Search: “kuwait”

As of yesterday, the E71 has officially been announced by Nokia. While being successor to the E61i, the best phone I have ever owned, would make it worthy enough to be a great phone. Nokia have sealed the deal by throwing in longer battery life, 3.2mp (AutoFocus) camera, HSDPA, a faster processor in a package much slimmer than any previous Nokia offerings. [Link]

While the apple fanboys will be fumbling about trying to find a unlocked 3G iphone, you can catch the E71 at your local reseller next month for a little over 130KD.  (It also comes in white/stainless)

Posted by K.

D*lush opened up a new branch in Salmiya yesterday behind Al Bustan mall. Also a new cookie store opened up at The Avenues food court called Crumbs and supposedly their cookies are really good.

I was at Kout Mall tonight and noticed that Marble Slab had opened up there. I first tried it when I was in Dubai at the Mall of Emirates and they now have a branch here in Kuwait. For those of you who don’t know what Marble Slab is, its an ice cream shop in which you choose the flavor of ice cream you want and then you get to choose what kind of topping you want mixed in with your ice cream. They have a gigantic collection of toppings to choose from but I always go for chocolate ice cream mixed with mini marshmallows. [Link]

The other day I posted a picture of the first Nissan Skyline GT-R in Kuwait filling up at a gas station. Turns out the Nissan dealership Al-Babtain got their first shipment of Skylines which consisted of 3 cars, 2 being red and 1 a dark grey. The picture I posted the other day was of the grey one and my friend just sent me the picture above of the two red ones. The cars from this shipment and the next two shipments have already all been sold. Each car went for KD30,000.

Anyone know where I can purchase used arcade machines in Kuwait? I am interested in either of the following games:

Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II, NBA Jam TE or Killer Instinct. The original Sega Rally would be nice but I wouldn’t know how they could fit it through my apartments door.

Awhile back I wanted to sell my car and decided I would do a little experiment by listing my car on Q8car and also on Q8showroom and see which site ends up getting me a buyer. Well I just sold my car today but I didn’t get to try my Q8car vs Q8showroom experiment.

Thursday my car went up on Q8car and by Friday I had two people call me and pass by to check it out. By Saturday I got two more people call and one more person passed by. Sunday I got a call and the guy told me to meet up with him at Al Reemal Al Dahabi in Shuwaikh which is this huge ass place that checks cars. I think all the tests took around two hours and in the end the potential buyer got a printout with all the positives and negatives in the car. After that it was a done deal and we shook on it.

So as you can see I didn’t even have time to list my car on Q8showroom. Even today while doing the car paperwork with the guy I had a guy call me asking me about the car. Before I placed the car on their website I had read somewhere that if the car isn’t anything too weird it usually sells within three days and I guess thats true.

I paid KD10 to list my car on Q8car and that includes four pictures and the duration is “until its sold”. For KD5 you can list the car for one month and you get to post just one picture.

Marzouq just emailed me this link to an article on the very popular video game website Kotaku. The article talks about how one of the most eagerly anticipated PlayStation3 games, Metal Gear Solid 4 was released in Kuwait ahead of the official release date in the US by a full 3 days. Kuwait always ends up in the news because of the strangest things. The picture above is of some guys posing outside Game Station with their copies of MGS4. So if you want a copy of the game head to Rihab Complex in Hawalli. [Link]

Last month I read on Memoirs of A Kuwaiti-Chick about a version of KitKat called Senses. Today while I was checking out the chocolate corner in Shamiya supermarket I spotted them and decided to take two to try and now I think I found my new favorite chocolate. The taste is a mixture between KitKat and Kinder’s Bueno which also has a hazelnut cream filled chocolate wafer. Downside is they cost 450fils a bar but its worth it. The chocolate section at Shamiya has a lot of imported stuff which is cool and right next to it there is the gourmet section which also has a ton of stuff not available elsewhere. If you don’t know where Shamiya Coop is its near the Sheraton roundabout and here is it on google maps. [MAP]

I’ve been using my Eee heavily for 5 days now and I figured I would post a second impression. As I mentioned in my previous post, the Eee is tiny and thats why I am loving it so much. Its very light weighing around 900grams which makes it very easy to lug around and pick up with just one hand. I really can’t wait till my next business trip so I could carry this with me.

The Eee version I got was the Linux version which comes with a 20GB hard drive. The system OS is very easy to use because Asus have a very simple and basic interface setup by default. When you first turn on the computer it takes less than 30 seconds, maybe around 20 to boot up. You are then greeted with a colorful and simple icon based interface with tabs on top. If you want Internet apps you click on Internet, if you want work apps you click on work, very easy. Since I wanted a bit more control I installed the advanced interface which is similar to most Linux and Windows based systems.

