Category: Personal

It’s 6:15AM and I am getting ready to leave my house. Everything is packed just need to shutdown my computer. Will try to post from Lebanon, it might mostly be pictures will see.

I spent all day today getting some paperwork done. First I went in the morning to get my motorbike driving license. I passed the test like 2 weeks ago but I never got around to exchanging my learners permit for the actual license. When I got to the place in Jabriya it turned out I had a lot of papers missing, so I had to go back home, get the papers and drive back to Jabriya. The whole process took over 2 hours but I now have my motorbike license.

One thing I found strange is I now have to separate driving licenses, one for riding and one for driving. The new redesigned license has icons in the back for riding, truck driving, car driving etc.. and they mark under each what you are qualified to operate. I figured they would print me out a new card stating I can drive a car and ride a motorbike but instead they printed me a card that says that I can ride a motorbike. Now I have two licenses which are exactly the same except for the little marking in the back. It would have been more practical to just combine the two in one card.. weird why they don’t do that.

Later in the afternoon I had to go to this other place in Shuwaikh to transfer my car into my name. I just finished paying the installments for it and I had to meet a mandoob (the person who does the paperwork) there to transfer the car in my name. That operation also took 2 hours. It would have finished a lot sooner if the employees actually came to work on time. My mandoob had to wait 45 minutes in line waiting for the employee to come in. When the employee finally arrived the line was super long but he didn’t seem to care, he sat down, ordered his tea, spoke to his friend on the phone and THEN started signing the papers. Mandoobs have a lot of patience.

So now I am home, my flight to Lebanon leaves early tomorrow morning so I am packing my bag. We are going for 6 days but Nat is taking practically all her winter and summer clothes. Whenever I say anything about it she yells at me telling me girls are not like guys and she can’t just take just 2 t-shirts and a jeans. “She has to be prepared for any scenario”.

Anyway, I am checking the site statistics and I might hit 100,000 unique users for this month by tonight. Thats 5 days ahead of schedule, pretty cool.

note: thats not my real date of birth in the picture, its their own creation.

Since no one ever agrees to buy me toys for Christmas I end up having to buy them for myself. This year I bought myself a radio controlled car and a Lego Technic set.

I was parking my car outside Sultan Center in Salmiya when I first spotted this place. Its located in the backside area near the clinic and because of the name I felt I had to try their shawermas.

After I was done shopping I put the bags in the trunk of my car and walked over to Shoo? Shawerma to order some food. I ordered two chicken shawermas with no pickles and a coke. Total price? 800fils. I was like “fuckin A” this must be some seriously good shawerma if they are charging 350 a piece for it. So, I picked up my two shawermas and headed to the car where I started eating them.

After my first bite I turned around and told Nat this was a 2.5, but the more I ate it the more I hated it. The shawerma was really bad, like really bad. It tasted really greasy and the garlic flavor was no where to be found so there was nothing to cover up the god awful taste of the chicken. It was so bad that once I was done with my first shawerma I threw the second one away. I had NEVER done that before!

Now if this was any ordinary crappy place selling shawermas for 200fils then I might expect something this bad, but 350fils for a shawerma, thats the big league, fuck that, thats the super league. Most top scoring shawerma places charge 300 fils for a shawerma and this joint was charging 350 for the worst shawermas I have ever had. Even the Pepsi can was the small 250ml one, who still sells these, even Bader Al Badoor sells the 330ml Coke cans!

So super high price, small Pepsi can, and most importantly the worst shawerma I have ever experienced in my life earned this place half a star out of a possible five. It only got that half star because if I was stuck in the desert with no food except for their shawerma then I would consider eating it.

Can’t believe I started my vacation by getting sick. Sucks.

Got up at 9, gave Marzouq a call and woke him up. We decided to meet at Marina Crescent at 9:45. I got dressed and left the house at 9:15 and to kill time I rode all the way to the end of the Gulf Road passed Kuwait City and then came back down Marina Crescent to wait for Marzouk.

Once he came he was like we are going to Hilton in Mangaf. I was like sounds cool and we headed out. After a quick stop for gas we hit the Fahaheel expressway. It was my first time on a highway so I was pretty excited.

