I think Ramadan put me out of touch with food in Kuwait. This is like the third time since Ramadan ended that I discover a new item at a favorite restaurant. Today for lunch I passed by Sbarro, I hadn’t been there since before Ramadan and today I found out they had a new item that seemed interesting. Its a stromboli and up until today I hadn’t heard of it before. It’s something like their stuffed pizzas except the dough is rolled up.
I usually order the stuffed sausage & pepperoni pizza but I decided to try the stromboli version today. Although it looked interesting it turned out to be let down. The stromboli was very dry and in some places there wasn’t any sausage & pepperoni just dough. Compared to the stuffed pizza, the stromboli was boring and bland. It costs 950 fils which is the same price as a stuffed pizza except I would choose the stuffed over it easily. Its worth a try though. Final score 3 out of 5.
I just got back from a late night ride. I hadn’t ridden since the beginning of summer and ever since TriStar had picked up my bike and serviced it last week my bike has been begging to be taken out. Tonight was his lucky night.
I was walking Geo and noticed the weather was just amazing so when I got home I suited up and went out for a ride. Salmiya was deserted and I had all the streets to myself so I took full advantage and rode up and down at my pace enjoying my time. I was a bit rusty so I felt a lot more comfortable riding alone with no traffic just in case I made a mistake.
One thing I realized, the weather is a lot nicer in shorts and a tshirt. My full bike gear which includes thick riding pants and a thick riding jacket kinda made things hot but it still felt great riding. I think I will do this every night, its very peaceful and mind clearing.
I got the following email from Agnieszka and it seems like an interesting opportunity for anyone whos interested.
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I am currently looking for freelance copywriters based in the Kuwait market, working in Arabic, to work on some of our projects.
World Writers is a centralised creative and language resource based in London. We work with both agencies and direct clients to create international advertising. Our services include international copy adaptation, copywriting, cultural filtering, brand name screening, local client liaison and TV/print production management.
Over the years we have worked with numerous agencies such as Weiden & Kennedy on Nike, Vodafone and Siemens; with Springer & Jacoby on DaimlerChrysler; with Ogilvy on Huggies and so on.
Creative copywriting: Our work is mostly adaptations, based on the approved global English version. But we do understand the need for local improvisation and we do not want literal translations!
You will be involved mainly with international adaptation of advertising and marketing copy, from English into your own language and market.
Excellent understanding of English, translation skills and creative flair in your target language are crucial; knowledge of your local market – essential.
If you are interested to work as a freelance copywriter for us, please do drop me a line.
It would be great if you could send me your updated CV showing your experience in copywriting or translation (marketing, advertising preferably), a few samples of your work and let me know your availability and contact details.
Today was such a blast! We got to Marina Waves around 9AM in the morning and first thing we had to do was move our plane to the proper location which was the front of the line. One team ahead of us had withdrawn from the event so we became team #3 instead of #4.
Our friends started to come one by one until our station resembled a large diwaniya then judges started passing by to judge and ask questions about our plane. Every time a judge would see our plane they would get this shocked look on their faces but they all had sense of humors and cracked jokes with us. They all agreed though that our plane was the most comfortable one to sit in, kinda like a lazy boy version of a plane. Later that we found out one of the teams had a large helium canister which we quickly took advantage of. We kept filling balloons with helium and passing them around to everyone to inhale, that cracked everyone up for a while.
Finally around 2PM they started the event and we were the third plane to jump off. We were dressed as traditional Kuwaiti fisherman which didn’t make sense at all but its not like anything else did. Every team had to play a song and have a dance before they pushed the plane off the ramp and our song was Sabo7a. I think that and our dance which was also traditional Kuwaiti cracked up people the most. For me I think the dancing was the worst part, I hadn’t danced the traditional Kuwaiti dance since I was like 10 years old in school so I was just a mess but who cared it was still fun. The rest of the team, Khalid, Bader and Marzouq were naturals though as you can see in the video at the end of this post.
Once we were done with the dance we got behind the plane and Bader who was our pilot got into it and we started to push. We pushed as hard and fast as we could and just before the end we let go and stood and watched. All I saw was our plane fly out a few meters and then slam hard into the water with Bader lying on his back and this look of horror and pain on his face. It was priceless! It was then our turn to jump in, we didn’t have to but we wanted to. The only reason we participated in Flugtag was to have some fun and jumping in was the last thing we had to do.
