Category: Personal

In the dumbest move of the year, I forgot my mobile phone in Dubai.

I am going to Dubai tomorrow and coming back Saturday. I really don’t feel like going to Dubai, all I feel like doing is just sleeping in late and then ordering a pizza while I watch some TV on the couch. This would be the third weekend in a row in which I am traveling, but unlike the last two trips, Dubai doesn’t interest me. I won’t be taking my laptop with me and I don’t think I will be moblogging from there either. Last months bill increased nearly 600% from my usual because of my moblogging!

In response to this [Link]

While in London I was able to walk around and discover the city without holding a large map and looking like a tourist because of a simple software I was able to get for my phone called A-Z London Maps. I don’t think I would have been able to enjoy my stay without this incredibly easy to use and practical software.

You don’t need a GPS device and you don’t need to connect to the internet to be able to use the map, the software installs everything onto your phone. To use the software all you need to do is type the name of the street you are in and the software will show you on a detailed map where you are. This helped me a lot since if I needed to find my way back to the hotel I would just check on the map to see where I was and then plan my route. Also if I found a street I liked I could easily find my way back. If I was using a regular paper map it would have taken me ages to find my location on it but with A-Z maps I just type my street and the software instantly circles my location on the map.

There are maps for London, Paris, Dubai, Barcelona, Helsinki and more but they only work on some Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones. You don’t need to buy it to try it either, you can download the map and try it out for 30 days before you decide to purchase it.

I only found 2 problems with the software or should I say there are 2 things I would have liked the software to do. The first is the option to work with a GPS device. Although every street corner in London displayed the street name it would have been more practical if the software automatically recognized where I was. The second thing I would have liked would have been the option to search for shop names and then have the software find it for me on the map. Of course thats asking for to much but still, it would have been nice to have.

Final score is a 4 out of 5. If you are interested in the maps you can check out the Lumisoft website for more details and trial downloads. [Link]

One store I fell in love with here in London is called Size?. Size? is a sneaker store but they seem to have the coolest/funkiest collection of sneakers I have seen all in one place. Majority of the sneakers I saw today I had previously only seen on SneakerFreaker.com and DrJays.com. Now I am trying to figure out which sneaker to get, I only want to get two but I have around 10 I like. Some of the sneakers I found and liked are displayed above and below this post.

I am at the Kuwait airport now waiting for my flight to Beirut. I was planning on having breakfast at Fuddruckers but I missed it by 15 minutes (they stop breakfast at 11AM).

Sunkist
A classic, probably the best orange drink ever created.

Frutti
Tasted terrible! I also had what looked like red hair in my drink although I am guessing its supposed to be orange pulp.

Fresh
Tasted better than Frutti but just not good enough to beat Sunkist.

Now on a side note if you look at the orange illustration on the Frutti cup you will notice it resembles the orange on the Sunkist cup. If you also look at the shape of the Fresh cup you will notice it is the same shape as the Sunkist cup. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

I was hoping to rest this weekend but it looks like thats not going to happen since I have a work related trip I need to take. Thursday I leave Kuwait around 1PM and get to Beirut at around 3. I spend the night there and next morning at 9AM I leave to London. I get to London at 1PM then the following day at 10PM I catch a flight to Bahrain where I catch another flight back to Kuwait. Its going to be really hectic but spending a day and a half in London is going to be worth it. Like last weekend I will be blogging directly from my phone which means I will be posting a lot of pictures. It should be a lot of fun.

Picture by kayodeok

My Gulf Air flight arrived at 7AM to Paris. Kuwait to Bahrain was a pretty lame flight, the plane was really old and the seats extremely uncomfortable. Bahrain to Paris was a completely different story. This was my first experience with sleeper seats and I love them. Now they aren’t as comfortable as real beds but they are more than enough for long night flights where you need to get some sleep. The entertainment system is crap though, its nothing like Emirates on demand system, its just the regular old system still used on Kuwait Airways flights.

After landing and checking in to the hotel we decided to do a bit of sight seeing since our first meeting was at 5PM. The weather here is great, yes its raining but I miss rain. It feels like winter and its hard comprehend how its 52 degrees in Kuwait and just 15 degrees in Paris! I should pick up my work schedule tonight and hopefully I will have some free time to do some shopping and take in the sights. [YouTube]

His Majesty King Raam by Lemon Jelly.

While watching my partner at work try to balance himself while standing on a soccer ball, it reminded me of this toy I had back in the 80’s. It was a disc with a rubber ball stuck in the middle and the aim was to stand on it and jump around.

