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KFC wasn’t the only one to recently introduce a new fish sandwich to their menu, Burger King also added the new Hammour Royale. Since I tried KFC’s Fish Zinger the other day, I decided it would only be fair if I also gave Burger King’s conception a shot.

Psychologically I am more comfortable having fish at Burger King then at KFC because BK just feels (and probably is) cleaner. Well I tried the Hammour Royale and I definitely prefer it over the Fish Zinger. Firstly it tastes like fish which is a good first step. Secondly it looks pretty good, maybe not as good as the product shots in their adverts but really no burger or sandwich ever looks like their glamor shots. My biggest problem with the Hammour Royale was that it was a bit dry. If I was to have it again I would order it with cheese and extra sauce because the way I had it today it really lacked some flavor.

The price of the Hammour Royale is 900fils and I believe its an extra 50fils if you want cheese with it. The price of the combo is KD1.350. This makes the Hammour Royale 100 fils cheaper then the Fish Zinger sandwich and 150fils cheaper then the Fish Zinger combo. Overall not a bad effort by Burger King, I would still rather have McDonald’s Fillet-O-Fish but this is not a bad alternative. I would definitely have it again. Final score is a 4 out of 5.

I just found out some disappointing news. After all these years of drinking Like Cola thinking I was supporting a local product, I just found out that Like was actually introduced by 7up. Oh well at least we still have Shani to be proud of.

Here is a stream of Smashing Pumpkins latest single.
They still sound amazing! [Link]

via digg

Ever since I saw the ad for KFC’s Fish Zinger sandwich I thought to myself, why?? It didn’t make any sense, who would want to have a fish burger at KFC? Now since I needed content for my blog I figured what the heck, I would try it for lunch. Luckily for me it wasn’t that bad.

It tastes like chicken. No really it does, I think its because the spicy zinger overpowers the taste of the fish… which is a good thing because who wants to taste KFC’s version of the fish anyway. The sandwich is presented in its own customized over sized packaging which misleads you into thinking the Fish Zinger is huge, only once you open it you realize its not that big. The bun they use is pretty good (not the regular KFC bun) but its not as good as McDonalds fillet-o-fish bun which I rank as one of the prettiest looking buns ever.

The price of a Fish Zinger sandwich is KD1.000 and if you order it as a combo its KD1.500. I personally wouldn’t order it again but its really not as bad as I imagined it to be. I don’t know why they would suddenly introduce a fish burger to their menu, maybe they are thinking of launching a Kentucky Fried Fish in the future and they are just testing the waters? Whatever their reason might be I hope they stick to chicken. Final score is a 3 out of 5.

I had to shoot a TV commercial today so I had to wake up at 6AM. Its now 11:58PM and I just got back to my hotel so it was a really long exhausting day. Problem is tomorrow I have to wake up at 8AM for another shoot so I will barely have any rest and sleep. I have a lot to write about but I am too tired at the moment to do so. I get back to Kuwait Thursday night.

[YouTube]

And in case you missed it, the Hungry Bunny commercial. [Link]

Thanks Feras!

note: If you didn’t live in Kuwait pre-1990 you will not get this

Nataly came home today to find her Apple MacBook in the hallway being chewed on by Geo, or dog. I don’t know what got into his head today but for some reason he took the laptop from the living room and started chewing it. Luckily it seems he only chewed the case since the screen is still working and so is everything else meaning it shouldn’t be too costly to fix (I hope). I still don’t understand how he managed to pick up the laptop off the table and drag it to the hallway…

Had a photo shoot today from 9 in the morning till 8 in the evening. Its really never as fun as it sounds and its nothing close to being glamorous. At one point today we were with over 20 cast and crew in a small apartment living room with no AC for 6 hours. If that wasn’t bad enough, add to it the stress and pressure of directing these people in addition to the fact that you spend hours shooting the same situation over and over so that in the end you have 1 shot that makes the cut.

Now there are positives of course, I get to travel and meet new people and that usually balances things out most of the time. Still though when you tell people you are traveling for a photo shoot they think you are going on vacation.

The results are out and we didn’t win anything at the Young Lions creatives competition, but thats not why I am depressed. The idea that did win gold was the third idea me and my partner had and we KILLED because we didn’t think it was strong enough. Thats like the worst thing that could happen. I am still hoping someone is pulling my leg here..

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

I passed by the jewelery exhibit tonight at the Mishref fair ground to check it out since my cousin who recently came in from Thailand had a display there (ZoRaB). On the way in to the exhibit I found a huge shawerma stand outside so I went up to a guy there and ordered myself two shawermas. The guy turns to me and tells me these shawermas are not for sale, they are for management upstairs! I found that strange, actually not really that strange since this is Kuwait but still, a fancy jewelery exhibition and the management upstairs have their own shawerma stand right outside?

So I walked in to the exhibit hall and right at the entrance the Kuwait Customs had a display. Again this felt out of place but I figured I would get closer and check it out. I have to say, its one really strange display. The backdrop of the display had a collage of pictures from their most famous drug busts I think. There were also a couple of pictures of alcohol busts, you know the very cliche 200 bottles of red label on the floor and 3 Bangladeshis posing behind them. Now the cool part was the magic section. They had a display of magical items they had caught, its seriously the silliest stuff. There was a horse shoe, some rings, a few rocks and a lot of handwritten notes. I think those were curses or something. On the far left they also had some pharmaceutical items (they looked like adrenalin shots) and three fake DVDs. I still don’t understand why they had a display set up at a jewelery exhibition, maybe for comical relief.

