Search: “ace”

I think I just found the funkiest designed clothing store in Kuwait and sadly its only for woman. I was leaving Platform and on my way out back to the main road when I saw this extremely trendy looking storefront right across the street from the BMW showroom. I didn’t know what it was and I wasn’t sure if it was open or not so I started driving really slow and then I noticed some girls walked into the place. I couldn’t tell what the place was because the windows were sand blasted so I parked my car and hoped for the best. As long as it wasn’t a lingerie store or someones house I figured I would be ok.

I opened the door and walked in and to my surprise it was a clothing store and it looked really trendy. The clothing racks were lined up on the side of the store and there were two pinball machines right in the center and in the rear there was a huge pink seating area. I walked around a bit and then left and will definitely go back with Nataly. The place is called 4 and it wouldn’t look out of place in Soho.

Note: Notice how I have 3 posts today on 3 different new stores?

Right after work I went to Platform in Shuwaikh to check it out. When I first walked in I was really impressed, everything seemed very tidy and clean and I got the impression the place was huge.

First thing I did was head over to the BOSCH power tools stand to check out the cordless drills. They had a good collection but they didn’t have what I was looking for. I wanted a 14v cordless drill which they did have but I was looking for the version that was made in Switzerland but they had the one made in Malaysia. A very friendly employee came up to me (I think he was Indian) and told me they didn’t have the version I wanted and then proceeded to explain to me that if I wanted to drill into concrete then I would have to get the version of the drill with the hammer. He was very friendly and informative. Price wise they were exactly the same as the dealer, the Malaysian version of the drill is selling for KD45 at the dealer and for the same price at Platform.

I then decided to walk around and explore the place and thats when I realized how disappointing Platform was. I used Ace Hardware as my comparison and Ace easily has it beat, at least when it comes to the stuff that matters to me.

Firstly the screws section wasn’t as expansive as Ace. They also didn’t have small packs that come with a variety of screw sizes and I also don’t sell screws by the piece.

Secondly I couldn’t find any threadlockers!! Not only does Ace Hardware have threadlockers but they have them in different strengths and even in very tiny one time use packages. Although its such a minuscule thing its still an important item which they didn’t have.

The hardware tools like hammers and screw drivers were mostly made up of cheap Chinese brands which was a major put off. Finally they didn’t have any electric tidbits like soldering irons, wires, speaker cables, ring terminals or anything of the sort. Ace on the other hand has a huge collection of those.

Feeling disappointed I walked back to the Maikta power tools section hoping the sound of a few drills would cheer me up. When I got there I was met with an Arab employee who asked me if I was looking for something. I told him about the drill I was looking for and he told me they had sold out (strange you’ve just opened) and that they discontinued the model. I was like ummm no, they haven’t discontinued the model and that the dealer has them in stock and selling for KD50. He was like ah then I guess we got the cheaper version. I was thinking to myself wtf? Why lie and try to bullshit me into buying the Malaysian drill?

I left the place disappointed but as soon as I exited their parking lot I got a huge grin on my face. Right across the street from Platform another hardware store is launching soon called Abyat. Judging by the size of the building it looks like its going to make Platform look like a bakala. Till then I will continue to get my hardware needs fulfilled at Ace.

I just found out about this shop called We Love Kuwait from blogger Armani Exchange. According to Kuwait they are NOT a bookshop, they are a place where you can find carefully hand-picked books for your children, arts and crafts materials for your quality time with your children and they also arrange gift baskets for your kids filled with fun goodies that would keep them busy for days. Looks like and interesting place. They are located in the mezzanine floor of Muthana Complex in Kuwait but they also have a website full of details and even a blog. [Link]

A friend was telling me that the old buildings in front of Seef Palace that contain all the trendy restaurants and shops is going to get demolished. Supposedly the government doesn’t want these kind of places in front of the oalace and will be demolishing the buildings and probably replacing them with a large park. My friend heard about this from his friend who owns a store there whom they’ve already approached asking him to close down.

I know the owners of Slider Station and Pink Moon Boutique check my blog so maybe they can confirm this story.

update: According to the owners of Slider Station and Pink Moon, their building will not be demolished but the group of shops and restaurants closer to the roundabout where Shay W Nana and Berts are located will be.

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!