Search: “maki”

Hard Candy was one of the movies I was looking forward to watch this year but sadly it disappointed me. Going into the movie I really didn’t know what it was about. All I knew was what I got from the trailer and that is a young girl meets an old guy over the Internet and then they meet up and things go wrong. Based on what I knew and what I was expecting, fifteen minutes into the movie and the whole thing takes a surprising 180 degree turn which was probably the coolest part in the movie. After that things just dragged for me.

One thing I have to say, the movie is visually stunning. The colors and styling in the house where most of the story takes place is really cool. The movie on the other-hand I felt was too long although the ending was very short. The movie finished and I was still trying to figure out what had happened and making sure I understood things correctly. Anyway I really can’t say much about the movie because I wouldn’t want to ruin any surprises. I am also going to advise you NOT to read the plot summary or ask questions about the movie and just watch it knowing very little. That way you will be in for a nice shock. For me the movie didn’t live up to my expectations and thats why I am giving it a 3.5 out of 5.

Kleio posted the following comment under the Kuwaitis Stuck in Damascus post:

I was one of those people who was lied to by the Kuwaiti Embassy. They told us all to go up to the Safir hotel in Bhamdoun and that we would be able to catch buses out from there, so we did (two of us) on Friday morning. Once we got there, it was pure chaos. The embassy was totally unorganized and only had about three employees there at the hotel. Why tell all the Kuwaitis to go there if you don’t know how to deal with that many people? The embassy staff (consul and ambassador included) were unhelpful and rude. We couldn’t get on a bus that day because they were giving priority to people with children and elderly. We were told to wait for a phone call telling us when we were assigned to a bus. We naively believed that that would really happen. We missed like 8 buses out merely because we were following the “rules” that turned out to be complete bull. Then, the embassy didn’t offer to pay for the hotel room we had to reserve for the night (even though they had told me when I called that morning that we would “certainly” get a bus out that day).

Next morning, we were told that every single person who was put on a bus to Syria would be guaranteed a seat on a flight out that day. They also told us there would be embassy officials accompanying us to the border, more officials at the border, and then officials from the Kuwaiti embassy in Syria would be there to greet us at the airport. All B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T. Nobody accompanied us – our Lebanese bus driver and one guy on our bus who volunteered to take charge took care of things at the border. Then once we got to the airport, there was no trace of the embassy. It was each man for himself. Went up to the Kuwait Airways office and it was chaos with an enormous waiting list. Guaranteed a seat, my a@@! Luckily, like Nat, we had our tickets booked for Sunday night on Jazeera from Beirut anyway (same flight as Nat, turns out), and so we were confirmed on the replacement flight leaving from Damascus on Sunday. However, we arrived at the airport on Saturday, thinking we had a Kuwait Airways guarnateed ticket out. Of course, all hotels in Damascus were fully booked, and the embassy did nothing to help us find accomodation (I never saw anyone from the embassy in the two days I was in Syria). We had to find our own shelter.

I’m not saying the embassy has to pamper us and do everything for us – quite the contrary, we were perfectly capable of making our own arrangements. All I’m saying is, don’t bloody lie to us and hundreds of others! I would rather they had told us up front: “Look, we’ll try to get you out but there are thousands of you and only a few buses at a time, so we don’t know how long before we can get you across the border. And all we’re doing is getting you to Damascus – from that point on, you have to make your own arrangements. We have extra Kuwait Airways flights arranged, but it’s up to you to get yourself on one of them.” Was that so hard? Why make empty promises and “guarantees” to people who YOU told to come to YOU for help?!

Kleio also has pictures and a video from her evacuation.

I first got into Alternative music in the summer of 92. I was visiting my cousin in LA and he made me watch a music video of a band called Blind Melon. The song was No Rain and it involved a girl dressed up in a bee costume, I am sure everyone has seen it.

Anyway in 1995 the lead singer died from a drug overdose. The band split up and Blind Melon fell apart. I was still a fan though and in 1999 I designed my own website as a tribute to them. It was located at https://unex-t.com/nico and it was the most popular fan site back then.

