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UNO restaurant at the Avenues has a pretty cool offer where if you buy one of their burgers you get another one free. Sadly I wasn’t impressed with my burgers (stay tuned for a review) but it’s still a pretty good deal.

I just found out from a friend that Blimpie is opening up in Kuwait. Blimpie is a American submarine sandwich chain just like Subway and Quiznos. Since Quiznos has closed down their only store in Kuwait, Blimpie will now be our alternative to Subway. First Blimpie branch will open in June, location still undisclosed.

As you know by now the Animal Friends shelter was engulfed by fire and so they now need help rebuilding it again. Animal Friends are going to hold a meeting on Friday to discuss the next steps in this rebuilding process. This is the email I received from them on this subject:

The outpouring of support and generosity since the fire has been overwhelming. Whether it is volunteering, donating, fundraising or fostering, your offers of help are hugely appreciated and will go a long way to help us get the AFL shelter back up and running as soon as possible. We are holding a meeting to give everyone the latest information, to discuss what the next steps are and how we can work together to help the animals.

When: Friday 26th March
Time: 4.00pm to 6.00pm
Location: Moevenpick Al Bida’a. Gulf Road Salmiya
Room Slaysell 2 & 3

Please email Olivia at [email protected] or call on 9737 7867 if you have any questions.

A big thank you to the Moevenpick Al Bida’a who are big supporters of Animal Friends and are allowing us the use of the meeting room and equipment free of charge.

Desert Girl scanned and emailed me a PDF of a National Geographic issue dating back to 1969 that had a pretty long and comprehensive article on Kuwait. I hate reading articles like this because it just makes Kuwait in the present look slow and untrendy compared to Kuwait in the past (I know I know I should GTFO). The architecture, the lifestyle and the exotic essence seemed to have vanished. I found the picture above of this really beautiful looking villa which I think belonged to Ibrahim Al-Shatti in the article and I was wondering how the villa looks like today. It would be very cool if it was still in excellent condition just like in the picture. If anyone knows where this villa is located or can take a picture of it and email me I can then post it here.

Here is the article [6MB PDF]

Last night I posted about the second fire at the Animal Friends shelter and I now just gotthis email which they sent out on their mailing list that contains more information on the fire and on how you can help:

There has been a second much more devastating fire at Animal Friends. This fire was in the main building and 39 animals perished. Several more are struggling to hold on.

Two fire investigations have shown that the fires were caused by a surge of electricity from the main lines. After the first fire, an inspection of the shelter elecrical system was conducted and smoke detectors and fire extinguishers were puchased and donated enmasse. Despite these precautions, a massive surge occured to the now weakened main electrical lines. All staff were sleeping nearby when the fire started. The fire was not discovered until aerosol cans near the source of the fire began to explode. At this point, the fire was fully involved and too dangerous for anyone but the fire department to fight. Our shelter staff acted herroically to save as many animals as possible, and the fire rescue team also showed great courage as they entered the building to release the dogs from their firey prisons while the fire was still burning. Despite these acts of bravery, at least ten animals died in the fire and many were so badly injured that the arriving shelter staff had to work frantically and desperately to triage them and provide euthanasia where necessary. Thus far, the fire has cost the lives of 8 dogs and 31 cats.

One whole section of the shelter is completely destroyed the entire building will require extensive repairs from smoke and fire damage. Animal Friends and the animals we care for have never needed your help more. Animal Friends simply will not survive without help from all of you. Below is a list of things we need in order of priority.

1. CASH! The rebuilding is going to cost KD50,000. Please donate what you can, hold small fundraisers and get as many people involved as possible. Checks should be made payable to: Ayeshah Waleed Al-Humaidhi and below is our bank information for a direct transfer. If you need further information please call 97377867 or e-mail [email protected].

Bank Name: Bank of Kuwait and the Middle East (BKME)
Branch: South Surra
Name: Ayeshah Waleed Al-Humaidhi
Address Line 1: P.O.Box 71, Safat 13001
Address Line 2: Kuwait
Account: 42043311
SWIFT: BKMEKWKW

2. Foster Homes. We have no shelter and currently have the animals housed at the Royal Animal Hospital and in outdoor enclosures at the shelter. These are obviously temporary fixes. The construction is going to take about 3 months and we are appealing to all of you to house an animal until it can be adopted or returned to the rebuilt shelter. If you are able to foster an animal please call 66187301 or e-mail [email protected].

