Category: Personal

I’ve been wanting to try out Ricardo ever since I was a kid. I used go have lunch at Al Hambra Restaurant with my family before the Gulf War and when I was done I would wonder around the large hotel lobby and then all the way to the back where Ricardo is located and it always looked mysterious and a place for grownups. Fast forward to the present, I no longer pass by Sheraton as much since there are a lot more restaurants available in Kuwait and more competitively priced. But, when I do pass by its always back to Al Hambra where they have one of my favorite buffets in Kuwait. Yesterday night though I decided to break my routine and finally go and try Ricardo.

I made reservations earlier in the day and we got there on time and were quickly seated in a non-smoking section as I had requested. Problem is like every other restaurant in Kuwait, all the best tables are in the smoking section. Still, ours wasn’t bad and we had a good view of the live band that was playing. When we got the menu I realized they had a much larger variety of dishes then I had expected. I was expecting a small menu with a few appetizers and a handful of main courses but instead I was greeted with two pages of appetizers, around eight pages of main courses and two pages of specials. Too many choices. In the end we settled for fried calamari and prawns and cream of mushroom soup for starters, then I had the salmon tortelloni for my main course while Nat went with the giant prawn ravioli.

Our starters didn’t take too long to arrive and when they did I was surprised by the quantity. They aren’t stingy thats for sure. The mushroom soup was one of the best I’ve ever had and the calamari and prawns was also really great. The tartar sauce that came with the calamari and prawns was the same one they use at Al Hambra which is what I use as a basis for all tartar sauces, its just delicious. So far I wasn’t disappointed.

Soon after our main courses arrived and thats where I wasn’t impressed. My tortelloni sounded a lot better in writing, salmon stuffed tortelloni covered with a creamy sauce containing two types of caviar and salmon and prawns on the side. The sauce though wasn’t that great and since the sauce was one of the primary sources of flavor the end result was a good dish but nothing special. Nats ravioli was also just good but the problem with her dish was that it was over priced mostly because the prawns weren’t really giant.

We didn’t have dessert although I was tempted to but as I said earlier, their food quantity is good and so we were really full by the end of our meal. Overall the experience was good, the music although not my style suited the candle lit table and the service was excellent as expected. The price on the other hand I have mixed feelings about. Our starters, the calamari and prawns cost KD6 while the mushroom soup cost KD3.5 which I think is very fair for both dishes. My main course the salmon tortelloni cost KD12 which isn’t too bad either. Nats dish on the other hand, the giant prawns ravioli was for KD15 which I think is over priced, it should also have been KD12. Over all the prices are a lot more decent then I was expecting them to be. Most of the pastas on the menu were under KD10 while the main courses ranged in prices from KD12 to KD20 with only one lobster dish costing KD35. In the end though I am going to have to give it a rating of 3.5 out of 5. Maybe if we had ordered different main courses the score could have been as high as a 4.5 but based on what we had and not on what we could have had plus the fact that I didn’t think the prawn ravioli should have cost that much, 3.5 is what I am forced to give it. I will be going back again thats for sure if I can pull myself away from Al Hambra that is.

So a friend calls me up and tells me to tune into 99.7 at around 7PM. He tells me there is this DJ, shes new, been on the radio now for maybe 6 months and she sucks really bad, like worse than Dr La Bouche. So I was in the car on the way to have dinner when I decided to turn the dial to 99.7. Once the song Barbie Girl finished playing (yeah they still play it) the DJ came on and thats when I wished Barbie Girl would play again. OK maybe she wasn’t THAT bad but she was bad, she had an annoying voice and she wasn’t make any sense. What is she doing on the air and who is she? Under normal circumstances I would check the official 99.7 website except that their site is still suspended. I did record some of the radio broadcast though using my phone and you can listen to it by clicking [Here]

Last night I met a friend at Blenz Coffee located in Marina Waves and I think I discovered the worst cookies, muffins and chocolate drink all in one place. I decided on Blenz as our meet up spot because it has a nice seating area outside with a great view and the fact that parking is abundant. There were only two other tables occupied and at first I figured its because not many people know about Blenz but now I know its probably because the food and drinks are really terrible.

I ordered a chocolate chip cookie, a chocolate chip muffin and an iced chocolate drink. All three of my items were the worst I have ever had. I only had a few pieces of the cookie, one bite of the muffin and two sips of the chocolate drink and then threw them away. They were just horrible! Lucky for us they only have one branch in Kuwait which means if luck is on your side you could live your whole life without having to experience the disaster Blenz is. My final score is a 1 out of 5 stars. The one star is because of the great view.

