Categories
Food & Drinks Information Kuwait

Dunkin Donuts City Center

Dunkin Donuts Salmiya

Dunkin Donuts is opening a branch in Souk Salmiya near City Center. This the second branch I know of thats opening. The first is the main Salmiya branch. Any others?




Categories
Kuwait Videos

Child getting abused by a maid

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.




Categories
Personal Travel

Lebanon Again

I just arrived to the hotel like an hour ago. The room is pretty cool, I got showtime and internet access so its just like home except for the fact I have to pay $10 for 5 hours worth of internet and I have to use up the 5 hours within 24 hours. I will try to find free wifi in the area and try to hop on from there.

The Kuwait Airways flight sucked. The plane left on time and arrived on time but the experience wasn’t that great. Firstly I arrived to the airport early and I asked the guy to give me window seat as front as possible. He told me the best he can give me was row 16. After travelling on like row 4 and 5 with Jazeera going back to 16 is like fucked up. Secondly when I got on the plane I just felt sick. The inside was dark and gloomy and the seats are too small and there is like zero leg room. I could also smell plane exhaust which made me even sicker.

On the bright side, the food was pretty good, I had hamour fish with rice. They also had an old episode of Xfiles playing which I watched.

The weather here is as hot as Kuwait which sucks. It looks like Lebanon will be missing its winter also, fucking ozone layer.

Note: It currently costs KD42 (approx $120) for a two way ticket with Jazeera Airways to Lebanon but costs KD147 (approx $450) for a two way ticket with Kuwait Airways. What a fucking ripoff.




Categories
Food & Drinks Travel

My Oasis

vodka

I went to the supermarket today and stepped into the alcohol isle. Its fucking amazing! I really miss it. I got 2 bottles of red wine (Chateu Kefraya), 1 bottle of white wine (ksara blanche de blanche), 2 bottles of Ballentines Whisky (my favorite) and 1 bottle of vodka (stoyshka or something, the cheapest and the best). I also got munchies and a whole bunch of other crap. Final price like KD20. Thats like half the price of one bottle of alcohol in Kuwait.




Categories
Personal Travel Work Related

Time to Lock Up

Today is my last day at work before I go on my ten day vacation. Its tradition for me that on the last day at work I start locking up my stuff on the computer. I spend a lot of time on my mac at work and so accumulate a lot of items like bookmarks, files, typefaces etc.. that I don’t want to share with people at the office. The way I lock up my stuff is I create a new account which the computer will log into automatically on boot and then I set the permissions on the folders I don’t want anyone else viewing to “No Access” except for myself. Its not a full proof plan since its easy to reset the password on the Mac but its good enough for my needs. To be safe I also delete all my key chains and clear everything in Firefox.




Categories
Kuwait News

Limiting expats stay to 6 years will hurt economy

Today there was an article in Arab Times related to what I posted the other day on the fact that I heard expats will be limited to staying in Kuwait for only 6 years. I am glad the majority of people think this is a stupid idea. Here is the link to the Arab Times article or click on more to read it here.




Categories
Kuwait News Politics

Index of Political Freedom

This is the list for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region according to the Economist. I guess Kuwait is in a pretty good spot.

1. Israel 8.20
2. Lebanon 6.55
3. Morocco 5.20
4. Iraq 5.05
5. Palestine 5.05
6. Kuwait 4.90
7. Tunisia 4.60
8. Jordan 4.45
9. Qatar 4.45
10. Egypt 4.30
11. Sudan 4.30
12. Yemen 4.30
13. Algeria 4.15
14. Oman 4.00
15. Bahrain 3.85
16. Iran 3.85
17. UAE 3.70
18. Saudi Arabia 2.80
19. Syria 2.80
20. Libya 2.05

[Source]




Categories
Kuwait Mags & Books

Editor of Bazaar

The editor of Bazaar has replied to the previous post Bazaar Magazine Knows Shit. This is what he had to say:

mark,for your information I am a regular reader of your blog and am always very impressed by it as I am by all of you guys!. I wish we had a tenth of the freedom you guys have in expressing yourselves.Moreover,just to clarify something to you,we dont edit writers and we dont pick and choose what we print and what we dont print depending on OUR point of view. We dont neccesarily agree with what our writers submit,but we do give them space to express themselves. Unfortunately,sometimes that means that some readers will definately not agree with something written.These views do NOT represent our point of view,and to prove it,have a look at all the positive articles on blogging and on bloggers we have had over the years.I strongly urge you to write a column regarding the article that came out with your views on the matter and I promise you it will get published in bazaar! best regards.

I am personally not a good writer (my vocabulary is very basic) but maybe another blogger out there like Nibaq, shewritesq8 or K can write an article from a bloggers point of view.




