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Dear Mark, Readers and Valued Kabab-ji Customers,

We would like to express our sincere respect and appreciation to the blog post comparing Kabab-ji with its competitors as well as the constructive feedback received by the blog readers.

At the start, the comparison shown within the initial blog post was misrepresented, we contacted Mark and he took the kind liberty to amend the post which is now accurate and resembles a fair comparison.

As mentioned within the amended blog post, it is true, we do focus and pride ourselves when it comes to high quality meats that are delivered to our customers at the highest quality standards.

We are passionate about our meat and care about where it comes from. We distinguish ourselves within Kuwait by utilizing Australian bobby veal meat which is an extremely tender & lean nutritious meat produced in South-Eastern Australia , inspected and certified for export by AQIS (Australian Government Quarantine and Inspection Service) and AUSMEAT (Meat-Standards Australia). No meat leaves Australia without accreditation and certification by the above bodies, on every shipment.

Being meticulously selected from Australia, our Hallal bobby veal meat is unbeatable in terms of quality. Most importantly, the animals used are growth hormone and antibiotic-free, are fed a vegetarian diet and of course, are humanely raised.

Furthermore, once the meat arrives to Kuwait, our production facility specialists handle it with utmost respect and attention to the BRC standards which is a leading global product safety and global certification program, which our production facilities strictly follow on a daily basis. You can read more about BRC on their website: https://www.brcglobalstandards.com/

In the end, yes, we may be a bit more expensive when it comes to our products, but our customers are also paying for unparalleled quality and flavour, with safety measures on a global standard.

Thank you once again for your initiative and we will do our best to continue offering our valued customers with the highest quality products and services.

We look forward to receiving feed forward from Kebab-ji fans and comments that can help us improve and better serve our valued customers.

Please do feel free to contact me directly on 97285651 or email me at [email protected]

Best Regards,

Miguel Angel Estevez- Gonzalez

KFG – Group
Director of Operations CD & IDD innovation Officer

Every night as part of my diet I am allowed to only eat grilled food and veggies. After the gym the most convenient thing for me to pick up is grills from either Turkish Grill, Kebabji or Villa Fayrouz Express. I usually call them from the gym parking lot and by the time I get to them the food is ready for me to pick up. Recently Kebabji increased their prices which annoyed me since their main competitors offered more for less. I decided to put up this post in hopes of someone from Kebabji reads this and realizes they need to go back to their old pricing.

Below are the three restaurants with some figures I took so I could compare them. The weight of the meat was calculated by placing just the meat on a digital scale and not the whole box. I ordered the exact same dishes from the three restaurants, grilled tikka meat and a side of tabbouleh.

Turkish Grill
Grilled Meat Tikka Cost: KD2.000
Pieces of meat: 15
Weight of meat: 175grams
Tabbouleh Cost: 600fils
Weight of tabbouleh: 272grams
Telephone: 25752565

Villa Fayrouz Express
Grilled Meat Tikka Cost: KD1.950
Pieces of meat: 19
Weight of meat: 196grams
Tabbouleh Cost: 850fils
Weight of tabbouleh: 508grams
Telephone: 25755527/32

Kebabji
Grilled Meat Tikka Cost: KD2.390
Pieces of meat: 12
Weight of meat: 66grams
Tabbouleh Cost: 950fils
Weight of tabbouleh: 295grams
Telephone: 1861616

I took the liberty to plug the figures above into a table for easier comparison. I highlighted the best prices and weight in green while I used red for the worst prices and weight. As you can see Villa Fayrouz Express surprisingly came out to be the best deal. I said surprisingly since between the three it’s actually the least fast foodish. Kebabji on the other hand didn’t fare too well. They had the most expensive prices and the least quantity.

Update: Thanks to a tip from a reader called Environmental, it turns out I can get the grilled tikka from Turkish Grill at half the price. You need to order the grilled meat tikka with “no service” and then the cost amounts to just 850 fils! You don’t get bread, veggies, pickles, hummus or a fancy box, just the meat wrapped in aluminum foil. Now the strange thing is I counted the pieces today and I got 25 pieces of meat, that’s 10 more from the regular which strikes me odd but hey I’m not complaining. That’s over a 50% savings, not bad at all. Below is a picture of the “no service” tikka.

If anyone from Turkish Grill reads this I have one comment, please install a Knet machine at your Salmiya branch. I don’t carry any cash with me most of the time so when I don’t have cash I usually head over to Villa Fayrouz since they accept Knet. There are no Knet machines on my way from the gym to your Salmiya branch.

