Search: “kuwait”

I was just checking out Frankom’s site when I found a picture of this guy above. If you have ever been to any of the popular malls in Kuwait you MUST have seen this guy atleast once. It seems he goes by the nickname Shark and you could usually spot his Blue vintage Bugatti or yellow T-Rex parked outside Starbucks in Salmiya opposite Fanar. I sometimes see him at Souk Sharq during my lunch break and Marina Mall during the evening and I always wonder if this guy has a job or not since he is always hanging out at cafes. Anyway you can check out more pictures of the Shark at his website. Maybe next time I see him I will try to find out what he does for a living. [Link]

For the past two days I have been waking up in the middle of the night to young men singing in the street. I live in Salmiya high street (thats what it used to be called in the old days) and my apartment is located on top of a shopping mall which is located right on main road. The guys park their cars in-front of the mall, turn up the radio loud and start singing. The first night this happened at 4:30AM, yesterday it happened at 3AM. On the first night they were singing a sad Arabic song which was kinda eerie waking up to but yesterday night they seemed to be in a better mood since the music seemed “happier” and they sounded like they were dancing to it while singing.

They are FUCKING ANNOYING! I mean what the hell is wrong with these people. If we had alcohol in Kuwait you would think they were drunk or something but what the fuck is wrong with these guys? Don’t they have jobs they have to wake up early for? I think tonight if they wake me up I am just going to start randomly throwing eggs in their direction and hopefully hit some fucker. I did that once when I was in high-school, we went up to the tall building in front of ASK and once the students started coming out of the main gate me and some friends started throwing eggs down at them. Really funny stuff..

Update: I added a picture above to show why I chose eggs as my weapon of choice and not a paintball gun or a bucket of hot boiling oil. I basically don’t have direct line of sight because of the way my building is shaped. My only options were either water balloons or eggs since you don’t need a direct line of sight for those. In the end I decided to go with eggs since I could throw them further. Anyone remember the old Dos Basic game where you had 2 gorillas, one on each side of the screen with buildings in between and you had to throw something in a calculated arc to try and hit the other gorilla? Well this is going to work the same way.

Ok, I believe I have officially overdosed on Choowy Goowy cookies. I had a dozen on my way to work today morning and I had 5 more after lunch plus yesterday I brought the super large jar of 5 dozen cookies to work and I don’t know how many of those I ate. I still have 4 more jars left at home! So many cookies so little time. By the way, anyone know where I can get Cookie Monster stuff here in Kuwait?

Update: Forza was nice enough to share this link with us. Its cookie monster in rehab! [Link]

This is a video of a BMW M3 racing against a chipped Porsche Cayenne Turbo in Kuwait. Notice that the M3 slams on the gas after the Porsche starts to accelerate. I love M3’s. [2.8MB WMV]

[source q8speed]

Thursday afternoon I drove all the way to Ahmadi so that I could take Geo our pet dog to the International Veterinary Hospital. I read from peoples comments on my site that IVH was the best veterinary hospital in Kuwait and I now believe that to be true.

I used to take our previous family dog to the vet in Shuwaikh near the Friday Market. That place was really dirty and I never felt comfortable there neither did my dog. But then again my dog never felt comfortable leaving the house and he “hated” strangers. Still, when my dog got sick that hospital really didn’t do anything and we finally had to put our dog to sleep. Since I didn’t want the same thing to happen to Geo I decided to take him to the best vet in Kuwait and all signs pointed to IVH.

Driving out to Ahmadi from my home in Salmiya took 30 minutes. The map on their website was very easy to follow and we never got lost. When we arrived to the hospital it was like arriving to a ranch in Arizona or somewhere in the Australian outback, it didn’t look anything like your usual Kuwait. To get to the hospital you have to drive off the main road down a paved path surrounded by desert bushes on the side and very little if any buildings around. You then come in through a large gate where you find two signs, one pointing to the emergency entrance and the other towards the visitors parking. We parked in the very clean and very spaced out parking lot and walked towards the main hospital building. I couldn’t believe how gorgeous the place was, there was green grass everywhere, large palm trees, no trash and everything looked really good, better then our hospitals!

We walked into the hospital and told the employees that we had an appointment and then we took a seat while we waited for our turn. The waiting room was very cozy, the benches had cushions on them and their were tons of magazines to read. Their were 4 other dogs in the waiting room with us, 3 labrador puppies and one Japanese breed. Geo spent most of his time playing with the Japanese dog which was very cute. When Geo finally got bored we took him back outside to play on the grass where he met another dog and started to play with him. Finally around 15 minutes later it was our turn to go in.

