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I love mangos but I have no clue how to choose the good ones. I have a pretty terrible hit rate with 3 out of 5 mangos I get turning out to be crap. Buzberry had a post on mangos and I posted a comment asking for tips on choosing the best mango and a reader called Alvaro they replied with the following:

Well u should pick the ones which are a bit greenish, since they’re gona stay in ur fridge for a day or so until they turn yellow.. When mangos r yellow and slightly redish – they’re perfect! Remember avoid the ones which are easily squeezed and never get ones that have black patches or whatever that dirty stuff is.. Bon apetit!

So I went to Sultan Center Sharq and picked out what I thought were the four best mangos on the shelf but then I noticed a Sultan Center employee bringing in new boxes of mangos. So I went up to him and showed him my mangos and asked him if they were any good. He took one look at them, took them off me and told me to go get him a new bag. So I went got a plastic bag and when I got back he had 4 mangos waiting for me. He put them in my bag I said thank you and left.

How did they turn out? Unbelievably good! I just had all 4 of them now and they had to be the best mangos I’ve ever had. I am now going to go back to Sultan Center tomorrow and look for the guy again since he is now officially my mango guy. All I need to do now is find a melon guy.

Picture from Buzberry

I can’t confirm if this actually did take place in Kuwait or not but supposedly it did. Either way its still sad to watch. [YouTube]

I was checking the blog 4th Ring Road today when I spotted their post on the new Electrozan offer so I decided to pass by them and pick up a BlackBerry Curve for Nat. When I got to the Electrozan showroom I found out the BlackBerry’s were sold out already. The employee told me they will be getting more tomorrow afternoon but I also found out why the Curve’s were being sold for cheap… they are T-Mobile branded. That automatically turned what sounded like a really good deal into a bad deal. Let me explain:

– An unlocked unbranded BlackBerry Curve costs KD135 on Amazon [Link]. With shipping to Kuwait via Aramex the total would amount to KD142. Sorry this was for the QWERTZ keyboard.

– An unlocked unbranded BlackBerry Curve costs KD145 on Amazon [Link]. After tax and shipping to Kuwait via Aramex the total would amount to KD165.

– Now on the other hand a new unlocked T-Mobile branded BlackBerry Curve from eBay costs KD124 [Link]. With shipping to Kuwait via Aramex the total would amount to KD129 which is KD30 cheaper than Electrozan.

So to summarize things, its still a much better deal to order a BlackBerry Curve online since a saving of KD30 is a pretty big chunk.

Update: Just picked up a Curve from Electrozan for Nat. Paypal locked up my account because I logged in and paid for something through my VPN and they assumed someone else got into my account. So now I can’t use eBay for awhile. The BlackBerry is T-Mobile branded and comes with T-Mobile literature. Employee said its officially unlocked so I can do the software updates. Comes with 6 months warranty so it will be interesting to see what exactly that means if something does go wrong from now to 6 months time. They’re out of Bolds at the moment.

Update 2: The Curve’s sold at Electrozan are from T-Mobile Germany which means the keyboard is a QWERTZ and not the regular QWERTY. Simply put, the locations of the letters Z and Y are swapped.

Choowy Goowy will be opening up at the Avenues hopefully this Wednesday. This will be Choowy Goowys first store and they’ve really come a long way since I first reviewed them over three years ago back in January 2006. They will be baking cookies at the Avenues store so you should be able to pick some up as they come out of the oven. The pictures above and below are just sneak peak shots of the store taken with a Nokia E71. They still haven’t removed the wooden paneling that currently surrounds the store so it was pretty hard to get anything wider than these shots.

Update: I just realized that a lot of readers might not be aware of the fact that Choowy Goowy have cookies called Mark&Nat. Back in November 2006 Nat and I were invited to Choowy Goowy to create our own cookies. After some experimenting and having some friends try out our creations, the oreo cookies were voted as being the best and so Choowy Goowy decided to make these cookies and call them Mark&Nat with jar labels matching our blog. You can read about our experience [Here]

I don’t know where to start this review because I’ve got a ton of good things to say about the Archos 7 but an equal amount of bad things. I guess I will start with the bad things.

