Search: “ace”

Could someone please bring back my three favorite franchises to Kuwait. A&W originally opened up in the 80’s and then shut down only to open up again in the 90’s and to be shut down once more. Arby’s opened up in the late 80’s and then shutdown once the owner got the Burger King Franchise. Wendy’s opened up in the early 90’s to be shutdown for some unknown reason.

With Kuwait being the 8th fattest country in the world you would think that every imaginable franchise would fight for the opportunity to open here. How come my three favorite franchises no longer exist in Kuwait?

I’ve got a friend who is planning to open up a place at the new 360 Kuwait mall and he told me something that sounds very promising. What he was told by the owners of the mall is that they don’t want any brand or shop in the mall if it is already open somewhere else in Kuwait and supposedly the only Alshaya store will be Starbucks. If thats true it might make the mall pretty cool.

The Emir Sheikh Jabir passed away two years ago on this day and a reader emailed me suggesting I share this song with everyone. The song is called “The prince of our hearts” and here is some information on it by its creators:

This song is dedicated to the late Prince Jabber. Also to Prince Saad, Prince Sabah, and Prince Nawaf. A mix of Arabic,R&B and Rap.

Although, Prince Jaber passed away on January 15 2006 “May He Rest in Peace”, he still remains firm in the hearts of Kuwaitis, arabs, and foreigners. This song was written, produced,and was sang by Luqman Sherriff A.K.A MiracaLz, Hany Baker A.K.A The_Kuwaiti_Don, and Salman A.K.A Morice. Combining R&B, Smooth Rap, and a new style of Arabic R&B.

I didn’t like the song but I don’t listen to this style of music anyway, you can download the mp3 and watch the video [Here]

The video embedded in the post above is a different song by Ahmad Al-Hajri which I just found on YouTube.

Thanks Zaid

My car speakers and multi-amp wiring harness arrived today. I now have everything I need to start the installation except for the RCA and speaker cables. I will get those from Mr System in Shuwaikh sometime this week. Yesterday I passed by Ace Hardware to get some pollyfill which everyone online advises to use to fill in the enclosure behind the speaker. Surprisingly they didn’t have any which is weird because they have everything. If you haven’t been to Ace Hardware recently you should because they’ve rearranged sections, canceled some unimportant ones and added new ones with more useful stuff. I really love the place. So after Ace I passed by Barakat in Salmiya which is a sewing store, I ended up finding pollyfill there which is basically pillow stuffing. 250grams for 750fils.

I also got a call from Cadillac today, I am going to be test driving the new 2008 CTS over the weekend. I checked out some pictures of the car online and it looks pretty interesting so I am looking forward to it. [Cadillac CTS]

This post will probably be understood just by Lebanese but my sister just told me about this place in Kuwait that sells ka3k and also makes ka3k sandwiches. I got 3 packs of Picon the last time I was in Lebanon so it would be cool if they can grill me a Picon sandwich in kaa3k. They also have a website and they deliver! [Link]

Tomorrow is MacWorld Expo 2008 and rumors are flying on what new products Apple might release. One product thats currently circulating the rumor sites is the MacBook Air, supposedly an ultra portable MacBook that will replace the discontinued 12inch PowerBook and iBook laptops. I hope they don’t release anything new, my credit cards are maxed out as it is! [Link]

I have an old PIII 500 with 256MB of RAM and a 20GB hard drive lying around which I wanted to give to someone. I didn’t want to install Windows on it since the person isn’t very good with computers and always ends up getting viruses and trojans installed on his system. The computer was going to be used for Internet browsing, chatting on MSN and Yahoo and copying and view pictures from his digital camera. I decided to install a Linux OS.

The first Linux OS I installed was the latest version of gOS which was released two days ago. From the screen shots it looked like a really friendly and easy to us version of Linux and thats what I was looking for. After installing it I realized that the operating system was running very sluggishly on this really old computer, it wasn’t going to work.