The vet was a very nice friendly guy and Geo ended up liking him a lot. When the vet asked us what we were feeding the dog, we told him raw meat… to our surprise the vet didn’t try to convince us it was not good for him like most vets would do. Instead, he turned out to know about the raw meat diet and how its the best diet for Geo. He started asking us if Geo was getting all his vitamins and proteins and what else we were feeding him. We told him we were also giving Geo raw eggs twice a week, One large yogurt spoon twice a week and brown toast with honey once a week. We also told him Geo wasn’t getting any Vitamin A or B since he wasn’t eating any of his vegetables, so he gave us some vitamins to give to Geo once a day until he started eating his vegetables. The vet then started asking us questions about how we were treating him and how the toilet training was going and he started giving us advice and tips which we already new about. And thats what I liked about the vet, he was telling me stuff I already knew, but the thing is I had to research my ass off to find out and learn all this stuff from various websites, breeders and people with different opinions. Its not stuff you learn at vet school but stuff you learn with experience after years of raising dogs yourself and this vet knew all the best methods and techniques and that gave me a lot of confidence in him. My previous dogs vet never asked me any thing and never gave me any kind of tips. This vet on the other hand was giving me a lot of tips and telling me all the right stuff. He’s amazing, he knows what he is talking about and I could have a decent conversation with him about my dog. We told the vet we wanted to start Geo on worming and he agreed and gave him the medicine. Finally we were done and we walked out thanking the vet. Our bill? KD12.500 and that included KD7 for the visit, KD1 for the worming medicine and KD4.5 for the vitamins. Not bad at all. I scanned the full price list and I have it linked at the end of this post for those of you that are interested.

Once we left the vets office we decided to walk around outside and discover the hospital more. We past by their pet shop which was pretty cool and had a ton of stuff. We also past by the agility course which looked like something Geo would really enjoy once he grows up. Finally we let Geo run around a bit on the grass before we decided to head back home.

I was really impressed with the hospital and I feel a lot more better knowing something like that exists in Kuwait. The only downside to the place is the location but I couldn’t find anything else and thats why I am going to give this hospital a 4.5 out of 5.

Click here to view pictures of the hospital
Click here to view the prices at the hospital
Click here for the IVH website

This is what 5 dozen Choowy Goowy cookies look like 🙂

Top 3 things our pet dog Geo fears the most:
1) Little girls on rollerblades
2) My Hoberman
3) The Roomba

Top 3 things our per dog Geo loves the most:
1) Little boys high on sugar
2) The Egyptian gang under our house
3) Ethernet cable

There is a brand of earphones called Shure, they became really popular in the US because people who owned iPods and were looking for much better quality earphones would purchase the Shure’s. I own a pair of the Shure E2’s and they are really amazing. Anyway the Shure dealer in Kuwait refuses to stock them. I past by the Shure dealer over a year ago when I wanted to by the E2’s, I figured I would check and see how much they were in Kuwait before I decided to purchase them from Amazon. I passed by the dealer and he told me they only bring them by order and it would take 2 to 4 weeks. I was like fuck it and got them from Amazon for a cheaper price and they arrived a week later.

Two weeks ago Shure opened a store near my office in Muthana Complex. I just past by them today because a friend of mine wanted to by some Shure earphones and once again the dealer told me they don’t carry them but they can order it for me. What the fuck?

If I owned the Shure brand in Kuwait I would get a large quantity of the affordable E2 earphones, a good amount of the more expensive E3’s and a handful of the much more expensive E5’s. I would then target the iPod crowd by maybe placing a stand at Virgin and selling them there or maybe by placing an ad in Bazar magazine. Why would the dealer in Kuwait not stock the best selling Shure products especially if everyone owns an iPod?

Click here for pictures of my Shure E2’s with foam tips

I always wanted to be a policeman and it pisses me off that I am not allowed to become one here in Kuwait? I can’t even become a reserve cop! I have lived here all my life and I want to give back to the community by becoming a cop, shouldn’t I be allowed to? If I want to give back to my community what else can I do? What options do I have as an expat?

Thanks to Rami I currently use Tivo to record all my favorite shows on Showtime. But tonight I past by the Showtime stand at Marina Mall and noticed they now have something similar called Showbox. I tried to find out how close Showbox is to Tivo in features but the salesperson there didn’t know anything. The way she explained it to me was that with Showbox I can watch any show I want any time, meaning if I feel like watching King of Queens now I can just click on King of Queens and watch it live. I think thats bullshit and she really doesn’t know what she is talking about. I got the leaflet on the Showbox from her and I was able to understand a bit more. Basically what I understood is you can pause live TV which is something the Tivo can do of course. With Showbox you could also schedule what you want it to record for you 7 days in advance but say Seinfeld is playing everyday, you have to manually tell it to record each and every episode one by one. Now this is where Tivo kicks Showbox’s ass. With Tivo I can just say record every episode of Seinfeld with one command and it will record every episode of Seinfeld from now until I tell it not to which can be a month from now, a year from now.. whenever I want. I don’t have to manually set it to record each and every episode over and over. Anyway she also said Showbox would cost me KD135 and has an 80GB hard drive inside. Tivo cost me $70 and I have a 120GB drive inside. So far Showbox doesn’t interest me but it might for those of you who don’t have a Tivo. I scanned the leaflet and you can check it out below.

