2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003
I passed by the Choowy Goowy opening today at the Avenues. They opened up in place of where Starbucks used to be located just outside the food court. They’ve got their cheesecakes, brownies and cookies all available there and all freshly baked in front of you. Now some bad news, I found out tonight that Arby’s will NOT be opening at the Avenues. It seems they pulled out which sucks!
I was checking the blog 4th Ring Road today when I spotted their post on the new Electrozan offer so I decided to pass by them and pick up a BlackBerry Curve for Nat. When I got to the Electrozan showroom I found out the BlackBerry’s were sold out already. The employee told me they will be getting more tomorrow afternoon but I also found out why the Curve’s were being sold for cheap… they are T-Mobile branded. That automatically turned what sounded like a really good deal into a bad deal. Let me explain:
– An unlocked unbranded BlackBerry Curve costs KD135 on Amazon [Link]. With shipping to Kuwait via Aramex the total would amount to KD142. Sorry this was for the QWERTZ keyboard.
– An unlocked unbranded BlackBerry Curve costs KD145 on Amazon [Link]. After tax and shipping to Kuwait via Aramex the total would amount to KD165.
– Now on the other hand a new unlocked T-Mobile branded BlackBerry Curve from eBay costs KD124 [Link]. With shipping to Kuwait via Aramex the total would amount to KD129 which is KD30 cheaper than Electrozan.
So to summarize things, its still a much better deal to order a BlackBerry Curve online since a saving of KD30 is a pretty big chunk.
Update: Just picked up a Curve from Electrozan for Nat. Paypal locked up my account because I logged in and paid for something through my VPN and they assumed someone else got into my account. So now I can’t use eBay for awhile. The BlackBerry is T-Mobile branded and comes with T-Mobile literature. Employee said its officially unlocked so I can do the software updates. Comes with 6 months warranty so it will be interesting to see what exactly that means if something does go wrong from now to 6 months time. They’re out of Bolds at the moment.
Update 2: The Curve’s sold at Electrozan are from T-Mobile Germany which means the keyboard is a QWERTZ and not the regular QWERTY. Simply put, the locations of the letters Z and Y are swapped.
A reader spotted the yellow Kid ‘R’ Us koala bear at the Friday Market shoved underneath a foosball table. It doesn’t look too happy.
Thanks Valencia!
3D flying is pretty weird to describe. It’s not about flying in the typical sense but more about really difficult acrobatic maneuvers. I guess the best way to explain it is by watching the video above of a local team in action. Some very cool stuff. [YouTube]
Choowy Goowy will be opening up at the Avenues hopefully this Wednesday. This will be Choowy Goowys first store and they’ve really come a long way since I first reviewed them over three years ago back in January 2006. They will be baking cookies at the Avenues store so you should be able to pick some up as they come out of the oven. The pictures above and below are just sneak peak shots of the store taken with a Nokia E71. They still haven’t removed the wooden paneling that currently surrounds the store so it was pretty hard to get anything wider than these shots.
Update: I just realized that a lot of readers might not be aware of the fact that Choowy Goowy have cookies called Mark&Nat. Back in November 2006 Nat and I were invited to Choowy Goowy to create our own cookies. After some experimenting and having some friends try out our creations, the oreo cookies were voted as being the best and so Choowy Goowy decided to make these cookies and call them Mark&Nat with jar labels matching our blog. You can read about our experience [Here]
I don’t know where to start this review because I’ve got a ton of good things to say about the Archos 7 but an equal amount of bad things. I guess I will start with the bad things.
The Archos 7 is extremely buggy plus I think I have a problem with mine. There are three brightness settings on my A7, low, medium and high. When I put the brightness on high the back light flickers between low and high constantly. I checked online and some people faced this issue when the screen was set on low brightness but I am the first to report this issue with the brightness set on high. Luckily for me I don’t have any problems when the brightness is set on low or medium, the two settings I will be using most while traveling. I read this issue could get fixed with a firmware update but so far since I got the device over a week ago there’s been two firmware updates and both haven’t solved the flickering issue.
As I mentioned earlier the device is also buggy. I haven’t used the A7 much but so far its crashed with me while watching a movie once. At times it just crashes while getting charged or while its on sleep and I need to reboot it, a quick process but nevertheless it shouldn’t do that. I had it connected to my Mac for over a day now and it was working fine until awhile ago I tried to turn it on and it wouldn’t. For some reason it wasn’t charging over USB which it should have been and the battery got completely drained. URGH! The last negative thing I have to say is that the Archos is pretty heavy. I love using my iPhone after I am done with the A7 since it makes my iphone seem tiny and ultra light. Oh and one more thing, I can’t seem to remove the battery, its like jammed or something!
Yeah there are A LOT of issues but… I still love the Archos 7! I love the screen, the battery life, the ability to just drag and drop my movie folders onto it, the way it plays ALL my files without needing to convert them, the touch screen, the browser, the web TV, web Radio, the stupid flash games, the little stand on the back of the device, the way Archos keeps improving the device with firmware upgrades and finally the fact that I can stream videos off my main server at home over wifi and watch them on my Archos from anywhere at home. When I bought the device I didn’t know I could do that but it turns out I can and easily. I just browse my home network from the Archos, find a video file, double click it and it starts playing instantly.
When I purchased the Archos 7 it was because I thought it was the best portable video player on the market but now I know it is. As of this post I am not aware of any other device on the market that has the same features and abilities as the Archos 7 and thats why I have no regrets. Final score is a 3.5 out of 5. Yeah it has a TON of issues but at the end of the day all it needs to do is play movies for a very long time without running out of battery and that it does perfectly. Of course I am hoping Archos will work out whatever bugs I have with the next firmware update.
