Search: “kuwait”

You really have to owe it to these guys, they have done an amazing job so far.

Jazeera Airways is ready to fly travelers with tickets from other airlines to return to Kuwait at NO cost. Travelers must report to Jazeera Airways’ Damascus office with their tickets

Jazeera Airways accepts Kuwaitis with NO tickets at NO cost, with letter from Kuwait Embassy in Damascus

All Beirut flights re-routed to Damascus for 7 days (until July 21). Booked travelers have the option of flying to Damascus (or flying from Damascus to Kuwait), or canceling their flight and receiving credit in the amount of their ticket to be used to any Jazeera Airways destination within 12 months

[Link]

Since I just got the Nano I figured I should post an update on my experience with U Shop We Ship so far. I first posted about them back in March and have been using them since. Right after my first package got delievered by USWS I stopped using Aramex because the difference is night and day.

I have received 9 packages so far all via USWS and all without any problems. Other USWS users who have been posting in the forum also have been experiencing the same great service. The online payment system makes life extremely easy, and their shipping is very fast. Currently for a limited time they are shipping packages to Kuwait the same day they arrive to your US mailbox at no extra charge. Thats the coolest thing and I hope it they keep it like that. Another cool thing is the minute your package arrives in the mailbox you get an SMS telling you the package has arrived int he mailbox and whats in the package. For example I got an SMS a few days ago telling me an iPod Nano has arrived to my mailbox. This is a lot more practical compared to Aramex who would just state that I received a package from Amazon. You also get another SMS once the package ships from the mailbox and they even include the tracking number. Finally, their phoneline has NEVER been busy so far (4724673) and the customer support girl is always very helpful and cheerful.

Anyway if you haven’t signed up yet now is a good time since they have the shipping everyday offer going. [Link]

What the hell! Not only have Fasttelco blocked Flickr but it seems they have blocked other photo sites including stock.xchng! Stock.xchng is a site I check every now and then whenever I needed some HiRes images for work. The site is like Corbis and Photodisc except its free. I was just trying to check it now and I got the Fasttelco block page, what losers.

Its been a while since I last posted a review of a microwave meal and since Nats in Lebanon I figured this would be a good time to start again. Tonight for dinner I had the Chicken Fingers meal by Banquet and I really liked it.

I was at Sultan Center checking out the frozen foods section when I spotted this meal. What grabbed my attention was the fact it came with a fudge brownie! I thought that was fucking cool since I never tried a microwave meal that came with cake before. I grabbed two packs plus two packs of the Fried Chicken Meal and headed towards the cashier.

Cooking the Chicken Fingers was very easy, pop it into the microwave for two and a half minutes and its done. While cooking my kitchen started smelling of brownies.. which is a good thing of course since I love the smell of freshly baked brownies. When it was done cooking I took it out of the microwave and grabbed a coke and headed to the living room.

It fucking rocked. Keep in mind I am comparing it to other microwave meals and not some fancy gourmet dinner. The chicken fingers tasted pretty good and the fries wasn’t bad either but the biggest surprise was the brownie, it was eatable! I was having doubts about trying it once I was done cooking it because it just looked.. weird. But, I took the first bite and then had another after another. Its not the best brownie in the world but it tasted pretty good for something that came with a microwave meal.

Now the biggest problem I have with this meal is the portion, its tiny. Three chicken fingers and a spoonful of fries isn’t very filling. But I guess thats why its cheap, the meal costs only 850 fils which is a bargain compared to some other microwave meals. So, for the final score I will have to give it a 3.5 out of 5. If the portion was just a bit bigger it could have easily gotten four stars. Be sure to check out my other reviews in the review section.

This brings back some memories. I was walking back from Baskin Robbins when the sirens started blasting. They must have installed a new system because it was fucking loud. Like so loud it sounds like its coming from everywhere, I felt like I was in a movie. I recorded a short clip with my phone you can watch it by clicking the link. [Video]

update: its 5:09pm and the sirens just came back on again..
update 2: turns out it was turned on by misake [Link]

There was a fire again in one of the trash bins behind my building. This time though there was this one Egyptian worker trying to put the fire out. First he came with a fire extinguisher and it didn’t really do much. Then he went and got a shovel and started throwing sand at it which excited some of the kids who joined in by throwing rocks at the fire. 20 minutes later the guy was able to put out the fire surprisingly, I think he must have been the reason the fire started since there is no other explanation to why he spent 20 minutes throwing sand into a fire in this hot weather. 10 minutes after the fire was put out the fire trucks arrived, fashionably late as usual..

Here are links to two previous times I posted about this same trash:
Link 1 and Link 2

I don’t usually have postive things to say about Mac & More but today I passed by them and turned out they had 2 Black MacBooks. They were already sold to clients and they were busy installing software on them but atleast Nat was able to see in person how the black MacBook looked like. She told her PowerBook and was considering either the 2ghz white MacBook, the 2ghz black Macbook or the 1.8ghz MacBook Pro. The prices between the three were very close, $1300, $1500 and $1800.

Well the blackbook turned out to be pretty boring. It just looks like an ordinary computer which wasn’t very exciting. This instantly took the black book out of the picture and Nats options were either the 2ghz $1300 white MacBook or the $1800 1.8ghz MacBook Pro. $500 difference for a larger screen… not worth it. So I just placed an order for the white book.

Something funny happened while at the Mac store. One employee saw me taking a picture of the black book and he asked me if I had a problem. I thought that was weird cuz the correct question would have been why are you taking a picture? Anyway I replied back asking him if he had a problem. He was like no he was wondering if I had a problem because I was taking pictures. I asked him why is that a problem? He was like no. I was like o..k.. weird.

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]