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Today I had my first riding lesson. It was really cool because I got there and there were two training motorbikes, two mechanics, this cool American biker called Kevin AND Jafar Behbahani, the owner of TriStar where I got my bike from. I had heard a lot about him and how cool a guy he was so meeting him was like really great. He spent the first half of the course teaching me how to ride but then had to leave for a meeting but Kevin continued in his place.

My lesson didn’t go that bad. I was stalling a lot in the beginning but near the end of my lesson I started getting the hang of it. My left hand and right hand can not coordinate together which is what made my lesson difficult. Its hard for me to do one thing with one hand and a different thing with my other hand, but they told me with practice I will get the hang of it and I can’t wait till that day comes. My second lesson is tomorrow, I am going to try to finish up all my lessons very quickly so I can get my license ASAP.

I really have to say I am extremely impressed with TriStar, Marzouq had told me before about how good they were and thats why he had recommended I get my bike from them but I didn’t think they would be this good. They are real professionals. If anyone is interested in a Ducati, KTM or BMW motorbikes, new or used then you should pass by them or give them a call. They are located in Kuwait City, at the end of the Istiklal freeway, opposite Al Khaleejiah Complex. You can call them on 2405194 (ask for Salem) or visit their website on tristarkw.com.

Tomorrow is my second lesson, should be really fun.

Today I finally have my first biking lesson. It really sucks having a bike and not being able to ride it and now I can’t wait till I finally get my license. Since I am going to the lesson right after work I have my helmet, gloves and jacket in the car. I am also wearing my biking boots which are the Alpinestars Stroke shoes. They are pretty cool and they don’t look half bad either. They also make me feel like a biker even though I still don’t know how to ride a bike which is pretty lame.

The weather is getting really better really quickly. I can’t wait till Ramadan starts since the roads would get deserted at around 5:30pm which would be perfect for a newbie biker since I can fuck up and not have to worry about getting run over.

Someone asked that question in the forum and I thought it was interesting. In case you didn’t know, the government gave every Kuwaiti KD200 two days ago. So the question is directed to the locals, how are you planning on spending the money? The funniest thing I heard was that some guys were betting KD200 against each other in rounds of Winning Eleven on the PS2. Easy come easy go..

After posting about the iPod mini for sale the other day someone from Kuwait emailed me asking if I could help sell her iPod Video. The iPod is from 11/2005 and is in good condition. The iPod has only minor scratches from normal use. The iPod is 60 GB and black. It comes with the original package, with earphones, USB cable and Itunes CD.

Asking price: KD90 KD80

If interested send an email to [email protected]

Update: iPod is sold an no longer availabe

One of the coolest features of iTunes 7 is the album cover browser. Problem is if you don’t have the album art its pretty useless. iTunes does come with an option called “Get Album Artwork” but you need an iTunes music store account to get it working and to get an iTunes music store account you need a US credit card. Sucks but there is some good news. Before iTunes 7 when there was no “Get Album Artwork” option I used to use a script called Fetch Art to download the album covers. I just tried it now and it is still working with iTunes 7 so I figured some people might find this script usefull. Its only works on Macs though so PC users need to find another option. [Link]

update: I just found this other software which seems cool while trying to find a Windows version. [Link]

update 2: PC users, here are 2 programs that downloads art. [Link 1] [Link 2]

I am a big chocolate spread fan and the most common brands I get are Nutella, Crumpy and Hazella but mostly I just get the large Nutella jar. I tried the Galaxy chocolate spread but I just found it tooo sweet. So the other week I was at Sultan Center in Salmiya and I found a new brand of chocolate spread, the famous Neuhaus from Belgium. I was like gourmet chocolate spread? I have to try it! So, I went and purchased a jar of Neuhaus Chocolate Spread with Nuts and went back home to try it.

Was it any good? No question about it, the Neuhaus chocolate spread was the most flavored chocolate spread I have ever tried. Its thick and smells nutty plus the presentation of it is very minimal and elegant. Its really delicious. I never doubted the fact that it would taste really good, the only question is… is it worth it?

The 750-grams Nutella jar costs 915fils. The 200-grams Neuhaus jar costs KD2,780. That means the Neuhaus chocolate spread costs more then 11 times the price of Nutella, but is it 11 times better?

Simply no, it isn’t.

