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I was sitting at home all cozy watching tv when Nat calls me up on her way back from the gym. She had spotted a dog near our house playing with a cat by the side of the road and she was worried the dog might run into the street and get hit by a car. So I put on some shorts, got a towel, dog bowl and leesh and then waited for her to come home so we could go together in the Wrangler to rescue it.

When we got there it turned out what she had thought was a cat was actually another dog. They were both medium sized dogs and when they saw us they started barking and wagging their tails as if they were happy to get some company. They were playing on the grass near a puddle of water on one of those islands that are located near intersections (see picture below) and they seemed to be very friendly. When we got close one of the dogs came up to us and we started petting him but the other one kept his distance. I went back to the car to get a leash and the other dog that was keeping his distance crossed the road behind me and then ran off towards some buildings and disappeared. Nat was still petting the other dog and so I was able to get close and put the leash on him and then made him cross the road where we fed him some treats and gave him some water. We called Animal Friends and arranged a drop off location but as we were about to take off the car wouldn’t start. My Jeeps battery had died (I had just done a full service a week ago in which I would think they would have checked the battery condition at least).

Its always an awkward position to be in when the car doesn’t start but now I had a dog with me which made things more complicated. Luckily I was in my neighborhood so I called up this car electrician who is located near my place (thats what I love about Salmiya everything is near my place) and he came 5 minutes later and jump started my car. I then had to drive to his place and swap out my car battery while the poor dog waited in my trunk confused and scared with all these things going on around him. Finally around midnight I was able to get to the Animal Friends drop off point and hand them over the dog.

As always I would like to remind everyone that Animal Friends is a non-profit organization and they need donations to be able to keep rescuing all the animals. If you would like to donate click on the following link to find out how. [Donation Link]

This is a pretty messed up incident. A British soldier in civilian clothing got ambushed by five guys in Kuwait City and then held captive. Luckily he managed to escape by jumping out of a first story balcony. [Article]

Update: According to Al-Rai newspaper the British government is denying this incident took place. Here is the article (it’s in Arabic). [Article]

The website Yearbook Yourself has relaunched after being down for some time. There are some new additions to the site but most importantly there are new pictures to be super imposed onto. Yearbook Yourself is a website where you upload your picture to it and it will then super impose your face onto different yearbook pictures from the 1950 up to the year 2000. You get to see how you would have looked like if you had lived back in that era. It can be a lot of fun. [Link]

Back in July I posted about Amigos that was going to open in place of Arby’s at Avenues. Well they’re now open and as you can guess they serve Mexican food like nachos, burritos, fajitas and tacos. They’re located in the Avenues food court opposite Choowy Goowy.

I know this is a bit late but I just passed by the Oum Kalthoum exhibit at the 360 Mall over the weekend and thats why I decided I would post about it. I am not a big Oum Kalthoum fan neither do I know much about her but the exhibition is definitely worth visiting. The exhibition space is huge. I was expecting a small room but it turned out to be gigantic. Its also very nicely put together, very tasteful and there are a lot of things to see. There is even a small cinema like section with a large projector where you can sit and watch Oum Kalthoum perform on screen. If you haven’t passed by the exhibit yet you should. Its free and its located on the ground floor of the 360 Mall.

The Hummingbird Bakery is one of my favorite dessert places in London so when I heard they released a cookbook I ordered one right away from Amazon. Since I have a lot of free time during Ramadan I will be baking a lot more and today I started off with an Apple Pie.

I passed by Sultan Center to pick up my ingredients around 3PM but it was a huge mistake. The supermarket was packed and everyone there was shopping in large quantities. My favorite line I overheard today was a daughter telling her dad “but that’s a lot, we don’t need that much” and then the dad replying “it’s Ramadan so it’s fine”. That’s why the 10 items or less line was practically empty and why I was able to leave so quickly without waiting in the humongous lines with people who had carts filled to the brim with food.

Anyway back to baking. The cookbook has a lot of pretty pictures and instructions for baking but they really don’t take you in great detail through the process. Since I hadn’t baked an Apple Pie before I used a Betty Crocker cookbook from the 70’s that had step by step pictures which helped out a bit specially when it came to putting the bottom crust in the pan without ripping it (you fold it twice so its a triangle and then you put it in the pan and unfold back into a circle).

According to the cookbook you’re supposed to bake the pie at 170degrees celcius for 30-40 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. It took me 1 hour and 30 minutes to get the crust golden brown! Next time I will be increasing the temp up to 180 to try and speed things up a bit. The result though was an extremely delicious tasting pie. I had only one minor issue and that was with the bottom crust and top crust separate while baking on one side of the pie but its a minor quibble which I should be able to solve next time.

