2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

In And Out Of My Life – Onephatdeeva

I passed by Souk Sharq today morning because I wanted to get some breakfast from Sultan Center. Most of the parking lot opposite Debenhams was closed because of construction. Souk Sharq is finally building car shades it seems. It took them how many years to realize that a shaded parking is important in Kuwait? If it wasn’t for the strong competition from Marina Mall I don’t think they would have bothered with the shades. I think they are doing too little too late. I think the Souk Sharq days are gone, Marina Mall is a much better place with better shops, a better food court and much better management. There are a couple of more large projects coming up, we will see if they will also turn out to be better then Souk Sharq.

I found this link to a website with a very comprehensive guide on finding MP3s using google. Since AllofMp3.com is probably gonna get shut down soon and I hate using P2P software, this will be another way of finding some music. Oh how I miss the golden days of AudioGalaxy..

As Busynow had predicted in his comments, Amazon has put the Sony PSP preorder back but this time the system is bundled with 5 games and the price is $450. Sadly this new price is way above my budget and so will now have to wait for Amazon to carry the PSP as a stand alone unit before I can purchase it and that might take a couple of months depending on the PSP stock in the market.

I don’t know if this review will be very fair since the place I am reviewing I have been visiting for 26 years now. Yeah that long, and my parents were visiting it before I was born. The place is called Caesars Restaurant and its located in Salmiya. Its one of my favorite chinese places ever.. worldwide. In-fact every time I have chinese food anywhere I have to compare it to Caesars. Caesars just recently moved to a new location since their old place got demolished recently. The new location is adjacent to their old building so regular customers can find it easily. The new location is larger, is better decorated and now contains a lot more private booths. All the waiters are extremely friendly. I spend the first 5 minutes of my arrival saying hello to all of them. Its good to see them all. Some have been around since I was a little kid and have actually watched me grow up. I love the new private booths, they are very comfortable and they dont feel claustrophobic at all. For appetizers I ALWAYS have crab soup and prawn spring rolls. As I said previously, every time I have chinese anywhere else I have to compare it to Caesars and when it comes to the starters, Caesars wins by a mile. Their crab soup is simply the best soup I have ever had and I dont mean best chinese soup I mean best soup.. ever! The spring rolls? You can ask Nataly about them. When we go we usually order 2 plates of prawn spring rolls, one for her and one for me. Each plate has 6 pieces and they all disappear very quickly. For the main course I always have the sweet & sour chicken. Ofcourse I have tried their other dishes like the popular sizzlers and noodles, but I just can’t get enough of their sweet & sour dishes. Nataly keeps trying new stuff, yesterday night she had the sweet & sour prawns but before she had the fish sizzler and before that chicken with mushroom and bamboo shoots. One more thing left to talk about and that is the rice. Once again Caesars have the best rice in the world. We always order the fish fried rice and its easily the best rice you can ever have anywhere. Now with all this excellent food you would think the prices are just out of the world. In reality, Caesars is a very affordable chinese restaurant. This is what we had last night:

1 Large bottle of water
1 Coke
1 Crab soup
2 Prawn spring rolls
1 Fish fried rice
1 Sweet & Sour Prawns
1 Sweet & Sour Chicken

Total Price: KD10.500

As you can see the price for a very filling chinese dinner for 2 is just ten dinars. and this included shrimps. Very affordable. The only thing stopping me giving the place a full 5 stars is consistency. Every now and then something might not taste the way its supposed to. Maybe its me, maybe I am too picky but this is a minor issue I have. Also the location, its not really the place to be in Kuwait. So for the final score I give it a 4.5 out of 5. For reservations or to get the exact directions, you can call them at 5732885 and 5733044.

Here is a picture from the outside.

Update: Seems I couldn’t even spell Caesars right. I fixed it now.

Return to Patagonia – Lemon Jelly [Real Audio]

Swearsaurus is the world’s largest resource of multilingual swearing. It will teach you a vast array of swearing, profanity, obscenity, blasphemy, cursing, cussing, and insulting in a massive 165 languages – because it’s good to experience cultural diversity! Here is the link.

