Category: Personal

Lots of Red Bull, street racing, a police chase and a group photo with an iPhone.

Was just browsing when I fell upon some illustrations done by a French girl called Anne-Julie Aubry. I love her style and I just emailed her asking if she had any paintings for sale. The illustration above is called “The Fall”. [Link]

I have gotten a few emails from a few people who were wondering how Geo (my dog) is doing and how come I haven’t been posting about him.

Well Geo is fine, he is around a year and a half old now. He is still extremely playful and hyper and is still on the BARF diet. The reason I haven’t been posting much about him is because not many people are interested in reading about another persons dog.

I do want another dog though and it would have to be either a Saint Bernard or an Irish Wolfhound. Problem is I need a backyard with a garden which I currently don’t have meaning no second dog for now…

I’ve been having a ton of fun with this at the office,
its the best bang for the buck.

I haven’t had Internet since yesterday morning and it sucked! Last week I upgraded my connection with Qualitynet and I was on 2MB downstram and 512KB upstream set up. It was a very fast connection but it kept getting disconnected.

Well it seems the problem lies with my phone line. According to an engineer who called me up from Qualitynet, my line can handle something around 2.4MB down but only 288KB up so he had to downgrade my account down to 256kb up and 640kb down. It sucks since I got used to the 2MB connection but at least my connection is stable now. Tomorrow they are sending someone over to check the lines in my building and see if there is a way to solve it. I hope there is.

Baskin Robbins have a new milkshake called the Crunchy Shake. What makes it different from the regular shakes is that they blend a waffle cone with it so that while you are sipping your drink you get to taste the tiny bits of waffles. In theory it sounds good but my experience wasn’t.

First you get to choose three different flavors of ice cream for your shake. That is the fun part since you have a large variety to choose from but I went with the safe route and just chose chocolate mousse for my drink. The employee then took my scoops, dropped them into a blender with milk and a large waffle cone and then turned it on.

The flavor of the drink wasn’t that bad, the waffle cone bits actually do make a difference. The problem I had with my drink was that it was too liquidi, it was as if the employee put too much milk and not enough ice cream. That ruined the shake for me and after drinking half of the cup it just became really gross. I don’t know if this is how the shake was meant to be but I didn’t like it. Final score is a 2 out of 5.

I forgot to mention this last week but I now have two day weekends! Fridays and Saturdays are now officially off for me. Everyone still stuck working 6 days a week, tough luck!

Last night I had dinner at the Al-Muhallab Seafood restaurant at The Palms hotel in Bida’a. Since it was a business dinner and I didn’t pay the bill, this isn’t going to be a full review meaning I won’t give it a score at the end.

The restaurant is located right at the back of Palms and I imagine during the day you could most probably see the sea. They tried to make the restaurant look Kuwaiti but I didn’t feel it. When you first come into the place you go through an old wooden door which leads you to believe you will be walking into an old Kuwaiti house but once you are in the place opens up into this large cold space and it just kills the mood. I found the place too bright and not very cozy. The place should have looked like Oum Habib but instead you are greeted with a high ceiling, and old Kuwaiti artifacts hung around the walls in very Fuddruckers and Chilis style.

Now on the other hand, the food was really delicious. We chose a couple of hamours, lobsters, crabs, shrimps and zbeydi and then had them grill it for us. When the food arrived the waiters cut up the fish and served them to us which made dinner more enjoyable. The grilled shrimps was my favorite followed closely by the hamour.

Its a pity the place wasn’t designed nicer, thats the biggest let down. Even though the food was good I doubt I would go back. For me the atmosphere of the restaurant is as important as the food, they compliment each other and in this case the food was much better then the restaurant.

You can check out the Al-Muhallab Seafood website by clicking [here]

In June I posted about how a group of us applied for the Red Bull Flugtag which is going to be held in November at Marina Waves. Well today we got word that our application and plane design got approved.

Our team is called Imperial27, in remembrance of Imperial Airways which was the first airline that flew in and out of Kuwait back in 1927. The team will be composed of lead pilot and magician Nibaq, accompanied by conspiring engineering extraordinaries Marzouq, Mark and K.