3. Volunteers. We need help with clean-up and helping care for the animals. We need to salvage anything and everything we can from the building before the demolition starts. This weekend, Friday-Saturday (26-27) are going to be huge clean-up days. Your help would be hugely appreciated. The map will be uploaded to the website shortly.

4. In Kind Donations. We will be putting together an extensive list of items we need in the next few days and will send it out to the list as well as post to our website.

Thank you in advance for your help and support and we hope to rise out of the ashes bigger and better.

This is another comedy act that also seems interesting and the ticket prices are cheaper than the AUK show. Allah Made Me Funny will be taking place 7PM on Thursday April 1st, 2010 at the Gulf University for Science & Technology.

You can buy tickets online from their website [Here]
or by calling 55258454/94415462
Regular tickets are KD15 and VIP are KD25.

Video of a young Chinese girl freaking the hell out of people walking into a building. I think it’s because she looks like the girl from The Ring, pretty weird. It might be a fake but still funny. [YouTube]

I was at Ace Hardware picking up a clog remover (my 4th bottle and I’ve still got a clog) when I noticed they’ve completely restocked. Around once or twice a year Ace Hardware gets their big shipment and it seems a new one arrived. All the shelves are packed with stuff including the pet section. The picture above is of all the doggie treats. The hardware section and car section have also been restocked. Lots of cool stuff.

Posted by Fahad AlYehya | Core Fitness – Kuwait

It’s almost summer time and all the gyms around Kuwait are packed! People have locations to travel too, beaches to swim in and jet skis to ride, but you got to look good doing it. What’s the sure-fire, shortcut approach and rapidly fast solution to all this? A truckload of performance enhancers, dietary supplements and A LOT of chest and bicep exercises! That was the norm back in my university days, but people now demand abs too; but no legs, definitely no legs. They are evil and such a pain in the butt when exercised.

The summertime crowd is a lot more demanding and highly impatient in comparison to other seasonal clients. They expect so much in such little time. Moreover, they tend to quit early if extreme results are not presentable within 72 hours, literally. This is how a typical meeting with an average “I need to look like 50 Cent within a month” client:

Client: “All I’m looking for is definition. I need to tone my arms a bit, expand my chest and work on my abs. As you can see, I’ve got the jello jiggles all around dis area yo.”

Me: “How long do I have in order for to make these changes?”

Client: “Brah! I’ve got a month and I’ll be hittin’ da beaches of Ibiza. If things don’t work out with da visa (that rhymed, dude must be a rapper), I’d might extend it for another month and go to Sharm.”

Me: “What you’re asking for is a shortcut, which is highly unlikely since you’ve got no muscle for me to tone and a spare tire around your waist.”

Client: “NO YO! I’ve heard Core Fitness does wonders. I need to lose all of this and gain poundage’s all ova my upperbody. Wam, bam, do me SON!”

Me: “Uhh, no, we don’t offer doing anyone, we just provide you a diet plan, a workout plan and absolutely no happy endings.”

Client: “And yo, no legs. I’ve got more jiggle than Santa Claus lying around this lower area as you can see, so no leg workouts whatsoever. I don’t want to be looking like an Egyptian belly-dancer yo.”

Me: “I hope you realize you’re whiter than I am. Anyways, cutting out legs isn’t a good idea; it’s literally half your body. If you want those changes, you have to give us a minimum of 2 months. It’s a lifestyle.”

Client: “Dude, I’ll pop pills! I’ll drink dem powders! What’s dat white stuff called? Crac….I mean creatine? Yeah, I’ll give that a try!”

Me: “No. What’s your current diet like?”

Client: “I’m not a breakfis’ person, so screw dat. At around 11 am at work, I pass by a Starbucks and order a triple-shot-venti-half-caf-half-decaf-French-roast-2 caramel pumps-extra-whip-non-fat-mocha-with-extra-foam……Oh, and a low fat muffi’. At home, I eat pretty much what I want and for dinner, strictly fast food.”

Me: “I swear to God, if you don’t stop talking like that I’m going to punch you on the face.”

Client: “Ok man, jeez…so I’ll give you two months. Does that work for you?”

