Search: “kuwait”

I got an email today at 4PM from a reader about a dog that was stuck on a roof of a building in Khaitan. The dog had been stuck up there for a few days and it looked like it was nearing its end and needed to be rescued right away. Here is a snippet from the email:

I’ve got a stray dog emergency on my hands and thought you might be the right man for the job. Im not super good at explaining directions in Kuwait which is why I have not already placed a call to Animal Friends or PAWS.

There is a dog stuck on the roof of a building. I can see him from my kitchen window.

I really pray that you can help. Several residents have tried climbing up the wall below the roof to reach him. But he backs off. My own 12 year old son tried and he almost fell off the wall.

The dog barks all night. I just checked on him and I can see his chest rising fast. His breathing is labored. I don’t think he has much time left.

Here is how you can find him, but please keep my address details private.

XXXXXADDRESS REMOVEDXXXXX

Now the haris of this building has a reputation (so I have heard) for throwing live kittens from the top of the roof! It’s only a matter of time before the barking at night gets on his nerves and he kills this dog.

So I quickly forwarded the email to Animal Friends and sent one to Nataly as well who ended up calling them up and explaining the situation. Within two hours of getting the email Animal Friends not only managed to rescue the dog that was stuck on top of the roof but also managed to rescue a second dog which they found nearby.

Animal Friends are an incredible organization in Kuwait but really do need as much help as they can get. I know many of you have emailed me asking how you could help out financially so I got their bank account information so you can now easily transfer to them your donations. Any amount will make a difference so please if you care about animals help them out. By the way they don’t just save dogs they save all kinds of animals. They’ve got a 4 month old baboon for example whom they’re building an enclosure for which you can check [Here]

So please help them out, here is their bank information:

Name: Ayeshah Waleed Al-Humaidhi
Address Line 1: P.O.Box 71, Safat 13001
Address Line 2: Kuwait
Account: 16205133
SWIFT: BKMEKWKW
Bank of Kuwait and the Middle East (BKME)

I passed by the Choowy Goowy opening today at the Avenues. They opened up in place of where Starbucks used to be located just outside the food court. They’ve got their cheesecakes, brownies and cookies all available there and all freshly baked in front of you. Now some bad news, I found out tonight that Arby’s will NOT be opening at the Avenues. It seems they pulled out which sucks!

I was checking the blog 4th Ring Road today when I spotted their post on the new Electrozan offer so I decided to pass by them and pick up a BlackBerry Curve for Nat. When I got to the Electrozan showroom I found out the BlackBerry’s were sold out already. The employee told me they will be getting more tomorrow afternoon but I also found out why the Curve’s were being sold for cheap… they are T-Mobile branded. That automatically turned what sounded like a really good deal into a bad deal. Let me explain:

– An unlocked unbranded BlackBerry Curve costs KD135 on Amazon [Link]. With shipping to Kuwait via Aramex the total would amount to KD142. Sorry this was for the QWERTZ keyboard.

– An unlocked unbranded BlackBerry Curve costs KD145 on Amazon [Link]. After tax and shipping to Kuwait via Aramex the total would amount to KD165.

– Now on the other hand a new unlocked T-Mobile branded BlackBerry Curve from eBay costs KD124 [Link]. With shipping to Kuwait via Aramex the total would amount to KD129 which is KD30 cheaper than Electrozan.

So to summarize things, its still a much better deal to order a BlackBerry Curve online since a saving of KD30 is a pretty big chunk.

Update: Just picked up a Curve from Electrozan for Nat. Paypal locked up my account because I logged in and paid for something through my VPN and they assumed someone else got into my account. So now I can’t use eBay for awhile. The BlackBerry is T-Mobile branded and comes with T-Mobile literature. Employee said its officially unlocked so I can do the software updates. Comes with 6 months warranty so it will be interesting to see what exactly that means if something does go wrong from now to 6 months time. They’re out of Bolds at the moment.

Update 2: The Curve’s sold at Electrozan are from T-Mobile Germany which means the keyboard is a QWERTZ and not the regular QWERTY. Simply put, the locations of the letters Z and Y are swapped.

A reader spotted the yellow Kid ‘R’ Us koala bear at the Friday Market shoved underneath a foosball table. It doesn’t look too happy.

Thanks Valencia!

Choowy Goowy will be opening up at the Avenues hopefully this Wednesday. This will be Choowy Goowys first store and they’ve really come a long way since I first reviewed them over three years ago back in January 2006. They will be baking cookies at the Avenues store so you should be able to pick some up as they come out of the oven. The pictures above and below are just sneak peak shots of the store taken with a Nokia E71. They still haven’t removed the wooden paneling that currently surrounds the store so it was pretty hard to get anything wider than these shots.

