Category: Personal

Oh I nearly forgot, I watched the Family Guy movie yesterday night. It was so so, some scenes were really funny like the Thundercats one but they were few and spread out. I was expecting the movie to be a lot more funnier, maybe its because I prefer the Simpsons.

Oldboy
I just finished watching two really great movies. The first one is called Oldboy, its a Korean movie that made a big splash at the Cannes Film Festival back in 2004. The movie is available with an English soundtrack but the one I manged to get was Korean with English subtitles. I can’t say much about the movie without ruining the plot but basically a guy gets locked up in a studio apartment for 15 years by some unknown assailants before getting released one day. Once he is out he tries to seek revenge by trying to find out who locked him up and why. Quentin Tarantino loved the movie and thats why it got the extra attention in Cannes.

The Devil’s Rejects
The second movie I watched was called The Devil’s Rejects. This movie reminded me a lot of Natural Born Killers except its way cooler and more violent but they both involved violently sick people who are on the run from the cops. The movie was written and directed by the freaky Rob Zombie and it features A LOT of violence, nudity and general weirdness. If you liked Natural Born Killers you would really like this movie then.

With all this free time now that Ramadan has started I was able to watch a few movies the past two days. I watched Cinderella Man first and I didn’t like it. It was too long and it starts off very sad and doesn’t really turn into a happy movie by the end. Million Dollar Baby was way better. I watched Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy second, I had never read the book but the movie was pretty cool. I mean any movie where earth gets blown up in the first 5 minutes must be cool. The movie was filled with a variety of weird and strange characters so it was very odd and entertaining. Finally I watched Land of the Dead yesterday night. This was fun to watch. Its not as scary as Dawn of the Dead or 28 Days Later but it was interesting none the less and it did play from a different perspective. This is the only zombie movie I have watched where the movie makes you side with the zombies. It’s definetly worth watching.

What are your Ramadan working hours?
Mine is Saturday to Wednesday, 9AM to 3PM.
Thursdays its 9AM to 1PM.

Nataly is the same except her agency get Thursdays off!

I know everyone recently has been complaining about the traffic and I want to add something here. Today the traffic was the worst I had EVER seen in Kuwait EVER. Not even the great winter floods or the Thursday night Salmiya traffic could even come close to todays traffic. Everywhere I went, all my little traffic escape routes, every corner, intersection, road, everywhere was just packed with cars. There was traffic in places I couldn’t imagine their ever being traffic in! I got to the office nearly 30 minutes late so I hope this isn’t going to be like this everyday now…

Jazeera Airways seems to be all the buzz lately, I was a great fan of Kuwait Airways but it seems lately they have turned into trash (last time I used them was 4 years ago). So me and Nat were planning our trip to Lebanon on Christmas and I decided to give Jazeera Airways a shot, I was impressed.

I went to the Jazeera Airways website to check out the prices and stuff when I noticed a button to Book a flight. I clicked on it out of curiosity and started filling up some forms. 10 minutes later I had purchased two, two-way tickets to Lebanon. The whole process felt like I was ordering movie tickets online, it was too easy. The coolest part about the whole thing was I was actually able to book my seats on my flight to Lebanon and on my flight back to Kuwait. No one else had purchased or booked tickets for the two flights I was on so the whole plane was empty and I was able to get 2 seats on row 10 for the trip going and coming. When I was done paying for the tickets I received an email with all the details about my flight, my reservation number and my invoice, its like shopping on Amazon.

The booking and paying online, plus the fact I could reserve my seats ahead of time had already impressed me, but the biggest seller was the price. Two, two-way tickets to Lebanon cost only KD164 (with taxes and everything) during peak season. Kuwait Airways or Middle East Airlines would have cost around KD135 per ticket and they wouldn’t have allowed me to reserve my in flight seats ahead of time. So thats a total saving of over KD100 which I could now spend on 600 bottles of beer or 4 bottles of Jack Daniels at B018.

