Search: “ace”

Just got a phone call from Sarita. Some of you might know her from the Aramex Shop n Ship service. She left them a while back and now works at a new place called IEC Trading who offer a similar service to Aramex except with some more advantages. I only got a few details off her but will be getting more soon. Here is what I got:

– Setting up a US mailbox costs the same, KD10
– Packages are shipped to Kuwait via FedEx and DHL
– No customs on any of your packages
– Shipping prices are the same
– On heavy packages they can give you a discount

So far everything sounds great and I will definitely be creating an account with them since Aramex have become really slow. My last package spent 7 days in UAE in transit! Once I get more details I will post them here.

Coca Cola replaced its old tagline “Real” with a new slogan “Welcome to the Coke side of life”. I still choose Pepsi. [Link]

Today there was an article in Arab Times related to what I posted the other day on the fact that I heard expats will be limited to staying in Kuwait for only 6 years. I am glad the majority of people think this is a stupid idea. Here is the link to the Arab Times article or click on more to read it here.

Only video game fans will get this comic strip. I love Killer Instinct by the way.. even though I was never able to perform the 80+ combo moves. My dream would be to buy a Killer Instinc arcade machine and shove it in my living room. Only place in Kuwait I know of that still has the Killer Instinct arcade is Showbiz on the seaside. [Link]

I was just checking out pictures taken by a regular commenter on my blog (Hudis) and I found pictures of the Kuwaiti desert but like nothing I had ever seen before. We have mountains in Kuwait? I am guessing this is the Mutlaa Ridge near the Iraqi border and it looks like an amazing place. I didn’t think the pictures were in Kuwait until I noticed a car in one of the pictures had a Kuwaiti license plate. This place looks like a cool place to rock crawl with 4×4’s. [Link]

The indoor ski slopes finally opened up in Dubai and looking at the pictures on their website makes me jealous that we don’t have anything similar here in Kuwait. Entrance price is only $35 and that includes clothes and equipment rental which I think is a pretty good deal. But, the place doesn’t look “that” big so I am curious to find out if its going to be over crowded the whole time or not. [Link]

They are opening a Ferrari theme park in UAE which will feature a racetrack, rides, and attractions, a display of Ferrari history, and even driving instructions. Its seems like a good idea but I would rather they open a 4×4 theme park here in Kuwait. The 4×4 park could have different rough and muddy trails which you could take your jeep through. I remember reading about one in Japan where you would bring your 4×4 and then pay to go around their offroad trail. [Link]

Yesterday night I was invited to the soon to open Tai Chi restaurant located near the Sheikh Resort before Palms Club on the Gulf Road. At the moment you can only be invited to the restaurant because the place isn’t yet 100% complete and the staff is still in training, but from what I experienced the place is going to turn out great.

Tai Chi is a Tai and Chinese food restaurant. The interior of the place is very minimalistic with just enough design elements hinting out the cuisines place of origin. The restaurant is two floors but I only managed to see the first since thats where we were seated.

The food was definitely the highlight of the evening. They had a large variety of appetizers and I ended up going for something I can’t pronounce but was basically prawns on toast with some kind of sweet cucumber dip while Nat went for the saute chicken. Both dishes were delicious. The prawns on toast was very light and sweet unlike the Peacock restaurant version which feels heavier and more filling. The saute chicken was also very tasty and it came with this slightly spicy sauce which gave the dish its edge. For the main course I was planning on having my usual sweet & sour prawns but decided to try something new and went with the corn prawns with a side dish of steamed rice. The corn prawns is a combination of prawns, curry leaves and corn flakes! I was really looking forward to the meal because I never had a main dish which involved corn flakes before. As I was hoping, the corn prawns turned out to be very good. Nat also enjoyed her main course which was some kind of weird looking noodles. For desert they only had two options and we decided to go with the fried bananas with ice cream which turned out to be good but nothing special.

Overall it was a very good experience, the service was very friendly, the food was really good and the setting with their stylish plates and chilled out interior was very cool. I didn’t mention anything about the prices because there were none on the menu, the restaurant is still not finished and they only had a Microsoft Word typed menu. I don’t think they have the prices set but I believe they should be cheaper then Peacock. The place is definitely worth checking out once it opens.

Cool, seems Beirut is the place to be although I don’t understand why with all the recent political crap going on.

