Category: Personal

The Wrangler is way cooler with the roof off and I wish I could keep it like this all year round. I have one problem though, it seems at night cats are coming and sleeping inside the car, I don’t know how to stop them from doing that. I mean I don’t mind them napping in the car but I am just worried they are going to pee in it or something.

Here are some movies I watched the past few days, I didn’t like any of them.

Blood Diamond
This was a movie I had been looking forward to see for some time now. When I finally got to watch it, I didn’t like it and it was mostly because of the story. The movie is trying to be real and emotional by showing the truth behind the illegal diamond industry in Africa and while all I wanted to watch was a no brainer action movie.

Little Children
Another movie I had been looking forward to see for a very long time. Sadly the trailer painted a different picture from the actual movie. Not that the movie was bad because it wasn’t. The trailer made me expect a thriller but the movie turned out to be more drama mixed in with romance.

Lonely Hearts
I watched this movie because of James Gandolfini. Since the new season of Sopranos still hasn’t started I figured I could get my dose of mob stories from Lonely Hearts. Turns out this movie had nothing to do with mobs and James Gandolfini was actually a good guy. I still gave the movie a chance but it was just boring. The whole movie is about this serial killer which might have been something dramatic back in the 1940s where the movie is based but today with shows like CSI and Dexter, serial killers is something of the norm.

Babel
Finally Babel. This movie has to be the worst of the bunch. Its trying to follow the same style as last years big hit Crash where stories come together but this time there are 4 different stories located across 3 different countries. The stories alone are nothing exciting and even in the end when they all come together it didn’t do anything for me. Crash was a whole lot better.

Now I have one more movie I want to watch today and thats Little Miss Sunshine. Hopefully it won’t be disappointing.

Unlike Kuwaitism, I don’t have work today.

Usually while watching TV my dog comes over with a tennis ball wanting me to play fetch with him. I usually throw the ball for him a bit until it starts getting really wet and then I start pushing him away. Recently I noticed he stopped coming to me to play fetch. Turns out he found another way to get entertained and it didn’t require him coming over and begging me to play with him..

What he has been doing is taking the tennis ball and going over to the edge of the stairs (I live in a duplex) and letting the ball fall down the stairs. He stands watching it fall down then once it hits the bottom he runs down, picks up the ball and goes back to the top to start all over again. Its amazing how little it takes to entertain him.

Today morning I went riding with Marzouq on the Gulf Road. The weather is great so I am trying to take advantage of it as much as I can. Other then riding my bike I am going to be taking the roof off of my Wrangler (after National Day due to foam season) and I will also be going out riding.. on my bicycle. I haven’t ridden my bike since early last year way before I got my motorbike so I figured I would start again now since the weather is good again.

I went to Ace Hardware, picked up an electric air pump and came back home to pump some air into my bicycles tires. After filling it with air I decided I would take it for a small spin around my parking lot just to see how it felt.

It felt incredibly strange. Because I now ride a motorbike, riding my bicycle just feels completely way off. The seat is uncomfortably hard, the bicycle is super light, the riding position is different and the strangest thing of all.. I have to actually PEDAL! After taking the bicycle for a few spins up and down the floors of my buildings underground parking I was exhausted and had a headache. I couldn’t even ride properly! Since my motorbike weighs around 170KG and my bicycle like 12KG I was literally throwing it around turns.

Tomorrow I am going to try riding my bicycle around Salmiya, if it turns out to be a crappy experience like today I will probably end up selling it. The whole point of the bicycle was to go urban exploring but now since I have a motorbike license I can just go get myself a dirt bike.

So its this time of year again when Kuwait turns into one large foam party. I don’t mind it if some of the kids weren’t like REALLY into it.

Tonight I was waiting in traffic and some kids passed by and asked if they could spray my car. My window was closed so I figured what the hell let them have some fun. The kids started foaming my car but then one faggot starts spraying my front windshield and then lifts up my wipers. Right then the traffic light turned green and I started to drive off blindly, I turned on my wipers and it was useless and the water was barely having an effect. Finally I had to stop my car in the middle of the Gulf Road and get out to put the wipers back down because I literally couldn’t see anything in front of me.

I mean come on what the fuck? I was nice enough to let you foam my car so why the hell are you trying to kill me? This is the problem with foaming, some people really abuse it.

I watched The Prestige yesterday night at Marzouqs place. It was a really really good movie specially when compared to The Illusionist. The movie is over 2 hours long but its one of those movies you just wished it was even longer.

