Search: “sti”

[YouTube]

I hate it when people say there isn’t much to do in Kuwait because from my experience there are a ton of cool activities here. One new activity I found out about is Milsim. This has to be one of the coolest things to do in Kuwait and its now going to be something I will do as often as I can.

Milsim is a military simulation that has a lot of strategy and some very cool realistic weapons. Unlike paintball which uses paint pellets, Milsim uses powder pellets. Also unlike the paintball here in Kuwait where you run around hiding behind inflatable balloons, Milsim uses real life locations for their games. I got invited to participate in a game today and I’m now in love with Milsim. Todays location was an abandoned prison in Doha near Entertainment City. They have different locations for different sized groups for example when there are 40 guys they like going and play at an abandoned residential compound that’s around 3 blocks large. Since we were 16 guys they decided on the prison location due to its close combat nature. Judging by the video above it seems they also have a very cool abandoned farm they use.

[YouTube]

First thing they do is split everyone into teams, todays mission involved the Marines and Delta Force vs the Taliban’s. I was placed in the Taliban team. We were then briefed on the mission which was the following… Marine One crashed and it was carrying the President of the United States. The Marines were with the president and the game starts off at their crash site. They have 15 minutes to defend their zone and protect the president before the Delta team reinforcement arrives. After an hour into play they would receive a radio call with the location of the landing in which they then have 30 minutes to get to that point and evacuate. As Talibans, our aim was to capture their president or capture a box that contained nuclear keys, if we captured any of the two we would win. Everyone was limited to just 4 magazines and each contained 20 rounds. There are no refills and although the weapons can fire at full auto its highly discouraged because you will run out of ammo very quickly. We also all had 3 lives, if you get shot (anywhere) you have to put your hands over your head and walk to the medical zone where you have to remain for 10 minutes before you go back and join your team.

How was it? A lot of fun that’s for sure and very exhausting. My team ended up losing, not sure how since we had a ex Austrian military guy, a local special forces guy and the Milsim owner, while the opposing team were made up mostly of newbies like me. We even had flares and smoke grenades! Oh well it was still a lot of fun and its something as I said I’m going to do a lot more of.

I took some pictures which you can check out below. The first video on top is a video they created to show the kind of weapons and gameplay style. Unlike paintball their games aren’t only about shooting but its about accomplishing missions and involves strategy. The second video above is one I shot today when me and some guys were getting briefed on how to use the weapons. This is seriously one very cool activity, and they say there isn’t anything to do in Kuwait…

If you’re interested to participate in Milsim its KD10 per person. That includes the weapon, gun magazines, vests, helmet, goggles, water and pelets. I think its actually pretty cheap for what you get. They cater to groups, individuals and even for corporate outings. For contact information you can visit their website at www.milsimkuwait.com.

This is a comedy I can’t wait to watch.

Four Lions tells the story of a group of British jihadists who push their abstract dreams of glory to the breaking point. As the wheels fly off, and their competing ideologies clash, what emerges is an emotionally engaging (and entirely plausible) farce. In a storm of razor-sharp verbal jousting and large-scale set pieces, Four Lions is a comic tour de force; it shows that-while terrorism is about ideology-it can also be about idiots.

[YouTube]

Here is the calendar for Cinemagic’s rooftop movie nights for May. This month they’ve got movies from the Cannes Festival. Check out the full list below:

Thursday, May 6 at 07:00 PM
Ali Zaoua, Morocco 2000
Director: Nabil Ayoush
Genre: Drama | 99 min | English Subtitle
Rated: PG 13

Saturday, May 8 at 07:00 PM
Vozvrashchenie, Russia 2003
Director: Andrei Zvyagintsev
Genre: Drama | 105 min | English Subtitle
Rated: 15+

Thursday, May 13 at 07:00 PM
“Winner for Best Director, Cannes 2008”
Three Monkeys, Turkey 2008
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Genre: Drama | 109 min | English Subtitle
Rated: PG 15

