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Seems the local magazine Student-Talk doesn’t think too highly of us bloggers. K.TheKuwaiti has a couple of interesting posts regarding Student-Talk including the emails they sent him in reply to his original post. After reading their emails it kinda makes me appreciate Bazaar just a bit more.

Here are links to his posts:
Student-Talk Magazine is a joke
Student-Talk responds
Dima Al-Damen from Student-Talks, Talks

What I realized today (its probably a generalization but still) is that before the invasion the people who came to work in Kuwait liked living in Kuwait. Today most of the people who come to work in Kuwait really don’t like living here.

Here is some interesting information regarding the Kuwait national squad. It was written by ilbaasha and edited by me.

Why is the Kuwait national team called Al-Azraq?
Al-Azraq refers to the period of time at the start of February when it becomes extremely cold after few days of warmth and people start to wear winter clothes again. This is the last chance of getting rain in Kuwait and it indicates the start of the end for the winter season.

The national team mascot is Haydoo the camel; the word is used as a “sit down” order to camels according to the Kuwaiti accent dictionary.

Why and how was Haydoo used as the mascot?
Back in October 1981 Kuwait was playing a world cup qualifying match in Oakland, New Zealand where the Kiwi fans had signs reading “Go Back to your Camels!” which they were waving as the Kuwaiti team came onto the field. Kuwait won that match 2 goals to 1.

When it was the home game later that year, 100 camels were brought on the pitch before the match to show that Kuwait was proud of its past.

Kuwait ended up qualifying to the 1982 world Cup in Spain and was the first Arab country from Asia to ever qualify. A Spanish newspaper later claimed that the Kuwait national team will be late to the World Cup because they would be “traveling on the backs of their camels!”. So, the Kuwaiti Football Association decided to use a camel (named Haydoo) as their mascot.

Unlike the newspaper had predicted, the Kuwaiti team ended up arriving early. Too early actually and no one, not the journalists or the locals knew that the Kuwaiti team was even in Spain! To attract attention, the head of the Kuwaiti Football Association told a French journalist who there to cover the arrival of the French team that “The Kuwaiti team would withdraw from the competition unless they were allowed to bring their mascot.” Within hours the hotel was packed with journalists wanting to find out more about the mascot

The Spanish authorities and the hotel manager finally allowed the Kuwaiti team to bring their camel as long as it was left in the backyard of the hotel. The head of the Kuwaiti Football Association then called the minister of sport in Morroco to send a camel as soon as possible to Spain. He also ordered a T-shirt to be made for the camel. This hype and the Camel mascot helped make Kuwait’s presence extremely felt by the locals and journalists.

Haydoo, has been the mascot for the Kuwaiti national team ever since.

You can listen to the Haydoo song (its Arabic with some English). The file is in Real Audio format. [ Download Song]

Update: Here is the video

Here are 26 urls from A to Z. These are the first sites that appear in Firefox when I type a letter:

A – Autoblog
B – Blind Melon
C – CNN
D – Digg
E – Engadget
F – Applenova Forums
G – Gmail
H – Hotbot
I – iToot
J – Joystiq
K – Kottke
L – Lebanese Forces
M – MacRumors
N – NBK
O – NBK Online
P – PowerPage
Q – Qualitynet Unwanted
R – Real Hot Stuff
S – Socialitelife
T – TorrentLeech
U – U Shop We Ship
V – Virb
W – Naharnet
X – XE Currency Exchange
Y – YouTube
Z – zDistrict

update: Just to make things clear. In some browsers when you type a letter in the address bar you get a drop down list of your most visited sites starting with that letter. the above list is my most visited sites per letter on my Mac at home. Yours will be different. This list is just to share with you some sites some of which you might not know of.

When I asked about good chilidogs in Kuwait a lot of people recommended I try the chilidog at Johnny Rockets. Well I tried it and it sucked.

First of all the hot dog arrived with the bun wide open. Then the hot dog itself was also split open down the middle and the whole thing was covered with a ton of chili and some chopped onions. When I closed the bun so I could eat it the top half of the bun split away from the bottom half and the chili just started dripping uncontrollably everywhere. Its definitely not a sandwich you would want to order on your first date… or ANY date for that matter.

After a short struggle and going through a dozen napkins I finally managed to finish my chilidog. I wasn’t impressed. Their chili is decent but really the whole experience wasn’t very pleasant, their chili burger is much more enjoyable. Compared to Hardees, Burger Boutique and Fuddruckers, Johnny Rockets has the worst chilidog. My final score is a 2.5 out of 5. The price of the chilidog is KD1.850. I’ll stick to their burger next time.

