2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Here is a link to three videos of three Lost stars before they were famous. Kate and Sawyer’s videos are funny until you watch Sayid’s video then you are just rolling on the floor laughing! [Link]

Seems there is a Lebanese guy on the show The Apprentice this season. Tarek Saab, a 27-year-old Maronite Catholic and the son of a Lebanese father and an American mother, lived in war-torn Lebanon as a child before he and his family came to the U.S. and moved into public housing projects in New Bedford, Mass. [Link]

Celebrating 8 years of Duke Nukem Forever as ‘vaporware’ [Link]

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Come and view the thrill of The Flying Bulls and their air show here in Kuwait on the 23rd in Al-Kout Mall and 24th of March in Marina Mall Crescent at 4pm. Brought to you by Red Bull Energy Drink – It gives you wings!

Here are two slightly graphic car videos. The first one is similar to the one I posted a while back about a stunt gone wrong in Saudi. The second looks like something out of a movie..

Big Hit [RealVideo 748kb]
Intersection [MPG 1.4MB]

Right click and save-as

I guess I could break my diet to give this burger a shot. Check out more pictures after the jump. [Link]

Thanks to Arabesque for pointing it out in the Forum, Marina FM have just relaunched their online website and you can now listen to them online and also check out whats going on in their studio using their live webcam. There is also a section on the site called “Blog” which should turn out to be interesting once they start posting. [Link]

[original source of info grafika]

I am trying to figure out what this Disney poster reminds me of, can someone help me out?

I love hating Wataniya. Have you watched the Wataniya TV commercial where there is a guy walking on a red carpet that keeps rolling open in front of him? Well Kuwaitism found an ad from Taiwan by a company called Mio with the exact same concept. Check it out. [WMV 2.3MB] (right click and save as)

Update: Just uploaded a much higher quality video.

Update 2: Ok, sadly it seems Mio might have copied the ad from Wataniya. I just did a bit of research and I found out the Mio A700 which is the phone advertised in this commercial was released last month but was first announced in October. Wataniya on the other hand released their ad in October, but they must have worked on it atleast a month before. This means that Mio copied the ad from Wataniya.. and managed to do a better production job.

Update 3: Here is the video of the Wataniya TV ad. [WMV 1.14MB]

A couple of days ago I was contacted by Bazaar magazine and was offered a chance to have my own “B-Sides” page in the magazine every month where I could post mini reviews on anything related to Kuwait. At first the idea sounded really interesting, combining blog with print sounded like an excellent opportunity. But the more I thought about it the more I realized.. excellent opportunity for what? What could I gain with this?

Increased Readership
Bazaar prints around 25,000 copies a month while 248AM gets more then 3 times that amount of visitors every month and we are still growing. Bazaar readers would only read around 4 mini reviews by me every month while my blog readers would read at least 4 mini posts by me a day. My sites url would be advertised in that Bazaar page but from those 25,000 readers how many would actually think about checking out my site? When was the last time anyone saw a url in a magazine and then checked it out online.. it happens but just not that often.

Digital to Print
At first this sounded interesting, but then I realized isn’t that a step backward? Isn’t print trying to get online? Shouldn’t Bazaar start thinking about getting online instead? WIRED magazine have a small 2 page section where they print interesting posts from the web but I never liked that section but thats besides the point, WIRED can do whatever they want since their whole Magazine is published for free online anyway.

The Money
The first offer I got was KD20 (yes two and one zero) a month. I calculated the amount of time and effort I would have to put extra every month to have at least 4 mini reviews of something interesting to do with Kuwait and I realized KD20 wouldn’t be worth my trouble at all. Bazaar were nice to say they would consider another amount I had in mind but if they had KD20 in their mind to begin with I doubt they would go that much higher.

The Magazine
Do I even like Bazaar? Not really. I do think its the best locally published magazine but thats because their competition is really crap. I pick up Bazaar once a month so I can skim through it quickly and see if there is anything interesting. I mostly don’t find anything worth reading and the magazine ends up in the trash or left on a food court table. I enjoy reading local blogs a lot more then I enjoy reading Bazaar thats for sure.

Who’s the boss?
When someone suggested to Zaydoun that he should hook up with one of the newspapers as a syndicated writer, Zaydoun replied saying “I am my own editor… I can’t imagine being subjected to deadlines and editorial controls!”.

So taking everything above into consideration, I sent an email back to Bazaar today morning thanking them for their kind offer but that I wasn’t interested. I think I made the right decision.

Just saw some spy shots of the upcoming Mercedes CL. I think it looks weird from the back while the front end looks like shit. Mercedes is really playing it safe when it comes to their car designs. [Link]

[source autoblog]

After work I passed by PWC to pick up my Crunch which a reader of the blog was nice enough to get me from Camp Arifjan after reading my post about how Crunch isn’t available in Kuwait. 48 pieces, 24 regular chocolate Crunch and 24 white chocolate Crunch. I had 3 on my way back home and I think I overdosed on them so now I have to wait it out a bit so I can have some more. I love Crunch.

Pictures of a Murcielago Roadster accident that occurred in Dubai. Scroll down a bit to see the full set of pictures. [Link]

A portable application is a software program that you can carry around with you on a portable device, such as a USB flash drive and use on any computer without necessarily modifying that computer’s hard disk. [Link]

[source digg]

Aramex have a new customer service manager because they want to fix all their problems. If you are having any problems or if you have any feedback or comments about their service then let them know about it so they can fix it. I know I had a lot so I sent them like 2 pages worth of problems with their solutions.

Send all your Shop & Ship feedback and comments directly to the customer service manager, her email is: [email protected]

Thanks

update: just replaced the hotmail email with her aramex email