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Below are a list of TV shows I am currently watching, what I think of them and what episodes I just finished watching.

Grey’s Anatomy (Pictured above)
Season 2, Episode 18
Really entertaining and addictive, I am watching 2 a day.

X-Files
Season 1, Episode 12
Used to be my favorite show, I missed out on a lot of episodes when I was in university so I just started watching them all over again. I got 9 seasons which means I should be done by Christmas!

Prison Break
Season 1, Episode 13
I hated the show when I first started watching it because I didn’t like the main guy. Now though I still hate him but I really like all the supporting actors who are pretty fucked up but in a cool way.

24
Season 5, Episode 12
The best show ever, I have said it a million times already and will say it a million more times, Jack Bauer is just the coolest character ever. I was watching the movie Stand By Me the other day and it turns out Jack played the role of this delinquent teenager. It was an old movie and he was really young in it but he still looked a lot like Jack does now which made things weird.

Family Guy
Season 1, Episode 8
I watched the movie first, then I watched season 4 and now I am watching season 1. Doesn’t make sense I know but better then nothing.

Arrested Development
Season 3, Episode 10
I only have 3 more episodes left and I am scared to watch them. Arrested Development got canceled last year and the show ends at episode 13 of season 3 so once I am done, I am done forever. I never want the Arrested Development experience to end so I am watching only 1 episode a week but I know in three weeks time it will be all over, one of the funniest shows ever made will be over. Its sad.

The IT Crowd
Season 1, Episode 4
“Yeah, you do know how a button works, don’t you? No, not on clothes. No, there you go, I just heard it come on. No, that’s the music you hear when it comes on. No, that’s the music you hear when… I’m sorry, are you from the past? ”

Reno 911
Season 1, Episode 3
This show is like a spoof of the TV show COPS. Sometimes I find it really corny but other times I can’t stop laughing.

Knight Rider
Season 2, Episode 3
KITT was really pimped out. He had a built in video game system, GPS navigation, video conferencing, Nitros, night vision, voice activation… some really high tech stuff..

Desperate Housewives
Season 2, Episode 15
Its not as fun as season 2 but doing a hell of a lot better then Lost (read below)

Lost
Season 2, Episode 15
I have no clue why I am still watching this crap. Season 2 has been a disaster, the show has become extremely lame, boring, uneventful and repetetive. What started off as one of the most exciting shows ever has taken a 180 degree turn for the worst. Total crap.

Curb Your Enthusiam
Season 1, Episode 8
Larry Davids charactar is a mixture of Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza. He’s a bit weird at first but you get used to him.

Weeds
Season 1, Episode 10
This show started off boring but it started getting really good around episode 3. Its about a school mum who starts dealing weed to make some money. First season is only 10 episodes and now I have to wait till July for season 2, I can’t wait.

Update: I added Weeds, don’t know how I forgot about it.

I had heard a lot about Johnny Cash but I only really heard his music for the first time back in January. The first song I had heard by him was Hurt which was a remake of a Nine Inch Nails song and it just gave me goosebumps. When I heard about Walk the Line which was based on his life story I had to watch it, even though I had only been listening to his music for just over a month now there was something about him.. his voice.. it just wanted me to find out more about him. In the video for Hurt it looked like Johnny Cash had been through a lot in his life and if this movie was all about him then I was eager to watch it.

Well there is good news and bad news. The good news is this movie was really beautiful. Joaquin Phoenix was just incredible, I have never seen him act this well before, he really shines in this movie and the same goes for Reese Witherspoon, whoever cast her to play Johnny’s wife is very gifted because after watching this movie and seeing pictures of Cash’s wife I couldn’t imagine anyone else playing her in the movie.

Now the bad news, I was expecting this movie to focus on Johnny Cash’s career from the beginning till the end but sadly it only focuses on his early days up till the late 60’s. I wanted to know more about Cash, I wanted so much more and this movie just left me hanging. Its still a great movie but it just kept me wanting more. I don’t know if I would recommend this movie to someone who isn’t into Cash, Nat for example found the movie just “OK” but I think she liked it a bit more after I made her watch the video for Hurt.

If you don’t know who Johnny Cash is then this movie won’t mean much to you. Me, personally, I give it a 4 out of 5.

I found some cool info in Kuwait Explorer I didn’t know about, here are some interesting stuff I found:

– Single round of golf at Ahmadi course is KD5, annual membership is KD175
– Horse riding lessons at equestrian club costs KD3 per half hour
– Kuwait Darts & Social Leage [Link]
– If I had time I would do some Kung Fu [Link]

So far I really am liking the book Kuwait Explorer.

