Search: “kuwait”

It’s hard to write this review because whatever positive thing I will say people will assume its because I got it for free or I am just kissing ass to get more free stuff. This is not true and I will tell you why…

Usually someone emails me or calls me asking for my office address so they can send me stuff. It could be anything from Donuts like today or vouchers for dinner like last week. The first thing I tell these people is that if I end up not liking your product then I won’t post about it. If your product turns out crap I will just not mention it at all on the site. On the other hand if its good I will post about it and try to encourage people to try it. The reason I don’t post negative reviews of items I get for free is simply to keep getting more stuff for free. I wouldn’t want to scare away people and I want to continue trying new stuff so that I could share it with my readers.

Now the reason I said all the above is to prepare you for what I am about to say now. I am a big fan of Dunkin Donuts and my favorite two donuts there are the glazed and the cholcolate. Today I had the “Choco Mallow Frost” from Go Nuts Donuts which is pictured above and its basically a chocolate donut with marshmallow and nuts on top. I have to say this donut was better then the chocolate donut at Dunkin. Its that fucking good. I never tried Krispy Kreme so I can’t compare to that but I have tried Planet Donuts, Donut King and La Baguette’s donuts and I can easily say they suck compared to Go Nuts.

Usually I have one donut and feel like I overdosed on sugar but today I had two of those Choco Mallow Frost and I didn’t feel sick at all. At first I thought maybe its me, maybe I have a bizzaro donut taste issue, but every time someone took a bite out of their donuts in the office all you would hear is hmmmm. So its not just me, the donuts are actually really good.

I was really not expecting these donuts to be good or for me to even end up posting about them. But, the donuts are good and the only thing lacking I think is a location in Salmiya near Starbucks and Johnny Rockets. The thing is people don’t just go to Dunkin Donuts for the food, they go there to chill out and waste time. Currently Go Nuts is located in Hawalli in the new Al-Bahr Center that just opened. Take it I haven’t been to that mall yet but I have been to Hawalli and I don’t want to go there unless its an emergency. Now the good thing is they deliver.. wherever you are. If you want to have a dozen donuts for breakfast and you work in Kuwait City, just call them up and they will deliver it to you. As a final score I am going to give them a 4 out of 5. Give them a call and try them out. Their telephone number is 2670671 or 72.

Jabriya Canidate (District 10) Jamal Al-Omar is caught buying votes on video.

Link to Sa7at Al-Safat
Link to YouTube
Download WMV Video

[source K.theKuwaiti]

After I posted the picture of the new Escalade earlier in the month I got a phone call from Alghanim Automotive marketing people telling me I could take the car out for a ride. So yesterday I took it for a ride and wow what a ride.

The first thing I noticed once I got into the car was how beautiful the interior was. As I mentioned before, unlike the old Escalade who’s interior I found extremely boring and “American”, the new Escalade is much more cleaner and very European. The interior detailing is extraordinary and extremely comforting on the eye. It’s really a huge leap over the old one. The drivers seat was also extremely comfortable and I was quickly able to adjust it and the mirrors before I left the dealership.

I took the car out to the Gulf Road and went cruising. The engine is unbelievable, with over 400HP it just wants to go faster and faster. I had a hard time keeping it at 80KM/h, there is just soo much power in it that a slight tap on the gas and you’re already at the speed limit. Of course speed limits are meant to be broken when no radar cameras are around so as soon as I passed one I slammed on the gas for an earth-shattering kick down. The engine (which comes from the Corvette) just suddenly took on a new life and turned the classy quiet Escalade into a scary loud hotrod.. it was incredible.

After driving for a while I decided to park the car and take some pictures plus explore the various features of the car. The coolest thing I found was the trunk since its fully automated. Basically the old trunk was very heavy to open and close especially for woman so the new trunk is motorized. You press a button on the handle and step back while the door opens up. You press another button and the trunk closes down. I even recorded a video of it, which you can watch [Here]. The car currently doesn’t come with a Navigation system but by the end of the year they will not only be coming with a built in Navigation system but also 3 screens in the back (it currently has 1) and the ability to play a different movie on every screen, plus 3 other people in the car could also listen to 3 different CDs all at the same time using wireless headphones. So in total 6 people could be watching or listening to 6 different things all at the same time.

The exterior of the car has also changed a lot although it still closely resembles the older model. You still have the over sized headlights for example which allows you to spot an Escalade from a mile away. The new Escalades also come with 22inch rims as standard and soon official body kits will be made available by Cadillac so anyone will be able to pimp their ride at the dealer. When driving around on the Gulf Road the car is an eye catcher. It can’t not be since the car is huge and I was driving the Pearl White version so I was sparkling under the sun.

