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During my lunch break I went to the ice skating ring. It was my first time there since I went back in June and I had posted about it on Miskan.com. In June though the weather was really hot and Ice Skating helped cool us down. Today though I froze my ass off ice skating, my fingers actually turned blue from the cold. The cool thing though was that it was empty except for me and my friend, there was absolutely no one else which was really cool. Entrance cost us KD1.5 and we took the free skates this time around which were actually easier to skate with compared to the ice hockey ones we took last time. I am a really terrible ice skater and I find ice skating a very dangerous sport, don’t know why it freaks me out so much. Even though, I like going there during my lunch break because I find it very refreshing.

For the past two days I have been waking up in the middle of the night to young men singing in the street. I live in Salmiya high street (thats what it used to be called in the old days) and my apartment is located on top of a shopping mall which is located right on main road. The guys park their cars in-front of the mall, turn up the radio loud and start singing. The first night this happened at 4:30AM, yesterday it happened at 3AM. On the first night they were singing a sad Arabic song which was kinda eerie waking up to but yesterday night they seemed to be in a better mood since the music seemed “happier” and they sounded like they were dancing to it while singing.

They are FUCKING ANNOYING! I mean what the hell is wrong with these people. If we had alcohol in Kuwait you would think they were drunk or something but what the fuck is wrong with these guys? Don’t they have jobs they have to wake up early for? I think tonight if they wake me up I am just going to start randomly throwing eggs in their direction and hopefully hit some fucker. I did that once when I was in high-school, we went up to the tall building in front of ASK and once the students started coming out of the main gate me and some friends started throwing eggs down at them. Really funny stuff..

Update: I added a picture above to show why I chose eggs as my weapon of choice and not a paintball gun or a bucket of hot boiling oil. I basically don’t have direct line of sight because of the way my building is shaped. My only options were either water balloons or eggs since you don’t need a direct line of sight for those. In the end I decided to go with eggs since I could throw them further. Anyone remember the old Dos Basic game where you had 2 gorillas, one on each side of the screen with buildings in between and you had to throw something in a calculated arc to try and hit the other gorilla? Well this is going to work the same way.

Thursday afternoon I drove all the way to Ahmadi so that I could take Geo our pet dog to the International Veterinary Hospital. I read from peoples comments on my site that IVH was the best veterinary hospital in Kuwait and I now believe that to be true.

I used to take our previous family dog to the vet in Shuwaikh near the Friday Market. That place was really dirty and I never felt comfortable there neither did my dog. But then again my dog never felt comfortable leaving the house and he “hated” strangers. Still, when my dog got sick that hospital really didn’t do anything and we finally had to put our dog to sleep. Since I didn’t want the same thing to happen to Geo I decided to take him to the best vet in Kuwait and all signs pointed to IVH.

Driving out to Ahmadi from my home in Salmiya took 30 minutes. The map on their website was very easy to follow and we never got lost. When we arrived to the hospital it was like arriving to a ranch in Arizona or somewhere in the Australian outback, it didn’t look anything like your usual Kuwait. To get to the hospital you have to drive off the main road down a paved path surrounded by desert bushes on the side and very little if any buildings around. You then come in through a large gate where you find two signs, one pointing to the emergency entrance and the other towards the visitors parking. We parked in the very clean and very spaced out parking lot and walked towards the main hospital building. I couldn’t believe how gorgeous the place was, there was green grass everywhere, large palm trees, no trash and everything looked really good, better then our hospitals!

We walked into the hospital and told the employees that we had an appointment and then we took a seat while we waited for our turn. The waiting room was very cozy, the benches had cushions on them and their were tons of magazines to read. Their were 4 other dogs in the waiting room with us, 3 labrador puppies and one Japanese breed. Geo spent most of his time playing with the Japanese dog which was very cute. When Geo finally got bored we took him back outside to play on the grass where he met another dog and started to play with him. Finally around 15 minutes later it was our turn to go in.

