Category: Personal

My sister got a dog yesterday and Geo and him have been have been running around playing and fighting ever since. One minute they are best friends and the next they are fighting over a doll. Its ridiculous and exhausting keeping an eye on both of them. They are getting used to each other so thats a good thing. My sisters dog is a Shar Pei and she’s called him Mao but that confuses Geo since Mao sounds like “no” to him. Thats why I’ve decided to call him China Town which I think is cooler and he seems to be responding better to it anyway.

I thought I needed an hour more work today but it ended up taking like three. I was experiencing some vibration sounds yesterday so today I removed the 4 speakers and stuff the area behind them with a lot more pollyfill (pillow stuffing). This ended up improving the sound quality and killing any vibrations I was hearing. I also cleaned up the wires in the rear, and fastened my amp and subwoofer into the trunk.

Even though I have the amp and sub installed in the trunk, when the rear seat is folded up there is still a lot of room for Geo to get in, sit and walk around. When the rear seat is down the amp is hidden and there is still some room next to the sub for some grocery bags.

I tuned the sound system a bit but will wait two more weeks for all the speakers to break in before I spend more time tuning things. Although it was really exhausting work it was a good learning experience. Next project I am probably going to try is to install is a suspension lift by myself. I already have the step by step instructions just need to get the right tools.

I woke up at 9AM today morning so I could start work on the installation of my Alpine sound system in the Wrangler. First thing I did was pass by Sultan Center and pick up a cutter and extra batteries for my MagLite. From 10 in the morning until 5 in the evening I was working on the installation non stop without lunch just 2 small bottles of water and gum. I got a lot of surprises, most of the stuff I was expecting to be difficult turned out easy and what I was expecting to be easy turned out to be difficult. My fingers are killing me now and I have a ton of tiny scratches all over my hands from all the work I did under the dashboard trying to get all the cables neatly through.

I am not done yet, I still have around an hour of work work which I will do tomorrow. I still need to fasten the amp and the sub to the car, I already drilled the holes just need to screw them in. I also need to fine tune the sound, currently I got a lot of highs and a lot of lows with no midrange. Also the front speakers are slightly louder then the rear so I can still tell which direction the sound is coming from but thats also an easy fix. I think I did a pretty good job of the install, there were a few moments where I thought I was fucked but those quickly got worked out. Only thing I need to improve on is my soldering technique.

My friend at work has been nagging me to start riding in to work again but I just found the weather too cold to ride. This week the weather has been perfect so I am back to riding to work and although I was originally worried I would freeze my ass off in the morning, it actually isn’t bad at all, refreshing if anything. During lunch I ride with my friend to Souk Sharq and the weather is usually sunny and cool but once the sun goes down in the evening things will get nippier again.

I’ve had the car for a day now and so far its been surprising. Before I picked up the car I thought the thing I would like the most in the car would be the interior. I had checked the CTS website and I was really looking forward to the “Ambient Interior Lighting”. A lot of cars have it but the CTS has a unique version that uses LED’s that go along the dash from one end to the other. But, I quickly found out the version of the car I was reviewing didn’t have the ambient lighting, I don’t know if its not available as an option in Kuwait or if it just wasn’t an option in my car but I wasn’t able to experience it.

With one of the things I was looking forward to not available I had to find something else to take my interest and I quickly found it as soon as I hit the 5th Ring Road. The CTS has over 300hp and as soon as I slammed on the gas the engine let out a brutal grunt and took off. At high RPM’s the engine gets really loud and aggressive which is surprising because the car gives a civilized impression. Another thing that surprised me was the “Driver Shift Control” which allows me to manually change gears. Unlike most of the ones I have tried before the Cadillac’s transmission was pretty fast and responsive. I’ve been recently trying to cut down on my speeding and the CTS wasn’t helping.

