Search: “kuwait”

I needed to get a Polaroid camera today so I called all the Ashraf stores in Kuwait who are the Polaroid dealers and non of them had any cameras in stock except for the one in Salmiya who had two. I ended up passing by them and picking it up for KD20. On Amazon the same camera is being sold for KD43.500 so they are basically selling it in Kuwait for less than half the price. If you are interested they have one more in stock, their number is 5731372.

I don’t know how accurate this information is but over the weekend I heard that Alshaya is going to enter the fast food business and they are going to do that by relaunching Arby’s and Wendy’s in Kuwait. I hope the rumor turns out to be true.

I passed by Abyat Megastore awhile ago and it hasn’t opened. Although the soft launch is today no one is allowed into the store. You need to be invited and accompanied by an Abyat employee to be let into the place. So if you are planning on checking out Abyat for the moment it’s not possible, you need to wait for the full launch of the store.

Abyat the super large home improvement store is supposedly soft launching tomorrow. I hope thats true because its supposed to be wayyy bigger and better than Platform which really sucked. I was going to pass by the BOSCH dealer tomorrow to pick up a Dremel but I guess I will pass by Abyat first just to see what they have.

Thanks Big Pearls

Update: Fixed the Abyat website link. [Link]

Update2: Just got back from Abyat, the security guard wouldn’t let me into the parking lot and when I asked him if they had opened he told me no. BUT, I just got an email from their customer relations telling me the soft launch IS today so I don’t know, they seem to have some miscommunication…

This is the last time I am going to spend National Day in Kuwait. Its absolutely the worst time of the year to be in Kuwait. Three years ago when little kids were foaming cars it was cute but last year older teenagers and adults started doing it and this year it was even worse.

I stayed indoors most of the vacation but tonight I had to go into Kuwait City to meet up with a friend and it was disgusting. You can’t drive with the windows open cuz you never know which idiot is going to spray you and you can’t get on the Gulf Road because the cops block everything. Its just messed up.

By the way at one traffic light I was stuck in the cop made us all run a red light to clear up the traffic. Problem is the camera at the intersection took pictures of all the cars and buses that ran the red light, what happens in a situation like this? I am hoping the cop telling us to cross the red light shows up in the picture or else I am pretty fucked.

This year it barely rained and although I was hoping for a flood like Hurricane Laila, that didn’t happen. Nevertheless I just got back from my parents home where they experienced their on “indoor” flood. Some filter connected to their washing machine blew and within 15 minutes the 2 floors of the apartment were completely flooded. I rushed over quickly to help out with the mopping and drying but I think most of the damage was already done. Electronics wise one TV got burned and an unused dvd player got soaked which is no biggie but the ground floor of the apartment has wooden floors and I think thats going to show the most damage tomorrow once it expands from all the water it absorbed.

Kinda makes me paranoid about my apartment now, my computer room is littered with cables and power plugs all lying on the floor and even my computer is there too. My living room is the same thing with cables, routers, xbox and amp all on the floor under the cabinet. If my apartment had gotten flooded I think I would have gotten pretty fucked. So just a heads up, home flooding can happen and you don’t need a hurricane.

Last night I was thinking that the biggest hurdle with my Wrangler lift will be getting the right tires at the right price. When I posted about my plan to lift the Wrangler last week I also posted the prices of the tires and the availability, simply put I had only 3 options with one of the options costing just too much. I had to choose between either Maxxis or Hankook tires so after doing some research I decided to go with the Hankook Dynapro MT RT03. They are no where near as popular at the BF Goodrich tires in the Jeep Forums but the few people who do own the tires have said they were really great. Two users actually who owned BFG MT tires posted that the Hankooks were nearly as good as the BFG’s offroad but were a lot quieter on the road and cost a lot less too. The thing is there is not BFG dealer in Kuwait, the closest one is in Bahrain and although its tempting to drive all the way there to pick up the tires and come back, thats not really practical.

Anyway I passed by the Hankook dealer (Tel: 884737) today and its a good thing I did. They only had 5 tires left in all of Kuwait and I needed 5 tires so I bought them all on the spot. Even though I haven’t ordered my lift yet and even though I don’t even have rims to mount the tires on it didn’t matter, I needed the tires sooner or later and with only 5 tires in stock I had to get them now. They cost me KD37.500 per tire which isn’t bad at all, cheap even when compared to my BMW tires. Now I need to pass by on Wednesday with a pickup truck and pick up the tires since they didn’t fit inside my Wrangler, the tires are huge!

Is there a supermarket in Kuwait that sells edamame?

Last week we wrote about the issue Fasttelco users were having with their private information being publicly available online. Cnet/News.com have published an article covering this subject and this is the result of the user (36o/Abdulaziz), who reported the issue on the forum and then passed on the details of the glitch to Google. Apparently, Google have contacted Fasttelco and offered their services to help resolve the issue.

Hopefully some good can come from this and Fasttelco will reevaluate their users security (a price cut and promised speeds would be do wonders too).

Cnet / News.com article [here]
Our original post [here]

Posted by K.

Thanks Abdulaziz

I just found out everyone is getting a salary increase, Kuwaitis will get KD120 while everyone else gets KD50. I guess now we can all afford to drink KDD milk again.

Update: everyone else = expats

update2: Here is more info from KUNA

The cabinet approved Thursday a monthly bonus of KD 120 for Kuwaitis employed in the public and private sectors, retirees and those receiving social assistance as of March 1, and KD 50 for expatriates working in the public sector, said Finance Minister Mustafa Al-Shimali.

