Category: Personal

I was talking to a friend of mine two weeks ago and he pointed out to me an article in TimeOut Dubai magazine on the best burgers in Dubai. Their winner? Johnny Rockets. I thought that was very sad since although Johnny Rockets burgers are great they’re no where near being the best burgers in Kuwait. Thats why I decided to start my own “The Best Burger in Kuwait” competition. I will hopefully be having at least two burgers a week from places you might or might not have heard of and once I decide I have enough burger reviews (maybe after 15 reviews?) I will crown a champion.

If anyone has a place they want me to try out, please leave a comment below with the name and location of the restaurant and I will try to make sure I check it out.

Update: Here are the burgers I have reviewed so far…
Applebee’s
Bredz
Burger Boutique
Eighty 6 Bistro
Fauchon
Fuddruckers
Hashi
Gaucho Gril
Gourmet Burger Kitchen
Johnny Rockets
Munch
Napket
Nino
Papa John’s Burgers
Prime & Toast
Ruby Tuesday
Slider Station
Sheraton Hotel
Smoke House
The Burger Hub
The Butcher Shop
The Little Oven
The Meat Co.
Wimpy

Something weird happened to me today. I arrived to the office thinking it was 10AM and I was late but it turned out it was only 9 and that my phone, watch and car clock all were one hour ahead. It didn’t make any sense, how could three of my watches all be an hour ahead??? This is how it happened:

Phone Clock
I was in Fujaihrah last week and I moved my phone’s clock an hour ahead to match Fujaihrah time. When I got back I forgot to put the clock an hour back.

My Watch
I took off my watch Friday and left it on my dresser. My watch is an automatic meaning it works with hand movement and when you leave it still for 48 hours it stops. The clock must have stopped yesterday at 9PM because today morning when I put my watch on at around 8AM it was an hour ahead.

Car Clock
Yesterday morning I was working on my car stereo and disconnected it resetting the clock. When I plugged it back in at around 11AM the radio clock started at 12:00, an hour ahead.

Thats why my morning today got really confusing. When I thought my watch was wrong, both my car stereo and phone confirmed to me it was right. Everywhere I looked it was an hour ahead. What are the chances of something like this happening!

Radiant Guy emailed me to tell me that my blog was mentioned in the new brownbook urban city guide on Kuwait. brownbook is an urban lifestyle magazine focusing on middle eastern lifestyle agendas, events and developments. The magazine is available internationally (even on Amazon) and the city guides should be available everywhere soon. This is what the article says about the blog:

This is a kind of strange selection for shopping, but when doing our research we found out that mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com offer an aerial perspective towards the shopping as well as the social development in Kuwait. With the blog constantly updated by Mark and Nat, a couple who are living in Kuwait offer an in depth perspective towards Kuwait.

248am.com

The brownbook magazine is very stylish and trendy and the guide is also designed beautifully so its a really cool thing that I am in it. I am also the only blog in there. Here is a larger scan of my page from the guide. [Picture]

Thanks Radiant Guy!

Last week I got a pack of frozen edamame from Sultan Center and tonight I decided to have it for dinner. As I mentioned previously the instructions for cooking the edamame are in Japanese but a lot of users helped me out by telling me how they prepare edamame.

I decided to boil some water in a large pot first. Once the water started boiling I dropped the edamame inside and let it boil for 6 minutes. I then removed the pot from the cooker and drained all the water. I placed the edamame in a large bowl and then sprayed a lot of salt all over it.

Result? Restaurant perfect. It tasted exactly like the edamame I have at Maki and Wasabi. The only problem is you need to eat them before they cool down and since Nat is in Beirut I had to eat the whole pack as quickly as I could before the edmame got cold. Took me 14 minutes to finish the whole pack and I think I’ve overdosed on the edamame, but it was worth it.

Does anyone know how I can make the spicy sauce Maki use with their fried edamame?

I am at the Dubai Airport waiting for my Emirates flight back to Kuwait. The drive from Fujaihrah was exhausting even though it was only an hour and a half drive. There is free WiFI at the Dubai Airport so I am just killing time now surfing the web although the Internet Connection is kinda slow.

I am leaving to Fujairah tonight and coming back Wednesday morning for work. When I first heard I was going to Fujairah I thought they were sending me to Fallujah in Iraq!

I needed to get a Polaroid camera today so I called all the Ashraf stores in Kuwait who are the Polaroid dealers and non of them had any cameras in stock except for the one in Salmiya who had two. I ended up passing by them and picking it up for KD20. On Amazon the same camera is being sold for KD43.500 so they are basically selling it in Kuwait for less than half the price. If you are interested they have one more in stock, their number is 5731372.

I’ve always wanted a Dremel rotary tool but I never had a reason to get one until last night. Awhile back one of my external hard drives died so yesterday I decided instead of getting another external drive I would just swap the damaged drive from inside the case with a new one. I passed by Hawalli, picked up a 500GB SATA drive for KD34 and when I came back and tried installing it into the case I realized I had a problem. The hard drive I got used a different power adapter than the hard drive I was replacing which I was able to solve by using an adapter, problem is the adapter was too big to fit into the case. I needed to cut away some of the plastic to be able to fit the drive so I saw this as an opportunity to finally get a Dremel tool.

I passed by the Dremel dealer today and got myself a Dremel 300 Series Multi Tool and Flexshaft. It came with 55 accessories which will allow me to use the Dremel to engrave, carve, sharpen, grind, clean, polish, cut and sand. I paid KD22 after discount for this set, there was a cheaper set without the Flexshaft and only 25 accessories for KD16 but I figured I might as well get the better one while I am at it.