CooSt Tropez? Passé. Ibiza? So over. The hottest spots for bars and clubs in Europe right now are not where you’d expect. [More]

Bill Gates wanted to call Windows 1.0 “Interface Manager.” Marketing exec Rowland Hanson persuaded him that Windows was a better name. [More]

[via Cult of Mac]

After driving around Jabriya yesterday street by street trying to find a pet shop and after driving all the way to Fintas even trying to find a place that sells dog, thanks to BusyNow it turns out there was a pet shop just 2 minutes from my house! I past passed by it tonight, its called My Puppy. Its located near Al-Shaab Amusement park behind Texas Chicken. The place had 6 puppies on display which were placed in tiny little cages. One dog, a 6 month old Dogo Argentina was in a cage so tiny he couldn’t stand up or move around. While I was there he didn’t move or bark, he was just lying there depressed. There was a very active 2 month old Cocker Spaniel (not in the picture) who was very playful when we took him out of the cage but was all dirty and stinky. They were all dirty and stinky, the whole place stunk. The pet shop also had a large Iguana in a cage and some mice and crickets for sale. The place was depressing and watching the puppies scream for help from their tiny cages begging take them with us was sad. This place should be shut down, its animal cruelty. Oh and the guy who works there I don’t know where he is from but he neither spoke English nor Arabic.

Me and Nat have been wanting to get a dog for some time now and we finally decided on what to get, a German Shepherd. We found a British Bulldog for sale (KD350 if anyone is interested) but in the end me and Nat want something much bigger. I have always loved German Shepherds, my cousin had two and I used to love playing with them. German Shepherds are very friendly and very loyal dogs who are mostly trained as police dogs. Today I called up a guy who imports pure bred German Shepherds from Eastern Germany, he has two dogs for sale, Larry and Ben. Ben is 2 years old while Larry is 11 months old. I was interested in Larry but I wasn’t able to see him because he is currently being trained at a school and has 2 more weeks before graduation. I met Ben and he was amazing, the dog is huge and EXTREMELY friendly. He couldn’t stop running around and jumping wanting to play with someone and when you called his name he would run towards you and start licking you. I saw pictures of Larry and he looked even finer and according to the owner even more playful. I also was able to see pictures of Larrys family, his mother and father, his grand parents and his grand grand parents. I saw his whole family tree and they all looked great. I am totally convinced about getting him except for one thing, the owner wants a thousand fucking dinars for him! Nat thinks we should just charge it on our Visa card but a thousand dinars for a dog?! I think thats just crazy, its like hmmm a Quad core 2.5ghz PowerMac or Larry? Now I have to quickly find her another option or else I am going to have to get Larry. I met a kid at Ace Hardware today who had a puppy with him, when I asked him where he got it from he told me Amazon.com! So now I need to check that out…

I was watching 5th Gear yesterday on the Discovery Channel when they had a bit on light poles similar to the ones used on Kuwait streets. They took a regular car and installed hardware on it so they could control it remotely and then driving at 45mph they made it ram into one of these steel light posts. The result was catastrophic. The light pole barely moved or bent while the car was destroyed and thrown violently around. If there was anyone in the car they would have been seriously wounded if not killed.

They then started to tell us about these new types of light poles that are being using in countries like Sweden and Finland, collapsible poles. These poles are made from aluminum and are designed to absorb the impact of a car and slow it down. They look very similar to the regular poles except of course they are very different.

To demonstrate how safe driving into the poles were the inventor of the “safe” poles got into a car wearing only a seatbelt and a helmet (to protect him from flying glass if any) and drove into a pole going at 45mph. It was incredible, once the car hit the pole it bent and the car drove over it slowing down. The car did get damaged but very lightly, the driver got out safely and the car was even drivable after the crash.

Now I have seen loads of accidents here in Kuwait specially on the Gulf Road where people have rammed into the light poles and gotten killed. With all the money in Kuwait how come the government hasn’t installed these new collapsible poles.. at least in places where it is very common for people to ram into them?

Update: Here is a link to an article abou the Lamppost which turns out has been in use in Sweden for the past 12 years! [Link]

Update 2: If you want to download the bit on the lamppost you can from the 5th Gear official website for a price of KD1 [Link]

Update 3: The video is on YouTube you can check it below

The Kuwait Advertising Awards it currently taking place at the Salwa Events Hall near Marina Crescent. I just got a message from my sister who is at the awards ceremony. The event started 1 hour late at 7 and they started of with speeches, according to her its very boring. I received another message from another art director from my agency who is there and according to him the event actually turned out to be very formal, so Nataly was right when she said it was a formal event.

Update: My sis called me after the event finished. Basically out of 22 awards my agency (JWT) took half of them while Nats agency (Saatchi&Saatchi) took the other half. Just to make it clear out of all the awards Saatchi took none were for Kuwait work, and out of all the awards my agency took only 1 was for Kuwait. The event supposingly was very unorganized and chaotic, my sister should be posting about it tonight on her blog.

According to a recent poll held by Kuwaitism, McDonalds is kicking ass!

First Place: McDonalds
Second Place: Hardees
Third Place: Subway

[Link]