Category: Kuwait

Today is the first day of the 4×4 event at Marina Mall. I passed by yesterday night and they were still setting things up. Basically various car manufactures are going to be displaying their 4X4’s plus on the beach there is a 4X4 offroad course with little hills and stuff. I heard you will be able to test drive any car for free on this course including an H2. We will have to wait and see if this turns out to be true or not. The event is from March 8th till the 18th if I remember correctly.

Had the Italiano Burger from McDonalds today. Sucks. Sucks like their mushroom and swiss.

Update: And oh yeah, the sauce is not a dark red as in the pictures, its brown.

This is “ASIMO” Internet Office.
Thank you for your inquiry.

Unfortunately, I am very sorry to inform you that we do not
rent ASIMO out to overseas for its technical differences
such as power supply, radio wave, and security maintenance.

We appreciate your understanding.

Best regards,
——————
“ASIMO” Internet office [asimo [email protected]]

Don’t shoot the messenger! I was listening to the radio today morning while taking a shower and Linda from the breakfast show was talking about how woman should stay at home with the kids and how that would help the economy by freeing up work for the men on welfare. She couldn’t have chosen a better day for her personal opinions. While today everyone is out in-front of the parliament demonstrating for more rights for woman, Linda wants all the woman to leave their jobs and stay home with the kid. I hope she gets a lot of hate mail and even fired for her stupid opinion. PLUS, she has kids yet she is working so that makes hers a hypocrite. On my way to work today I passed by the demonstration, I snapped a few pictures and I just put them online. Nibaq is there now and taking pictures so his should come out better.

Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3

Update: Here are nibaqs pictures

Do you know who originally created the iPod? If you guessed Steve Jobs then you are absolutely wrong. The father of the ipod is an engineer called Tony Fadell. Another interesting fact is that Tony Fadell is a Lebanese citizen. I contacted Tony Fadell last year and I had a nice chat with him via email. He turned out to be a very cool guy. I asked him if I could send him my iPod mini so that he could autograph it for me. He told me I didn’t need to and then fedexed me an autographed blue ipod mini skeleton. So anyway thought I would showoff share a picture of my autographed blue mini with you.

I passed by Souk Sharq today morning because I wanted to get some breakfast from Sultan Center. Most of the parking lot opposite Debenhams was closed because of construction. Souk Sharq is finally building car shades it seems. It took them how many years to realize that a shaded parking is important in Kuwait? If it wasn’t for the strong competition from Marina Mall I don’t think they would have bothered with the shades. I think they are doing too little too late. I think the Souk Sharq days are gone, Marina Mall is a much better place with better shops, a better food court and much better management. There are a couple of more large projects coming up, we will see if they will also turn out to be better then Souk Sharq.

I don’t know if this review will be very fair since the place I am reviewing I have been visiting for 26 years now. Yeah that long, and my parents were visiting it before I was born. The place is called Caesars Restaurant and its located in Salmiya. Its one of my favorite chinese places ever.. worldwide. In-fact every time I have chinese food anywhere I have to compare it to Caesars. Caesars just recently moved to a new location since their old place got demolished recently. The new location is adjacent to their old building so regular customers can find it easily. The new location is larger, is better decorated and now contains a lot more private booths. All the waiters are extremely friendly. I spend the first 5 minutes of my arrival saying hello to all of them. Its good to see them all. Some have been around since I was a little kid and have actually watched me grow up. I love the new private booths, they are very comfortable and they dont feel claustrophobic at all. For appetizers I ALWAYS have crab soup and prawn spring rolls. As I said previously, every time I have chinese anywhere else I have to compare it to Caesars and when it comes to the starters, Caesars wins by a mile. Their crab soup is simply the best soup I have ever had and I dont mean best chinese soup I mean best soup.. ever! The spring rolls? You can ask Nataly about them. When we go we usually order 2 plates of prawn spring rolls, one for her and one for me. Each plate has 6 pieces and they all disappear very quickly. For the main course I always have the sweet & sour chicken. Ofcourse I have tried their other dishes like the popular sizzlers and noodles, but I just can’t get enough of their sweet & sour dishes. Nataly keeps trying new stuff, yesterday night she had the sweet & sour prawns but before she had the fish sizzler and before that chicken with mushroom and bamboo shoots. One more thing left to talk about and that is the rice. Once again Caesars have the best rice in the world. We always order the fish fried rice and its easily the best rice you can ever have anywhere. Now with all this excellent food you would think the prices are just out of the world. In reality, Caesars is a very affordable chinese restaurant. This is what we had last night:

1 Large bottle of water
1 Coke
1 Crab soup
2 Prawn spring rolls
1 Fish fried rice
1 Sweet & Sour Prawns
1 Sweet & Sour Chicken

Total Price: KD10.500

As you can see the price for a very filling chinese dinner for 2 is just ten dinars. and this included shrimps. Very affordable. The only thing stopping me giving the place a full 5 stars is consistency. Every now and then something might not taste the way its supposed to. Maybe its me, maybe I am too picky but this is a minor issue I have. Also the location, its not really the place to be in Kuwait. So for the final score I give it a 4.5 out of 5. For reservations or to get the exact directions, you can call them at 5732885 and 5733044.