Update2: It turns out Kebabji have a savings meal which gets you an extra skewer for around 200fils more. Below are the new updated details. Check the following link for more info on this [Link]

Kebabji
Grilled Meat Tikka Cost: KD2.595
Pieces of meat: 18
Weight of meat: 105grams
Tabbouleh Cost: 950fils
Weight of tabbouleh: 295grams
Telephone: 1861616

And here is the updated chart:

The 70 colored photos were taken from 1939 to 1943 and are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations. Some seriously amazing stuff there. Makes me want to bang my head on the wall for not taking pictures of Salmiya back in the 1980’s. [Link]

Posted by Fahad AlYehya | Core Fitness – Kuwait

I would first like to apologize for my long absence from the world of blogging and greatly appreciate all my supporting readers for being patient and understanding. Moreover, I’d also like to send my sincerest apologies to those of you who have emailed me but haven’t recieved a reply. I’d like to thank you all for putting up with my crap and style of writing, which by-the-way will only get worse. I’ve stated this a million times. If you’re not cool with my writing nature, then don’t read me. I should warn you, though; you’re going to miss out on some epic nutrition advice.

Before I begin preaching, I’d like to clarify how this guide will work:

1) I’ll list down all the basics of Ramadan eating and training to provide a brief understanding for the readers.

2) The reader will then post his/her goal, physical stats (height, weight, bf % if available) and Ramadan lifestyle (exercise timing, family gatherings, favorite/worst foods, etc).

3) I will then reply with a customized optimal plan for that reader’s goal

4) Other readers/haters who are too lazy to comment/hate can read/[go-kill-themselves] the Q&A’s below so that they may personally implement on their own.

The Q&A below will serve as a guide to unanswered questions anyone might have about Ramadan. Please refrain from emailing me since the goal of this post is to publicly educate through the written facts/opinions/experiences and the associated comments.

Credibility and Experience

It took me around 3 Ramadans to fully understand how my body works when it comes to losing fat and maintaining muscle when fasting. From eating small portions of food to indulging in every calorie dense food item, I’ve realized the only way to survive Ramadan is by doing the exact same thing.

1^st Attempt: I dieted in Ramadan, performing 30-60 minutes of cardio 2 hours prior to breaking my fast, and weight lifting 1 hour after a light futoor, followed by a light dinner and a light suhoor.

Result: Managed to lose 10kg in 1 month.

Damage: Managed to lose a lot of my hard earned muscle. Fail.

2^nd Attempt: I gorged on endless calories, weight-lifted with less intensity and did absolutely no cardio.

Result: Gained 5kg.

Damage: 5kg of fat; but I kept my muscle. Epic fail.

3^rd Attempt: Dieted 3 months prior to Ramadan (low calorie intake, 60 minutes of cardio, 30-45 minutes of weight-lifting). Stuck to the same level of calorie intake and workout-intensity in Ramadan, eliminated cardio completely.

Result: Nothing. Kept my muscle, maintained my superb condition.

Damage: Refer to the above. Boo-Yeah.

Recently I noticed that when I sleep for over 9 hours I wake up with neck cramps and a sore ear. It turned out my pillow had become too hard and with the way I sleep was causing me neck pains. Nat suggested I get Tempur pillows so I did a quick google to find a local dealer and landed on Some Contrast’s blog. He had found and gotten Tempur pillows from a place called The Bed Boutique in Tilal Complex. Since I was planning to pass by the Tamiya dealer there anyway, I decided to drop by and see what they had.

The shop has pillows, quilts and mattresses. They had a few brands the most popular being Tempur and Temprakon. Now one reason I felt like coming to this store was because Some Contrast posted they had a small private room (pictured above) in which you could try the pillows which is what I ended up doing. I got around 4 different types of pillows and tried them while lying down which is much better than just trying to feel the stuff in your hands. In the end I ended up getting the Temprakon Ergomagic which is a very comfy pillow (picture and details on their website). It’s a down pillow with a three layered core, one layer is a comfort foam which provides support for the head and neck, the other two layers are foam inserts which are used to control the height of the pillow. If the three layers combined are too high for you, you remove one of the inserts. If it’s still too high you remove another insert. Very practical.

Nat on the other hand got the same pillow as Yousef from Some Contrast which is the Tempur Symphony (pictured above). I tried it and also it was very comfy I didn’t think it was high enough for me since I like high pillows. The Tempur material feels very organic since it takes your shape and molds around it. I tried the Tempur mattress and it felt like the bed was alive since however you moved it slowly takes your form.

Anyway if you’re interested, The Bed Boutique is located at Tilal Complex. Their phone number is 22256171.

Update: Was just reading about the brand Temprakon on their website and it’s even better than I had thought. Their pillows and quilts are made with NASA’s OUTLAST material which is used in the NASA space suits. They’re the only manufacturer in the world allowed to use the OUTLAST material to make pillows and quilts.

The trendy shop number 4 which is located in the Shuwaikh industrial area recently launched an online shop (I think it’s recent at least) and it’s not too bad. The site is simple and fast and they have a sale now. I just wish they had a larger Lifestyle section with more stuff. Currently they just have the Wallpaper* City Guides. Here is the [Link]

via mashmoom

I’ve already posted about the Zinio magazine app on the iPad before (pictured above) and about how great it is and if there was only one app I could have on the iPad that would be it. Sadly though, not all my favorite magazines are available to subscribe to on Zinio… or at least not available yet. So what’s the solution?

