2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Wow I wasn’t expecting that much of an interest in Newsvine. I sent out an invite to the first 19 people to comment since Nibaq sent me an SMS at like 6AM asking for one. If I get anymore invites will send them out to the rest.

It Rocks! If anyone needs an invite leave a comment below. I got 20 invites to give out. [Link]

Today was fucked, I past by the photographer at 1PM, they were retouching the shots we took yesterday and I had estimated I would spend max 1 hour finalizing the retouching with them. I ended up leaving at 9PM! Really long day but luckily they were shooting some wine bottles for one of their clients so we ended up drinking a ton of red wine. I will be back in Kuwait tomorrow.

So I am sitting in my hotel room flipping through the channels on the TV when I fall upon the Lebanese station New TV. There was a game show on where they ask a question and if you call in with the right answer you get a chance to win up to $20,000. So I watched it a bit and it was really funny. No one was calling in and the chick who was hosting the show seemed really bored. I was thinking what a fucking stupid show, how the hell do these guys make money. Anyway someone finally called in after 30 minutes of no phone calls and gets the question right and won like $100.

The next game comes on and its basically a puzzle. There are six letters scrambled that when they put together should form a countries name. The answer was easy, Russia so I decided to call in and answer it. I call and get an automated machine telling me that the phone call was going to cost $1 a minute, no problem. Then I got another voice telling me sorry, I am close to winning but I should call again. So I do, and I get the same two voice messages. Turns out everytime you call in you randomly might get through but every time you call you pay $1. So I kept trying to call since the least I could win was like $100. I kept calling and I kept getting the fucking voice mail and I kept trying again. Now I just realized I must have easily tried over 50 fucky times! I am actually still trying to call in now while I am typing this post. Its like I am addicted and I believe I have a chance to get through. I can’t fucking stop!! I can’t!!

Awhile ago I was making fun out of this stupid fucking game show and now I have spent over $50 trying to fucking participate! Nats going to kill me when I get back to Kuwait.

Update: Some fucking dickhead from Saudi Arabia got through and won $200. I feel like such a fucking loser. I hate gambling.

The photography shoot was today and it went good. We originally had 4 different locations we were going to shoot but in the end I had to kill one because it wasn’t going to work out. I really like shooting ads in Lebanon. The quality of work you get from here is really world class. The photographer we were using is really the best one I have ever dealt with. For people living in Lebanon you might have seen his work, he does all the Aishti and Aizone shots. The Aishti work is so good that I used to think they were shot in Europe and was surprised when I found out they were shot in Lebanon by a Lebanese. Anyway I come back to Kuwait on Saturday, can’t wait.

Temperature in Kuwait right now: 13 degrees celcius
Temperature in Lebanon right now: 19 degrees celcius

This is what I call a photography studio. This picture only shows half the place, there is still a similar sized area to the right of this picture. The studio is on the 4th floor of an old warehouse in an industrial area. There is a large lift that fits cars, thats how that benz is up on the 4th floor. Its actually higher then the 4th floor since the first floor is like 4 stories high and then the rest of the floors are as high as this studio. S

Why don’t we have studios like this in Kuwait? How hard is it to find a large warehouse and turn it into a studio?

Whats up with this new law in Kuwait where you need to have a fire extinguisher in your car? Are burning cars that big a problem in Kuwait that we all need to carry around fire extinguishers? I remember there was a similar law in Lebanon, one of the politicians had purchased a large quantity of extinguishers and then created the law so he could make profit by selling them.

Private bars in hotel rooms are amazing. They are filled with the coolest munchies and for some reason a Pepsi can always looks a lot cooler in these hotel room fridges then in yours back home. The items are also extremely overpriced and thats why its usually a good rule never to get stoned in a hotel room. A coke can costs KD1 ($3) while a tiny bottle of Black Label costs KD5 (I could still buy it and bring it to Kuwait and sell it for profit). The most expensive thing in my fridge at the moment is the 1/4 bottle of champagne costing a nice KD20. The cheapest thing is Kit Kat which costs 800fils.

Click here to view a picture of my rooms mini fridge.

Took a cab ride today in one of those old beat up Mercedes cars. In Lebanon these cabs are called “service” (pronounced serveece) and they ride up and down the streets picking up people. They pickup more then one person and you usually get off on the main road near your destination. They charge LL1000 which is like 200fils (I think like 50cents). The driver I took a ride with today turned out to speak fluent Arabic, French, English and Indian. Turned out he used to work in construction back in Saudi and moved back to Lebanon in 1993. He ran out of money and couldnt find another job so he ended up becoming a cab driver. These kind of stories are pretty comon here sadly.

If you have done a lot of shopping on Amazon.com you might have noticed that the prices of products on Amazon go up and down like the stock market. You might find and buy something today for $100 but check again the next day and the same product might be $90 or $110.

It really isn’t fair if you buy something today for a price and find it cheaper the next day and thats why Amazon has a policy where if you buy something for lets say $100 and within 30 days of your purchase the price goes down to say $90, Amazon would credit you back the difference of $10.

Keeping track of the products you buy and their prices can be a pain and this is why the site RefundPlease.com is very handy. This website keeps track of your purchases and the price you paid and within 30 days if the price of the product goes down they will email you with the correct url which you could use to request credit from Amazon. I have already added some stuff I purchased this christmas and hopefully I might get some cash back. [Link]

For Lebanese in Kuwait I have some good news, Malek al Taouk is opening a branch in Kuwait. For those of you who don’t know Malek al Taouk, they make the best taouk sandwich in the world which is also the largest sandwich in the world. I will try to take pictures of the sandwich today.

Just found a bug in the Internet connection here, kinda like the one Zajil had in Kuwait. Basically I log in using my internet card, I sign onto MSN and then logout from the internet. The MSN connection stays open. Pretty cool.

I just arrived to the hotel like an hour ago. The room is pretty cool, I got showtime and internet access so its just like home except for the fact I have to pay $10 for 5 hours worth of internet and I have to use up the 5 hours within 24 hours. I will try to find free wifi in the area and try to hop on from there.

The Kuwait Airways flight sucked. The plane left on time and arrived on time but the experience wasn’t that great. Firstly I arrived to the airport early and I asked the guy to give me window seat as front as possible. He told me the best he can give me was row 16. After travelling on like row 4 and 5 with Jazeera going back to 16 is like fucked up. Secondly when I got on the plane I just felt sick. The inside was dark and gloomy and the seats are too small and there is like zero leg room. I could also smell plane exhaust which made me even sicker.

On the bright side, the food was pretty good, I had hamour fish with rice. They also had an old episode of Xfiles playing which I watched.

The weather here is as hot as Kuwait which sucks. It looks like Lebanon will be missing its winter also, fucking ozone layer.

Note: It currently costs KD42 (approx $120) for a two way ticket with Jazeera Airways to Lebanon but costs KD147 (approx $450) for a two way ticket with Kuwait Airways. What a fucking ripoff.

Ok I was just are two flights to Lebanon today, one at 12PM and the other at 3. I decided to go with the 3PM one since its 9AM now and I haven’t packed or anything yet. The problem is the 3PM flight is with Kuwait Airways. I used to prefer Kuwait Airways over Middle East Airlines but recently everyone has been complaining about the terrible Kuwait Airways delays and service and now I am just worried I am going to have the crappiest flying experience ever.. and I hate flying! Hopefully things won’t be as bad as I am guessing it will be. I will post a Kuwait Airways review when I come back or something.