Here is a picture from the outside.

Update: Seems I couldn’t even spell Caesars right. I fixed it now.

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OK, I left the office with everyone else around 10:30AM and got to the marina near the Sultan Center restaurant at around 10:45AM. I saw the yacht and it was pretty big. But I also noticed that while the boat was parked inside the marina in very calm waters it was still bouncing up and down and sideways. So I decided not to get on the yacht. No way you know. If it was bouncing while parked I am sure it was gonna be bouncing a lot more out in the open sea. So now I am back at the office, I am the only one here and I am gonna catch up on some work. I would rather be stuck here in the office then be out at sea.

I am at the office now, we are all gathering up here to leave at 10AM towards the marina. The plan is at11AM we will bard the boat for a 11:30AM departure. At 4PM we will come back. I already popped 2 pills earlier but I don’t think it will have any effect. We wil see. If I see a single wave in the sea I don’t think I will get on the boat.

Recently you might have noticed these ads on some buses advertising this restaurant called Wildfire. Well yesterday evening me and nat decided to pass by and give it a try. The place is located in Kuwait City in Mubarak Al Kabeer Street opposite the “Blockat” shops and the Chamber of Commerce building. The first impression wasn’t very good. The signage outside was in lime green and looked very cheap. When we got closer we saw the inside from the large window next to the door and the place looked small and like a hotel lobby with a small bar and small tables. Once we went in though we realized that it WAS actually a lobby / coffee shop for the restaurant which is located upstairs. Once we went in we were greeted with very friendly faces and led to the restaurant upstairs. When we reached the top we were once again greeted with smiles and they asked if we would like a private cabin. We said yes.. the first mistake. The restaurant on the inside is much bigger then i expected. Its clean, dimly lit and the furniture all new as it should be expected since the place just opened at the end of ramadan. The private cabin though was claustrophobic. The table was long and very slim like an oversized ironing table and the benches were very uncomfortable. It was also getting stuffy inside so we decided to keep the cabin door open. Then they brought us the menu which was the biggest surprise of the evening. Wildfire has simply the largest menu I have ever seen in Kuwait with nearly 200 dishes to choose from. Their menu has everything from extravagant cocktails and milkshakes to all types of dishes from Indian, Chinese and even Fish & Chips and Club Sandwiches. They even have lobster and crab for sea food lovers. The menu has 20 pages of everything you could imagine. We decided to have shrimp spring-rolls, kindu prawns, mongolian chicken and egg fried rice. We decided to skip the soup because weren’t that hungry but they did have shark fin soup which is usually my favorite. The shrimp spring rolls arrived first. They were too crunchy, had green peppers and weren’t very tasty. I hate green pepper in my food so my vote shouldn’t count here but nat doesn’t mind them and she also thought the spring-rolls were bland. The main course arrived soon after we finished. When he first put the food on the table I noticed the mongolian chicken was bright red. Thats the first time I see it like that, usually its dark brown, the kindu prawns also looked like normal prawns with a bit of light brownish sauce, again its not supposed to look like that. The food tasted as good as they looked, not very good. My mongolian chicken was not spicy at all and its supposed to be very spicy. Natalys kindu prawns tasted like normal prawns, the kindu part of it was tasteless. The rice was one of the worst I have tried, very boring in flavor and dry. We were very disappointed. The large menu led us to believe that we would keep coming back to try different things but after our meal we knew this would be the last time we would ever come back. The bill turned out to be 8KD, that also included 1 coke and 2 bottles of water. We left a 1KD tip and left. The waiters asked us how good the food was and I lied and told them it was great.. I couldn’t be bothered to explain why I didn’t enjoy the whole meal. The final score for the place is 3 out of 5. I would have given it 2 but the extremely large menu and the very friendly service helped raise the score. Maybe the Indian menu is better then the Chinese, maybe our dishes were not their speciality, whatever the case is, we didn’t enjoy our meal and we will most probably never go back.

Their website is wildfirekwt.com but it wasn’t working when I tried it now. Their phone numbers are 2476886 and 2476996. Below are 2 pictures from the outside.

