2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

The other day I mentioned a design agency called Landor and today I am gonna mention another great agency called Interbrand. Everyone knows that Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, and Van Gogh painted the Starry Night, but very few people know which agency created the Vodafone logo, yet alone which designer was behind it. Designers are not as appreciated as painters although both are creatives. Creating a brand identity I believe is harder then creating a painting. When artists paint they paint for themselves. Their painting in the end will be purchased by 1 person who might be the only one likes the painting. On the other hand a designer creating a brand identity has a lot more pressure and a much much more difficult aim. When a designer creates a brand its not just for himself, its for everyone. It will be seen by thousands and millions of people and it will become part of peoples daily life. Brands are not locked up away in some museum where viewers trickle in one at a time to see it. Brands are let out into the wild where millions and millions of people will interact with it.

Interbrand have created identities for some of our favorite brands ranging from Imation, Nikon, and Lufthansa to British Airways, 3com and Lexmark. My favorite is Petro-Canada.

For some samples of logo’s they have designed click here
For the agencies website and portfolio click here

I met with Nibaq awhile ago for lunch. He had been walking around Muthana complex trying to kill time until it was time for me to have lunch. While walking around he found a new Apple store that was still being worked on. The place is called Solize and is not connected to any of the other local dealers. We spoke to the guy incharge who was busy displaying mac hardware and he seemed like a nice person ALTHOUGH when Nibaq asked him if he supplied RAM for the powerbooks the guy asked is it Apple? Like duh… Anyway the store had two cool things. First they had second hand macs for sale although not cheap. One was a Graphite G4 500mhz powermac for 300KD. The second was a Dual 800mhz Quicksilver powermac for around 430KD. He also told me he had a Dual 1GHZ mirrored door powermac inside, but I didn’t see it nor did I ask its price. Another good thing he had although once again not cheap was Sonnet Encore CPU upgrades for older powermacs. A G4 1.4ghz upgrade would set you back 190KD at solize compared to the 450$ on amazon. The store will be completed within a week. I personally think this store will NOT succeed due to the terrible location. Its in Muthana Complex, Mezzanine 1, right in the back behind Steps and near the Asus and As Seen on TV dealers. Impossible to find and even if it was located at the main entrance, I doubt the people who frequent Muthana are potential Apple users..

Here are some pictures I took

Nibaq joined me for lunch today at Burger King. I had a kids meal like yesterday with 2 extra burgers. He had 2 Kids meals also. I got the StarWars Faclon toy today.

I just finished watching the final episode of the season for The Amazing Race on One TV. It was my first time watching the show and I started watching this episode half way through but from what I saw it looked like a really cool show. Don’t know why I hadn’t heard of it before.

You probably saw the billboards on the street advertising the new BK Kids Meal toys, they are giving away StarWars stuff. So for lunch today I passed by Burger King and had 1 kids meal plus 2 burgers on the side. I got the Chewbacca toy.

Over the weekend, Rami (Tivo Guy) was able to setup One TV for us on the Tivo. Now we can record The Contender and other cool shows like The West Wing and Judge Judy. So yesterday night while watching a recorded episode of The West Wing I noticed something strange. I felt as if some of the scenes were being.. cut. So near the end of the episode there was a scene in which the woman tells the guy, “I am gonna kiss you now”, the guy says “ok”, then when she moves in to kiss, the scene changes. I was shocked. They censor kisses??? I thought only KTV did that. It really sucks.

Remember the BumFights DVD I bought the other day off the street kid? Well turns out it came with a bonus. The DVD is actually 2 DVDs in 1! The DVD had BumFights AND World’s Wildest Street Fights Vol2. I watched a bit of BumFights but then went straight to World’s Wildest Street Fights and it was amazing! WWSF is 45 minutes of non stop videos of people fighting. Could be schools kids beating the fuck out of each other or two girls fighting at a BBQ party. Really amazing stuff, its all home made movies recorded by people at the fights. Very violent and interesting to watch, I loved it. I just wish it was much longer, 45 minutes flew by very quickly.

