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From Naharnet today:

Kuwait issued a decision Sunday banning men from working in shops selling “private” women’s garments like lingerie.

The decision, issued by the ministry of social affairs and labor, gave businesses until April 7 to implement the ban or face a fine of up to 700 dollars for each violating worker.

It said that special inspectors from the ministry would enforce the ban.

The ministry also ordered its labor departments to stop recruiting male migrant laborers for employment in women’s lingerie shops.

I didn’t know men WERE allowed to sell lingerie in the first place…

Thanks Shak

Anyone heard of or been to Burger Company? I first heard about it 10 days ago in the forum but today someone else mentioned it to me. Its supposed to be a 24 hour diner, the first in Kuwait. The place is located in Hawalli opposite “the college of business studies”.

Picture by vampire

I have gotten a lot of things to try out because of my blog but I don’t think I have ever gotten anything like this… water. I came in today morning to find a box of OGO Oxygen Water on my desk. At first I thought it was a new client of ours but then I found out that a company who imports OGO to Kuwait wanted me to try it out and get my feedback on it.

According to the label and website, OGO water contains up to 35 times more oxygen then regular bottled water. What I was more interested in was the actual bottle. It reminded me of the magic potions Asterix and Obelix used to carry around with them which is a cool thing.

Anyway, if anyone is interested you can place an order by phone. Minimum 5 boxes, each box holds twelve 330ml bottles and costs KD6. So thats 500fils per bottle. The number to call is 4341209 or 7242595.

www.OGOlife.com

Just got home awhile ago. I was over at Marzouqs place, we first watched the latest episode of 24 and then we ended up watching Snakes on a Plane. Their were also some guys there who were at The Gulf Run last weekend and they were sharing with us stories and stuff. It was a pretty chilled out evening. The past few days I was extremely busy at work so it was cool to just relax.

I usually go out to lunch but on some occasions I stay and eat in at the office. One place I enjoy ordering from is a small restaurant near my office called Tourist Restaurant Co. It has a dumb name, it has an ugly menu and they even stole their logo from BigBoy but, the food is really good and cheap. I mostly order Butter Chicken or Chicken Curry with a side order of basmati rice and I haven’t been disappointed yet. The service is also extremely friendly and their serving portion is very filling. If you work in the city and are looking for some good Indian food (they have Chinese also but I haven’t tried it yet) then I would recommend Tourist Restaurant Co.

Here is their menu:
Side 1
Side 2

Their delivery numbers are:
2439574
2411702
7435485

I know a lot of people really hate the new Hardees “Thickburgers”. Mushroom & Swiss used to be my favorite until they ruined it by replacing the thin burger with the terrible tasting thickburger. Thats why I stopped ordering it at Hardee’s until recently when I found out I could still order the old “classic” mushroom & swiss.

When you place an order for the Mushroom & Swiss just tell the employee you want the old thin burger. They will still charge you the same as the thickburger except when they call it inside to the kitchen they yell out “one mushroom & swiss special”. Now you can enjoy the original Mushroom & Swiss again.

I haven’t written any movie reviews lately because the majority of the stuff I watched have been crap like Pirates of the Caribbean 2, Jackass 2, Danika and The Illusionist or they have been really good, just difficult to write about like Brick and Idiocracy. Today though I watched a movie that exceeded my expectations, Running Scared.

While watching the movie I tried to figure out where I had seen the main actor before and I couldn’t put my finger on it until just 5 minutes ago while checking out IMDB. The main star of the movie is Paul Walker, the blond guy from The Fast and The Furious movies. I thought he was pretty lame back then but in Running Scared he was like a different person.

The movie is about Paul Walker trying to get back a gun he had in his possession that was used to kill a cop. The gun keeps changing hands “in an underworld of freaks, pimps, hookers and pedophiles” and Paul spends the whole movie trying to find it while avoiding his gang and the cops.