Update: I just realized that a lot of readers might not be aware of the fact that Choowy Goowy have cookies called Mark&Nat. Back in November 2006 Nat and I were invited to Choowy Goowy to create our own cookies. After some experimenting and having some friends try out our creations, the oreo cookies were voted as being the best and so Choowy Goowy decided to make these cookies and call them Mark&Nat with jar labels matching our blog. You can read about our experience [Here]

I’ve got a friend who works at the Commercial Bank of Kuwait and according to him CBK terminated the contracts of all their employees. Supposedly they are now going to have to sign new contracts but no one knows yet what to expect. No bonuses? Salary Cuts? No one has been told what the new contracts will state…

Update: Buzberry just posted a letter from a CBK employee which you can read [Here]

A local blogger called Ansam found rotten tomatoes in her Whopper at Burger King. If that wasn’t bad enough the manager there didn’t even apologize for it! Last month it was Hardees with their bug sandwich and now its Burger King with their rotten tomatoes. I guess I am only going to be eating at McDonalds from now on. [Link]

Update: The marketing manager responds, you can read about it [Here]

I noticed something recently with my Aramex Shop&Ship mailbox which actually pissed me off until I got a phone call awhile ago explaining to me what was going on. For the past two weeks I’ve been buying a lot of stuff from Amazon and eBay. The problem I was facing was that I would have lets say four packages in my US mailbox waiting to be shipped to Kuwait but then Aramex would only ship one of them. This usually happens during periods of time when people shop online a lot like before Christmas or Eid so it didn’t make sense why it was happening now. Now what confused me with all of this is that the rest of the packages ended up shipping the next day but then all four of my packages arrived to Kuwait at the same time. It didn’t really make any sense.

So after a few emails complaining I got a phone call today from Aramex and it turns out they’ve done something new. Basically they only have two cargo flights a week out of the US. This is why they ship the stuff to Kuwait twice a week. Two weeks ago they struck a deal with Kuwait Airways where they are now able to ship some items to Kuwait on their planes which from what I understood are daily flights. Aramex is limited by the kind of mail and the amount of mail they can ship on those flights so thats why they were “choosing” what to send from my packages. Anything that can’t be sent on those daily Kuwait Airways flights remains in the mailbox until a cargo plane is available to take them to Kuwait which is twice a week.

In short, some of the packages from now on will ship the day after they arrive to the box while others will continue to be shipped only twice a week. Thats pretty cool.

Note: For those of you who don’t know what Aramex Shop&Ship is, its a forwarding mailbox which Aramex sets up for you in the US or the UK and any package that gets sent to that mailbox gets forwarded to you here in Kuwait.

A body of a student was found in the parking lot of the Australian College of Kuwait. No cause of death has been disclosed but the following email was sent out to ACK students:

Dear All,

I am sad to inform you that a student was found deceased in his car on campus. It is extremely unfortunate and disheartening to see this incident happen to this young student with a bright future. Appropriate measures were taken including reporting to the police.

Investigators from the Department of Criminal Investigation and the Ambulance Department were notified immediately. The police at this stage could not confirm the nature of death; however, in due course they will inform the college on the details of the investigation.The police were extremely cooperative in attending to this emergency on the campus and worked in conjunction with the ambulance and other members of the college including our security. We extend our deepest condolences and prayers to the grieving family.

Vishy Karri

A friend of mine told me the other day that Caribou Coffee got the rights to Cheese Cake Factory cheese cakes in the Middle East and today I got an email confirming this. In total, Caribou Coffee will be bringing in 15 different types of cakes. They will be introducing this partnership on April 6 at the Kuwait City branch (next to Johnny Rocket’s across from Salhiya). The slice of cake will be priced at KD1.950.

Thanks David!

Note: The cheese cakes are currently available at Caribou Coffee but I guess the official launch is April 6..

Update: 4thringroad posted it first [Here]

A few people emailed me a link to this video on YouTube where two AIS school teachers trash Kuwait. Judging by the viewers comments the two teachers should probably go into hiding. [YouTube]

Thanks to everyone who emailed this in.

Update: Video has been removed from YouTube

Asking price? A ridiculous KD20,000! You could probably buy two from eBay for that price and ship them to Kuwait (ok maybe not two but still) or just wait until the local dealer gets them and sells them for around KD11,000. [Link]

I first spotted this on Some Contrast and then this weekend I ended up driving by it on the way to Marzouqs place so I decided to stop and take a picture of it with my Yashica. If you want to see the previous artwork that was on display there click [Here]

I was at Smoke House with Nat having lunch when a friend of ours called up saying her friends had rescued 3 puppies and didn’t know what to do with them. We finished up our lunch and headed towards Adan area where we met up with our friend, Jasem from the Six-K Club and his best friend. Jasem and his friend rescued the three puppies after finding them locked up without food or water.

Turns out the owner of these dogs went insane and the cops came to take him away. When they came and found the three puppies they locked one up in the bathroom and then shoved the other two into a small pigeon cage in the back yard. No water, no food, just left there to die. They had been left like that for 6 days before Jasem and his friend found them. The puppies were very dehydrated and starving.

We first called Animal Friends League and no one picked up, so we then called PAWs and as usual no one picked up from their side. Once we hung up we got a call back from Animal Friends who asked us if we could drop the puppies off at their farm in Wafra which we agreed to. After giving the dogs some water and food we took off to Wafra.

Its extremely extremely disappointing and sad to hear how the cops treated the puppies. I don’t know what to say, maybe they should just ban dogs in Kuwait once and for all. At least that way the dogs won’t suffer in the hands of abusive kids or get left to die in tiny cages under the scorching sun. Thanks Animal Friends for taking in the dogs. They need all the help they can get so if you want to know how you can help them out click [Here]

Can we get solar farms instead??

The Ministry of Electricity and Water in Kuwait has confirmed its participation in Earth Hour 2009. The ministry will provide the campaign with all the required consumption statistics before, during, and after the event. Also, the streets’ lights management in the ministry has confirmed switching off two light bulbs per street light in about 11.6 Km of the total length of the Arabian Gulf Street, one of the most famous streets in Kuwait, without affecting the public safety. This length represents around 60% of the total street’s length.

The Ministry of Electricity and Water find this event a good opportunity to show the bad consequences of over energy consumption in the community and its effects on the environment.

Thanks Yousef!