Picture by Kristel Wyman

In the comments to my Nearly There post, a reader commented saying that I needed to “add more interesting stuff which appeals to a broader audience”. I try my best to scour the web everyday trying to find interesting stuff to post, I also spend most of my day looking for stuff to post wherever I go and some days I find a lot of stuff and other days its a struggle.

My question is what would you, my readers like to see more of in this blog? I don’t know if I will change the content much since the formula at the moment must be working if people are coming back, but it would still be interesting to read what you guys would like.

I just came back from a short ride on my Ducati. It was my first time back out on the public roads since my crash 2 months ago. I was kind of nervous which is natural but not afraid which is a very good thing especially after a crash. I rode in Salmiya in the area around my building but there was a bit more traffic then I thought there would be. For my first ride I think I did fine.

Before I rode out on the streets I rode my bike a bit in my buildings underground parking. I did some 8’s with the bike and also some braking and moving, braking and moving. I still need to get the hang of my bike.

My wrist by the way still hasn’t heeled healed. I passed by Razzi Hospital two days ago and they told me I had a torn ligament in my wrist and still needed two months to heel heal. They told me I should rest my wrist for these two months and I shouldn’t ride the bike. Thing is in Kuwait there are only like two months of the year where you can actually ride the bike so I am not going to waste them giving my wrist a rest.

I am going to do a bit of riding everyday, small sessions not to kill my wrist but also just enough to get me the hang of the bike and give me some practice before I decide to go back out onto the main road again. Can’t believe I am riding again, it feels amazing..

Tonight me and Nat passed by the Choowy Goowy bakery to make our own cookies. Originally I had planned a whole variety of cookies to make but due to the fact I am extremely lazy I didn’t get all the ingredients I needed plus the lack of a deep fryer at Choowy Goowy meant I couldn’t fry any cookies anyway.

The result of two hours of baking were the following types of cookies:

– Chocolate chunks cookie
– Chocolate and white chocolate chunks cookie
– Rice Krispies with marshmallow cookies
– Oreo cookies
– Cookies with smacks and a Nutella core
– Plain cookie with a Nutella core
– Cookies mixed with Nutella and white chocolate chunks
– Cookies mixed with Nutella and Frosties cornflakes
– Plain cookies with chocolate fudge on top

I tried a couple of them and they are really really good. Its going to be hard to choose only one to produce. I got a whole bunch of jars filled with cookies I am going to take to work tomorrow and share them. Really delicious cookies.

I was talking to one of the owners of Choowy Goowy when we ended up talking about different kinds of cookies and what cookies I would make if I had a bakery. One thing led to another and basically me and Nat are now invited to create our own cookies. Tomorrow evening we will be visiting the Choowy Goowy bakery and with their help we will be creating our own cookies. We will experiment with a variety of flavors and ideas and our best creation will be sold by Choowy Goowy for a limited time.

Now I have a lot of ideas for cookies but I thought I would share them with you guys first. Some sound strange but I want to do them out of curiosity and they might even end up tasting good:

– Cookie with a soft nutella chocolate core
– Pizza Cookies. Cookie dough mixed with tomato paste and stuffed with mushrooms and olives
– 4 Cheese cookies
– Chocolate chip cookie dipped in chocolate sauce
– Rice krispy cookies
– Plain cookie dipped in chocolate sauce topped with cornflakes
– Tempura cookies
– A healthy cookie probably stuffed with broccoli and something
– Bubblegum flavored cookies
– Zaatar cookies
– Cookies with cocopuffs
– Oreo cookies
– Choco-Banana cookies

After sharing my ideas with the Choowy Goowy guy I felt he was going to take his invite back. Luckily he didn’t or should I say hasn’t yet. I will continue brainstorming on some cookie ideas and might add more to the list.

Why don’t they make the chocolate dip compartment larger? The way it is now, the chocolate dip always finishes before the sticks. [Link]

I posted about Auction it TODAY last month. They are a company in Kuwait that take care of selling your stuff on eBay. Well I was checking out what they were currently auctioning off on eBay and I ended up finding some strange items. Keep in mind all this stuff is located in Kuwait which makes the actual items strange. Like the Food Dehydrator or 35mm camera. If you check their previous sold items you will find even stranger stuff.

You can check out their auctions by clicking [Here].

Tonight at 10PM local time Amazon had a special deal on the Xbox 360. The were offering it for only $100, the catch.. only 1000 pieces. I knew I didn’t have a chance when I saw that deal plastered all over the web including places like Digg and Gizmodo. Still, I decided to give it a shot and see if I could be one of the lucky 1000.