I can’t even imagine what Nutella times 11 would taste like but I am pretty sure it must be close to orgasmic and although the Neuhaus spread is really fucking good its no where near orgasmic. So would I recommend it? Yes I would, at-least to try it once. But I wouldn’t recommend it as a replacement to Nutella, its just not feasible, what you get is something better then Nutella but not something that deserves to be eleven times as expensive. This is why for the final rating it gets a 3.5 out of 5.

Yesterday after work I decided I would pass by Bader Al Badoor for a quick bite to eat. Once I got their though I changed my mind and decided I would try the other shawerma place opposite to it. A friend of mine told me they had better shawermas so I figured I would give it a shot and see.

After trying Al-Ghader and Badar Al Badoor’s shawerma, Burgan was a disappointment. First the place seems to be the least clean out of the three. The interior was very small and even though it wasn’t that packed I still found it difficult to get to the cashier who was tucked away in a corner behind a Pepsi fridge. The employees also didn’t seem the cleanest or the most organized compared to Al-Ghader and Bader Al Badoor. There was a brief argument for example that broke out with the shawerma guy and one of the employees, the employee originally told the shawerma guy 2 shawermas but then gave him a paper saying 6 shawermas because the customer had requested more. The shawerma guy didn’t read the paper and just went and did 2 shawermas. So they were arguing for like 5 minutes on whose fault it was while the customer was outside waiting in his car for his order.

After a brief wait I picked up my shawermas and a can of coke and headed to the car to eat. Its not hard to make a good shawerma, as long as its not greasy, you use good bread and you make sure the garlic doesnt taste like mayonnaise then you have yourself a good shawerma. But, from a good shawerma to a great shawerma it takes a lot more then that and this is where Burgan fails to deliver. While Badar Al Badoor and Al-Ghader both had neutral tasting chicken in their shawerma’s, Burgan trys to be different by giving the chicken some flavor. If you actually look closely at the chicken shawerma skewer you will notice the chicken has what looks like red spice on it. This is what gives Burgan’s chicken this extra touch of flavor but with me at-least this addition of theirs backfired because I didn’t like it. Its not so bad that I wouldn’t eat it, I don’t think I have ever come across a shawerma that I wouldn’t eat but it does make me prefer Badar Al Badoor which is just across the street from them.

Burgan’s quantity of chicken is good, they are not stingy, their Pepsi was also freezing cold but the chicken just tasted strange and the garlic wasn’t strong enough to cover the taste. The shawerma costs 250fils which is standard for a place like this. The final score is a 3 out of 5.

Need directions? Follow Badar Al Badoor’s [Link]

I just watched this crazy ass video on CNN.com. A CNN camera man and reporter were doing some investigation when the reporter got attacked by a man and his wife. The camera guy kept on recording even though his partner was getting beaten up. You can watch the whole incident at CNN.com, it gets kinda bloody at the end. [Link]

Two years ago I read somewhere that Ewan McGregor was going to ride a bike around the world. I didn’t think much of it then and totally forgot about it until a few weeks ago Marzouq mentioned Long Way Round on his blog. Turns out Ewan McGregor took cameras with him on the trip and he turned his adventure into a documentary. So right after I read Marzouqs post I download the series from the Internet and I watched it none stop for 2 days.

Long Way Round is a documentary that is 7 episodes long and it takes you on an adventure with Ewan McGregor and his best friend Charley Boorman on a 151 day journey from London all the way to New York. They headed East from London through a couple of countries in Europe, then they headed into Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia then Russia again followed by Siberia where they then took a plane to Alaska. From Alaska they then rode down to Calgary and then down into the US until they reached New York. It was a really incredible and extremely exhausting journey. Mongolia for example has only 80 miles of tarmac so the majority of their ride was on gravel and offroad.

It was really fun to watch the documentary and by the end of it you just want to quit your job, go out and buy a bike and then travel the world on it. I was really disappointed when it finished and I really wished it was longer because it felt like I was with them on their adventure. My final rating is easily a 5 out of 5. The only other series I have given a full 5 stars to is Band of Brothers so its not a score I give out easily unless its really worth it.

You can buy Long Way Round on DVD from Amazon

My motorbike lessons don’t start until next week and I have had my bike for two weeks now and its really frustrating not being able to ride it. Since I know how to drive a manual stick car, and I also know how to ride a bicycle, I decided to go ahead and try to ride my bike since I figured it can’t be too different from driving a stick shift and balancing it can’t be too different from a bicycle.