The Archos 7 is extremely buggy plus I think I have a problem with mine. There are three brightness settings on my A7, low, medium and high. When I put the brightness on high the back light flickers between low and high constantly. I checked online and some people faced this issue when the screen was set on low brightness but I am the first to report this issue with the brightness set on high. Luckily for me I don’t have any problems when the brightness is set on low or medium, the two settings I will be using most while traveling. I read this issue could get fixed with a firmware update but so far since I got the device over a week ago there’s been two firmware updates and both haven’t solved the flickering issue.

As I mentioned earlier the device is also buggy. I haven’t used the A7 much but so far its crashed with me while watching a movie once. At times it just crashes while getting charged or while its on sleep and I need to reboot it, a quick process but nevertheless it shouldn’t do that. I had it connected to my Mac for over a day now and it was working fine until awhile ago I tried to turn it on and it wouldn’t. For some reason it wasn’t charging over USB which it should have been and the battery got completely drained. URGH! The last negative thing I have to say is that the Archos is pretty heavy. I love using my iPhone after I am done with the A7 since it makes my iphone seem tiny and ultra light. Oh and one more thing, I can’t seem to remove the battery, its like jammed or something!

Yeah there are A LOT of issues but… I still love the Archos 7! I love the screen, the battery life, the ability to just drag and drop my movie folders onto it, the way it plays ALL my files without needing to convert them, the touch screen, the browser, the web TV, web Radio, the stupid flash games, the little stand on the back of the device, the way Archos keeps improving the device with firmware upgrades and finally the fact that I can stream videos off my main server at home over wifi and watch them on my Archos from anywhere at home. When I bought the device I didn’t know I could do that but it turns out I can and easily. I just browse my home network from the Archos, find a video file, double click it and it starts playing instantly.

When I purchased the Archos 7 it was because I thought it was the best portable video player on the market but now I know it is. As of this post I am not aware of any other device on the market that has the same features and abilities as the Archos 7 and thats why I have no regrets. Final score is a 3.5 out of 5. Yeah it has a TON of issues but at the end of the day all it needs to do is play movies for a very long time without running out of battery and that it does perfectly. Of course I am hoping Archos will work out whatever bugs I have with the next firmware update.

160GB Archos 7 is for $272. [Amazon Link]
320GB Archos 7 is for $412. [Amazon Link]

By the way there is also a smaller version called the Archos 5 which sells for $280. Its the same as the Archos 7 in every way except the screen is a 5inch and the battery lasts around 5 hours. [Amazon Link]

Last month while browsing the web I landed on a website which spoke about some cool solar powered lights that Ikea was going to introduce into the market. To my surprise, while shopping today at Ikea I spotted the lights! They had the whole collection and the most expensive one (pictured below) was for around KD6 and that was because the set contained five light sticks. That’s pretty cool and cheap!

The guys from Kuwait Extreme successfully completed in the Marathon Des Sables, a self-reliant 254km footrace through the Sahara desert over the course of one week. This is the first team from the Gulf to participate the 2009 Marathon Des Sables.

The team members are Zed Alrefai, Reyad Malallah, Khalid Alsayer and Ahmad Almajed. Their participation was to raise awareness and, through sponsorship, to fund The Kuwaiti Association for Learning Differences (KALD). The team was sponsored by: ALSAYER GROUP and Eastpak and supported by Extreme Sports, Caribou Coffee, Pro-Vision Sport Management, Artistic View, Dr. Zuhair ALNasar, AMAC, LOfat and Garmin.

The Marathon Des Sables:

This arduous event known as “the toughest footrace on Earth” takes place in the largest desert in the world Sahara desert over seven days covering a distance of 254 km on foot.In addition all athlete must be totally self reliant, carrying their food, water, medical needs and camping equipment for the entire duration of the race in their backpack. The race itself; which is equivalent to a marathon a day, is in fact broken into various stages, the most extreme of which is a distance of 84 km in a 24 hrs period. The real challenge is the weather which all athlete are exposed to sandstorms, high humidity as well the temperature could reaches 50 C during the morning and goes below -0 C at night.

