Search: “salmiya”

A friend recommended I try shawerma from a place in Salmiya called Happy Duck. At first I was hesitant but then I thought to myself, what if this back alley place with a stupid name turns out to have really good shawermas? I decided not to discriminate and give the place a shot.

I passed by the place late in the evening, it wasn’t too hard to find, I just took the exit on the Gulf Road right before were Crepaway (now called Divas) used to be located. The location wasn’t bad, they had ample parking space and no traffic around them. I went down, ordered two shawermas and a coke, came back to the car and started eating them.

My first impression was that the shawerma was really greasy. I munched away and went through the first shawerma without encountering anything out of the ordinary but when I hit the second sandwich something tasted really weird. Kinda like the chicken was under cooked or something which grossed me out so I threw it awat. I didn’t like their shawerma at all.

The price of their shawerma is 250 fils which competes with my two favorite shawerma places at the moment, Badar Al Badoor and Al Ghader, but Happy Duck is not even in the same league as them. Final score is a 1.5 out of 5.

Although there are a ton of shawerma places near my house Dodo is the place I frequent the most. The staff are friendly and quick and they also have a wide range of sandwiches to choose from. Personally my favorite sandwich at Dodo is their chicken shawerma.

I don’t know how accurate this story is but I remember being told that the owner of Dodo was also the owner of Barakat, my favorite shawerma place back in the day when they were open in the old Salmiya near Fay (opposite Hardees). I think its true because one of the employees of Barakat now works at Dodo but it could be just a big coincidence. Dodo is a Lebanese restaurant that serves Lebanese style of food ranging from falafel to burgers to shawermas. One of the advantages of having shawerma at a Lebanese place is the garlic, and the garlic at Dodo is pretty damn good. As I’ve said before, there are only three things in a shawerma, the bread, the chicken and the garlic. The bread is easy to get right so no worries there. The chicken although the taste of it is important, even if you mess up you can cover up your tracks with good garlic since the garlic can cover the taste of the chicken. Now I am not saying there is a problem with the chicken at Dodo, on the contrary, the chicken is really good but the garlic is where its all at.

The size of the shawerma is pretty small and I usually have 3 to fill me up sometimes with a side order of their fries. The price of each shawerma is 300 fils which is cheap and I think with the quality of their shawerma they could easily price it at 350 fils and no one would complain especially when their most recent competitor, Vila Fayrouz Express charges 750 fils for theirs. All is not perfect though, Dodo suffers from lack of consistency which pisses me off. Sometimes I feel the chicken is undercooked and I hate it when that happens but luckily it doesn’t happen often. Final score is 4 out of 5. Dodo is located near La Baguette on Baghdad Street.

Just found out from a friend that Taco Time is coming back to Kuwait. They used to be open before in the mid 90’s but then shut down and now it seems they are reopening again. According to their website they will be opening 4 branches, one in Salmiya, one in Souk Salmiya, another in Hawalli and one more in Salwa. The Salmiya one is supposedly behind Johnny Rockets and the signage seems to be up. The launch according to their website is third quarter of this year. [Link]

During lunch break we usually go out have lunch at Souk Sharq but every now and then we go do something like ice skating, rock climbing (Marina Waves) or bowling. Today we wanted to see if we could actually go, jet ski and come back to the office in under an hour. The result? It’s doable!

I first used Google Maps to find out what beaches near our office rented jet ski’s. I found two beaches on the map that looked like they had jet ski’s parked on the sand, the first was right next to Fridays (TGIF) and the second next to Le Notre. We decided to head to the one next to Firdays. At 1PM we left the office (we’re situated near Muthana complex), took the first ring road and headed out onto the Gulf Road. There wasn’t any traffic so we were there in under 10 minutes. We parked the car and headed towards the beach where we spotted the jet ski place with around 10 jet skis parked. Half an hour of jet ski is KD7.5 so we took two and headed out to the open sea.

The weather was amazing and the water was soooo refreshing. The whole experience was surreal especially since it all happened during our lunch break. We were able to go, jet ski, quickly clean up and get back to the office in 1 hour. This is definitely THE summer lunch break activity of the year. Easily beats ice skating. Next up… wakeboarding!

Cinemagic who are entertaining people every Wednesday night with movies have now created a Documentary Night which is going to be held every Tuesday. This week they will be playing Al Gore’s controversial Academy Award winning Documentary about Global Warming, “An Inconvenient Truth“. The location is the same, Bait Lothan in Salmiya and the movie will run from 7:30PM till around 9:30PM.

