2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Today was the third and final day of the three day shoot. When I woke up in the morning I was worried that the shoot was going to get postponed till tomorrow since today was declared a national mourning day after the assassination of the politician yesterday. Luckily it wasn’t canceled and we went ahead with the shoot.

We started shooting late at around 10AM today because it took a lot longer to setup the market then expected. Once everything was setup it just looked really great and full of colors and colorful characters. I took a ton of pictures which you can check by clicking the link below.

Tomorrow morning I have to attend the color grading of the film in the morning and that should take a few hours. Once I am done I have to quickly rush to my hotel, pick up my luggage and head off to the airport to come back to Kuwait. I can’t wait to get back.

For those of you who signed up to the forum in the past few days please be patient for me to approve you. I have 41 new accounts I need to approve manually and the connection here is extremely slow.

Today was the second day of the three day shoot. I was on set at 6:30AM and we were done awhile ago around 8PM. It wasn’t as exhausting as the first shoot but since I’ve only had a total of eight hours of sleep in the past two days I was extremely tired. I was still better off then some of the guys in the production team who had slept only two hours in two days.

While in the middle of the shoot we got word that there was an explosion a few kilometers away. We later found out a politician was assassinated. Another explosion, another day. Things are just a total mess over here.

To check out more pictures from todays shoot click on the link below.

I just found this site while browsing and since I am going to be in Dublin for a few days in August for the NIN concert this site is going to be really useful. Everything looks delicious. [Link]

So even presidents have car problems.

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via

I just got back to the hotel room, its 6:30 in the morning. We were out shooting since 2 in the afternoon and it lasted all through the night up until the break of dawn. I am extremely exhausted but I wanted to upload a few pictures of the shoot before I went to sleep. There were over 100 people on the set today so it was really packed. This was the first day of a three day shoot. Check out the pictures by clicking the link below.

I am in Lebanon shooting a TV commercial for MTC-Vodafone and today is going to be the first day of a three day shoot. I am going to get permission from MTC to allow me to post pictures I shoot on the set at the end of every day. We are shooting two locations today, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. The evening shoot will start once the sun goes down and end before the sun comes back up. Its going to be a really long day but hopefully once I get back to the hotel I will post some pictures.

The reason I am not posting much is because the hotel DOUBLED their Internet rate. Its $5 per hour now which sucks. As you can expect I sent them an email complaining but of course since this is Lebanon, no one cares what the customer thinks.

The majority I had seen before but they were some interesting ones I hadn’t like the woman and the girl falling down the fire escape. [Link]

via Kottke

I took the picture above tonight when I was in Gimayze, an extremely popular street on a Friday and Saturday night since its packed with pubs and restaurants. Tonight it was empty and its for the same reason I posted about earlier which is people are afraid to go out. I’ve never seen anything like this here its strange, usually people in Lebanon go out and party no matter what.

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Although I was in Lebanon around 3 weeks ago a lot of things have changed here mostly related to security. It seems people are starting to worry about all the bombings that are taking place and it shows with the extra security precautions.

My hotel for example doesn’t allow cars drive up to the entrance anymore and while entering the hotel I now get scanned with a metal detector. Bliss Street where the American University is located, now has yellow no parking warning on both sides of the street.

Yesterday evening I also passed by the ABC mall in Achrafieh, a place thats usually packed with young people shopping and hanging around at the cafes but yesterday when I passed at 9:15PM half the stores were closed, the other half were closing down and there were barely any people around. Since the bombings are taking place at night, everyone is afraid of the dark.

I am not worried about the bombings but its pretty obvious that this years tourist season in Lebanon has been killed.

My MEA plane was supposed to take off at 11:15AM but after boarding the plane turns out there was going to be a delay. After 2 hours of waiting on the plane with no AC we were taken back to the airport transit area where we are now waiting for the plane to either get fixed or something. It really sucks.

note: on the bright side The 4 Cats are with us on the same flight.

The other day I posted about the horrendous article in Kuwait Times by Mona Al-Fuzai where she talks about how talking to taxi drivers or being friendly with your boss could end up with you getting raped. Well that article has since then been withdrawn from the Kuwait Times website and instead a new article has popped up where Mona tells all her critics that she can write what she pleases and that we all should shut the hell up. K.thekuwaiti has a link to her article plus a nice analysis of her reply. Check it out. [Link]

This by far has to be the cheesiest vintage commercial yet. Whats up with the Russian mail order brides?

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If you don’t love it already, here are 10 reasons why you should. [Link]