Search: “kuwait”

Marzouq posted the other day about how slow Aramex has been lately. Well I wanted to share my experience with USWS which for some reason I thought would also be slow. On Friday morning my package arrived in my US mailbox. Late Friday night I get an SMS telling me my package shipped. Today morning I arrived to find my package on my desk. Turned out it was delivered to my office yesterday after I left work. It took 3 days from the US to Kuwait. Thats fast.

My item was a Western Digital 500GB hard drive. Its my first USB 2.0 drive (other then my passport drive). All my main external drives are firewire but since I ran out of firewire ports and the USB 2.0 version is much cheaper I decided to get it. The drive cost me $170 from Amazon and Marzouq has a review on it. The drive arrived just in time because I only had 4GB of space left. Now the total of my hard drives add up to 1.7TB.

I got this in my email today:

We’ve experienced some turbulence. Now you can fly comfortably for less. British Airways is offering dramatic price reductions on flights to the UK and North America. Book now and secure a great deal, on us! Travel in World Traveller to the UK from as little as KD 90* or to North America from KD155*. What’s more you can also get 15% off hotels and car hire at https://ba.com/middleeastoffers Book online now at https://ba.com/middleeastoffers to secure great deals before someone else does. Offer ends 23 February 2007. Alternatively contact British Airways Kuwait 802 777.

Yours sincerely
Shaun Davis
Executive Club Director Asia & the Pacific

*This offer is subject to change without prior notice. Prices quoted are after discount and exclude tax, surcharges and service fees. This offer is valid for travel between 3 February 2007 and 12 June 2007. All flights are via London Heathrow. Tickets purchased online must be paid for immediately. British Airways Holidays discount are only available online at ba.com. Further terms and conditions apply. For a list of destinations and terms and conditions log on to https://ba.com/middleeastoffers

Just saw the new license plates live, it looks kinda boring.

I got an email today from Hilton Kuwait Resort inviting me and Nat to a a live “chocolate show” done by one of the world most famous chocolatier, Pierre Marcolini on February 11th. The day will start off at 12PM with lunch at the Teatro Restaurant, this will then be followed by a live chocolate presentation by chef Pierre Marcolini at 2:00PM in the Song Bird Cafe where we can eat all the chocolate that we can eat.

The live chocolate presentation is open to the public and you will be able to buy and try a variety of chocolates. I have never been to a chocolate event so it should be interesting. You can view the ad for the event by clicking [Here]

A friend of mine just told he saw an ad for KEMS (Zajil) in the newspaper saying that you can get an 8MB DSL connection for only 8KD. For more details you have to visit their stand at InfoConnect. Anyone know anything about this???

update: I just called Zajil and this is there offer.

Now until February 9th they have a special 3 in 1 deal. When you sign up for their DSL connection you get a free dial up connection AND access to all their hotspots in Kuwait. Here are their prices:

256KB DSL + Dial up + Zajil Hotspots = KD96 a year (KD8 per month)
512KB DSL + Dial up + Zajil Hotspots = KD179 a year (KD15 per month)
1MB DSL + Dial up + Zajil Hotspots = KD349 a year (KD29 per month)

You can get more info by calling them on 820820

I think the 1MB connection for KD29 is a really good deal and add to that free access to the hotspots and it makes things a lot more interesting. I am really tempted to swap over from Qualitynet to Zajil now.

note: The Zajil Hotspots can hit up to 8MB thats why they are saying 8KD for 8MB.

Today I had to wake up at 5AM because I had a photo shoot at 6 in the morning. Once the shoot was done and after having a quick breakfast at Krispy Kreme, me and a friend decided to head to the Friday market.

Last time I went there was over a year ago and things have changed condierably since then. The place is cleaner and more organized then before. They seriously sell the strangest stuff there, you can find anything including used deodorant cans.

