Category: Reviews

On Thursday night k.thekuwaiti and Nibaq picked me up to go have dinner at Al-Ghader in Salwa. Many people were recommending I try Al-Ghader shawerma so I really was looking forward to it.

The place isn’t easy to locate but I will give it a shot. You know the street in Salwa where you have the Salwa co-op, police station and gas station? Well if all of those are on your right hand side and you are driving towards the Fahaheel Expressway, take the last right on this street just before the traffic light. Then, drive straight and take your 6th right. Then drive in a bit until you find Al-Ghader on your right hand side. Here it is on Google Maps.

The shawerma tasted very similar to Badar Al Badoor’s. It had the same taste which I liked except that Al-Ghader was much more stingier. The portion of chicken in the shawerma was half the amount of Badar Al Badoor’s. That kinda sucked since the taste of the bread was over powering the chicken. On a positive note though, Al-Ghader’s garlic tasted slightly better than Badar Al badoor’s but it wasn’t enough of a flavor difference to make the sandwich better. By default they put garlic, pickles and tomato in the shawerma but I had mine just with just garlic. The price of the shawerma is also 250fils. The place was very packed but it wasn’t all on the shawerma, they have a nice variety of food at the place and people were spread evenly across them.

Al-Ghader has good shawerma and if you are located near it then its worth the drive to have it. But, if you have a choice between Al-Ghader and Badar Al Badoor then I would recommend the later since you are basically getting the same shawerma just more of it for the same price. This is why the final score for Al-Ghader’s shawerma is 3.5 out of 5.

update: Since writing this review I’ve frequented Al-Ghader numerous of times and if I was to write the review today I would give it a 4 out of 5.

From the cast list I was expecting this movie to be great and after watching it I have to say it was. The Sentinel stars Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland, Eva Longoria, Kim Basinger and David Rasche (Sledge Hammer). Its a really fucking cool cast and they all play cool roles, for example you have Jack Bauer playing an investigator in the secret service, David Rasche playing the president, Kim Basinger the presidents wife and Eva Longoria a secret service rookie. Last time I saw David Rasche play a president it was on the comedy show DAG along side one of my favorite comedians David Alan Grier (In Living Color). When I found out he was playing the president in this movie I was like how the fuck could he pull it off without making us laugh. It must be his more mature aged look now because David Rasche was just fucking amazing. Actually, everyone was, this movie brought out the best in everyone. Like Eva Longoria, no way on earth did I think she would ever be able to pull off the role of a secret service agent, but not only did she pull it off, the role actually suited her a lot. Jack Bauer was naturally incredible, he was born to play the role of a special agent. Kim Basinger was also the perfect presidents wife and Michael Douglas who I haven’t liked since his last good movie The Game, fit his part like a glove.

The movie is about an assassination attempt on the president which is always an exciting plot. The movie was fast paced and never dragged or felt slow or boring. The only thing I would change would be the ending, I felt it finished to quickly and was a bit on the weak side. The whole thing felt like an episode of 24, which is a very good thing. This is why I give this movie a 4 out 5. The reason I didn’t give it anything higher is because I don’t think this movie will be a classic in the same way Clint Eastwoods “In the Line of Fire” is. Although I prefer The Sentinel, the assassination plot isn’t as deep and important to the movie the same way as it was in In the Line of Fire. Never the less, this is a really fucking great movie to watch.

This past weekend I had chicken shawerma twice from Badar Al Badoor. Some people had told me the place had the best shawerma in Kuwait so I had to try it out and I wasn’t disappointed.

I passed by Thursday night around 8ish and the place was packed. I parked my car and went down and ordered 3 shawermas and a coke. By default they put garlic, tomato and chicken in the shawerma and I decided to try it like that. They use samoon bread (the hotdog bread) which is my favorite when it comes to shawermas. After 5 minutes of waiting I got my shawerma and went back to my car to eat. My first impression was a mixed one. The shawerma was good but something was off and I concluded it was the tomatoes, they just made the sandwich a bit too moist and ao I decided I would try it again the next night without them.

Friday night also around 8ish I went back to Badar Al Badoor. The place was even more packed then the previous night but I went ahead and ordered 2 shawermas without tomatoes. 5 minutes later I was back in my car eating my shawermas and realizing that the tomatoes definitely were the problem. The shawermas tasted much better without them and I could taste the garlic even better.