160GB Archos 7 is for $272. [Amazon Link]
320GB Archos 7 is for $412. [Amazon Link]
By the way there is also a smaller version called the Archos 5 which sells for $280. Its the same as the Archos 7 in every way except the screen is a 5inch and the battery lasts around 5 hours. [Amazon Link]
Last month while browsing the web I landed on a website which spoke about some cool solar powered lights that Ikea was going to introduce into the market. To my surprise, while shopping today at Ikea I spotted the lights! They had the whole collection and the most expensive one (pictured below) was for around KD6 and that was because the set contained five light sticks. That’s pretty cool and cheap!
I’ve got a friend who works at the Commercial Bank of Kuwait and according to him CBK terminated the contracts of all their employees. Supposedly they are now going to have to sign new contracts but no one knows yet what to expect. No bonuses? Salary Cuts? No one has been told what the new contracts will state…
Update: Buzberry just posted a letter from a CBK employee which you can read [Here]
A user in the forum just posted that the cast of the new Star Trek film were in Kuwait (includes Sylar from Heroes, Eric Bana and Simon Pegg). I am guessing they’re here to meet the US army or maybe in transit to Iraq? In any case I wish I had spotted them so I could have taken some pictures with them!
Here is the link to the post in the forum. [Link]
Update: I need to move to Camp Arifjan!
About 440 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines will get to see the newest Star Trek movie at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, on Saturday — about a month before its stateside premiere, Army and Air Force Exchange Service officials announced Friday. [Source]
Update 2: Faisal sent me a link to a post on Socialite Life with pictures of the cast in Kuwait. Wish I was in one of those pics! [Link]
Update 3: Here is a video! [YouTube]
A local blogger called Ansam found rotten tomatoes in her Whopper at Burger King. If that wasn’t bad enough the manager there didn’t even apologize for it! Last month it was Hardees with their bug sandwich and now its Burger King with their rotten tomatoes. I guess I am only going to be eating at McDonalds from now on. [Link]
Update: The marketing manager responds, you can read about it [Here]
I just got invited to a new exhibition that will be held at the Al Sabah Art & Design Collection next week. For this exhibition they commissioned a bunch of designers and artists to customize a very popular fragrance bottle which they will be displaying and selling at the exhibition. They aren’t revealing what the fragrance is until the actual event but I heard that the fragrance might actually be Chanel No.5 which could be what the “5.5” in the exhibition title stands for. H
Private Viewing / April 12, 2009 (By invitation only)
8:00pm to 10:00pm
Open to Public / April 13 to April 20, 2009
10:00 am to 10:00 pm
Admission: Free
Here is the link to the actual invitation which contains more information. [Invitation]
The guys from Kuwait Extreme successfully completed in the Marathon Des Sables, a self-reliant 254km footrace through the Sahara desert over the course of one week. This is the first team from the Gulf to participate the 2009 Marathon Des Sables.
The team members are Zed Alrefai, Reyad Malallah, Khalid Alsayer and Ahmad Almajed. Their participation was to raise awareness and, through sponsorship, to fund The Kuwaiti Association for Learning Differences (KALD). The team was sponsored by: ALSAYER GROUP and Eastpak and supported by Extreme Sports, Caribou Coffee, Pro-Vision Sport Management, Artistic View, Dr. Zuhair ALNasar, AMAC, LOfat and Garmin.
The Marathon Des Sables:
This arduous event known as “the toughest footrace on Earth” takes place in the largest desert in the world Sahara desert over seven days covering a distance of 254 km on foot.In addition all athlete must be totally self reliant, carrying their food, water, medical needs and camping equipment for the entire duration of the race in their backpack. The race itself; which is equivalent to a marathon a day, is in fact broken into various stages, the most extreme of which is a distance of 84 km in a 24 hrs period. The real challenge is the weather which all athlete are exposed to sandstorms, high humidity as well the temperature could reaches 50 C during the morning and goes below -0 C at night.
Link to facebook group: [here]
Posted by K.
I noticed something recently with my Aramex Shop&Ship mailbox which actually pissed me off until I got a phone call awhile ago explaining to me what was going on. For the past two weeks I’ve been buying a lot of stuff from Amazon and eBay. The problem I was facing was that I would have lets say four packages in my US mailbox waiting to be shipped to Kuwait but then Aramex would only ship one of them. This usually happens during periods of time when people shop online a lot like before Christmas or Eid so it didn’t make sense why it was happening now. Now what confused me with all of this is that the rest of the packages ended up shipping the next day but then all four of my packages arrived to Kuwait at the same time. It didn’t really make any sense.
So after a few emails complaining I got a phone call today from Aramex and it turns out they’ve done something new. Basically they only have two cargo flights a week out of the US. This is why they ship the stuff to Kuwait twice a week. Two weeks ago they struck a deal with Kuwait Airways where they are now able to ship some items to Kuwait on their planes which from what I understood are daily flights. Aramex is limited by the kind of mail and the amount of mail they can ship on those flights so thats why they were “choosing” what to send from my packages. Anything that can’t be sent on those daily Kuwait Airways flights remains in the mailbox until a cargo plane is available to take them to Kuwait which is twice a week.
In short, some of the packages from now on will ship the day after they arrive to the box while others will continue to be shipped only twice a week. Thats pretty cool.
Note: For those of you who don’t know what Aramex Shop&Ship is, its a forwarding mailbox which Aramex sets up for you in the US or the UK and any package that gets sent to that mailbox gets forwarded to you here in Kuwait.