2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Introduction
In January I posted about my home theater setup and I mentioned I wanted to upgrade my aging old Kenwood receiver with something newer and better. Well a few days ago I passed by the Denon dealer in Salmiya to check out some AV Receivers and I ended up buying one. I did a lot of research online before I decided to upgrade my receiver and I came to the conclusion that for my budget and my needs, the Denon AVR-2106 fit the bill perfectly. I had previously seen the receiver when I tagged along with K.TheKuwaiti when he was getting a Denon for his living room and I remember the price was around KD175 since they were having discounts. So I passed by the Salmiya dealer and I looked around and I couldn’t find the Denon AVR-2106. I asked the salesman about it and he told me they were out of stock but he would check to see on the computer if any of the other branches had any left. Two minutes later he tells me he found one more piece left, but its the display model in the Hawalli branch. I am not good at price haggling at all, in-fact there is only one person I have ever met that was worse then me and thats TivoGuy, but I went ahead and asked the guy how much discount extra would he give me since it was the display model. He checked on his computer and told me the lowest he could give me the amp was for KD161. I was like stunned, I wasn’t planning on getting the receiver, I was just checking on the price, but now with this special price it was just soo fucking tempting to resist. So I tell the guy OK and he was like give me a minute to call the Hawalli branch and make sure they still have it. Five minutes later he comes back to me and tells me that the receiver they have in stock is actually not displayed and is still brand new in the box. I was like thats great but I still just want to pay KD161. The salesman laughed and said that wouldn’t be a problem since I was a good customer. I couldn’t believe what a good deal I was getting, I quickly paid the money and went and picked up the receiver from the Hawalli branch.

My aim of trying to hit over 5,000 unique visitors a everyday for February failed. It only hit over 5,000 six times with the highest being on 27th of February with 5,411 visitors. The lowest amount of visitors in one day was 4,415 and that was on February 10th. The average amount of visitors per day for February was 4,799 compared to 3,949 for January. The total amount of visitors in the month of February was 134,375 compared to January’s 122,430 (and February is 3 days shorter). For more details you can check the [Website Stats].

Japanoid. definition: Extremely compact cars from Japan.

I had never seen 80% of these Japanoid cars before and some like the Nissan Figaro pictured above look really cool and funky. [Link]

Update: seems the official name for these kind of cars is “Keicar”. Keicar is a Japanese category of small automobiles, including passenger cars and also vans and pick-up trucks for commercial use. They are mainly designed for sale in Japan, because there are some tax and insurance relaxations and an exemption from the usual requirement of certification of park space that one has adequate parking space at his or her home or has contract for a parking spot.

These relatively relaxed standards came from the post-World War II days when most Japanese were too poor to buy a full sized car, yet had more than enough money to buy a motorcycle. To promote the growth of car industry as well as to offer an alternative delivery method to small business and shop owners, Keicar standards were created.

More information here. [Link]

Susan, a regular reader of the site recently went on a sky tour of Kuwait and this is what she had to say about it:

A recent start-up called Kuwait Sky Tours is now operating in Kuwait and taking passengers on 15-minute helicopter rides at a cost of KD25 each. The 15-minute flight takes off from the helipad behind the Sultan Centre restaurant on the Gulf Road, travels up to Green Island and then back down to the Amir’s Palace in Salwa, before returning to land. It is a great way too see Kuwait from a different perspective. The helicopter is a MD 500-E and seats 3 adults. There is space for a child or a very skinny person between the pilot and front passenger. If you want to go, give Steve a call on 705 6666. They also fly from Khiran and Failaka on occasion. Cameras are allowed.

You can also go on a larger helicopter, for an hour-long flight for the princely sum of USD1,500. Or, try the executive jet, which is ready to fly you and 13 of your friends to any destination in the world! Don’t know that price; I was too afraid to ask!

P.S. Don’t talk into the headset during the flight. The pilot told me off!