As always, attendance is free of charge and they encourage you to invite guests. Seating is limited, so make sure you come a little early. Snacks and refreshments will be served.

I got the following email from Cinemagic:

Dear All,

You are invited to attend “Short & Sweet”, Cinemagic’s weekly screening event. The events will take place at the Cinemagic Courtyard in Bait Lothan, Salmiya, on Wednesday 9th of May, and will run between 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

This week we will be screening “Children of Heaven“, a 1997 Iranian film that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1998.

It deals with a brother and sister and their adventures over a lost pair of shoes, while also touching upon the more serious subject of the political situation in Iran as well as class differences between the rich and the poor and daily urban life.

In 1998, the film was the first Iranian film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but lost to the Italian film Life Is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni.

It was successfully shown on numerous film festivals and won awards at the Fajr Film Festival, the World Film Festival, the Newport International Film Festival, the Warsaw International Film Festival, and the Singapore International Film Festival. It was nominated for the Jury’s Grand Prize at the American Film Institute’s festival.

For its part, Cinemagic Kuwait, is organizing these events as part of its efforts to contribute to the development of an internationally competitive Kuwaiti audio-visual production industry, partly by bringing the filmmakers and audiences together and by Increasing the public’s interest in – and appreciation for – the art of filmmaking.

As always, attendance is free of charge and you are encouraged to invite guests. Seating is limited, so make sure you come a little early. Snacks and refreshments will be served.

Yazan Al Ghazzawi
PR & Marketing Manager
Kuwait Cinemagic

Tel: (+965) 574 3253
Cell: (+965) 722 2416

www.cinemagics.com

American University of Kuwait which is located in Salmiya is having a carnival/open-day this Thursday from 10am till 5pm.

Just got back from the dentist, I had to get some scaling done. The dentist tells me I need to pass by every 3 months but I keep telling him its such an awful experience that I need at least a year to forget about it before I could come back. He is a cool dentist and has a sense of humor which is why I keep going back to him. For anyone who’s interested I go to the Bayan Dental Center in Salmiya opposite Sultan Center. I forgot which blogger recommended I visit them, maybe it was Zaydoun. They are really great.

Can anyone recommend a car rental agency. I am looking to pay max KD8 a day.

Update: So I called some rental agencies and here are the results:

Avis: No one picked up
Budget: They had a 2007 Lancer for KD8, but they couldn’t have it ready for me before 1PM and the guy I spoke to didn’t know if car smelled of cigarettes or not.
Hertz: For KD8 they only had a Hyundai
AutoMax: They had a 2006 Camry for KD8 but they were located in Salmiya.
Europcar: Very friendly and professional. Only had medium sized car available. Location close to my office.
Sixt: Called them up, they had problems with their automated teller, everytime I pressed 3 for Sixt it would take me back to main menu.

In the end I went for Europcar mostly because I needed a car before 1PM and they were walking distance. I was in contact with the Sheraton branch and the employee there was very friendly. She gave me a 2007 Lumina for KD10 and promised to arrange me a cheaper car from a different branch. I picked up the car at 12:30 and it was in excellent condition with just 1300km on the dial.

Cinemagic is having a weekly screening event called “Short & Sweet”. The events will take place at the Cinemagic Courtyard in Bait Lothan, Salmiya, and will run every Wednesday between 7:00 – 9:00PM. The screenings bring together a collection of short films from all over the world including Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Poland, Brazil, Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait. Each week they will screen a different selection of films of varying genre, nationality, and style.

For its part, Cinemagic Kuwait, is organizing these events as part of its efforts to contribute to the development of an internationally competitive Kuwaiti audio-visual production industry, partly by bringing the filmmakers and audiences together and by increasing the public’s interest in and appreciation for the art of filmmaking.

This week, they will screen “Promises” a 2001 Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning documentary film that looks at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the perspectives of seven children living in the Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Israeli neighborhoods of Jerusalem.

The film follows the journey of Israeli-American filmmaker B.Z. Goldberg as he meets with seven Palestinian and Israeli children between the ages of nine and thirteen, seeing the Middle East conflict through their eyes. Rather than focus on specific political events, the film gives voice to these children, who, although they live only 20 minutes apart, live in completely separate worlds.

Attendance is always free of charge, but seating is limited, so make sure you arrive early. Snacks and refreshments will be served.