I hate the sneakers that are available at Foot Locker and Athletes Foot here in Kuwait. In the past few years I don’t think I’ve even purchased any sneakers from here, I always ordered them from Amazon and other retailers online. Other than the fact that they don’t carry certain brands here, most of the retailers play it pretty safe and just get your average looking regular dull models. In the UK for example Foot Locker isn’t even counted as a trendy store for sneakers, Size?, Offspring and Foot Patrol for example all have better taste and carry funkier collections. Athletes Foot barely even exists outside of Kuwait!

One of my favorite TV shows is Entourage and one of the characters on the show is called Turtle who is a sneaker collector. That gave me the idea to also start my own sneaker collection. Its still really small but I only just started so it should grow a lot more in the coming year. You can check out some of my sneakers below.

I want these sneakers!! I saw them online for the first time yesterday and today I got some more info on them. Basically they will be sold exclusively at Offspring in the UK and thats it, no other place anywhere. Now the bigger problem is Offspring don’t have an online store just a stupid myspace page. The sneakers aren’t out yet but once they are I am sure I will figure out a way to get them. [Link]

I think Ramadan put me out of touch with food in Kuwait. This is like the third time since Ramadan ended that I discover a new item at a favorite restaurant. Today for lunch I passed by Sbarro, I hadn’t been there since before Ramadan and today I found out they had a new item that seemed interesting. Its a stromboli and up until today I hadn’t heard of it before. It’s something like their stuffed pizzas except the dough is rolled up.

I usually order the stuffed sausage & pepperoni pizza but I decided to try the stromboli version today. Although it looked interesting it turned out to be let down. The stromboli was very dry and in some places there wasn’t any sausage & pepperoni just dough. Compared to the stuffed pizza, the stromboli was boring and bland. It costs 950 fils which is the same price as a stuffed pizza except I would choose the stuffed over it easily. Its worth a try though. Final score 3 out of 5.

I just got back from a late night ride. I hadn’t ridden since the beginning of summer and ever since TriStar had picked up my bike and serviced it last week my bike has been begging to be taken out. Tonight was his lucky night.

I was walking Geo and noticed the weather was just amazing so when I got home I suited up and went out for a ride. Salmiya was deserted and I had all the streets to myself so I took full advantage and rode up and down at my pace enjoying my time. I was a bit rusty so I felt a lot more comfortable riding alone with no traffic just in case I made a mistake.

One thing I realized, the weather is a lot nicer in shorts and a tshirt. My full bike gear which includes thick riding pants and a thick riding jacket kinda made things hot but it still felt great riding. I think I will do this every night, its very peaceful and mind clearing.

Today was such a blast! We got to Marina Waves around 9AM in the morning and first thing we had to do was move our plane to the proper location which was the front of the line. One team ahead of us had withdrawn from the event so we became team #3 instead of #4.

Our friends started to come one by one until our station resembled a large diwaniya then judges started passing by to judge and ask questions about our plane. Every time a judge would see our plane they would get this shocked look on their faces but they all had sense of humors and cracked jokes with us. They all agreed though that our plane was the most comfortable one to sit in, kinda like a lazy boy version of a plane. Later that we found out one of the teams had a large helium canister which we quickly took advantage of. We kept filling balloons with helium and passing them around to everyone to inhale, that cracked everyone up for a while.

Finally around 2PM they started the event and we were the third plane to jump off. We were dressed as traditional Kuwaiti fisherman which didn’t make sense at all but its not like anything else did. Every team had to play a song and have a dance before they pushed the plane off the ramp and our song was Sabo7a. I think that and our dance which was also traditional Kuwaiti cracked up people the most. For me I think the dancing was the worst part, I hadn’t danced the traditional Kuwaiti dance since I was like 10 years old in school so I was just a mess but who cared it was still fun. The rest of the team, Khalid, Bader and Marzouq were naturals though as you can see in the video at the end of this post.

Once we were done with the dance we got behind the plane and Bader who was our pilot got into it and we started to push. We pushed as hard and fast as we could and just before the end we let go and stood and watched. All I saw was our plane fly out a few meters and then slam hard into the water with Bader lying on his back and this look of horror and pain on his face. It was priceless! It was then our turn to jump in, we didn’t have to but we wanted to. The only reason we participated in Flugtag was to have some fun and jumping in was the last thing we had to do.

When you look down from the edge the water looks really far but I thought about that for just a second before I just went ahead and jumped in. For some reason I decided to land on my ass so I landed pretty hard and it was kinda painful but not as bad as landing on your back which Khalid and Bader did. The water was amazing and it was just an incredible rush jumping off after such a long and amazing day. I could hear the crowds cheering and laughing and I could also hear Bader, Khalid and Marzouq all laughing. We then got on the jet skis that came to rescue us to take us back to shore, me and Khalid got on behind this one guy and just as he was taking off the whole jet ski flipped on its side and we landed on an adjacent jet ski which was pretty hilarious at the time I don’t know why.

