2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Remember when you were kids in school and if you did something good the teacher would give you a star? Well I am starting this trend at the agency. I am giving out pink and blue stars of various sizes to designers who work hard. The harder you work the bigger the star you get. Really funny stuff.. I think this should be applied to all of our offices worldwide. I also think I am gonna get fired when management comes back from their trip!

I am selling my car because I want to get a new one.
Here are the car specs:

Year: 2001
Brand: BMW
Model: 330ci
Color: Topaz Blue
Interior: Individual

Extras:
-Rear Shade -Sport Package -Seat Warmers -Xennon Lights -17″ rims -Business CD -Chrome Trim Exterior -Alluminium Trim Interior -Clear Signal Lights -Motorolla V3690 GSM phone ready

It has 69,000KM on the dial, if interested leave a comment and I will contact you.

More information and pictures of the car available here.

Update: I think someone from the office is going to buy it off me…

Just came back from a blogger meetup. It wasn’t planned as one but it turned into one. I had lunch with Tivo-Guy, Missundaztoood and Fadibou at Starbucks in Salhiya. The meetup was very cool, we mostly sat and talked about the PSP and Halo2, and Fadi was telling us about how Microsoft Longhorn will kick ass when it comes out in 2015. Compared to the planned “official” meetups, I think our unplanned one faired out evenly even-though we didn’t have an invisible celebrity guest!

We have 2 PSP’s at the office, a Japanese version and an American version. We have 2 copies of Need for Speed, a Jap version and a US version. The problem is we can’t get the two systems to connect for a head to head race! Wtf?! I thought we would be able to do this even though we have two PSP’s from different regions.

Have you guys noticed the Swensens ads on the streets? If you will look carefully you will see a small quote that says “Ice cream will never melt”. Just thought that was a pretty stupid statement..

As you know the other day I was contacted by Kuwait Cinema regarding my terrible movie experience. Well after the last phonecall where a guy from Kuwait Cinema wanted me to call him before I went to the movies so he could get me the free tickets, I sent another email to the general manager explaining how this wasn’t very convenient for me and he replied. Below I posted the email I sent to the GM and the email he sent back:

Mark to Alan

hi thank you Alan for your email and phone call. Its good to know that KNCC does care about their customers even though they have a monopoly on the market.

I do have 1 more minor issue though. Santhosh called me and told me about my 2 free tickets. He was very nice and all and told me to call before I go to the movies next time so that he can get me the tickets. I was wondering would you be able to credit the 2 tickets into my account instead of me having to call santhosh the next time I go. The reason for this is I would like to choose the seats myself and calling santhosh for the tickets and hoping he answers just before i go to the movies is a bit of a hassel.

If its not possible its ok.

thanks

And this is the email I just received from the general manager today:

Alan to Me

Mark

I have arranged for this to be done. We do care, very much, as to what our customers feel and experience.

Please let me know what your next movie is like.

Alan

As you can see he was very proffesional. I am now 100% satisfied with their actions regarding the incident.

According to a Sony Ericsson representative, the K750 will begin shipping this week. The K750 is the updated version of the K700 which I wanted to get but many people told me not to. The biggest change in the K750 other then the fact that it looks better is the 2MP camera built into it. When it first gets released though it will probably cost anything from KD140 to KD160 so I will have to wait a bit for the price to settle down. For a full review of the K750 click here.

Update: I received an email telling me that the phone has been available in Dubai since Friday and its priced at 1350AED 1630AED which comes to around KD107 KD130.

ALL the management at my agency are leaving tonight for a three day seminar in Dubai. What does this mean? It means I will be in charge of the creative department for the next three days so I created a schedule of things to do for all of us here.

Day 1 – We all ditch work and go to the beach. This way by the time management come back on Thursday, everyones tan would have settled.

Day 2 – We all ditch and go to Entertainment City. Many of the employees here haven’t been to Entertainment City yet so it would be a good experience for them.

Day 3 – We go Ice Skating at the skating arena near the office. This way we can go skate for an hour and be back to the office to catch up on some work before management come back Thursday.

Day 4 – Management come back, find out what I did and then fire me.

I was checking out Missundaztoood’s website and saw his her Only in Kuwait list. I found the list funny and it reminded me of an incident I witnessed recently. Me and Nat were walking in Salmiya around 2 weeks ago when we spotted this car with a lady in it outside a shoestore. She honked the horn and the salesman came out. She told him something and he went back into the shop and came out 2 mintues later with 2 pairs of shoes. She tried them on in the car and then gave them back to the guy and drove down a few meters to another shop and honked again.