At around 9:45PM I started refreshing the offer page every 20 seconds. By 9:58 Amazon’s servers got overloaded and the page stopped loading. So using two computers I started opening the same page in like 20 tabs on each computer. Finally two of my tabs loaded and I saw the Get this deal button. I quickly pressed it but my other tabs started loading and I noticed the same page now was saying Sold Out. I was hoping that since I clicked the button already I would be counted as one of the first 1000. Around a minute later one of the tabs where I had clicked the Get this deal button loaded and Amazon was asking me what 11+16 was. I quickly loaded up the calculater (yes I suck) and calculated their question and entered it and pressed Get this deal for a second time.

Sadly, by the time the third page loaded around 10:13PM I got a message telling me the product didn’t exist. The 1000 Xbox 360’s got sold out in under 15 seconds. With our lousy internet connection here in Kuwait I didn’t stand a chance. But, at least it was a fun experience.

Here are some screen grabs of the two pages aftr I clicked the first Get this deal button.

Second page message
Third page message

I passed by IKEA earlier tonight, the new one which is located at the Avenues Mall. It IS huge, very huge. I really liked the new place, the whole mall although still closed looks massive. The most noticable update at IKEA has to be the restaurant, its now around 4 or 5 times larger then it was before. Actually what am I saying, the whole place is like 4 times larger. Its now a really long walk from the beginning till the end.

I had dinner at the IKEA restaurant, Chicken Masala with Rice. It was pretty good but to help paint a picture on how big the new IKEA is, by the time I got to the exit I was hungry again and ended up ordering food from the snack stand near the exit. The new snack stand by the way is a huge improvement over the old one. Other then corn, ice cream, and hotdogs they now have shawerma. I decided to order one just to try it, I would probably give it a 3 out of 5, still need to pass by and try it one more time before I can give my final score though.

The biggest change in the new IKEA is that you now have to pick up your packages yourself just before you get to the cashier. You enter this huge warehouse like room and its just shelves and shelves of packed goods. Someone told me IKEA did this to bring down the prices of the products by 10%. Whatever their reason I know many people will not like the fact that they now have to do manual labor. I took a picture of one of the shelves which you can view by clicking [Here]

Overall I think its a really great improvement. Although I really liked the old IKEA I think the new one is better in every way.

Late last month I posted about how Showtime were still taking money from me every month even though I canceled my account. Well I finally spoke to a guy at Showtime who told me he would solve my problem by making sure they cancel my subscription and then refund me two months worth of subscription fees by the next day. I was like fine, great.

A few days later I call the guy up again telling him that I still hadn’t received the refund. He told me he had deposited the money into my account and it should be there. After further investigation it turns out the guy deposited my refund in the wrong account! He told me that its too late now and he couldn’t take it back and that I should contact the other person and try to get my money off of him. I told him I wouldn’t do that and that he should solve the problem. He then sarcastically told me fine, he would pay me the refund from his salary. I was like whatever you want to do, do it. I just want my refund.

Since that day I haven’t been able to get a hold of the guy again. He won’t return my calls and I have been leaving messages on his voice mail and still no reply. I don’t think my troubles with Showtime will ever finish.

update: I just got off the phone with the COO of Global Direct. He told me I will get my refund within the next 2 days. I told him that it wasn’t about the money but the actual process I had to go through to get my account canceled. He assured me that Showtime was going through a major restructuring of the customer service department and all the problems I faced will be fixed.

I found out last minute I had to go down to Dubai for work and since Gitex had just started, finding a room was practically impossible. Finally though the travel agent came through and found me an empty room and booked it. I have to say it was the crappiest hotel I had ever been to. The whole place looked like a bathroom and smelled like one that had just been cleaned. They had these air fresheners that spray perfume automatically located all over the hotel but they just reminded me too much of bathrooms.

If the look of the hotel wasn’t enough to put me off, before we got the room key they made us sign a paper which said if any of our stuff goes missing in the rooms that they wouldn’t be responsible for it. Not only that but inside the room there was a framed photocopy of a similar paper stating the same thing and another A4 sheet located on the table also saying the same thing. As you can imagine I didn’t want to leave anything in the room and I didn’t, I kept my backpack with me the whole time.

Traffic in Dubai because of Gitex was just a disaster. It was always at a complete standstill, a real mess. One cab driver told me things get even worse in February during the shopping festival.

The weather in Dubai was also a lot hotter then Kuwait. Its currently freezing here. Froze my ass off tonight while leaving Maki at Marina, even had a jacket on and it wasn’t enough!

I wanted to visit Gitex but I finished my work around 8PM and Gitex closes at 7. Why can’t they stay open till like 10 or something like exhibitions that are held in Kuwait? Its like people need to take a day off work to pass by them.

I went to Ibn Battuta mall. Its not as big as Mall of the Emirates but its still a lot bigger then Marina Mall and the whole thing felt very Las Vegasishy.

I still can’t believe I was in Dubai and didn’t get to pass by Gitex!