The jewelery exhibit itself was kind of dull but I am also not really a jewelery person. The exhibition ends today (Monday) so if it is your kind of thing maybe you should check it out, the customs stand itself is worth the trip.

I got back from Dubai last night and since I averaged around 5 hours sleep a night I was really exhausted when I got back. Here are s

The Flight
We took the Sri Lanken airlines to Dubai for two reasons, the first was because it was an early flight (before the 2 hour delay) and the second because I was told the Sri Lanken airlines is owned by Emirates they are the same. Well they aren’t. I think all the old Emirates planes get handed down to the Sri Laken airlines. The two planes were old and setup very similarly to the Kuwait Airways ones meaning no entertainment jukebox of the Emirates with over 300 things to watch. If you want to drink water on the plane its not bottled but out of a jug, even Jazeera Airways gives passengers bottled water and for free.

The Hotel
We stayed at the Sapphire Hotel which was located very close to Dubai Media City where the Young Lions Competition was being held and it was also close to the Mall of the Emirates. The hotel felt more like a furnished apartment because I had a small kitchen, large fridge and even a washing machine. The staff weren’t good communicators and they all felt untrained. They have Internet access in all the rooms via Wifi and it costs 15 Dhms per hour. Problem was that even with my very sensitive MacBook I was only able to get a decent signal from inside the closet located near the rooms main entrance. Finally, no cab driver had heard of the hotel so every time we took a cab we had to give the driver directions.

Lina’s Cafe
Had the Turkey Fillet with cheese sandwich on Wednesday for lunch. It was so good we actually went back Thursday to have the exact same thing for lunch again.

The Butcher
Wednesday night we had dinner at The Butcher in the Mall of the Emirates. I had the steak fillet which was above average but nothing special. The restaurants name is cooler then the food.

Chicago
Virgin Megastore in Dubai don’t sell the Arabic book Chicago, which was the book that supposedly shutdown Virgin in Kuwait. Borders on the other hand which was located a few stores away did sell the book. I should have gotten a bunch and sold them here in Kuwait on the black market.

Cabs
We took a lot of cabs in Dubai since it was our only mean of getting around. Cab drivers were mostly friendly and easy to converse with except for one driver who turned out had been in Dubai for just a month and reminded us a lot of Borat. One tip, if you are leaving Mall of the Emirates at 10pm and notice there is a long long long line of people waiting for a cab in a very orderly fashion… don’t wait with them. Just walk 20 meters to the main road and grab a passing cab from there, it will save you at least 30 minutes of waiting. Seriously the line was as long as those at six flags or Disney. I should really have taken a picture! Vallet parking at the mall is 50 Dhms (KD4).

Aï Zone
Found a really cool pair of Prada sneakers at Aï Zone, there was no price tag on them so I figured if I have to ask then I probably can’t afford them.

Passport Covers
One quick question. At the Dubai airport they had a large stand selling passport covers. Now my question is this, can I use a passport cover of a different country on my passport? For example can I buy the Russian passport cover and then use it to cover my Canadian passport?

Today was the Young Creatives competition in Dubai. Our flight arrived last night at around 1AM to Dubai and by the time we got to the hotel it was 2. Still, we managed to wake up at 7 and headed to Dubai Media City where the Cannes Lions competition was being held.

At 9AM we were briefed by the client which turned out to be WFP (World Food Program) and we had to come up with a campaign that would help promote their Food for Education program. We had until 6PM to come up and execute our ideas which was a surprise because we were told originally to expect 12 hours to work on it.

Anyway we managed to come up with around 19 different ideas which we finally narrowed down to three and then to just two which was the maximum amount of creative work we could present. We are pretty confident one of our ideas should get us in the top 3 but we will have to wait and see.

At the start of the event they introduced me and my partner as the only team that isn’t from Dubai. Turns out this was the first time a team from outside of Dubai participated which put Kuwait in the spotlight. My partner is Kuwaiti and I grew up in Kuwait so we were truly representing Kuwait.

Hopefully one of our directions hits the top 3, we should find out the results by May 8th I believe. I will try to post our favorite direction here but at the moment I am not sure if I am allowed to. I am going to go skiing now so will I post again later on tonight once I come back.

I finally picked up my car today from the BMW dealer but before I picked it up I got taken backstage to the garage and given a short tour plus introduced to a few people.

Overall I found the employees backstage to be a lot friendlier and more interesting then the people they have in the front dealing with customers which is kind of ironic. They told me they had received calls from various people around the world regarding my email and post (thanks to everyone who told me to email BMW in Germany and Dubai). The workshop manager told me no case ever grew to this proportion and that next week a delegation is even coming to Kuwait to check on the problems.

I told the workshop manager I was positive they weren’t coming because of my complaint alone but because they had been receiving a lot of complaints from many people. I also told him I wouldn’t have even sent out the emails or posted what I posted had there been friendly and good customer service.

Anyway they fixed the car and didn’t charge me for it and now its running perfectly so I am happy.

The weather today is really gross. I rode in on my bike in the morning and later at lunch I had to ride back home and it was just awful. Its not only really dusty but at some points on the Gulf Road the air becomes really hot for some reason and it just makes things disgusting. It was terrible, I think riding season is nearly over.