Search: “kuwait”

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.

As I have mentioned before I have a telephone line problem at home. There is no dial tone and its not just me, its nearly everyone in my block. We already called the post office to complain and they told us that a note was written to the technician but he hasn’t picked it up yet. If by Saturday the phone lines aren’t working we should send an official complaint. My parents who live next door have asked around in the area and it seems some people have had the same phone issue for over 2 months now and no technician is coming to fix it. Their complaints are going unheard of and now I am worried my phone line won’t be working for another 2 months also.

What can I do to have my problems solved quickly? Who can I call to complain about this? Is this a helpless cause where I just have to sit and wait for things to get solved by themselves?

Having trouble knowing which Danish brands to boycott? I don’t know why I didn’t realize this earlier but Bang & Olufsen is Danish.. I wonder if their store in Fanar is still open? Anyway I did a bit of research to see if there were other brands I liked that were Danish and I found out that my favorite brand of gum, Stimoral is Danish. I need to check and see if Sultan Center still carry them but I am guessing they aren’t. Here is a nice list of Danish products I found, I don’t know if all of these are available in Kuwait:

Food & Beverages
* Arla Foods – milk and dairy products
* Danish meat
* Carlsberg – beer and softdrinks
* Tuborg – beer and softdrinks
* Suntop – orange drink
* Puck – cheese spread
* 3 Cows – #1 feta cheese in Kuwait
* Dano – powdered milk

Danish design
* Lego – Toys
* Bang & Olufsen – Music systems and televisions
* K.I.S.S. – DVD Recorders
* Stelton – Danish design
* Jacob Jensen – Danish design
* Alfi – Danish design
* Rosendahl – Danish design
* Louis Poulsen – Lightning
* Skagen Watches – Danish watches
* Danish Furniture Online
* Piet Hein – Fritz Hansen furniture
* Arne Jacobsen – Fritz Hansen furniture

Candy
* Toms
* Galle & Jessen
* Stimorol Chewing Gum

Cigarettes
* Prince

Healthcare
* Novo Nordisk – Healthcare

Clothes, textile & Shoes
* H2O
* Jysk – Quilts, pillows, mattresses
* Hummel
* Ecco
* Jaco
* Inwear
* Matinique

Other
* Maersk Sealand – one of the largest shipping companies
* Aqua – pop group (Barbie Girl)

I met Sheikh Nasser Al-Sabah the new PM a couple of times a few years back. He is a really nice guy with a huge passion for cars. He is one of the largest Aston Martin collectors in the world and has a garage with some of the coolest cars ever made. He also enjoys collecting vintage cars and I believe he has the largest collection of those in Kuwait. I always thought it would be cool if Jay Leno met up with Sheikh Nasser to talk about cars on the Tonight Show since Jay Leno also loves cars. I guess that will never happen now that he is PM.

Geo arrived yesterday night at 12:05AM via KLM. When I had spoken to a KLM representative earlier in the day he told me I needed only 30 minutes to clear Geo once he arrives.. what bullshit. After 2 hours of running around to 6 different locations at the airport cargo terminal and after going and coming between these 6 offices a total of 11 times, I was finally able to clear Geo and take him home. Mind you I was the only one there clearing anything and it took me over 2 hours so you could imagine how painfully long the process would be during the day when every trader in Kuwait is at the cargo terminal clearing their products. All the employees were very nice and tried their best to get all our papers completed asap but its just a lot of stuff that needed to be signed and at full speed it just wasn’t possible to take less then 2 hours. Oh a strange thing, we were sitting at the vets office at the terminal and one guy there was like did you check on your dog, is he alive? I was like no I hadn’t seen my dog yet but what the fuck, do dogs arrive here dead? The guy was like yeah, many times the dog arrives to Kuwait and its dead. I am guessing this happens often during the summer when they keep the dogs locked up in their tiny travel cages for over 2 hours in the hot summer heat waiting for their owners to get all their paperwork done.