So how did they rate? Well I wouldn’t call them the best shawermas in Kuwait, so far my best experience has been with Sajj House. Badar Al Badoor shawermas are very normal which is a very good thing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with them, the bread, the garlic, the chicken, it all tastes good but just lacks the tiny bit of extra oomph to make the shawerma extra special. From all the hole in the wall shawerma places I have tried Badar Al Badoor is the best so far, its just lacking a signature flavor. The shawermas cost 250 fils which is standard with shawerma places in this class so overall the final score is a 4 out of 5. Now I need to try the shawerma place in Salwa which many people were recommending.

Badar Al Badoor directions [Link]

update: Since I posted this review a few months ago I have been back to Badar Al Badoor numerous of times and I have to say the shawermas have gotten much better. If I was to review Badar Al Badoor today I would give it a 4.5 or even a 5. Its currently my favorite shawerma place.

So its been like 3 months now since I got my Motorola V3x. People ask me what I think about the phone and its hard to give them a direct answer. I personally love the phone but I don’t understand why. There are so many things that are wrong with it I don’t know why I haven’t gotten rid of it yet.

The phone is stupid. When I first got the phone and I tried sending a picture via bluetooth I couldn’t get it to work. I would select the image, click on “options” and then “send to” but it would only give me the option to send by MMS. I was like what the fuck is this crap and I just left it at that. Then one day I was telling a friend of mine who also owns a Motorola about how I can’t send pictures with bluetooth and he tells me I can. Basically what you have to do is select the image, click on “options” then click on “manage” and then click on “copy” and then choose the bluetooth device you want to send the picture to. I was like shocked, what idiot came up with this incredibly unnatural method of sending a picture by bluetooth? By default if people want to send a picture to another phone they will click on “send” not “manage” then “copy”.

The phone is riddled with strange shit like that. Sending an SMS is a pain because the T9 dictionary keeps forgetting words I teach it. The word “fuck” which I use a lot never even gets saved in the dictionary for some unknown reason. Other words, mostly names of people I know seem to be forgotten by the dictionary after a certain amount of time. Its just really weird.

The worst thing has to be that sometimes people on the other end of the line don’t hear me clearly. People have reported strange beeping sounds, crackles and white noise. It doesn’t happen when I am using the 3G network but sometimes when the 3G signal is low the phone swaps to the regular 2G and thats when the problems occur. I heard a firmware update solves this issue but I haven’t tried it.

With all this unlogical and unexplainable issues I still love the phone. Its fast, I hate it when machines can’t catch up to my needs. With the V3x in the 3 months I have owned the phone not once did I have to wait a single second for it to “think” or “act”. Everything is instant from canceling a call, to redialing, to exiting and entering menus. Never a lag, never a hiccup. The phone also has some nice features like if I don’t read a message or view a missed call, the phone vibrates and beeps once every 5 (or could be 10) minutes. The phone is also customizable, I can move menus around and assign every single button on the phone to perform an action different then what it was supposed to do. Its small little things like that which makes this phone a pleasure to use.

Overall though I wouldn’t recommend this phone to anyone, I wouldn’t recommend Motorola at all not just this phone. I love it and I am still not fully sure why, I mean it could be just because I think the phone looks cool but in general most people should hate it.

A week ago Z District reviewed the Seagate Portable HD and although I am a Seagate fan I thought the hard drive looked ugly and fragile. This is why I decided to put up a review of the drive that competes directly with the Seagate one, the Western Digital Passport.

I ordered the 120GB Western Digital Passport drive so I could use it to back my MP3s and personal work. I already have an external drive but I needed something much smaller and portable. Since I was going to use it for my most important data, the drive had to be reliable and durable. Thats why I went with the Passport drive, I have never had any problems with Western Digital hard drives and from the pictures the Passport drive looked like it could take a beating. Now that I have it sitting in front of me I can tell you that it can.

The Passport drive case is made from 2 materials, half of it is alluminum and the other half is rubber. The drive feels like its indestructable but still looks really slick and extremely cool. The other positive thing is you only need 1 USB slot to both power and run the drive unlike the Seagate which requires 2 USB slots.

I really am in love with the drive and can’t find a single flaw except for the fact that 120GB is the largest size available. I give it a 4.5 out of 5.