The only downside to Jazeera is that if you want to eat on the plane you have to pay for it. They serve cold sandwiches and drinks but they are not free which I don’t really think is a big problem anyway. For those of you who want to travel in style and not economy, for an extra KD26 per ticket per one way you can sit in first class. That would put the price similar to the Kuwait Airways or MEA regular economy ticket price though.

Finally, I called them up a few times on the phone (177) for details and info and the people I spoke to were very friendly and polite which made me feel more comfortable. Now the only thing left is to fly with them, my flight is in December so I will review it when I come back.

I had an invite for wordpress.com and I didn’t know what username to get. Then I remembered when I signed up to 23hq.com I was able to get the username “mark”, so I tried mark on wordpress.com and it was taken, I decided to try the next 4 letter word that came into my head which was fuck and it signed me up! I was expecting maybe a step 2 or confirmation screen but it just took the word fuck and now I am stuck with fuck.wordpress.com. I guess it’s cool…

I have been addicted to American Hot Rod for like 2 months now. Its been more entertaining then American Chopper and Rides since there are a lot of problems on the show and most of them I could relate to. The pace of work, the impossible deadlines, the how fast can you do it not how good can you do it mentality, all typical issues common here in Kuwait. Yesterday night though Charley the painter, the most chilled out guy on the show had enough and decided to leave Boyd Coddington and join Boyds competitor, an ex friend and ex employee, Chip Foose. Foose is a regular on Rides and has his own show Overhaulin also on Discovery. It seems American Hot Rod is falling apart. None of the employees are happy and the best people have left the body shop so I don’t think I will be watching it anymore. For fans of the show if you want to talk to Charley he posts regularly on the Overhaulin forum, his nick name is idahoboy. [Link]

Yesterday I watched a cool episode of CSI, it starred Wil Wheaton and Stephen Baldwin. I had actually been waiting to watch Wil Wheaton in CSI since I first read about it on his blog. For those of you who don’t know, Wil Wheaton played the part of Wesley Crusher, Dr. Beverly Crusher’s son on Star Trek The Next Generation. TNG is one of my favorite shows so I am a big fan of Wil Wheaton. Sadly though he didn’t have a very large role in the show which was disappointing since I had been expecting to see a lot more of him. Wil played the part of a crazy homeless guy who was a suspected of murdering a kid. Having Stephen Baldwin also in the same episode was awesome, he played the part of a cocaine dealer and we got to see him a lot more then Wil. I hope a lot more celebrities start popping up on CSI, makes the show even more cooler.

I am sitting at work listening to music and I realized something, I am old. I am listening to R&B songs from like the year 2000 and I realized thats like nearly 6 years ago. Then I started thinking about Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Blind Melon which are from the early 90’s and I realized, I listen to music thats like 15 years old. In the 80’s when my parents used to listen to music from the late 60s and 70s, we used to call those oldies. So now, is Pearl Jam an oldie?

I went to the dentist last night and although I used to really hate dentists before, yesterday I started to like them a lot better. I was always worried that if the dentist was going to do something major to my teeth that I would be in a lot of pain during the procedure and then after while recovering. Yesterday I realized that this wasn’t true. After the dentist injected me with anestesia, he performed a minor wedge surgery which I didn’t feel at all. Last time I took anestesia for a dental procedure I was young and had to have some teeth pulled so I could get braces. It wasn’t a nice incident and I believe thats why I dislike dentists so much. Yesterday though the dentist operated on me and I wasn’t the least bit comfortable. It was incredible, and even after the procedure was done and I went home, the pain I was expecting to appear never did, not even today morning long after the anestesia has worn off. Now I have a second oppointment with the dentist tomorrow and I am not nervous about it at all.

One word of advise, if you have a problem with your teeth, don’t wait a long time to have it fixed, it won’t heal by itself and it will just get worse.

I am very busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy.

Here is the list in no particular order.

