Category: Personal

I got back from Lebanon yesterday night. My flight arrived at around 11:30PM which was around the same time Star Academy Prime was on LBC. I wanted to watch it to see if we made it on the program since they were going to talk about the making of the MTC commercial. According to k.thekuwaiti I did make it on the program but only for around 4 seconds and I was like in the background behind Shada. Not bad considering I was the only one from my agency that actually made the final cut and appeared on the show.

I am currently in a studio up in the mountains where they are working on the color grading of the MTC Atheer commercial. Yesterday after the commercial shoot they dropped the films here where they were developed and converted to video, a process called telecine. Now we are working on the color grading of the video which is the process of altering or enhancing the colors of the video. When you pull the video off the film its in very raw form and needs to be color graded before use. The commercial director and director of photography are both present for this process.

I have a few pictures and a short video I want to post hopefully today from yesterdays shoot but I am waiting to get permission from LBC. Once I do I will put them up.

Today I had the MTC Atheer commercial shoot with Ilham Al Madfai and Shada from Star Academy. I woke up at 7AM and was on the set by 8. The whole shoot took place in an old house/museum here in Lebanon and it was a really beautiful location. The shoot started at 8:30AM and ended 16 hours later at 12:30AM. It was extremely exhausting with only 1 short break for lunch.

Its now 2:15AM and I just got back to the hotel room. I am posting three pictures from todays shoot for now but will try to post more pictures tomorrow with more details.

We were done with the music recording at around 7PM and so I came back to my friends place where we played some Nintendo Wii. I think I am over the Wii, its not as fun as I imagined it to be and its really exhausting to play. When I pick up a joystick to play a video game its because I want to relax and chill out in front of the TV. The Wii on the other hand demands physical effort which I really don’t want to give. I think I am going to get the Xbox 360 instead. Forza Motorsport 2 is coming out in May and thats all I really need, oh and an NHL game.

I just got to the recording studio awhile ago, they have wifi here which is pretty cool. I am in Lebanon on an MTC Atheer (Iraq) commercial shoot involving Shada from Star Academy and Ilham Al Madfai. Currently Shada is inside recording and we are just waiting outside until she is done. This studio is really huge, so huge they actually have their own restaurant inside.

Today we are recording the soundtrack to the commercial but tomorrow we will be actually shooting it. The picture above is of the large set at this recording studio.

update: Ilham just arrived and said hi to everyone. He seems like a cool and down to earth guy.

I arrived to Lebanon I think around 1:30PM Lebanon time, left the airport and came straight to the hotel where I just lazed it out. Today is the only day where I can relax and do nothing so I am taking advantage of it. In a bit my brother is coming to pick me up and I will probably go have a drink and a bite to eat with him somewhere.

My rooms view is pretty sweet, I got the sea view this time around which is great. One thing I forgot to pack is a swimsuit, the hotel here has a roof top pool which overlooks Beirut, its an incredible view which makes swimming very tempting. Oh yeah, the weather here is like Kuwait… winter is over.

Best thing about this hotel is the location, its near the American University of Beirut which means there are a lot of things to do here when I have free time. By a lot of things I mostly mean food.

I need to go down to Beirut for a few days to shoot a commercial and I should be back Friday night. My flight leaves at noon so I have to pack everything tonight. I will have Internet access from my hotel room so I will continue to blog from there.

Just came back from my morning ride awhile ago and the new exhausts sound ridiculous! They are unbelievably good!! Its like a completely different bike, they are loud, mean and look much better then the stock ones. The whole bike feels lighter since the new carbon exhausts are much much lighter then the old aluminum ones. Anyway below I have pictures of the bike with the new exhausts and front fairing. If you want to see how the bike looked like before click [Here]

Today morning I got 24 cup cakes from Little Treats. The delivery guy came early in the morning to my office, I paid him and then hurried back to my desk so I could dig in. I spent the first 5 minutes just staring at the cupcakes, they were just so beautifully decorated I didn’t know if I should eat them or just look at them. Finally I opened up the package and tried the cupcakes.

The Little Treat cupcakes are much better then Juju’s. Everyone at my office who tried them gave the same comment “these are better then yesterdays”. Yesterday being Juju’s cupcakes. Other then the fact that the cupcakes are bigger and better decorated then Juju’s, they also taste better.

My biggest issue with Little Treats is the packaging. Its difficult to take out one cupcake without damaging the decoration on it or on the cupcakes adjacent to it. Other then that after trying both Juju’s and Little Treats cupcakes I have realized I prefer muffins over cupcakes and cookies over muffins.

If you are interested in Little Treats check out their website by clicking [Here]

Yesterday night Tristar came and picked up my bike so they could install my new slip-ons. While the bike was being put on the truck I realized I still haven’t come up with a name for the bike. So after some thinking I have decided to call my bike Starscream.