When we got back to the shore we met up with the other teams and they congratulated us and we shared with them our experience. After that we just packed up and left since we were all wet and tired.

I have to say all the other teams we met and interacted with were also a lot of fun. Majority of the guys there were there just like us to have a lot of fun. If you actually saw the planes at the event you can tell most didn’t care about winning, everyone just wanted to enjoy the day and crash land with style. From the teams, to the Red Bull staff and even the judges, everyone was very positive, super friendly and a lot of fun. I would definitely want to participate again next year maybe even with an updated plane although I love ours the way it is. After this event I actually suggested we convert our plane to a raft and just join the yearly raft race with it.

The pictures above were taken by Nicole except for the picture of goatse (we had spray painted it at the rear of our plane), that was taken by me. The video below was shot by Nat. Special thanks to Hashem (he doesn’t have a blog so I could link to) for helping us out by being our ground crew and helium supplier.

Kuwait’s Red Bull Flugtag 2007 from Mark on Vimeo.

I’ve recently gotten addicted to the TV show Rules of Engagement. They are in their second season now but I never thought it would be interesting, for some reason I used to read the name and think it was a TV show related to lawyers and the military. Probably because I keep thinking about the movie of the same name. Luckily by accident I downloaded and episode and after watching the first one I was hooked. The show stars three great actors, Megyn Price who plays the wife on Grounded for Life, David Spade which everyone knows from Just Shoot Me and finally my favorite actor from the bunch, Patrick Warburton who played David Puddy, Elaine’s boy friend on Seinfeld, Johnny Johnson on News Radio, The Tick on The Tick and the voice of Joe Swanson on Family Guy. A truly amazing actor and super funny in his own simple way. For more information you can check out the IMDB page. [Link]

Yes I like shawermas and it seems a lot of people know that because before I left to London around a million people recommended I should try the shawermas at Ranoush. Ranoush Juice is part of the Maroush group of restaurants which are extremely popular in London and the place was located near my hotel on Edgware Road so I decided to go ahead and try it.

Good shawerma in London? I found that hard to believe and I would never have believed it had I not tried it for myself. I’ve been reviewing shawermas for a while now and its always difficult to describe the taste of a shawerma, its not easy to explain why one tastes better than the other or why it tastes worse. It’s mostly because its not one single thing alone that makes a difference, its a balance of a variety of things and this was the case with the shawermas at Ranoush. There wasn’t anything particular I could single out about their shawerma which made it special but it was. Maybe it was because I hadn’t had a shawerma for a week, I don’t know but it just felt really good having it. It felt comfortable and so perfectly balanced. The garlic wasn’t too strong but wasn’t too weak, the chicken was great and the cleanliness of the place was top notch.

Price sadly was out of this world for a shawerma, 3.25 Pounds which is around KD1.900! It completely blew away the previous record of 750 fils for the Villa Fayrouz Express shawerma but luckily for Ranoush it’s in London and KD1.900 for a shawerma is a great deal in a city where KD5 burgers are practically the norm. This is why for the final score it gets a 4.5 out of 5.

This is really messed up. One of my hard drives, a 500GB Western Digital has just died on me. The drive was full with only around 8GB of free space. It had a ton of movies, tv shows and my iTunes library. Now its fucking dead, just like that out of the blue.

Now what? Thats what I have been asking myself for the past few minutes. Do I get another hard drive and go through the painstaking task of re-downloading all the movies and shows? Where do I begin? I don’t even know what movies and shows I even had on this drive. I’ve been asking myself for a long time now why I am building a large database of shows and movies and why I don’t delete them when I am done with them. I never have a proper answer. What about the other shows and movies I have on other drives, do I just delete them as well and say fuck it to all this?

I didn’t back up my data because it wasn’t important data. The only thing I do have backed up are my MP3s but thats because they are all legally ripped from my CD’s or purchased digitally online. I backed them up because I did not want to go through the painstaking task of ripping my CDs all over again one by one. My movies and TV shows are illegally downloaded and they are just too huge to back up anyway coming in at over 1.5TB. I don’t know what I will do, its a shock. I guess I will just get another drive and just continue from where I stopped.

Well for some reason today my credit card just stopped working. It didn’t get canceled or anything of the sort, machines just don’t read the card anymore. I think the chip on my credit card got damaged somehow. Now I have to walk around with cash, sucks!

We left Paris today and got back to London but not without going on one hell of a ride.

We got to the Eurostar train station in Paris around 5PM which was around an hour before our train was set to leave. When we got to the automatic check in the machine rejected our tickets. I couldn’t understand why until an employee there arrived to help us and explained to us the problem. Our train had left over an hour earlier!

