Search: “cop”

Below are a list of TV shows I am currently watching, what I think of them and what episodes I just finished watching.

Grey’s Anatomy (Pictured above)
Season 2, Episode 18
Really entertaining and addictive, I am watching 2 a day.

X-Files
Season 1, Episode 12
Used to be my favorite show, I missed out on a lot of episodes when I was in university so I just started watching them all over again. I got 9 seasons which means I should be done by Christmas!

Prison Break
Season 1, Episode 13
I hated the show when I first started watching it because I didn’t like the main guy. Now though I still hate him but I really like all the supporting actors who are pretty fucked up but in a cool way.

24
Season 5, Episode 12
The best show ever, I have said it a million times already and will say it a million more times, Jack Bauer is just the coolest character ever. I was watching the movie Stand By Me the other day and it turns out Jack played the role of this delinquent teenager. It was an old movie and he was really young in it but he still looked a lot like Jack does now which made things weird.

Family Guy
Season 1, Episode 8
I watched the movie first, then I watched season 4 and now I am watching season 1. Doesn’t make sense I know but better then nothing.

Arrested Development
Season 3, Episode 10
I only have 3 more episodes left and I am scared to watch them. Arrested Development got canceled last year and the show ends at episode 13 of season 3 so once I am done, I am done forever. I never want the Arrested Development experience to end so I am watching only 1 episode a week but I know in three weeks time it will be all over, one of the funniest shows ever made will be over. Its sad.

The IT Crowd
Season 1, Episode 4
“Yeah, you do know how a button works, don’t you? No, not on clothes. No, there you go, I just heard it come on. No, that’s the music you hear when it comes on. No, that’s the music you hear when… I’m sorry, are you from the past? ”

Reno 911
Season 1, Episode 3
This show is like a spoof of the TV show COPS. Sometimes I find it really corny but other times I can’t stop laughing.

Knight Rider
Season 2, Episode 3
KITT was really pimped out. He had a built in video game system, GPS navigation, video conferencing, Nitros, night vision, voice activation… some really high tech stuff..

Desperate Housewives
Season 2, Episode 15
Its not as fun as season 2 but doing a hell of a lot better then Lost (read below)

Lost
Season 2, Episode 15
I have no clue why I am still watching this crap. Season 2 has been a disaster, the show has become extremely lame, boring, uneventful and repetetive. What started off as one of the most exciting shows ever has taken a 180 degree turn for the worst. Total crap.

Curb Your Enthusiam
Season 1, Episode 8
Larry Davids charactar is a mixture of Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza. He’s a bit weird at first but you get used to him.

Weeds
Season 1, Episode 10
This show started off boring but it started getting really good around episode 3. Its about a school mum who starts dealing weed to make some money. First season is only 10 episodes and now I have to wait till July for season 2, I can’t wait.

Update: I added Weeds, don’t know how I forgot about it.

Susan, a regular reader of the blog just passed by and gave me a copy of the newly released Kuwait Explorer “The Complete Residents Guide”. I have been skimming through the book and at first glance it looks really clean and very nicely organized. I am going to spend the next few days reading it and then give my review on it but so far it looks like it going to kick Kuwait Pocket Guide’s ass. You should be able to find the book at Virgin and the Kuwait BookShop in Muthana Complex. Here is link to the book on Amazon UK. [Link]

As I mentioned yesterday I was going to send an email to Pizza Hut International about the cockroach I found walking on the table. Well they replied to my email and here is what they had to say:

Dear Mr . Mark,

Thank you for taking the time to contact our International Customer Services Hotline regarding your feedback.

As per the standard of Pizza Hut, we aim to provide and serve the highest quality product at all times. Your feedback and comments are very important to enable us further improve our service.

We do apologize for the inconvenience this situation may have caused you. By copy of this note, I am passing your comments to Mr. Louay Ghandour from Al Homaizi Foodstuff Co., our Pizza Hut Franchise partner in Kuwait and I am confident that Pizza Hut representative will contact you to address the points you raised.

Please do not hesitate to contact us again in the future.

Best regards,
Lanie Kadwani

A good reply but lets see how the local management will react.

