2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

I will be traveling to Dubai on the 1st of May and I will be back on the 3rd. I will be going there with my partner from work to participate in the Young Creatives compeition thats part of the Cannes Lions which is regarded as the most prestigious international advertising festival. The Young Creatives competition is for creatives 28 years old or younger and you enter as a team made up of an art director and copyrighter.

Last year me and my partner wanted to participate but they were fully booked, this year we managed to get in luckily because I turn 29 in August so I wouldn’t have been able to participate ever again. To get to Cannes we need to qualify and thats why we are going to Dubai. Different creatives from the Middle East will be participating in the qualification process on May 2nd with the gold winner going to Cannes to participate in the main international competition.

This is how the competition works. They put all the creative teams participating into one large room. They then bring in a client which is usually a non profit organization to brief us on the job. Once the client is done briefing us, the teams have 12 hours to come up with a campaign and execute it. Every team will have a workstation to work on, there will be no Internet access (for 12 hours!!!) and you aren’t allowed to bring in anything with you either like CDs, cameras, laptops etc.. There will be a work station usually sponsored by Corbis or Getty Images where you can search for photos but there is a list and you have to sign up and wait for your turn.

Its a very exciting event and getting gold would be amazing since it would mean me and my partner will be traveling to Cannes in June and putting Kuwait on the map. You can check out the winners from last years competition [Here]. As you can see the work from last year was extraordinary. I am nervous but it should be a lot of fun.

Yesterday night I watched a movie called Smokin’ Aces which is kinda like Ocean’s Eleven except bigger, meaner and a lot cooler. The movie has a huge cast and I mean HUGE! Here is a list of some of the most recognizable ones:

Ben Affleck
Jason Bateman
Common
Andy Garcia
Alicia Keys
Alex Rocco
Wayne Newton
Ray Liotta
Ryan Reynolds
Jeremy Piven
Peter Berg
Martin Henderson
Christopher Michael Holley
Maury Sterling
Curtis Armstrong
Matthew Fox
Nestor Carbonell

Full list of cast is [Here]

So you can see the cast list is just awesome, even Jack from Lost is in this movie.. even Herb from the old TV show Moonlighting is in this movie! The movie is about a mob guy who turned snitch and now has a 1 million dollar bounty on his head to whoever can kill him. Different assassins try to get to him and it becomes a race to see who can kill him first.

As I mentioned earlier the cast in the movie is great but the best part is a lot of the actors are playing roles that we usually don’t associate them with. For example, Ryan Reynolds plays a very serious and dedicated FBI agent but he usually plays the role of a funny and silly guy in various comedies. Nestor Carbonell, the hispanic guy on Suddenly Susan, last time I saw him he was playing the role of Batmanuel on the short lived comedy series “The Tick“. In Smokin’ Aces he plays the role of a psychotic torturer / assassin. These role changes make the movie a lot more enjoyable because its really twisted and unexpected.

The movie is a lot of fun and even though its nearly two hours long it never gets dull not even for a single second. On IMDB it got a raiting of 6.5 out of 10 but I really don’t understand why. I personally give it a 4.5 out of 5. Its loaded with action and it stars some of my favorite actors, its the perfect recipe for a successful movie.

Check out the official website [Here]

I just got a phone call a few minutes ago from the BMW workshop manager. He was very sincere and apologized about how my radiator leak was handled and they want to now fix the car at their cost. They are sending a tow truck to pick up my car from the other garage.

I was in Marina Mall yesterday when I noticed that Mac&More surprisingly have the Apple TV in stock. They are selling it for KD129 which is around $140 more expensive then on Amazon.

I just got a phone call from my Mercedes contact asking me nicely if I could remove my negative review of the car so I complied. I didn’t have to remove the review, I did it out of courtesy because I didn’t want to cause the person any problems. Just wanted everyone to know why that post disappeared.

I was driving the E-Class all day today and so far I have mixed feelings about it. First let me get the negatives out of the way.

The E-Class I am driving is the E200 which is the lowest spec’d E-Class at the moment. The engine is a small 4-cylinder pumping out 183hp which means the car isn’t fast at all. In fact I found it frustratingly slow when driving off from a stand still. When you first slam the gas nothing happens until the RPM passes the 2000RPM mark and only then the car moves so it feels very laggy, you have this 1 or 2 second pause before the car reacts. The 0-100 acceleration is around 11 seconds! The second thing is, the car doesn’t have any special options, no navigation system, no rear view camera, no seat warmers, the steering wheel and chair don’t retract when you come in and even the passenger side chair isn’t electrically adjustable.

