Category: Personal

My motorbike license test is on Wednesday so today I went to bike practice with Nat so I could train a bit before the exam. It was my first time back on the bike since my crash over a month ago. I wasn’t on the Ducati today, I was back on the Bajaj Pulsar. At first I was afraid I had forgotten how to ride but I managed to get a hold of things quicker then I had anticipated. My wrist is still killing me and it was hurting quite a bit while I was riding but its not that big a deal. I just want to pass my test and get the license and then I can give my wrist all the time it needs to heal. Can’t wait to get back on the Ducati and ride again.

After my post on hot dogs, Equalizer from Gastronomica recommended I try the following:

you seriously want the best hot dogs that u can prepare in 5 minutes?

Wrangler smoked hotdogs
Bun
Relish
Saurkraut
Brown Mustard
Ketchup (optional)
Chopped Onions

those are available in Sultan Center ready made except the chopped onions

Pan grill the hot dogs in butter. Place in bun wrap in paper towel and microwave for 30 seconds. Add condiments and enjoy!

So I went to Sultan Center, I couldn’t find Wrangler hot dogs but I found Eckrich Jumbo Franks. I also got brown mustard, hot dog buns and onions. I don’t like relish or saurkraut.

I tried to pan grill the hot dog in butter which I figured meant heat a pan, put some butter in it and then put the hot dogs. I think I messed up because I ended up burning the hot dogs nearly instantly.

Three hot dogs gone to waste but I still had more in the pack. I decided to play it safe. I ended up boiling water in a pot, then throwing in three more hot dogs, closed the cover and then removed the pot from the heat and left it for 9 minutes. When it was done I took the hot dogs, placed them in the buns and then put the mustard and onions on them.

The result? BORING! The hotdogs tasted average, the buns were dry, I think I put too much onions and maybe not enough mustard. In Conclusion… I am going to stick to eating hot dogs in restaurants because I can’t cook to save my life.

For some reason 2 nights ago I decided I would start running every night and today was my first run. I left my house around 11:30PM, 3 and a half minutes later I was out of breath and feeling all dizzy and disoriented. I knew I was out of shape but I didn’t know things were this bad. After taking like a 5 minute break I decided I would run back home. 2 minutes later I was taking another break. When I finally made it home my total running time without the breaks was 6 and a half minutes.

Last time I went running was 2 years ago and back then I could run for like 40 minutes. I wasn’t in the best of shape but compared to the state I am in now…

I got home 20 minutes ago and took a shower and I have yet to catch my breath. I am still breathing heavily and I am feeling kinda dizzy. I feel numb. At least my sneakers still work.

I hate it when I send an SMS and right as I click the send button I realize I am sending it to the wrong person. Whats worse is with my Motorola there is no way to abort the send. By the time I try to shut off the phone or remove the battery its already too late.

I live in Salmiya, Salam Mubarek Street. The “old” Salmiya. I live right on the main shopping street and have been living on this street for most of my life.

Pre 1990 I was living in the building that had A&W, after 1990 I moved to the building across the street from it and thats where I have been living ever since. As you can imagine, I know the street very well. How well?

I remember The New Super Market before it closed down, I remember when Dairy Queen was open here and then shut down and Jashanmal opened instead. I remember buying my Thermos metal lunch box with the Dukes of Hazzard picture on it from there. I remember the night A&W opened with Mister Donuts right next to it. I remember when Majda el Roumi the famous singer came to open a perfume store right across the street from my building. I remember Hungry Bunny, I remember how after they renovated a cookie store opened inside it which had the best chocolate chunk cookies ever. I also remember the sad day when that cookie area inside got closed down.

I remember the high end stores like Channel, Versace and Cartier. It was a high end street and Rolex and Mercedes are still open here today serving as a reminder to what was once a beautiful street. I remember when Kids R Us opened and I remember what was there before it opened and after it closed. I remember the most popular music stores of their time, Soul II Soul, Bells and Swan Lake. I remember buying my original copy of Windows 95 from Computer World, I remember the small video game store on the ground floor of the same building, he had a NeoGeo in the display and I used to watch the Samurai Showdown demo play while I gazed through the glass hoping to own the system one day. I got my first Swatch from Fay stationary, I remember getting my Peter and Jane books from Family Bookshop. Fay shutdown, Family Bookshop is surprisingly still open.

Well my Salmiya isn’t what it used to be. All the upper scale stores shut down and everyones attention moved up to the Sultan Center area. All thats left here are low end stores all selling the same shit. The whole street has turned into a garbage dump. The sidewalk tiles are damaged, the trees look unhealthy, and the worst thing of all, Salmiya is slowly slowly losing its soul.

I was taking a late night walk just a while ago and I noticed the building that housed Swan Lake was going to get demolished. Thats when I realized I need to do something.

