Category: Kuwait

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.

Yesterday night me and nat passed by the Jeep stand at Marina Mall. We saw our salesman and he had some good news for us. Because of the 4×4 thing going on at Marina Mall they are dropping down 200KD off the car. Since me and nat hadn’t picked up our jeep yet they decided to give us the 200KD as cashback. If thats not good service I don’t know what is. We had already paid for the jeep and all and yet they thought it would be fair that we got the extra 200KD back. Amazing service. The guy also told us we could pick up the jeep anytime from 8AM to 11AM the next day. So today we woke up at 7:15AM and got to the dealership and picked up our jeep. First impressions, this is going to be really fun to drive. I am checking the weather forecast for the weekend and it seems its going to rain which means we got to leave the top on for the next few days. Nat is travelling tomorrow also for 2 weeks so its going to be and the car all to ourselves.

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.