2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

The good stuff:
– It’s pretty
– Excellent browser
– Everyone wants to touch your iphone
– It has an iPod built in
– Touch screen is amazing
– Decent camera
– It’s cheap, KD95 for 4GB and KD130 for 8GB (with shipping to Kuwait) prices the iPhone very competitively to other regular phones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson

The bad stuff:
– Once you have an iPhone you realize its just a phone
– If you have a lot of numbers its a real pain finding a contact
– Everyone wants to touch your iphone
– Typing on the iPhone is a joke
– Battery life is a bigger joke, barely lasts a day with below average use
– Adding a ringtone is a hassle
– Majority of headphones won’t work with it
– Not as useful or fun without a wireless internet or GPRS connection
– You have a lot of basic phone features missing like forwarding an SMS, turning off the predictive dictionary, different phone profiles, searching for contacts etc.. etc.. etc..

Would I recommend it?
If you aren’t a heavy phone user yes.
If you don’t send a lot of messages also yes.
For everyone else, no.

Final score, 3.5 out of 5. Nat loves it although she has issues with it. I personally could never have an iPhone as my primary phone.

Update: I now use the iPhone as my primary phone and can’t imagine life without it. The software 2.0 brought with it the app store which has made the iphone a lot more interesting for me.

Bacon = Freedom
Lettuce = Love
Tomato = Passion

All for only $33.95… weird! [Link]

I am at a location now shooting and there is a really cute 3 month old German shepherd called Enzo. I really miss my dog, can’t wait to get back to Kuwait and see him. (Posted from my Nokia e61i)

Remember the Dove ad of the woman morphing from something not very pretty to something very hot? Well this is the follow-up campaign. [YouTube]

And I thought iPhones were selling for a lot in Kuwait. Yesterday I overheard some Virgin employees here in Lebanon talk about this store thats selling unlocked iPhones for $1400!

I don’t have any paintings or pictures on my walls back home in Kuwait but when I get back I will have my first one. I got the picture above enlarged and will frame it and hang it up on my wall once I get back. Its a beautiful photo taken in the 80’s during the war in Lebanon. The picture was taken by Roger Moukarzel who also signed the photo for me. I love war photos and this one is probably as good as they come. if I wasn’t working in advertising I would most probably be a war photographer. Its something I’ve always wanted to do.

I never saw this one coming. Gucci ad directed by David Lynch! [YouTube]

update: Dima sent me this link of the behind the scenes video. [Link]

When I heard a sequel was going to be made I wasn’t too excited since I found the first Transformers movie disappointing. But, I just read that they are planning on adding more characters and a deeper story to the sequel which might actually make it decent to watch. [Link]

Been up since 7:30 shooting. We are shooting outdoors today and for some stupid reason I didn’t get my shades. We are now at this really cool park that isn’t open to the public because the trees inside are still growing. Geo my dog would love this place. (Posted from my Nokia e61i)

Pre-order Radioheads latest album! [Link]

This is what a 39MP camera looks like.(Posted from my Nokia e61i)

I’ve been in the studio since morning shooting. It’s not as interesting as shooting outdoor since the studio feels very monotonus (no spell checker on my phone). Anyway I am no longer coming back to Kuwait on the 4th, I am now coming back on the 6th. This means slow posting till then unless I can find cheap Internet access somewhere. (Posted from my Nokia e61i)

I think we have the worst McDonalds here in Lebanon. The one next to my hotel for example looks dirty and their fries is always soggy. Maybe I should start complaining here a bit. (Posted from my Nokia E61i)
.

I don’t have any work today morning since its Sunday so I am up at the hotels pool side trying to get some color. I have a meeting later in the day so I will probably stay up here until I find out what time the meeting is. (Posted from my Nokia e61i)

A few weeks ago a new shawerma place opened up called Mr Subs. I got emails from readers of the blog telling me about it and some friends also recommended it to me. What made this shawerma place special is that it was owned by Samir Saeed, the owner of Mr Baker.

The place is located in Jabriya, over looking the 4th Ring Road near where Mr Baker is. I passed by last week for dinner and it wasn’t that hard to find, you take the first right after Hardees, then another right so that you are driving in the direction of the 4th Ring Road and at the end of the street take a left to find Mr Subs on your left hand side.

Mr Subs serve a variety of stuff other than shawerma but I wasn’t interested in them. I ordered two chicken shawermas and was told I had a choice of 3 different bread to choose from. I chose the regular Arabic bread, the other two choices were a burger bun like bread and a bread that had olives in it or something. First thing that struck me about the place is how clean it was. It’s probably the cleanest shawerma place I have ever seen, the area around the shawerma grills were spotless which really impressed me. Sadly that was the most impressive thing about the place.

After picking up my two shawermas I went back to the car and started munching on them. I wasn’t very impressed. The shawermas reminded me a lot of the Kurdo shawermas which I am not a fan of. Its what I call commercial shawerma and its mostly because of the sauce they use. Notice I said sauce not garlic because thats basically what both Mr Subs and Kurdo use. Its a consumer friendly replacement to regular garlic most shawerma places use. The sauce which probably does use a bit of garlic doesn’t taste like garlic, instead it tastes more like mayonnaise which I can’t stand. Its also very liquidi which makes the shawerma feel greasy.

Another problem I had with the shawermas were the price, starting from 600 fils per shawerma its not cheap. The cheapest shawerma they have is the one that comes in Arabic bread, the other two choices of bread add 100 or 200 fils more to the price. At 600 fils a shawerma is also puts it really close in the price range of the Villa Fayrouz Express shawerma which tastes a lot better and is of much better quality. Oh and while I was waiting for my shawermas at Mr Subs I saw them pre grilling their burgers. They were grilling their burgers and then placing them in a container so that if someone ordered a burger they could just place it on the grill and heat it up. Although the place is really clean I didn’t like the idea they were pre-grilling their burgers. Anyway for the final score I decided to give their shawermas a 3 out of 5.