2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

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.

A body of a student was found in the parking lot of the Australian College of Kuwait. No cause of death has been disclosed but the following email was sent out to ACK students:

Dear All,

I am sad to inform you that a student was found deceased in his car on campus. It is extremely unfortunate and disheartening to see this incident happen to this young student with a bright future. Appropriate measures were taken including reporting to the police.

Investigators from the Department of Criminal Investigation and the Ambulance Department were notified immediately. The police at this stage could not confirm the nature of death; however, in due course they will inform the college on the details of the investigation.The police were extremely cooperative in attending to this emergency on the campus and worked in conjunction with the ambulance and other members of the college including our security. We extend our deepest condolences and prayers to the grieving family.

Vishy Karri

If you don’t want to answer your secret question every time you log into Watani Online here is how to get rid of it.

Step 1 – Log into your Watani Online account as usual

Step 2 – Once you log in click on Manage my WOL Security Key on the left hand side

Step 3 – Click on Register you computer then on OK

Step 4 – Thats it. Next time you log into Watani Online from the same computer you won’t have to answer your secret question.

I’ve had my Wrangler for 4 years now exactly and I’ve noticed an interesting trend with my dealership after they merged with Al Mulla who are renowned for their terrible service centers.

– An oil and filter change originally used to cost me KD8. I would pop into the quick service center and come out 30 minutes later. It was still called Behbehani Motor Company here.

– An oil and filter change later became KD12. I would pop into the quick service center and come out an hour later. This is after Behbehani Motor Company and Al Mulla merged.

– An oil and filter change now costs me KD16. I now pop into the quick service center and come out two and a half hours later.

There is a Lamborghini Diablo for sale on Q8Car for only KD14,500. I think that’s not a bad deal although I am not too fond of the color. [Link]

On Friday April 10th the Jeep Club in Kuwait will have an off-road mud festival. Here are some details:

– Location: Subiyah Hights.
– Gathering: 1pm behind Sultan Center, Salmiya.
– Events: Mud Bogging, Mud Drag Racing, Speed Test

For more details please contact the phone numbers below.
All 4X4 vehicles are welcomed.

Jeep Club Kuwait Pictures
Jeep Club Kuwait Videos
[email protected]
Tel: 99504315 and 66533100

I don’t know how I missed this! [YouTube]

One of my favorite Le Mans cars, the Aston Martin DBR9 is on display at the Avenues. I am not sure if its the actual race car or a replica but either way its one great looking car.

That must have been a pretty strange sight. [YouTube]

So as I posted earlier, my Archos 7 arrived today. I watch a lot of movies and tv shows on the plane when I travel and I’ve been using my old iPod to do that. It served me well but the tiny screen and the 4 hour battery life wasn’t cutting it for me. I also didn’t like the fact I had to convert all my videos to a format the iPod would read because it mean I had to plan ahead of time what I was going to take with me so I could spend a couple of days converting them.

I wanted a player which had a long battery life, a large screen and a player that could play Divx and Xvid formatted movies. Thats why I ended up going with the Archos 7. The battery lasts over 8 hours, the screen is a huge 7inch and I could just drag and drop movies onto its 160GB hard drive without converting them.

My first impressions so far are good. The screen is great and much more responsive then I was expecting. It doesn’t get smudged easily because its a matte screen but the back of the device which is shiny is full of smudges. I moved a few tv shows and movies over to the Archos and it played them all except for one which had AC3 sound encoded. To play that I needed to purchase a plug-in which I did. The US site has 3 plug-ins listed for the Archos 7 at $20 each while the global version of the site had the 3 plug-ins bundled together for $40. I decided to get all 3 plug-ins for $40 and I can now play HD movies and movies encoded with AC3 without a problem. I don’t like the idea of paying for plug-ins but I am glad I have the choice to do so instead of no choice at all. I tried watching tv with the built in web tv and although it works I couldn’t find a decent channel to watch except for Sky News. The web browser on the Archos works really well and I was able to load up my blog without any issues. It even displayed the flash ad banners which I have on my site, something which Safari on the iPhone can’t do.

Now the negative stuff. The device is heavier than I expected which isn’t really a problem for me since I will only be using it on the plane. I also had trouble playing one movie, every time I tried it would just crash the Archos. I am thinking its because of the way the movie was encoded but need to experiment more with this. It was a 1.8GB file. Quantum of Solace which I have encoded with AC3 sound and coming in at around 1.4GB played flawlessly.

So far I am really liking the device. I know some of you might have specific things you want to know about the Archos just ask me below and I will try to reply. The Archos 5 and 7 are basically the same device except for the larger screen and longer battery life on the 7.

160GB Archos 7 is for $272. [Amazon Link]
320GB Archos 7 is for $412. [Amazon Link]

Aramex just dropped off my Archos 7 and it looks AMAZING. Will take a better shot of it later but I just took this quick one to show how much larger the screen is compared to my iPhone. This is going to make watching movies on the plane a lot better now!

Yesterday I passed by a new concept store which my friend set up called i love souk. It turned out to be a pretty cool store that sells a bunch of random funky items like design books, vintage clothing, accessories, artwork and more. They’re also authorized dealers for Lomography and American Apparel.

They’re located outside Al Corniche Club to the left of Athletes Foot right on top of the Al Sabah Art & Design gallery. Their main ilovesouk.com website is still not up but there is a small section with pictures about the store on the Al Sabah Collection website which you can check [Here]

A friend of mine spotted a vending machine at one of the guy bathrooms at the Avenues offering free condoms and tampons. Tampons I can understand although its strange that its in the guys bathroom but condoms? The bathroom he found this vending machine in is on the top floor next to the first Starbucks that comes up when walking away from IKEA.

Thanks Holla!

update: This is NOT an april fools prank!

Magic Planet opened up at Avenues and it looks really great. What I think makes the place special is the minimalist design of some of the toys which all seem to take form of white bugs. I took the picture above but a friend of mine (Thanks Ibrahim!) emailed me a ton of pictures which you can check out by clicking on continue below.