Why do old buildings get demolished and not refurbished? Salmiya (and Kuwait even) would look so much nicer if the old buildings were just redone up. Look at what was done with Beirut. They could have demolished everything and sprung up modern glass buildings but instead they decided to keep Beirut’s soul intact. Why can’t that be done here? My Salmiya really has a lot of history, how many other shopping streets in Kuwait can even begin to compare. No other has sidewalks wider then here nor is any other street located in such a good location. No other street has as much history! The Swan Lake building has a style, it can be cleaned up, updated and reopened but instead its going to get demolished and replaced by a cheap ass low end tiny crappy wannabe mall.

I want to be elected as the mayor of Salmiya. I would clean it up, repaint it, re-tile it and revive it. I don’t know who the mayor is now (if there is even such a position here in Kuwait) but I do know that he can’t be a true Salmiya dweller or else he wouldn’t let it die and rot like this. Vote for me, I won’t let everyone down.

I went to pick up my cheque from Dent Xpress for the monthly banner and on my way out the owner gave me a black 80GB iPod video as a gift! It was a thank you gift because he got a lot of referrals from my site.

I am so giddy, although I have a black 60GB iPod video (which will now go to my younger brother) the new one is scratch free, has a larger hard-disk and a much better battery life. I think the battery life is the most important thing because watching videos drains a lot of battery.

One thing I found interesting was the back of the iPod was engraved with the Dent Xpress logo and phone numbers. I don’t think he did this on Apple.com because they can’t engrave logos. I need to find out where he got the iPod engraved because I could imagine a lot of people would be interested in customizing their ipods like this.

Anyway thank you Dent Xpress!

Seef Mall Vs Marina Mall
Winner: Marina Mall

Gulf Air Vs Kuwait Airways
Winner: Kuwait Airways

Heineken Vs No Alcoholic Budweiser
Winner: Heineken

Bahrain Airport Vs Kuwait Airport
Winner: Kuwait Airport

Bahrain Duty Free Vs Kuwait Duty Free
Winner: Bahrain Duty Free

Jashanmal Bookshop Vs Virgin Megastore
Winner: Jashanmal Bookshop

Ritz Carlton Vs Sheraton
Winner: Ritz Carlton

Johnny Rockets Bahrain Vs Johnny Rockets Kuwait
Winner: Johnny Rockets Kuwait

List might be updated through out the day

Watching Nip/Tuck, browsing the web and chatting with Nat on MSN.

Its just one shock after another here. I was expecting Bahrain Airport to be crap but guess what? They have a really nice Duty Free, I actually prefer it over Dubai’s. The departure area is also huge, and its really packed with people from all over the world. Its feels like an airport in Europe. Internet is also cheap here, 1 hour for 700 Kuwaiti fils. My flight is in an hour.

Coming to Bahrain has really depressed me. I have always felt this and I said this the last time when I went to Dubai. Consumers in Kuwait are treated like idiots.

Skyscrapers. In Bahrain they look more like the stuff you would see in Dubai, which is a good thing because they are very modern and futuristic looking. They aren’t rectangular blocks but more like creative spaces. In Kuwait our skyscrapers just look dull. Even places like Water Lemon, Johnny Rockets and Nino’s look wayy cooler in Bahrain. A lot of things seems better designed here.

We also seem to lack luxurious hotels. I briefly visited the Ritz Carlton Hotel here and there really isn’t any hotel in Kuwait I think that could match it when it comes to luxury.

Toys R Us. How is it Bahrain have a huge one and we have a crappy tiny one? How come we don’t have any toy store thats as big as Toys R Us here which by the way isn’t really big compared to the ones in the US and Canada.

I also walked into a tiny bookshop at the Seef Mall. I walked out with 2 books and a magazine. You know when was the last time I bought a book in Kuwait? I think 2 years ago. How come a small tiny bookstore at a local mall had a better quality of magazines and books then Virgin and the bookshop in Muthana combined?

Boring designs, no luxury hotels, small toy stores, and generic books and magazines. It feels like some people in Kuwait think we (the consumers) are not worth the effort. You know why? Because we don’t complain.

So after my last post I decided to go check out Seef Mall. I don’t know if its bigger then Marina Mall, I mean the corridors are tighter but it could be longer, anyway thats not what this post is about. I got bored at Seef Mall because it was too similar to Marina Mall, they had the exact same shops which made things really boring.

Anyway I left the place, took a cab and went to Traders Vic. What a place, its total crap. Its like a upper class snobbish restaurant/pub. I soooo hate those places. Reminded me a lot of a couple of places in Lebanon which I hate. Anyway after walking in and not finding a place at the bar to sit I called a cab and was planning on coming back to the hotel. On the way I told the cab driver that I was looking for a pub that wasn’t as upper class, something more down to earth and cool and shit. He told me he would take me to City Center where there are a lot of places and if I dont like one I can go to another. I was like cool pub jumping, I used to do that a lot in Lebanon.