The Annual exhibition by KASA (Kuwait Architectural Students Association) is being held at Bayt Lothan from 10 to 14 March. The exhibition is open from 7PM to 9PM and will be displaying work done by architecture students. Bayt Lothan is located in Salmiya adjacent to Marina Mall.

I remember the air show that was held in the early 90s. I think over 140 planes participated in that one. Today there is another air show although not as grand, if you are passing by Salmiya keep your eyes up in the air. Dailystar has more details. [Link]

update: I think I posted this too late

Today morning I went riding with Marzouq on the Gulf Road. The weather is great so I am trying to take advantage of it as much as I can. Other then riding my bike I am going to be taking the roof off of my Wrangler (after National Day due to foam season) and I will also be going out riding.. on my bicycle. I haven’t ridden my bike since early last year way before I got my motorbike so I figured I would start again now since the weather is good again.

I went to Ace Hardware, picked up an electric air pump and came back home to pump some air into my bicycles tires. After filling it with air I decided I would take it for a small spin around my parking lot just to see how it felt.

It felt incredibly strange. Because I now ride a motorbike, riding my bicycle just feels completely way off. The seat is uncomfortably hard, the bicycle is super light, the riding position is different and the strangest thing of all.. I have to actually PEDAL! After taking the bicycle for a few spins up and down the floors of my buildings underground parking I was exhausted and had a headache. I couldn’t even ride properly! Since my motorbike weighs around 170KG and my bicycle like 12KG I was literally throwing it around turns.

Tomorrow I am going to try riding my bicycle around Salmiya, if it turns out to be a crappy experience like today I will probably end up selling it. The whole point of the bicycle was to go urban exploring but now since I have a motorbike license I can just go get myself a dirt bike.

I got the following in my email today:

Cinemagic Kuwait Launches Weekly Short Film Screenings
“Short & Sweet”

(Kuwait 05/12/2006) Cinemagic Kuwait are organizing “Short & Sweet”, a schedule of weekly short film screenings. The screenings will commence on Wednesday, February 21st, and run throughout the year. The events will take place at the Cinemagic Courtyard in Bait Lothan, Salmiya, and will run between 7:30 – 9:00 p.m.

The screenings will bring together a collection of short films from all over the world including Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Poland, Brazil, Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait. Each week we will screen a different selection of short films of varying genre, nationality, and style.

For its part, Cinemagic Kuwait, is organizing these events as part of its efforts to contribute to the development of an internationally competitive Kuwaiti audio-visual production industry, partly by bringing the filmmakers and audiences together and by Increasing the public’s interest in – and appreciation for – the art of filmmaking

Attendance for the event is free of charge, but seating is limited. Snacks and refreshments will be served throughout. For more information, please do not hesitate to contact me at the numbers below.

Yazan Al Ghazzawi
PR & Marketing Manager
Kuwait Cinemagic

Tel: (+965) 574 3253
Cell: (+965) 722 2416
www.cinemagics.com

Placed order with Papa Johns at 8:30. Promised would be delivered within 45 minutes. Called back at 9:20 telling them pizza hadn’t arrived yet, they told me within 10 minutes. Called back at 9:35 telling them pizza hadn’t arrived yet, they told me they will check on it and get back to me. Called back at 9:45 telling them pizza hasn’t arrived yet even though I called twice. They transfered me to manager who told me he will call back in 2 minutes. Its been 5 minutes and no call back yet and I need to leave the house.

update: called back at 9:55, spoke to manager again told him he had told me he would call me back in 2 minutes and he hadn’t. He told me he spoke to Salmiya branch manager and he is probably trying to call me now and he is getting a busy tone. I told him no I have call waiting if he was trying to call me I would know. I told him I need to know when my pizza will get here because I need to leave. He was like if you have to leave I can’t do anything about it. So I was like then cancel my order, he was like fine. What the hell, what lame customer service is that.

Then a few minutes later I get a phone call from the Salmiya branch manager telling me my pizza will be late. I told him why didn’t you call me half an hour ago when the call center manager told me you would call me. He was like I had to call the driver. I was like you need 30 minutes to do that? I was like anyway I canceled my order. He was like ok and I closed the phone.

I would never order from them again. Why?
– They should have been apologetic instead of blaming it on traffic
– Its Thursday night and they know there is traffic so why tell me 45 minutes in the first place
– After my first call they should have called the driver and found out how long he needed
– After they told me they would call me back they should have called me back
– At the very least they should have offered me the pizza for free, its been over an hour and a half and the pizza is going to be cold anyway
– The two managers I spoke to were not friendly enough