Leaflet
Front Page
Second & Third Page
Fourth Page

I think you can also find more information on showbox.showtimearabia.com but I wasn’t able to connect to it because I am on my slow GPRS connection now.

I just setup a forum for this site. I figured readers can hang out there, chat and discuss stuff. People new to Kuwait can also go in and ask questions if they have any and other users can answer them back. The forum is easy to use and I don’t think anyone should have any trouble using it. I placed a link in the top menu for easy access. Check it out. [Link]

Last week I received five jars of Choowy Goowy cookies each a different flavor. The flavors are Chocolate Chip, Peanut Butter, Cinnamon, Macadamia and Double Chocolate. After sharing the cookies with family and friends, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to review each flavor separately and the reason being no one had anything negative to say about the cookies! Everyone who tried the cookies automatically fell in love with a flavor and started ordering jars for themselves. They are really all delicious and its become a common sight in my office for example to find cookie jars on some peoples desks. Everyone who finds out about the service is amazed such a thing exists in Kuwait.

So basically its not about which cookie flavor is the best. They are all the best, its about which flavor is your favorite. I know mine and its the double chocolate.

Want to order cookies? Call them up at 2626559.

Read my Choowy Goowy Review

Have you gotten your loved one a Shani today?

Special greetings to:
K the Kuwaiti
Savior Machine

I passed by the Ministry of Communications branch in Salmiya today morning to solve my phone problem. When I got there I spotted 3 MOC vans which I guessed were the technician vans, so I waited in my car hoping to catch one leaving so I could bribe him to fix my phone line. Around 10 minutes passed when I saw another MOC van arriving and about to park. I got out of my car and ran towards the technician who was coming out of the van. I call out and he stops and asks me what I wanted, I asked him if he was a technician and replied telling me he was in charge of installation. Now the problem is while running towards the guy I thought he was Egyptian but after I started talking to him I realized he was a local. At first I wasn’t sure if I should offer him a bribe or not but he seemed annoyed by me and so I decided not to even try. He told me if I needed a technician to go inside the building. So I went in looking for the technicians walking around not know where to go when the guy I had spoken to outside came up to me and pointed me to a building outside, he told me to go in it, take a left and then take the last door on the right. So I do that except the door on the far right had an employees only sticker on it. I figured whatever and just walked in.

I walked in a huge ass room with a really high ceiling and a couple of rows of racks with tons of cables running around them. I figured this was the main switchboard room but it looked like technology from the 70’s and 80’s. I found a woman sitting at an old wooden desk and told her I was looking for a technician. She asked me why and I explained to her my problem. She brought over a small basket full of what I realized were complaint cards and started flipping through them looking for mine. Suddenly an old Indian guy walked in and asked the woman for the complaint basket and she told him to wait a bit because she was looking for something. So I turn around and asked the guy if he was a technician, he told me yes. I told him my line had a problem, he asked me which area and I told him. He told me the whole block there has a major problem and that over 1400 lines were not working. He told me they are trying to work as fast as possible but it was a fault in the major cable and they still need around 4 days to fix it. I told him if it was only 4 days I don’t have a problem with its just that I know people who’s phone lines haven’t been working for over 2 months. He told me not to worry and they are trying their best to fix the problem. So I thanked him and the woman and left.

Now I will wait and see what happens. I believe they are working to fix the problem so I guess its just a matter of time and I get my phone line and Internet back.

There is a site I use every now and then to buy CDs from. I usually use it when I want to buy every CD of a certain band for example I got all the Alice in Chains CDs plus all Rage Against the Machine CDs from this site. The site I am talking about is BMGmusic.com. I use them because the CDs are really cheap, you buy 12 CDs for the price of 1. Thats it, no small print filled with traps and no forcing you to buy 6 more CDs in the next 2 years like Columbia House.

I have used them maybe 6 times so far and I usually buy classics like Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Its a practical way of expanding your CD collection… that is if you still collect CDs. 12 CDs for the price of 1, its hard to beat. [Link]

Note: You need an Aramex Shop & Ship mailbox if you are living in Kuwait.