I had a lot of fun driving the car around and when I brought it back to the dealer, the manager gave me a detailed tour of the cars features. If I had the money I would have bought the car right on the spot which brings me to the final point, the price. The new Cadillac Escalade starts from KD20,900 which is cheaper then a Range Rover but more expensive then the Lexus. It’s in a pretty nice position at the moment and I am sure once the car is more widely available the price will come down a bit more. If I had to choose between a Range Rover and the new Escalade it would be a really tough decision, luckily it’s not a decision I am likely to make anytime soon.

Here are some pictures and videos I shot:
Picture of Escalade’s interior
Picture of Escalade’s Exterior
Another picture of the Escalade’s Exterior
Video of trunk opening and closing
Video of a tour around the car

I have had the MacBook for around a week now and I have decided to write about my experience so far. This isn’t a review because it wouldn’t be fair. I have always had a thing for ibooks and I had already given the MacBook a 5 star even before I got it. So this isn’t a review, its just what I experienced.

When I first got the Mac it had around 30GB of empty space from a total of 60GB. Thats because the MacBook came installed with everything including trial runs of Microsoft Office, Pages, Keynote and a couple of other softwares plus the whole iLife package was installed. I ofcourse didn’t need most of these so first thing I did was format the Mac and reinstall it with the softwares I needed… iMovie, iTunes and iPhoto. This resulted in over 46GB of space being free which is a big difference. The MacBook came with a small remote control and its still in the plastic wrapping in the box. I don’t like FrontRow (XBMC spoiled me) so no need for the remote. Another thing that I will probably never use is the built in iSight. I tried it a bit and I can imagine it being very handy but its not for me.

Anyway, the MacBook is incredible. Its super fast and I just have 512MB of RAM installed. FireFox launches in 1 second, System Preferences in less then a second and iPhoto in 2. The wifi reception is also unbelievable. Suddenly all these wifi hotspots started appearing while sitting on my living room couch, hotspots I hadn’t seen before. Its like where did all these come from??

So far in the week I have been using the Mac it only gotten REALLY hot once when I was busy installing Adobe CS, browsing the web and downloading software updates all at the same time. The MacBook just got really hot, but it didn’t crash or anything. Currently I have been surfing the web for over 3 hours and the MacBook feels warm but not hot at all. The battery life is really good, it easily lasts me 4 hours and even more if I lower the screens brightness. Speaking of the screen, its really really bright, like blinding bright. I have to decrease the brightness most of the time since I would be watching TV and the MacBook’s screen would be brighter which is distracting. Its even brighter then my Lacie CRT at work!

I also installed Windows XP on my MacBook using Apple’s Bootcamp. I don’t have a major need for it but its only occupying 5GB of space and I am going to install Red Alert 95 on it plus the Dos version of DopeWars. Its cool to have since when I play around with the sites template for example I always want to see how it would look like on a PC. Plus it has a “wow effect” when I show my PC friends that my Mac can now run Windows.

Other then that I don’t know what else I can talk about. If anyone has any questions I could answer them in the comments below. I am very pleased with my MacBook and I am very happy I got it over the MacBook Pro. Nat on the other hand doesn’t like the plasticness of the MacBook and so is going to get the Pro version. This I realized might be true for other people also. The plastic feel could put off people who are looking for a serious looking laptop. The MacBook is more funky and trendy then serious. It will grab a lot of attention if you are surrounded by ordinary looking Dell and Toshiba laptops, attention you might not want. But, I still believe this is a better built laptop then the Pro version and I believe this one can take a beating while the Pro version can’t. Everyone to his own though..

I just took some more pictures of Nats PowerBook. They are higher quality so you can see exactly what you would be getting. [Pictures]

If you are interested in it, here is more info. [Link]

Hmmmm I just got a jar of Choowy Goowy cookies. Its been like forever since I last had some. Yummmyyy…

The cheapest Big Mac is in China, where it costs $1.30, compared with $4.93 in Switzerland which is the most expensive. Kuwait is not on the chart but a Big Mac here costs $2.76. [Link]

The past week I have been driving to work using the Gulf Road. On my way I kept spotting this group of American looking people on the side of the road (on the side going towards Salmiya) with their GMC’s parked up on the side walk and a little shade setup. I thought maybe they were shooting a TV commercial but then I noticed that everyday they would move a bit. First time I saw them they were in front of Burj al Hamam restaurant, then I saw them near Fridays and just now on my way back from the beach I saw them near Marina Mall. So, I decided to u-turn and stop and ask them what they were doing.

I park the car and open my window and a guy comes towards me, I ask him if he minds telling me what they are doing since I keep seeing them in a different spot every day. The guy replies back to me with an Australian accent that they are installing fiber optic cables. I thank him and drive off.

