2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

In St. Petersburg, Russia they are looking for ways to keep customers at the pump. Phaeton holding announced that it will develop 15 “luxury” gas stations to capture the higher end of the gas market. The new stations will have free internet, sushi bars and women in “flight-attendant style uniforms” to attend to the vehicles. The idea is that customers are willing to pay a higher price for better service and that the gas stations might become the new hot spots. [details]

Why don’t we have luxury gas stations here? Actually, why don’t we just have more normal ones! They are too few and too far apart here.

At the office I am on a 512kb Fasttelco connection. At home I am on a 512kb Qualitynet connection. I ran a bandwidth test at both locations and the following were the results:

Qualitynet
Communications: 475.4 kilobits per second
Storage: 58 kilobytes per second
1MB file download: 17.6 seconds
Subjective rating: Not Bad

Fasttelco
Communications 362.5 kilobits per second
Storage: 44.3 kilobytes per second
1MB file download: 23.1 seconds
Subjective rating: Not Bad

In both trials, no one but me was using the connection on the network.

Winner of Round 1: Qualitynet

The PSP sold 620,000 handheld units and 1.1 million software units in March while the Nintendo DS has sales of only 420,000 to date since the begining of the year. The PSP launched on March 24th that means that Sony sold nearly one PSP per second in the first 8 days of the handheld’s launch. [via]

If you remember last month I posted about the new terrible BKME logo. Well since then I heard that the logo was done by an international agency (hard to believe) and I heard another story that it was designed by Horizon here in Kuwait (more believable). Yesterday I also got an email from someone called Jeeb, this is what he had to say about BKME and the logo:

The sphere isn’t only about a pearl, a BKME personnel indicated to me that two pepole reaching each other are actualy represented inside! I said who in the world would know or see that? By the way when copied, the “pearl” or “human reaching each other” logo goes white! Vanishes..

It also took me 2 days to open an account! Still confused, I received 6 e-mails with 6 user numbers bkmeonline/e-trading, which one to use? Why the guy kept telling “use another username this one is giving an error”? Now, ofcourse, i can’t use any of them, each had a password which i don’t remember now!! Bmke didn’t reply, i have to waite till sunday. Talking about making “life simple” for us!!!

I drew with a red line what “might” be 2 guys, one seems very fat. Also I can understand about the terrible service, when I tried calling them to ask about the logo 2 weeks ago it took me all morning to get a hold of someone..

I spent all night listening to the British Radio One in my car. Whenever there is a dust storm or humidity in Kuwait my car gets the Radio One signal on 102.1Mhz. I think its broadcasted from UAE or Bahrain. Tonight I was listening to the Ministry of Sound session, some really cool stuff.. for the radio atleast.

I was adding stuff to my amazon wish list and one of the stuff I added was Nine Inch Nails new album called With Teeth which is coming out next month. Out of curiosity though I decided to check and see if any of the songs were available on P2P networks. Surprisingly they were! So I downloaded a whole bunch and I have to say these new songs are sooo fucking cool. I can’t wait till the new album comes out on CD. I noticed also its more electronic then the previous albums, one song sounds drum n bass while another sounds ambient. Overall though this is gonna be one amazing album. My favorite song is Right Where It Belongs. I have had it in loop for the past 30 minutes. I uploaded a 1 minute teaser so you can hear it. [MP3 Link] If anyone wants to preorder it here is the amazon link.

Lyrics to teaser above:

What if everything around you,
Isn’t quite as it seems?

What if all the world you used to know,
Is an elaborate dream?

Just found a link with pictures of the new Jaguar XK, it looks reeeaaaallllly fucking cool! Like Aston Martin cool but at a more realistic price. Never liked Jaguars before but if this is the new XK then I might become a Jaguar fan. [Link]

Wow, just read that there is a possibility Bentley will be coming out with an SUV. Just imagine how flooded Kuwait will be with these Bentley SUVs, everyone will want one. But then as soon as they get released into the market, a month later it will be like *yawn* my neighbour has one.. [Link]

Just read this on boingboing and found it too funny:

The president also has an eclectic mix of songs downloaded into his iPod from Mark McKinnon, a biking buddy and his chief media strategist in the 2004 campaign. Among them are “Circle Back” by John Hiatt, “(You’re So Square) Baby, I Don’t Care” by Joni Mitchell and “My Sharona,” the 1970s song by The Knack that Joe Levy, a deputy managing editor in charge of music coverage at Rolling Stone, cheerfully branded “suggestive if not outright filthy” in an interview last week.

So his friend Mark McKinnon gave him songs from his collection, thats stealing. [Link]

Just launched awhile ago, Google Video Upload lets you submit videos electronically to Google Video. If you video is accepted people will later be able to search and find your video. You can have your video watched for free or you can charge people to watch your video. For example, if you were at Phuket when the Tsunami hit and you recorded it on video. You could have uploaded it to Google Video and charge $5 for example if people wanted to watch it. Since your video would have been interesting then people would have paid. You could also make a home made porn movie if you want and upload it to and charge people to watch it. [Link]

Just saw this cool thing on engadget. Its a rechargable handle pad for the Sony PSP. Basically it will add 4-5 hours over the regular battery life of the PSP for only $25. I haven’t had any battery issues myself but maybe if I was going to New York, the extra 5 hours of juice would come in handy. [Link]

I saw this new burger yesterday and I forgot to post about it but Forzaq8 just posted about it and he even took pictures. Their new burger is carb free which means no bread. The burger is wrapped in lettuce. When I was asking the guy at hardees about it (i was picking up a cookie) he was giggling while explaining it to me. They don’t even know what the hell it is. Its like a deformed burger. Anyway check forza’s post for the pictures. Totally looks like something I do not even want to try!

“Robert Clark usually shoots for the likes of National Geographic and Vanity Fair, but he’s currently crossing the country taking photos exclusively with a cameraphone” – Kottke

When I saw these pictures I felt so ashamed. This guy is taking amazing shots using a mobile phone and I can barely shoot a decent picture with my Nikon D70. It goes to show if you are talented and creative it will always show no matter what you do or use. Check out his pictures here.

Yesterday night me and nat watched Office Space which tivo had recorded earlier in the week. I already have watched the movie atleast half a dozen times but its a classic and always worth watching again. But, this was the first time I watched it censored! I can’t believe how badly one tv sucks! The words fuck and shit are censored, there is a whole “PC Load Letter” scene in the movie which was cut short, there is a completely missing scene in the movie where the Michael Bolton guy is listening to rap, there is a cancer tits ad missing scene, there is just so much cut out that the movie wasn’t worth watching anymore. They completely slaughtered what has to be one of the coolest movies of all time. In the end I just couldn’t handle it, we deleted the movie off the Tivo and watched something else. The only good thing about One TV is The Contender. I don’t know how they got the rights for Sopranos..

There is this one pigeon I keep seeing outside my window which doesnt seem to have any toes. I don’t know what happened to them but its pretty fucking sad watching him all day long. He seems to be getting along fine with all the other pigeons, they don’t seem to be leaving him out of any of their activities but I know deep inside this pigeon wishes he had all his toes. He seems to be able to walk fine but every few seconds he tries to stand on just 1 leg, I guess cuz it might be his other leg hurts him or something. Anyway I took pictures for you guys to see.

Birdie Pic 1
Birdie Pic 2 (warning: not for pigeon lovers)