During lunch break we usually go out have lunch at Souk Sharq but every now and then we go do something like ice skating, rock climbing (Marina Waves) or bowling. Today we wanted to see if we could actually go, jet ski and come back to the office in under an hour. The result? It’s doable!

I first used Google Maps to find out what beaches near our office rented jet ski’s. I found two beaches on the map that looked like they had jet ski’s parked on the sand, the first was right next to Fridays (TGIF) and the second next to Le Notre. We decided to head to the one next to Firdays. At 1PM we left the office (we’re situated near Muthana complex), took the first ring road and headed out onto the Gulf Road. There wasn’t any traffic so we were there in under 10 minutes. We parked the car and headed towards the beach where we spotted the jet ski place with around 10 jet skis parked. Half an hour of jet ski is KD7.5 so we took two and headed out to the open sea.

The weather was amazing and the water was soooo refreshing. The whole experience was surreal especially since it all happened during our lunch break. We were able to go, jet ski, quickly clean up and get back to the office in 1 hour. This is definitely THE summer lunch break activity of the year. Easily beats ice skating. Next up… wakeboarding!

Tonight I passed by the recently opened Burger Bar in Kuwait City. I got there and found the two parking spots in front of the place empty so I parked my car and got down when the Holiday Inn security guard came up to me and told me I couldn’t park there. Since Burger Bar is located adjacent to Holiday Inn downtown, the security guard told me I wasn’t allowed to park in the two empty spots outside the restaurant. He told me I had to park across the street. I thought that was strange but wasn’t in the mood to argue and just went back into my car and parked on the other side.

The place from the outside looked like a Japanese restaurant and when I looked through the windows I saw what looked like Japanese waiters. I thought to myself this must be the wrong place, even Nataly was like “Mark this looks like a Japanese restaurant”. Once we walked around to the main entrance we saw the Burger Bar logo and realized we were at the right place. We walked through some dimly lit candles outside (very Japanese-ish) into the restaurant where we were greeted by waiters dressed in red silk clothing and black bandannas which again was very Japanese-ish. The place was empty except for one table with two men so we sat down wherever we wanted. We had two choices for seating, what looked like long benches or one of the booths, we chose the booth since it looked more comfortable. Our table was the smallest in the restaurant and I think it could easily fit 8 people. I don’t know if they were made for extremely overweight people or they believe that people eat in packs like hyenas but whatever their reason, it felt really awkward having the whole table for just me and Nat. The music that was playing was loud and guess what genre… it was country music. So, so far the place looked Japanese, had Japanese looking waitresses dressed in Japanese like clothing, playing country music and serving burgers. Pretty strange combination but I was like whatever, its “different”.

We got the menu and I decided to order the mozzarella fries for starters, the mushroom burger for my main course and a junior cheese burger for Nat (junior = slider). The waitress asked me what I wanted to drink and I told her Pepsi. She then replied saying they didn’t have Pepsi. I looked at her surprised thinking to myself what the hell, no soft drinks?? So I asked her what do you mean you don’t have Pepsi? She was like we don’t have Pepsi only Coca Cola. I was like god damn woman I thought you meant you didn’t have any soft drinks! Pepsi, Coke whatever its all the same.

The food arrived a while later and was fairly disappointing. The fries firstly weren’t that great, there was only a small portion of mozzarella over them and they weren’t even melted right. The burger had a strange flavor to it. The actual hamburger bun was great but the meat tasted like “kafta”? I am not sure what but it wasn’t very burgery.

Overall I wasn’t impressed. The mushroom burger was for KD2.500 and that was one of the cheapest burgers on the menu, the majority were around KD4 and KD5. The fries I believe were super expensive costing KD2.700 and they were sooo not worth it. Nats slider cost 750fils which is slightly more expensive then Burger Boutique which brings us to the question, is Burger Bar in the same league as Johnny Rockets and Burger Boutique? Hell no. Final score 2.5 out of 5. Although the Japanese Cowboy look is strange, the design of the place is still pretty cool. Other positives are lots of parking spaces across the street and the fact that you don’t have to call 4 years in advance to book a table is a plus. Food is lousy though but might be worth a visit just to check it out.