Anyway we get home and Geo is all active and shit and wants to play. So we play. We figured he probably just was so bored trapped in his cage and he just wants to let off some steam. So we played with him until 4AM and Geo was still jumping around all excited. We decide to lock him up in his area downstairs and go up and sleep. His area consists of half the bottom floor of our apartment separated by a 1 meter high fence. His area is around 4×6 meters and the floor is covered in vinyl in case he goes to the bathroom indoors the mess would be easier to clean up. So we lock him up and go upstairs and Geo starts to whine which we were expecting. Suddenly he stops and I was thinking wow that was easier then I expected and so I decided to sneak downstairs quietly to watch Geo sleep. So I am standing in the stairway trying to sneak a peak at Geo sleeping but I couldn’t find him in his area. Suddenly I see Geo walking out of the first floor bathroom casually.. he had escaped from his area! So I realized there was a weakness in my fence design and Geo was able to squeeze out from the far side of the fence. I solve that issue by blocking his escape route with his travel cage. I go back upstairs and I am about to go to sleep when suddenly Nat is like “Mark, Geo is here”. He had escaped again! So I went back down and realized he had climbed over his travel cage and then over the fence. So I solved that problem also and on my way up the stairs I look back and I see Geo squeezing out from between two fences. Fucking A thats like 3 prison breaks in 15 minutes. Good thing I don’t design prisons for a living. We decided to solve the fence issue the next day and for the night he could sleep with us in our bedroom. That didn’t work out the way we planned it either. Geo spent the whole night whining wanting to play with us. At around 7AM we all fell asleep. 9AM I wake up to realize Nat and Geo were missing, seemed they both had woken up at 8AM and Nat made him breakfast and took him down for a walk. It was a totally sleepless night.

We spent most of today fixing his fence issue and taking naps whenever we could. I wasn’t able to post more details earlier because I was dead tired but I just woke up from a 30 minute nap and I feel a bit more energized. I spoke to Fadibou on the phone and we will be meeting up with him and his dog Mikki at Marina Crescent later tonight.

Overall I am really glad we got Geo. He turned out to be much more cuter then his pictures had shown him to be and he is also a lot bigger then I expected. He is silly and dumb at times (like yesterday he got introduced to the concept of a glass door after ramming into it 2 times) and loves playing with Amazon boxes. He doesn’t bark and he’s extremely playful. I will record a video of him soon and upload it once I get my DSL connection back at home. For now I just have the picture I posted earlier today.

I just got a phone call from the Choowy Goowy delivery guy. I am getting 5 jars of cookies delivered to me before 5:30 courtesy of the Choowy Goowy owner. I will try all five flavors and then write a mini review of each and post them here on the blog. Could the readers who ordered some cookies after I posted about them last time leave some comments below on how they found them. Thanks.

Read the Choowy Goowy Review

Update: The cookies are here! They look nice and colorful in their packaging. Can’t touch them though until I go home and take a picture of them.

Remember how last week I was hoping they weren’t going to ban LEGO from the market because its a Danish product? Well yesterday I past by Sultan Center and went upstairs to the LEGO section and guess what? All the shelves where the LEGO used to be are empty now! They banned LEGO!! The dairy section downstairs also had no more Danish products that includes Lurpak, Puck and Three Cows. Whats next? Will they start banning products from countries who supported the Danish like the French and Germans? Would that mean no more BMWs and Mercedes? That would be really silly.

Yesterday me and Nat went to the supermarket and got the following: A box of Kellogg’s Cornflakes, a box of carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, fresh meat, chicken breast, Basmeti rice, eggs and KDD Yogurt. You would think this stuff was ours to eat but its actually for our dog who arrives tonight from Belgium. Its official, my dog will be eating healthier food then me! Geo will be on a raw meat diet which means no crappy canned dog food. Do you know what they make dog food out of? Stuff thats not fit for humans, meaning you know how hot dogs are made up of all the left over meat? Well dog food is stuff you can’t even make hot dogs out of! Its like junk food for dogs, they are convenient for dog owners because all you need to do to feed your dog is open up a can and dump it in his bowl. On the other hand raw meat is the best thing you can feed your dog, its what their bodies were meant to eat and digest. Before dogs started living with humans they used to live in the wild and hunt their food and eat it raw and its what any good breeder feeds his dogs.

When I first asked my breeder what he fed his dogs he told me raw meat I was shocked and disgusted. I was always told raw meat was bad for the dog and this guy was telling me thats all he fed the dogs. So I did some online research and it turns out feeding dogs raw meat is very common amongst breeders and has recently started to gain popularity in the US with pet owners. I read an article on Salon.com that talked about the raw food diet and how new places have popped up all over the US where they deliver you raw meat daily for your dog. It turns out vets don’t recommend raw meat because it keeps the dog healthier meaning less vet visits. From what I read raw food also makes your dogs breath smell better and his poop smaller and more solid. And if every now and then you give your dog meat on a bone his teeth will also be better.

So if you have a dog or are thinking about getting a dog then think about feeding him healthier food, think about going in the way of raw meat. There are a ton of articles online about this and my favorite would be the Salon one. There is also a book you can get from the Kuwait Bookshop in Muthana Complex (Kuwait City) called “All About Dogs”. It costs only KD1.300 and is written by a breeder who has been raising dogs forever. Inside the book he talks in detail about the raw meat diet and lists you all the advantages and disadvantages of it. The ISBN of the book is 1899606327 and you can find it on Amazon for $3.43 but if you live in Kuwait its just easier to pass by the bookshop. If you want to read the Salon article you can also do that by clicking [here]