2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Whenever I get back to Lebanon one of the things that pisses me off is the amount of racism that still exists there. I was just checking CNN and noticed an article called Maid Suicides and it turned out to be an article about the recent spate of maid suicides in Lebanon. This is extremely depressing and honestly I am not sure what can be done to educate the employers of those maids. Anybody have any ideas? How do you educate a whole country? [CNN Link]

This is an interesting event, Genki Sushi who are located at Al Raya want people to try and see how good their sushi is so they’re holding an event at The Exhibition and inviting everyone to come and try their sushi for free. Here are the details:

Genki Sushi Nights @ The Exhibition
Enjoy FREE SUSHI for two nights ONLY!

6PM-10PM
Wednesday and Thursday
December 9-10, 2009

Directions to event: Three shops to the left of Slider Station on ‘The Strip’ – Across from Alseef Palace, Jibla, Kuwait.
Telephone: + (965) 940 662 26

The Genki Sushi restaurant is located in Arraya Mall, Kuwait City. Tel: (+965) 229 979 33

That’s free all you can eat sushi people!

Thanks Hiba

Here is the calendar for Cinemagic’s rooftop movie nights for December:

Thursday, December 3rd at 7:00 PM
BRODRE, DENMARK 2004
Director: Susan Bier
Genre: Drama | 146 min | English Subtitle

Saturday, December 5th at 7:00 PM
COUSCOUS, TUNISIA 2007
Director: Abdellatif Kecheiche
Genre: Drama | 148 min | English Subtitle

Thursday, December 10th at 7:00 PM
DEATH NOTE – THE LAST NAME, JAPAN 2007
Director: Shusuke Kaneko
Genre: Adventure | Mystery | 141 min | English Subtitle

Saturday, December 12th at 7:00 PM
SURPRISE FILM

Thursday, December 17th at 7:00 pm
A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, USA 1993
Director: Tim Burton
Genre: Comedy | Musical | 80 min | English Subtitle

Saturday, December 19th at 7:00 pm
UN CONTE DE NOEL, FRANCE 2008
Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Genre: Drama | 150 min | English Subtitle

Cinemagic movies are screened in the old Salmiya, on the roof on top of Alghanim Electronics and LG. Attendance is free of charge and snacks and refreshments will be served.

Here is a link to their facebook group [Link]

The video above is the new teaser trailer for GulfRun 5 thats going to be held at the end of January in Bahrain. The guys promised me I will have another video and more information to post in a few more days so will keep you posted with any updates. [YouTube]

Here is a link to the Gulf Run website [Link]

Just got the following message from the Facebook group Keep Kuwait Green:

Friends, please come to the green rally on Saturday, December 5th from 10am to 11:30am. Wear green and support the peaceful cause to keep reasonable hedges and stop cutting down Kuwait’s trees. The Green Rally will be held in West Mishref, across from the Australian college facing the Mishref Fair Grounds. Bring the kids

Picture by Ramez

Someones found a way to turn vodka into pills. That should be fun for airport customs officials:

‘Solid’ vodka would become popular for two reasons only – it would be easier to carry it and because it cannot be broken. In fact, ‘dry’ vodka can be wrapped in paper and carried around in your pocket or bag. Besides that, vodka in the form of pills can help consumers determine their preferred ‘dose’ of intoxication.

Here is the link to the article [Link

Just learned that octogenarian means a person who is between 80 and 90 years old. [YouTube]

Tonight was the soft launch for The Meat Company so I decided to pass by with Nat and have dinner there. Like Wagamama, I hadn’t been to any other Meat Company before so I didn’t come in with any expectations. The interior of the place is very well done, the lighting, the carpet, the wooden walls all help give the place a very warm and cozy feeling. The staff all seemed to be from South Africa and very friendly. Our waiter was previously based in Dubai and he’s now going to be living and working in Kuwait along with a few other waiters who also moved to here from Dubai.

For starters I ordered the salt & pepper calamari while for my main course I ordered the 300 grams Australian fillet, pepper crusted and medium rare with a side order of mashed potatoes. Nataly ordered the petit fillet which is 200 grams but she ordered hers well done with a side order of salad but also pepper crusted. The calamari was ok but I wouldn’t order it again. The steak on the other hand was probably one of the best steaks I’ve ever had. It was cooked perfectly and the meat was so soft and tender it was just melting effortlessly while I was chewing it. Even Nat’s well done fillet was extremely soft, I was actually surprised since most well done steaks I’ve had end up being dry and tough. I really loved the steak which has put me in a strange position because when I was first checked the menu I spotted some burgers and decided that I would try one on my next visit. Now I don’t think I will because it would be a shame not to have the fillet again.

Price wise the petit fillet for example costs around KD10.5 and comes with a side order. The calamari was KD3 something. Oh I also tried their home made wine (alcohol free). It comes in a nice wine glass and it looks a lot like wine but sadly doesn’t taste like wine. On the bright side I didn’t drive back home drunk.

I really liked the place and would try to make it there once a month at least. The Meat Company is located in the 360 Mall, first floor opposite Coffee Republic.

Although I would think by now everyone knows what Ace Hardware is it seems it’s not as popular as I had imagined. Whenever I mention Ace on my blog a few people always comment asking what it was or where it was so I figured I would highlight the place.