Buy the 40GB WD Passport drive from Amazon
Buy the 80GB WD Passport drive from Amazon
Buy the 120GB WD Passport drive from Amazon

Hard Candy was one of the movies I was looking forward to watch this year but sadly it disappointed me. Going into the movie I really didn’t know what it was about. All I knew was what I got from the trailer and that is a young girl meets an old guy over the Internet and then they meet up and things go wrong. Based on what I knew and what I was expecting, fifteen minutes into the movie and the whole thing takes a surprising 180 degree turn which was probably the coolest part in the movie. After that things just dragged for me.

One thing I have to say, the movie is visually stunning. The colors and styling in the house where most of the story takes place is really cool. The movie on the other-hand I felt was too long although the ending was very short. The movie finished and I was still trying to figure out what had happened and making sure I understood things correctly. Anyway I really can’t say much about the movie because I wouldn’t want to ruin any surprises. I am also going to advise you NOT to read the plot summary or ask questions about the movie and just watch it knowing very little. That way you will be in for a nice shock. For me the movie didn’t live up to my expectations and thats why I am giving it a 3.5 out of 5.

Its been a while since I last posted a review of a microwave meal and since Nats in Lebanon I figured this would be a good time to start again. Tonight for dinner I had the Chicken Fingers meal by Banquet and I really liked it.

I was at Sultan Center checking out the frozen foods section when I spotted this meal. What grabbed my attention was the fact it came with a fudge brownie! I thought that was fucking cool since I never tried a microwave meal that came with cake before. I grabbed two packs plus two packs of the Fried Chicken Meal and headed towards the cashier.

Cooking the Chicken Fingers was very easy, pop it into the microwave for two and a half minutes and its done. While cooking my kitchen started smelling of brownies.. which is a good thing of course since I love the smell of freshly baked brownies. When it was done cooking I took it out of the microwave and grabbed a coke and headed to the living room.

It fucking rocked. Keep in mind I am comparing it to other microwave meals and not some fancy gourmet dinner. The chicken fingers tasted pretty good and the fries wasn’t bad either but the biggest surprise was the brownie, it was eatable! I was having doubts about trying it once I was done cooking it because it just looked.. weird. But, I took the first bite and then had another after another. Its not the best brownie in the world but it tasted pretty good for something that came with a microwave meal.

Now the biggest problem I have with this meal is the portion, its tiny. Three chicken fingers and a spoonful of fries isn’t very filling. But I guess thats why its cheap, the meal costs only 850 fils which is a bargain compared to some other microwave meals. So, for the final score I will have to give it a 3.5 out of 5. If the portion was just a bit bigger it could have easily gotten four stars. Be sure to check out my other reviews in the review section.

Shopaholic Q8eya just posted a review of the Al-Corniche Club Spa. Seems she had a terrible experience starting with an obnoxious receptionist all the way to a smelly therapist. A very fun read. [Link]

update: she got a call-back from upper management [Link]

It’s hard to write this review because whatever positive thing I will say people will assume its because I got it for free or I am just kissing ass to get more free stuff. This is not true and I will tell you why…

Usually someone emails me or calls me asking for my office address so they can send me stuff. It could be anything from Donuts like today or vouchers for dinner like last week. The first thing I tell these people is that if I end up not liking your product then I won’t post about it. If your product turns out crap I will just not mention it at all on the site. On the other hand if its good I will post about it and try to encourage people to try it. The reason I don’t post negative reviews of items I get for free is simply to keep getting more stuff for free. I wouldn’t want to scare away people and I want to continue trying new stuff so that I could share it with my readers.

Now the reason I said all the above is to prepare you for what I am about to say now. I am a big fan of Dunkin Donuts and my favorite two donuts there are the glazed and the cholcolate. Today I had the “Choco Mallow Frost” from Go Nuts Donuts which is pictured above and its basically a chocolate donut with marshmallow and nuts on top. I have to say this donut was better then the chocolate donut at Dunkin. Its that fucking good. I never tried Krispy Kreme so I can’t compare to that but I have tried Planet Donuts, Donut King and La Baguette’s donuts and I can easily say they suck compared to Go Nuts.

Usually I have one donut and feel like I overdosed on sugar but today I had two of those Choco Mallow Frost and I didn’t feel sick at all. At first I thought maybe its me, maybe I have a bizzaro donut taste issue, but every time someone took a bite out of their donuts in the office all you would hear is hmmmm. So its not just me, the donuts are actually really good.