Me: “Two months, our workout routine and a strict diet plan should do.”

Client: “Ho-nee FUT! DUDE, DATS INCWEDIBUL! You ma boi!!!”

Me: “Get the f%$k out.”

Health and fitness is a lifestyle. If you want to look good and feel good from this day onwards, you need to understand that it requires a lot of effort at first, and once you get used to it, it’ll be like breathing air and drinking water.

Reality

For every goal you set, commitment must be taken into consideration; the greater you want the end result to be, the harder you have to push yourself to achieve it. For example, in order for me to maintain the current weight and body fat percentage I am on, I’d have to consume a specific amount of calories, weight-lifting poundage’s, and rest and recovery. Since summertime is approaching, my meal plan has to be a lot cleaner, sometimes tasteless and slightly low in calories, with the addition of cardiovascular activity. If I expect a leaner set of abs, I need to put in the effort in order to achieve this.

A lot of you have slowly introduced this lifestyle and are witnessing good results. If you’ve currently stopped producing any significant results (i.e. fat-loss or muscle-gain), your eating and training habits have to be a lot stricter, which may include cleaning out or adding in calories; this is only assuming you’d want more results.

I am leaving to Beirut for a few days and will be back early next week. While there I will be carelessly indulging in an unlimited supply of Cadbury Chocolate Milk while having some of the best Nutella and banana crepes. Posting will continue as normal while I am there.

In the post below I was just testing to see if I could broadcast live footage and it worked! For the people who were able to catch my live act I was just broadcasting video of my dog sleeping on the floor so you didn’t miss out on much. I got this idea for live broadcasting from P0ach and wanted to see if there was an easy way to do it and it turned out there was. I signed up for a free account on ustream.tv and downloaded the iPhone app for Ustream called Ustream Live Broadcaster and thats it. All you need is your iPhone’s 3G connection or WiFi and you can broadcast live video from anywhere to the blog. So next time I witness a fire or fight I can just broadcast the video live for everyone to watch. Pretty cool!

Update: This was just a test, [see here]

Here is a quick review of the Alpine iXA-W407.

It works great with the iPod as expected. I previously had the Alpine iDA-X001 installed in my Wrangler and one annoying thing in the X001 was searching for an artist. It doesn’t get much better in the W407. You can’t search using an onscreen keyboard to type an artist name for some reason instead you need to scroll down to the artist u want. You can scroll down by letter as in if you are looking for Smashing Pumpkins you can press “page down” when u r at A and it will take u to B and u keep pressing till u get to S. A painfully long process which I do not recommend while driving. Once you get to S you then have to scroll down regularly by pressing “down” untill u get to Smashing Pumpkins. Takes forever and not practical at all.

On the bright side, that’s the only negative thing I found. The multi display screen is very cool (see picture above) which basically allows you to display up to 4 different kinds of information on the same screen. I Just wish there were more widgets to add out of the current 6 including calculator and sound adjustment which are not pictured above. What I would have liked to have seen is a weather widget (could use my iPhone’s internet connection for the date) or an RSS reader.

The W407 has Bluetooth built in. Once I get into the car my iPhone connects to the Alpine automatically and whenever I want to call someone I bring up the phone number on the Alpine screen and call it. When I get a phone call I can either answer it on the Alpine or if I want privacy I can talk directly on my iPhone. Now all thats pretty normal but my favorite thing is the fact that I can stream music from my iPhone to the Alpine using Bluetooth. Like my iPod and the Radio I have Bluetooth as an audio source. When I select Bluetooth as a source whatever sound my iPhone makes I hear it on the cars sound system. Other than listening to your iPod’s music wirelessly or playing games and have the sound blast out of the cars sound system, another cool feature is the fact I stream music from the web over 3G and onto my car stereo using bluetooth. I’ve got the iPhone app WunderRadio (which I’ve posted about before) and I use it to tune into radio stations in Lebanon and stream them into my car. I don’t have any problems streaming the Lebanese radio stations since they broadcast in EDGE but Ministry of Sound UK for example streams as 3G and after a minute or so the music cuts off and I have to buffer for like 10 seconds which is very annoying. But, I am going to be upgrading my iPhones internet connection from 600kb to 14.4MB at the end of the month which should solve my problem.