Now that we got that negatives out of the way here are the positives. The car is extremely comfortable and its very relaxing to drive. The mood inside the car with the plush leather seats creates a very cozy atmosphere. The sound proofing is also great, even at high speeds there is barely any wind or engine noise, although the later might be attributed to the small 4-cylinder engine. The legroom in the back is really roomy and the car does have a large sunroof which is always appreciated. The AC and stereo controls are very simple to operate which is a godsend for people who don’t want to fidget around with a complicated control system.

Really though I am really curious to know why Mercedes has the lowest spec’d E-Class as a test drive vehicle. If I wanted to buy the car I would have been put off with the lack of power and features in this test drive vehicle. Its a Mercedes which is expected to last a long time so if I was going to buy it I would personally invest more money and get a higher spec’d model like the E280 or even the E350. But for those who are budget conscious or for people who don’t want to pollute the planet with a gas guzzling 6-cylinder car, the Mercedes E200 costs around KD12,000.

You can get more information on this car and a full price list on the local dealers website. [Link]

Q80Boy sent me an email telling me that last night at 9:30PM, Virgin in Marina Mall was shutdown because they were caught selling inappropriate movies. Can anyone confirm this? It’s confirmed!

update: I just got back from Marina Mall and Virgin is closed. There are red stickers all around the place and two A4 photocopies of the closing order which you can view [Here] and [Here]

These scratch ‘n sniff stickers were popular ack in the 80’s when I was in high school. I wonder if I could still buy these stickers from somewhere… [Link]

I am going to be test driving the Mercedes E-Class for the next few days. I was hoping to get the brand new redesigned C-Class but that won’t be possible until next week. The E-Class series is positioned between the smaller C-Class and the larger S-Class Mercedes. So far, judging by the ride from the dealership to my house it looks like its going to be a very comfortable weekend.

Zaydoun just posted two pictures of a Monster Burger taken at The Burger Hub here in Kuwait. Its cool a place finally decided to create a monster burger, I haven’t been to The Burger Hub yet but now I have a reason to because I NEED TO TRY THIS BURGER! [Link]

note: I called up The Burger Hub and it seems this Monster Burger will launch on the 29th of April which is on their anniversary. The price isn’t final yet but it should cost over KD15.

I haven’t posted a movie review in a while because as usual, most of the movies I watch turn out to be average. Big Nothing on the other hand surprised me because it actually turned out to be really cool and absurd.

The comedy stars David Schwimmer the guy from the tv show Friends and Simon Pegg, the guy from Shaun of the Dead. David plays the role of unemployed teacher who goes to work at a call center where he meets Simon who convinces him to join him in a simple blackmailing scheme. The scheme turns out to be anything but simple with twisted murders and lies.

Simon Pegg as expected is extremely comical while this is probably David Schwimmer’s best movie yet. The movie takes a lot of unexpected twists and turns that you spend the whole time laughing because you can’t believe what just happened. The way their simple plan falls apart over and over and over is just ridiculous! It was really entertaining to watch and isn’t long clocking in just 86 minutes. So for the final score I give it a 4 out of 5.

On my way to Marzouq’s place tonight I ran over a beautiful white fluffy cat. It was horrendous but there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was exiting the the Fahaheel expressway going around 80km/hour when suddenly out of no where this white fluffy cat jumped out of the bushes and right in front of my Wrangler. I slammed the brakes but it was useless the cat was too close, I quickly centered the car to pass over the cat but the cat still hit the bottom of my car. I pass over it and look in the rear view mirror, I saw a cloud of smoke from my brakes and then noticed the cat bouncing madly in the middle of the road. I couldn’t stop since there were a lot of cars behind me but I was hoping one of them would run over the cat and put it out of its misery. I felt awful and the thing is for the brief second I did see the cat it didn’t look like a street cat but more like someones pet. Sucks!

So I passed by the BMW dealer today and they tell me that I have a leak in the car which is causing it to overheat. They then give me the list of parts required to fix the leak, here are the items:

SP: KD30
Mount. plate: KD13.850
Exp. Tank: KD18.950
Thermostat: KD14.200
Radiator Cap: KD4.650
Switch: KD4.400
Housing: KD24.600
Fan Clutch: KD45.850
RMFD. Pump: KD21.950
Hose: KD9.050
Hose: KD7.700
Hose: KD7.500

Parts = KD202.700
Labor = KD98.750
Mis. = KD20.000
———————-
Total = KD321.450

Is it me or does that seem like overkill just to fix a leak? I am not a mechanic but why would I have to replace the radiator cap to fix a leak? Why change the thermostat, a switch and fan clutch also?? Wouldn’t the leak be from just one place? So why not just replace that one item why do I have to replace everything else also? I had my car towed out of the dealers garage and its now going to get fixed elsewhere. Once I find out how much its going to cost me to fix it outside I am going to post it here.

I honestly don’t know what this is, I just know that its strange. [Link]

Seems shes back and from the looks of it, she had a lot of lipo… [Link]