The roads were practically empty and the weather was just amazing. Since the expressway is just a long straight line I opened up the throttle to see how fast I could go. I hit 170KM/h before I decided to go back down to the our cruising speed of 140KM/h. The bike could easily have flown past 170, I was only in 4th gear (out of 6) and the more throttle I gave it the more the bike would pull away. In the end I decided to throttle down because the wind resistance was just too much. The speed cameras all didn’t seem to be working today. I tried to get one to fire (no front license plate on bikes) but none wanted to go off.

After getting to Hilton we decided to head back to Marina and have breakfast. The road back was pretty quick and when we finally got to Marina it was a lot more packed. We parked our bikes and had breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien. First thing we ordered was hot chocolate to warm us up a bit. That was quickly followed by a bread basket and omelets.

It was 12PM by the time I got home.I am off work now for 2 weeks starting tomorrow so I think I will be riding every morning. Its really a lot of fun.

Picture by Marzouq

Yesterday I got an Ericsson 388 and today I started using it as my primary phone. I have been getting a lot of ooooooohs and ahhhhhhhs everytime someone sees the phone. Everyone owned one and everyone seemed to have positive things to say about the phone and good memories to go along with it. The phone simply rocks.

Now the bad thing. The battery isn’t as good as I thought it was. On standbye the phone lasts long but after 4 or 5 phone calls the phone beeps with a “Low Battery” warning and the happy green blinking LED on the top of the phone turns red. To solve it I just remove the battery, shake it and then place it back again. Suddenly my battery is full again until the next phone call.

Other then that though the phone is just fantastic. I have an extra battery with me which I think I will charge now. This way when one dies I just swap in the other.

I posted before that my favorite phone I ever owned was an Ericsson 337 and 388. They both looked the same except the biggest difference was that the 337 had a metal front cover while the 388 had a plastic one. Also the 388 allowed me to send SMS while with the 337 I could only accept.

Anyway thanks to Jens a blog reader I now have in my possession an excellent condition Ericsson 388 with a perfectly working battery and home charger. Its gorgeous. Back when I had it the phone looked really tiny since its main competitor back then was the bulky Nokia 2110. Now the phone looks big compared to current phones. I still love the way the phone looks like and I love the green back light and the blinking green light on top of the phone telling me I have signal. Its all very retro.

The phone does lack some things. It doesn’t have a camera, no bluetooth, no infrared, no mp3 ringtones, no colored screen and no 3G. But I can make and receive phone calls and I can also send and receive SMS.

The Ericsson 388 is replacing my Motorola V3x which I have been hating more and more every day. Now I need to go and enter all my phone numbers manually into my phone. Its going to be a long night.

Note: To access the 388 service menu press right then * then left left * and left * one more time.

Its Friday morning and I just got to work. Its been one hectic week. Actually its only 11AM and its already been a busy day. Nat went off in the morning riding with some Harley bikers. She will be posting about it later today plus she has some really cool pictures.

I also took Geo to the Marina Crescent beach. He spent the whole time jumping into the sea and me yelling at him to get out. Now I am at work, I rode in on my bike which was fun.

Its going to be a busy busy day.

Just booked a flight for me and Nat to Beirut. Will be leaving on the 27th and coming back January 1st. I booked with Jazeera Airways and was expecting not to find any places but it seems the current political situation in Lebanon has led to a lot of cancellations. Last time I celebrated New Years in Lebanon was in 2000 so it should be fun.

So I am coming back home after work on the Gulf Road and I notice there was a huge fire behind Texas Chicken. So made a detour, passed Texas Chicken and parked my car just as the fire truck was arriving. I take my camera, locked the car and walked towards the fire. The fire looked huge and still fresh so I turn on my camera to shoot and turns out I had no battery! This was the first time I ever ran out of battery when I needed to shoot something. I felt naked.

I love Montreal. Its my favorite place on the planet. Since Christmas is nonexistent in Kuwait and since Nat has never been anywhere other then Lebanon and Kuwait I figured we would spend Christmas and New Years in Montreal. I was looking forward to binging on Labatt Blue while stuffing myself with poutine. Nat on the other hand was looking forward to the Tiesto concert on New Years night. We had everything planned and ready, only thing missing was Nats visa to Canada. I don’t need a visa because I have the Canadian citizenship.