Saturday, May 15 at 07:00 PM
“Winner of Golden Palm 2009”
The White Ribbon, Sweden 2009
Director: Michael Haneke
Genre: Drama | 144 min | English Subtitle
Rated: R 18

Thursday, May 20 at 07:00 PM
“Un certain Nominee 2009”
Precious, USA 2009
Director: Lee Daniels
Genre: Drama | 109 min | English Subtitle
Rated: PG 15

Saturday, May 22nd at 07:00 PM
“Golden Palm Nominee 2008”
Promise Me This, Serbia 2008
Director: Emir Kusturica
Genre: Comedy | 127 min | English Subtitle
Rated: PG 13

Thursday, May 27 at 07:00 PM
“Opening Ceremony, Cannes 2001”
LOTR: The Fellowship of the ring, USA 2001
Director: Peter Jackson
Genre: Fantasy | 178 min | English Subtitle
Rated: PG 13

Friday, May 28 at 07:00 PM
LOTR: The Two Towers, USA 2003
Director: Peter Jackson
Genre: Fantasy | 179 min | English Subtitle
Rated: PG 13

Saturday, May 29 at 07:00 PM
LOTR: The Returm Of The King, USA 2004
Director: Peter Jackson
Genre: Fantasy | 201 min | English Subtitle
Rated: PG 13

Cinemagic movies are screened in the old Salmiya, on the roof on top of Alghanim Electronics and LG. There is a KD1 charge for the venue fees which includes refreshments, popcorn and much more. Here is a link to their facebook group [Link]

After reading Fahad’s post below I felt like finally passing by Baking Tray in Kuwait City and trying it out. I had heard a lot about the place but hadn’t had the chance to try it out yet. The place is located in Kuwait City near the Wataniya Telecom building and opposite Saso Lounge (Google Map). The interior is cozy and the display of food was very appetizing. They have pies, sandwiches, pizza’s, pastas and a variety of pastries and desserts.

Everything looked really good but I managed to stay away from all the sweets and ordered some sandwiches. I was with Nat and so we ordered two sandwiches to share. She had the garlic chicken avocado sandwich with rye bread while I tried the Philly steak also with rye bread. The sandwiches took around 20 minutes to reach us and they looked very good. I tried both sandwiches and I have to say the garlic chicken avocado was really good and the garlic flavor was very light. The Philly steak on the other hand I didn’t like at all. In the menu it mentioned all the ingredients except for one which is Dijon mustard. I am not a fan of Dijon mustard and the whole sandwich was just plastered with it. I couldn’t taste anything except the mustard, the sandwich was just literally dripping with mustard and I hated it. Not sure why they didn’t mention it as an ingredient. Even the Philly steak picture on their website doesn’t look like it had any Dijon mustard in it so I am guessing its something they decided to add at a later stage after the menus were printed and pictures taken. Below you can see my sandwich on the left with the Dijon mustard dripping out while the one on the right is taken from their website.

Even though I was disappointed with the Philly steak I would still go back. I liked the atmosphere and I liked the large variety of healthy dishes they had. Prices are very reasonable except for the Philly steak. The garlic chicken avocado sandwich was KD2 which I think was the average price for their sandwiches. The Philly steak on the other hand was KD3.3 which was not worth it. For 500 more fils I could have had my favorite “NY Thing” sandwich from Napket. But as I mentioned, they had a whole bunch of items I still want to try so I’m going back again. Here is a link to their website [Link]

Update: Went back today for lunch. Ordered the EBT which according to their menu online says that it contains Fried eggs, Bacon, tomatoes (roasted). This time the order took under 10 minutes to get to me but when I took my first bite it turned out the sandwich contained Dijon mustard as well! Not really sure whats going on and why Dijon mustard is never mentioned in their menu but this time I sent it back and asked for an EBT without mustard. When I got the sandwich back it turned out to be really really good. It’s three simple ingredients but it tasted great and the place has now officially become my favorite lunch spot. I just need to remember to tell them no Dijon mustard every time I order something.