Many of you might not know this but the Commercial Bank of Kuwait logo was designed by one of the best design agencies in the world, Pentagram back in 1979. Not only that but the designer who worked on the Commercial Bank identity, Alan Fletcher, is also among the most influential figures in British graphic design history. I decided to share with you what Alan Fletcher said about the Commerical Bank project back in the 1980’s and also the idea behind the logo itself.

The text below was written by Alan Fletcher

Designing in the Middle East requires certain cultural adjustments to one’s normal working pattern and lifestyle. The Gulf States are seven hours’ flying time from London with a time difference of three hours. Travel by Arabic airlines is like arriving in the Gulf before you’ve left. It’s a dry journey – no alcohol. At midday, Muslim passengers are likely to say prayers prostrated in the aisle; one wonders about the flight deck! Normal working hours are 8.00 am to 1.00 pm, and even then a government survey indicated that the oil-rich Kuwaiti only works an average of ten minutes each day. Friday is a holiday but they work Saturday instead. Appointments, are not necessarily appointments, and frequently involve hours (if not days) of waiting.

The Commercial Bank of Kuwait had catered only for institutions and businesses within the Gulf States until it decided to expand into international markets and enter retail banking. The new policy created the need for an appropriate visual identity. Since the bank had neither the experience nor resources, it appointed Tony Vines, via Ogilvy and Mather, New York, to set up a marketing department and create a new identity within eighteen months. Vines flew to London in 1979, interviewed various advertising agencies and designers, and on reaching a rapport with Pentagram commissioned us to work on the program. His fast response to locating a design resource set the pace for the hectic schedule that followed.

In architecture the term ‘fast tracking’ describes the method of designing whereby the architect keeps one jump ahead of the builder. In this case the severe deadlines and cultural differences made it more of a jump in the dark. The brief stipulated that the corporate identity and design style should be Arabic in flavor, but be understood internationally. The symbol, in particular, was required to mean something to both an Arab and a Westerner. Designing within these constraints reduced the normal available options. The two different scripts precluded using the alphabet to form a logotype such as Unisys, or initials such as IBM. An abstract mark would take too long to establish. A pictorial device might have encouraged the client to insist on a heraldic solution such as a scimitar crossed with palms. However the design of the symbol proved to be the least of the problems. Designing from right to left, in a script and language one didn’t understand, and within an unfamiliar culture, required keeping one’s head fast on its feet.

The new Commercial Bank symbol is an amalgamation of calligraphy and image. the words commercial and bank are rendered in kufic, a geometric script, to make a decorative star, recognizable by anyone as a distinctive pattern and, additionally, readable to an Arab. The dual language identity has English type in Paul Renner’s Futura with a compatible Arabic script especially drawn by Ahmed Mustafa.

Back in September I posted on Miskan my weight which was 90.6KG. As some of you who know me since “Moblogging from Kuwait“, I used to be a fast food junkie. I used to have McDonalds nearly daily and if I wasn’t having McDonalds I was having Burger King, Hardees or some other burger place. Anyway back in September I decided to cut back on the junk and start eating better. Well I got on the scale yesterday and I am now 84KG. Since September I have had McDonalds only a handful of times, Hardees only twice and Burger King also twice. I still eat food from the food court but I don’t have any burgers and I rarely have french fries or anything fried. My diet has been a success!

When I was in Lebanon over Christmas someone who does some work for this famous sandwich place in Lebanon called Malak Al Taouk told me they were going to open up a branch in Kuwait soon. “Malak Al” means king of in Arabic while “Taouk” is a Lebanese word for marinated chicken cubes which are usually grilled on an oven or BBQ. The taouk sandwich at Malak Al Taouk (their specialty) is really really huge and very cheap costing around 650 fils. The ingredients of the sandwich are: lots of taouk, lots of French fries, lots of coleslaw and lots of ketchup. On my last trip to Lebanon I took some pictures of the sandwich to share with everyone and I totally forgot about them until yesterday. The sandwich I took pictures of though is their “super” taouk sandwich which comes with cheese and ham as extra. As you can see from the pictures the sandwich is wider then a 330ml can of Pepsi.