I was really not expecting these donuts to be good or for me to even end up posting about them. But, the donuts are good and the only thing lacking I think is a location in Salmiya near Starbucks and Johnny Rockets. The thing is people don’t just go to Dunkin Donuts for the food, they go there to chill out and waste time. Currently Go Nuts is located in Hawalli in the new Al-Bahr Center that just opened. Take it I haven’t been to that mall yet but I have been to Hawalli and I don’t want to go there unless its an emergency. Now the good thing is they deliver.. wherever you are. If you want to have a dozen donuts for breakfast and you work in Kuwait City, just call them up and they will deliver it to you. As a final score I am going to give them a 4 out of 5. Give them a call and try them out. Their telephone number is 2670671 or 72.

When I first found out about the movie the first thing I read was that it was the same style as the movie Crash (not David Cronenbergs CRASH). The movie talks about guns in America and their effects on people and since Crash was a good movie I was looking forward to watching American Gun.

I watched the movie last night and the best thing about the movie is Donald Sutherland. If you use a bit of your imagination and squint your eyes a bit you could pretend Donald Sutherland was Jack Bauer pretending to be an old guy trying to infiltrate a terrorist group. Thats the only thing that kept me going till the end of the movie. It started off slow but I was cool with that, nothing happened in the middle, I was cool with that too, but then the movie finished and nothing had happened. I was expecting for all the different stories in the movie to interweave for a big final but they didn’t. From the couple of stories that were taking place only one of them had something happen. It was extremely disappointing since they build you up for nothing.

I wouldn’t recommend anyone watch this movie, and I am scoring it a 2 out of 5. I would have given it a 1 but because Donald Sutherland had a role in bringing Jack Bauer to life he gets an extra star.

It really works. Any questions?

Order it now from Amazon.

Back in February of last year I published a post titled “Mac & Small” and in it I talked about how small their branch at Galleria 2000 was and how over priced their items were. Well yesterday I passed by Mac & More’s new branch in Marina Mall and I have to say they are no longer small. The place looks really cool and huge.. and thats the only positive thing I can say. It seems when they moved from Mac & Small to Marina Mall they didn’t get any new merchandise. The place is empty and I mean empty. When you first walk in there is one MacBook Pro on display and one MacMini connected to a generic brand of LCD screen.. imagine not even an Apple Display! Once you walk into the rest of the shop you will realize that was it, no more Apple products.. the rest of the store is just a large shelf full of iPods and a wall full of generic iPod skins which you can find at any other Mac store in Kuwait including Mac City which is located in Virgin at the other end of Marina Mall. Even the tiny zMacShop have brands like Marware and Foof how come Mac & More don’t have anything cool?

Price wise… Mac & More is the most expensive Apple dealer in Kuwait.

The store is visually very impressive which misleads you to believe you will find many great things there, but once you go in and look around and can’t find anything, you wonder what the hell are these guys selling… iPod covers?

update: If I was to review the store again now I would have to say they have improved things a lot. Firstly they have a lot more products and a lot more brands, their prices have also decreased, maybe not as cheap as US prices but they are closer to UAE prices. I would probably give them a 3.5 out of 5 now.

I was supposed to watch Lucky Number Slevin but the downloaded copy I had turned out to be corrupted so I decided to watch Stay. I had downloaded it a while back but wasn’t very keen in watching it but since I didn’t have anything else I went ahead and did.

The movie stars Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts, where Ewan plays the role of a psychiatrist who is trying to stop one of his patients from committing suicide. Things start to go weird and confusing and he tries to get a grip on what is real and what isn’t.

The movie wasn’t only weird and confusing to Ewan but also to me. I don’t mind “strange” movies and I don’t mind being puzzled trying to figure out whats going on, but the problem with Stay is that in the end when everything finally comes together and all the questions answered, you realize that the past 90 minutes were really not worth the ending. I am not going to ruin the the movie and tell you what happens in the end but I can tell you that it didn’t leave me shocked but more like “huh this is it? How lame.”

The movie felt slow at some points but the acting was great and visually the movie looked cool. In general I like Ewan McGregor as long as he isn’t singing and Naomi Watts when she isn’t running around the jungle looking for King Kong. It could be the movie wasn’t weird enough to make the ending good or maybe its the other way around, but whatever the case, I didn’t have high expectations of the movie to begin with and so wasn’t left too disappointed.

