2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

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Tonight I passed by the recently opened Burger Bar in Kuwait City. I got there and found the two parking spots in front of the place empty so I parked my car and got down when the Holiday Inn security guard came up to me and told me I couldn’t park there. Since Burger Bar is located adjacent to Holiday Inn downtown, the security guard told me I wasn’t allowed to park in the two empty spots outside the restaurant. He told me I had to park across the street. I thought that was strange but wasn’t in the mood to argue and just went back into my car and parked on the other side.

The place from the outside looked like a Japanese restaurant and when I looked through the windows I saw what looked like Japanese waiters. I thought to myself this must be the wrong place, even Nataly was like “Mark this looks like a Japanese restaurant”. Once we walked around to the main entrance we saw the Burger Bar logo and realized we were at the right place. We walked through some dimly lit candles outside (very Japanese-ish) into the restaurant where we were greeted by waiters dressed in red silk clothing and black bandannas which again was very Japanese-ish. The place was empty except for one table with two men so we sat down wherever we wanted. We had two choices for seating, what looked like long benches or one of the booths, we chose the booth since it looked more comfortable. Our table was the smallest in the restaurant and I think it could easily fit 8 people. I don’t know if they were made for extremely overweight people or they believe that people eat in packs like hyenas but whatever their reason, it felt really awkward having the whole table for just me and Nat. The music that was playing was loud and guess what genre… it was country music. So, so far the place looked Japanese, had Japanese looking waitresses dressed in Japanese like clothing, playing country music and serving burgers. Pretty strange combination but I was like whatever, its “different”.

We got the menu and I decided to order the mozzarella fries for starters, the mushroom burger for my main course and a junior cheese burger for Nat (junior = slider). The waitress asked me what I wanted to drink and I told her Pepsi. She then replied saying they didn’t have Pepsi. I looked at her surprised thinking to myself what the hell, no soft drinks?? So I asked her what do you mean you don’t have Pepsi? She was like we don’t have Pepsi only Coca Cola. I was like god damn woman I thought you meant you didn’t have any soft drinks! Pepsi, Coke whatever its all the same.

The food arrived a while later and was fairly disappointing. The fries firstly weren’t that great, there was only a small portion of mozzarella over them and they weren’t even melted right. The burger had a strange flavor to it. The actual hamburger bun was great but the meat tasted like “kafta”? I am not sure what but it wasn’t very burgery.

Overall I wasn’t impressed. The mushroom burger was for KD2.500 and that was one of the cheapest burgers on the menu, the majority were around KD4 and KD5. The fries I believe were super expensive costing KD2.700 and they were sooo not worth it. Nats slider cost 750fils which is slightly more expensive then Burger Boutique which brings us to the question, is Burger Bar in the same league as Johnny Rockets and Burger Boutique? Hell no. Final score 2.5 out of 5. Although the Japanese Cowboy look is strange, the design of the place is still pretty cool. Other positives are lots of parking spaces across the street and the fact that you don’t have to call 4 years in advance to book a table is a plus. Food is lousy though but might be worth a visit just to check it out.

The new redesigned CNN.com is up and I absolutely love it. I think this is the first time I actually like their redesign. The last two times they redesigned I sent them hate mail but this time I am going to to email them and tell them what a great job they’ve done. Its so pretty! Make sure you check out their video page to, its way better then before. [Link]

update: Wooowww, I just saw their breaking news banner, I love it!

I wasn’t planning on posting about the iPhone but I found this video funny.

[YouTube]

Nibaq sent me this over the weekend. Its a chart of the most reliable and least reliable vehicles. In the number 1 spot for reliability its Lexus, Toyota is 5th, BMW 9th and Mercedes 19th. The least reliable brand is Land Rover and its the least reliable by FAR. [Picture]

This news is a few days old now but I just found this video which shows the actual crash. For those of you who haven’t heard about this, Hayfa Wehbe was shooting a new music video which involved a scene where she was driving a convertible and a plane flies over her. While shooting the scene, the pilot misjudged his distance and the wing of the plane hit Hayfa’s head and the car’s windscreen. Looking at the video of the crash I would say she is one extremely lucky person. [YouTube]

Here is another video where she is interviewed at the hospital. [YouTube]

The best pictures I have seen of the new Land Cruiser so far. Interior looks pretty cool, exterior still looks like crap. They also have pictures of the new LX570. [Link]

Yesterday I went to the movies with a bunch of friends including Marzouq, Nibaq and K.theKuwaiti. We went to the Al Fanar movie theater to watch Die Hard 4.0. After watching the movie I’ve realized that people will either love it or hate it, I am the later.

The movie is high budget so no where in it does it ever end up looking cheap or fake… except when it comes to the story. You can’t get a more 1990’s cliché styled plot then this one which is the main reason I think people will love it or not. If the movie was released in 1998 it might have been cool but today with great TV shows like 24 which are similar in idea (1 hero kills 2 million bad guys) the movie didn’t it cut it for me.