So around 30 minutes ago I headed down to the parking lot and turned on my bike and tried to ride it. The first 6 times I tried to drive off I ended up stalling the bike. I was releasing the clutch too early I think because as soon as I gave it some gas and moved like a centimeter the bike would stall. Finally I got the hang of it and was able to release the clutch right and my bike took off! I drove the length of my parking the whole time expecting the bike to stall with me but it never did. Once I got to the end I did a u-turn and headed back and then started driving up to higher floors of the parking. It was really cool and I loved the accelaration.

I stayed in first gear the whole time and I was able to speed up a bit and then brake with my hand when I realized I was actually riding the motorbike as if I was riding my bicycle. I wasn’t using the foot brake which I am guessing I should have been using because my braking wasn’t very smooth, I also wasn’t changing gears because I didn’t know what would happen if the bike stalled while I was moving or if the brakes would continue to work with the bike off. For my first time riding (if I can call it that) I think I did pretty good. I think I will go back down later and try riding some more and maybe even try shifting. I am really having fun with this although I am not doing much.

I passed by Dunkin Donuts earlier tonight. I wasn’t planning to since I imagined the place to be extremely packed as it was the opening night but as I was on my way to Sultan Center I decided to pass by and check it out. As I was walking towards Dunkin I was expecting to find a long queue outside the place of people wanting to get in. Surprisingly there was no queue, in fact, there was no queue inside even. I guess not many people care about it here in Kuwait which isn’t a good sign considering Dunkin Donuts opened up in the most jinxed place on that street. Tons of places ranging from restaurants to a music shop opened and closed in that location numerous times giving it the jinxed title.

First the good news, the donuts taste great, they taste exactly like Dunkin Donuts anywhere else. Thats the only thing positive I could think of, so lets get started with the negatives. I go to Dunkin Donuts not for their donuts but for their amazing sandwiches, my favorite being the egg, cheese and ham in croissant heated up in the microwave. They don’t have it here! Its probably not a big deal for like 99% of their customers but I was really disappointed, its the only thing I used to have there. Other then that the Pepsi comes in cans which sucks, not only that but its the small 250ml cans even! They also had a DJ for some odd reason and he was playing Arabic music! Finally probably the worst thing is that they are not open 24 hours! They open from 7AM to 1AM meaning no passing by at 2:48AM for late night munchies.

So for first impression it wasn’t very positive but they did just open today so I am sure they are still working on stuff like buying a regular coke machine. Price for a donut is 350fils. For 1KD you get 2 donuts and a coffee. I am definitely going back there again and I hope in the future they do start making the egg cheese and ham sandwich.

On Thursday night k.thekuwaiti and Nibaq picked me up to go have dinner at Al-Ghader in Salwa. Many people were recommending I try Al-Ghader shawerma so I really was looking forward to it.

The place isn’t easy to locate but I will give it a shot. You know the street in Salwa where you have the Salwa co-op, police station and gas station? Well if all of those are on your right hand side and you are driving towards the Fahaheel Expressway, take the last right on this street just before the traffic light. Then, drive straight and take your 6th right. Then drive in a bit until you find Al-Ghader on your right hand side. Here it is on Google Maps.

The shawerma tasted very similar to Badar Al Badoor’s. It had the same taste which I liked except that Al-Ghader was much more stingier. The portion of chicken in the shawerma was half the amount of Badar Al Badoor’s. That kinda sucked since the taste of the bread was over powering the chicken. On a positive note though, Al-Ghader’s garlic tasted slightly better than Badar Al badoor’s but it wasn’t enough of a flavor difference to make the sandwich better. By default they put garlic, pickles and tomato in the shawerma but I had mine just with just garlic. The price of the shawerma is also 250fils. The place was very packed but it wasn’t all on the shawerma, they have a nice variety of food at the place and people were spread evenly across them.

Al-Ghader has good shawerma and if you are located near it then its worth the drive to have it. But, if you have a choice between Al-Ghader and Badar Al Badoor then I would recommend the later since you are basically getting the same shawerma just more of it for the same price. This is why the final score for Al-Ghader’s shawerma is 3.5 out of 5.

update: Since writing this review I’ve frequented Al-Ghader numerous of times and if I was to write the review today I would give it a 4 out of 5.

