2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

I’m really not a museum type of guy but I have to highly recommend the British Museum in London. I passed by because I was in the area and curious but I’m really glad I did. The museum is HUGE, I think it’s the largest museum I’ve ever been to, actually I’m sure it is. It’s a maze of rooms after rooms filled with so much random stuff from all over the world that you’re bound to find something that interests you. Nat enjoyed the Egyptian mummies while my favorite section was the old watches and clocks but even the Japanese and Americas history section was fascinating.

What was going to be just a quick in and out tour of the museum ended up taking a couple of hours and I really was just walking from room to room barely stopping. That’s how big the place is.

The British Museum is just a few minutes off Oxford Street and entry is free.

Pretty cool but don’t think there was much room for them to play with since the tower they used at Green Island is tiny. Check the one done below by Fanta at Burj Khalifa.

Investigations are currently ongoing in a case in which a group of friends claim that an enemy they were preparing to fight against almost released a large tiger at them. The alleged incident reportedly took place on Al-Blajat street in Salmiya where the 12 young men approached someone they had unfinished business with, and decided to settle their differences the old fashioned way.

Soon enough, the enemy was joined by a friend, who reportedly had an adult tiger sitting in the backseat of his car. The group opted to flee when the tiger’s owner threatened to release the wild beast at them. They reported the incident at Rumaithiya police station immediately afterwards. Investigators are working to confirm the allegations before further action is taken.

WTF? [Source]

A leading music distributor has shuttered its Kuwait operations after claiming the Gulf states’s censorship of albums and artwork had made it impossible to run a full-scale operation. Music Master, which distributes music from major labels such as Universal, Sony and EMI, said curbs on content from bestselling artists such as Lady Gaga and Beyonce had left it battling to maintain its profit margins.

I didn’t even know they were in Kuwait. I actually can’t think of one place that still sells new CD’s now that Virgin has closed down. [Link]

Thanks Ahmad

Someone from WiMD the new internet provider I posted about earlier in the day left the following comment:

Many thanks, first of all, for giving us a platform to voice our services.

First things first, WiMD stands for Wireless Mobile Data. The name implies the meaning, so no gimmickry with names and how strong and powerful we are. Our technology is not based on the WiMAX standard and we don’t believe in sharing the customer subscribed bandwidth. We have nation wide coverage for our residential customers as of today.

Having said the above, we pride ourselves in what we commit to our customers. In today’s age of blogs and forums, we are aware that customer satisfaction is of prime importance and any wrong information/commitment can only do more harm to us than good.

As most of your readers have mentioned, they have never heard of us. This is true as we didn’t launch or market our services in the residential domain before today. All our existing residential customers till date have been through word of mouth and personal referrals. For obvious reasons you don’t get recommended for bad service or performance, do you?

We don’t want to take any further space and just want to introduce ourselves us a healthy alternative to your existing miseries with limited bandwidth and slower speed. Our request to all is, don’t judge us without even trying us. Our company policy for bandwidth commitment to customers is based on the site survey we do before delivering our services. Fair and transparent. Our NOC and Helpdesk are equipped to answer your queries.

And even after this, if your satisfaction quotient is not reached, kind reminder to our existing and prospective customers. We have a fair money bank policy which means, if you are dissatisfied with our services, you get the remaining balance on your contract reimbursed upon cancellation.

Just want to remind your readers, we are in Hall 6 @ InfoConnect. Please feel free to drop by.

We mean business and that is what we are here for. So no strings attached, no hidden dramas. JUST PERFORMANCE.

No idea on the price but one reader mentioned they start from KD385 per year.

Update: Here are their prices per year

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

Update2: I’m going to be trying out and signing up for their service. First hurdle is to see if I can install the antenna on my balcony instead of the roof since I don’t have access to my buildings roof. Hopefully the balcony would work, I’ll find out on Saturday.

I had dinner at Johnny Rockets last night and found out that they had updated their menu with some new items. They even added a little side-menu for all the different variations of soda you can get, including some strange combinations like Coca-Cola & Chocolate.

Posted by Patrick

From what I read on their website it looks like they will providing internet by rolling out a large Wifi network that covers all of Kuwait. No idea when they’re planning to start (or if they’ve started already) and how much their prices will be. If anyone manages to get a hold of them and find out more let me know. [Link]

Thanks Sabah

A presentation of the new Kuwait Airport by Foster+Partners. [YouTube]

Update: I’ve updated the video link to a working one.

