Search: “kuwait”

A simple but detailed guide to eating sushi. A lot of interesting stuff including information on Fugu, the fish Homer once had in an episode of The Simpsons where he got poisoned at the sushi place. I wonder if any place in Kuwait serves Fugu? Tons of information and all very interesting and informative. [Link]

It seems whatever the problem was with blogspot and fasttelco is solved now. Fasttelco users can access blogspot without getting a timeout error.

Yesterday while at work I couldn’t access any blogspot website. We have a fasttelco connection here but I thought it was probably just a fluke from our internal network. When I got home I realized K theKuwaiti also had trouble accessing blogspot. I don’t think blogspot is being blocked by fasttelco because if it was they would put up a URL Blocked page. Whatever the case is, I am currently accessing all the blogspot blogs using HideMyAss. Not practical but it gets the job done.

Update: It’s not blocked anymore

Name
Jabir al-Ahmad al-Jabir al-Sabah
Amir Sheikh Jabir al-Ahmad Al Sabah
Amir Jaber al-Ahmad al-Jabir Al Sabah

Personal Information
Born – 1929.
Marital Status – Married, up to four wives, large number of children.
Education – Home taught (Local private schools and palace tutors).

Personal History
Emir of Kuwait, Jabir al-Ahmad succeeded his cousin, Sheikh Sabah al-Salim al-Sabah, as Emir of Kuwait in December 1977, having been prime minister (1965-78) and Heir Apparent from 1966.The rule of Jabir has been full of dramatic events. There have been many internal battles over democratization of the society and freedom of the press. The economy has seen much instability, there have been demonstrations and assassination attempts on Jabir’s life. But most dramatic was the invasion by Iraq in 1990, where Jaber was driven out of the country for a period of 7 months.

Political Activity
Jabir al-Ahmad is the current Emir of Kuwait. He became Chief of Public Security in the al-Ahmadi oilfields in 1949. In the late 1950s he dealt with the oil companies in various capacities, and in 1959 became head of the Department of Finance, which in 1962, after Kuwaiti independence, became the Ministry of Finance. In 1963-65 he also was a Deputy Prime Minister, while remaining Minister of Finance and Industry. In 1977, after the death of his cousin, he became the Emir of Kuwait. In 1979, following the Islamic revolution in Iran, and demonstrations among the Shiias of Kuwait, Jabir put more restrictions on freedom of the press in Kuwait. He has been a decisive leader, having allowed the National Assembly to reform in 1981 and dissolving it in 1986 as disagreements arose over its right to question the ability of ministers. During the invasion by Iraq, he fled to Saudi Arabia, where he established a government in exile, returning home in March 1991 after Iraq’s withdrawal. During his exile he gained the support of Kuwait’s opposition leaders in return for his agreement to restore the National Assembly. He did this in 1992, and in 1999 he gave women the right to vote.

Additional Information
Jabir al-Ahmad has survived an assassination attempt in 1985.

[source]

I woke up today morning not wanting to get out of bed. It was nice and cold and I was really cozy. I forced myself to get up and wash up. While brushing my teeth Nat came and told me that the Emir of Kuwait had died. I quickly got online and checked CNN but didn’t find anything. I Checked Arab Times and they also hadn’t published anything. Finally I checked Safat and found that Jelly Belly had posted about his death.

A few minutes later articles started popping up on news.google.com and finally CNN.com. I wasn’t able to find out how he died but all the articles mention that he was very sick and old so I am guessing he died a natural death. He was 79. The government offices will be closed three days beginning today. I am currently at work but they will be sending us home soon.

I have known the Emir all my life and it is sad to see him go.

May he rest in peace.

Faisal sent me a link to this video showing a young child getting beaten and abused by his maid here in Kuwait. According to the person who originally posted the video this is the story:

“Recently a family in Abbasiya employed a female servant at their house to look after their kid. After a couple of days the kid turned gloomy and was always tired. With some doubts, the family put a hidden cam in their sitting room when they left to work. When they returned, they saw the video and they were shocked to see how the servant mistreating the kid.”

To view the video [click here]

Here are a few tips by Knick on how to prevent incidents like this:

1. Get a telephone recorder which is avaliable in Hawally for KD 8-12 which records all incoming and outgoing conversations. A normal cassette is used to record.
2. Keep rooms that are not required by the maid locked.
3. Almost every houshold has a PC attach a webcam and place it in such a place that it monitors the entire room.
4. Dowload windows media encoder and install it to start monitering your house daily. (8 Hrs movie approx is 300 mb)
5. Spend quality time with your children, buy them small gifts every day in return for a report on what happenned during the day at home.
6. Love your kids, show them that you do and let them understand that you are always there to love and protect them.
7. In most of these cases the children are silenced by the maids who threaten them to tell the parents that he/she did this or that and they will be punished. Parents tend to go with the maids who are a different personality in their presence and punish the children. Children loose faith and confidence in the parents. Do not let this happen.
8. Children who undergo such traumatic experiences in their childhood tent to grow up with more complicated personalities, lack confidence and are effected mentally.