Link to facebook group: [here]

Posted by K.

A body of a student was found in the parking lot of the Australian College of Kuwait. No cause of death has been disclosed but the following email was sent out to ACK students:

Dear All,

I am sad to inform you that a student was found deceased in his car on campus. It is extremely unfortunate and disheartening to see this incident happen to this young student with a bright future. Appropriate measures were taken including reporting to the police.

Investigators from the Department of Criminal Investigation and the Ambulance Department were notified immediately. The police at this stage could not confirm the nature of death; however, in due course they will inform the college on the details of the investigation.The police were extremely cooperative in attending to this emergency on the campus and worked in conjunction with the ambulance and other members of the college including our security. We extend our deepest condolences and prayers to the grieving family.

Vishy Karri

If you don’t want to answer your secret question every time you log into Watani Online here is how to get rid of it.

Step 1 – Log into your Watani Online account as usual

Step 2 – Once you log in click on Manage my WOL Security Key on the left hand side

Step 3 – Click on Register you computer then on OK

Step 4 – Thats it. Next time you log into Watani Online from the same computer you won’t have to answer your secret question.

I’ve had my Wrangler for 4 years now exactly and I’ve noticed an interesting trend with my dealership after they merged with Al Mulla who are renowned for their terrible service centers.

– An oil and filter change originally used to cost me KD8. I would pop into the quick service center and come out 30 minutes later. It was still called Behbehani Motor Company here.

– An oil and filter change later became KD12. I would pop into the quick service center and come out an hour later. This is after Behbehani Motor Company and Al Mulla merged.

– An oil and filter change now costs me KD16. I now pop into the quick service center and come out two and a half hours later.

Yesterday I passed by a new concept store which my friend set up called i love souk. It turned out to be a pretty cool store that sells a bunch of random funky items like design books, vintage clothing, accessories, artwork and more. They’re also authorized dealers for Lomography and American Apparel.

They’re located outside Al Corniche Club to the left of Athletes Foot right on top of the Al Sabah Art & Design gallery. Their main ilovesouk.com website is still not up but there is a small section with pictures about the store on the Al Sabah Collection website which you can check [Here]

A friend of mine got a hold of some cupcakes by Blossom’s Bakery and I think they’re the best cupcakes I’ve had so far. Sadly I understood she no longer takes orders or delivers but you can still check out her blog for a ton of pictures of some really great looking cupcakes. [Link]

Asking price? A ridiculous KD20,000! You could probably buy two from eBay for that price and ship them to Kuwait (ok maybe not two but still) or just wait until the local dealer gets them and sells them for around KD11,000. [Link]

The blog is currently being prepared to be moved over to the new server on Rackspace. The forum is going to be shut down until the move is completed and there will be no posts on this blog until Saturday.

If you leave a comment from now till Saturday on this blog there is a chance it won’t be there once the blog is up on the new server. Sorry for any inconvenience, it should be a quick and painless move.

Update: Ok the forum is now on Rackspace. Its no longer mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com/forum you now can access it by going to forum.mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com

Update2: The blog is now on Rackspace. Took only around an hour thanks to Rami.

Update3: My email is still down at the moment.

Update4: Email is working and by the looks of it everything else on the blog. The move is complete, I just have a few things related to the theme and the forum I need to adjust. Rackspace my server provider emailed me and then called me because they read on my twitter I was having minor issues. They read my twitter and then called me! Thats fanatical support!

I found out about this online BBQ store from Buzberry and I think the idea is pretty interesting. But there are a few things I would fix like adding pictures of the products, better descriptions, decreasing the delivery time to a few hours instead of 48hours, and lowering the minimum order down to KD5 or something instead of the current KD20. Adding an option to have them BBQ the stuff for you in case you don’t want to go through the hassle of doing it yourself would also be cool. [Link]