I liked the way the movie was shot and edited especially the colors and the locations, it was all very dark and urban. There is also a cool signature move where the main character (Paul) visualizes how an incident took place while standing still and looking around, kinda like how they do it in the TV show CSI. The only thing I disliked about the movie was one of the other stars, the kid Cameron Bright. I didn’t like him in The Butterfly Effect and I didn’t like him in Running Scared. The kid just looks really weird.

The movie was really fun to watch and it never felt boring, I actually only checked my email once throughout the whole movie which rarely happens, thats how fast paced it was. Final score though it gets a 4 out of 5. The reason is there were a lot of people I wanted to see more of, mostly his gang and the Russians. But the movie flowed through so many characters and so quickly that it never stopped or slowed down enough to really enjoy them all. In general though this is definitely a movie I would recommend.

Think Gumball but on a local level and you have Gulf Run 2007. From the first couple of pictures on the Official Gulf Run website I can see 2 Porsches, a Ferrari, 2 Nobles, 2 Lancers, a 350z, and a Corvette but in total there are 22 cars participating this year. The drivers will be heading from Kuwait to Bahrain where they’ve booked the Bahrain International Circuit for a full day. I didn’t get any invitation to participate this year (must have been lost in the mail) so for now I will just keep checking their site for picture updates. K.TheKuwaiti is participating in the race this year. [Link]

Last year on this day the Amir of Kuwait, Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah passed away. Today on the Gulf Road opposite the House of Parliament there is an extremely long condolence letter stretching from a bit after Seef Palace all the way past the House of Parliament. I read on one of the banners that this is the longest condolence letter in the world.

There are a few tents setup and a lot of people are gathered there. Here is a larger picture of part of the condolence letter. [Picture]

I have been using XBMC for over a year now and I have yet to find a better alternative.

Here are some screenshots
https://jonsthoughtsoneverything.com/xbmc/

What I like about it:

1) easy to use, very practical
2) plays any video format you throw at it
3) for movie covers and info it connects to IMDB and downloads them. You get the movie dvd cover, cast info, movie plot, running time, IMDB rating and more.
4) connects to my macs itunes and photos
5) connects to internet radio stations, very nice interface
6) you can install scripts that allow it to do a multitude of things from connecting you to youtube to watching movie trailers on Apple. For examples go to https://www.xbmcscripts.com/
7) very useful weather section
8) allows you to connect to your xbox from any room using your computer..
9) you don’t need to install any software on your computer
10) when playing movies you have a ton of options including the very important audio syncing. say you download a movie with a messed up audio sync, you can slow down the audio or speed it up using xbmc
11) you can create bookmarks in movies. say you are half way through a movie and you need to leave, create a bookmark so you can come back to it later
12) you can customize or download different skins for xbmc although i like the default one
13) its very impressive when you show people over 300 album covers and you tell them you see all these movies? well you can watch any of them right now with a click of a button. it looks like the future basically.
14) very cheap to setup, all you need is an old xbox and the xbox remote

www.xboxmediacenter.com

Yesterday I posted about the Missing Speed Camera on the Gulf Road. Well Ratlab have a picture of the camera on its death bed, turned out it was killed by a black Trail Blazer. Check it out. [Link]

I was at Sultan Center and noticed Aero redesigned their package and logo. It now looks a lot cooler then before. I love the new typeface.

Early last month Nat ordered some Puma Satori Alto boots from Nordstrom for $250. They weren’t available in Kuwait and they were sold out on Amazon who were also selling it for $250. Around a week ago Athletes Foot got the boots and guess how much they are selling them for? KD59 which is $205! Thats $50 cheaper then US prices not including the shipping cost which was also another KD10. If only more places sold stuff cheaper then Amazon…

Someone in the forum is selling a brand new 60GB PS3 for KD250. Thats KD50 cheaper then the cheapest place I know of which is ClicknBuy. Here is the link to the post in the forum. [Link]

I am going to start off by saying I am not a fan of Wataniya. I have been an MTC user since 1995 and I am very loyal to the brand. So, when I was contacted by Wataniya to try out their new W-net internet router I wasn’t very thrilled because I would rather it had been MTC calling me. But I still went ahead and met with the Wataniya guy who turned out to be cool and a Nintendo Wii fan and he explained to me what W-net was and told me that Wataniya had hooked me up with a 6 month prepaid subscription. I was thinking worst case scenario if the connection turned out to be crap I could take the router to work and hook it up over there since my office lacked a wifi connection which annoys the hell out of me whenever I take my Macbook to work. After using the device for over 2 weeks I can say I am impressed.