Picture next to Pepsi can
Close up shot of whats inside

This is hard to believe but Pizza Hut’s management currently are ranked very high in my best customer service list. I just got a phone call this time from the Pizza Hut district manager who once again apologized for what happened. He told me that Pizza Hut owed me one and to take down his number and next time I feel like having pizza to call him and tell him which branch I would like to go to and he would make sure I would be taken care of. If I didn’t want to go out they would send dinner over to my place. I thanked him again and told him everything is OK now. I still can’t believe this is Pizza Hut I am dealing with, I never expected them to care this much about their customers. Pretty cool.

I had to take Geo to the vet again today. Since he has been using his injured hand as a weapon, hitting everything in his way with it, the plastic stick inside (the spoon) shifted positions and I got worried this would disturb the healing process. So, I went to the vet, I took the BMW this time since driving all the way there in the Wrangler is a very slow process and takes around 25 minutes. In the BMW, I was driving an average speed of around 140-160 and even managed to hit 190km/h in one place so I got to the vet in 15 minutes from Salmiya. It doesn’t feel like a long trip anymore. The vet fixed his leg again and now I have to keep an eye on him to make sure he stops hitting stuff with it.

After stepping on Geo last night I was hoping by today morning he would be ok, well, he wasn’t. He was still limping in the morning so me and Nat decided to take him to the International Veterinary Hospital. We arrived there at 8:30AM to a beautiful sight of around a dozen dogs with a dozen handlers all lined up outside the place doing some training. We later found out these dogs were mostly used for narcotic and bomb detection, really cool. We continued going in and asked to see the Vet, after waiting for a while outside on the green grass we were called in. Our usual vet only comes in during the afternoon so today we had another Italian vet except this time it was a woman. She did some physical tests on Geo and recommended we take some Xrays just to be safe. Good thing we did because it turned out he fractured bones. Now geo has something like a cast around his leg and he is going to have to be in it for up to 3 weeks depending on how fast he will get healed. The vet was very nice and although Geo looks like a dork now with his one green leg I am really glad he is going to be ok. I am going to hopefully get 10 days off work so I could be with him at home. I feel really guilty for what I did and even though he loves to runaround and play its not going to be possible until his leg heals. The vet told us he is lucky he is still a puppy because they heal a lot quicker. She gave us some calcium pills and told us to give him a lot of cheese to help speed up the healing process. The whole thing cost us only KD34 which is pretty decent and now Geo is sleeping in the living room while I am watching the Discovery Channel. I am sorry Geo!!

While running with our dog Geo on the beach I accidentally stepped on him! I was wearing my heavy timberland boots and I accidentally stepped on his front right foot. Geo started screaming in pain and I just went down on my knees and started hugging him. Fadibou was there with his dog Miki and that helped Geo forget about the pain a bit. While there we called the International Veterinary Hospital because according to their brochure they are open 24 hours a day in case of emergency, well thats bullshit. They told me I couldn’t bring Geo in because they were closed and I would instead have to bring him in tomorrow morning. What the fuck is that load of crap. If I get into an accident I go to the hospital right away, I don’t wait till the next day. Why do dogs have to wait till the next day?? I need to find a new fucking vet, they really pissed me off. Geo is back home now I don’t think his foot is broken but he is threading on it very lightly and is very quiet and sad. I think he is in shock from the incident and is really exhausted. I also think he might have either fractured his foot or sprained it. If by tomorrow morning he is still not stepping on his foot I am going to take him to the vet. It really sucks and I am really fucking clumsy.

I was sitting having my salad at Pizza Hut in Muthana Complex (Kuwait City) with Nat when I look to my left and see a huge fucking cockroach on the table! I quickly got up surprising Nat who hadn’t yet noticed the intruder yet. I was like look there is a fucking cockroach on the table which quickly made her get up in disgust and shock. So I call the head waitress over and I told her there was a huge cockroach on the table. She calmly asks us if we would like to change to another table. I asked her if there were gonna be any cockroaches there and she laughed and said no. I didn’t find any of this funny. We sat down at the new table but neither Nat nor I felt like finishing our salads so I got up to the counter to pay the bill.

While I was standing there waiting for the cashier to hand me back my change I hear Nat calling a waiter and then telling him that the cockroach is back on our old table, he quickly goes and kills it. I tell the cashier I want to talk to the manger and he tells me OK but then starts tidying up around the register and putting away menus and stuff. So I tell the cashier I wanted to see the manager NOW, he was like why is there a problem? I was like fuck yes now get me the manager. The manager comes out of the kitchen and asks me what the problem was. I told him the problem was there was a huge fucking cockroach on the table while we were eating. I told him I found that disgusting and I would never come back to the place again. The manager who looked like he was confused and didn’t know what to do told me the reason for the cockroach was that they had sprayed the night before. I told him I didn’t fucking care and thats not an excuse since there was a fucking cockroach on my table! Seeing as I wasn’t even going to be able to convince the manager that the cockroach on the table was a problem I picked up my stuff and left.