I have been flipping through some old backup CD’s for the past hour trying to find my original copy of Dopewars (DOS version) and while scrimaging through my old stuff I have been finding the strangest things. I never delete anything so I have stuff going back all the way to 1995. While flipping through one of the CD’s I found a folder containing Apple’s main website dating back to 1998 and I decided to upload it for everyone to see. Here it is [Link]

Susan, a regular reader of the site recently went on a sky tour of Kuwait and this is what she had to say about it:

A recent start-up called Kuwait Sky Tours is now operating in Kuwait and taking passengers on 15-minute helicopter rides at a cost of KD25 each. The 15-minute flight takes off from the helipad behind the Sultan Centre restaurant on the Gulf Road, travels up to Green Island and then back down to the Amir’s Palace in Salwa, before returning to land. It is a great way too see Kuwait from a different perspective. The helicopter is a MD 500-E and seats 3 adults. There is space for a child or a very skinny person between the pilot and front passenger. If you want to go, give Steve a call on 705 6666. They also fly from Khiran and Failaka on occasion. Cameras are allowed.

You can also go on a larger helicopter, for an hour-long flight for the princely sum of USD1,500. Or, try the executive jet, which is ready to fly you and 13 of your friends to any destination in the world! Don’t know that price; I was too afraid to ask!

P.S. Don’t talk into the headset during the flight. The pilot told me off!

Here are Susan’s pictures from her trip:
The Helicopter
Looking North West
Marina Mall and Marina Hotel
The Scientific Center
View of Salmiya
The Gulf Road and Kuwait Towers
House in Salwa
Radisson SAS

I was out and about yesterday walking our dog Geo from Marina Crescent all the way to Scientific Center and I noticed the cops weren’t letting any cars slow down on the road. They were also stopping cars that were spraying foam outside the windows and they had cop cars parked in all the locations were people usually stood on the side of the road to spray passing cars. There wasn’t any traffic building up on the streets and all the traditional foaming was very minimal. Why did they become so strict this year? I used to love National Day because everyone is out on the streets having fun…

I always wanted to be a policeman and it pisses me off that I am not allowed to become one here in Kuwait? I can’t even become a reserve cop! I have lived here all my life and I want to give back to the community by becoming a cop, shouldn’t I be allowed to? If I want to give back to my community what else can I do? What options do I have as an expat?

Two nights ago when Egypt won the African Cup in soccer, large convoys were driving around celebrating by honking and cheering. They were really annoying and kept going at it for 30 minutes around my area before they left somewhere else. If this happened at say 6PM I wouldn’t have had a problem (maybe) but they were honking like crazy at 11PM! So awhile ago I found out that the cops arrested a lot of Egyptians on the Gulf Road that night because while the whole country was mourning the passing of the late Amir they were driving around celebrating a soccer game. I am glad the cops arrested them, I was tempted to call the cops on them myself because they were causing such a disturbance but I didn’t know what number to call (777?) and I didn’t know what to say (people are honking please help me). Anyone else hear them?

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.

Fucking Åmål
I watched two movies this weekend which were very good and thought I would share them with you. The first movie I watched was Fucking Åmål. Its a Swedish movie with nothing to do about fucking so don’t let the title fool you. They mean fucking as a sign of frustration. Here is the plot summary from IMDB:

Åmål is a small insignificant town where nothing ever happens, where the latest trends are out of date when they get there. Young Elin has a bit of a bad reputation when it comes to guys, but the fact is that she has never done *it*. Another girl in her school, Agnes, is in love with her but is too shy to do anything about it. For different reasons, Elin ends up at Agnes’ birthday party as the only guest. They have a girl’s night out together but after that Elin desperately avoids Agnes, refusing to even consider her own homosexuality.

Fucking Åmål is one of the best movies I watched this year. There is no nudity, there is no violence, there is no sex and there are not hot Swedish blonds, but nevertheless it was a great movie to watch and it never felt slow or dull. The story was very well written and watching Agnes go from sad and lonely confused girl to a confident and happy lesbian was somehow exciting to watch. I guess the fact that she was Swedish AND lesbian could have made things more interesting but I think it had to do more with the fact that the movie is Swedish and so it was interesting to watch the lifestyle of their high school students. If this was an American movie I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much. Anyway watch it if you can, I am giving it a 4.5 out of 5.

Ichi the Killer

The second movie I watched was Koroshiya 1, (Ichi the Killer). I had had this movie on my wish list for over 2 years now and I was finally able to watch it. The reviews I had read about the movie said this was one of the most violent movies ever made and I have to agree with them. I don’t think I am going to go to Japan anytime soon after watching this movie since I no longer think of them as quiet polite people but more like psychotic violent killers (I am joking here don’t send me hate mail). Here is the plot summary from IMDB:

Yakuza boss Anjo disappears with three million yens. His loyal gang members, lead by the masochist Kakihara, start a search, but their aggressive and gory methods worry the other yakuza gangs. Kakiharas most scary counterpart is the mysterious Ichi, a psychopathic killer with a dark childhood secret, who is controlled by a retired cop.