From the superficial: “Quentin Tarantino has signed on to direct the May 19th season finale of CBS’s “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”. Tarantino also came up with the episode’s storyline, which will put one of the key members of the CSI team in danger. Details are sketchy, but it might also involve a bunch of guys in suits doing a lot of shooting and maybe a kung fu master doing kung fu. And a sodomy scene. There’ll definitely be a sodomy scene.”

We are sorry to report that we will not be able to obtain the following
item from your order:

“Sony Playstation Portable (PSP) Value Pack”

Though we had expected to be able to send this item to you, we’ve
since found that it is not available from any of our sources at this
time. We realize this is disappointing news to hear, and we apologize
for the inconvenience we have caused you.

We have cancelled this item from your order.

I was checking the top views for my pictures at my flickr account and the results are pretty strange, here is the top 5:

#1 Where Apple’s Go to Die 1325 views
#2 Fuck Me Boots 1261 views
#3 Incest 842 views
#4 The Red Light District 461 views
#5 I See Dead People 441 views

OK, I left the office with everyone else around 10:30AM and got to the marina near the Sultan Center restaurant at around 10:45AM. I saw the yacht and it was pretty big. But I also noticed that while the boat was parked inside the marina in very calm waters it was still bouncing up and down and sideways. So I decided not to get on the yacht. No way you know. If it was bouncing while parked I am sure it was gonna be bouncing a lot more out in the open sea. So now I am back at the office, I am the only one here and I am gonna catch up on some work. I would rather be stuck here in the office then be out at sea.

I am at the office now, we are all gathering up here to leave at 10AM towards the marina. The plan is at11AM we will bard the boat for a 11:30AM departure. At 4PM we will come back. I already popped 2 pills earlier but I don’t think it will have any effect. We wil see. If I see a single wave in the sea I don’t think I will get on the boat.

Recently you might have noticed these ads on some buses advertising this restaurant called Wildfire. Well yesterday evening me and nat decided to pass by and give it a try. The place is located in Kuwait City in Mubarak Al Kabeer Street opposite the “Blockat” shops and the Chamber of Commerce building. The first impression wasn’t very good. The signage outside was in lime green and looked very cheap. When we got closer we saw the inside from the large window next to the door and the place looked small and like a hotel lobby with a small bar and small tables. Once we went in though we realized that it WAS actually a lobby / coffee shop for the restaurant which is located upstairs. Once we went in we were greeted with very friendly faces and led to the restaurant upstairs. When we reached the top we were once again greeted with smiles and they asked if we would like a private cabin. We said yes.. the first mistake. The restaurant on the inside is much bigger then i expected. Its clean, dimly lit and the furniture all new as it should be expected since the place just opened at the end of ramadan. The private cabin though was claustrophobic. The table was long and very slim like an oversized ironing table and the benches were very uncomfortable. It was also getting stuffy inside so we decided to keep the cabin door open. Then they brought us the menu which was the biggest surprise of the evening. Wildfire has simply the largest menu I have ever seen in Kuwait with nearly 200 dishes to choose from. Their menu has everything from extravagant cocktails and milkshakes to all types of dishes from Indian, Chinese and even Fish & Chips and Club Sandwiches. They even have lobster and crab for sea food lovers. The menu has 20 pages of everything you could imagine. We decided to have shrimp spring-rolls, kindu prawns, mongolian chicken and egg fried rice. We decided to skip the soup because weren’t that hungry but they did have shark fin soup which is usually my favorite. The shrimp spring rolls arrived first. They were too crunchy, had green peppers and weren’t very tasty. I hate green pepper in my food so my vote shouldn’t count here but nat doesn’t mind them and she also thought the spring-rolls were bland. The main course arrived soon after we finished. When he first put the food on the table I noticed the mongolian chicken was bright red. Thats the first time I see it like that, usually its dark brown, the kindu prawns also looked like normal prawns with a bit of light brownish sauce, again its not supposed to look like that. The food tasted as good as they looked, not very good. My mongolian chicken was not spicy at all and its supposed to be very spicy. Natalys kindu prawns tasted like normal prawns, the kindu part of it was tasteless. The rice was one of the worst I have tried, very boring in flavor and dry. We were very disappointed. The large menu led us to believe that we would keep coming back to try different things but after our meal we knew this would be the last time we would ever come back. The bill turned out to be 8KD, that also included 1 coke and 2 bottles of water. We left a 1KD tip and left. The waiters asked us how good the food was and I lied and told them it was great.. I couldn’t be bothered to explain why I didn’t enjoy the whole meal. The final score for the place is 3 out of 5. I would have given it 2 but the extremely large menu and the very friendly service helped raise the score. Maybe the Indian menu is better then the Chinese, maybe our dishes were not their speciality, whatever the case is, we didn’t enjoy our meal and we will most probably never go back.

