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Wow Kuwaitism just posted the coolest music video ever made in Kuwait. The video was recorded in 1978 back when alcohol was still legal and when the sea was actually visible while driving down the Gulf Road. Its an English music video called Do You Love Me? and its by the Bendaly Family.

Kuwaitism also has another video linked and more info so check out his post [Here] Also the guy who put the video on YouTube has a ton more vintage music videos which you can also check out by clicking [Here]

update: I asked my mum if she knew a group called Bendaly Family since she was in Kuwait back then and she told me she did and it turns out I do to. They are a Lebanese band and their daughter Remi Bendaly later went solo and was pretty famous. According to my mum back in around 1985 or 1986 I actually attended a Bendaly Family concert here in Kuwait and got to sit front row. The concert was held in Shaab Park which was an open area back then. The Showbiz owner back then George Karam brought the Bendaly Family to Kuwait.

I just found out Bershka is opening in The Avenues on March 13th. I am not a big fan of Bershka, Nat is, but the interesting thing to note here is the opening date. If Bershka is opening on the 13th then I am guessing The Avenues is opening either before or on that same day.

update: Launch pushed back till the 18th.

Yesterday night Tristar came and picked up my bike so they could install my new slip-ons. While the bike was being put on the truck I realized I still haven’t come up with a name for the bike. So after some thinking I have decided to call my bike Starscream.

Nathans or Hardees, which of the two has the better chili dog?

THE NATHANS CHILI DOG

THE HARDEES CHILI DOG

PRICE
Nathans Chili Dog: 750 fils
Hardees Chili Dog: 500 fils

SIZE
Both Hardees and Nathans have similarly sized hot dogs. The Nathans is just slightly bigger but not by that much.

LOOKS
Hardees looks visually more attractive and colorful while the Nathans hot dog looks dull and stale.

SPEED
Nathans hot dogs take longer then Hardees to prepare. I ordered my hot dog from Nathans Souk Sharq then I went to Hardees ordered a hot dog, I picked it up and went back to Nathans and my hot dog was still not ready. Also while waiting at Nathans I had to stand there listening to the manager making fun out of people who pass him. He’s an idiot.

TASTE
Nathans Chili Dog: The chili is terrible and the onions tasteless. The hot dogs meat itself is tastier then the Hardees meat but everything else tasted bad. I even ordered a plain hot dog with just ketchup and mustard and I don’t know what ketchup they use but its one of the worst tasting ones I have ever tried. A real mess seriously.

Hardees Chili Dog: Although the actual hot dog itself tastes a bit better at Nathans, the chili used at Hardees is much better and the mustard and onions are also better tasting. Even the bread feels softer and fresher.

CONCLUSION
I believe the Hardees Chili Dog is a better hot dog overall. Firstly it costs 50% less then the Nathans one Nathans hot dog costs 50% more. Its also visually more attractive, quicker to order and in general is a better tasting hot dog. I would not have a Nathans hot dog again, not unless they get better ingredients.

I was waiting for Marzouq to post about this but he hasn’t still so I am going to post about it first… although it is HIS story.

Today I got an email from Marzouq and he sounded really pissed and depressed. He was vague in his email but it was something about losing a really important bid. I was like fuck, what was he bidding for? I figured something related to work, maybe he was trying to get the rights to Google Kuwait or some fast food chain or something. Anyway a few hours later he gives me a call.

We are talking and he tells me about this charity auction that took place in the US and how they were auctioning off a variety of items like electronics, snowmobiles etc.. I was thinking he probably tried bidding on a limited edition motorbike and he lost. Then he tells me that one of the items they were auctioning off was the chance to appear on an episode of 24 next season! Whoever won the auction would have a role on the show in season 7 and would also get to meet the whole cast and then leave with the episode script autographed by everyone. So I was like ok what happened??

Turns out he had a friend at the auction who was bidding in his place. He told his friend to bid max up to $10,000. Turns out though he had a tough competitor, some wife of a millionaire who according to Marzouqs friend came up to him and told him she wanted to have Jack Bauers babies. She kept bidding against him until past his $10,000 limit. In the end he increased his max bid till he hit around $16,000 but she kept bidding until in the end she won the auction for $21,000.