Categories
50s to 90s Music Personal

My Car’s Playlist

Owner Of A Lonely Heart – Yes
Run To You – Bryan Adams
Voyage voyage – Desireless
Self Control – Laura Branigan
Thriller – Michael Jackson
Bette Davis Eyes – Kim Carnes
Maria Magdalena – Sandra
Touch Me – Samantha Fox
In The Heat Of The Night – Sandra
Missing You – John Waite
Stranglers – Golden Brown
Broken Wings – Mr. Mister
Rock You Like A Hurricane – Scorpions
Who Are You – The Who




Categories
Funny Information

Contacted by a Princess

The Princess of Brunei just contacted me asking me for help. She basically has money stashed in various parts of the world and needs my help in retrieving them. In return I will get rewarded financially. I love these spam mails. Click on more to read her email.




Categories
Design

Wieden + Kennedy Offices

cool office

Comparing my ad agencies office to Widen + Kennedy’s office is so fucking sad. Why can’t I work in a place like that! I want a bigger desk! Lots of pictures after the jump [Link]




Categories
Kuwait Photography

B-Side 019 2/12/04

019

Was flipping through my Miskan archive when I found this picture dating back to February of this year which for some reason I never ended up using. Looking at it now I think its a lot cooler then the image I finally decided to use that day.




Categories
Kuwait Photography

B-Side 347 26/10/05

car wreck

Todays B-Side is from a car wreck near McDonalds on the Gulf Road.
Click here for the Miskan post.




Categories
Funny Politics

Top ten reasons why Syria didn’t kill Hariri

10. Cell phones are too advanced for syrians to use

9. The instructions on the bomb manual were not written upside down

8. Abu Addas was busy hiding his suicide tape in a tree and forgot to drive the truck

7. Lahoud had the vibrating phone stuck up his @$$ and couldn’t give the go ahead.

6. The Mourabitoun were too happy celebrating having been resurrected from syria’s junkyard of non existent militias to remember what it was they were supposed to do.

5. Al A7bash were too busy celebrating the sale of 10 cell phone lines that they missed the boat too

4. Ghazi Kenaan was practicing shooting himself in the back accidentally threw himself out a window while tied to a chair. Luckily he had given an interview minutes before absolving syria.

3. Bashar said on tv that he didn’t do it and that’s not the kind of person he is. What more proof of innocence could anyone want?

2.Syria “Doesn’t have that type of system” of assasinations, Kamal, Bachir, Renee, Hobeika, Dany, Sadr, Irani, Khaled, etc are all coincidences.

1. Everyone including Hassan Nassrallah, Berri, Iran, knows that the Mossad did it. Duhhhhh!! How silly can this Detlev be…..phone records…what phone records…evidence….what evidence………This statement is POLITICIZED…..we cannot accept it.

By Naycola




Categories
Apple Kuwait Shopping

Mac City

mac city

This is just a repost from Miskan.com since I want to store it also in 2:48AM’s archive.

A new Mac store opened in Kuwait called Mac City. Someone told me its supposed to be the largest Mac store in the Middle East, if it is then thats very sad. I past by Mac City tonight expecting a “city” but all I found was a regular shop. I was expecting a large store with loads of Mac’s on display and a comfortable atmosphere where I could go mingle with other Mac users. What I got was an average sized store, with only 4 different Macs on display and an atmosphere that wasn’t comfortable at all. The store felt very sterile and unfriendly. It was obvious they wanted the store to look like an Apple store but they forgot one important thing, personality. When I walked into Mac City there were two employees, one was in his late 40’s while the other was in his late 30’s. They didn’t seem friendly nor did they look cool. The shop was also very quiet, there wasn’t any music playing or anything and every footstep me and Nat took could be heard. We didn’t feel comfortable, we quickly walked around checking the prices of the various products and then we left. I wasn’t impressed, I was disappointed and not just because of the terrible atmosphere but also because of the prices. Mac City is just like Mac & More, Virgin, IOC and Kamal Sultan… over priced. Mac City had nearly all the Griffin Technology mac accessories but ALL of them were more then double the price of what you can find online. The prices of the Apple hardware were also exactly like the other over priced Mac stores. 2GB nano is KD110, 4GB is KD130. 1GB shuffle is KD58 while 512MB is KD49. 14″ iBook is KD578 while the iMac starts at KD574. There are a whole bunch of Mac stores in the market already, this store doesn’t differ from them. So far the cheapest Mac store is zMacShop followed by Solize. The best atmosphere is also zMacShop and thats because the 2 guys who run it are young and friendly. Mac City is just one big disappointment. For those of you who want nano’s, wait a few days and you should be able to get them from zMacShop for nearly KD50 cheaper.