The vet was a very nice friendly guy and Geo ended up liking him a lot. When the vet asked us what we were feeding the dog, we told him raw meat… to our surprise the vet didn’t try to convince us it was not good for him like most vets would do. Instead, he turned out to know about the raw meat diet and how its the best diet for Geo. He started asking us if Geo was getting all his vitamins and proteins and what else we were feeding him. We told him we were also giving Geo raw eggs twice a week, One large yogurt spoon twice a week and brown toast with honey once a week. We also told him Geo wasn’t getting any Vitamin A or B since he wasn’t eating any of his vegetables, so he gave us some vitamins to give to Geo once a day until he started eating his vegetables. The vet then started asking us questions about how we were treating him and how the toilet training was going and he started giving us advice and tips which we already new about. And thats what I liked about the vet, he was telling me stuff I already knew, but the thing is I had to research my ass off to find out and learn all this stuff from various websites, breeders and people with different opinions. Its not stuff you learn at vet school but stuff you learn with experience after years of raising dogs yourself and this vet knew all the best methods and techniques and that gave me a lot of confidence in him. My previous dogs vet never asked me any thing and never gave me any kind of tips. This vet on the other hand was giving me a lot of tips and telling me all the right stuff. He’s amazing, he knows what he is talking about and I could have a decent conversation with him about my dog. We told the vet we wanted to start Geo on worming and he agreed and gave him the medicine. Finally we were done and we walked out thanking the vet. Our bill? KD12.500 and that included KD7 for the visit, KD1 for the worming medicine and KD4.5 for the vitamins. Not bad at all. I scanned the full price list and I have it linked at the end of this post for those of you that are interested.

Once we left the vets office we decided to walk around outside and discover the hospital more. We past by their pet shop which was pretty cool and had a ton of stuff. We also past by the agility course which looked like something Geo would really enjoy once he grows up. Finally we let Geo run around a bit on the grass before we decided to head back home.

I was really impressed with the hospital and I feel a lot more better knowing something like that exists in Kuwait. The only downside to the place is the location but I couldn’t find anything else and thats why I am going to give this hospital a 4.5 out of 5.

Click here to view pictures of the hospital
Click here to view the prices at the hospital
Click here for the IVH website

Two years ago I was looking for interesting stuff to read for my long plane trip to New York when I ended up finding a website which had tons of articles and stories on terrorists and killers. I started printing some stuff including information on Black September, Munich, Carlos the Jackal and tons of articles on all the terrorist attacks that occurred in the 70s and 80s. Some I had heard of before some were completely new to me. In any case I got the printouts binded them into a book form and took them with me to read during my trip. They stories and articles proved to be very interesting to read and I found the Munich event very disturbing yet very exciting.. it felt like driving by a big car accident. What I found really interesting in the story is how Israel and the Mossad spent years after the event slowly and carefully tracking down every high ranking official that was responsible for the Munich event and assassinating them. When I heard Steven Spielberg was going to release a movie about Munich I couldn’t wait to watch it and two nights ago I finally did.

During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. In retaliation, the Israeli government recruits a group of Mossad agents to track down and execute those responsible for the attack.

Munich was really fun to watch. You always hear about Mossad all the time in the news and stuff but you never really see them in films. You always see the CIA, KGB and MI6 portrayed in movies but never Mossad and so to finally see them was a really nice change from the usual intelligence agencies. The movie takes place after the Munich event and it follows Eric Bana who plays a Mossad agent leading a 4 man team in an attempt to assassinate the masterminds behind the Munich event. The movie started off REALLY good, like I was enjoying it as much I would enjoy an episode of my favorite tv show, 24. The movie has a lot of buildups and they are all to the assassination scenes. Each assassination needs research, a new safe house, planning, a new method of killing etc.. and as a viewer you are taken along to witness these steps up to the “grand” assassination moment. Once one of the targets is killed the process is repeated over again. The problem with the movie is that its nearly 3 hours long. Once again I would like to point out that I don’t have a problem with long movies! I refused to watch any of the Lord of the Rings movies until the extended versions came out which were around 40 minutes longer then the already long regular version. I like long movies.. when there is a reason for them to be long. Munich however didn’t have a reason to be this long. I think 30 minutes could easily have been chopped off at the end when the assassinations were over and things were just dragging. Still though the movie was really great and subject extremely interesting. This is why I am giving it a 4 out of 5.

Visit the official movie website

This is a picture of our dog Geo I took over the weekend.

Seems everyone has phone problems. I passed by Ceasers Restaurant yesterday and they were having phone problems so I couldn’t pay with Knet. Later I past by International Veterinary Hospital all the way in Ahmadi and they also had phone problems and so I couldn’t pay with Knet. I hate paying with cash.

Today I past by Applebee’s, my first time in like 5 years and probably my last time for another 5 years. First of all they must have the smallest and worst NON-smoking section in the world. I mean usually restaurants reserve the best seats for non-smokers and shove the smokers in a small room in the back. Applebee’s on the other hand has 90% of the restaurant dedicated to smokers and then has a handful of tables hidden in the back for non-smokers. What the fuck is up with that? Secondly I never remembered their prices being this high. I seriously think they have a pricing issue, I mean neither the food nor the location nor the atmosphere is better then Chili’s and Nino’s for example, yet Applebee’s prices are more expensive? Really fucked up, I guess thats why they still had empty seats during peak hour for lunch today.

