FUCKING COOL! Here is the link.