Category: Kuwait

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.

I met with Nibaq awhile ago for lunch. He had been walking around Muthana complex trying to kill time until it was time for me to have lunch. While walking around he found a new Apple store that was still being worked on. The place is called Solize and is not connected to any of the other local dealers. We spoke to the guy incharge who was busy displaying mac hardware and he seemed like a nice person ALTHOUGH when Nibaq asked him if he supplied RAM for the powerbooks the guy asked is it Apple? Like duh… Anyway the store had two cool things. First they had second hand macs for sale although not cheap. One was a Graphite G4 500mhz powermac for 300KD. The second was a Dual 800mhz Quicksilver powermac for around 430KD. He also told me he had a Dual 1GHZ mirrored door powermac inside, but I didn’t see it nor did I ask its price. Another good thing he had although once again not cheap was Sonnet Encore CPU upgrades for older powermacs. A G4 1.4ghz upgrade would set you back 190KD at solize compared to the 450$ on amazon. The store will be completed within a week. I personally think this store will NOT succeed due to the terrible location. Its in Muthana Complex, Mezzanine 1, right in the back behind Steps and near the Asus and As Seen on TV dealers. Impossible to find and even if it was located at the main entrance, I doubt the people who frequent Muthana are potential Apple users..

Here are some pictures I took

Over the weekend, Rami (Tivo Guy) was able to setup One TV for us on the Tivo. Now we can record The Contender and other cool shows like The West Wing and Judge Judy. So yesterday night while watching a recorded episode of The West Wing I noticed something strange. I felt as if some of the scenes were being.. cut. So near the end of the episode there was a scene in which the woman tells the guy, “I am gonna kiss you now”, the guy says “ok”, then when she moves in to kiss, the scene changes. I was shocked. They censor kisses??? I thought only KTV did that. It really sucks.

The other day I watched Terminator 3 and I was a bit surprised in one scene. The scene in question is when Arnold comes to the present time, goes into a bar, steals a strippers clothes and car keys, then goes out to the guys old beat up truck and drives off. Just before he drives off he puts on the strippers watch, an Offshore Audemars Piguet. I found that a bit odd since the watch cost A LOT more then the guys truck. A LOT more then the guy could ever make. It was total bullshit, no stripper working in a bar like that could make enough money to buy a watch like this. So I was kinda put off at the lack of realism in the scene. Anyway, yesterday I found out that this watch store I know in Kuwait has two special edition watches. An Audemars Piguet, Arnold Schwarzenegger edition AND a Montoya edition. So I did a bit of research turns out AP and Arnold have a pretty good relationship and they have worked together on many things from charities to movies.. I found this page that talks about the T3 movie tie in.

Now, lets talk about the coolest watch of the two, the Montoya edition. I didn’t even know such a watch existed. I am a great fan of Montoya since his Indy days and I am a bigger fan of Audemars Piguet watches. So combining the two is too extreme. Here is some info I was able to obtain about the Montoya watch:

Juan Pablo Montoya Royal Oak Offshore Chronograph
This watch was released in tribute to Formula 1 race car driver Juan Pablo Montoya. This watch features a 45mm titanium case with carbon fiber inlaid accents all over the top of the bezel and sized of the bezel and sides of the case. Every shape on this watch and every feature is designed to resemble a Formula 1 race car; The chronograph pushers are styled to look like air-intake cooling flaps, the Bezel screws are shaped like cylinder head screws, the winding crown resembles a wheel axle, the winding Rotor of the movement resembles a clutch disk and the strap resembles the racing suits of F1 racers. And of course, the watch is adorned with inlaid carbon fiber on the top and sides of the bezel. This is a very limited and near impossible to find watch, the Titanium model was released in only 1000 individually numbered pieces with current retail price as of March 15, 2005 of $19,500.

Here are some pictures of the Montoya watch.

So how much are they selling for in Kuwait? The Arnold version is going for KD7,000 while the Montoya version for KD12,000.

Today I bought a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum and something phenomenon happened. Something that has never happened in all the years I have purchased Wrigley’s chewing gum. One of the gum sticks was double wrapped! Here is a picture.

I went for a long walk in Salmiya tonight and found a kid selling some DVDs. I don’t usually buy of these street kids since the quality of the DVD recording is usually terrible. I still decided to check out the dvds though and to my surprise I found Bumfights volume 1. What is Bumfights? Well these guys went around paying homeless people to fight each other and do stupid pranks like set their hair on fire or pull their teeth out using pliers all on film. When the dvd first got released it caused some controversy and thats when I found out about it. Its not a major movie release or anything so I was surprised to find it here on the streets. Its amazing how you can find the strangest stuff in Kuwait sometimes.

Today morning on my way to work I saw a funny bumper sticker on the car infront of me. Click here to see it.

Today I found the old Pizza Hut logo and I realized how much I missed it. I don’t like the new logo, never did. I don’t like the new shop designs also. I used to really like the Pizza Hut in the old Salmiya where it was right next to Hungry Bunny. The place had carpet floors which I love in restaurants and it was also dimly lit. Now with the current logo and interior design the place looks really cheap.

I am home alone. Its so quiet here. If I don’t make a sound myself, then its just total silence. Its strange.

Spent the whole afternoon driving on and off the road. If you were driving behind me all you would see is a guy driving a Jeep, one second on the road, the other second on the sidewalk. You have to understand, my other car is a 330ci BMW, I can barely make it over a speed bump without hitting it. With the Wrangler though its begging you to climb over stuff. It makes it soo easy. Me and Nat went to a sandy area and I let her drive the Jeep there. She shifted the jeep to 4 wheel drive and took off flying over sand bumps. Now all we need to do is take the top off but its supposed to rain this weekend so it really sucks. Here are picture of the car.