Ace Hardware is one of my favorite stores in Kuwait. They’ve been open over a decade now and every year they just keep on improving. They sell everything from bedsheets, towels, sporting equipment, ATV’s, barbecue’s, gardening tools, car accessories, bathroom accessories, hardware tools, power tools, toys, paint, kitchenware, bulbs, pet supplies and the list goes on and on. Everything is arranged nicely, the place never gets too crowded, the staff are friendly and helpful and since they import a lot of items directly from the States, you find a lot of stuff you can’t find anywhere else. I use Ace mostly for the hardware tools section, the barbecue accessories and pet supplies but every now and then I would need something totally random and I would find it only at Ace.

They’re located in Al-Rai in the area between Avenues and the 4th Ring Road. I’ve drawn a map below of how to find the place, they’re open from 9AM to 10PM daily and their phone number is 24769100.

I passed by the Tamiya dealer after lunch since I heard they got a new shipment of cars and parts. While there I noticed their outdoor track was nearly finished, seems it will be ready to race on by next week. Since I had one of my cars with me I decided to try out their indoor track and luckily no one was around because it would have been very embarrassing if anyone saw how horribly I was driving.

So far I’ve spent most of my time playing with my cars in empty parking lots or open desert spaces but this was the first time I tried driving in a confined track. I was basically really glad most of the walls were covered with foam padding since my car spent most of the laps slamming from one wall to the next like a pinball. My last laps were definitely much better than my first few but by then it was too late since my car’s shell had already gotten pretty beat up. It now has a large chunk missing in the front but I guess that just gives me an excuse to pick up a new body.

I passed by The Meat Company earlier today and took some pictures of the interior. The place is huge, seats 200 people and looked very cozy. Turns out they will have wine on the menu, supposedly some really good home made wine but sadly it will be alcohol free wine.

I passed by Wagamama for lunch to try it out. It was my first time trying Wagamama anywhere not just Kuwait so I didn’t know what to expect. At first glance most of their menu seemed to be made up of a lot of noodles and fried food, two things which I don’t eat but after a closer look I did start spotting some grilled dishes. I decided to go with the Negima Yakitori for starters, its grilled chicken and spring onions on skewers which turned out to be very good followed by Chicken Katsu Curry. Some readers had previously recommended I try the Katsu Curry but when I found it on the menu it turned out to contain deep fried chicken which was a let down. BUT, turns out they had an option where you could swap the deep fried chicken for grilled chicken which is the option I went with. When my dish arrived it looked like the chicken was too dry but after mixing it with the rice and curry I tried it and it wasn’t dry at all. The chicken was soft and the curry sauce was pretty good.

When I first went in the place was empty so we got to sit on our own private table. On our way out the place had filled up and you had strangers sitting next to each other on the long shared tables which should theoretically be awkward but wasn’t since even though the tables are connected the benches were far apart.

I had a good experience and would probably go back. The prices were decent with the Negima Yakitori costing KD1.500 and the Katsu Curry KD3.750. You can actually download and view the whole menu with the prices from the local Wagamama website and here is the direct link to it [Link]

Just ordered the Drobo backup system along with 4×1.5TB drives from Amazon. I currently have 3TB of storage that’s a combination of 5 external drives and it’s fine except for the fact if I lose one of those drives I lose everything that’s on it and its happened to me before. So I’ve been wanting to get a decent backup system and decided to go with the Drobo. The Drobo can take 4 2TB drives and the best part about it is if one of the drives fails you just swap that drive out with another one and you don’t lose any information.

The Drobo works kinda like Raid 5 except with one cool feature, you can mix match a variety of different sized drives together and expand with great ease.

I added all the stuff to my shopping cart and when I checked out Amazon was still using my Aramex shipping address and the Tax was around $70. So I swapped it for my new DHL address and poof no tax. It’s my first time shipping with DHL EasyShop so will post my review once I get the package.

The Drobo costs KD100 on Amazon, here is the [Link]

Also, here is the Drobo hard drive space calculator. Because of the way the Drobo works to secure your data, installing 4x2TB drives won’t give you 8TB of space to use, you get 5.5TB. This link will help you calculate how much space you get with a certain combination of drives. [Link]

Stephen King is writing a sequel to The Shining and it will be based 40 years later and focus around Danny (the young boy from the original). I haven’t read the original book but loved the movie so not sure how I feel about a sequel since the first question that pops up into my mind is who would direct it if it ever got turned into a movie? The original was directed by Stanley Kubrick who passed away back in 1999. [Link]

I got the following email today with a link to the trailer above:

I’m one of the people who are working on a Kuwaiti film, and we would love to post the trailer on your blog so we can get feedback from the viewers before we move to the next step of production. We are a group of Kuwaiti youth who are interested in Film-making and cinema. We are trying to make serious Kuwaiti films, but since we are doing it ourselves and without any form of support, we need all the help that we can get.

I really like the fact that more and more people in Kuwait are getting interested in film and it’s great these guys took the time to work on this movie. But, I am going to give my opinion now on this trailer and I will try not to be too harsh. I just watched the trailer and found it too long and unexciting. There also is a ton of cheap special effects and the whole thing looks like a B-rated Ramadan TV series. Now I know they didn’t have any form of support and I am guessing no budget but why think of an epic movie that would need a budget and cast equal to Lord of the Rings? They should have gone with a movie that focused more on the story and characters instead of the special effects and large battle scenes. The film Sharq for example focused around a handful of characters, no special effects and no expensive hard to shoot locations.

Now that I’m done giving my opinion whats yours? [YouTube]