Search: “ace”

Last night I met a friend at Blenz Coffee located in Marina Waves and I think I discovered the worst cookies, muffins and chocolate drink all in one place. I decided on Blenz as our meet up spot because it has a nice seating area outside with a great view and the fact that parking is abundant. There were only two other tables occupied and at first I figured its because not many people know about Blenz but now I know its probably because the food and drinks are really terrible.

I ordered a chocolate chip cookie, a chocolate chip muffin and an iced chocolate drink. All three of my items were the worst I have ever had. I only had a few pieces of the cookie, one bite of the muffin and two sips of the chocolate drink and then threw them away. They were just horrible! Lucky for us they only have one branch in Kuwait which means if luck is on your side you could live your whole life without having to experience the disaster Blenz is. My final score is a 1 out of 5 stars. The one star is because of the great view.

Supposedly this rat was eating shawerma at a restaurant on share3 al ma6a3em (Restaurant Street). I can’t make out the name of the place. [YouTube]

Thanks Erzulie

I hate the sneakers that are available at Foot Locker and Athletes Foot here in Kuwait. In the past few years I don’t think I’ve even purchased any sneakers from here, I always ordered them from Amazon and other retailers online. Other than the fact that they don’t carry certain brands here, most of the retailers play it pretty safe and just get your average looking regular dull models. In the UK for example Foot Locker isn’t even counted as a trendy store for sneakers, Size?, Offspring and Foot Patrol for example all have better taste and carry funkier collections. Athletes Foot barely even exists outside of Kuwait!

One of my favorite TV shows is Entourage and one of the characters on the show is called Turtle who is a sneaker collector. That gave me the idea to also start my own sneaker collection. Its still really small but I only just started so it should grow a lot more in the coming year. You can check out some of my sneakers below.

I want these sneakers!! I saw them online for the first time yesterday and today I got some more info on them. Basically they will be sold exclusively at Offspring in the UK and thats it, no other place anywhere. Now the bigger problem is Offspring don’t have an online store just a stupid myspace page. The sneakers aren’t out yet but once they are I am sure I will figure out a way to get them. [Link]

I think Ramadan put me out of touch with food in Kuwait. This is like the third time since Ramadan ended that I discover a new item at a favorite restaurant. Today for lunch I passed by Sbarro, I hadn’t been there since before Ramadan and today I found out they had a new item that seemed interesting. Its a stromboli and up until today I hadn’t heard of it before. It’s something like their stuffed pizzas except the dough is rolled up.

I usually order the stuffed sausage & pepperoni pizza but I decided to try the stromboli version today. Although it looked interesting it turned out to be let down. The stromboli was very dry and in some places there wasn’t any sausage & pepperoni just dough. Compared to the stuffed pizza, the stromboli was boring and bland. It costs 950 fils which is the same price as a stuffed pizza except I would choose the stuffed over it easily. Its worth a try though. Final score 3 out of 5.

I just got back from a late night ride. I hadn’t ridden since the beginning of summer and ever since TriStar had picked up my bike and serviced it last week my bike has been begging to be taken out. Tonight was his lucky night.

I was walking Geo and noticed the weather was just amazing so when I got home I suited up and went out for a ride. Salmiya was deserted and I had all the streets to myself so I took full advantage and rode up and down at my pace enjoying my time. I was a bit rusty so I felt a lot more comfortable riding alone with no traffic just in case I made a mistake.

One thing I realized, the weather is a lot nicer in shorts and a tshirt. My full bike gear which includes thick riding pants and a thick riding jacket kinda made things hot but it still felt great riding. I think I will do this every night, its very peaceful and mind clearing.

Someone just told me that Al-Sayer Al-Ghanim are launching a new store in Kuwait thats similar in concept to The Home Depot in the US. Supposedly its going to be called “Platform” and they will be launching some time mid this month. I think its about time someone is opening a decent home improvement place here in Kuwait, the only thing we have is Ace Hardware but it really doesn’t have a lot of things.

Today was such a blast! We got to Marina Waves around 9AM in the morning and first thing we had to do was move our plane to the proper location which was the front of the line. One team ahead of us had withdrawn from the event so we became team #3 instead of #4.