Picture 1
Picture 2

Today I filled up my brand new Case Logic CD wallet with some really good music. I went through my CD collection and added some great classics, stuff I haven’t heard in a while and stuff that I should be hearing more often. Here is a list of all 48 CDs in the same order as they are in the wallet.

Jimi Hendrix – The Ultimate Experience
Korn – Life is Peachy
Korn – Korn
Nine Inch Nails – And All That Could Have Been
Nirvana – Bleach
Rage Against the Machine – The Battle of Los Angeles
Smashing Pumpkins – Adore
Tool – Aenima
U2 – Best of 1980 – 1990
Theater of Tragedy – Velvet Darkness they Fear
Lost Highway – Soundtrack
Nine Inch Nails – Downward Spiral
Nirvana – Nevermind
Nirvana In Utero
LF – Home Made Mix
Rage Against the Machine – Renegade
Nine Inch Nails – The Fragile (Double CD)
Audioslave – Audioslave
Velvet Revolver – Contraband
Rage Against the Machine – Evil Empire
Ministry – Filth Pig
Pet Shop Boys – Complete Singles Collection
Pink Floyd – The Wall (Disc 2)
Pearl Jam – Ten
Dj Danger Mouse – The Grey Album
Stereo MC’s – Dj Kicks
Kid Loco – Kill Our Darlings
Kid Loco – A Grand Love Story (Double CD)
Ian Simmonds – Return of X
Ian Simmonds – Last States of Nature
Tosca – Opera
Tosca – Suzuki
Comfort Zone Volume 3 – Various
Comfort Zone Volume 4 – Various
Lounge Conjunction – Various
Lemon Jelly – lemonjelly.ky
Dzihan & Kamien – Freaks & Icons
Dzihan & Kamien – Grand Riserva
Underworld – Beaucoup Fish
Dj Shadow – Entroducing…
Vikter Duplaix – Dj Kicks
Thievery Corporation – Dj Kicks
Thievery Corporation – Abductions & Reconstructions
Thievery Corporation – Sounds From The Thievery Hi-Fi
Lounge Conjuction 2 – Various
Truby Trio – Dj Kicks

From the above list the CDs I would like to highlight as simply the best ever are both the Tosca CDs and the Dzihan & Kamien CDs, plus the Nirvana Nevermind Album and Audioslave.

How much do people tip in general here? I know in the States people generally go by the 15% rule. Here I usually give a tip of around 10%. If the bill is over 5KD but under 10KD I would tip 1/2 a dinar. If the bill is between 10KD and 30KD, I would tip between 1 to 2KD. If the waiter is Lebanese I double the tip. If I know the waiter for many years like at Ceasers where I have been visiting for over 20 years, then the tip is usually 2KD for a 10KD bill. The reason I don’t go with the 15% rule is because 10% is easier to calculate. How much do you tip?

I was reading Puss-In-Boots blog and she said she loves to collect rare stuff. But she didn’t say what stuff she collected. I know Nibaq likes to collect toy figurines, but what else does everyone collect? I personally collect 2 things. Wired Magazines (I have every issue since 5.01 and my oldest is 3.12), and also videogame systems. So since today is cleaning Firday, I decided to take out and shoot all my systems and then wipe the dust off before I put them back into the cabinets. Below is a list of all the systems I currently own and they link to their pictures.

Atari Jaguar
Atari Lynx
Coleco Vision
Commodore 64
Commodore VIC 20
Dingoo A320
Game & Watch – Chef
Game & Watch – Donkey Kong Jr.
Game & Watch – Mario Bros.
Microsoft Xbox
Microsoft Xbox 360
MSX2 (Sakhr)
NEO-GEO AES
Nintendo 64
Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS Lite
Nintendo Gameboy SP
Nintendo Gamecube
Nintendo Wii
Panasonic 3DO
Sega Dreamcast
Sega Gamegear
Sony Playstation 1
Sony Playstation 2
Sony Playstation 3
Sony PSP
Speak & Spell
Super Nintendo
Super Simon

I still have a couple of systems I would like to own, mainly a Nintendo Virtual Boy, a Sega Nomad and a Sega Saturn.

Before I got married and moved into my own apartment, I didn’t have any room to display the stuff in my old room so I had them all under my bed. Now though since I have my own place I have them all displayed in my cabinet (1,2) with the boxes and some accessories in the drawers and closests (1,2,3,4).

So what do you guys collect?

I am soooo jealous. Puss-In-Boots just got a brand new Grendizer GX-40S complete set. To make things worst she took some really nice pictures just to tease us all with!