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I landed at the Qatar Airport awhile ago and since I had some free time before my connecting flight to Kuwait I decided I would walk around and check out the airport. While doing so I spotted A&W which is my favorite burger and root beer place and I automatically fell in love with the airport. Even though their duty free section is crap, even though the airport is small, even though its over crowded and even though the bathrooms are dirty as hell, they had A&W which quickly made everything better. So I quickly went and ordered a double cheese burger and root beer combo. Guess what? The place is a fake! It seems once upon a time maybe in the 80’s the place was an A&W but they left a long time ago and now all thats left is their A&W signage. I didn’t find out until I got my burger and it was wrapped up under a different brand. The burger turned out to be really nasty and I felt cheated. Whats worse is that I paid over $10 for this crappy combo which would have been worth it if it had been A&W but definitely not for this crap.

This airport has officially become my least favorite in the Gulf. Luckily my stop over is really short so I should be back in Kuwait very soon.

I am at the Bangkok airport waiting to board my Qatar Airways flight back to Kuwait. I slept in total only 4 hours in the past 3 days because of the workshops and last night when it was all done and over with I only managed to get 5 hours of sleep so I am still extremely tired. Once I get back to Kuwait posting should resume normally and I will also fix the serious problem with the forum.

There is a slight problem with the forum which occurred during a routine server upgrade. I will try to fix the problem as soon as I can but for now the best way is to remove the styling from the page. In Firefox go to View>Page Style>None.

My flight arrived to Bangkok yesterday night at 8:30PM which is around 3:30 Kuwait time so other than the fact I had a long 7 hour flight from Qatar I also ended up losing around 5 hours of my day because of the difference in timezones. Isn’t it supposed to be a 4 hours difference actually? I don’t know maybe. The point is by the time I got to my hotel I was exhausted with no sleep so I didn’t get to see much of Bangkok. Today is my day off to go explore but I just woke up now and its nearly 2PM so half of today is also gone. Its not raining so I guess thats a good thing. Quick notes about my trip. I flew Qatar Airways economy class. The plane was really great, decent legroom great entertainment system with video on demand and live news feeds. The food was also great. Qatar Airport on the other hand sucked. It was over crowded and once you get off the plane you need to do a security check even if you are going through transit, that took like 20 minutes of waiting in line. Also it seems you need to take a bus from and to all the planes. Bus ride to the plane seriously took 20 minutes also. Not a very nice airport..

I’m leaving to Bangkok in the middle of the night for a work related trip. I’ve got to be at the airport at 3:30AM which sucks. Its like the worst timing so I am going to try and go to sleep at 10PM so at least I would have some shut eye. Things I am looking forward to doing in Thailand:

1) The $200 burger
2) Midget Kick Boxing
3) Ride a scooter
4) Eat a deep fried bug
5) Forensic Museum (Museum of Death)
6) Sky Train

Any other fun things to do in Thailand?

Very eerie pictures of previously inhabited cities that have now been completely abandoned. [Link]

Some people are reporting problems accessing the blog with Qualitynet. I have Qualitynet at home and haven’t had a problem but a handful of people have told me they haven’t been able to connect to the blog for over 24 hours. Anyone else having this issue?

update: According to someone at Qualitynet my server is “somehow responding with erroneous checksums on certain cache servers”. I don’t exactly know what that means but they are checking to see how to fix it.

Update 2: Qualitynet have fixed the problem and everything should be back to normal now.

I was just reading a post from a blogger in Beirut and I found out two interesting things about Sultan Center.

The first which was a surprise is that Sultan Center is now operating the large supermarket chain in Lebanon called Geant. Geant is a large French based supermarket chain like Carrefour which is why I found that interesting. Could Sultan possibly open Geant in Kuwait? Or will they rebrand Geant’s to Sultan Center in Lebanon? I don’t know if Sultan operating Geant in Lebanon will have any effect here in Kuwait but nevertheless a lot of interesting things could happen.