One day I was checking BlindMelon.com which wasn’t active and decided to email the owner asking him if he could forward the domain to my site. He replied telling me not only would he forward the domain to my site but that I could have the domain since he didn’t have a need for it. That was in 2000 and ever since then I had been running the site.

Everyone was happy, I had a very active community with a active message board with over 20,000 messages, I was providing free blindmelon.com subdomains with hosting to other Blind Melon sites and mostly I was keeping the band alive.

To make a bit of cash I had links on my site advertising the bands various CDs on Amazon and for every CD I ended up selling I got like 50 cents or something. I was making anywhere from $100 to $200 a quarter selling these CDs, its not a lot of money, it didn’t cover the hosting bill (back when I had I was hosted on fasthosts.co.uk) but it was nice cash that I injected back into Amazon by buying tshirts and sneakers.

The problem is suddenly out of the blue the band is interested in the domain. The band members all had different solo projects that all resulted in failure. Unified Theory, The Tender Trio, Extra Virgin and Mercy are some of their failed projects. Now it seems they want to release a new album of unreleased stuff in September and they want the domain.

At first they wanted me to give them the domain for free and when I refused they offered me $500. I tried to explain to them that I had a lot of sentimental attachment to the domain and the fact that I spent a lot of money on it. They disappeared and hooked up with the Law Offices of David Rudich who a few days ago sent me a cease and desist letter accusing me of cybersquatting.

This is not fair and I need help. After taking care of the site for over 6 years and keeping the band alive its not fair that they can come and take it away from me just like that. What are my options? I can’t afford a lawyer. They even HAVE a official website located at BlindMelonMusic.com, what do they want with me?

You can check out the site now by going to BlindMelon.com although I put up a fruity intro page. If you want to see how the site used to look like then you need to go to BlindMelon.com/index2.html

note: Just so there isn’t a misunderstanding, I made money from the domain but it wasn’t profit. Hosting the site cost me a lot more then what I was making from Amazon..

You can read the cease and desist letter after the jump..

I knew they were going to be expensive but I didn’t know they were going to be THAT expensive. I am not even talking about the $21,000 ticket for a skybox seat in the final game I am talking about ticket prices to regular games for example the cheapest ticket to the Argentine Vs Netherland game is like $1,400! I need to start making more money… [Link]

If you are interested in modeling and making some quick easy money then follow the link and sign up (you must be in Kuwait). You don’t have to be a super model or a certain age or gender and most of the modeling is for advertising. You have nothing to lose, try it. [Link]

Update: It seems Romeo fixed the spelling mistake under the client section and also posted the following message:

Hey Guys Take it easy on us with your blogs we are still under construction…. But I got five model applications because of you so thanks for free advertising …. (LOL)

Funny stuff 🙂

I just took an AQ test to measure my extent of autistic traits. The test is not a means for making a diagnosis but eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher. I scored a 26. [Link]

I used to make these cookies back when I was in university. They used to come out really good and everyone always nagged me about when I would bake some more. I forgot what brand of brown sugar I used but for the actually chocolate chips I used to use the brand Baker. I haven’t made the cookies since I came back to Kuwait because I can’t find decent brown sugar and I can’t find Baker chocolate chips which sucks. Anyway here is the recipe, I forgot where I found it:

Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) (226 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup (150 grams) white sugar
1 1/4 cups (270 grams) firmly packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 3/4 cups (525 grams) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons (10 grams) baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoons (6 grams) baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups (375 grams) semisweet chocolate chips

————

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a mixing bowl cream the butter. Add the sugars and beat until well combined. Beat in eggs one at a time making sure to beat well after each addition. Add vanilla and beat until incorporated.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture and beat until just incorporated. Stir in the chocolate chips and nuts, if using. The cookie mixture will be moist and hold together.

Using two tablespoons, drop about 2 tablespoons of dough (38 grams) on the prepared baking sheets. Do not flatten cookies. Bake on the center rack of oven for 12 minutes, or until golden brown and still soft when gently pressed.