I heard a lot of stories about this sandwich and they were mostly horror stories but never the less I wanted to try it for myself. Awhile ago I ordered some food from Naif and one of the items was the infamous Puri Fillet. The Puri Fillet is fried chicken with cheese, lettuce and mayonnaise wrapped in puri bread. Puri is deep fried bread for those of you who don’t know.

So deep friend chicken plus deep fried bread and you get a three million calorie sandwich. Its so greasy its suicidal. I swear after I finished the sandwich I felt like I had doubled my weight.

The final score, 0 out of 5. This sandwich is for people who ride motorbikes wearing flip flops and no helmet.

Just finished watching the first season of Dexter and it was really cool. The best part has to be the fact that the main actor is Michael Hall who played the gay brother on my favorite TV show, Six Feet Under. In Dexter he plays a Miami police forensics expert during the day but at night he is a serial killer who goes around killing criminals who he believes have escaped justice. Its such an incredible and very strange show, I so can’t wait for the second season.

The other day I posted about how I took the roof off the Wrangler and how cats were coming in and napping inside. Well today I went down to the car to find a ton of fur on the back seat. Seems either two cats were fighting or humping in the back seat…

Over a year ago I got the Sennheiser PX100 headphones to replace my Shure E2s canal phones. The Shure’s although really great weren’t very practical for office use since putting them on was a hassle and at work I am always being interrupted which meant I had to keep taking them on and off. Thats when I decided to go with the PX100 headphones and the sound was really great but, I ran into problems. The PX100 were open air meaning they let sound in and they also let sound out. People around me could easily hear what I was listening to and I could hear them. This is why I researched for new closed headphones.

I found a nice bunch of headphones including the amazing the Beyerdynamic DT 990 which I was ready to get until I found out they had an impedance of 250ohms which meant I needed one heck of an amp to power them.. not very iPod friendly. After days of research on Headfi.org I realized the headphones for me were the Austrian designed AKG K81 headphones. They were closed air, had a good amount of bass and a very decent sound stage. They were also 32ohms which meant would run off my iPod very nicely and they were very affordable at $95.

I have been using the AKG’s for a few months now and I love them. They are very comfortable and the sound is superb. For the price I paid I don’t think I could have gotten anything better. I think they are the best headphones you could get for under $100. But, its not perfect. The headphones just barely fit me. I don’t have a large head but I am guessing Austrians have a small one because I have the headphones expanded to the max and they just barely fit. So if you have a big head I wouldn’t recommend the AKG. Final score is a 4 out of 5.

As you probably noticed I have a new sponsor, Al Ghalia Group who are based in Bahrain. This means I now have a total of 5 banners on my blog which I won’t deny is a lot. I have tried my best not to clutter up the blog too much with banners and this is honestly the best I can do.

Like you I would rather this blog had no banners at all but the banners are there for a reason… they provide me with extra income. I understand these banners decrease the aesthetics of the blog but the money is actually pushing me to continue blogging.

Blogging daily is difficult, its a lot of pressure and it takes time. I currently try to post a minimum of 3 posts a day so I could remain consistent. If I didn’t have the income coming in from the banners I might have stopped blogging ages ago or at least I would have stopped posting as often.

Now money usually is not a comfortable subject to discuss but this is a blog and I think its important for me to be as open as I can with my readers.

How much money am I making? Well I have decided to share with everyone a PDF file I send to people who request information on advertising on the blog. Its my rate card and you can download it by clicking [Here]. I wasn’t sure if I should make this information public or not but I figured if I was a reader I would be curious to know how much money this blog is making the same way I am curious to know how much money engadet or digg make. Well as you can see from the rate card this blog is currently making nearly $3000 a month. This is a good chunk of cash and I hope now everyone understands why I have so many banners here.

I have not sold out. Just because I am making money from the blog doesn’t mean I have sold out. All I am doing is cashing in on my 15 minutes of fame. When something sucks I will still say it sucks and when something is good I will still say its good.

Anyway it feels awkward sharing this information but I hope everyone especially my long time readers understand the reason for all these banners. Thank you!

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update: If anyone has any questions you can ask by leaving a comment below and I will reply to it.

One reader, Biohazard asked an important question which is Can I bash a sponsors product? The answer is simply no. When Alghanim Automotive were my sponsors I told them that if a cars they lent me to test drive sucked then I would post negative stuff about it. So what they did was just lend me their best cars. Now though what I do is tell my sponsors that if they lend me a product to try out and it turns out to suck I will just not mention the product at all. This way they aren’t afraid to send me more stuff to try out.

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update 2: I changed the location of the new banner because of complaints. If you prefer the new location over the previous one please leave a comment below. In case you missed it here is a screen shot of the previous location. [Screen Shot]