2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

The Deal just got a collection of Tumi bags if anyone is interested. Once items move up to The Deal they’re usually given a further discount so you might be able to find a good deal. They’re located on M1 in Salhiya.

After trying out WiMD with unlimited speed I finally had to decide on what connection I was going to subscribe to and I decided to go with the 10Mbps. I originally wanted to go with 15Mbps but decided KD72 a month is more than what I was willing to pay. 10Mbps is KD523 a year which works out to KD43.5 a month and to me is a much more reasonable amount.

I’ve had this connection for 2 days now which is enough time to get a first impression. Browsing is still super fast and I managed to download torrents at speeds of around 1.3MB/s to 1.5MB/s which is pretty fast. I imagine with a 15Mbps connection you would get around 2MB/s to 2.3MB/s speeds. The best part is that even if I’m downloading torrents at full speed it doesn’t hinder my browsing experience. Not sure how that is possible but with all my previous connections I always had to limit my torrents download speed so I could still have some bandwidth left to browse with. With WiMD on the other hand I’ve got my torrents set to download at full speed and I browse with no slowdown.

Below are speedtest results. This isn’t very accurate because for example you have various speedtest servers in London and when testing one would give me a very low ping rate of under a 100 but the download rate would be around 4Mbps while another would give me a higher ping rate in the 300’s but with a higher download speed. Thats why I decided I would perform the test on all the servers and post the ones with the highest download speeds.

I really hope the connection doesn’t suffer in the long run once more and more users sign up. That’s actually my only concern but I’ll post an update 6 months down the line and let you guys now how things turned out. If you want to get a second opinion Marzouq over at zDistrict just signed up to a 20Mbps connection and posted about it [Here]

Madonna is going to be hold a concert in Abu Dhabi on June 3rd. It’s still months away but they’re going to start selling tickets on February 27th and they’re most likely going to get sold out right away or at least the best seats. So if you’re interested in getting tickets, set a reminder and bookmark the following [Link]

A fire was reported in a vehicle at Kuwait International Airport on Tuesday, which was successfully put out by firefighters, head of operations department at the airport Isaam Al-Zamel said.

No damage was reported, the official told KUNA, adding that the cause of the fire was an electric shortcircuit within the towing vehicle. [Source]

Video via Q8 Lens

I’ve managed to get more information regarding the 2012 Concours d’Elegance that is going to be held in Kuwait next week.

– Leonardo Fioravanti the designer behind some legendary Ferrari’s including the 365 GTB 4 “Daytona”, 365 GT4 Berlinetta Boxer, the 308 GTB and GTS as well as the 288 GTO and the F40 will be giving a lecture at the Concours. His lecture will be on the Ferrari F40 since it’s the F40’s 25th anniversary. The F40 is the last Ferrari he designed and a car many believe to be one of the greatest super cars ever made. Obviously there will also be a Ferrari F40 on display.

– The F40’s nemesis, the Porsche 959 will also be on display at the Concours.

– The first day of the event they’ll be displaying old government vehicles like the old police cars and ambulances etc..

– The last day of the Concours on the occasion of Enzo Ferrari’s birthday, over 150 Ferrari’s will get together at Marina Crescent and then drive towards the Kuwait Towers.

– The Alfa Romeo Bat 11 will be on display.

– The first production model of the new Aston Martin Zagato will be launched worldwide at the Concours. In addition there will be an original 1960’s Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato on display right next to it.

This is basically all I have for now. For more information on this years Concours check out my previous post [Here]

The flag is animated and looks really great at night.

Picture taken by Buzberry

A friend of mine just posted about a new Mexican restaurant that opened up in The Village. Going by the pictures and write up it looks like the place is actually pretty good. Check out his post [Here]

Registration is now open for entry into the 2012 PAWS annual dog show. The show will take place in the beautiful gardens of the British Embassy on Friday March 9th from 11AM to 4PM. There will be stalls at the dog show selling a variety of merchandise, activities for the children, refreshment stalls and of course the main attraction will be the dog competition categories.

Full details can be found on the PAWS website and all competition categories are listed on the application form which can be downloaded from the website as well. Here is the [Link]

YouTube has a channel called adblitz filled with all the Superbowl commercials from this year. Check them all out [Here]

I spotted the garbage bin above while in London. It has a built-in LCD screen on the side that broadcasts the latest news. My question is this. If London can afford to install cool looking garbage bins like this, then why are we getting extremely cheap and horrible looking Big Bird yellow trash bins instead?

Update: Here’s more information on the bins

– It displays market moves, weather forecasts and breaking news
– The rubbish bins also come with Wi-Fi connectivity
– Costs $1,800 each and orders are expected from New York, Singapore and Tokyo

[Source]

Dr Farah Al-Nakib is holding a talk entitled: “Beyond Demolition and Heritage: On the Conservation and Re-Use of Kuwait City’s Early Oil Landscape.” The event is going to be looking at the importance of preserving and reusing old buildings in Kuwait instead of demolishing them or turning them into museums which is what seems to always be the case in Kuwait. Dr Farah will be sharing some real examples of how some people (mainly businesses) have made use of old buildings to revive areas and create “locally made business communities”. One great example she will be sharing is the Seif Palace strip where Pink Moon, Slider Station and Burger Hub are located.