Over the vacation I watched the movie Jarhead. Its based on a best-selling book written by a marine on his experiences in Saudi Arabia pre-Desert Storm and later his Desert Storm experience fighting in Kuwait. The movie starts of with a famous “Full Metal Jacket” scene but thats as far as the similarities go. The movie isn’t action packed since its based on truth. You see the movie follows a scout/sniper platoon based in the desert outside Kuwait. Desert Storm was mostly fought from the sky and Sea with very little ground work. Since this movie follows foot soldiers they didn’t have a lot to do, unlike the ground soldiers now in Iraq. It takes on a really interesting perspective showing you the emotional side of the war from the side liners view.

Even though the whole movie takes place in the empty desert it was still entertaining to watch even though there was no war action. There was always something going on in the movie. Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire originally vied for the lead role in the film and thank god they went with Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko) instead. Jake looks like a marine and looks like he can kick ass unlike both Leonardo and Tobey. I actually didn’t recognize Jake until after the movie was over, he looked really different then when he played the messed up kid in Donnie Darko. Overall I give this movie a 3.5 out of 5. It was the best movie I watched over the vacation, the other movie I watched was Oliver Twist and that pretty much sucked.

Its not as bad as Kuwait’s Airport (its pretty close though) but it still sucks. First of all it stinks of something, like coming into a house that hasn’t had their windows open for years. The AC is also off and its really hot and stuff.. I am in my tshirt nearly sweating. There is Internet but its like $10 for 75 minutes. There is no entertainment, and 1 very over priced restaurant. My flight has been delayed, way to go Kuwait Airways. I am bored.

Today was fucked, I past by the photographer at 1PM, they were retouching the shots we took yesterday and I had estimated I would spend max 1 hour finalizing the retouching with them. I ended up leaving at 9PM! Really long day but luckily they were shooting some wine bottles for one of their clients so we ended up drinking a ton of red wine. I will be back in Kuwait tomorrow.

So I am sitting in my hotel room flipping through the channels on the TV when I fall upon the Lebanese station New TV. There was a game show on where they ask a question and if you call in with the right answer you get a chance to win up to $20,000. So I watched it a bit and it was really funny. No one was calling in and the chick who was hosting the show seemed really bored. I was thinking what a fucking stupid show, how the hell do these guys make money. Anyway someone finally called in after 30 minutes of no phone calls and gets the question right and won like $100.

The next game comes on and its basically a puzzle. There are six letters scrambled that when they put together should form a countries name. The answer was easy, Russia so I decided to call in and answer it. I call and get an automated machine telling me that the phone call was going to cost $1 a minute, no problem. Then I got another voice telling me sorry, I am close to winning but I should call again. So I do, and I get the same two voice messages. Turns out everytime you call in you randomly might get through but every time you call you pay $1. So I kept trying to call since the least I could win was like $100. I kept calling and I kept getting the fucking voice mail and I kept trying again. Now I just realized I must have easily tried over 50 fucky times! I am actually still trying to call in now while I am typing this post. Its like I am addicted and I believe I have a chance to get through. I can’t fucking stop!! I can’t!!

Awhile ago I was making fun out of this stupid fucking game show and now I have spent over $50 trying to fucking participate! Nats going to kill me when I get back to Kuwait.

Update: Some fucking dickhead from Saudi Arabia got through and won $200. I feel like such a fucking loser. I hate gambling.

The photography shoot was today and it went good. We originally had 4 different locations we were going to shoot but in the end I had to kill one because it wasn’t going to work out. I really like shooting ads in Lebanon. The quality of work you get from here is really world class. The photographer we were using is really the best one I have ever dealt with. For people living in Lebanon you might have seen his work, he does all the Aishti and Aizone shots. The Aishti work is so good that I used to think they were shot in Europe and was surprised when I found out they were shot in Lebanon by a Lebanese. Anyway I come back to Kuwait on Saturday, can’t wait.

Temperature in Kuwait right now: 13 degrees celcius
Temperature in Lebanon right now: 19 degrees celcius

This is what I call a photography studio. This picture only shows half the place, there is still a similar sized area to the right of this picture. The studio is on the 4th floor of an old warehouse in an industrial area. There is a large lift that fits cars, thats how that benz is up on the 4th floor. Its actually higher then the 4th floor since the first floor is like 4 stories high and then the rest of the floors are as high as this studio. S

Why don’t we have studios like this in Kuwait? How hard is it to find a large warehouse and turn it into a studio?

Whats up with this new law in Kuwait where you need to have a fire extinguisher in your car? Are burning cars that big a problem in Kuwait that we all need to carry around fire extinguishers? I remember there was a similar law in Lebanon, one of the politicians had purchased a large quantity of extinguishers and then created the law so he could make profit by selling them.

Private bars in hotel rooms are amazing. They are filled with the coolest munchies and for some reason a Pepsi can always looks a lot cooler in these hotel room fridges then in yours back home. The items are also extremely overpriced and thats why its usually a good rule never to get stoned in a hotel room. A coke can costs KD1 ($3) while a tiny bottle of Black Label costs KD5 (I could still buy it and bring it to Kuwait and sell it for profit). The most expensive thing in my fridge at the moment is the 1/4 bottle of champagne costing a nice KD20. The cheapest thing is Kit Kat which costs 800fils.

Click here to view a picture of my rooms mini fridge.