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A friend of mine just posted about a new Mexican restaurant that opened up in The Village. Going by the pictures and write up it looks like the place is actually pretty good. Check out his post [Here]

I hope this actually gets built. Find out more about this project [Here]

The luxurious car show Concours d’Elegance is going to be held for the third time in Kuwait next month. Like the previous years, it going to be an important and prestigious event that will attract people from both inside and outside Kuwait.

What is the Concours d’Elegance?
Concours is a French word meaning competition. The concept of Concours originates in 17th C. France when aristocrats used to choose their best horse carriages to parade around parks of Paris during the summer week ends and holidays. Later these traditions changed to automobiles from the 20th C. Concours today have strict regulations and cars are inspected by qualified judges. Trophy winners are carefully chosen. Each year there are numerous events which take place across the world, many of which are world famous, including Villa d’Este in Italy, Goodwood in UK, and Pebble Beach in USA. The Kuwait Concours d’Elegance is rapidly becoming a fixture in this international program, able to attract some of the world’s rarest and exotic motorcars.

Date: February 15th to the 18th
Time: 10:00AM – 10:00PM
Location: Marina Mall interior, Marina Crescent and Marina Lawn

Tidbits
There are going to be some very interesting cars this year at the show including the Zagato, Jaguar F-Type, the McLaren and other surprises which they wouldn’t tell me about except that they’re “Concours Special Editions”. Valentino Balboni the former chief test driver for Lamborghini is going to back this year. Bruce Meyers the inventor of the Dune Buggy will also be at the event.

The new Supercar De Macross GT1 is going to be officially launched at our Concours. The GT1 has an 800hp Rouch engine and incoporates technologies currently used in F1… including some that are banned.

The Concours categories
Vintage: Class-A 1900 – 1930
Classic: Class-B 1931 – 1945
Post war Classic: Class-C 1946 – 1965
Modern Classic: Class-D 1966 – 1975

Muscle Cars Section
69 Dodge Daytona
70 Plymouth Superbird
71 Plymouth ‘Cuda 340 Convertible
67 Mustang Shelby GT500
74 Trans-Am SD
69 Shelby GT500 owned by Carroll Shelby him self!
and many many more.

Hollywood Cars
This year they’re bringing real life sized Pixar/Disney cars including Lighting McQueen, Finn and Mater.

Daily Events
15th – Muscle & Classic
16th – Supercars
17th – Kuwait Bike Show
18th – Enzo Ferrari Birthday

Once I find out more information I’ll add it to this post.
Here are some related links:
kuwaitconcours.com.kw
@KuwaitConcours
Facebook.com/Kuwait.Concours

My current health insurance isn’t that great. I’ve been with them for around 7 years now and a couple of years back I found out I had mild asthma and my insurance company sent me a letter saying that my doctor visits and medicine wouldn’t be covered (even though I had been with them for around 5 years and hadn’t really used them thanks to free health care. So now I’ve decided to look for a new insurance company. I checked out Bupa which is supposedly the best but the price I got quoted is a lot more than I am willing to pay.

Can anyone recommend an insurance company they’re using and are happy with?

I was looking for an action cam a couple of months back and narrowed down my options to the GoPro Hero, Replay XD1080 and the Contour+. It was a really tough decision because each one of these cameras had an advantage and disadvantage. With the GoPro I hated the form factor, it felt too awkward to use and I didn’t feel comfortable using it but it was the cheapest of the bunch and the video quality wasn’t that bad. Plus it’s the most popular action cam with a ton of mounts. The Replay XD1080 is the smallest of the three and has a very easy to manage form since it’s basically just a small cylindrical tube. The downside is that it’s the least popular of the 3 so I couldn’t find much feedback on it and it also had a limited amount of mounts which were also expensive. Finally I checked out the Contour cameras. I love how they look and at first I wanted to go with the entry level Contour Roam which was waterproof and pretty cheap compared to the Replay and GoPro. But, it had one limitation which was the fact it couldn’t record at 60fps which meant if I ever wanted to do any slow motion I wouldn’t be able to properly. I then decided to check out the Contour GPS which was a notch above and finally ended up with the Contour+ which is their top of the line model.

The Contour+ has a bunch of cool features which I will try to go through quickly. First it has built in GPS. When you record a video with GPS turned on and then upload the footage to their website, you get a small map next to your video showing you the route you had taken. That can be handy if you’re racing around a track or going on trails but I don’t have a use for this feature and I always keep it off to gain around 30 minutes of extra battery life. The camera lens rotates which is super practical because if I mount the camera upside down or sideways, I just rotate the lens so that the footage ends up facing the right way up. It also has a bright f/2.8 lens and from the 3 cameras in the line up the Contour+ offered the sharpest and most detailed footage. I haven’t seen a comparison yet to the GoPro Hero2 but I would think the Contour+ is closer in quality to that than it was compared to the previous Hero.