Here are some quick tidbits: I’ve gotten used to the keyboard but the problem is I can’t type properly on other keyboards now! The battery life is around 4 hours with normal use while the speaker volume is surprisingly louder than my Macbook which is cool and the screen is really sharp and very viewable from a lot of angles. Its also as bright as any other laptop screen. Overall I can’t find much to complain about. Although its a 900mhz celeron the Eee is very snappy with most programs launching nearly instantly.

My only issue with the Eee I guess is that when its running on batteries the CPU speed drops to 630mhz to save power and I haven’t found a way to turn this off. Other than that I have no regrets whatsoever with this Eee, I would definitely recommend it.

Update: Just an FYI, I haven’t seen the Eee 900 in Kuwait. All the ones I’ve seen here are the 7inch screen version, this one is 8.9inch. I ordered mine from Amazon for around KD140 and paid around KD8 for shipping to Kuwait with USWS. It didn’t get held in customs, probably cuz the box is really small. Here are links to the Eee 900 on Amazon:
Asus Eee 900 with Windows [Link]
Asus Eee 900 with Linux [Link]

Last week I posted about Alshaya’s mystery shopper program and now I found out about another program by a company called Khayal Consultants. Best part is you can sign up to be a mystery shopper through their website by filling an online form and answering a few questions. No idea on how much these guys pay though and who their clients are. [Link]

Thanks Mai

My Wrangler’s battery died today while trying to leave the Avenues. Its not the first time this has happened, the first time was two years ago when I was trying to leave Souk Sharq. That same day I posted about it on my blog on how Jeep’s Road Assist was amazing, that was on June 4, 2006. Thats nearly exactly two years later (off by just two days) except this time Jeep’s Road Assist wasn’t there to save me. The Road Assist number wouldn’t connect me to anyone, I would call and it would ring twice then I would get a beep and the line would die. I tried over and over and it wouldn’t work.

I didn’t even have jumper cables so I just walked back into Avenues and headed to Carrefour and bought some cheap ass cables for like KD1.300 (they sucked, need to get a better pair). When I got back to the car I asked the parking security if they had a plan for a situation like this, I figured they might have a tow truck number or maybe an emergency jump starter kit but turned out they didn’t have anything of that sort. Instead the security guard was kind enough to help me find a car that was willing to help me jump start my Jeep.

After jump starting the car it turned out if I removed my foot from the gas pedal the car would die on me instantly so after restarting the car again I had to drive with two feet, one on the brakes and the other constantly holding down the throttle. Luckily I didn’t have to drive too far, I was planning on taking my Jeep to service it at the dealer tomorrow so I just drove the car to the garage which was just 5 minutes away. Once I parked the Jeep outside and removed my foot of the gas pedal the car died again, perfect timing. I found a cab passing by and just took it back home. Tomorrow will pass by the dealer and have them replaced my battery. I am kinda glad I purchased the extended warranty back then. What I now regret is not actually going ahead and purchasing the Emergency Jumper Starter which I posted about in March!

This looks like the perfect way to cook hot dogs at home. I wonder if I could find something like this in Kuwait since I don’t feel like ordering it off the Internet. [Link]

I’ve been hearing a lot of positive stuff about Aramex’s Shop & Ship service lately. K.thekuwaiti keeps telling me how he keeps getting everything really quickly and SomeContrast posted the other day that you can now even pay with Knet on delivery. I had a lot of problems with Aramex before which I made very clear on this blog but it seems they’ve improved a lot since then so I’ve decided to try them out again.

So far the experience has been positive. I called Aramex up on the new hotline number and I was instantly able to get a hold of customer service, something that was impossible to do when I last used them since their lines used to be always busy. I will try them out for my next few shipments and post my experience with them here on the blog. Looks promising so far.

Although my plan was to stay in Munich forever thats easier said than done. I am now in the Frankfurt airport waiting for my flight back to Kuwait. I really need to learn German. (Posted from my Nokia E61i)

I just heard from a friend they’ve started power cuts in Kuwait. My friend didn’t have electricity for 6 hours today! I hope this isn’t going to be a habit. In Lebanon we get power cuts but come on its Lebanon, the country doesn’t have any money and worse comes to worse the weather really never gets that hot there. In Kuwait on the other hand the government DOES have money so they can build more power plants and the weather gets extremely hot in Kuwait which means a home without AC is unlivable.