Category: Personal

Although there are a ton of shawerma places near my house Dodo is the place I frequent the most. The staff are friendly and quick and they also have a wide range of sandwiches to choose from. Personally my favorite sandwich at Dodo is their chicken shawerma.

I don’t know how accurate this story is but I remember being told that the owner of Dodo was also the owner of Barakat, my favorite shawerma place back in the day when they were open in the old Salmiya near Fay (opposite Hardees). I think its true because one of the employees of Barakat now works at Dodo but it could be just a big coincidence. Dodo is a Lebanese restaurant that serves Lebanese style of food ranging from falafel to burgers to shawermas. One of the advantages of having shawerma at a Lebanese place is the garlic, and the garlic at Dodo is pretty damn good. As I’ve said before, there are only three things in a shawerma, the bread, the chicken and the garlic. The bread is easy to get right so no worries there. The chicken although the taste of it is important, even if you mess up you can cover up your tracks with good garlic since the garlic can cover the taste of the chicken. Now I am not saying there is a problem with the chicken at Dodo, on the contrary, the chicken is really good but the garlic is where its all at.

The size of the shawerma is pretty small and I usually have 3 to fill me up sometimes with a side order of their fries. The price of each shawerma is 300 fils which is cheap and I think with the quality of their shawerma they could easily price it at 350 fils and no one would complain especially when their most recent competitor, Vila Fayrouz Express charges 750 fils for theirs. All is not perfect though, Dodo suffers from lack of consistency which pisses me off. Sometimes I feel the chicken is undercooked and I hate it when that happens but luckily it doesn’t happen often. Final score is 4 out of 5. Dodo is located near La Baguette on Baghdad Street.

I was sitting at home watching TV when I heard sirens outside. They were getting louder and louder so I looked out the window and saw a bunch of fire trucks coming towards my building. I figured they must have taken a wrong turn but to my surprise the trucks started parking under my building and a crowd started to gather. I was thinking WTF? Their were 8 trucks, a cop car and an ambulance parked under my building so I figured something must be wrong. I took my camera and headed downstairs to see what all the commotion was about.

Once I got downstairs I saw the building keeper (haress) and asked him what was going on. He told me a store inside the mall (I live over a shopping mall) must have had a short circuit but there wasn’t anything to worry about. Fire fighters were running into the building with full gear on so I decided to take a few shots. Luckily the fire was put out quickly before any other stores caught fire.

War Stories by UNKLE is the album of the year. My favorite song is number 7, Burn My Shadow. It fucking rocks. This album is wayyy better then anything I have recently heard including Smashing Pumpkin’s Zeitgeist. [Amazon]

Late May I purchased two tickets to the Nine Inch Nails and Foo Fighters concert in Dublin and surprisingly today I received the tickets in regular mail! I had emailed Ticketmaster telling them specifically NOT to mail me the tickets because I was sure they would get lost in the mail. Magically they arrived to my mailbox and not only that, the tickets arrived before the concert date. The Kuwait postal service must have gotten a makeover.

update: My tickets were mailed out on June 12, they arrived to my PO Box on June 20th. One week from Ireland to Kuwait, thats really good.

Is there a restaurant in Kuwait that serves the Beef Wellington? Ever since the first season of Hell’s Kitchen I’ve been wanting to try it.

Picture by Jimsterpedia

IKEA isn’t the first place that comes into mind when you think of Indian food but surprisingly, it should. When IKEA was still based in Shuwaikh their restaurant was tiny and had a limited variety of dishes. Now that they are based in The Avenues and have a lot of space they expanded their restaurant not only in size but also in the variety of dishes that they serve.

One of the dishes they used to serve every now and then as their daily special has now become a permanent dish on their menu, the chicken masala.

As I said earlier when it comes to Indian food IKEA isn’t the first thing that comes into mind. Swedish meatballs yes, chicken masala no. Despite how strange the notion of a Swedish furniture chain serving Indian food might sound, they somehow managed to get it right. IKEA serve extremely good chicken masala and they serve it alongside plain white steamed rice. Combined the meal is priced aggressively at only KD1.500! The portion is large and filling and the flavor is pretty darn good. Its currently my favorite dish at their restaurant and a favorite among many. With a cheap price tag, good portion and great flavor there really isn’t much to complain about. Final score is a 4.5 out of 5.

I have a passion for vintage toys and video games and recently I realized if I had a lot of extra cash lying around what I would love to start collecting is vintage Matchbox cars like the one pictured above and currently currently going for $330 on eBay!. Thats one expensive little toy car…

I was watching two items on eBay today, the first was a brand new boxed Popeye Game & Watch, the second was a brand new boxed Oil Panic Game & Watch. I was willing to pay max $200 which I figured was a pretty good chunk of change but I just got home and checked to find out that I lost both bids. Both items got sold for around $270 each!

update: Just lost another bid this time on a boxed Simon, but whats messed up is I lost by 50 cents only!

I finally got to try Edo on Friday for lunch and I didn’t find the place that special. With all the hype built up by the “Edo Pride” groupies I was expecting the place to be the place. Everything I tried tasted pretty bland and boring. I still prefer Kei over Edo even though I don’t eat at Kei anymore after Nat found what looked like a thick eyebrow in her maki. I hear Shogun at The Palms is good so I think I will give that a shot this weekend.