Speaking to reporters following the extraordinary cabinet meeting, he said a monthly bonus of KD 120 will be paid as of March 1, 2008 for Kuwaitis employed in both the public and private sectors. He explained that retired citizens would also be receiving this bonus, as well as all those receiving social assistance from the state. Moreover, Al-Shimali said expatriates employed in the public sector would also be getting KD 50 on a monthly basis.

Someone had told me before that the Chili’s in Kuwait was the largest in the world and a lot of people told me that wasn’t true. Well I emailed Chili’s last week asking them if the Kuwait branch was the largest and this is what they replied back:

Dear Mark:

Thank you for your email and interest in Chili’s.
Our Kuwait location is our largest Chili’s restaurant.
Again, thank you for your email.

Sincerely,
Pharisa Smith-King
Guest Relations

I guess that settles it!

Once again, the view from my office looks as if I am staring into an hourglass. I tried to take a picture of the weather outside but every picture ended up looking like this:

Nibaq explained it best:

Desert: A dry, often sandy region of little rainfall, extreme temperatures, and sparse vegetation.
Fubuki: Japanese for snow storm

Link [here]

-Posted by K.

Now that I finished with the audio install in my Wrangler the next thing I am going to do is get a lift so I could install 33″ tires. After scouring the Jeep Forum and doing a lot of research I decided to go with the DPG Ultimate Trailgunner Suspension System which is a kit put together by DPG for Jeep Wranglers and consists of a 2.5″ Old Man Emu suspension system combined with DPG springs, a 1.25″ JKS body lift and a bunch of other parts which I need for the Wrangler install like adjustable track bars, quick disconnects and bump stops, etc.. basically all the parts I need to get 33″ tires installed on my Wrangler. You can check it out [Here]

Now as usual I always try to purchase stuff from Kuwait first but also as usual I get put off by the prices. I found the Old Man Emu dealer in Kuwait which is Naser Al-Sayer (Tel: 4747137) but their prices were more than double that of the US. Even with shipping it would be a lot cheaper and more reliable to order the parts from a specialized place like DPG in the States.

So now that I solved my suspension lift issue I have another problem with the tires and wheels. My current setup is 31″ tires with 15×7 wheels, for my 33″ setup I need to get 15×8 wheels and 33×12.5xR15 tires. I found some really nice American Racing wheels (black steelies) for KD16 per wheel but they will cost me an arm and a leg to ship to Kuwait. So I decided to pass by the American Racing dealer in Kuwait who are Silicon Valley Group (Tel: 4826723) to see how much the wheel cost here. The visit was pretty disappointing, they barely had anything in stock, they had nothing that fits the Wrangler and the employee there really had no clue about anything. They are even the local dealers for Mickey Thompson tires yet they only had one model from the size I wanted 33×12.5xR15 and even worse they only had one tire in stock. The guy told me I could place an order for anything I wanted but that it would get here by August/September. Very disappointing.

For tires I wanted BF Goodrich AT/KO but I couldn’t find a local dealer so I started calling other places to see what they had and this is what I found:

Goodyear Wrangler MT/R
33×12.5R15
KD80 per tire (slow shipping, 2 months to arrive)
KD110-120 per tire (fast shipping, 2 weeks to arrive)
Tel: 884737

Mickey Thompson Desert King
33×10.5R15
KD90 (1 tire in stock)
Tel: 4826723

Maxxis MT762 Bighorn
33×12.5R15
KD42
Tel: 4824256

Hankook Dynapro MT RT03
33×12.5R15
KD37 (6 tires in stock)
Tel: 884737

I also tried Dunlop, Toyo and Yokohama but they didn’t have any in stock or in Toyo’s case no one ever answered the phone. I am extremely disappointed with the state of some of the dealerships in Kuwait. Prices are expensive, they don’t have a large stock and ordering stuff with them takes ages. Gives me less and less reason to buy stuff from Kuwait.

Update: A friend gave me a link to a website of shop in Dubai called Icon Auto who sell and install lifts for the Wrangler. Their price is very competitive compared to the US. For example a 2.5″ suspension lift costs $659 in the States, $800 in Dubai and $1100 in Kuwait. How come we don’t have a place like Icon Auto in Kuwait?? [Link]

Since its Kuwait’s National Day next week I decided to post some of my favorite songs I used to hear when I was a kid. They are all available on YouTube and you can check them out below. By the way is it just me or does Kuwait in general seem less decorated than the previous years? Usually the majority of the buildings in Kuwait City would be covered with lights and flags but other then the KTV building nothing has grabbed my attention this year. Strange…

عيدي يا بلاد
امبارك عليك العيد يا بلاد
كاسروه دله
كلما زادت المحن
كويت والعرب

Some readers in the forum have been experiencing account access issues when using Fasttelco. When you login into a website (FaceBook, Gmail, Forum), it informs you that you have been logged out and then you have access to someone else’s account (and vice versa). There are screenshots in the forum of a user being redirected to several different gmail accounts and even gaining access to post under different user-names.

If you are unable to use another ISP to access your sensitive information, I suggest using a proxy, vpn or anonymizer (such as Tor) to bypass the Fasttelco cache server. For those who already logged into sensitive websites; login using a different ISP (or the methods suggested) and change your password.

This is most likely due to the Fasttelco cache server (which stores information locally to speed/conserve bandwidth) incorrectly passing data. If you are a user of Fasttelco, call up the help desk and demand that the cache server be disabled until they can fix it.

Link to the topics [here] [here] [here]

Thanks 36o!

-Posted by K.