You’re going to have to download magazines illegally.

Magazine subscriptions are cheap with the majority costing around $10 a year and I’ve already subscribed to over a dozen but the ones that aren’t available in Zinio I just download pirated copies of the magazines for free.

To do that you need two things, a PDF reader on the iPad and links to sites that post those magazines for you to download.

PDF Reader
I use GoodReader (pictured above) on the iPad to read my PDF magazines. The reason I went with GoodReader over other PDF readers is because it’s cheap, it handles large files extremely well and also because it has a ton of features. Some of the cool features are the ability to upload files into GoodReader directly from your web browser on the computer over wifi, the ability to drag and drop files into GoodReader from iTunes and the ability to download files from the Internet directly into GoodReader via an internal browser. Not only that but you could take a bunch of files, zip them up, upload them into GoodReader and then unzip them within the app. The only downside to GoodReader is the extremely ugly app icon.

Magazine Sites
There a ton of sites but the ones I use the most are the following: World Mags, Get Magazine and Magazines Download. Now just an FYI before you click the links, those sites also have PDF’s of certain magazines that are banned in Kuwait so close your eyes when you see them.

That’s all there is to it. Most of the magazines available in Zinio are also available at those sites as well but, since subscription fees are very cheap on Zinio I would highly recommend you subscribe to them instead.

My favorite mountain bike brand is Cannondale and I’ve posted about the local Cannondale dealer a few times including on my Miskan blog 5 years ago. Thing is since I first got my bike in the winter of 2004 until now the dealer really hasn’t expanded, improved or changed in any way. It’s very sad and not sure why specially since more people bike today than they did 5 years ago. Maybe the dealer doesn’t care about the brand anymore but it’s very disappointing. I passed by yesterday to get my bike and Nat’s serviced and they didn’t even have transmission cables available. Luckily GoSport has a good collection of Shimano bike parts and so was able to pick up some cables from there and dropped them off to the dealer. The dealer doesn’t have many Cannondale bikes for sale as well, they had only 2 models available. I guess thats a good thing since if I did see a bike I liked I might have ended up buying it.

On the bright side I’m glad that GoSport carry a good collection of bike accessories and parts. Nothing hard core like Fox shocks or disc brakes upgrade kits but still a lot better than nothing. For everything else there is Amazon.

Now thats one very cool looking Land Rover. It comes out next year but you can watch the video of the reveal [Here]

The 2:48AM app has now been updated to version 1.4. This version now works with iOS4. I’ve also updated the Kuwait Blogs again now to version 1.21. This update fixes the Some Contrast feed. The Kuwait Blogs update is available right now in all the stores, the 2:48AM update just got approved a few minutes ago by Apple so it’s still being pushed to the stores. If you can’t see the update try again later.

You can download the 2:48AM app by clicking [Here]
You can download the Kuwait Blogs app by clicking [Here]

Saw this on iLSuL6ana’s blog and found it hilarious. [YouTube]

Update: He’s released part 2! [YouTube]

I guess our Internet is not that slow here in Kuwait… if we compare ourselves to Sudan and Yemen… [Link]

Thanks Najib

Negative Effect whom I’ve posted about a number of times before has started a cool new interesting project called The Hot Foot. It’s a blog that reviews “anything driven by fuel” which basically means cars, motorbikes, boats and more that are all available here in Kuwait. He’s already got a few posts up my favorite being his latest one about SeaBob which is pictured above. SeaBob is a cool new marine vehicle that can fit in the trunk of my FJ but that will never happen since I can’t afford the KD4,000 price tag. Looks really cool though and from what I read a lot of fun. Anyway check out his website and if you have any feedback leave it below. [Link]

While in New York I picked up the Elgato video capture device for my Mac. Basically it allows me to connect regular RCA and S-Video cables to my Mac which I can then use to convert analogue video like old VHS and Betamax tapes to digital. I have a ton of old videos from the 80’s I want to start converting to digital and sharing on this blog. My issue is the Betamax tapes, does anyone know where I can get a hold of a Betamax player here in Kuwait?

My blog finally passed the 200 mark on Alexa.com. Last time I posted my Alexa ranking was back in January when I was ranked 260 in Kuwait. In case you haven’t heard of it before, Alexa is a website that tracks the popularity of websites around the web and in different countries. As of this post Alexa has me ranked at 192, meaning, there are 191 other websites that were being accessed from Kuwait more than mine. Google.com.kw is still the champion as the most popular site being accessed in Kuwait.

The coolest part is that the blog is now more popular than the 6alabat, Viva and Aramex websites which of course gives me a huge ego boost. The next stop is the top 100 list. Free burgers for everyone when that happens… not! [Link]