Cab driver drops me off in front of City Center Hotel and tells me to go upstairs. I was like fuck no I am not going into another place like Traders Vic. So I decide to walk around and find my own pub. I find a place called Diggers and I walk in. I was like fuck, this is my place. They were playing rock music and there was a huge bar and the place was filling with British looking guys. I ordered half a pint of Heineken draft beer and started looking around. Then I realized wait, 80% of the occupants were British looking dudes, the other 20% were Asian girls just hanging around in groups around the bar. I was like fuck, these are hookers. How do I know? Because I just know, they were hookers and guys were walking up to them whispering something in their ears then the girls would whisper something back and the guys would walk away. I finished my beer and walked out of the place.

I walk down maybe 10 meters and I see something that looks like an Indian restaurant or something. I don’t know why but I was like let me walk in. I walked in and automatically I realized I had walked into a brothel. Not any brothel mind you, the really low end brothel filled with overweight Indian girls with pimples all over their faces. I turned around and started walking back out when a woman asked me where I was going and I should come in and have a drink. I was like no thank you and walked out.

So then I walked another 10 meters to another place and this place was like a restaurant but had like this asian girl band playing and it was full of Gulf nationals sitting chatting up Asian girls. I again walked out and started walking around the area. I found a massage parlor and I looked through the glass window and guess what I found… Asian shemales just sitting around waiting for customers.

I then spent over an hour walking around the area going into hotels. Each and every hotel I went into had hookers. Each and everyone one of them. One hotel I went to had a different pub on every floor for 4 floors. Each pub was full of hookers but each a different nationality. One floor Asians, one floor Indians, one floor Arabs and one floor African. It was just crazy, I never expected Bahrain to be like this. I went to at least 6 or 8 hotels checking them out and they ALL had hookers. It was just really shocking.

Finally I got bored and really sweaty from all the walking so I found a cab (a pickup truck) and asked him to drop me off at my hotel. It was really fun hotel jumping and seeing all these old European guys trying to get some from all these Asian hookers but it was also really exhausting. I am now back in my hotel room and I am going to ordered some room service. I haven’t had dinner yet.

update: OK what kind of hotel runs out of burgers? I had to order a hotdog off the kids menu. SUCKS!

update 2: I forgot to ask, can anyone recommend a decent pub minus the hookers. I am just looking for a decent place to have some beer and listen to music.

I have to say I have been in Bahrain for like 30 minutes and I am already pretty impressed. Firstly I have a really huge hotel room which is really cool. Secondly there is 1 mall right behind the hotel, another mall right on the side of the hotel and a third mall right in front of the hotel. The one on the side, Seef Mall looks a lot bigger then Marina Mall. On my way to the hotel I found out Bahrain is made up of 33 islands. Why didn’t I know this from before? At night Bahrain is looking like a mini version of Dubai which is again not what I was expecting. Lots of construction and tall cool looking glass office towers. I don’t know why I had a completely different idea on Bahrain, so far it looks like a lot of fun.

Now I need to stop blogging and go get drunk.

I am at the airport now sitting at Mc Cafe drinking some tea. When Nat came back from Lebanon early in the week she came back coughing and with the flu. It seems I am getting sick now. The airport is super packed, never seen it like this before. I am taking Gulf Air to Bahrain which I am not too excited about. I have heard a lot of terrible stuff about Gulf Air and didn’t they also have like a plane or two crash a few years ago?

I just came back from my bank. I went to check and see if Showtime honored my cancellation request and canceled my standing order with the bank but it turns out they haven’t. I no longer have Showtime at home since I canceled my subscription over 2 months ago but they are still taking money from me every month!

The employee at the bank was very helpful because he had gone through the same situation with United Networks which is also owned by Global Direct the same company that owns and runs Showtime. He told me what many people are doing is canceling their credit cards so that Showtime stops billing them but I wouldn’t be able to do that because Showtime take the amount straight from my account and not my credit card. So, the employee gave me some numbers at Showtime to contact but he told me they rarely pick up and to keep trying.

Dealing with Showtime has seriously been the worst experience I have ever had with any company ever! I am really trying to think of a company that treated me worst but can’t think of any at the moment. My advice is to stay away from Showtime and any other company that is run by Global Direct like United Networks and ZakSat.

update: Just got off the phone with someone at Showtime. He was very friendly and helpful. He apologized for the mixup and told me they would refund me the extra months they have taken and make sure they cancel my subscription for sure. Finally!

The color sucks but other then that this beast makes my Wrangler look like a muffin about to get run over by a truck. [Link]