When you look down from the edge the water looks really far but I thought about that for just a second before I just went ahead and jumped in. For some reason I decided to land on my ass so I landed pretty hard and it was kinda painful but not as bad as landing on your back which Khalid and Bader did. The water was amazing and it was just an incredible rush jumping off after such a long and amazing day. I could hear the crowds cheering and laughing and I could also hear Bader, Khalid and Marzouq all laughing. We then got on the jet skis that came to rescue us to take us back to shore, me and Khalid got on behind this one guy and just as he was taking off the whole jet ski flipped on its side and we landed on an adjacent jet ski which was pretty hilarious at the time I don’t know why.
When we got back to the shore we met up with the other teams and they congratulated us and we shared with them our experience. After that we just packed up and left since we were all wet and tired.
I have to say all the other teams we met and interacted with were also a lot of fun. Majority of the guys there were there just like us to have a lot of fun. If you actually saw the planes at the event you can tell most didn’t care about winning, everyone just wanted to enjoy the day and crash land with style. From the teams, to the Red Bull staff and even the judges, everyone was very positive, super friendly and a lot of fun. I would definitely want to participate again next year maybe even with an updated plane although I love ours the way it is. After this event I actually suggested we convert our plane to a raft and just join the yearly raft race with it.
The pictures above were taken by Nicole except for the picture of goatse (we had spray painted it at the rear of our plane), that was taken by me. The video below was shot by Nat. Special thanks to Hashem (he doesn’t have a blog so I could link to) for helping us out by being our ground crew and helium supplier.
I’ve recently gotten addicted to the TV show Rules of Engagement. They are in their second season now but I never thought it would be interesting, for some reason I used to read the name and think it was a TV show related to lawyers and the military. Probably because I keep thinking about the movie of the same name. Luckily by accident I downloaded and episode and after watching the first one I was hooked. The show stars three great actors, Megyn Price who plays the wife on Grounded for Life, David Spade which everyone knows from Just Shoot Me and finally my favorite actor from the bunch, Patrick Warburton who played David Puddy, Elaine’s boy friend on Seinfeld, Johnny Johnson on News Radio, The Tick on The Tick and the voice of Joe Swanson on Family Guy. A truly amazing actor and super funny in his own simple way. For more information you can check out the IMDB page. [Link]
A friend of mine was telling me that the word “wanayt” meaning pickup in local slang was actually based on an old pickup truck model number 1 8. He wasn’t sure if the engine size was 1.8 or why they used to call that truck 1 8 but the interesting part is how 1 8 became wanayt.
I watched Saw IV while I was in London and I found it really lame. The gruesome scenes were pretty detailed and realistic which is great but the story was just really forced. Part 4 was just squeezed out of no where, the whole thing should have ended in the third part, they should never have done a fourth. Currently there isn’t much on at the theaters so it might be worth watching just to kill time. I would recommend The Kingdom and Stardust over Saw 4 if you haven’t watched them already. Final score a 2.5 out of 5.
In my Hummingbird Bakery post I was told to try out Ben’s Cookies in Covent Garden so first thing I did today was try some for breakfast. They sell cookies by weight not piece. I had one milk chocolate and one double chocolate cookie and they came out to KD1.250 which is around 600 fils a cookie. Not bad considering they were pretty big and Starbucks in Kuwait sell their crappy ones for nearly the same price. I ate both cookies and found the double chocolate a bit too heavy but the milk chocolate one which is basically a chocolate chunk cookie was delicious. It was perfectly balanced, not too sweet, very light and crunchy on the outside while soft on the inside. I loved it. (Posted from my Nokia e61i)
We were at the supermarket picking up some munchies when on our way to the cashier we noticed a bunch of self checkout counters. It was hard to grasp the concept at first, I check out my stuff? Who will check and see if I was honest and didn’t skip anything? I still don’t know how they make sure people don’t cheat (probably monitor them with CCTV’s) but the idea of having customers check themselves out is unreal.
Its a pretty easy process, you take your items one by one, scan them on the machine and place them in the bag. Then you have a number of ways to pay, I chose credit card and just placed my card in the machine and that was it. Its the coolest thing ever.
Its 2007 and we are still traveling by planes? Why hasn’t anyone invented a teleporter yet like the one from Star Trek. Hi sir can I see your ticket please? Thank you have a safe trip. Voooooyoooooop. Hi sir welcome to London.