Around a week ago we sent Nats passport and all the forms and papers needed to the Canadian Embassy in Abu Dhabi (local embassy don’t do visas). Visa costs like KD18 while DHL with a return airway bill costs KD55. So thats KD73 for a one time entry visa.

Today Nat got her passport back and guess what? They refused to give her a visa! Their reason was the following:

You have not satisfied me that you meet the requirements of Regulation 179; that you would leave Canada at the end of the temporary period if you were authorized to enter. In reaching this decision I considered your ties to your country of residence/citzenship balanced against factors which might motivate you to stay in Canada.

In summary, they think Nat will basically go to Canada, tear up her passport and request asylum. How did they come up with this conclusion? Its because she is Lebanese. How much more discriminating can they be? No one called her to talk to her, no one called her in for an interview, they didn’t even care that her husband is a Canadian.

I am extremely pissed off now because it basically means I can no longer go to Canada unless I am alone, which isn’t going to happen as long as I am married. Tomorrow I will be calling up the embassy and giving someone there a piece of my mind. No way am I gonna accept the fact that some stranger all the way in the UAE is going to ruin my Christmas!

What I realized today (its probably a generalization but still) is that before the invasion the people who came to work in Kuwait liked living in Kuwait. Today most of the people who come to work in Kuwait really don’t like living here.

After going to sleep early last night I woke up around 9AM today and decided I would go out for a ride. By 9:30 I was downstairs in full gear warming up my bike. Today I even put on my Alpinestars Knee Guard which I should have worn the day I had my crash because it would have saved my knee from getting road rash. Its kind of bulky but its not about the looks, its about the protection. One thing I forgot to do with all my excitement was brush my teeth which was a big mistake because I ended up spending the whole ride smelling my Friday morning breath inside the helmet.

I had 3 rules for my ride today:
(1) Keep off the Gulf Road
(2) On traffic lights, go straight or right but not left (since I had my accident while going left)
(3) Stay clear of roundabouts

Well I broke one of the rules. I ended up going out onto the Gulf Road but just for a tiny bit. My bikes gas light came on and I figured I might as well fill it up with gas, something I hadn’t done before. But before I got onto the Gulf Road I rode into the AUK parking lot and decided to do some riding exercises which involved lots of driving around in circles and braking and accelerating. Once I felt comfortable with the bike I rode out of the parking lot and headed towards the Gulf Road. I ended up going to the gas station opposite Pizza Hut. I was hoping I would find some of that ultra super high octane gas (the green one) but turned out they only had the regular and super versions. It was my first time filling up gas in my bike and I felt awkward. First I didn’t know how to open the gas gasket, the key wasn’t turning in the gasket lock so I called up Marzouq who told me I needed to push the key in and turn which worked. Second I didn’t know how much gas the bike would take but I kept filling it slowly until I could see the gas line in the tank. I filled up 550fils worth of super gas and rode back out onto the Gulf Road and then back into Salmiya.

In total today I rode for around an hour and a half. I would have stayed out longer but my wrist started hurting so I had to come back home. The weather was amazing and I spent most of my ride riding with the helmet visor open so that the wind blew in onto my face . I really had a lot of fun, can’t wait for my next ride.

I just came back from a short ride on my Ducati. It was my first time back out on the public roads since my crash 2 months ago. I was kind of nervous which is natural but not afraid which is a very good thing especially after a crash. I rode in Salmiya in the area around my building but there was a bit more traffic then I thought there would be. For my first ride I think I did fine.

Before I rode out on the streets I rode my bike a bit in my buildings underground parking. I did some 8’s with the bike and also some braking and moving, braking and moving. I still need to get the hang of my bike.

My wrist by the way still hasn’t heeled healed. I passed by Razzi Hospital two days ago and they told me I had a torn ligament in my wrist and still needed two months to heel heal. They told me I should rest my wrist for these two months and I shouldn’t ride the bike. Thing is in Kuwait there are only like two months of the year where you can actually ride the bike so I am not going to waste them giving my wrist a rest.

I am going to do a bit of riding everyday, small sessions not to kill my wrist but also just enough to get me the hang of the bike and give me some practice before I decide to go back out onto the main road again. Can’t believe I am riding again, it feels amazing..