Panorama 1
Panorama 2

For lunch today I had a Mushroom & Swiss combo plus a Chilli HotDog

Nearly forgot to post this, Today I had a 6inch Subway Club, a 6inch Subway Melt, a Coke and a Cookie.

The other day I watched Terminator 3 and I was a bit surprised in one scene. The scene in question is when Arnold comes to the present time, goes into a bar, steals a strippers clothes and car keys, then goes out to the guys old beat up truck and drives off. Just before he drives off he puts on the strippers watch, an Offshore Audemars Piguet. I found that a bit odd since the watch cost A LOT more then the guys truck. A LOT more then the guy could ever make. It was total bullshit, no stripper working in a bar like that could make enough money to buy a watch like this. So I was kinda put off at the lack of realism in the scene. Anyway, yesterday I found out that this watch store I know in Kuwait has two special edition watches. An Audemars Piguet, Arnold Schwarzenegger edition AND a Montoya edition. So I did a bit of research turns out AP and Arnold have a pretty good relationship and they have worked together on many things from charities to movies.. I found this page that talks about the T3 movie tie in.

Now, lets talk about the coolest watch of the two, the Montoya edition. I didn’t even know such a watch existed. I am a great fan of Montoya since his Indy days and I am a bigger fan of Audemars Piguet watches. So combining the two is too extreme. Here is some info I was able to obtain about the Montoya watch:

Juan Pablo Montoya Royal Oak Offshore Chronograph
This watch was released in tribute to Formula 1 race car driver Juan Pablo Montoya. This watch features a 45mm titanium case with carbon fiber inlaid accents all over the top of the bezel and sized of the bezel and sides of the case. Every shape on this watch and every feature is designed to resemble a Formula 1 race car; The chronograph pushers are styled to look like air-intake cooling flaps, the Bezel screws are shaped like cylinder head screws, the winding crown resembles a wheel axle, the winding Rotor of the movement resembles a clutch disk and the strap resembles the racing suits of F1 racers. And of course, the watch is adorned with inlaid carbon fiber on the top and sides of the bezel. This is a very limited and near impossible to find watch, the Titanium model was released in only 1000 individually numbered pieces with current retail price as of March 15, 2005 of $19,500.

Here are some pictures of the Montoya watch.

So how much are they selling for in Kuwait? The Arnold version is going for KD7,000 while the Montoya version for KD12,000.

Today I bought a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum and something phenomenon happened. Something that has never happened in all the years I have purchased Wrigley’s chewing gum. One of the gum sticks was double wrapped! Here is a picture.

Starting today I will start posting what I had for lunch. It will go under the Lunch category and it will help me (and anyone else) keep track of how much junk food I am eating. Today I had McDonald’s. 1 Fillet-O-Fish combo supersized, and 1 double cheese burger.

Yesterday night on the Conan O’Brien show, Sylvester Stallone was one of the guests. I really like him (Stallone) a lot, he is one of my favorite actors. Not because of his acting abilities but because of his personality as an actor and the fact that he made the movies Rambo and Cobra, both favorites of mine. So yesterdays show was extremely funny, Conan was able to get the best out of Stallone, he joked about Rocky and stuff, plus asked if Rambo would make a come back and surprisingly Stallone suggested he might. Conan made a good point by suggesting Rambo now has a new enemy to fight, Al Qaeda. Stallone joked saying that Rambo is old now and probably won’t travel that far from home, he said Rambo would probably just drive down to Mexico and fight someone there. Stallone is a really funny guy, watching him yesterday made me feel like watching Cobra again. Anyway here is a recent picture of him with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Similar to the flickr site from the other day, this site spells words using thumbnails from Amazon.com. It works differently from the flickr one so its interesting to try. Here is the link.