I am never going back to another Pizza Hut again. Other then the cockroach on the table I found the staff very unprofessional and I found the manager to be incompetent and an idiot. He barely even apologize about the cockroach nor did he offer any kind of compensation! I am now going to make sure the owners, Al Homaizi Food Group know about this incident and I will also send an email to Pizza Hut international so they know what kind of managers work for them. This was really fucking disgusting.

Just a little something to help some readers out.

2) Pornography sexualizes the viewer’s mindset. It warps and perverts their perspective such that sex is unnaturally elevated in their thoughts. Porn’s images are stamped into viewer’s brain with the aid of hormones released during sexual arousal. Even if a person decides to stop looking at porn, the past images can remain for years or even a lifetime.

Reasons Why Porn is Bad
Stories on How Porn Destroys
Lies of porn
Porn Statistics
Mass Murder and Porn

Today I decided I will discontinue posting porn on this blog. There are a couple of reasons for my decision but I think the main one is that porn is attracting a “different” kind of crowd to this blog. My Haifa and Nancy Ajram videos I posted awhile back were recently linked to by an Arab porn forum and I didn’t like that neither did I like some of the comments that were left, so I decided to delete those two posts. Then I realized, hey, why not just remove the rest of the porn, I don’t have that many porn posts anyway so very little will be missed. So starting Sunday the porn will be deleted. So make sure you help yourself to whatever is there now before its all gone. [Sex]

Introduction
In January I posted about my home theater setup and I mentioned I wanted to upgrade my aging old Kenwood receiver with something newer and better. Well a few days ago I passed by the Denon dealer in Salmiya to check out some AV Receivers and I ended up buying one. I did a lot of research online before I decided to upgrade my receiver and I came to the conclusion that for my budget and my needs, the Denon AVR-2106 fit the bill perfectly. I had previously seen the receiver when I tagged along with K.TheKuwaiti when he was getting a Denon for his living room and I remember the price was around KD175 since they were having discounts. So I passed by the Salmiya dealer and I looked around and I couldn’t find the Denon AVR-2106. I asked the salesman about it and he told me they were out of stock but he would check to see on the computer if any of the other branches had any left. Two minutes later he tells me he found one more piece left, but its the display model in the Hawalli branch. I am not good at price haggling at all, in-fact there is only one person I have ever met that was worse then me and thats TivoGuy, but I went ahead and asked the guy how much discount extra would he give me since it was the display model. He checked on his computer and told me the lowest he could give me the amp was for KD161. I was like stunned, I wasn’t planning on getting the receiver, I was just checking on the price, but now with this special price it was just soo fucking tempting to resist. So I tell the guy OK and he was like give me a minute to call the Hawalli branch and make sure they still have it. Five minutes later he comes back to me and tells me that the receiver they have in stock is actually not displayed and is still brand new in the box. I was like thats great but I still just want to pay KD161. The salesman laughed and said that wouldn’t be a problem since I was a good customer. I couldn’t believe what a good deal I was getting, I quickly paid the money and went and picked up the receiver from the Hawalli branch.

Susan, a regular reader of the site recently went on a sky tour of Kuwait and this is what she had to say about it:

A recent start-up called Kuwait Sky Tours is now operating in Kuwait and taking passengers on 15-minute helicopter rides at a cost of KD25 each. The 15-minute flight takes off from the helipad behind the Sultan Centre restaurant on the Gulf Road, travels up to Green Island and then back down to the Amir’s Palace in Salwa, before returning to land. It is a great way too see Kuwait from a different perspective. The helicopter is a MD 500-E and seats 3 adults. There is space for a child or a very skinny person between the pilot and front passenger. If you want to go, give Steve a call on 705 6666. They also fly from Khiran and Failaka on occasion. Cameras are allowed.

You can also go on a larger helicopter, for an hour-long flight for the princely sum of USD1,500. Or, try the executive jet, which is ready to fly you and 13 of your friends to any destination in the world! Don’t know that price; I was too afraid to ask!

P.S. Don’t talk into the headset during the flight. The pilot told me off!

Here are Susan’s pictures from her trip:
The Helicopter
Looking North West
Marina Mall and Marina Hotel
The Scientific Center
View of Salmiya
The Gulf Road and Kuwait Towers
House in Salwa
Radisson SAS