Tomorrow I will be posting about the International Veterinary Hospital and how much it rocks. I will also post about the movie Munich which I really loved.

How to quickly find out if your iPod has a hardware problem. [Link]

Very gruesome and graphic. [Link]

[via BoingBoing]

Top 3 things our pet dog Geo fears the most:
1) Little girls on rollerblades
2) My Hoberman
3) The Roomba

Top 3 things our per dog Geo loves the most:
1) Little boys high on sugar
2) The Egyptian gang under our house
3) Ethernet cable

Well since the launch of the forum yesterday 28 users have registered and started posting. Thats more then I was expecting for the first day and I am hoping that number will grow a lot bigger once more topics get posted there. If you haven’t registered or checked out the forum already please do, I think it will turn into a great place where readers of this site can communicate with each other. [Link]

Nat wants us to take a cruise but due to the fact I get sea sick that will never happen. I could never last for days on end out in the sea, just thinking about it makes me dizzy. Now after seeing the Aeroscraft I think this is something I would definitely enjoy. [Link]

[source Digg]

There is a brand of earphones called Shure, they became really popular in the US because people who owned iPods and were looking for much better quality earphones would purchase the Shure’s. I own a pair of the Shure E2’s and they are really amazing. Anyway the Shure dealer in Kuwait refuses to stock them. I past by the Shure dealer over a year ago when I wanted to by the E2’s, I figured I would check and see how much they were in Kuwait before I decided to purchase them from Amazon. I passed by the dealer and he told me they only bring them by order and it would take 2 to 4 weeks. I was like fuck it and got them from Amazon for a cheaper price and they arrived a week later.

Two weeks ago Shure opened a store near my office in Muthana Complex. I just past by them today because a friend of mine wanted to by some Shure earphones and once again the dealer told me they don’t carry them but they can order it for me. What the fuck?

If I owned the Shure brand in Kuwait I would get a large quantity of the affordable E2 earphones, a good amount of the more expensive E3’s and a handful of the much more expensive E5’s. I would then target the iPod crowd by maybe placing a stand at Virgin and selling them there or maybe by placing an ad in Bazar magazine. Why would the dealer in Kuwait not stock the best selling Shure products especially if everyone owns an iPod?

Click here for pictures of my Shure E2’s with foam tips

I just read that Memoirs of a Geisha got banned in Kuwait. I wasn’t interested in watching it, but I am curious to why it got the ban. I am also curious to why it was playing in the movies here for a week now, why didn’t they ban it from the beginning? [Link]

Thanks to Rami I currently use Tivo to record all my favorite shows on Showtime. But tonight I past by the Showtime stand at Marina Mall and noticed they now have something similar called Showbox. I tried to find out how close Showbox is to Tivo in features but the salesperson there didn’t know anything. The way she explained it to me was that with Showbox I can watch any show I want any time, meaning if I feel like watching King of Queens now I can just click on King of Queens and watch it live. I think thats bullshit and she really doesn’t know what she is talking about. I got the leaflet on the Showbox from her and I was able to understand a bit more. Basically what I understood is you can pause live TV which is something the Tivo can do of course. With Showbox you could also schedule what you want it to record for you 7 days in advance but say Seinfeld is playing everyday, you have to manually tell it to record each and every episode one by one. Now this is where Tivo kicks Showbox’s ass. With Tivo I can just say record every episode of Seinfeld with one command and it will record every episode of Seinfeld from now until I tell it not to which can be a month from now, a year from now.. whenever I want. I don’t have to manually set it to record each and every episode over and over. Anyway she also said Showbox would cost me KD135 and has an 80GB hard drive inside. Tivo cost me $70 and I have a 120GB drive inside. So far Showbox doesn’t interest me but it might for those of you who don’t have a Tivo. I scanned the leaflet and you can check it out below.

Leaflet
Front Page
Second & Third Page
Fourth Page

I think you can also find more information on showbox.showtimearabia.com but I wasn’t able to connect to it because I am on my slow GPRS connection now.

I just setup a forum for this site. I figured readers can hang out there, chat and discuss stuff. People new to Kuwait can also go in and ask questions if they have any and other users can answer them back. The forum is easy to use and I don’t think anyone should have any trouble using it. I placed a link in the top menu for easy access. Check it out. [Link]