Gizmodo
Engadget
CNN
BBC
2:48AM
Google News
Boing Boing
Waxy
Macrumors
The Superficial
Amazon
Kottke
Slashdot
Gmail
Lebanese Forces
LF Forum
Naharnet
AppleNova
The Register
Cnet
Autoblog
Safat
Joystiq
IGN
Del.icio.us
I Don’t Like You
Google

So yesterday I finally decided I was gonna get a Mohawk. I went to my Pakistani barber and shared with him my idea expecting him to crack up and call in his buddies to share the laughter with. That didn’t happen, I guess my barber is a real pro because he had no reaction, to him a haircut is a haircut I guess no matter how extreme. So before he started cutting my hair I double checked to make sure he knew what a Mohawk was, I used a lot of hand gestures and a lot of pointing to my hair so there wouldn’t be any miscommunication.

My barber started trimming my hair but he started from the sides and then the back. I was thinking in my head wouldn’t it be better if he started from the front. Five minutes later my Mohawk was done, what a catastrophe. I was right he should have started trimming from the front because now my Mohawk started in the center in the back but by the time it reached the front of my head it had shifted off to the right. My Mohawk was not centered!!

Anyway I looked at it carefully, I knew that my Mohawk was fucked but I wanted to see if it was working or not. Sadly even if he had centered my Mohawk correctly I don’t think it would have worked out since my hair was to short. I think I need my hair to be at least 4cm in length for my Mohawk to work. So now I am thinking of growing my hair till December and when I travel to New York or Montreal I will get my Mohawk done there. At least I had the balls to try it.

Update: Incase it wasn’t clear, I told the barber to remove the mohawk since he had messed it up…

Yesterday I got my Nintendo DS which I had ordered from Amazon.com. I had ordered the bundle which included the Spiderman 2 game, Metroid Prime demo game and the Pro Gamers Kit. The Pro Gamers Kit is basically an Aluminum Case, Games Case, Earphones, Car adapter Screen Lenses and Neck Strap all in 1 package. The aluminum case looks like those bags in the movies where the drug dealers carry their cocaine in. First thing I did once I picked up my stuff was pass by Rihab Complex to exchange the Spiderman game for Super Mario. I hate Spiderman 2 but it came for free with the bundle and I figured I could exchange it for a game I would enjoy more. I found a store in Rihab that was willing to exchange spiderman for mario if I paid him KD3 which was a fair deal and I went ahead with the trade.

When I got home I took out the DS from the package and started playing with it. First thing I noticed was that its huge. Compared to my PSP the DS feels larger and heavier, Nat felt this the most since her hands are smaller then mine. I played Mario for a while and then played the mini games that came with the game and it wasn’t bad. I actually prefer the mario mini games to the actual game, they were more fun and faster. I really like the touch screen, I hate the stylus and thumb strap though, I prefer using my thumbs to click and rub the screen. I later played the Metroid Prime demo and that also made use of the touch screen, using my thumbs to click on screen buttons is very practical and easy. The reason I purchased the DS was so I could play the game Nintendogs which I ordered with the DS but which I still haven’t received so I am kinda disappointed about that.

The graphics of the DS compared to the PSP suck of course. This is why if I am going to buy games for the DS they won’t be realistic looking games. I would get 2D games or 3D games with a cartoony look, like Mario and Nintendogs. When it comes to realistically rendered games the PSP will always win. In October Castlevania is going to be released on the DS and it will be in 2D which is exactly the way I like it, so that will be the next game I will probably get. Nat is enjoying Mario a lot at the moment so I think she will be hogging the DS until I get Nintendogs at the end of this week.

So in conclusion, my first impressions of the DS is that its big, bulky, heavy and the graphics suck. BUT, it does have 2 things going for it, the touch screen and some cool games (like Nintendogs & Castlevania). I personally believe a system is worth purchasing if there is 1 great game you want on it, having 2 games I want is a bonus.

Click here to see the Nintnedo DS with the Pro Gamers Kit.