Their website is wildfirekwt.com but it wasn’t working when I tried it now. Their phone numbers are 2476886 and 2476996. Below are 2 pictures from the outside.

Picture 1
Picture 2

Today I filled up my brand new Case Logic CD wallet with some really good music. I went through my CD collection and added some great classics, stuff I haven’t heard in a while and stuff that I should be hearing more often. Here is a list of all 48 CDs in the same order as they are in the wallet.

Jimi Hendrix – The Ultimate Experience
Korn – Life is Peachy
Korn – Korn
Nine Inch Nails – And All That Could Have Been
Nirvana – Bleach
Rage Against the Machine – The Battle of Los Angeles
Smashing Pumpkins – Adore
Tool – Aenima
U2 – Best of 1980 – 1990
Theater of Tragedy – Velvet Darkness they Fear
Lost Highway – Soundtrack
Nine Inch Nails – Downward Spiral
Nirvana – Nevermind
Nirvana In Utero
LF – Home Made Mix
Rage Against the Machine – Renegade
Nine Inch Nails – The Fragile (Double CD)
Audioslave – Audioslave
Velvet Revolver – Contraband
Rage Against the Machine – Evil Empire
Ministry – Filth Pig
Pet Shop Boys – Complete Singles Collection
Pink Floyd – The Wall (Disc 2)
Pearl Jam – Ten
Dj Danger Mouse – The Grey Album
Stereo MC’s – Dj Kicks
Kid Loco – Kill Our Darlings
Kid Loco – A Grand Love Story (Double CD)
Ian Simmonds – Return of X
Ian Simmonds – Last States of Nature
Tosca – Opera
Tosca – Suzuki
Comfort Zone Volume 3 – Various
Comfort Zone Volume 4 – Various
Lounge Conjunction – Various
Lemon Jelly – lemonjelly.ky
Dzihan & Kamien – Freaks & Icons
Dzihan & Kamien – Grand Riserva
Underworld – Beaucoup Fish
Dj Shadow – Entroducing…
Vikter Duplaix – Dj Kicks
Thievery Corporation – Dj Kicks
Thievery Corporation – Abductions & Reconstructions
Thievery Corporation – Sounds From The Thievery Hi-Fi
Lounge Conjuction 2 – Various
Truby Trio – Dj Kicks

From the above list the CDs I would like to highlight as simply the best ever are both the Tosca CDs and the Dzihan & Kamien CDs, plus the Nirvana Nevermind Album and Audioslave.

How much do people tip in general here? I know in the States people generally go by the 15% rule. Here I usually give a tip of around 10%. If the bill is over 5KD but under 10KD I would tip 1/2 a dinar. If the bill is between 10KD and 30KD, I would tip between 1 to 2KD. If the waiter is Lebanese I double the tip. If I know the waiter for many years like at Ceasers where I have been visiting for over 20 years, then the tip is usually 2KD for a 10KD bill. The reason I don’t go with the 15% rule is because 10% is easier to calculate. How much do you tip?