2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

I woke up today morning not wanting to get out of bed. It was nice and cold and I was really cozy. I forced myself to get up and wash up. While brushing my teeth Nat came and told me that the Emir of Kuwait had died. I quickly got online and checked CNN but didn’t find anything. I Checked Arab Times and they also hadn’t published anything. Finally I checked Safat and found that Jelly Belly had posted about his death.

A few minutes later articles started popping up on news.google.com and finally CNN.com. I wasn’t able to find out how he died but all the articles mention that he was very sick and old so I am guessing he died a natural death. He was 79. The government offices will be closed three days beginning today. I am currently at work but they will be sending us home soon.

I have known the Emir all my life and it is sad to see him go.

May he rest in peace.

Faisal sent me a link to this video showing a young child getting beaten and abused by his maid here in Kuwait. According to the person who originally posted the video this is the story:

“Recently a family in Abbasiya employed a female servant at their house to look after their kid. After a couple of days the kid turned gloomy and was always tired. With some doubts, the family put a hidden cam in their sitting room when they left to work. When they returned, they saw the video and they were shocked to see how the servant mistreating the kid.”

To view the video [click here]

Here are a few tips by Knick on how to prevent incidents like this:

1. Get a telephone recorder which is avaliable in Hawally for KD 8-12 which records all incoming and outgoing conversations. A normal cassette is used to record.
2. Keep rooms that are not required by the maid locked.
3. Almost every houshold has a PC attach a webcam and place it in such a place that it monitors the entire room.
4. Dowload windows media encoder and install it to start monitering your house daily. (8 Hrs movie approx is 300 mb)
5. Spend quality time with your children, buy them small gifts every day in return for a report on what happenned during the day at home.
6. Love your kids, show them that you do and let them understand that you are always there to love and protect them.
7. In most of these cases the children are silenced by the maids who threaten them to tell the parents that he/she did this or that and they will be punished. Parents tend to go with the maids who are a different personality in their presence and punish the children. Children loose faith and confidence in the parents. Do not let this happen.
8. Children who undergo such traumatic experiences in their childhood tent to grow up with more complicated personalities, lack confidence and are effected mentally.

Over the vacation I watched the movie Jarhead. Its based on a best-selling book written by a marine on his experiences in Saudi Arabia pre-Desert Storm and later his Desert Storm experience fighting in Kuwait. The movie starts of with a famous “Full Metal Jacket” scene but thats as far as the similarities go. The movie isn’t action packed since its based on truth. You see the movie follows a scout/sniper platoon based in the desert outside Kuwait. Desert Storm was mostly fought from the sky and Sea with very little ground work. Since this movie follows foot soldiers they didn’t have a lot to do, unlike the ground soldiers now in Iraq. It takes on a really interesting perspective showing you the emotional side of the war from the side liners view.

Even though the whole movie takes place in the empty desert it was still entertaining to watch even though there was no war action. There was always something going on in the movie. Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire originally vied for the lead role in the film and thank god they went with Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko) instead. Jake looks like a marine and looks like he can kick ass unlike both Leonardo and Tobey. I actually didn’t recognize Jake until after the movie was over, he looked really different then when he played the messed up kid in Donnie Darko. Overall I give this movie a 3.5 out of 5. It was the best movie I watched over the vacation, the other movie I watched was Oliver Twist and that pretty much sucked.

Now that me and some friends at work have finished watching Desperate Housewives, Lost and Rome, we are trying to find some more shows to watch. We don’t want any of the new shows currently playing since we want to download full seasons and not just a few episodes. So far what we are getting are: Band of Brothers and From the Earth to the Moon. Does anyone have any more recommendations?

I am going to try this experiment hopefully today if it stops raining since I will need to do it outside. Its a simple experiment, take a 2 liter bottle of Coke and a packet of mentos. Then empty the mentos into the bottle of coke and take cover. If you did it right you might end up with a Coke fountain 18ft high! [Link]

[source Digg]

Allegedly used to train U.S. Fighter Pilots, who are expected to dodge the game’s rectangular bogeys for more than two minutes. I lasted 17.4 seconds. Time flies by very slowly while playing this game! [Link]

[source Digg]

zMacShop have lowered the prices of their 20″ iMacs and are now selling them for KD599. Thats over KD150 cheaper then competition.

Here are the specs:
* 2.1 GHz PowerPC G5 running Mac OS X version 10.4 Tiger
* 512 MB DDR SDRAM, 250 GB hard drive, and SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW), built-in iSight video camera
* 20-inch (viewable) widescreen TFT active-matrix LCD, 1680 x 1050 pixels, millions of colors
* Two FireWire 400 ports; three USB 2.0 ports, two USB 1.1 ports (on keyboard); VGA output; S-video and composite video output
* Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T (Gigabit), 54 Mbps AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi (802.11g), and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) module

Visit their website for contact information. [Link]

The Nokia 770 is now available on Amazon.com for $379. [Link]

Here is an interesting rant by a Mac developer on the problems with the MacBook Pro. Lower screen resolution, slower less capable superdrive, higher power consumption, removal of the firewire800 port, Dialup jack and S-Video output are some of the reasons he mentions. [Link]

Mila Kunis (Jackie from The 70’s Show) is getting married to Macaulay Culkin (Home Alone)??? What’s wrong with her?? Couldn’t she find anyone better?? [Link]

I just read that Steve Jobs was supposed to announce much more cooler Mac products but decided not to last minute due to supply issues with the Intel chips. The products are not the 12″ and 17″ MacBooks, they are something much more cooler. What could they be??? [Link]

Yesterday I read that Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey were selling their house for like 3.7 million dollars and didn’t think much of it but just now I read that Justin Berfield who plays Reese on the show Malcom in the Middle bought the house! I knew Frankie Muniz (Malcom) made a lot of money but Reese also?? [Link]

Yesterday night I watched the new Pierce Brosnan movie called The Matador. In the movie Pierce plays the roll of a hitman who meets Greg Kinnear in a bar in Mexico City. They become friends and the movie takes the viewers along on their strange relationship.

This has to be one of the best Pierce Brosnan movies I have ever watched. The movie visually is very funky and the story itself is very original and entertaining. I really liked it a lot and thats why I am giving it a 4 out of 5. [Link]

You can read the live feeds from the keynote on the following websites: Macrumors, MacMerc and Engadget. MacRumors is the best ofcourse since they have the MRchat IRC software meaning quicker updates.

Show highlights
* Macbook Pro with Intel
* iMac with Intel
* iWork ’06 ($79)
* iLife ’06 ($79)
* iPod FM tuner ($49)

Update: Show is over. Where are the new shuffles?

The photography software Adobe Lightroom beta is out and I downloaded and played around with it for a bit now and it seems cool. The installation file is like only 4MB and the system requirements needed to run are very acceptable. Unlike Aperture, Adobe Lightroom not only runs on my G5 at work but will also run on my older G4 at home. Seems like Adobe really wants to kick Apple’s ass. [Link]

Note: The beta is currently available only for Macs.