Its such an insane thing, imagine, a blogger from Kuwait would have been on 24. I would have been really jealous if he had won, but it sucks he didn’t. I know how much it would have meant to him being on the show. Anyway I think he is going to be pissed now because I posted about HIS experience before he did!

This reminds me of when King Abdullah appeared on Startrek.

update: Here is a link to Marzouqs post with more details! [Link]

Today I got a long rectangular box with a dozen cupcakes from a new place that opened up in Fanar called Juju’s Cupcake. All the cupcakes looked stunning and within seconds they disappeared. Everyone just wanted one. I don’t have any idea on the prices and although the box has a website address, jujuscupcake.com, the website is still not up. If you are interested though you can call them on 5722999.

Picture above taken by 7oO7oO

Just finished watching the first season of Dexter and it was really cool. The best part has to be the fact that the main actor is Michael Hall who played the gay brother on my favorite TV show, Six Feet Under. In Dexter he plays a Miami police forensics expert during the day but at night he is a serial killer who goes around killing criminals who he believes have escaped justice. Its such an incredible and very strange show, I so can’t wait for the second season.

A friend sent me a link to the wikipedia entry for the word “Paraphilia” with a simple instruction “You gotta check the list at the end”. So I scrolled down and I didn’t know what I was looking for until I found the strangest thing. Its the “List of paraphilias” with some really strange entries, here are some of my favorites:

Acousticophilia: sexual arousal from certain sounds
Aquaphilia: arousal from water and/or in watery environments, including bathtubs or swimming pools
Coprophilia: sexual attraction to (or pleasure from) feces
Emetophilia: sexual attraction to vomit
Gynophagia: sexual attraction toward eating woman (eating as in food)
Nasophilia: sexual attraction to the sight, touch of human noses
Retifism: sexual arousal from shoes
Sitophilia: sexual arousal from food
Spectrophilia: sexual attraction to ghosts

For the full and very enjoyable list click [Here]

As you probably noticed I have a new sponsor, Al Ghalia Group who are based in Bahrain. This means I now have a total of 5 banners on my blog which I won’t deny is a lot. I have tried my best not to clutter up the blog too much with banners and this is honestly the best I can do.

Like you I would rather this blog had no banners at all but the banners are there for a reason… they provide me with extra income. I understand these banners decrease the aesthetics of the blog but the money is actually pushing me to continue blogging.

Blogging daily is difficult, its a lot of pressure and it takes time. I currently try to post a minimum of 3 posts a day so I could remain consistent. If I didn’t have the income coming in from the banners I might have stopped blogging ages ago or at least I would have stopped posting as often.

Now money usually is not a comfortable subject to discuss but this is a blog and I think its important for me to be as open as I can with my readers.

How much money am I making? Well I have decided to share with everyone a PDF file I send to people who request information on advertising on the blog. Its my rate card and you can download it by clicking [Here]. I wasn’t sure if I should make this information public or not but I figured if I was a reader I would be curious to know how much money this blog is making the same way I am curious to know how much money engadet or digg make. Well as you can see from the rate card this blog is currently making nearly $3000 a month. This is a good chunk of cash and I hope now everyone understands why I have so many banners here.

I have not sold out. Just because I am making money from the blog doesn’t mean I have sold out. All I am doing is cashing in on my 15 minutes of fame. When something sucks I will still say it sucks and when something is good I will still say its good.

Anyway it feels awkward sharing this information but I hope everyone especially my long time readers understand the reason for all these banners. Thank you!

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update: If anyone has any questions you can ask by leaving a comment below and I will reply to it.

One reader, Biohazard asked an important question which is Can I bash a sponsors product? The answer is simply no. When Alghanim Automotive were my sponsors I told them that if a cars they lent me to test drive sucked then I would post negative stuff about it. So what they did was just lend me their best cars. Now though what I do is tell my sponsors that if they lend me a product to try out and it turns out to suck I will just not mention the product at all. This way they aren’t afraid to send me more stuff to try out.

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update 2: I changed the location of the new banner because of complaints. If you prefer the new location over the previous one please leave a comment below. In case you missed it here is a screen shot of the previous location. [Screen Shot]

I just got the following SMS from my sister who I’m guessing is inside Avenues:

Avenues has what is acclaimed to be the sexiest Starbucks in the world. Even the name and logo are in silver, not green. The walls are also dark gray granite.