Yesterday I went to the movies with a bunch of friends including Marzouq, Nibaq and K.theKuwaiti. We went to the Al Fanar movie theater to watch Die Hard 4.0. After watching the movie I’ve realized that people will either love it or hate it, I am the later.

The movie is high budget so no where in it does it ever end up looking cheap or fake… except when it comes to the story. You can’t get a more 1990’s cliché styled plot then this one which is the main reason I think people will love it or not. If the movie was released in 1998 it might have been cool but today with great TV shows like 24 which are similar in idea (1 hero kills 2 million bad guys) the movie didn’t it cut it for me.

In fact I found the movie long and boring. It was over 2 hours long which is great if you’re watching an epic but an action movie? It should have easily been under an hour and a half thats for sure. Bruce Willis was great in the movie though. For some reason I’ve always wanted to see him in a movie matched up against Sylvester Stallone, the same way Al Pacino and Robert Deniro were matched up against each other in the movie Heat. Maybe they should have made Bruce Willis the bad guy in the upcoming Rambo 4. My favorite scenes in the movie were the ones that involved Kevin Smith since. they were funny and a change of pace from the rest of the movie, mind you it was Bruce Willis that made me laugh here more then Kevin Smith. Bruce Willis is like Will Smith when it comes to humor in the middle of an action movie. Since both were comedians before its easy for them to be serious through out the film playing a tough guy and then suddenly be funny without looking out of place. They are naturals and now that I think of it, maybe if Die Hard 4 wasn’t made to be taken seriously, and was more of an action/comedy it might have been more fun. Kinda like how Feast is a horror/comedy combo.

I personally didn’t like Die Hard 4.0 and don’t its worth going to the movies for. But, if you really want to go and watch something then just wait a few more days till Transformers gets released. I give this movie a 3 out of 5.

Today I had a flat tire AND a flat spare! The worst part though was trying to find four tires for my car. I went to the Canada Dry street and went to all the main dealers and they were mostly out of stock with the good stuff. In the end I managed to get the last two Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 available and I reserved two more that should arrive to Kuwait sometime in July. I reserved two tires, thats like the most ridiculous thing!

Blades of Glory
There wasn’t anything else better to watch at the movies so I watched this. It turned out to be cool and funny. Great cast, Will Arnett was the movie.

Ghost Rider
Sucked big time. I couldn’t even finish the movie because it was so bad. Big budget but B-rated acting and story. Nicolas Cage should have retired after Face/Off.

Wild Hogs
Its a cheesy family/children movie. I personally watched this movie because it starred William H. Macy but sadly he wasn’t at his best here. Some funny moments here and there but overall just cheesy humor.

Vacancy
The movie stars Luke Wilson who is incredibly funny, his last movie I watched, Idiocracy was hilarious so watching him being serious in this thriller was weird. The movie was fairly decent, its your everyday cliché slasher put together nicely.

Mr. Bean’s Holiday
I am a huge Mr. Bean fan but this movie was trash. It got so boring that I actually started forwarding the movie until I got to the good parts which was mostly near the end. The movie starts nicely and ends nicely but everything in the middle was just dull. It should have been a short sketch instead of a full length movie.

Perfect Stranger
I never paid attention to Halle Berry’s acting before, but after this movie I realized its not any good. She needs to act topless, thats the only way you won’t notice her acting. Bruce Willis was cool in the movie, he’s always been cool in his movies except in Hudson Hawk. Giovanni Ribisi wasn’t as annoying as he usually is. Sadly since the main star of the movie is Halle Berry, her acting skills killed it.

One of my favorite shows has ended and although the last episode wasn’t as dramatic as the Six Feet Under finale, it was still great. The last episode had a lot of memorable songs including the final one at the diner which I can’t seem to get out of my head. For a full list of songs that played during the last episode check out this post on Stereogum. [Link]

note: please don’t leave any spoilers in the comments below.