2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Seriously there is a blog for everything. [Link]

I watched The Kingdom yesterday at what has to be the worst movie theater here in London. Seriously what theater actually leaves the lights on during a movie? The movie itself was pretty decent but now that I watched it I am really surprised it was banned in Kuwait. Watching the movie you can tell that the producers tried their best not to make Muslims look bad and the Saudi police actually were heroes in this movie so why was it banned?

On paper it doesn’t take much to open a store in Kuwait, the business process is comprised of the following: get money, get franchise, get location. The same store you visited a few years back on your summer vacation to an Arab hotspot (London, California, DC) has now shown up in your neighborhood avenue. In the past ten years, most Kuwaitis have grown accustomed to the growth of shopping malls and their associated brand names. The Midases of Kuwait who do come up with their own names are merely an amalgamation of other brands.

So what is one to do if the franchises (or combination of them under a local name) do not carry the products you are looking for?
You make it yourself.

Well, that is what one company recently did with Baroue… The concept was realized by Fahed Al-Mutawa after a bout of frustration finding items for his then newborn. After realizing the need for a child superstore; the idea behind Baroue was hatched, and it came to life through MS (Mutawa/Sayer) Retail (Restaurateurs in previous ventures).

What differs Baroue from any other children’s’ store?

Baroue has gone beyond the cookie-cutter approach of reselling items and retaining franchises; They have created a complete brand/franchise from zero. Their design studio (clothes) is based in London, their factories are in India and their head office is home sweet home, Kuwait.

Their first store is the third largest at the Avenues and carries everything from clothes and toys to a huge dragon that is a playpen in itself. And they have plans of expanding to other countries shortly.

For those who have had the theme song playing endlessly in their head (Baroue, Baroue, Baroue) .. You can blame Yuri Mrakdi, who originally came onboard as a Marketing director (and later sang the song). For the techies, you can track your children (RFID armbands) playing in the dragon through the kiosks scattered around the store.

Oh my god its really as good as people said it would be!! (Posted from my Nokia e61i)

update: Here is a link to their website. [Link]

A blog with loads of airline related design displayed, just flip through the different sections on the site. [Link]

Today is the final race for Formula 1 with the rookie favorite McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton (107 points) and just mere points separate him from his own team mate Fernando Alonso (103) and Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen (100).

Also include the drama that has been happening between Alonso and Hamilton then the spy scandal with Ferrari and McLaren it just extra spicing for what looks like will be an great race.

You can catch it tonight on Jazeera Sports at 7pm local time.

Personally I am cheering for Hamiliton, I like what he has done for the sport and is a new face and really got me into the sport this year.

Who do you think will win?

We just got evacuated from the subway due to some emergency. Pretty weird, I think I heard something about an electric fire. (Posted from my Nokia e61i)

Cheese burger, Ceaser salad, fries, onion rings, 2 beers and a coke.
Total: KD17

Its 2007 and we are still traveling by planes? Why hasn’t anyone invented a teleporter yet like the one from Star Trek. Hi sir can I see your ticket please? Thank you have a safe trip. Voooooyoooooop. Hi sir welcome to London.

Well not really cheap but cheaper than what a lot of people are selling their iPhones for. Click n Buy are selling the 8GB iPhone for KD219. Compared to Eureka’s KD399 price and compared to individuals who are selling their phones for KD230-KD250, suddenly Click n Buy looks like a good deal. [Link]

After I accepted Mark‘s invitation to be a guest writer in the week +1 span of his ‘vacation’ .. I came to the realization that If I were to post here as often as I posted on my personal blog .. my next post would be in a couple months.

However, you can be assured that in the span of my absence (and Marks); Marzouq will post about cartoons and toys, while Nibaq links you directly to the original content.

(If you count the K’s you get a prize.)

-K.

I haven’t blogged with Mark since back in the qHate.com days. It feels like a velvet glove cast in iron.

Well the plane is almost done. We had the technical guy come over yesterday for a safety check and some other advice. It is looking good based on his view. He suggests that we cut more weight from it as possible to help the lift. Seems that every little bit helps.

All is left is our secret weapon that Mark is brining with him from his trip, and the color of it. I really hope we don’t have the same incident as last time. Huge fight broke out about which color the plane should be. We didn’t talk to each other for a week…

Since I will be going on vacation for around 8 days I have invited k.thekuwaiti, Marzouq and Nibaq to be guest writers while I am away.
This should be fun!

I will be out of the country from the 19th of October to the 27th on vacation. Me and Nat will be heading to London and Paris and so I don’t know how often I will be updating the blog through out this trip. If I don’t update it daily I am sure you can understand why. This is my first proper vacation in a long time.

A friend of mine passed me his two iPhones today to unlock. He purchased them around the same time I purchased my last iPhone except his arrived with the 1.1.1 firmware while mine luckily arrived with the 1.0.2 one. Yesterday an updated version of AnySIM got released which I posted about and which supposedly unlocked the 1.1.1 iPhones but I tried it and it didn’t work.

The steps to unlocking a 1.1.1 iPhone are fairly easy, its just one tiny extra step compared to unlocking the 1.0.2 phones.

1) I downloaded the latest version of INdependence
2) I ran it and clicked on the option to Enter DFU mode (this is the option that you didn’t have to do with 1.0.2)
3) I quit INdependence, ran iTunes and restored the phone to version 1.0.2
4) I quit iTunes and ran INdependence again
5) I clicked on Activate
6) I then clicked on Jailbreak
7) I then clicked on install SSH
8) I FTP’ed to the phone and copied AnySIM
9) I ran AnySIM

Thats all the steps required to activate and unlock the iPhone. I also installed AppTapp but that can be done later. Now my issue is everything went smoothly except for the AnySIM unlock. It ran and gave me an error at the end which is normal, but when I rebooted it still wouldn’t work with the local GSM network. I tried unlocking both iPhones and had the same issue. Everything else on the iPhone works except for the phone. I don’t know if this is happening with other people or if I missed a step somewhere but whatever the reason might be it’s too late at night to figure it out.