Our friends started to come one by one until our station resembled a large diwaniya then judges started passing by to judge and ask questions about our plane. Every time a judge would see our plane they would get this shocked look on their faces but they all had sense of humors and cracked jokes with us. They all agreed though that our plane was the most comfortable one to sit in, kinda like a lazy boy version of a plane. Later that we found out one of the teams had a large helium canister which we quickly took advantage of. We kept filling balloons with helium and passing them around to everyone to inhale, that cracked everyone up for a while.

Finally around 2PM they started the event and we were the third plane to jump off. We were dressed as traditional Kuwaiti fisherman which didn’t make sense at all but its not like anything else did. Every team had to play a song and have a dance before they pushed the plane off the ramp and our song was Sabo7a. I think that and our dance which was also traditional Kuwaiti cracked up people the most. For me I think the dancing was the worst part, I hadn’t danced the traditional Kuwaiti dance since I was like 10 years old in school so I was just a mess but who cared it was still fun. The rest of the team, Khalid, Bader and Marzouq were naturals though as you can see in the video at the end of this post.

Once we were done with the dance we got behind the plane and Bader who was our pilot got into it and we started to push. We pushed as hard and fast as we could and just before the end we let go and stood and watched. All I saw was our plane fly out a few meters and then slam hard into the water with Bader lying on his back and this look of horror and pain on his face. It was priceless! It was then our turn to jump in, we didn’t have to but we wanted to. The only reason we participated in Flugtag was to have some fun and jumping in was the last thing we had to do.

When you look down from the edge the water looks really far but I thought about that for just a second before I just went ahead and jumped in. For some reason I decided to land on my ass so I landed pretty hard and it was kinda painful but not as bad as landing on your back which Khalid and Bader did. The water was amazing and it was just an incredible rush jumping off after such a long and amazing day. I could hear the crowds cheering and laughing and I could also hear Bader, Khalid and Marzouq all laughing. We then got on the jet skis that came to rescue us to take us back to shore, me and Khalid got on behind this one guy and just as he was taking off the whole jet ski flipped on its side and we landed on an adjacent jet ski which was pretty hilarious at the time I don’t know why.

When we got back to the shore we met up with the other teams and they congratulated us and we shared with them our experience. After that we just packed up and left since we were all wet and tired.

I have to say all the other teams we met and interacted with were also a lot of fun. Majority of the guys there were there just like us to have a lot of fun. If you actually saw the planes at the event you can tell most didn’t care about winning, everyone just wanted to enjoy the day and crash land with style. From the teams, to the Red Bull staff and even the judges, everyone was very positive, super friendly and a lot of fun. I would definitely want to participate again next year maybe even with an updated plane although I love ours the way it is. After this event I actually suggested we convert our plane to a raft and just join the yearly raft race with it.

The pictures above were taken by Nicole except for the picture of goatse (we had spray painted it at the rear of our plane), that was taken by me. The video below was shot by Nat. Special thanks to Hashem (he doesn’t have a blog so I could link to) for helping us out by being our ground crew and helium supplier.

Kuwait’s Red Bull Flugtag 2007 from Mark on Vimeo.

As I’ve mentioned before I get a lot of strange emails, at least one a day and sometimes when they are really strange I decide to share them with you. This is one I just received now, I have no clue what it says! By the way, I received it exactly the way its written below.. with the spaces and all…

ｙｅｓｔｅｒｄａｙ　ｉ　ｂｏｕｇｈｔｆｒｏｚｅｎ　ｔｗｏ　ｍｉｎｃｅ，ｂｕｔ　ｔｈｅ　ｐｒｉｃｅ　ｉｓ　ｖｅｒｙ　ｄｉｆｆｅｒｅｎｔ．ｂｕｔ　ｔｒｕｔｈｆｕｌｌｙ　ｏｎｅ　ｐｉｃｅｓ０．５４５ｆｉｌｓ，ｉｍ　ｂｕｙ１．０２０ｆｉｌｓ　ａｎｄ　１．０４０ｆｉｌｓ．ｉｍ　ｓｔａｙ　ｉｎ　ｆｉｎｔａｓ，ｓｈｏｐｓ　ｕｎｔｉｌ　ｖｅｒｙ　ｄｉｓｔａｎｔ．ｗｈａｔ　ｉｓ　ｔｈｅ　ｄｉｆｆｅｒｅｎｃｅ　ｍｉｎｕｔｅｓ　ｙｏｕ？

Update: For those of you just seeing shapes instead of copy, here is what it says:

Yesterday I bought frozen two mince. but the price is very different. but truthfully one pieces0. 545fils. im buy1. 020fils and 1. 040fils. im stay in fintas. shops until very distant. what is the difference minutes?