I spent a good chunk of time trying to find a picture of it but I couldn’t. I remember it being called Disk-O-Jump or something of that sort but I couldn’t find any pictures or traces of it. Then I remembered the Pogo Stick and figured I try searching for Pogo Ball and to my surprise I found it. I really don’t remember it being called a Pogo Ball though… [Link]

I have tickets to the NIN concert that is taking place on the 22nd in Ireland but I will be missing it and instead going to Paris for work. I am disappointed I will be missing out on NIN but it’s not like I am getting sent to Dubai or Beirut. I’ve actually never been to Paris before so I am really looking forward to it. I will be leaving on the 21st and coming back on the 26th. While there I will try photo blogging since with my new phone (the E61i) I can actually do that. By photo blogging I mean taking a picture from my phone and then instantly sending it to my blog. I already have a software that will do that for me and I will try it out before I leave to France to make sure its working right.

update: Here is a link to my old photo blog, before I started 248AM and Miskan. [Link]

I have decided to no longer listen to my friends when it comes to shawerma places. First I got sent to Happy Duck which turned out to be a disaster and then I got sent to Weekend which also turned out to be as bad. Weekend is located opposite AUK in Salmiya and although I’ve passed by it numerous of times before, I never thought about trying it until recently when a friend recommended I give it a shot.

I ordered two chicken shawermas and a coke. After waiting for what seemed like an eternity I got the sandwiches, drove a bit further down the road parked my car and started eating. Its always best to have the shawerma while its hot and fresh but in Weekend’s, case I don’t think that really matters. The sandwich wasn’t greasy but that’s the only thing positive I have to say about it. The garlic was too liquid like and didn’t really taste like garlic although it smelled like garlic. The chicken was too moist and tasted terrible. The quantity of the chicken in the sandwich was also little although thinking about it now, that might be a good thing since the chicken was really bad anyway.

The cost of the chicken shawerma is 250fils which is normal. My advice? Drive down a further 20 meters to Malek al 3aseer (King of Juice) who make a much better shawerma. Final score 1.5 out of 5.

A friend recommended I try shawerma from a place in Salmiya called Happy Duck. At first I was hesitant but then I thought to myself, what if this back alley place with a stupid name turns out to have really good shawermas? I decided not to discriminate and give the place a shot.

I passed by the place late in the evening, it wasn’t too hard to find, I just took the exit on the Gulf Road right before were Crepaway (now called Divas) used to be located. The location wasn’t bad, they had ample parking space and no traffic around them. I went down, ordered two shawermas and a coke, came back to the car and started eating them.

My first impression was that the shawerma was really greasy. I munched away and went through the first shawerma without encountering anything out of the ordinary but when I hit the second sandwich something tasted really weird. Kinda like the chicken was under cooked or something which grossed me out so I threw it awat. I didn’t like their shawerma at all.

The price of their shawerma is 250 fils which competes with my two favorite shawerma places at the moment, Badar Al Badoor and Al Ghader, but Happy Duck is not even in the same league as them. Final score is a 1.5 out of 5.

Last night I passed by the French restaurant Fauchon in Laila Gallery for dinner. Laila Gallery isn’t one of the best malls on that street so having a lush restaurant like Fauchon in it is kind of strange. From what I heard though is that the owner of Laila Gallery is the same owner as Fauchon so thats why he opened it there.

I will start by giving a quick rundown of all the food we ordered. For starters we had two two dishes, one involved salmon while the other involved lobster. I then had a wild mushroom soup while Nat visited the salad bar. For the main course I had the beef fondue while Nat had the hamour and lobster dish. Finally for desert we chose 2 pieces of cake from their desert tray.

First the negatives. The starters were really forgettable, I would not order them the next time I visit. They tasted fine but fine wasn’t what I was expecting at a place like Fauchon. The soup was ok but I’ve had better versions at Nino’s and Lorenzo. Nat also ordered a mango juice but it tasted like water had been diluted with it which made it really nasty.

So after a disappointing start to dinner I was worried our main courses would also turn out to be flops but luckily that didn’t happen. My dish, the beef fondue was mouthwatering. The presentation of my plate looked very neat, it came with one large bowl filled with cubed beef and potatoes alongside three smaller bowls filled with different sauces for me to dip the beef into. The flavor was very strong and the quantity was very filling, I definitely made the right choice with my main course which by the way was difficult to choose because so many things on the menu looked good. Nat enjoyed her lobster but found the hamour pretty bland but in the end it kind of balanced out. Finally when done our desert arrived, I had the chocolate mousse cake while Nat had the same except with a raspberry mix. As expected since chocolate and cakes are their specialty, desert was delightful.

The interior of place was very stylish with silver curtains and pink lighting. Our waiter was very friendly and helpful and later in the evening the manager even came and spoke to us to make sure everything was going fine. The whole evening would have been perfect if it wasn’t for the disastrous start. The prices of the dishes varied from overpriced to decent. The lobster dish we had for starters was around KD5 which I think wasn’t worth it but on the other hand my main course cost around KD6 which I think was very acceptable. The bill in the end came out to KD32 but this is the maximum I think it could reach. Now that I know what to order I can easily bring the bill down to under KD20 the next time. For the final score I am going to give them a 3.5 out of 5. If the starters were good or if I hadn’t had the starters at all the score would have been a 4.