So mystery solved, now if you see the SUVs parked on the side of the road you know why they are there.

update: a reader mentioned the following article related to fiber optics in Kuwait. Looks like we might be getting some good stuff. [Link]

I just added a link on the top menu called Proxy. This will take you to a page where you can type a url of a blocked site and it will open it for you. For example the blog I don’t like you in that way is blocked for some stupid reason in Kuwait but if you go to the proxy page and type the website address it will open the page for you. Try it out. [Link]

Sometimes I can’t purchase stuff online because they require a US based Visa card or a Paypal account. My usual action then is to ask a friend who lived in the States before and has an American Visa card to purchase the item for me and then I pay him back.

Now there seems to be a way around this.. epassporte.com. Basically you get a “virtual” visa card from them which has a US billing address. You can then fill up your virtual card using your regular visa card here in Kuwait. By virtual they mean digital as in you won’t get a physical credit card you can hold in your hand, you just get the numbers.

Anyone tried this service? I am thinking of trying it out myself. [Link]

update: OK seems they are not very trustworthy.. [Link]

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have a habit of naming my devices after Transformer characters. I took a screenshot of my home wifi access points and my hard drives on my main Mac to better show what I mean. Whats cool about naming them after Transformers is that it would be hard to run out of names because there are so many. Its very practical to do this and consistent.

One of the best customer service in Kuwait can be found at International Optics. The employees there are always extremely friendly and professional.

The other day we passed by them because Geo had chewed up Nats glasses after she accidentally left them on the table and they were completely destroyed. The frames plastic was bent, the metal thing on the side was scratched like crazy and he had chewed one of the glasses. She was about to throw them away when I told her they might be saved. So we went to the International Optics branch in Central Plaza and showed it to this one guy. He asked what had happened to it and I told him my dog chewed it. He of course found that funny and shared it with his fellow employees. He told me to come back the next day at the same time and we left.

Next day we went back and I realized I should have taken a before and after shot because what they did was incredible. They actually bent the frame (plastic and all) back to the right shape, they polished the front to remove all the scratches and the side metal was repainted. It was hard to believe this was the same glasses. If they had come and told me we threw your glasses away because they were unfixable I would have said ok but instead they fixed the glasses and they only charged us KD10 to replace the one scratched glass.

This is not the first time they were this helpful, I have had problems with my other shades and they always took care it. Anyway I figured I would talk about a company would good service since I mentioned Showtime’s bad service in the previous post.

The Kuwait Cinemagic & The Royal Film Commission invite everyone to attend a Jordanian Short Film Screening event which will take place at Al Sha’ab Theatre on the evening of June 22nd, at 7:30 p.m.

They will be screening around 10 short films made by young Jordanian filmmakers, some of whom will be attending the event and discussing their work.

It promises to be a fun evening, and you can bring as many people as you like just as long as you come early, as the seating is free and will be on a first come first served basis. Here is the flyer for the event.

I know I keep picking on Mac&More but I can’t help it. So today I walk in and a salesgirl comes up to me and asks if she can help, this is how the conversation went:

Me: Yeah Hi, do you have the MacBooks?
Her: The laptop?
Me: Ummm yeah…
Her: Yes we do
Me: Oh cool how much are they?
Her: well we have the 15″ and the large 17″..
Me: Hold on, the MacBook is only 13″
Her: ?
Me: ?
Her: ??
Me: I am not asking about the MacBook Pro, I was asking about the MacBook
Her: ?
Me: The regular MacBook.. the white and black ones
Her: Ah, yes we get them in 2 days
Me: Thank you bye

Yeah so that didn’t go very well. On the bright though they have some Crumpler Bags although they have the ugliest colored models. Don’t know why they didn’t get any of the cooler colored ones. On another note my MacBook is in my U Shop We Ship mailbox in the States and is going to ship today and arrive hopefully on Sunday.

Fuzz a fellow blogger is selling his car. Its a 1970 Mercury Cougar, here are some details:

Engine- 7.2 Litre V8
Automatic Transmission
Air Conditioning
AM/FM Radio
Cassette
Automatic Convertible Top
Original Hub Caps
Power Brakes
Power Steering
Radial Tires
Seatbelts
Vinyl Interior
Numbers are Matching

The engine and transmission have been rebuilt by Edelbrock himself in Illinois, USA. Very nice original car with lots of options, has front power disc brakes, have copy of bill of sale, new exhaust, power top & headlight covers work properly.

The only 1970 Cougar in Kuwait. Interior needs minor work, some stiching. This sort of interior job is available in Kuwait and the cost is minimal.

Price – KD8,000
A test drive is possible and can be scheduled.
For further inquiries call 9185054 or send an email to
[email protected].

Fore more pictures click [Here]