I then remember I had bookmarked a website from Digg which had a list of Linux distros that were meant to be run on really old computers. I went through the list, did some research and in the end decided to try two different ones, TinyFlux and Wolvix.

I tried TinyFlux first and although it ran really well the user interface wasn’t very friendly. I then decided to try Wolvix and not only did it perform really well but the interface was fairly friendly looking with a Mac like dock at the bottom and large friendly icons everywhere. I decided to stick with Wolvix and after playing with it for an hour I think its pretty impressive for an OS thats under 250MB in size. It has Firefox, a music player, video player, photo viewer, and a whole bunch of other softwares all included and there is a ton more I can download all for free.

This is actually the best part of Linux, its free and the majority of the software for it is free. Another good thing is you can try out the OS without installing it, you just run it straight from the CD and if you like it you can install it if not you just eject the cd, reboot and you are back to your old operating system.

If you want to check out the list of Linux distros for old computer click [Here]
For gOS click [Here]
and for Wolvix click [Here]

Last month Al Nasr, a Basketball team in Kuwait signed up American center John Francis Smith to play for their team. Well John is in Kuwait now and he’s made a video of the apartment the team has given him. It looks really nasty and very old, I don’t think I could even spend a night there yet alone live there. Its a really shitty place and he’s really really pissed. [YouTube]

I woke up today morning at 8:30 with a phone call from Stallion. He was on his way to come pick me up so we could go to the junkyard. I needed a seat riser for my Wrangler but not any seat riser, it had to be off a pre-2000 model because the one I had was one of the new ones which allows my driver seat to tilt forward. The pre-2000 models didn’t have that option and so had more empty space under the seat which would allow me to install my car’s amplifier in that space.

I was expecting the junkyard to be just one large unorganized place but it turned out to be this huge area made up of little small junkyards that were split up by car make or type. We drove around looking for junkyards that had Wrangler parts but there weren’t many. We found around 6 to 8 places that had Jeep vehicles but only 3 had Wranglers. After driving around from place to place we found what I was looking for BUT the guy would refuse to sell the seat risers without the actual seat.

Stallion using his great haggling skills tried to convince the guy to sell us the seat riser by itself but instead of convincing the guy to sell us the riser he nearly initiated a riot and the guy ended up refusing to sell us anything. I was sure we were going to get attacked by the Afghani workers there, I don’t know what happened because it all happened fast but it was a really short conversation that ended with Stallion and the Afghani worker shouting at each other and us walking out quickly.

We finally gave up on finding the seat riser without the seat so we took off back home. On our way we passed by Dunkin Donuts in Al-Rai since I had been craving Dunkin Donuts for a week now. It had be a long time since I had Dunkin and I had forgotten how good their donuts were. I took a lot of pictures of the junk yards which you can find by clicking continue below. It was a pretty productive morning.

I’ve always wondered what was the logic behind the name of some items at IKEA. They always have Scandinavian names but what do they mean? According to Wikipedia it turns out there is a format IKEA follows. Firstly most of the names are usually either Swedish, Danish, Finnish or Norwegian in origin. Secondly most of the names are based on a special naming system which IKEA has put in place and is as follows:

Upholstered furniture, coffee tables, rattan furniture, bookshelves, media storage, doorknobs: Swedish placenames

Beds, wardrobes, hall furniture: Norwegian place names

Dining tables and chairs: Finnish place names

Bookcase ranges: Occupations

Bathroom articles: Scandinavian lakes, rivers and bays

Kitchens: grammatical terms, sometimes also other names

Chairs, desks: men’s names

Materials, curtains: women’s names

Garden furniture: Swedish islands

Carpets: Danish place names

Lighting: terms from music, chemistry, meteorology, measures, weights, seasons, months, days, boats, nautical terms

Bedlinen, bed covers, pillows/cushions: flowers, plants, precious stones; words related to sleep, comfort, and cuddling

Children’s items: mammals, birds, adjectives

Curtain accessories: mathematical and geometrical terms

Kitchen utensils: foreign words, spices, herbs, fish, mushrooms, fruits or berries, functional descriptions

Boxes, wall decoration, pictures and frames, clocks: colloquial expressions, also Swedish placenames

via

New York Times must have been on something when they came out with this list of “53 Places to go in 2008” because they’ve placed Kuwait in position number 32! We beat places like Las Vegas, New York and London, thats just insane! [Link]

Thanks S!