The Prestige Vs The Illusionist and Christian Bale Vs Edward Norton. No contest here because The Prestige has a much better storyline with an interesting although controversial twist at the end in addition Christian Bale’s character is more exciting. Even the other supporting actors like Hugh Jackman and Michael Caine were performing at their best. But really its the story, the idea behind The Prestige that set this movie apart from The Illusionist. The problem with The Illusionist is that very little happened and there was very little magic. The Prestige on the other hand is full of events and you get to see a ton of magic tricks and best of all they even show you how they were made, something The Illusionist was lacking.

The main plot deals with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman who are both magicians. Early in the movie an event takes place which results in the two hating each other. The whole movie is about them competing against each other.

For the final score I would give it a 4.5 out of 5. Without spoiling the movie for anyone who hasn’t watched it, the reason it didn’t get a full 5 out of 5 was because of the ending, it just wasn’t as real as the rest of the movie.

Oh and fuck Thomas Edison!

Pan’s Labyrinth (Movie)
I didn’t like it, it bored me and was uneventful.

Harsh Times (Movie)
I hated Christian Bale in this movie a lot and thats why I loved this movie. He is such an amazing actor, so real that the whole movie I thought he was such a dickhead.

Casino Royale (Movie)
He barely had a cool car for 3 seconds, there was no car chase, no secret gadgets tucked up his sleeves, he still drinks martini and there was no nudity. Yawn.

What Dreams May Come (Movie)
Super boring.

Heroes (TV Show)
Really amazing, lots of characters and things happening. My second favorite show at the moment.

Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (TV Show)
Not to be mistaken with Ramsay’s Hells Kitchen, Kitchen Nightmares is a much more exciting show. I really love it, its my favorite show at the moment although I think I have watched all the episodes available.

Lost Season 3 (TV Show)
Extremely boring. The shows viewership in the US has also dropped by half. Hopefully they take this as a sign and kill the show.

Grey’s Anatomy Season 3 (TV Show)
Still fun to watch, things are actually happening on the show unlike Lost.

Prison Break Season 2 (TV Show)
Biggest surprise of the year. I thought once they escaped show would get boring but its one of the most exciting shows this year, they really did a good job with the story.

24 Season 6 (TV Show)
Un-Fucking-Believable.

Seems I pissed someone off at Brainstorm the architecture firm because I said they made a mess of the new Bazaar website (they designed it). Here are two comments left by them on my blog today:

HIHI what is going on… I believe a blog for most of all should be nautral and independant. Or you can call it 248complainingandbitching…

I just checked out the Bazaar site and I think it is very coool and I cant wait to see the readable issue on site.. Because how irritating is it when Starbucks is out of copies. Now what is wrong for an arcitecture firm who also have a grapich department, doing his site….? Honestly we are all designers with new ideas.. and yours are highly appreciated, but stop using your own tast as an agenda.. The site is still under development, so give it some time and you will see. Go and bitch at others magazines who are copying Bazaar big time. That is a crime!!!!

I do not agree that Bloggers are nerds, but I do think that what Bazaar did was right, because it is the freedom of speach. And if that pisses you off so much Mark, why do you bitch and complain about others all the time. We all read your blog and we do like it, but try to be grown up enough to take some criticism and turn it in to something. If there was not a hint of truth to it, you would not react so harsh… I guess all doze long days infront of the computer are getting to you.. you should do some outdoor sport other than walking your dog…and driving your bike.. And leave Bazaar alone , he is older than you by 10 years…

Bazaar Magazine have a new website (finally no more hotmail emails) which you can access by going to bazaar-magazine.com. Sadly the WHOLE site is flash based which is a disaster. Who still does a fully flashed based website nowadays yet alone a magazine?

As K.thekuwaiti put it, Flash is dead. Bazaar should have done a proper online magazine which would archive all their articles so they could at least be search able. They need to start building a database of all their previous issues and their current ones because old fashioned print magazines are quickly becoming extinct. Digital is the future and a perfect example of an excellent magazines online presence is WIRED.

Finally, where is the Bazaar blog? Majority of companies and corporations are adding blogs to their website so its surprising to see that a popular, young and trendy publication like Bazaar still hasn’t jumped on board the blogging wagon knowing for a fact that the editor of the magazine and majority of their writers read blogs themselves.

Currently the website barely has anything to make it worthy of a second visit. Unless they revamp it I don’t think I would ever bother checking it again. [Link]

Today the weather started off perfect. In the morning I went riding with Marzouq on my bike and then in the afternoon drove around in the SLK with the roof down. Its a lot of fun driving around in a roadster convertible, so fun that I didn’t want to even park the car somewhere so I could take shots for the blog.

I was cruising on the Gulf Road with Nat by my side when I spotted k.thekuwaitis car on the other side of the road heading the opposite way. He then called me up and we decided to meet up on the side of the road. Thats when I took the camera out to take shots of the car or else I would have kept on driving.