Posted by Fahad AlYehya | Core Fitness – Kuwait

Your world rocked in 3, 2, 1….

And we’re back with part 2 of my original post (Herro Prease!) that seemed to cause more racial and homophobic controversy than health and fitness orientation and guidance.

Taste Buds
I’m often criticized for my diminishing taste buds. When on a strict diet, the food consumed tends to taste awful and total caloric intake is extremely low. I’m eating 6-8 small portions per day of gooky old-fashioned oatmeal, funky-smelling boiled eggs, cold and barely chewable chicken breasts, tasteless and dry brown rice, and a lightly sweetened protein shake that tries its best to taste like a Johnny Rockets milkshake, but is actually one notch above dirt, and dirt can taste like ice cream when dieting.

So Masta of da Universe, if taste bud BAD, how can we trust you, haaaa!?
Have you ever sat next to a person who has been dieting more than 3 weeks? He/she will stare at you eating that burger and those fries. Moreover, they’ll tell you how to lightly dip your food in ketchup. What’s even more annoying, they’ll screw you over for not eating your entire meal; I should know, since I’m that annoying person. Lastly, I base the meals I eat on the ingredients used and how I feel after consumption. Through trial and error, I’ve discovered how long it takes my body to clean itself out if I just ate a fatty and carby meal.

Breakfass!
I am not a morning person at all. I hate the sun and anything associated with looking at the sun. I’ll even wear sun-glasses indoors in the morning, and I could care less if it made me look douchey. (If anyone has any job offerings somewhere cold and dark, please let me know.) In the meantime, I can’t deny the sensation of breakfast food. Once in a while, I’d wake up early on weekends and just have this strong urge to ditch my gooky oatmeal and boiled eggs for some tasty restaurant-served breakfast food. Before I begin, you need to take these points into consideration:

• Upon waking from 8-10 hours of sleep, our bodies are deprived of nutrients and water.
• Our inner functions tend to work optimally in the A.M., providing a challenge to any calorie intake; you can actually get away with a large thick pizza for breakfast and it’ll have a hard time storing itself as fat (assuming your healthy and fit).
• Eating breakfast at a maximum of 1 hour after waking up will provide your metabolism with a boost from heaven. The earlier you eat breakfast, the better.
• Eating breakfast more than 90 minutes after waking up will skyrocket your chances of obesity by 150%!

The Discovery show Build it Bigger aired an episode featuring the Al Hamra Tower and I’m downloading it now from my favorite torrent site as I am typing this. The reason it featured Al Hamra Tower is because it’s the world’s tallest twisting structure and so makes it very unique. You can watch a snippet from the show [Here]

Thanks misz

Update: The full episode is on YouTube divided into 8 parts, here is a link to part 1 [YouTube]

If I was forced to keep just one app on my iPad it would have to be Zinio. Zinio has made me owning an iPad logical. I’ve already posted previously about the fact that I didn’t know what exactly I would use the iPad for but with Zinio its become very clear… magazines. I love magazines and I hate books (short stories are fine). Maybe if I was stuck on an Island with just a library I would take up reading but with my already hectic life I need to make the best of my time and books just take too much of it. It’s the same reason I don’t watch many movies, for the same amount of time it takes me to watch 1 movie I could watch 4 episodes from my favorite TV show. The problem we have in Kuwait is magazines are expensive costing KD3 and up per issue every month. In the US you could subscribe to a full year for the same price we pay for just a single issue here. I’ve tried subscribing to US magazines and having them shipped with Aramex but magazines can be heavy and in the end I was paying 10$ a year to subscribe to 12 issues of a magazine and then paying KD3 or KD5.500 to ship a single issue to Kuwait.