My favorite feature of the Contour+ is the ability to turn my iPhone into a viewfinder for the camera. With one button press on the camera, the Contour App launches on my iPhone and I can then see what the camera sees. Not only that but I can also use the app to change the camera settings like exposure, brightness, contrast, resolution etc. Another feature film makers will like is the external mic jack. What this will allow you to do for example is mount the camera on the outside of the car while having the mic inside the engine bay recording the engine sound without the wind noise. The Contour+ (and the whole Contour family) also has a large sliding button on top of the camera which you use to start or stop recording. It’s easy to activate while wearing gloves and it allows you to tell if you’re recording or not either by feeling where the button position is or just looking at it.

The build quality of the camera is great, it has a brushed metal body and feels like it can take a hard drop. It’s not waterproof but I purchased the waterproof case which makes it resistant up to 60m. I also purchased a universal mount which is a small adapter that gives the Contour+ a tripod mount. I didn’t purchase any official mounts from Contour, instead I purchased some more durable and sturdier metal mounts from RAM. I got the flat surface suction mount and another mount for my bike.

Arctic Cat from Mark on Vimeo.

I really love the camera and have no regrets getting it even though the Hero2 got released. The quality of footage is very good (watch above) especially when the weather and light is great. Customer support is also superb. They have pretty active forums and their customer support people are always there ready to answer or solve any of your problems. Not all is perfect since I do have two issue with the camera and the big one being the price. Both the GoPro and Replay XD cost around $300 while the Contour+ costs a whopping $500! You could literally get two GoPro cameras for the price of one Contour+ which is just insane. I had a bunch of PayPal credits which is why I went for it but if I was paying for the whole thing myself I would have most likely gone with the Replay XD instead. Another issue I have is with the night time footage quality. The image isn’t as clear as I would have liked it to be but it’s probably me expecting too much from these small action cam sensors. You can see a short nighttime footage below.

But as I said, I have no regrets getting this camera and compared to the GoPro which I tried using, I found the Contour+ a lot more easier and natural. If you’re interested in purchasing it get it from ebay. I got mine brand new for $455 including the waterproof case. That’s a big saving compared to Amazon’s $499 listed price for just the camera without the case.

Have guests coming to Kuwait and not sure where to take them? Architecture of Kuwait have posted a handy schedule although I personally don’t agree with some of their activities (flight simulation?) as well as some of their restaurant choices but it’s a good list to build on. When it comes to food I would add Cocoa Room or Early Bird for breakfast. Lunch I would add OFK and Oum Habib. I would definitely add desert places like Chocolate Bar and Life with Cacao. Finally I would add Maki and Slider Station for dinner.

If guests don’t leave Kuwait gaining a few pounds then you’re not doing it right. [Link]

I posted this picture on instagram and it got a lot of interest so I figured I post it here with more details. The picture above is of the new Double Cheese Burger at Little Ruby’s. Unlike their other burgers this one uses a regular bun and the patty is a different blend as well. I thought it was pretty good, I’d have a difficult time choosing between this burger and my other favorite their Bronte burger. It’s also the cheapest burger on their menu, I think it was KD3.1 and includes their awesome fries. Speaking of prices, they’ve gone ahead and increased their prices once again for some reason. I hate it when restaurants do that.

In case you’ve never heard of Ruby’s here is my original post on them. [Link]

Note: Ruby’s is NOT Ruby Tuesday.

Arabian Business released their list of “The Middle East’s top 10 restaurants to sample in 2012” and Cucina, the Italian restaurant located at Hotel Missoni made their cut. I have yet to try Cucina so it’s now on my to do list. Here is a link to their top 10 list [Link]

[YouTube]

Is it just me or does KD70,000 for a purse sound a bit on the expensive side?

Last year I posted about a house in Salwa that had two wind turbines installed. It seems their little experiment with wind must have went well because they currently have at least 7 wind turbines installed! I wonder if they’re completely off the grid yet?

Thanks Hamad

I heard about this place that fixes iPhones ages ago but never had a reason to pass by until today. My mum accidentally dropped her iPhone into her coffee and it stopped working so I took it to the Michel Chinese Workshop in Hawalli. That’s the official name of the store but you can call it the iPhone and iPad Workshop. The shop is located in the basement of a complex and is run by a very nice Chinese couple in the front and four young Chinese technicians in a small glass room in the back.