Sounds cool. I am going to google now and see if there is anything like this anywhere else in the world. Avenues is still not open to the public.

As most of you probably know by now there have been a number of Bird Flu cases reported in Kuwait. The big question of course is are we in any danger? How can we contract the Avian flu? Well I did some research and from what I understood the only way you can contract bird flu is through their saliva, nasal secretions, and feces. Meaning unless you are planning on making out with a bird you should be pretty safe. [Source]

Today I watched a pigeon hatch from an egg right outside my office window. At first it was exciting but 15 minutes later the pigeon still hadn’t finished hatching which made things really boring.

Hungry Bunny is a local creation that opened up in the early 80s in Kuwait. It was inspired by a Australian franchise called Hungry Jack which was what Burger King was called in Australia back then.

In 1997 Al Homaizi Foodstuff Co. who owned Hungry Bunny got the rights to Burger King. Since they couldn’t have two competing franchises they decided to close down all the Hungry Bunnys and open up Burger Kings in the same locations.

Since then there have been copycats the most popular being “Hungry Bunny World” and “Super Bunny” which was named after the famous Hungry Bunny burger. Hungry Bunny World actually opened up a branch on the 4th Ring Road back in 2005 and called it just “Hungry Bunny”. This led to a lot of speculation and rumors that Hungry Bunny was relaunching but they weren’t true. Al Homaizi sued (or threatened to sue) so they added the word “World” on their signage.

I heard awhile back from a friend that Al Homaizi was actually thinking of relaunching Hungry Bunny but I don’t know if thats true or not. For now the only way you can enjoy Hungry Bunny is to drive down to Saudi Arabia where the franchise still exists there. Here is the link to their website: www.hungry-bunny.com

note: the above information is based on my knowledge. If there are any mistakes in dates or events I will fix them but as far as I know the above is accurate.

update: A reader by the name of HaMooR wrote the following:

Dear Mark,

Al Homaizi has the BK franchize since the first hungry bunny openned in Kuwait. and I believe it was Kaifan branch, in order for Al Homaizi to sake BK prudects at that time in kuwait. they have to change the name of BK, because BK was consider in the taboo list (boycott Isreal).

There was a big sign in kaifan branch that says all the meat prudects are BK. So when BK was removed from the list back in 97 .. and there is no reason to for them to hide the name, they switched to BK.

Here are some movies I watched the past few days, I didn’t like any of them.

Blood Diamond
This was a movie I had been looking forward to see for some time now. When I finally got to watch it, I didn’t like it and it was mostly because of the story. The movie is trying to be real and emotional by showing the truth behind the illegal diamond industry in Africa and while all I wanted to watch was a no brainer action movie.

Little Children
Another movie I had been looking forward to see for a very long time. Sadly the trailer painted a different picture from the actual movie. Not that the movie was bad because it wasn’t. The trailer made me expect a thriller but the movie turned out to be more drama mixed in with romance.

Lonely Hearts
I watched this movie because of James Gandolfini. Since the new season of Sopranos still hasn’t started I figured I could get my dose of mob stories from Lonely Hearts. Turns out this movie had nothing to do with mobs and James Gandolfini was actually a good guy. I still gave the movie a chance but it was just boring. The whole movie is about this serial killer which might have been something dramatic back in the 1940s where the movie is based but today with shows like CSI and Dexter, serial killers is something of the norm.

Babel
Finally Babel. This movie has to be the worst of the bunch. Its trying to follow the same style as last years big hit Crash where stories come together but this time there are 4 different stories located across 3 different countries. The stories alone are nothing exciting and even in the end when they all come together it didn’t do anything for me. Crash was a whole lot better.

Now I have one more movie I want to watch today and thats Little Miss Sunshine. Hopefully it won’t be disappointing.

Rado at RatLab posted an interesting post about a large flag on the side of one of the buildings in the city that went crazy. Seems the flag got loose somehow and because it was windy it started slamming into the glass building breaking and smashing windows. The firemen ended up coming and closing down the street until they could bring the flag down. Pictures of the incident are available on RatLab. [Link]