In fact I found the movie long and boring. It was over 2 hours long which is great if you’re watching an epic but an action movie? It should have easily been under an hour and a half thats for sure. Bruce Willis was great in the movie though. For some reason I’ve always wanted to see him in a movie matched up against Sylvester Stallone, the same way Al Pacino and Robert Deniro were matched up against each other in the movie Heat. Maybe they should have made Bruce Willis the bad guy in the upcoming Rambo 4. My favorite scenes in the movie were the ones that involved Kevin Smith since. they were funny and a change of pace from the rest of the movie, mind you it was Bruce Willis that made me laugh here more then Kevin Smith. Bruce Willis is like Will Smith when it comes to humor in the middle of an action movie. Since both were comedians before its easy for them to be serious through out the film playing a tough guy and then suddenly be funny without looking out of place. They are naturals and now that I think of it, maybe if Die Hard 4 wasn’t made to be taken seriously, and was more of an action/comedy it might have been more fun. Kinda like how Feast is a horror/comedy combo.

I personally didn’t like Die Hard 4.0 and don’t its worth going to the movies for. But, if you really want to go and watch something then just wait a few more days till Transformers gets released. I give this movie a 3 out of 5.

Just found a blog called q8istuff.blogspot.com that has some cool vintage pictures related to Kuwait. I found two posts so far, one of the Free Kuwait demonstrations and meetings in London taken after the Iraqi invasion in 1990, and the second set of pictures are of the Kuwait football team from the late 70’s and early 80’s. The Kuwaiti football ones are extremely fascinating.

Here is the link to the Free Kuwait Pictures. [Link]

Here is the link to the Kuwaiti football team pictures. [Link]

For lunch I passed by Shatea Al Watyia, a small Kuwaiti restaurant located behind Casper & Gambini in Kuwait city. The restaurant is in an old Kuwaiti style home which goes well with the menu which is based on traditional Kuwaiti food.

The inside of the restaurant is divided by regions, since we were a large group we sat in Fintas which was a private room with enough seating for 8 people. Flipping through the menu there are a lot of dishes to choose from ranging from machboos to grills. I decided to go with the Mourabian which is a rice and shrimps dish.

We first got the starters which were made up of a variety of dishes including sambousak, yerish and a lentil soup. The sambousak was so so, but the yerish was pretty cool. It was my first time trying it and I honestly forgot whats it made from but to me it tasted like a chilidog’s chili which is pretty cool. The lentil soup was also really great.

The main course arrived soon after that and the quantity was huge. Last week I was in Ta’al and ordered the shrimp curry which disappointingly came with 8 pieces of tiny shrimps. In comparison at Oum Habib the Mourabian had at least two dozen tiny shrimps and the rice portion was gigantic!

The general atmosphere of the place was quiet and the staff friendly and fast. I don’t know how packed the place gets in the evening but I imagine its even cooler when filled with a lot more people. The prices are also really cheap. The soup was KD1, the appetizers around KD1.500 and my main dish was just KD3.500. Thats a really good deal for what you are getting in return. The shrimp curry at Ta’al for example was KD5.500 without rice. Good food, great prices and good service, final score is a 4.5 out of 5. I would definitely go back there again.

update: Erzulie decided to edit my review since my vocabulary is limited to three words “good” “cool” and “amazing”. If you want to check out her interpretation of my review [click here]

A reader sent me the following email:

Dear Mark,
I am personally aware of a very sad story about an American teacher in Kuwait. The teacher, Katherine Phillips, is an Al-Bayan Bilingual School Middle School Deputy Principal. She is the victim of an influential parent who has effectively detained her in Kuwait. Her only crime was to suspend the influential parent’s son for fighting! This is a normal procedure but the parent threatened her and is carrying out his threat. Her full story can be found in International Schools Review site.

She is crying for help. It would be great if you mentioned it.

Regards,
bu ziyad

You can read her story by clicking [Here]

The baby on the Nirvana’s Nevermind album is now 17!

via del.icio.us

During lunch I went with a bunch of coworkers to the ice skating rink. I was expecting the place to be packed with kids since school is out and the weather is extremely hot but instead the place was deserted! I am such a bad skater but I love the place since its freezing cold and in this heat I can’t think of any place I would rather be except for the frozen isle section at Sultan Center but thats about it.

For people who haven’t been there before the entrance is KD1.500 and that includes entrance and rental of the skates. Its also easy to find, look for a yellow building in Kuwait City.

If you are going to copy paste articles from blogs and put them on your website at least have the courtesy to link the original blog properly. Gulfnews had no problem copying and pasting my Faloda post onto their website but when it came to copying and pasting my blogs website address they misspelled it and it ended up as 248.am.com!

Its cool they are into blogs and actually publishing them on their website BUT I would do things differently. For one thing I would make the url’s for the blogs at the very least clickable. That way their readers could just click on the links and be taken to our sites helping us get more traffic.

The second thing is I wouldn’t copy and paste blog posts word for word and publish them like that on the site. Instead I would actually get one of the writers to summarize the articles (like we bloggers do) and then provide links to the original posts in case their readers want to read more. That way they would be supporting bloggers again by sending traffic their way.

The way Gulfnews has things set up now they aren’t sending any traffic to the blogs and instead are just using blogs to add more content to their own website. Thats basically stealing since they are taking articles without permission and then not giving anything back in return.

As I said its cool that they are into blogs but I would take things a step further and actually try to support bloggers by sending traffic to them.

Make sure you check their blogs section at gu.lf.news.com

As a Nutella freak I found this recipe on how to make Nutella ice cream interesting. Although I was expecting the process to be easier, like just shoving a Nutella jar into the freezer but it urns out its more complicated then that. Still if someone has the time this might be a worth while project. Step by step instructions plus a full list of items needed are listed. [Link]