2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

I have been looking for an alternative to Aramex Shop and Ship for a long time now and haven’t been able to find one. Don’t misunderstand me, there are other options to Aramex which I have even mentioned before, but none provided me with everything I needed. They were either cheap but slow or fast but expensive, or even lacked some of Aramex’s basic features like package tracking. Now though I think I found another better option and its called U Shop We Ship.

I found out about it from a user who commented on one of my older posts and I decided to check it out. The first thing I did was check out how much the shipping would cost for an item that weighed 1KG and I compared it to Aramex and they both turned out to be priced identical. I then started to read more about their service and it turns out not only do they have all the features of Aramex but they also have additional stuff. Here are my favorites:

You have the option to destroy unwanted mail
You know how sometimes you get a stupid envelope which is just a bill for some magazine and you end up paying like KD2.5 for it. Well with U Shop We Ship (USWS) if you find junk mail in your mailbox you can have them destroy it for you.

They offer immediate shipping
You can have them check your mailbox and mail you stuff either once a week, twice a month or once a month AND you also have an option to have an item shipped immediately no matter what your shipping frequency is by paying a certain fee. This could be worth it when ordering a big item like an ipod or laptop and you really want it as quickly as possible. Just to clear what this means is say you have your shipping frequency set to once a week and it turns out they check your mailbox every Monday but your item arrived to your mailbox on Tuesday, instead of waiting till next Monday to have them ship your item you can have them ship it right away on Tuesday.

You can pay for your packages online
This is the coolest feature, something I have been wishing Aramex would do. I hate carrying cash with me, I am a plastic type of guy and so I hate it when Aramex delivers a package and I need to have an unknown amount ready to pay the guy. With USWS you pay for your packages online using either Knet or Visa. This feature sold me instantly.

I just got my account setup with them and I am going to try it by buying the Philips Bodygroom and mailing it to my new mailbox. Oh and you can change the shipping frequency yourself from the prefrences menu once you login and you can also change your login password, two things you also can’t do with Aramex. Their Kuwait office number is 4724673 but you can only sign up from their website. [Link]

Note: You not only get a US mailbox but also a UK and UAE mailbox. They also use Skynet Worldwide Express to ship the packages.

update: BusyNow pointed out to me that in their FAQ they have a discount section which mentions a variety of ways of getting discounts on shipping, something which you would never get with Aramex. [FAQ]

Back in February of last year I published a post titled “Mac & Small” and in it I talked about how small their branch at Galleria 2000 was and how over priced their items were. Well yesterday I passed by Mac & More’s new branch in Marina Mall and I have to say they are no longer small. The place looks really cool and huge.. and thats the only positive thing I can say. It seems when they moved from Mac & Small to Marina Mall they didn’t get any new merchandise. The place is empty and I mean empty. When you first walk in there is one MacBook Pro on display and one MacMini connected to a generic brand of LCD screen.. imagine not even an Apple Display! Once you walk into the rest of the shop you will realize that was it, no more Apple products.. the rest of the store is just a large shelf full of iPods and a wall full of generic iPod skins which you can find at any other Mac store in Kuwait including Mac City which is located in Virgin at the other end of Marina Mall. Even the tiny zMacShop have brands like Marware and Foof how come Mac & More don’t have anything cool?

Price wise… Mac & More is the most expensive Apple dealer in Kuwait.

The store is visually very impressive which misleads you to believe you will find many great things there, but once you go in and look around and can’t find anything, you wonder what the hell are these guys selling… iPod covers?

update: If I was to review the store again now I would have to say they have improved things a lot. Firstly they have a lot more products and a lot more brands, their prices have also decreased, maybe not as cheap as US prices but they are closer to UAE prices. I would probably give them a 3.5 out of 5 now.

A really funny intro for a Philips “body” shaver. [Link]

Btw, you can purchase the shaver from Amazon.com [Buy]

Yeah so I posted the Macsaber video yesterday and today I found another video but this time its like super gay. Two dorks fight till the finish. [Link]

She has been looking really hot lately. [Link]

Is there someone in Kuwait that imports the Vespa brand of scooters? I think it would be cool to travel around Salmiya in a baby blue Vespa. No more looking for parking at Sultan Center..

I decided to go ahead and place an order for the MacBook. Heat issues or no heat issues I don’t care.