Here are Susan’s pictures from her trip:
The Helicopter
Looking North West
Marina Mall and Marina Hotel
The Scientific Center
View of Salmiya
The Gulf Road and Kuwait Towers
House in Salwa
Radisson SAS

These lists represent the top camera makes and models used to create photos uploaded to Flickr, the best online photo sharing application in the world. The lists are generated automatically by periodically sampling the EXIF data from the stream of recent uploads. [Link]

(yay my camera is #1)

Did anyone hear the large explosion bang today just before 9AM?

I was out and about yesterday walking our dog Geo from Marina Crescent all the way to Scientific Center and I noticed the cops weren’t letting any cars slow down on the road. They were also stopping cars that were spraying foam outside the windows and they had cop cars parked in all the locations were people usually stood on the side of the road to spray passing cars. There wasn’t any traffic building up on the streets and all the traditional foaming was very minimal. Why did they become so strict this year? I used to love National Day because everyone is out on the streets having fun…

My mum was a flight attendant on Kuwait Airways during the 70’s and she always talks about how great the experience was and how she got to travel to so many places and meet a lot of new people. Two months ago while I was in Lebanon I found a stash of old photos she had taken during that time and I found the pictures really interesting since I love photos from the 70’s and 80’s that deal with Kuwait.

[Click here to view the pictures]

Note: The last two pictures were taken on board the Amir’s plane (Amir Sabah al-Salim Al Sabah) which she served on the last period of her career.

Note 2: If anyone has a bunch of “colored” photos dealing with Kuwait which were taken during the 70’s and 80’s send me them and I will post them online.

Note 3: The uniforms were designed by Dior.

How to make your stolen Powerbook’s data remotely self-destruct.
Great software that will help in knocking out noise.
Software that sucks down new MP3’s from your favorite blogs.

And finally…

MC Hammer has a blog???

My mums car REALLY stinks and its stinking up the whole underground parking. We seem to think a cat must have died in the engine since we couldn’t find a dead body in her trunk. I would open the hood to see if the theory is true but I figured the sight of a chopped up kitten splattered all over the engine bay would be something that I wouldn’t ever want to see.

Update: We took the car to get washed today, turned out it was a large dead cat. First place refused to wash the car because of the small, second place charged double the price. It felt like a Seinfeld episode..

I just watched three really funny VW ads which poke fun out of the MTV show Pimp My Ride. Whats cool also is that the actor who plays John Abruzzi on the TV show Prison Break plays a leading role in these commercials. [Link]

Since I have off from work till Monday due to the Kuwait National and Liberation day, I went ahead and downloaded a couple of movies to watch. Here they are:

Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Colin Farrell Sex Tape
One Night In Paris Hilton
The New World
The Weather Man
Transamerica
Waiting

I am really busy at work today trying to finish up some jobs before our long weekend. Hopefully during this vacation I will find time to post some cool stuff. For example I have these cool vintage pictures of Kuwait Airways which I need to get scanned, once I do I will post them here. I will be carrying my camera around also during the vacation taking pictures, I haven’t done that since I finished with Miskan. Once I get some cool pictures I will also post them online here. Its going to be a fun weekend.

Remember I posted about the two English Premiership soccer players who made a gay orgy sex tape and no one knew who the two players were? Well it turns out one of the players is none other then Ashley Cole! PinkNews originally had the article with the proof and all but their whole site is down now probably because they weren’t supposed to reveal who the plyaer was. You can still see it in the google cache though although without the picture proof. [Link]

I am not good at this but maybe some of you readers could help out. I want to make put together a (funny) list of tips for people who will be spending their first Kuwait National Day and Liberation Day in Kuwait. Something like David Letterman’s Top 10 list. Here are some bad examples I just thought of:

– Do not leave your house.
– Don’t make eye contact with someone with a foam can.
– If you are driving on the Gulf road, keep your windows closed and your doors locked.

blah blah etc.. Can anyone with a better sense of humor help out? Leave a comment and if its good will add it to the list.

If you have any tips for people who will be spending their first Kuwait National Day and Liberation Day in Kuwait, post it in the comments below.