If you’re interested in attending the event it will be held in Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah this Tuesday. For more information click [Here]

Just a tip. If you’re traveling to London and are planning on getting VAT refunds at the airport on your way out then make sure you get to the airport 5 or 6 hours early. Seriously. It seems Travelex, the company that handles the VAT refunds at the airport actually deliberately try to be very slow so that you give up waiting and leave without collecting your refund. I arrived to the airport 3 hours ahead of my flight and first thing I did was stand in a super long line before check in to get my refund but the line wasn’t moving. I spent around an hour and moved only 2 or 3 spots and I estimated I had at least another 2 to 3 hours just get to the front of the line. In the end I gave up and decided to get the refund as credit on my credit card, a simpler process which involved passing the forms to the manager stationed there but not receiving any kind of delivery proof or even a carbon copy of my forms. According to other people who were waiting in line they tried the credit route before and never got the refund. I didn’t really have another option.

I had a new laptop with me as well so to get a VAT refund for that you need to do it after passing immigration. Once inside I got my laptop VAT Refund document stamped but then had to wait another hour and half in line to get the cash refund for that. It’s the same line you need to stand in by the way once you get your forms stamped in the first super long line before immigration. I ended up collecting my refund just as they were announcing the final call for my flight. So make sure you get to the airport a lot earlier then you think you need.

Last week I posted about a new internet provider that I found out about. Turns out they aren’t really new and have been in business for some time now but they were catering mostly to companies and certain individuals until they decided to expand their presence and showed up at InfoConnect for the first time this year. I was looking for a new internet provider myself so I got in touch with them and they came over yesterday to install it.

The internet provider is called WiMD which stands for Wireless Mobile Data. They provide you (obviously) with wireless internet to your home using the 5 GHz wavelength which is kinda similar to a wifi connection except it can transmit a lot further (in theory around 70km I think). To setup their connection you require the installation of a small white box that needs to be pointed to one of their towers. This is probably the most difficult and complicated part since the box needs a direct line of sight to their towers. If you’re living in an area like Salwa, Mishref or Bayan where all the buildings are low then you won’t have a problem. But, if like me you live in an area where you’re surrounded by tall apartment buildings and in my case Salmiya, then you’ll most likely NOT be able to get a direct line of sight. But I got lucky.

When they came over they tried installing the box on one of my balconies but it wouldn’t work. One balcony had tall buildings blocking my line of sight to their Hawalli tower while the other balcony wasn’t pointing towards their Ras Salmiya tower. Since the box is tiny I managed to get permission from my building to install it on the roof specially since we were just going to connect it to an existing pipe. Once we got onto the roof we were able to see their Salmiya tower (which is the communications/post office building near Salmiya Coop) and get a strong connection.

The white box is small and light and can be connected to any existing post on top of your building. You then need to run an Ethernet cable from the box down to your apartment and to your router or directly to your computer. There are two different connection speeds you need to know about. The first is the actual connection speed from your apartment to their tower. In my case the connection speed was around 15Mbps. The second connection speed is the one you subscribe to. So say you have a 15Mbps connection to their tower but you subscribe to their 1Mbps internet connection then you get just a 1Mbps internet connection. WiMD uses internet providers like Fasttelco, Zajil etc.. to provide their customers with internet. That is a good thing because it means if one internet provider is congested or having problems their system is smart enough to shift the balance over to the rest of their providers.

Right now I think they have my connection speed unlimited, so I’m getting internet as fast as my connection to their tower can handle. I’ve provided some speed test results below but really they do not do justice to the connection. Ignore the numbers below because in real world use the connection is super fast. Regular browsing which is what I do 90% of the time is very quick with instant page loads and no sort of lag whatsoever. Downloading files varies, I was downloading the 1.3GB Lion update from Apple at around 300kbps but that’s because I had one session open and it’s probably a limit by Apple. By using the software SpeedDownload I opened up a number of sessions and hit 1.2MB/s. I downloaded torrents as well and the accumulated speed of all my torrents was around 2.85MB/s! That’s by far the fastest I’ve ever downloaded torrents. Whats even better is the fact that while my torrents were downloading at that speed I was still browsing as usually not noticing any slowness. Their upload speed is also faster then anything I’ve ever had before.

I had my brother who lives next door and connected to my network try out gaming online and this is what he emailed me back:

The connection is f****** amazing. I always had trouble playing Halo but with this new connection there’s zero lag at all. Literally, no lag. I would have trouble connecting to games, no trouble here. Pretty cool

and later

I just tried FIFA, another game I had issues with, worked really well.

So first impressions, this connection kicks ass. Now I just need to figure out what speed to subscribe to. Originally I was thinking 6Mbps, then moved up to 10 and now really want to go even faster but once you go higher their connection isn’t exactly cheap. Below are their yearly prices again in case you missed my previous post:

1Mb KD130
1.5Mb KD150
2Mb KD180
3Mb KD225
4Mb KD270
5Mb KD320
6Mb KD325
7Mb KD355
8Mb KD390
9Mb KD473
10Mb KD523
11Mb KD590
12Mb KD660
13Mb KD730
14Mb KD800
15Mb KD870
16Mb KD940
17Mb KD1,010
18Mb KD1,080
19Mb KD1,150
20Mb KD1,220

If you’re interested in a connection you can call them on 22475841 and 22475842 or visit their website [Here]

Did you know that Hala February launched for the first time back in February 1999? I don’t think it has really improved much from back then and I find the event lacking consistency organization wise as well as any respect from the major retailers since a lot of them start their sale before the event. But I do find their Salmiya Carnival interesting since it allows everyone to see how much nicer Salem Al Mubarek Street can be without any cars. So if you’re looking for something to do tomorrow pass by the carnival, it should be there all day long. [Link]