Found this Wrangler today and its exactly how I want my Wrangler to look like. Now I just need to find out how much this lift is going to cost me. I should have left a note on the guys car and asked him to call me.

Stuck at work and all I am thinking about is food.
This yummy picture was taken by McLoy
The title of this post is spelled correctly.

The funniest show I am watching at the moment is called Extras. The show stars Ricky Gervais from The Office and Ashley Jensen from Ugly Betty who both play the role of extras on the show. Extras are the people who play very minor roles in movies or commercials usually with no speaking lines and located in the background. One of the cool things about the show is that each episode features a famous star; Ben Stiller, Kate Winslet, Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Stewert, Orlando Bloom and David Bowie for example have all appeared on the show.

Extras is a typical British comedy so the style might not appeal to everyone but I personally find it hilarious. Its a really silly show and I couldn’t imagine anyone else other then Gervais playing the lead role except for maybe Simon Pegg. You can find out more about the show by checking out the Extras page on HBO’s website. [Link]

I love my alarm clock but the problem with it is that its just that, an alarm clock. Sure it plays CD’s and has a radio but these are two features I never use. I really didn’t know what I really wanted until I found the Chumby.

What is a chumby?
The chumby is a compact device that displays useful and entertaining information from the web: news, photos, music, celebrity gossip, weather, box scores, blogs — using your wireless internet connection. Always on, it shows — nonstop — what’s online that matters to you.

Yes all that and it also has an alarm. It’s an internet appliance thats meant for the night table. The device isn’t out yet and won’t be out for at least a couple of months but the creators have promised it should cost under $200. You can check out the Chumby website for more details. [Link]

For now though if anyone is interested in an incredibly good deal on an internet appliance I would have to recommend the Audrey by 3Com. You can find them on eBay for under $50 and they look great and are perfect for the living room, kitchen or even the bathroom. You can check your email on it, browse the web and even use it as an organizer. I have one in my living room and it comes handy for checking the latest weather or headline news whenever my laptop isn’t around. Just go to ebay and do a search for “3Com Audrey”.

I hate Nokia. I really really REALLY hate Nokia. I think I have hated Nokia ever since my first Nokia, the 2110. Back then I couldn’t understand how Nokia could have released something as large and bulky as the 2110 when Ericsson had the tiny 337. But, I just got a Nokia and guess what? I love it.

I needed a phone with Wifi and I needed a phone with a QWERTY keyboard. With my previous phone, the Sony Ericsson K800i, I could check my Gmail account using the Google Mobile app for example which was cool, but replying back to emails was a long painful experience. There also wasn’t much more I could do when it came to Internet connectivity.

With the E61i, I have a full keyboard, Wifi, a large wide screen and it works with Blackberry. Since its also based on the Symbian OS there are a ton of cool software available my favorite being Fring, a software that allows me to connect to Skype and call people internationally from my Nokia at cheap Skype rates. It basically renders my IPEVO Skype phone useless. Browsing the web is a lot more convenient with the large screen and QWERTY key pad.

On the downside the phone is pretty wide which I am still trying to get used to. The keypad is also pretty packed with both Arabic and English letters so I placed an order for an only English keypad. I think these two are the only problems I have with the phone so far. Battery life is incredible, typing on the keyboard is enjoyable, the included web browser displays pages accurately (no flash though), and the price, the price is a steal. I got the phone for only KD120 but a member in the forum mentioned I could have gotten it for as cheap as KD115. For the amount of features packed into this device (it also has a camera), the phone is extremely well priced. I love it.

Picture of the phone above is by tekgik, he also has a lot more good shots so check them out. [Link]

I am a big fan of the chocolate cheesecake from Lorenzo but today I decided I am not going to have it anymore. I was at The Avenues killing time and on my way out I decided to pick up some cheesecake from Lorenzino Cafe so I could have them at home. It wasn’t my first time, its become a habit for me every time I visit The Avenues.

Today though there was a new manager there and he was a total dick. I went up to the counter and the manager came up to me, I told him I needed cake to go. He was like full cake or slices? I told him I needed two slices. He told me he wouldn’t be able to do that. I was like huh? Why? He told me he didn’t have any staff to action my order. I was like you have that guy (I pointed to one) putting cake on a plate, can’t he also put cake in a box? He told me no he couldn’t. I stood there for a few seconds bewildered before I decided to walk away.

I thought about getting into an argument with the manager because what he was saying didn’t make any sense but then I was like fuck it, its there loss if they don’t want to sell me cake. I should have gotten his name though so I could make an official complaint but I didn’t. All I remember was that he was Lebanese and had a shaved head.

I think this was one of my worst customer service experiences because it was such an avoidable incident. Usually I complain without offering a solution but today I decided I would.

What the manager should have done was the following:

a) Action the order himself which is what I would have done. At work when something needs to go out urgently in my department and there isn’t anyone to action the job then I would do it myself. Last Friday when Lorenzino was MUCH more packed, the manager (a different one) gave us the slices of cake himself. Its not brain surgery, its just taking cake from the fridge and placing them in boxes.

b) If he was too lazy to give us the cakes himself he could have at least told us that we could have the cakes but it would just take a bit longer then usual because they were really busy. Or maybe told us to come back in 15 minutes.

Anyway, I don’t need their cheesecake and I don’t need Lorenzo. If anything I am better off now since cheesecake is fattening.