So far the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook looks to be working. If you want to order it, it’s available on Amazon for around KD5. [Amazon Link]

Previously: My favorite cookie recipe

I posted a video of the Aston Martin Rapide in Kuwait before but here is better footage. I can imagine they would have a hard time explaining to hotel security what the box with all the wires in the trunk is for. [YouTube]

Update: Here is an article to go with the video above that talks about the testing that went on in Kuwait. [Link]

With the hottest part of the day approaching and temperatures now exceeding 50 deg C, the next test involved leaving the car parked outside in the intense midday sun for an hour – typical of an everyday lunch stop.

Sixty minutes later, the team measured what’s called the solar load placed on the car during the break using a device on the roof. To give an idea of how hot the sun in the Middle East can get, a typical solar test in a factory is usually limited to 1,000kW/h, as values higher than this rarely occur in habitable climates.

But after returning from lunch, the laptop was reading a peak value of 1,100kW/h! [Source]

Thanks AndyQ8

Office Depot has finally opened at the Avenues and I am kind of disappointed. I expected the place to be much bigger and have more stuff but at the moment they have a little of everything which I guess is ok for a shopping mall branch. They really need to have a much bigger place if they want to compete with the likes of Mogahwi. On the bright side at least we have a new franchise in Kuwait.

Update: I got the following response from the Office Depot marketing team:

In the future, we will have stand alone stores that will be much bigger in size having a bigger range as well as smaller stores that will have a limited selection focusing on stationery and small office supplies. Our focus is on offering the customers all they need in one shop at competitive prices, good customer service & an excellent shopping experience. We started with the Avenues store mainly for individual consumers however we will service business clients for that store as well. Our future plan is to open business targeted stores as well & in 2010, we will also launch our catalogue that will have the full range of products from all categories.

For more information, you can email us at [email protected] or check www.alshaya.com
If you want to receive a sms or email whenever we do offers, you can fill your info here https://www.alshaya.com/OfficeDepot/

It doesn’t exist simply put. Actually maybe at some hotels like Gefinor Rotana who always seem to improve their service every time I stay with them but in the majority of places just forget about customer service. I was at a large local supermarket chain for example tonight which closes at 10PM. At 9:45PM a woman announcer came on to tell everyone they close at 10PM and everyone should proceed to the cashiers. They then proceeded to shut off all the lights leaving just a few on. Then the employees started all leaving. I was at the cold cuts section waiting for the guy to finish my order when another employee came over and told me to proceed to the cashiers. Like WTF?

I took these today with my Nikon D90 and 50mm 1.8/f lens. I was freelensing with the lens held the wrong way round to get the macro ability. No retouching, just some minor color color grading. The yellow flowers were growing from a white plant which I hadn’t seen before.

Update: Added some more. Also I’ve placed some typography (NIN lyrics) on some of the shots to help bring out the picture.

Marzouq sent me a link to this today and I can’t believe its true. It seems some places like Kempinski Hotel in the Mall of Emirates are asking people to sign waivers which say that if you get food poisoned they are not responsible. Freaky. [Link]

Desert Kings 2 Jokers are back with a new video which now includes water activities. Personally I prefer the faster paced original video. [YouTube]

If I want to learn how to fly is there a place in Kuwait where one can take lessons? A flight school?

I got an email from the owner of a new boutique called Twist telling me about these BlackBerry covers they have which I found interesting. The covers are hand made using a technique called decopatch. This makes every cover unique with no two a like. I am not sure if they make them in Kuwait themselves or they’re made outside but I like the idea. She didn’t mention how much they cost but hopefully its something reasonable. If you’re interested they have a Facebook page with pictures of some of their covers and contact information [Link]

I’ve been eating healthy for nearly 3 months now and so far I’ve lost 5KG dropping my weight down from 89KG to 84KG. As my height is 186cm that puts my BMI at 24.3 which is where it should be. Keep in mind I wasn’t planning on losing weight with my diet, I just had to stop eating some types of food due to my acid reflux problem and the weight loss was just a bonus. I am still eating whatever I want I just have stayed away from two things, fried food and fast food. It was difficult in the beginning because I used to have fast food for lunch every day but once I found a replacement things became much easier. I no longer feel like eating junk food, I actually can’t stand it now.

I’ve already posted about two places which I’ve started eating at, Salad Creations and Macaroni Grill. Another place I’ve started going to is Nando’s. I passed by the first time after they started advertising on my blog and since then I’ve started popping in once a week for lunch. I haven’t tried many dishes there because I’m hooked on their Chicken Burger. They have 4 types of marinated chicken, I tried mild the first time but it wasn’t too spicy for me so I took it hot the second time and now thats how I always have it. The chicken is grilled which fits in my diet and the dish comes with a side order of your choice. I tried the corn kernels (pictured above) but I didn’t like it, my favorite side order is their coleslaw which is really good. The dish is KD2.250 which fits nicely in my daily lunch budget. Sometimes I have the Perri-Perri Hommous which is hommous with their spicy sauce, also very good. I think thats for KD1.500. Anyway they’re located at the Avenues in the back near Macroni Grill and Chili’s.

There is another place I have lunch at often and want to post about but I am worried if I do the place will start getting more packed and they might increase their prices so I am still thinking about it.