Once I got back home I used the Dremel tool on the plastic hard drive case and it worked like a charm. I was able to cut through the thick plastic with very very little trouble. Now my drive is working perfectly although I have a hole in the side. If you are interested in a Dremel tool they sell them at Ace Hardware but the prices at the dealer are cheaper. The dealer is located in Shuwaikh and their phone number is 4810844.

I got some pictures of the hard drive case mod which you can check by clicking on continue.

After reading the replies to my edamame post I managed to find edamame at Sultan Center. They were located in the frozen vegetables section and the packet has Japanese writing all over it and costs KD1.695 for a 400g bag. Hopefully I will figure out how long to boil them, the instructions on the back are all in Japanese!

During lunch I went with my friend at work in his Defender pickup truck and picked up my tires. They are HUGE, a lot bigger then I expected them to be. Once I get home I am going to put them side by side with my current tires just to get a better idea of the size difference.

This is the last time I am going to spend National Day in Kuwait. Its absolutely the worst time of the year to be in Kuwait. Three years ago when little kids were foaming cars it was cute but last year older teenagers and adults started doing it and this year it was even worse.

I stayed indoors most of the vacation but tonight I had to go into Kuwait City to meet up with a friend and it was disgusting. You can’t drive with the windows open cuz you never know which idiot is going to spray you and you can’t get on the Gulf Road because the cops block everything. Its just messed up.

By the way at one traffic light I was stuck in the cop made us all run a red light to clear up the traffic. Problem is the camera at the intersection took pictures of all the cars and buses that ran the red light, what happens in a situation like this? I am hoping the cop telling us to cross the red light shows up in the picture or else I am pretty fucked.

Every now and then a local company revamps their identity and the end result turns out to be great but that doesn’t happen too often. Most of the time the new identity turns out to be crap and it pisses me off. Salhia released a new identity last month and I have to say, I love it! Ever since I saw it I’ve been compelled to write about it but only just now did I manage to find the website with the new logo. When I first saw the logo I didn’t think it matched the atmosphere of the “Salhia Complex” but after reading their press release I realized the new logo replaces the Salhia Real Estate Company logo not the Salhia Complex logo. That makes a lot more sense since Salhia Complex is a lot warmer in reality while the new logo is colder and more corporate. Anyone know the agency behind this rebranding? [Link]

This year it barely rained and although I was hoping for a flood like Hurricane Laila, that didn’t happen. Nevertheless I just got back from my parents home where they experienced their on “indoor” flood. Some filter connected to their washing machine blew and within 15 minutes the 2 floors of the apartment were completely flooded. I rushed over quickly to help out with the mopping and drying but I think most of the damage was already done. Electronics wise one TV got burned and an unused dvd player got soaked which is no biggie but the ground floor of the apartment has wooden floors and I think thats going to show the most damage tomorrow once it expands from all the water it absorbed.

Kinda makes me paranoid about my apartment now, my computer room is littered with cables and power plugs all lying on the floor and even my computer is there too. My living room is the same thing with cables, routers, xbox and amp all on the floor under the cabinet. If my apartment had gotten flooded I think I would have gotten pretty fucked. So just a heads up, home flooding can happen and you don’t need a hurricane.

Last night I was thinking that the biggest hurdle with my Wrangler lift will be getting the right tires at the right price. When I posted about my plan to lift the Wrangler last week I also posted the prices of the tires and the availability, simply put I had only 3 options with one of the options costing just too much. I had to choose between either Maxxis or Hankook tires so after doing some research I decided to go with the Hankook Dynapro MT RT03. They are no where near as popular at the BF Goodrich tires in the Jeep Forums but the few people who do own the tires have said they were really great. Two users actually who owned BFG MT tires posted that the Hankooks were nearly as good as the BFG’s offroad but were a lot quieter on the road and cost a lot less too. The thing is there is not BFG dealer in Kuwait, the closest one is in Bahrain and although its tempting to drive all the way there to pick up the tires and come back, thats not really practical.

Anyway I passed by the Hankook dealer (Tel: 884737) today and its a good thing I did. They only had 5 tires left in all of Kuwait and I needed 5 tires so I bought them all on the spot. Even though I haven’t ordered my lift yet and even though I don’t even have rims to mount the tires on it didn’t matter, I needed the tires sooner or later and with only 5 tires in stock I had to get them now. They cost me KD37.500 per tire which isn’t bad at all, cheap even when compared to my BMW tires. Now I need to pass by on Wednesday with a pickup truck and pick up the tires since they didn’t fit inside my Wrangler, the tires are huge!

I’ve posted previously about XBMC which is currently the best media center available on the market. The only problem is it runs on the old original xbox and it doesn’t support 720p or 1080p. Recently though a Mac version of the software got released and its turning out to be exactly like the Xbox version (which is a good thing) except that it plays 720p/1080p movies flawlessly. I’ve been playing around with it for two weeks now and the progress thats being made in such a short time is ridiculous. The fact that they manage to make XBMC even more responsive then the already fast xbox version is unbelievable and the specs needed to run it are very low. I am running it on my 1.8ghz core duo MacBook for example and streaming 720p movies over Wifi without a hitch.

If you have an Intel Mac download the software and try it. You just drag and drop the app onto your desktop and run it. Here is a link to the website. [Link]