With Zinio I no longer have that problem. Zinio originally was a website which allowed you to subscribe to digital versions of magazines so you could view them on your computer. Now they’ve created an iPad app which allows you to view the magazines on your iPad. The magazines on the iPad look like the print version except it has a few advantages. For example I was flipping through an article in Car & Driver about a car and on one of the pages I noticed an icon, when I clicked the icon it opened up a gallery full of pictures of the car.. ones that weren’t available in the print version. Other nifty features is the ability to open the contents page and then click on the headline of the article you want to go to or view all the spreads as thumbnails and then select the spread you want to see. There was a Honda ad in the magazine with a button click here for a test drive, when I clicked the button it played a video commercial of the ad (which was actually a good one). You can also view the magazine as a spread (two pages side by side) or if you hold the iPad vertically you can view the magazine page by page. You can zoom into the page to enlarge the copy by other double tapping a location or by pinching the screen. Another cool feature is the fact that you can view a purely text version of the magazine in case you’re having issues for some reason reading the regular print version. Articles in the text format can also be emailed to friends or to yourself to print out and you can even control the font size.

When you run the app you have three main sections, featured articles, your library and shop. Featured articles is basically samples of articles from some of the popular magazines which you could read for free. Your Library is where all your magazine issues are stored. You can view your magazines either by titles or by date. It’s very organized and easy to navigate. Finally the shop section is where you can flip through the magazines available to subscribe to and order them. Once you download a magazine you don’t need Internet access to view them. Magazine sizes vary from around 20MB to 40MB per issue. The prices for most US magazines like Car & Driver, Maxim, Cosmopolitan etc.. are around $10 to $15 for a yearly subscription (similar to their print counterparts) while some magazines that are European imports cost a lot more. You can use your Kuwaiti credit card without any problems.

The Zinio app is free and available in the App Store (on both the iPhone and iPad). Here is a link to the Zinio website where you can check all the magazines they have available with their prices. [Link]

Before I book a hotel at a travel destination I usually use TripAdvisor to find out what hotels are popular in that city and I read up on peoples reviews. It’s helped me make a lot of right decisions and I think I can make even better decisions with the help of another website I just found about called Oyster. One of the great things about Oyster is their photos which they take of the hotel, the room and the hotels surroundings. For example I was checking out pictures for the hotel I am going to be staying at in New York (Nu Hotel) next month and Oyster has around 500 photos of the hotel divided up into sections. The picture above for example is just one of the many pictures of the room I will be staying in. They have pictures of everything in that room from the cable box to the toilet paper roll. It’s a very cool site and can prove very helpful the next time you want to travel. [Link]

This is an interesting article that was released today in the Times Online. Basically Kuwait is seeking $1.2 billion in compensation from Iraq because during the Gulf War Saddam stole 10 planes and millions of dollars worth of parts. Iraq kept telling Kuwait they didn’t have any money but then went and ordered $6 billion worth of planes from Boeing. [Link]

Thanks Dymatize

Update: Below is a picture a reader recently took while in Iraq. Thats the current state of the Iraqi Airways.

Thanks Keith

High Street Q8 is an interesting local fashion blog I found out about recently. It’s basically meant to be a kind of show and tell website were if you like what you’re wearing or maybe want feedback on what you’ve got on at the moment you just snap a quick picture and email it to [email protected] with some details on the items you have on and people will leave a comment. Check it out [Here]

I’ve posted about the Kuwait subway system before and it seems like its becoming a reality. I spoke to someone connected to the project and had him explain where the project stands today, how they got here and whats next. You can watch the short interview above. I can’t wait for this to become a reality since there is going to be a subway station right next to my house! [YouTube]

Back in December when Shake Shack announced they was were opening up in Kuwait I had been told they were going to open up at the Avenues in the first half of the year. Well the first half of the year is nearly over and there still isn’t any sign of Shake Shack. According to my insider, Shake Shack was originally planned to open in the Benihana location but that plan was scrapped and now it still hasn’t been decided where in the Avenues Shake Shack will be opening. My guess is they’re looking for a prime location like PF Chang and Pinkberry. On a different note Pottery Barn Kids is going to open near The One and X-Cite.