When I first opened the package I found the Quick Start Guide which involved 11 steps on how to setup the connection. I ignored the guide, turned on the router and connected to it via wifi on my Macbook. Thats it, I was connected to the Internet. Its a lot easier then 11 steps.

The Wataniya router works on the HSDPA network which is a 3G mobile protocol. Currently 3G isn’t covered everywhere in Kuwait so if you don’t have 3G in your area you will end up connecting onto the much slower EDGE network. So if you want to take full advantage of W-net you better hope you live in a 3G zone. I live in Salmiya and I have 3G here.

The most impressive thing about the W-Net connection is the download speed. I have a 512 DSL connection by Qualitynet and I usually download files at around 63 KB/sec. With W-net on the other hand I download at around 107 KB/sec which is nearly twice as fast as my DSL connection. The upload speed is slow though at around 15 KB/sec where as my Qualitynet hits around 35 KB/sec.

Loading websites feels slower on the Wataniya connection. When I type in a URL its always quicker to load on my Qualitynet connection. I thought it was because of the connection latency but I pinged mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com on both my Qualitynet connection and the Wataniya connection and the results were very close so I don’t know why the lack of acceleration.

Qualitynet
PING mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com (66.199.240.42): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=0 ttl=45 time=321.393 ms
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=1 ttl=47 time=305.564 ms
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=2 ttl=45 time=325.444 ms
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=3 ttl=45 time=356.846 ms
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=4 ttl=45 time=376.722 ms

Wataniya W-Net
PING mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com (66.199.240.42): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=0 ttl=45 time=306.380 ms
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=1 ttl=47 time=327.925 ms
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=2 ttl=45 time=383.964 ms
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=3 ttl=45 time=295.931 ms
64 bytes from 66.199.240.42: icmp_seq=4 ttl=45 time=472.001 ms

For the geek users, you can customize the settings of the router to your liking just as if it was an ordinary router. It originally came set with the IP address 192.168.1.1 but my network runs on 192.168.0.X so I just logged in to the router settings and just changed stuff like turning of DHCP and changing the routers name. The router has an Ethernet port so you can connect it to the regular network or directly to your computer in case you don’t have wifi.

The price of the router plus Wataniya data line is KD135. The monthly charge for the connection is KD28, or KD300 for 1 year and KD565 for 2. I don’t know if you can order a different cheaper router off the web and use it with the Wataniya data line, I guess it could work.

Would I give up my DSL connection for W-Net? No I wouldn’t. I upload a lot of stuff all the time and 35 KB/sec is slow for me yet alone 15. I also browse the web a lot and like it when pages load instantly. The W-Net connection reminds me of my previous Shownet connection (which was Satellite based). It has a high top speed but slow acceleration meaning when browsing websites you don’t really feel the connection is fast only when you start downloading files do you notice it.

Would I recommend the W-Net connection? Yes in certain situations. For example in my old place in Salwa I couldn’t get a DSL line setup because the phone network in my street didn’t support it. My only option was a Satellite/Dialup combo which sucked. If I was still living there then I would definitely get W-net. Also for people who can’t get phone lines for one reason or another or for people who simply want an Internet connection wherever they go (camping, challet, anywhere with a power outlet) then this would also be a good option.

Am I going to take the router to the office? Nope, whenever I have files to download I just switch over to the W-Net connection and download them. Its really convenient having it because its cutting my download time in half. Anyway if you have any questions regarding W-Net just leave a comment below and I will try to answer it.

www.wataniya.com