Yes I like shawermas and it seems a lot of people know that because before I left to London around a million people recommended I should try the shawermas at Ranoush. Ranoush Juice is part of the Maroush group of restaurants which are extremely popular in London and the place was located near my hotel on Edgware Road so I decided to go ahead and try it.

Good shawerma in London? I found that hard to believe and I would never have believed it had I not tried it for myself. I’ve been reviewing shawermas for a while now and its always difficult to describe the taste of a shawerma, its not easy to explain why one tastes better than the other or why it tastes worse. It’s mostly because its not one single thing alone that makes a difference, its a balance of a variety of things and this was the case with the shawermas at Ranoush. There wasn’t anything particular I could single out about their shawerma which made it special but it was. Maybe it was because I hadn’t had a shawerma for a week, I don’t know but it just felt really good having it. It felt comfortable and so perfectly balanced. The garlic wasn’t too strong but wasn’t too weak, the chicken was great and the cleanliness of the place was top notch.

Price sadly was out of this world for a shawerma, 3.25 Pounds which is around KD1.900! It completely blew away the previous record of 750 fils for the Villa Fayrouz Express shawerma but luckily for Ranoush it’s in London and KD1.900 for a shawerma is a great deal in a city where KD5 burgers are practically the norm. This is why for the final score it gets a 4.5 out of 5.

While in London I kept spotting this really cool retro looking car. At first I thought it was a classic British car but when I found a parked one and was able to get closer it turned out to be a Nissan Figaro. When I got back to the hotel room I did a quick google search and it turned out the Figaro’s were produced in the early 90’s and have a small cult following. I am not usually a fan of retro looking cars but I can’t help but not love this one, it just looks really funky. I found a place online that sells excellent condition versions for prices ranging from 3000 to 4000 Kuwaiti Dinars. [Link]

I got the latest version of OS X with me from London and I installed it today and its pretty cool. No major upgrades but instead lots of tiny ones here and there. My biggest concern was the dock, I was worried I wasn’t going to like the redesigned version but not I don’t think I can go back to the old one. Overall Leopard is just much prettier. I am now going to just format my Macbook and reinstall it again fresh. I don’t have a particular reason for doing it other then its a good way for clearing up space.

This is really messed up. One of my hard drives, a 500GB Western Digital has just died on me. The drive was full with only around 8GB of free space. It had a ton of movies, tv shows and my iTunes library. Now its fucking dead, just like that out of the blue.

Now what? Thats what I have been asking myself for the past few minutes. Do I get another hard drive and go through the painstaking task of re-downloading all the movies and shows? Where do I begin? I don’t even know what movies and shows I even had on this drive. I’ve been asking myself for a long time now why I am building a large database of shows and movies and why I don’t delete them when I am done with them. I never have a proper answer. What about the other shows and movies I have on other drives, do I just delete them as well and say fuck it to all this?

I didn’t back up my data because it wasn’t important data. The only thing I do have backed up are my MP3s but thats because they are all legally ripped from my CD’s or purchased digitally online. I backed them up because I did not want to go through the painstaking task of ripping my CDs all over again one by one. My movies and TV shows are illegally downloaded and they are just too huge to back up anyway coming in at over 1.5TB. I don’t know what I will do, its a shock. I guess I will just get another drive and just continue from where I stopped.

We left Paris today and got back to London but not without going on one hell of a ride.

We got to the Eurostar train station in Paris around 5PM which was around an hour before our train was set to leave. When we got to the automatic check in the machine rejected our tickets. I couldn’t understand why until an employee there arrived to help us and explained to us the problem. Our train had left over an hour earlier!

I am not one to make a lot of mistakes, I am usually the extremely reliable guy who plays it really safe and always tries to arrive earlier than the recommended time. Somehow, for some fucked up reason, I read our London arrival time as our Paris departure time. I can’t understand how that happened, looking at my non refundable non exchangeable ticket now I can’t imagine how I mixed up the departure and arrival times. Its right up on my list of dumbest things I have done in my life. We had missed our train out of Paris and that was just the beginning of our adventure.