I am not one to make a lot of mistakes, I am usually the extremely reliable guy who plays it really safe and always tries to arrive earlier than the recommended time. Somehow, for some fucked up reason, I read our London arrival time as our Paris departure time. I can’t understand how that happened, looking at my non refundable non exchangeable ticket now I can’t imagine how I mixed up the departure and arrival times. Its right up on my list of dumbest things I have done in my life. We had missed our train out of Paris and that was just the beginning of our adventure.

There was another train leaving to London in around 2 hours so we headed to the really long cue queue to buy tickets and waited. While in line I tried calling NBK on 801801 to try and move money onto my credit card. I didn’t know how much I had left on the card and I didn’t know how much the tickets would cost so I figured I would play it safe and move some more money onto my visa. I spent 15 minutes trying to call Kuwait without any luck when suddenly I got through and got a hold of the NBK operator and explained to her that I wanted to move money onto my card. After 10 minutes of trying the NBK operator told me there was a problem with the NBK automated system and I should call back in 15 minutes.

We got up to the ticket counter and we asked for 2 one way tickets out of Paris. The employee told us we could get on the next train, price was 236 Euros per person which amounted to a total of 472 for the two of us. That was more than DOUBLE what I had paid for 3 weeks ago for our two way tickets! We didn’t have any other option so we asked for the tickets but when we tried paying for them both my credit card and Nat’s got rejected. Our cards were maxed out, it just wasn’t our luck.

Now you are probably thinking why didn’t I just withdraw money from an ATM machine and pay for the tickets with cash? Well the problem is when I travel I don’t keep a lot of money in my ATM card account so that just in case I get mugged at an ATM machine I can only withdraw a certain amount of money (I watch a lot of movies). It’s never been a problem before because I always use my credit card for my purchases and if I needed more money than whats available on my ATM card I just transfer more onto it.

So here was the situation, my Macbook had no battery and I didn’t have the charger so I couldn’t connect to a wifi network at the train station. There was also no Internet cafe at the station but even if there was I didn’t want to access my bank account from a public computer. I couldn’t get a hold of NBK, the answering machine never came on it just kept ringing and no one was picking up. Since I couldn’t connect to my NBK account I couldn’t use my credit card and I couldn’t withdraw any money so I was pretty much fucked.

I decided to call my sister and have her log into my NBK account and transfer money, problem was she wasn’t at home and the line kept breaking up. I then started calling my friends one by one to see if they were near an Internet connection including Bader, Marzouq and Khalid but no one was near a computer. It was just freaking frustrating. I had the money to buy the fucking tickets to get the hell out of Paris but I just couldn’t get that money onto my ATM or credit card! Time was running out by now and I needed to buy the tickets.

We decided to leave the station and head out around town looking for a place to get Internet access. After around 30 minutes of exploring and asking people we finally found an Internet cafe. I asked the guy if I could connect with my macbook but he told me it wouldn’t be possible. I looked at his computers, they had Windows XP on it… I had no clue if there were any trojans or softwares that would read and store my bank account info and passwords on the machines but I didn’t have an option, I was desperate and I just needed Internet. In literally 2 minutes I had logged into my bank account, transferred money onto my ATM and credit card and was out of the cafe. Thats all I needed, 2 fucking minutes of Internet to change the direction of my life.

We ran back to the train station with 45 minutes to spare but now we were back in the cue queue to buy tickets. 30 minutes later we purchased the tickets. The employee told us something about how our seats would be pull down seats but we didn’t care we just wanted to get on the train. We checked in, passed through passport and security check which luckily was empty and ran towards our train. If we had just been 1 minute late we would have missed the train again.

When we finally got on the train and the doors shut and we started moving, it was just the most amazing feeling of relief. Our fold down seats were these tiny seats located between the carriage cars (pictures above). They weren’t really that bad, it was kinda cozy sitting in between the carriage cars alone.

I can’t believe how an average day turned into such a mess. First thing I did when I got to my hotel room here in London was log on to the internet and change my NBK online banking password. Also when I get back to Kuwait I am going to take out another credit card and keep it aside just in case of emergencies like today. Finally Nat is going to be taking care of our traveling from now on, I am losing it!

The coins! So many fucking coins! The smallest note is like 5 pounds and everything else below is just coins. My wallet doesn’t even have a coin pocket so I am walking around with all these coins in my jeans and I am jingling the whole time like one of Santas reindeer’s.

I haven’t blogged with Mark since back in the qHate.com days. It feels like a velvet glove cast in iron.

Well the plane is almost done. We had the technical guy come over yesterday for a safety check and some other advice. It is looking good based on his view. He suggests that we cut more weight from it as possible to help the lift. Seems that every little bit helps.

All is left is our secret weapon that Mark is brining with him from his trip, and the color of it. I really hope we don’t have the same incident as last time. Huge fight broke out about which color the plane should be. We didn’t talk to each other for a week…