Update: Ok a friend of mine told me that he heard that they are planning to open up in front of PF Chang. The restaurant will be built where the elevator is and the elevator shaft will be used for the ventilation (kinda like a chimney). The seating will be in the open in front of the restaurant. Although its hard to believe this actually makes a lot of sense since it would end up looking a lot like the Shake Shack in NY (picture above).

Who would have thought having a cast would be a complicated thing when traveling. I’ve been in Beirut for a couple of days now and I am getting back today but for some reason security at the Lebanese airport is being very anal about my cast. Kuwait airport didn’t even bring it up as a problem but here I’m being treated like I am trying to smuggle a machete or surface to air missiles in my cast.

I get to the airport at 6:30am still sleepy and hungover when the first security screening stop me from going through. They’re like wheres your paper? I was like what paper? They’re like for your hand. I was like wtf? They then spent 15 minutes fondling my arm and passing it in and out of the metal detector before letting me through. Then I found out my flight got rescheduled till the afternoon so I left.

Fast forward to around 3:30pm and I get back to the airport and pass through the same security checkpoint and they stopped me again. This time I got bounced from one person to another each asking me if I have a paper for my cast. I was like what paper where do I get it from? He’s like from where you got the cast. I was like I got my cast done in Kuwait you want me to go get a paper and come back?? I don’t think they liked my sarcasm because they then wanted me to remove the cast so they could check if I had hidden anything. I told them I couldn’t remove it and wouldn’t remove it and in the end had to get my arm fondled for 15 minutes again and waved through the metal detector a few times. What a mess, glad I just had my hand in a cast and not my ass or something.

Posted by Fahad AlYehya | Core Fitness – Kuwait

Consistency in dieting can be a challenge, especially when living in a country that endorses food more than anything else. Most of our days start out with food, some coffee and dessert, a little strolling around and shopping, and some more food. And at night, a small gathering of friends that involves barbecuing and a lot of muffins.

Some clients, relatives and friends call me every weekend, with inquiries such as “I’m at Gaucho. What do you recommend?” or “Pinkberry! Yay or nay?” and “Dude, why isn’t my girlfriend returning my calls?” For starters, you can’t really go wrong with Gaucho if you stick to Filet De Lomo; Pinkberry’s loaded with 20g of sugar per serving; and you should try being less douchey.

I’m not saying you should eat out everyday, but when you’re cornered into a meal, the right recommendations will prove useful. Moreover, dieting puts you in a state of hunger similar to that of a heroin addict; aching and scratching for that next meal. One last advice before I start dissecting each and every restaurant: if it tastes too good, then it’s probably not what you’re looking for.

Oh, Fahad-san! Ret us begin with hearthy restaurants!

What I hate more than carb and fat-infested fast food chains are eateries that preach about health, but are everything but healthy; which is why I’ll be poking at them first:

Every morning I pass by McDonalds for breakfast and every morning I see some of the weirdest things. You would think most of the strange things happen late at night but with my experience there is as much of it going on very early in the morning, at least at the Gulf Road branch.

One strange character I see very often is monkey guy. He’s a guy who visits the McDonalds Gulf Road branch early mornings with his pet monkey. He just hangs out outside with his monkey dressed up I’m assuming to try and chat up the girls.

Too much makeup girl: “awww look how cute…”
Monkey Guy: Jackpot!

Now recently I’ve noticed snake guy. Yeah you guessed it, a guy who comes in every morning with a snake around his neck. With monkey guy I can understand his plan but snake guy just confuses me. Unless..

Too much muscles guy: “awww look how cute…”
Snake Guy: Jackpot!

Seriously though one of the McDonalds employees there should set up a blog of some sort posting about all these strange characters. I’d buy the book even!