Everything isn’t perfect and I do have my problems with the car. For one thing I found the audio and navigation system sluggish. Firstly the car I am driving only has the European map installed. I don’t know if a local map isn’t offered yet but without one the navigation system is useless. Going from menu to menu and raising and lowering the volume is also a hit and miss affair. Sometimes the system doesn’t respond to my commands or responds after a few seconds delay. After experiencing this issue a number of times I am convinced its a software issue and the system problem needs an update or a reboot. Another thing that I didn’t like was the location of the fire extinguisher, its located in the middle of the passenger side foot area. Nat didn’t know if she should put her feet on top of the extinguisher or stretch them out over it but it was really annoying and uncomfortable.

Those were the only negatives I could find in the car although I would also have liked a reverse cam since its become like a standard but other then that the car is fully loaded. There is a USB socket where you can plug in the iPod and the navigation system turns into a TV although I couldn’t catch any channels but thats a good thing since KTV sucks. The sunroof is amazing because the whole roof is a large glass panel which really brightens up the interior.

I have the car till tomorrow evening so I will still be driving it some more. The price of the car if anyone is interested is KD13,000 with the all wheel drive version costing slightly more.

I was flipping through a book on the history of Kuwait called “The voice of the Oud” when I found a photo of a kid who looked exactly like me. The book is full of amazing old photos of Kuwait and here I was in one of the pictures. I checked the date of the photo and it was 1983 and taken in Mubarakieh outside the carpet souk where I used to tag a long with my dad every Friday morning.

I scanned the photo and emailed it to my mum just to be sure that the picture was of me when i was a kid and she called me to confirm that it was. I think its pretty cool especially since the book has a ton of cool shots of old Kuwait. The girl in the picture was my neighbor who is no longer in Kuwait and I am also no longer chubby although I am still very white.

Over a year ago I posted “Elect me as mayor of Salmiya” because I was pissed at how the old shopping street in Salmiya was getting torn a part bit by bit and all my childhood memories were disappearing with it. Well since then things haven’t changed, I wasn’t elected as mayor and Salmiya is still losing its history.

The building that has Hardees, Tikka, KFC, Waleed Toys, Alamiah and The Family Bookshop is going to be demolished soon. Already Hardees, Tikka, KFC and Baskin Robbins have vacated the building and I am sure the rest will follow soon. What I heard is that whole block with the land behind it and to its sides plus the old souk in front of Marina Mall (Kaysariyah) will be demolished and turned into one giant super mall, as if we don’t have enough of those already.

I got my first computer, the Sakhr MSX2 from Alamiah, I had my first roast beef sandwich from that Hardees and I bought all my Peter and Jane books from The Family Bookshop. This really sucks.

My car speakers and multi-amp wiring harness arrived today. I now have everything I need to start the installation except for the RCA and speaker cables. I will get those from Mr System in Shuwaikh sometime this week. Yesterday I passed by Ace Hardware to get some pollyfill which everyone online advises to use to fill in the enclosure behind the speaker. Surprisingly they didn’t have any which is weird because they have everything. If you haven’t been to Ace Hardware recently you should because they’ve rearranged sections, canceled some unimportant ones and added new ones with more useful stuff. I really love the place. So after Ace I passed by Barakat in Salmiya which is a sewing store, I ended up finding pollyfill there which is basically pillow stuffing. 250grams for 750fils.

I also got a call from Cadillac today, I am going to be test driving the new 2008 CTS over the weekend. I checked out some pictures of the car online and it looks pretty interesting so I am looking forward to it. [Cadillac CTS]

I am not a big fan of classic cars or old cars in general but there are five I would love to have in my garage one day.

1- Lancia Delta Integrale

2- BMW M3 E30

3- VW Golf GTI MKII

4- Ford Escort Cosworth

5- Datsun Skyline GTR (1971)

I was going to add this note to my Aramex post below as an update but I decided not to hijack it and instead post this separately.

On January 3rd my car amp arrived to my U Shop We Ship address.
On January 4th my car amp was shipped from my mailbox to Kuwait.
Today, January 6th, I just got my car amp delivered to my office.