Makes about 48 cookies.

In November I posted I wasn’t going to have Subway again because their sandwiches were starting to taste really weird and crappy. Well today I went back to Subway and I have to say it was my best experience with them in a long time. The sandwiches tasted really good and it looks like they started using their old ingredients again. They also started making chocolate chip cookies again, this time they are selling them 3 for 400 fils and they are a bit larger then they used to be. Sadly though their older cookies tasted better, the new ones although look and taste better then a lot of cookies (costa and breadz for example) are still not better then my current top 3 which are Choowy Goowy, Fuddruckers and Hardees.

Breadz! Seriously, their chocolate chip cookies are the dullest. I just tried one over lunch and it didn’t tingle a single taste bud. Its also 50 fils more expensive then the big cookie at Hardees which I would rather have had. On a brighter note I heard Subways cookies have improved again, I used to like their chocolate chip cookies but for some reason they stopped making them at the 2 branches I used to visit. It seems now they are back so I need to go and get some. I love cookies.

I just came back from dinner at Maki. I was invited there by Issa, one of the owners of Choowy Goowy who I had been in contact with for some time now. It was my first time meeting him and he turned out to be a really cool guy. Maki was really amazing, I don’t have a clue how Nat gave it a 1.5 out of 5. I am going to counter her review with my own and never listen to her food reviews ever again.

Simply Stinni found another link for an online maid shopping site. This place has an even larger collection of maids and allows you to search by age, sex, nationality, religion etc.. kinda like those match making sites… [Link]

Smartwrap is a small rubber stereo earphone cord manager. Basically what this means is if you have a headphone with a really long cord, the Smartwrap solves that issue for you by making it shorter.

When the Smartwraps first came out ages ago I wanted one but the only website that sold them only accepted PayPal which wouldn’t work with my Kuwaiti visa card. I then forgot about it until yesterday when I noticed someone at work had gotten one. His sister had ordered a couple and he ended up giving me a black one.

This thing rocks, its such a small simple thing but its won a couple of design awards and its just extremely practical. As you can see in the picture above I have wrapped my headphone around the Smartwrap, its annoying to have excess cable when I am working at my desk and its a lot neater now.

Anyway I just checked Amazon and they are selling the Smartwraps in packs of 3’s for like $11 so you can head over and get one incase you are interested.
[Buy from Amazon.com]

Update: I really love the Smartwrap!! I just uploaded a super hi-res picture of it, check it out. [Picture]

A list of things which do not actually constitue a valid April Fools’ Day joke taken from Anil Dash:

“I changed my stylesheet! To someone else’s!” Why isn’t that funny? Because I still knew it was your site.

“Our tiny company bought/got bought by a giant company. Like Microsoft!” Wow, that’s lame. Neither believable nor surprising enough to be amusing.

“We are embracing this thing we’ve demonized forever!” So you’re a pest removal service that’s getting into the cockroach-raising business? Sigh.

“We have a big announcement today!” No you don’t. It’s Saturday.

“Our new product does the impossible.” You mean like making an April Fool’s joke on the web that’s actually funny.

I was actually planning on changing my stylesheet to something funnier before I read this list. Nibaq already pulled the second one today.

The movie trailer for the 9/11 movie United 93 is now online. The trailer starts off feeling like a Gus Van Sant movie which is making me wonder if it might have been better off to have him direct it in the first place.. [Link]

Seems like Rocky is going the way of King Kong when it comes to pre-movie blogging. The Rocky Balboa blog recently came online and over the next year, Sylvester Stallone and the production team will talk about the making of the upcoming film Rocky Balboa. The site already contains a video and some pictures from the movie and from what I can see Stallone is back in shape but is really starting to look old. I heard that Mr. T is coming back for this Rocky movie, I hope thats true. I also hope that Stallone comes out with Rambo 4 soon, I would rather see Rambo over Rocky any day. Finally I also think Stallone should join Jack Bauer on ’24’, together they can do some serious ass kicking! [Link]