Today morning I went with Nat and the mandoob from TriStar to get our motorbike learners permit. I don’t know what mandoob is in English, but he is basically the guy who helps out with government paperwork. Todays experience like most government related work was exhausting, and the terrible humid weather didn’t help.

I picked up the mandoob at 9:30 and we headed to the Hawlly Traffic Department located in Jabriya. First place we went to inside was the typing room, there you give some guys your documents and for 1KD they fill out the forms for you on the computer and then print them out. Once we got the forms we headed into another much larger room filled with chairs and numbered booths. We headed to the very far end where we waited inline to get our papers signed by a high ranking police officer. This guy was very nice, he took a look at Nats form and he was like in English “you want to drive bicycle?” she was like yeah I want to ride a motorbike. He then proceeded to explain to her how driving in Kuwait is not easy and that if you are in a car its really dangerous so you can imagine how dangerous riding a bike is. He was like I could sign this paper for you if you want but I wouldn’t recommend it, she told him sign it please and he did. After that he told us we needed to go to Qurtoba to get an eye test so we left the place and headed there.

Once we got to Qurtoba I was worried I would fail the eye test. My vision isn’t perfect, I wear glasses when I am in front of the computer but I should be wearing them the whole time. Nat also has glasses which she wears in front of the computer and TV so she was worried she would fail too. So we go into the building and give in our forms and wait for our turn. 5 minutes later they call Nats name and she goes in for the test. A minute later she comes out telling me she passed although she made a mistake, her score was 24/6 for her left eye and 6/6 for her right. They called my name next and I went in. I don’t think I have seen an older eye test setup before. You sit in an old wooden school chair on one side of a room with a tall white plastic lamp behind you with the letters stuck onto it. You look ahead into a mirror stuck on the wall, cover an eye and read out the letters. It was really easy since they let me read out the big sized letters so I aced it with a score of 6/6 for both eyes. They signed the papers and we headed back to Hawally.

The weather was incredibly hot and humid and traffic was a bitch but we got to the traffic department and went back into the big room again back to the nice high ranking cop. He looked at the papers and told us to go to counter number 1. I get to counter 1 show him my papers only to have them rejected. The guy told me because I got my eye test today I needed to come back tomorrow to get the learners permit. I told him why do I have to do that, can’t I just get the permit done today? He was like come back tomorrow. So we were leaving the place when the high ranking cop asks us if we were done. I told him what the guy at counter 1 told us, he seemed irritated at the guy and took out some stamps from his pocket and stamped and signed out papers. He told us we needed to get a 10KD postage stamp and head over to counter 7. We got the stamps and headed to counter 7 where a guy took all our papers and filled them into the computer. He then told us to go get our pictures taken at the far end of the room.

There was a young woman sitting in a small room with a computer, a scanner and a small Canon digital camera attached to a cheap tripod. She told us to sit on the chair in front of the camera and she took our pictures. She then sent us back to counter 7. We got there and the guy started printing out our learners permit on his HP color laser printer. Although all the equipment they were using were off the shelf consumer electronics it was still cool that they were doing this. Finally the guy sent us to office 20, yes office, thats where the highest ranking official is located, we gave him our freshly printed learners permit and he signed it and we were done.

The whole process took around 2 hours and cost us KD11 per person. I am not sure but I am guessing this is the same process for getting cars learner permit. Below you will find some helpful information like papers needed and google map of the locations.

Papers needed for motorbike learners permit:
– 2 photographs, 3×4
– Work permit copy
– Passport copy (picture and visa page)
– Civil ID copy
– Driving license copy (if you dont have it then I believe you are required to do a medical test)

Location Maps:
– Hawally Traffic Department
– Qurtoba eye test place

Heat Vision and Jack is probably the coolest TV show which involved a motorbike. The TV show stars Jack Black as a super intelligent renegade astronaut and his talking motorcycle played by Owen Wilson. The show is also directed by Ben Stiller so you can imagine its ridiculously funny. Sadly it never made it past the pilot stage but the good thing is you can find the first pilot episode on YouTube. If you are not going to watch the whole episode atleast watch the opening of the show. [Video]

I was tidying up my room today when I found my helmet box and decided to try it on with my bike jacket. When I first tried a helmet on when I was still buying the bike I felt really claustrophobic. Now though I think I have gotten used to it a bit but it still feels a bit strange and awkward.