Search: “kuwait”

This has to be the longest lasting April Fools prank of the year. On April 1st Maynard Keenan the lead frontman for one my favorite bands Tool sent an email saying he found Jesus. This was an obvious attempt to mock Brian Welch from Korn who a few months earlier decided to leave Korn because “he had found god“. Surprisingly though many people didn’t get joke and till today people still don’t it was just a joke. Even Nibaq was telling me the other day that if I knew Maynard had found Jesus. Here is a link with details on this April Fools prank, something like a detailed history of it.

By the way, now that I think about it, Keenan sounds like a Lebanese family name pronounced Kin-3an. Interesting…

Yesterday while chatting with Tivo Guy over lunch about my DSL options, he mentioned UCC. I was like UCC? Never heard of them. Turns out UCC is Gulfnet which is Kuwait.net. I thought they had died a few years but turns out they are still alive. So later on in the evening I got to Shownet to cancel my account (finally got it over with) and the guy there was tells me that they have a new DSL only service in collaboration with.. UCC. Interesting how when you hear about something for the first time and then suddenly hear it again. Turns out Shownet is an official GulfNet DSL distributer and they are packaging showtime packages with Gulfnets DSL offerings. I ofcourse refused to have anything to do with Shownet anymore and said no thank you. So UCC is United Cable Company which is GulfNet which is Kuwait.net.

Ok so as I said in my previous post my PSP is in Kuwait. After trying to contact them from 2PM, I was just able to get a hold of someone now:

Me: When can i pick up my package?
Aramex: Package is in Ardiyeh (the main operations facility).
Me: Can I pick it up from there?
Aramex: No, everyone wants to pick it up from there but you cant, its not allowed. You can only pick it up from our Kuwait City office.
Me: Ok when can I come over and pick it up?
Aramex: I don’t know, there are over 800 packs and they have been sorting them out since 1PM
Me: O..K… but when will I be able to pick up my package?
Aramex: Usually around 6PM but we will send out SMS’s when they arrive
Me: OK so at 6 I can come pick up my package?
Aramex: inshalla
Me: Thank you good bye
Aramex: bye

Time for men to put aside their trousers and ties and dress in the comfy dishdasha for a Kuwaiti clothing experience. Women can wear the traditional “daraa” which is a long, loose gown usually worn at home, for an elegant yet comfortable look. For those who are not sure they want to invest in a dishdasha or daraa, the AWARE Center will provide a selection from which to borrow for the evening, and a local vendor will sell ladies daraas.

A hot buffet dinner will be served at 8 pm and AWARE staff will demonstrate a variety of traditional clothing. Price per person: 2 KD. Advance registration with payment is recommended since seats are limited. Call 533-5260/80 for more information.

Nibaq just got me the coolest thing. Its a toy based on the only website 20Q. Basically it can guess what you are thinking about. Its easy to play, just think of something, and 20Q will try to guess it in less then 20 questions. It really works try it.

According to our “secret” source. There is free wifi available at The Palms, Kuwait University, and the Kuwait Airport.

There is free wifi at Häagen Dazs at Souk Sharq according to a recent post by nibaq. Further investigation has revealed that this is just temporary. By next week the connection there will NOT be free. So take advantage and to those of you attending todays blog meetup, have fun.

I pass by McDonalds nearly every morning to have breakfast. It started off at first as a way to kill time before I got to the office, but now its become a daily routine. I love a good breakfast and I haven’t found a place in Kuwait yet that provides as good a breakfast as McDonalds.. for the price. 850 fils will get you eggs, muffins, sausages, hashbrowns and a coffee or orange juice. 400 fils will get you 3 large pancakes. 350 fils will get you one of the McMuffin sandwiches while 700 fils will get you a McMuffin sandwich, hashbrown and your choice of coffee or orange juice. I like passing by in the morning on my way to work because it gives me time to sit quietly and think while also allowing me to read the morning paper. Surprisingly, the majority of McDonalds breakfast people are local woman of various ages. Some look like university students, some look like government employees while others look like mothers who had just dropped off their kids to school. For those of you who have never had a McDonalds breakfast I definetly advise you to try it out. Where else can you get eggs, pancakes, muffins, hashbrowns, sausages, and orange juice all for only KD1.250?