The lady was drive by shoe shopping, I had never seen that before!

Today I received two phone calls in regard to my complaint about the StarWars incident I had last week. The first call was from Alan Hall, the General Manager of KNCC. He apologized about the incident and told me they would investigate it. When I asked him if they had received any other complaints he told me no they hadn’t but that they also generally never receive any feedback from anyone, good or bad. He then told me they would contact me again soon.

Around 5 minutes ago I received a call from another guy, he again apologized for the incident and gave me his number and told me the next time I go to the movies to give him a call 1 hour ahead so I can get free tickets. He wasn’t very clear on the issue so I asked him if I brought my wife can I get 2 tickets, he said yes. I said thank you and closed the phone.

The free tickets gesture is nice of them but I don’t think its good enough. I am not being greedy or anything but there are a couple of issues here.

1) I already paid for 2 tickets last time and wasted my time going to the movies at midnight on a work day to watch the movie and they fucked up. If they give me 2 free tickets in return then I am not getting anything extra.

2) Do I get 2 tickets or more? I asked the guy if I need 2 tickets for me and my wife would that be a problem, he said no. What if I need tickets for me and my friends? The guy wasn’t very clear on this issue.

3) I have to call the guy before I go to the movies? Would he remember me? When is this valid till? What if he doesnt pick up? I think calling a person on his mobile before I go to the movies is to much of a hassel and I wouldn’t be in control. Plus do I still book the tickets online or do I tell the guy what movie I want and he books the seats and buys them for me?

4) I booked the tickets and paid for them online, why couldn’t they credit my account with the free tickets? That would have solved a couple of issues. First I would know the exact amount of tickets I got. Secondly I can book my tickets online whenever I want and pay for them with the credit I have.

In conclusion, I am glad they called me back but I am disappointed with their gift.

Update: I just called the guy again to get clarification on the booking issue. Turns out I have to tell him what movie I want and he will book the seats and get me the tickets. I should have asked him how many tickets I get but I forgot..

Update 2: Just received the email below from Alan, very nice of him:

Mark

I refer to our discussion of this morning and thank you very much for providing the feedback. We are in the process of a major investigation as to why this happened. We do not take such matters lightly.

As a gesture I would love to welcome you and your wife back to enjoy a screening of Star Wars, with sound, at your convenience.

Santhosh, our operations manager will be contacting you to co-ordinate.

Kind regards.

Alan Hall
General Manager

This is what I have heard from various sources:

– Al-Shaya are going to close all their shops at Souk Sharq and move to the new 5th Avenue mall opening on the 5th ring road

– Blue Fig is closing down because its not doing good

– Al-Shaya purchased Blue Fig’s location and are opening 3 new restaurants in its place, one of which will be Le Pain Quotidien

Want to know if you have any speeding tickets? Call 198 to find out.

Heard about the Paris Hilton Carls Jr (Hardees) commercial that they decided was to pornographic for tv? Well now you can watch it at the directors site. [Link]

Update: Bumped up since the previous link went dead. New one is working now.

Don’t get it?

I just downloaded and updated my Nikon D70 Firmware. The first thing you will notice after the upgrade is how much cooler the camera’s menu looks, they redesigned the menus to make them easier to read. It feels as if I just got a new camera. The second major thing they fixed was the number of exposures remaining when shooting in RAW format. Before with my 512MB card it would display 47 shots although I could take a lot more. Now with the upgrade it shows me 88 shots. Below is a more detailed list of the updates:

1. Performance of the 5-area AF system has been improved (Dynamic area and Closest subject AF-area modes).

1. Changes have been made to the design of menu displays.

2. Page-size settings can now be applied from the camera with direct printing from a PictBridge-compatible printer.

3. The number of exposures remaining, displayed in the control panel and viewfinder, when shooting at an image-quality setting of NEF (RAW) or NEF+JPEG Basic has been changed (the number is calculated based on the size of compressed RAW file).
– Maximum number of exposures displayed when a 256-MB CompactFlash memory card is used:
– Version 2.00: NEF (RAW):approx. 44 exposures; NEF+JPEG Basic:approx. 39 exposures
– Version 1.03 or earlier: NEF (RAW):approx. 23 exposures; NEF+JPEG Basic:approx. 21 exposures

4. The default setting for camera clock has been changed from 2004.01.01 to 2005.01.01. Now you cannot set the clock back to a date before 2004.12.31.

5. A problem that sometimes caused communication between the camera and computer to be unexpectedly terminated when using Nikon Capture Camera Control has been corrected. (Windows)

You can download the 2.0 firmware upgrade from here.