1 “Apple MacBook MA254LL/A 13.3″ Notebook PC (1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo, 512 MB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, DVD-ROM/CD-RW Drive)- White”
Subtotal of Items: $1,099.99

Shipping & Handling: $11.24
——
Total: $1,111.23
Est.A9π/2% Instant Reward: $-17.45
Gift Certificates: – $411.52
——
Total for this Order: $682.26

I am soooo fucking pissed now. I was just reading the Kuwait Times newspaper from a few days ago where they talked about the Beach Spike event that took place on the weekend and it turns out Kid Loco was the DJ at the event. KID FUCKING LOCO! He is like one of my favorite artists and this is the second time I missed him. The first time he came to Lebanon to play at one of my favorite pubs (Bongos) but I was here in Kuwait and couldn’t go down see him play cuz of my Army papers and now this. I didn’t go to the event because I couldn’t leave Geo alone all day neither could he spend the whole day under the sun but if I had know Kid Loco was going to be there I would have atleast taken all his CDs with me to get them autographed. This is totally unfair, I am extremely pissed. Kid Loco was in Kuwait from all places! Kid Loco!!

Here is a link to some of his albums on Amazon. My favorite is a A Grand Love Story. [Link]

The funniest celebrity news in a while now, Tommy Hilfiger and Axl Rose (Guns N Roses duh) got into a fight at this party and the funny thing is Tommy was the psycho while Axl was the gentleman. It just doesn’t make sense.. [Link]

I really want to get the new MacBooks but I am extremely worried about the overheating problems. If I lived in the States I would go ahead and get a MacBook because worse comes to worse if I have a problem I can always return it.

The problem here is that I am going to order the MacBook from Amazon and ship it all the way to Kuwait which means if something goes wrong I would either have to (a) deal with it (b) fix it with my own money (warranty doesn’t apply in Kuwait) (c) ship it all the way back to the US to get it fixed.

This is why if I order the MacBook I have to know I won’t have any issues and it currently looks like I will. I don’t think I could wait for revision B since that will be like in atleast 6 months and I am not going to wait that long. A guy in one of the Mac forums I visit took the screenshot above.. 91 degrees! A bit more and he could start boiling water…

The past few days I was hearing a lot about this application on the Mac called Macsaber that worked with the latest Apple notebooks by replicating the Star Wars light saber sound everytime you swung your Mac around. Anyway I couldn’t try it myself and I couldn’t find any videos or pictures of it in action so I ignored it.. until now. I present you with Macbook Man! [Link]

Has to be the coolest adverts I have seen this year. [Link]

Super, Unleaded and Diesel. [Link]

I first found out about F4T from q8techdrive‘s blog a few days ago and then yesterday out of the blue they delivered their menu to my office. So today morning me and some friends ordered some food from them and it turned out to be pretty good. Their menu was a turn off, its too cluttered, hard to navigate and full of useless text on the history of each food item when they could have used that space to put the ingredients. After finally figuring out what to order we gave them a call and they told us they would be over within 40 minutes, 30 minutes later the food arrived. I ordered the Halloumi Heaven which was recommended by q8techdrive and Entrepreneur, while my friends ordered the Tender Turkey Sandwich, Fries and the Sweetcorn Chicken Salad. I found the Halloumi Heaven not bad, like a 7/10. The Tender Turkey was supposingly really tasty while the Sweetcorn Salad not that good. The fries is regular fried fries but was really good also. Unlike LoFat, F4T does provide you with nutritional values although they are a rough estimate. Anyway I can’t give it a full review based on one sandwich I had but atleast you get some idea. It seems like better food then LoFat although not as healthy. Then again healthy food is usually no match for unhealthy food.

I really dislike F4T’s menu and website style, its like wannabe cool/trendy which is a disaster. They have a website where you can download their menu from. The link to the menu is on the far right just incase you couldn’t find it. [Link]

I was supposed to watch Lucky Number Slevin but the downloaded copy I had turned out to be corrupted so I decided to watch Stay. I had downloaded it a while back but wasn’t very keen in watching it but since I didn’t have anything else I went ahead and did.

The movie stars Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts, where Ewan plays the role of a psychiatrist who is trying to stop one of his patients from committing suicide. Things start to go weird and confusing and he tries to get a grip on what is real and what isn’t.

The movie wasn’t only weird and confusing to Ewan but also to me. I don’t mind “strange” movies and I don’t mind being puzzled trying to figure out whats going on, but the problem with Stay is that in the end when everything finally comes together and all the questions answered, you realize that the past 90 minutes were really not worth the ending. I am not going to ruin the the movie and tell you what happens in the end but I can tell you that it didn’t leave me shocked but more like “huh this is it? How lame.”

The movie felt slow at some points but the acting was great and visually the movie looked cool. In general I like Ewan McGregor as long as he isn’t singing and Naomi Watts when she isn’t running around the jungle looking for King Kong. It could be the movie wasn’t weird enough to make the ending good or maybe its the other way around, but whatever the case, I didn’t have high expectations of the movie to begin with and so wasn’t left too disappointed.