If the site of blood makes you queasy, if torture scenes make you feel sick and if watching internal organs get splattered all over the wall makes you puke then I would not recommend you watch this movie. You will see allot of everything I just mentioned and more. The director Takashi Miike is one sick mother fucker and I think thats why his movies are so incredible and like nothing else out there. Quentin Tarantino’s movies look like a school girl dressed in pink carrying a Hello Kitty backpack when compared to Takashi’s movies. The torture scenes are extremely gruesome and even if you cover up your eyes theres no escape since the sound is just as horrifying. Ichi the Killer with all the violence and blood had a good plot and the star, Ichi is just really fucked in the head. The whole movie was fucked in the head and thats why I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen for a single moment. It took me a while to get a hold of this movie but I am really glad I was able to since it was really worth watching. I am soo watching more of Takashi’s movies now..

Last month I purchased an old 300mhz Apple clamshell iBook. It had 32MB of RAM and was running OS 9.2 slowly. So I ordered a Kingston 256MB RAM stick for my iBook and it arrived earlier in the week. The first thing I did once I installed it was to replace OS 9.2 with Linux. The reason simply was I needed to be able to browse on the iBook and Firefox wasn’t available for OS 9.2 and I had heard OS X would run very slow on my Mac. So Linux was my only option and after over 1 hour of installing the OS I tried it out and was very disappointed. Although it was very responsive and it did have Firefox, I wasn’t very comfortable using it and I decided to give OS X a shot. If OS X turned out to be very slow then I would come back to Linux as my last option.

I formated the drives and proceeded to install Panther (OS 10.3) onto my ibook. Installation was brisk and in less then 30 minutes it was done installing and rebooting. When the OS launched again I played around with it a bit and I was shocked. Panther was pretty responsive and very very usable. It was not slow, there was no lag and I wasn’t even bothered by the 800×600 screen resolution. I was simply amazed at how well everything was running. I quickly copied Firefox and Adium from my main mac at home and proceeded to set things up importing my bookmarks and setting up my system preferences, everything ran extremely smooth and I even managed to install OS 9.2 in case I ever needed it.

After a week of using my iBook it has finally become my main Internet browsing portal. I am getting online from my living room while watching TV and I am really enjoying it. Sure I could be surfing from the living room with Nat’s powerbook but its not mine and even when I setup my own account on her powerbook it still always felt as if I was using HER powerbook. My previous Internet portal in the living room was my Audrey and I think I will have to find another place for it (maybe the bathroom) since because of my iBook I am no longer using it. This iBook is mine and I feel right at home with it… until the next generation of iBooks get released. So far its great and I even am posting from it right now. So in conclusion a Mac capable of running OSX smoothly cost me KD25 ($85) for the iBook and KD12 ($40) for the RAM. Unbelievable fucking cheap!

First interesting trivia:
Francis Ford Coppola made a commercial for Suntory whiskey with legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa in the 1970s. This event later influenced a salient plot point in his daughter Sofia’s movie, Lost in Translation.

Second interesting trivia:
In the movie Lost in Translation while shooting the whiskey ad in the movie, the director kept telling Bill Murray to make expressions more like Sean Connery. Turns out Sean Connery actually did do whiskey commercials and you can watch them by clicking here.

Todays B-Side is from a car wreck near McDonalds on the Gulf Road.
Click here for the Miskan post.

GTA on the PSP is out but sadly its 1.16GB uncompressed. I need to wait until a ripped version comes out so I can copy it onto my 1GB memory stick. [Link]

Yesterday I watched Hostage starring Bruce Willis. I hadn’t heard allot of decent reviews on it so I didn’t have my hopes up. In the movie, Bruce Willis is a failed police negotiator turned small town cop. A hostage situation takes place in his town and he is forced back as a negotiator to save the lives of the family taken hostage. Things turn out to be allot more complicated and he gets drawn into a much more dangerous situation.

The intro credits to the movie were really cool. It looked like something out of a Frank Miller comic and the style didn’t match the movie at all. The intro credits were basically too funky and stylish for the actual movie.

The movie itself was good though, it never got boring and something was always happening. Some reviews said that they were tired of Bruce Willis playing a cop and the movie reminded them too much of the Die Hard trilogy, I personally would rather see Bruce Willis play a cop then anything else. If you’ve watched Hudson Hawk or the disastrous The Whole Ten Yards you would know what I am talking about.

Ultimately, if you are looking for a fun movie to watch that doesn’t require you to think, this is the movie to watch.