After walking around for around 40 minutes I spotted a guy with a ton of vintage video game systems. He had a ton of video games for the SNES, NES, Megadrive and MegaCD. He also had some video game consoles, Sega Genesis, Sega 32x, Sega MegaCD, Sega Saturn, Atari Jaguars, NES systems, a Panasonic 3DO and a NeoGeo. They weren’t all in the best of shape plus I had most of them so I wasn’t really interested in any of them for my collection. Then I spotted a NeoGeo game. The guy noticed I was interested and told me he had more pointing to under the table. I looked down and was like fuuucccckkkkk…. There were around 15 NeoGeo games just pilled up there.

A quick history on the NeoGeo. It was released in 1990 and back then it was priced at $650. It was one of the most expensive video game consoles and each game used to cost over $200 and most of the time over $300. Finding a brand new NeoGeo console today is very difficult, the last time I saw a brand new one online they were selling for $1200. Luckily a few years ago I got my brand new NeoGeo for less then $300.

So back to my story. The guy wanted KD5 for every game. I told him the prices were too expensive but he then pointed to the original price tags on the games.. KD75, KD60, KD65 etc.. I told him yeah they cost this much back in the 90s. I offered to give him KD10 for the 15 games. He said no and so I left. 30 minutes later I came back and decided to haggle with him. In the end I ended up getting 11 NeoGeo games (I had the other 4), a NeoGeo joypad and 2 Atari Jaguar consoles all for KD14. I have an Atari Jaguar but I accidentally ruined it a while back and needed a replacement. He didn’t know if the 2 systems he had worked so I decided to take both of them.

When I came back home I quickly started checking the NeoStore for prices of the games plus checked the price guide and it turns out I walked away with over $700 worth of NeoGeo games, the most expensive being Aggressors of Dark Kombat which is selling for $149 at the moment.

I had heard of Second Life numerous times but for some reason I never bothered to try it. Then a few days ago a reader emailed me a link to Second Life and I decided what the heck let me try it.

Second Life is really freaky, its literally a second life. Its another world and its not a game its just a different parallel universe. You can make money, sell stuff, buy stuff or just party and have fun. Today for example I went to this club which had Tiesto playing then I visited an art gallery followed by a walk on the beach. Everything we have in real life is available in second life. Actually if you are living in Kuwait there is more stuff in Second Life like alcohol, casinos and strippers.

There are over 3 million other users in Second Life so there is a lot to do and tons of places to visit. The experience is free, you just download the software from the Second Life website and create a free account. It runs on Windows and Macs and the setup file is like 60MB only. If you haven’t tried it yet then you should. [Link]

Just got back from the Kuwait Advertising Arab Awards, it was better then last years event but it was still extremely poor. The way the categories were divided and the way the ads were nominated didn’t make any sense. Our agency submitted work to some categories for example but during tonights event those categories didn’t exist. I heard the same feedback from other agencies who participated, everyone was just confused to what the hell was going on. The actual presentation of the awards was also a mess, they couldn’t get the TV commercials playing right (how hard is it to press play and pause) and the woman announcer had the most cheesiest one liners. The event was also supposed to start at 7PM according to our tickets (which had a major mistake btw), but according to their website the event was supposed to start at 7:30PM but in reality the event actually started at 8. There were also less agencies participating this year probably because after last years fiasco no one wanted to be involved with the KAAA.

On a positive note the stage looked good, BUT it was a near copy of the KREA awards. Compare the picture above to the picture [Here]. Notice the starry backdrop?

Anyway my agency ended up collecting the most awards (I think), with a total of 12 bronze, silver and gold trophy’s but it really doesn’t mean much since the KAAA doesn’t have any credibility internationally. One of my favorite TV commercials ever which was created by our Beirut office won a Gold in the food category. The version of the ad they played wasn’t the one I liked though, it has a different soundtrack and editing so I figured I would share with everyone the version I like which I uploaded to YouTube a while back. The commercial was for the product Zwan, if you haven’t checked it out you can by clicking [Here]. And thats it basically, I got to see a lot of old friends and I got to wear a suit so everything else didn’t matter much. Hopefully next year I won’t go.

update: here is another review of the event [Link]

update2: Just found out that they canceled one of our categories because we were the only ones who entered it. So according to the KAAA logic if you are successful and have no competition you can’t win. Now lets play along with that for a moment, how about you call us and tell us that you canceled that category, at least then we could have told the client not to come to the event. No professionalism whatsoever.