On Friday the 25th of January, Animal Friends League in Kuwait will be hosting a paint ball tournament on their farm in Wafra. The tournament will be comprised of five teams of five players each.

The entry fee is 20KD per player which includes:
Gun, face mask, body armor, CO2 canister, 200 paint balls and food.
Each additional 200 paintballs can be purchased for 5KD.
Each additional CO2 canisters can be purchased for 4KD.
Spectators are encouraged to attend for 3KD which includes food.

Teams need to register by January 20th by e-mail with a list of team players and a team name. Players must be over the age of 18.

For more information visit their website. [Link]

Yesterday my friend asked me if I wanted to try out a new burger place called Marrybrown. I hadn’t heard of the place before but he told me it was an American franchise. That turned out not to be true because according to Wikipedia “Marrybrown Family Restaurant is a Malaysia based fast food chain”. Malaysia, America.. they both end with the letter “a” so I can see how he could have gotten confused.

We drove to the restaurant which is located at the beginning of Canada Dry street next to a car wash. It’s a really crappy location for a new franchise and the place isn’t even well designed from the inside. I checked out their menu and there wasn’t a single burger on the menu! Turns out Marrybrown is more like KFC and not McDonalds. I ordered a chicken fillet combo, swapped the fries with onion rings and also ordered a chicken ceaser wrap.

We sat down and the food quickly followed. After a few bites it became obvious that although the place looked shady the food seemed to be fresh and everything seemed to taste fine. Thats where the problem is with Marrybrown, its just too normal. There really wasn’t anything I ordered that would make me want to come back again. If I feel like a chicken fillet I would think McChicken from McDonalds or Zinger from KFC. The location and the interior doesn’t help their situation either. Maybe if I ever wash my car at the car wash next door and I feel like grabbing a bite I wouldn’t mind Marrybrown but I don’t think I would ever go out of my way just for them. The final score is 2.5 out of 5.

Tonight I passed by Sultan Center and noticed they no longer had Indian eggs and instead have replaced them with fresh locally produced eggs by KUPCO selling for a very reasonable KD1 for a tray of 30 eggs. I guess the local egg crisis is nearly over?

If I post something negative about a place in Kuwait, some people get the impression that I am out to hurt that place. If I post something positive about a place in Kuwait, some people get the impression that I was paid to do so. It’s pretty fucked up really.

Last week I posted two negative posts about Sultan Center, one regarding their eggs, the other about how they stole the Kellogg’s mascot. One reader told me if I hated Sultan that much I should just stop shopping there. What kind of mentality is that? Its kinda like how if I post something negative about Kuwait people come and tell me to get the fuck out if I don’t like it.

I only shop at Sultan Center and I have been a customer ever since they opened up their Salmiya branch back in the 80’s. When I encounter a problem at Sultan Center I complain, I have the right to as a customer. If I complain it doesn’t mean I hate the place, it means I want the place to improve.

Same with my Bazaar posts, some people get the impression I hate Bazaar. I don’t.

One reader asked why I don’t contact customer service when I have a complaint instead of posting it on the blog? Well three reasons. First the obvious which is I need content for the blog. Second is the fact that I am used to sending emails to customer service only to have them ignored and the third and final reason is that problems get fixed quickly after I post about them on the blog.

So from now on if I say good things or bad things about a place or product I hope there will be no misconception.