This tiny place kicks ass. They fix whatever problem you have with your iPhone or iPad and at a very reasonable price. They fixed my mums phone for KD15 while one of my twitter followers was able to replace his broken iPad screen for KD30. They’re also fast, it took them less than an hour to diagnose what the problem was with my mums phone and also fix it.

Finding the place isn’t too difficult as long as you know Ibn Khaldoon Street since they’re right on it. Get to Ibn Khaldoon and if you pass McDonalds on your left, keep driving around 100 meters and you’ll spot the above banner on your right hand side. If you’re on Ibn Khaldoon Street and you pass McDonalds on your right then you’ve passed the place. In case you get lost you can call them on 66228596 or 22640666.

I have a habit of installing apps on my iPhone and then only using them a handful of times and never again. Over the years I’ve accumulated a ton of useless apps to a point where finding one I needed became a hassle. So I decided to do some spring cleaning and delete the apps I hardly use anymore as well as apps that do pretty much the same thing. For example I had two apps that I used to re-size images on my phone, two apps to listen to internet radio stations, two RSS readers and so and so. I also had two apps which I used to find numbers of local businesses, iBadala and Urban Moon. So which did I decide to keep?

First I’ll state the obvious, iBadala looks terrible. The app feels like it’s stuck in a bad design time-warp somewhere between Windows 3.11 and the Pontiac Aztek. It’s not a pretty app while Urban Moon on the other hand looks a lot cooler and feels trendier. It has a pretty icon and a nice start up splash screen that really helps with the first impression. So in the looks category, Urban Moon wins hands down.

When it comes to functionality though, things are completely different. Although Urban Moon is the better looking app of the two and one that feels like it should be easier to use, it isn’t. When I run either one of these apps it’s usually because I’m looking for a number, usually a restaurant to call and check if I can reserve or see how long the line to get in is. Whenever I run Urban Moon I first need to wait for the app to check for updates, and if any are found I have to wait for them to download before I can even start using the app. Depending on how fast my internet connection is at that very moment this could take 5 second if there are no updates (on my 4s) or 10 to 20 seconds if there are any updates. The thing is, even 5 seconds is too long since it makes the app feel sluggish right from the get go due to the app freezing on the start up screen until it’s done checking for updates.

iBadala on the other hand takes just 2 seconds to launch and is then ready to use right away. While Urban Moon has all the numbers built into the app, iBadala grabs a number for you from an online database. Although that sounds slow in reality the search can take as little as under a second depending on how fast your connection is. The disadvantage here is the fact that if you don’t have an internet connection you can’t find any numbers.

It wasn’t that hard really to choose between the two. Even though iBadala is an ugly app, I constantly found myself using it instead of Urban Moon to find numbers quickly. Even if there wasn’t a long wait at the start of Urban Moon I still had to enter a section (another 1 second lost) before I could get to the search box. In any case both apps are free so you could download both and try them out and see which you prefer. I actually got Urban Moon back when they were selling it for $3.99 but they’ve recently made it free (but added advertising) which I think is a better way to go about it.

Here are the links for both apps:
iBadala App
Urban Moon App

We could then have cute cookie monster bins all over Salmiya.

The last thing left to talk about my trip to New York is the Turkish Airlines Lounge. On the way to New York I spent an hour in the lounge which wasn’t much time to experience it but on the way back I had five hours to kill so I then managed to properly check everything out.

The Turkish airport itself is pretty nice. There is a good amount of restaurants and cafes with a bunch of known stores like Hermes and Burberry and then the usual bookshops, electronic stores and souvenir shops. It’s not as big as the the Bangkok airport which I always compare to a mall, but still a lot better than most if not all the airports in our region (I haven’t been to the new Emirates terminal in Dubai). The lounge is pretty sweet, you enter by scanning your boarding pass and once you’re in you’re inside a different world. There’s a lot of seating all around the lounge with different moods and seating styles in each section. You’ve also got a lot of food stations scattered all about, some serving dessert, others freshly baked items a couple of hot food stations as well as four salad/snacks/fruit bars located in the different sections. I spent most of the time in a space at the back of the lounge sitting underneath a tree with a grand piano playing by itself in the background. It was very peaceful and cozy away from all the airport hustle and bustle.

Other than the different seating areas they also have a pool table, a kids games room, a mini movie theater, showers, sleeping rooms and a business center filled with iMacs. They also had a masseur who walks around offering complimentary massage as well as the usual free WiFi.

Overall I thought the lounge was pretty well done. You could even leave the airport from within the lounge bypassing the busy immigration counters in the airport. I don’t remember where but I read that they also offer guided tours of the city if you have a long stay over which is what I should have done since five hours is just too long to spend in a lounge no matter how nice it is.