Starting Saturday, Kuwait will be issuing new license plates for the cars. I just saw an article in the Daily Star newspaper about it and I think the new plates look better then the current ones we have, but I don’t think they are better then Dubai’s. I just hope the new plates come in the really wide size also because this squarish one looks really weird on my Beemer.

The M45 is a nice car but its not a G35. The car isn’t as fun or as cool, its a family car. Its got a powerful V8 engine and all, but unlike the Infiniti G35 which they lent me last week, I don’t want to speed in this car. The G35 actually made me want to trade in my car for it but so far I haven’t clicked with the M45 like that. Maybe if I was older and had kids I would prefer the M45 over the G35 but at the moment I am not swinging that way. Its pretty comfortable though and I love how smooth and quiet it is on the highway.

On my way to work yesterday I saw some blue banners and something like a stage outside the House of Parliament. Thanks to a reader in the forum (RJV) I found out there was a demonstration yesterday asking for football reform in Kuwait. The full article is available on Kuwait Times if anyone wants to read it. [Article]

I personally haven’t watched that many soccer matches after 1990. Most of the games I watched were all pre-1990 and my favorites then were whenever Kuwait played against Saudi Arabia. Since I play the goal keeper position my favorite player then was Samir Saeed which is why I am now a big fan of Mr Baker (he owns it). I feel like playing football now.

Anyway in case you missed it, here is my post on
Haydoo, Kuwait’s lovely camel. [Link]

Anyone heard of or been to Burger Company? I first heard about it 10 days ago in the forum but today someone else mentioned it to me. Its supposed to be a 24 hour diner, the first in Kuwait. The place is located in Hawalli opposite “the college of business studies”.

Picture by vampire

In my W-net review I mentioned that W-net at full speed was only available in some locations. Over the weekend Wataniya sent me a list of the locations that have 3G. If you want to know if it works in your area or not download the file and see if your area is listed. [PDF]

Just got back from my ride today morning. I first cruised around Salmiya for a little bit and then headed off to Marina Crescent to see if their were any bikers there I knew. I ended up finding Marzouq who earlier in the morning had been out biking with Nat. We decided we would ride to Green Island where a bunch of Ducati and BMW bikers were gathering up for a ride out to the desert which was organized by TriStar.

As we were approaching the gathering area I spotted the new Ducati 1098s from far. There was no way to miss it, it was parked away from the rest of the bikers and it was sparkling under the sun. We parked our bikes, said hi to some friends and then me and Marzouq went over to the 1098. Its a really tiny and light bike weighing around 170KG and producing around 160HP! Thats nearly one horse power for every kilogram.

Anyway we hung out for a little while and then headed out for a ride. One thing I did today was go back to the intersection I had my first crash in and take the same route I took that day. Might not sound like much but after I had my accident I went through the whole incident in my head over and over and then I kept visiting that route with my car just to go over the spot and try to figure out how I messed up. So today I decided I couldn’t avoid that intersection for ever and I took it with my bike. I think going through the turn gave me a boost of confidence which is what I needed.

One issue I realized I had today was accelerating from a traffic light while I am with Marzouq. I usually know how much throttle to give and how much clutch to let go of using the sound of my bikes engine. But the problem is Marzouqs bike is bigger and much louder and so when I am with him I can’t hear my bikes engine anymore. I swear I think I messed up at like 6 traffic lights today, it made me feel like such a newbie. This is why I decided I am going to either upgrade the mufflers with some really cool louder ones by Termignoni or, try and convince Nat I “need” a Ducati 749.

The Sony Ericsson dealer in Kuwait (Barrak) has a website online with all the Sony Ericsson models available and their prices. Its not a pretty website but it gets the job done. [Link]