I really like the iXA-W407 and if I had to do the purchase all over again I would in a heartbeat. The final score is a 4 out of 5. The lack of a decent search feature and the fact there aren’t any extra widgets I can download and install are the reasons it’s not perfect. If anyone has any specific questions regarding that Alpine unit or the install just ask it below and I will try to answer it. Regarding the PAC TR7, it worked perfectly with the W407. With the TR7 install I can watch videos and change the stereo system settings while I am driving. Without the TR7 I would have to put the car in PARK and raise the handbrake. I also had the PAC SWI-Jack installed which allows the Alpine to be controlled with the FJ’s steering wheel buttons. The PAC SWI-Jack works on a number of cars and with a number of sound systems.

I ordered all my items from Amazon, here is the list with links:

Alpine iXA-W407 Digital Media Station $554.48
Alpine HCE-C107D Rear View Camera $176.99
Scosche TA2076B 2007 Toyota FJ ISO/Double DIN With Pocket Kit $19.58
Scosche Stereo Wire Harness Toyota FJ Cruiser $12.31
PAC TR7 Multi control interface bypass module $23.26
PAC SWI-JACK $42.90
Total: $829.52

Today I heard a really freaky story but one that ended with a happy ending. A receptionist I know nearly got kidnapped by a taxi driver. She took a cab to go home but instead the taxi cab driver started driving in a different direction. He then closed all the windows and locked the doors and started shouting at the receptionist whenever she said anything.

So she decided to SMS for help since she didn’t know how the driver would react if he saw her on the phone. She sent an SMS to the emergency number 112 with the taxi driver details which she got off the back of the seat. She told them she was being kidnapped and she needed help. 112 then called her up and straight away told her to pretend she’s talking to a friend so the driver doesn’t suspect anything. They told her to stay calm and that they would send help. They asked her to SMS them her location and to keep them posted by SMS on which road they were on. She did that and 112 were able to set up a police check point and catch the taxi driver.

It’s really scary the stories you hear about taxi drivers in Kuwait. Awhile back I read in the paper where a bunch of taxi drivers were capturing woman and taking them to this building where they would be locked up and forced into prostitution. Luckily for the receptionist she managed to escape. I was really surprised that 112 actually receive and react to SMS’s. I think that’s incredible and the speed and the way they reacted to this situation was spot on.

Great job!

Posted by Fahad AlYehya | Core Fitness – Kuwait

Core Fitness has been in business for close to 2 years. We’ve jumped into the market with very high risk, doubtful but hopeful. We originally started out with a much larger area (1,000mtr2) and slowly trimmed it down to roughly 300mtr2. Our risk was high as it is, so might as well shrink a few things or two.

In order to sell the service being sold, we needed believers, people who can witness results and talk about it to other people.  And so, we brought in 10 clients with different goals, interviewing them one by one before and after our prescribed 7 week cycles. The amount of questions had no answers. With all my knowledge, I could not convince any of them that our 20 minute workouts achieved anything. I even pulled in science to explain that it’s more than possible to benefit from 10 minutes of what we were doing. I don’t blame anybody since common sense tells us that the more time we put in the better results will be.

Finally realizing that no amount of words can explain what we’re trying to sell, I simply gave up and said “Guys, go try it out. If you don’t like it you’ll get your money back.”

“That was intense!” Client #1

“HARDCORE!” Client #2

“…….”Client #3. His blood-sugar level crashed. A diabetic who didn’t eat a single calorie since breakfast.

“Huuuuh, huuuh, huuuuh…man…gi..give me a few minutes to catch my breath!” Client #4. He puked 10 minutes later.

The comments above were what our clients said after their first 20 minute workouts. Thankfully, they’ve all signed up and witnessed great results. However, this proves nothing to the people who have yet to enroll at Core Fitness. After interviewing numerous clients throughout Core’s tenure, I’d like to think that I can finally explain why our 20 minute workouts work.

Short and Sweet

The first obvious question that pops to mind is the 20 minutes. What can we possibly do in such a short time? If you think about it, that’s exactly it. We realize that 20 minutes is a short duration and we also realize that in order for a client to achieve results is by pushing him beyond his physical potential, which involves a lot of boot-camp style training and attitude. Secondly, pushing someone to the brink of insanity in 20 minutes involves some sort of motivation, hence the personal trainers responsible for pushing you towards your limits.