A friend of mine passed me his two iPhones today to unlock. He purchased them around the same time I purchased my last iPhone except his arrived with the 1.1.1 firmware while mine luckily arrived with the 1.0.2 one. Yesterday an updated version of AnySIM got released which I posted about and which supposedly unlocked the 1.1.1 iPhones but I tried it and it didn’t work.
The steps to unlocking a 1.1.1 iPhone are fairly easy, its just one tiny extra step compared to unlocking the 1.0.2 phones.
1) I downloaded the latest version of INdependence
2) I ran it and clicked on the option to Enter DFU mode (this is the option that you didn’t have to do with 1.0.2)
3) I quit INdependence, ran iTunes and restored the phone to version 1.0.2
4) I quit iTunes and ran INdependence again
5) I clicked on Activate
6) I then clicked on Jailbreak
7) I then clicked on install SSH
8) I FTP’ed to the phone and copied AnySIM
9) I ran AnySIM
Thats all the steps required to activate and unlock the iPhone. I also installed AppTapp but that can be done later. Now my issue is everything went smoothly except for the AnySIM unlock. It ran and gave me an error at the end which is normal, but when I rebooted it still wouldn’t work with the local GSM network. I tried unlocking both iPhones and had the same issue. Everything else on the iPhone works except for the phone. I don’t know if this is happening with other people or if I missed a step somewhere but whatever the reason might be it’s too late at night to figure it out.
I passed by McDonald’s today for a quick bite to eat and noticed they had spring rolls on the menu. I hadn’t had McDonald’s since before ramadan so I don’t know how long they’ve been serving them but I decided to give it a shot.
It’s very rare for a fast food place like McDonald’s, KFC, Hardees or Burger King to introduce an appetizer and have it succeed. The only successful appetizer I can think of is the popcorn chicken at KFC. With that in mind and with the fact that chinese food is the last thing I would think of finding at McDonald’s, I proceeded to order my spring rolls with caution.
I know this might sound crazy, I know that my taste buds can be screwy sometimes and I know the Chinese are going to hate me for saying this but… the spring rolls at McDonald’s weren’t bad at all. In fact they were pretty good. I’ve tried nearly everything that McDonald’s in Kuwait ever introduced to their menu and this is why I know to always expect the unexpected with them. When they introduced their Mushroom and Swiss burger I expected it to be the best burger they’ve ever created and it turned out to be the worst burger ever.
The spring rolls comes with a sweet chili sauce which is actually a big part of the reason the spring rolls are good. The price is also good, 550fils for 6 pieces. In the end, these spring rolls are not the best spring rolls in the world. They are not even close to being the best spring rolls in Kuwait but compared to what other fast food places are offering like the crappy Hot Rods at KFC or the overpriced cheese sticks at Burger King, these spring rolls are the best appetizers being offered at the moment and best value for money. I give them a 3.5 out of 5.
A few months back I noticed a new sports store was opening up in place of where Boushari was located in Salmiya. I was pretty excited because I thought it was a new franchise opening but then I found out it was just Sport Corner and I lost interest. Sports Corner was already open further down the street near Thuraya Complex and I didn’t like the place so I wasn’t expecting this new one to be better. I even got invited to the launch of the new store but I wasn’t interested.
Tonight though I decided to go in and it was pretty impressive. The store is 4 floors and although I don’t think the floor space is as big as GoSport, its still pretty packed with stuff especially in the basement. The ground floor is dedicated to Adidas, the second floor to Reebok, the third floor is Champions and the basement is packed with weight lifting, exercise equipment, bikes, punching bags, rackets and just a ton of stuff. The place is worth a visit if anything just so you know whats available in Kuwait in terms of sporting gear. GoSport still caters to a wider range of sports while I would say Sports Corner has a larger variety of weight lifting and exercise equipment.
The Kuwait Flour Mills started producing a new type of burger bun. Or at least I think its new since I never spotted it before and its still not listed on their website. The new bun is similar to the buns used at places like Burger Boutique and Johnny Rockets and doesn’t come with sesame seeds on the top. By the way you have to check out the Kuwait Flour Mills website, its really strange. They have an online shop which doesn’t seem to work, they have a section called “Attractive Corner” and they have a weird flash intro. On the bright side, its cool they have a site. [Link]
Oscar Pistorius is a double amputee athlete who runs with the aid of carbon fibre transtibial artificial limbs. I read about him in WIRED magazine but this is the first time I see him in action. [YouTube]