Yesterday evening two large bags filled with food were delivered to my home. A new place opened up called LoFat and they wanted me and Nat to try out their food and maybe post about it on the blog so they could get some publicity. I don’t think I have ever refused free food and I wasn’t going to begin now so I agreed and a few hours later their delivery guy delivered 2 large brown bags filled with goodies.

They sent us a lot of food which was really cool, they sent us beef wraps, veggie wraps, turkey wraps, a grilled chicken sandwich with cheese, unfried fries, 2 Tiramisu’s, 2 brownies, 2 chocolate chip cookies and 2 oatmeal cookies.

The first thing I did when I set the food on the table was to take a look at the prices in the menu. I was expecting to see some ridiculously high prices for food items of very small quantity but surprisingly everything cost under KD1.750. Nat came into the room and the first thing she noticed was how good everything smelled. Even though the delivery guy had lost his way to my apartment the food still arrived warm and fresh.

The biggest delima now was where to start from, so many choices to choose from but in the end I decided to start off with the unfried fries. 30 minutes later and more then half way through Desperate Housewives (Season 2 Episode 22) we had finished eating. I think we overate, you know you hear low fat food and you just can’t stop eating. I loved their fries, I don’t know how they are made, I think they are steamed and then grilled or something, they tasted really good and the best part about them is they are not fried. The grilled chicken sandwich was also really good and Hard Rock Cafe should take their recipe since they can’t seem to make a simple thing like a grilled sandwich taste good. I really didn’t like the veggie wrap since I am not into this weird stuff, I don’t even know what it was, I think it tasted a bit like falafel or something. I also didn’t like the low carb turkey wrap since it was wrapped in lettuce, a concept I don’t believe in. I think lettuce wraps should be banned. The beef wrap was ok, Nat liked them more then me but the deserts were the best. I didn’t try the Tiramisu since I don’t like coffee but the brownies.. wow… thats some really good stuff. I really loved their brownies and I can’t believe they are low fat. Their cookies were also good but the oatmeal cookie costs 500fils which I find too expensive.

I really wasn’t expecting the food to turn out good because when I think healthy and low fat I think of stuff like the veggie wrap and lettuce wrapped sandwiches which I don’t find appetizing at all. But the grilled chicken sandwich with the hot melted cheese is definitely the thing I would order the next time. The brownies I think are the best I have had and knowing that they were low fat doesn’t make me feel guilty for having them. The cookies… well you know where my heart is on that one. I think Nat enjoyed the food more since she ate more then me (a first). I always get pissed at her since she doesn’t eat much and now I know her secret, just add the word low fat to her meal and watch it all disappear.

I will scan their menu later on and upload it to the blog but for now I just have their delivery number which is 7666733. I will try to have the menu up tonight. (check below)

For the final score I will have to give them 3.5 out of 5. The grilled chicken sandwich and the Brownies were really good and the unfried fries should be available in more places. I really didn’t like neither the veggie wrap nor the lettuce wrapped turkey wrap, but I won’t include them in the review since I hate them in general and not only in this restaurant. If anyone decides to order from them make sure to order the fries and the brownies. Finally their prices are also very decent.. except for the 500fils oatmeal cookie, I still don’t get that.

The menu is available [Here]. Their delivery number is 7666733

update: I droped the score down to 3.5 because as some people brought it to my attention, they don’t mention any kind of nutritional information nor the amount of calories in the food. Something that is important for their target customers.

When I saw the new ads for Hardees advertising the Chili Lava I fell in love. I haven’t had Hardees since I started my no fast food diet late last year, but I love Chili and I really love the Chili Hot Dog at Hardees so to have a Chili Burger was like wow! Sadly though the Chili Lava was a disappointment. Don’t get me wrong here, there was nothing wrong with the burger, just don’t expect to get what you see in the picture. The burger looked pretty boring but I liked how they presented it to me.. in a plastic basket covered with a sheet of paper with my curly fries and burger on top. It looked like something you would get at Fuddruckers or TGIF. Taste wise I was expecting it to be wilder but it was pretty normal. I would most probably have the burger again its just that I think their ads over hyped it so I was expecting more flavor. My biggest issue with the burger is the price, the single lave combo costs KD1.550 while the double lava combo costs KD1.750. When did the combos get so expensive? Even the regular Mushroom & Swiss or Roast Beef N’ Chedder combos cost like KD1.400 and I remember the Roast Beef used to always be cheaper then the burgers. Because of the expensive price and the lack of shock and awe I give the Chili Lava a 3.5 out of 5. [Chili Lava Poster]