The SLK although having the small 1.8 liter engine doesn’t feel too slow on the road. The acceleration feels fast and I thought the car was actually faster then my beemer but to my surprise when I checked the stats online turns out the SLK actually is 1.1 seconds slower from 0-100. I guess with the roof down and the sound of the engine blasting it exaggerates the impression of speed.

So far I am really enjoying the car. Its both compact and a convertible so its a lot of fun. Best thing of course is the hard top. Once the weather got really dusty it took a click of a button to put the top back up and just like that its not a convertible anymore, it was a coupe with a hard roof.

Today afternoon I went picked up a red Mercedes SLK from the dealer so I could review it over the weekend. Originally I was supposed to get the G55 but it was out with a potential buyer so I got the SLK instead. Which by the way isn’t a disappointment at all since the weather is perfect for a convertible.

I have had a crush on the SLK for a long time now but the original one, the first model that came out was a bit girlish while the new model looks more aggressive. They gave me the SLK200 which is the low end version of the car meaning no power seats, no navigation and the smallest engine but all that really doesn’t matter when flying down the Gulf Road with the roof down.

The first thing I did once I drove out of the dealers lot was to bring down the hard top with a click of a button. My Wrangler needs like 15 minutes and 2 people to be able to remove the roof and here I was sitting in my car and with a flick of a switch, 30 seconds later the roof was off. How I love technology. I am extremely disappointed that BMW still use soft tops which I really hate.

The color of the SLK is red which matches my Ducati nicely. It was dark by the time I picked up the car so I couldn’t take any decent pictures so I will take better ones tomorrow. While at the dealer waiting to pick up the car I spotted an SLR on display. I was surprised they were displaying it since I thought you needed to order the car. The price is KD150,000 which the dealer assured me is a good deal since it was previously priced at KD165,000. Thats still a bit over my budget.

The internets are internet is boring today.

note: originally had it as “the internets” but didn’t think anyone would get it

Took a day off work to enjoy chocolate day. Today is the chocolate event at Hilton and I am going to leave in a few minutes for the 12:00 lunch. 12PM, thats brunch or lunch? Anyway it should be fun, will try to take some pictures.

Oh and I got a call a few minutes ago from U Shop We Ship. My package which shipped on February 9th (another harddrive) from the US arrived to Kuwait today. Thats just crazy. I placed the order for my harddrive from Amazon on the 8th, the package then shipped and arrived to my USWS mailbox on the 9th, then it shipped from my US mailbox on the 9th and now the package is here in Kuwait by the 11th. I don’t think it could get faster then this.

A while back I posted about a good web space provider and today I decide d I would post about a good domain name provider. Although most hosts nowadays provide you with a free domain once you sign up, I for example have around 30 domains for a whole bunch of various sites of mine so I need a good domain provider where I could manage my domains and not pay an arm and a leg every time a domain renewal comes up.

For the longest time I had been using Directnic for my domain management and purchases. I started using them back in 2000 when they first launched. They were one of the first companies to offer domains for only $15 a year (before that domains cost a lot more). I never had any kind of problem with them but they also never really expanded their services. Six years later there are now many other sites that offer domains for much cheaper then $15 a year and with more features, so I decided to find another domain manager.

My first two options that came up were Joker.com and GoDaddy.com. For some reason I always had a negative impression about Joker plus they sell domains at 12$ a year while GoDaddy is $9 a year, so I went with GoDaddy. After transferring one domain name to them I realized GoDaddy really sucked. Their domain management interface was just awful and unintuitive. Not only that but whatever you wanted to do, buy a new domain name, transfer an old domain name, whatever you want to do they always seem to be trying to sell you stuff. I really hated how pushy they were.

I hated my experience with GoDaddy and I had only one domain there, I started looking for another domain provider and I found NameCheap. I have now been using NameCheap for a few months and I have transferred nearly all my domains there. The interface is fast, simple and practical to use. Their prices are also cheap, they sell domains for $8.88 and they have had this offer now for a couple of months where if you register or transfer a domain name they give you WhoisGuard for free. WhoisGuard keeps your domains anonymous which is pretty handy.

My experience with Directnic was great and I never had any bad experience with them. Customer service was always prompt and helpful but in the end of the day they weren’t offering me much for my money. The WhoisGuard option isn’t even available with them. GoDaddy was just a total diaster and I would never recommend them to anyone. NameCheap is now my new domain manager and I really like them a lot. I haven’t contacted customer service yet about any issues so I don’t know if that department is any good but everything else has just been working out flawlessly and the site is the quickest of the bunch to load. I would definitely recommend them.