This has to be the fastest I have EVER received a package.

It sucked. Dragon Wars is the worst movie I am going to watch this year because I can’t imagine anything turning out worse than this. And yes, the picture above is of a lizard attacking a helicopter…

I am not a big fan of zombie flicks and horrors but I end up watching a lot of them because Nat is a huge horror buff. I Am Legend is a movie I wasn’t too interested to watch, first because it starred Will Smith who I don’t really like and second because I had just recently watched Fido and Resident Evil: Extinction, both zombie flicks and both turned out to be crap so I wasn’t too excited to watch anything else similar. Luckily, I Am Legend is nothing like them.

A plague takes over the world and the only person still left alive is Will Smith, a scientist living in whats left of New York. He spends everyday living the exact same routine, hunting for food, watching DVDs and trying to find a cure for the plague that has turned everyone into zombies. The movie isn’t fast passed, it’s also not the regular cliché story where a group of people are trying to run away from zombies. The movie is much deeper than that with a story to tell. It actually reminded me a lot of Waterworld (which I loved) where Kevin Costner explores the vast underwater cities alone, except here its Will Smith exploring a completely abandoned New York City thats being overrun by wilderness. I completely wasn’t expecting the movie to turn out this way.

The zombies in this movie have to be the freakiest ones I have seen so far. Usually they are either slow or clumsy but the ones in this movie are extremely fast and agile. For me this is also the best Will Smith movie I have seen and his acting really is on display here since the majority of time its just him we’re watcing. Overall the movie was very captivating and there wasn’t a moment where I got bored. My biggest problem with the movie is the fact I would have wanted to see Will Smith explore the city more, I kept wishing the movie was longer and we would get to see more of the beautifully created abandoned New York. I guess once this movie started I wanted it to turn into an adventure. Final score a 4 out of 5.

Note: Movie gets released on January 10th here in Kuwait

I am ending the year and beginning the new one while watching what some people say is one of the best TV shows ever made, Twin Peaks. I can’t ask for a better new years than this.

Yesterday my friend asked me if I wanted to try out a new burger place called Marrybrown. I hadn’t heard of the place before but he told me it was an American franchise. That turned out not to be true because according to Wikipedia “Marrybrown Family Restaurant is a Malaysia based fast food chain”. Malaysia, America.. they both end with the letter “a” so I can see how he could have gotten confused.

We drove to the restaurant which is located at the beginning of Canada Dry street next to a car wash. It’s a really crappy location for a new franchise and the place isn’t even well designed from the inside. I checked out their menu and there wasn’t a single burger on the menu! Turns out Marrybrown is more like KFC and not McDonalds. I ordered a chicken fillet combo, swapped the fries with onion rings and also ordered a chicken ceaser wrap.

We sat down and the food quickly followed. After a few bites it became obvious that although the place looked shady the food seemed to be fresh and everything seemed to taste fine. Thats where the problem is with Marrybrown, its just too normal. There really wasn’t anything I ordered that would make me want to come back again. If I feel like a chicken fillet I would think McChicken from McDonalds or Zinger from KFC. The location and the interior doesn’t help their situation either. Maybe if I ever wash my car at the car wash next door and I feel like grabbing a bite I wouldn’t mind Marrybrown but I don’t think I would ever go out of my way just for them. The final score is 2.5 out of 5.

I really really really hate Aramex. I stopped using them for my important packages ages ago and instead started using U Shop We Ship who are much better. I now only use my Aramex account for my magazine subscriptions and it seems I can’t even trust them with that anymore. Today I got a package after not getting anything for 2 months and it turns out I have 2 months worth of magazines missing! I have been trying to call them since morning to try and see what happened but their lines are all busy, ALL THE TIME! I can’t understand why people still use Aramex, USWS isn’t perfect, they have their own issues but at least packages get shipped promptly from the US and do arrive in Kuwait on time. Where are my magazines???