Now the second thing which I found funny actually is that it seems the problem Sultan has in Kuwait with expired produce has worn off onto Geant in Lebanon. The Lebanese blogger purchased rotten meat from the supermarket and had a bad experience with the management there which is why he posted about Sultan and Geant in the first place. This blog by the way is my favorite Lebanese blog so it has some pretty interesting stuff. [Link]

Update: I just found out about another local blogger who found expired food at Sultan Center and was able to document his finding with pictures. He took it up with management and when they found out about his blog they threatened to sue him if he didn’t remove the post. I think thats extremely bad for their image. Threatening a blogger for posting about expired food he found at their supermarket. If anything they should thank him for highlighting the problem. Here are his posts on his experience with Sultan Center…

Sultan center in trouble!
Sultan center did It AGAIN!!!!
Sultan center STRIKE 3!

Note: Please take into account that the above information might not be true. There is no way for us to verify that the bloggers above are telling the truth and we haven’t heard Sultan Center’s side of the story. I for one only shop at Sultan Center.

Q8 Loco has posted images and information on Dhiafa Village which is the new location near the Kuwait Towers that has Trader Vic’s. I was wondering what the other two restaurants were and it turns out they are going to be French and Italian. The Italian (pictured above) seems like its going to be pretty cool. Check out Q8 Loco’s website for more pictures and details. [Link]

Picture above taken by Q8 Loco

He screamed like a girl but I probably would to. Ok it turns out it was a GIRL who was hit by lightning not a guy, my mistake. [Flickr]

This site has pictures and info of practically every major home video game system starting from 1972 up till now. Some really great stuff. [Link]

Pictured above: Coleco Telstar Arcade (1978)

I used to find Lexus and Infiniti pretty boring but not anymore. My experience with the G37s was short and slightly confusing. I was expecting it to be an aggressive loud sports car but it wasn’t. I was expecting it to be ridiculously fast but it also wasn’t. The thing is the car has 330hp which is nearly as much as the previous generation BMW M3 and that was a brutal car. But the G37 is completely different, its a quiet fast car. Its the kind of car in which you’ll accidentally hit 160km/h on the Gulf Road while thinking you’re doing 40. Its fast but you just don’t feel it.

The interior of the car is very cozy and its probably my favorite thing about the car. I found the seats Lazy Boy comfortable but thats because my Z4 has hard tight sport seats while my Wrangler, well its a Wrangler. I also really liked the the black leather interior but I would have done without the wooden trimming. But again thats because I keep thinking it’s a sports car and not a very comfortable luxury coupe that can go fast. The car also has all the goodies like iPod inputs, navigation system, reverse camera, key less entry and a start button. The car I drove had a bright red exterior but if I was to get it I would probably go with a silver or dark grey color.

The G37s costs around KD14,000 while the non “s” version goes for around KD13,000. The G37s costs around KD13,750 fully loaded. I think the price is very reasonable and the car really doesn’t have any competition in that price range. The Audi TT costs nearly the same but the new TT is pretty dull and its also much smaller while the new Audi A5 coupe costs like KD18,000. The BMW 3 series is also more expensive, the Mercedes CLK is getting a redesign soon and Lexus don’t even have a model that competes with this. Thats why I think the G37 is going to do really well. Its a great Japanese car and you can’t go wrong with it.

Ok if you are a Top Gear fan then you know who the Stig is and you know that every episode they race a car on the track and time it. Well supposedly in the upcoming episode, the Stig takes the Nissan GT-R around the track and the timing was leaked online. If you don’t want me to spoil it for you DON’T click on continue reading…

I am at the BMW dealer getting an oil change but something is strange. The service is actually good and instead of expecting to wait 3 hours for a simple oil change they told me it should take less than an hour. Something is wrong here… this is BIZARRO WORLD!

Nat just told me about this website here in Kuwait where people sell and buy pets from. Sounds normal until you actually check the site and realize people are selling everything from ponies and monkeys to crocodiles and cheetahs. My favorite though has to be the rare french dwarf goat, I wish I had a farm so I could get it. [Link]

Update: I called and asked about the cheetah, its 8 months old and the guy is selling it for KD1,200. He had four originally and this is the only one left. Is this even legal? How are people allowed to buy and sell cheetah’s or tigers?? Why isn’t there some kind of control? This is really upsetting.

Update2: Here is a video on YouTube of a guy in Kuwait who had a baby cheetah in his house. Although its very cute keep in mind this is a WILD animal and not a house pet so what he’s doing is very cruel. [Link]