For just £15 I was able to get a pre-paid phone line from the mobile operator 3 that lasts a month and comes with 300 minutes of talk time, 3000 SMS’s and unlimited 3G data. Works great with the iPhone and Personal Hotspot also works so you could get online in your hotel room with your laptop and avoid the hotels expensive internet rates.

I’m uploading and sharing a lot of photos on Instagram while I’m here on vacation and you can check them all out by clicking [Here]

The only thing I could think of that would suck even more is if N’SYNC and Take That teamed up together as well.

Looks like this year the government is really thinking digital with the upcoming elections in Kuwait. Last week I posted about their Flickr page where they were uploading pictures taken at different events related to the elections. Well Saud A. Almutairi contacted me and provided me with details regarding the election day website he helped the government setup.

On the day of the elections the Kuwaiti public will have access to preliminary results via the following channels:

Main Website
On the day of the elections after all polls are closed at 8pm that’s when counting will begin. An hour later if you visit the MOI news portal at https://news.gov.kw you will be automatically redirected to a live results website containing 5 tabs each representing a Kuwaiti circle and each containing 3 lists:

The Candidates
This first list will be a list of all the candidates (ordered alphabetically) and contain two fields that will be constantly updated: the vote count and current rank of the candidate. This list will NOT be auto sorted based on rank as to avoid confusion. This list will remain alphabetically ordered.

Follow
The second list will contain a list of candidates a user wants to follow. This list will be empty by default until the user adds his candidates. In the screen shots below you can see how it looks empty and how it looks with some candidates added.

The Leaderboard
This final list will contain the top 15 candidates based on rank. This list will be constantly changing as per the vote count so unlike the first list, the names of the candidates here will move up or down. This list will also contain the percentage of votes the candidate has based on all votes in the circle.

If there is an update the numbers will flash. Updates to the website should start around 10PM and occur every 5 to 10 minutes.

Mobile Website
When a user visits https://news.gov.kw from a mobile device (tested on the iPhone and Android) they will be presented with a mobile optimized version of the website. You can check out the screenshots below on how the information will be presented. The only thing to note here is that on the mobile website, the list of candidates are sorted by rank.

Twitter Integration
For twitter the MOI will have 5 handles, one for each Kuwaiti circle. The system will be set up to automatically post updates every 5 minutes on the Top 12 candidates.

Here are the twitter handles for all circles: @MediaKuwait1 @MediaKuwait2 @MediaKuwait3 @MediaKuwait4 @MediaKuwait5

Note: The results from the MOI are considered preliminary scores and NOT official scores.

I’ve seen electric cars before but this was the first time I spotted one being charged. In Mayfair they have few parking spots that have electric charging points. Very cool.

My favorite method of transportation from the airport to the hotel and vice versa is using the Heathrow Connect train. I tried the black cabs but at 60 British Pounds (around KD25) they’re too expensive and you spend a lot of time stuck in traffic (total trip time close to an hour). I also tried taking the subway which cost me 1.5 pounds but found it too much of a hassle and it wasn’t easy navigating with a bag. Plus the subway took nearly as long as the cab.

Once I discovered Heathrow Connect I haven’t looked back. Actually there are two very similar options the other being Heathrow Express which is the train the airport heavily advertises. Heathrow Express costs around 20 pounds and will have you in London within 20 minutes. The train has room for your baggage and even has wifi on board which I think is great. The other option is Heathrow Connect which is similar to the Express train with some minor differences. Unlike the Express train, the Connect train has around 5 stops before it arrives into London. These 5 stops add around 15 minutes of travel time when compared to the Express. In addition to that the train also doesn’t have wifi. But on the other hand the Heathrow Connect costs just 10 pounds for a ticket and as you can see the from the picture above is usually empty since it’s less popular since the airport advertises the Express train. So that’s around 6 times cheaper than the cab (if you’re 1 person) and gets you there nearly twice as fast.

So next time you’re going to London consider the Heathrow Express and Connect trains. You can get the tickets at the airport and the trains leave every 15 minutes.

I hope this actually gets built. Find out more about this project [Here]