Yesterday my PSP arrived at my US mailbox. Now I am just waiting for them to ship it to Kuwait. I can’t believe I have to wait the whole weekend to get the PSP. I have two major worries. One, I will have problems with the local customs since it seems Sony, Panasonic and some other dealers in Kuwait have made a pact with the custom authorities, and any of their products are usually not allowed into Kuwait. The second worry I have is dead pixels. Dead pixels are pixels on the screen that don’t change color. This means if the whole screen is black for example the dead pixel might show as a green dot on the screen. 1 dead pixel isn’t a major problem but I have read about people getting a full row or dead pixels! The suspense is killing me.

Oh my god I really can’t believe this. So my internet hasn’t been working for over a month now and I they are still taking 50KD a month. No one can come fix my connection at home because they cant come after 5PM and I finish work at 5:30. So I just went to shownet now in Farwaniya to cancel my account and guess what. They fucking close at 6. There is no way I can make it from Kuwait City to Farwaniya in less then half an hour. I might but it I doubt if I get there at 5:55 anyone will be willing to help. So this means I dont have internet and I can’t cancel my account. unfucking believable!

My Sony PSP has shipped, it should arrive in my US mailbox on the 4th via UPS and hopefully arrive in Kuwait by Thursday.

Nibaq yesterday left his Nintendo DS over at my place.. deliberately. He is trying to get me to like the DS and convince me that its a much better system then the PSP (yeah right). I tried playing wario ware on it yesterday, I found the fact that you could blow on the DS for some of the mini games interesting and original but other then that I wasn’t impressed. I find the second screen useless as it serves really no purpose and the touch screen is so uncreative since I have had it for ages on my PDA and the only good thing its for is clicking links on and not controlling a car. If anything the two screens actually make me a bit dizzy. So since my first experience with the DS, I haven’t gone back to playing with it again, neither has nataly who is busy playing Metroid Zero Mission on the Gameboy SP. Will I crave the DS today? We will see but I doubt. So far, it really sucks.

Since my post the other day on the new BKME logo I have heard two definitions for the sphere. The first is that its not a pearl its the moon. The second definition is that its a crystal ball. Both sources for these answers were BKME employees. So I decided I will contact BKME myself and find out. I sent them an email 2 days ago and I didn’t get a reply. I called them up last night and believe it or not their customer support line works only during regular working hours! So since today morning I have been trying to contact them on 812000 but no one is picking up. If I was planning on being a new customer I would have moved on and looked elsewhere by now. I will keep trying to call and will post when I find out anything.

Update: turns out its a pearl

I don’t know why I hadn’t heard of this until today but I just found out about the coolest fucking thing ever, the Sinclair C5. It was released back in 1985 and it was supposed to be the Segway of that era. The C5 worked on rechargeable battery that would last up to 30KM, if the battery finished you could pedal your way back home. Best of all it cost only 150KD. But, the Sinclair C5 was a commercial disaster. It got very negative media coverage and in the end only 12,000 C5s were produced and the project was killed off.

I really want one now, I checked eBay and they are selling for like 100KD only. Imagine me driving one down to Sultan Center or something. Its amazing!! Now I just need to find someone who would be willing to ship one from England to Kuwait.

Here are some links:
Sinclair C5 Enthusiasts
Sinclair C5 on eBay

My favorite orange drink since highschool has been Sunkist. I started drinking it back in highschool because it was cheap at only 50fils. Since then, Sunkist has become the only orange juice I drink. For some reason though I always thought Sunkist was a 100% local product. But just now I was reading the label and it said “Under license from Sunkist Growers Inc; USA”. So I googled Sunkist and quickly found www.sunkist.com. Then I found this which I found funny:

Sunkist products have a long history in several Persian Gulf States. Besides being a major juice brand, Sunkist is the market leader in juice drink cups in the Kuwaiti market.

Ofcourse they are gonna be the market leader, their are no other juice drink cups in the market! hehe, anyway, Sunkist still rules!