There was another train leaving to London in around 2 hours so we headed to the really long cue queue to buy tickets and waited. While in line I tried calling NBK on 801801 to try and move money onto my credit card. I didn’t know how much I had left on the card and I didn’t know how much the tickets would cost so I figured I would play it safe and move some more money onto my visa. I spent 15 minutes trying to call Kuwait without any luck when suddenly I got through and got a hold of the NBK operator and explained to her that I wanted to move money onto my card. After 10 minutes of trying the NBK operator told me there was a problem with the NBK automated system and I should call back in 15 minutes.

We got up to the ticket counter and we asked for 2 one way tickets out of Paris. The employee told us we could get on the next train, price was 236 Euros per person which amounted to a total of 472 for the two of us. That was more than DOUBLE what I had paid for 3 weeks ago for our two way tickets! We didn’t have any other option so we asked for the tickets but when we tried paying for them both my credit card and Nat’s got rejected. Our cards were maxed out, it just wasn’t our luck.

Now you are probably thinking why didn’t I just withdraw money from an ATM machine and pay for the tickets with cash? Well the problem is when I travel I don’t keep a lot of money in my ATM card account so that just in case I get mugged at an ATM machine I can only withdraw a certain amount of money (I watch a lot of movies). It’s never been a problem before because I always use my credit card for my purchases and if I needed more money than whats available on my ATM card I just transfer more onto it.

So here was the situation, my Macbook had no battery and I didn’t have the charger so I couldn’t connect to a wifi network at the train station. There was also no Internet cafe at the station but even if there was I didn’t want to access my bank account from a public computer. I couldn’t get a hold of NBK, the answering machine never came on it just kept ringing and no one was picking up. Since I couldn’t connect to my NBK account I couldn’t use my credit card and I couldn’t withdraw any money so I was pretty much fucked.

I decided to call my sister and have her log into my NBK account and transfer money, problem was she wasn’t at home and the line kept breaking up. I then started calling my friends one by one to see if they were near an Internet connection including Bader, Marzouq and Khalid but no one was near a computer. It was just freaking frustrating. I had the money to buy the fucking tickets to get the hell out of Paris but I just couldn’t get that money onto my ATM or credit card! Time was running out by now and I needed to buy the tickets.

We decided to leave the station and head out around town looking for a place to get Internet access. After around 30 minutes of exploring and asking people we finally found an Internet cafe. I asked the guy if I could connect with my macbook but he told me it wouldn’t be possible. I looked at his computers, they had Windows XP on it… I had no clue if there were any trojans or softwares that would read and store my bank account info and passwords on the machines but I didn’t have an option, I was desperate and I just needed Internet. In literally 2 minutes I had logged into my bank account, transferred money onto my ATM and credit card and was out of the cafe. Thats all I needed, 2 fucking minutes of Internet to change the direction of my life.

We ran back to the train station with 45 minutes to spare but now we were back in the cue queue to buy tickets. 30 minutes later we purchased the tickets. The employee told us something about how our seats would be pull down seats but we didn’t care we just wanted to get on the train. We checked in, passed through passport and security check which luckily was empty and ran towards our train. If we had just been 1 minute late we would have missed the train again.

When we finally got on the train and the doors shut and we started moving, it was just the most amazing feeling of relief. Our fold down seats were these tiny seats located between the carriage cars (pictures above). They weren’t really that bad, it was kinda cozy sitting in between the carriage cars alone.

I can’t believe how an average day turned into such a mess. First thing I did when I got to my hotel room here in London was log on to the internet and change my NBK online banking password. Also when I get back to Kuwait I am going to take out another credit card and keep it aside just in case of emergencies like today. Finally Nat is going to be taking care of our traveling from now on, I am losing it!

We were at the supermarket picking up some munchies when on our way to the cashier we noticed a bunch of self checkout counters. It was hard to grasp the concept at first, I check out my stuff? Who will check and see if I was honest and didn’t skip anything? I still don’t know how they make sure people don’t cheat (probably monitor them with CCTV’s) but the idea of having customers check themselves out is unreal.

Its a pretty easy process, you take your items one by one, scan them on the machine and place them in the bag. Then you have a number of ways to pay, I chose credit card and just placed my card in the machine and that was it. Its the coolest thing ever.