Search: “ur”

Both me and Nat had our riding test today and it was a disaster. We both failed!

While Nat waited outside I went in first on the motorbike. After waiting in line behind 5 cars it was my turn to go next.

Now to follow what I am about to say next you need to view the map above.

Once I got to the starting line the cop told me I should drive up in lane 1 then turn and come down lane 3, and then go into lane 2 and go back up and then turn into lane 3 again and come back down. I was like fine. I drove into lane 1 and as I was about to turn into lane 3 the car that was parked behind me in the starting line had driven forward and was now parked in lane 3. So I stopped the bike and put my foot down and waited for the car to leave lane 3. As soon as I put my foot down the cop was like aha! I was like what aha?! He was like you aren’t allowed to put your foot down. I was like but there is a chick parked in lane 3 and I am just waiting for her to leave. He was like fine continue. So I continue and I finish the first test.

The cop then tells me to keep turning in lane 1 and 2. I did that like 3 times and the cop was like ok you passed. He then said something I didn’t understand and pointed me to the other lane. So I stopped the bike and put my foot down and turned around to ask him what he had just said because I couldn’t hear him over the sound of the motorbike engine, plus I had my helmet on and plus he was standing like far away. As soon as I put my leg down the cop pointed at my foot and was like AHA!!! I was like what the fuck?! Whats wrong now? By then he was talking to the other cops who were sitting and having tea, he was like you see you see he put his foot down. I was like dude I stopped on purpose to ask you what you had just said because I couldn’t hear you. He then replied telling me “bara bara” meaning out out. He had failed me.

I drove out of the testing area and saw Nat waiting outside. I told her I had failed and she thought I was kidding. I told her no I really failed. She laughed and got on the bike and went inside. Five minutes later Nat drove back out, got off her bike and started screaming out loud. She was really fucking pissed. Turns out when she first got to the starting line the cop started asking her questions like why do you want to bike and girls shouldn’t bike. He then told her to ride around in circles which she did but then he asked her to do a figure 8 between the 3 squares. She couldn’t believe he had asked her to do that because the space between the squares is extremely tight and can barely fit a bike. While she was turning through the squares she put her foot down on the side of the curb and the cop was like AHA!!! And he failed her instantly. She was super pissed because she felt that they made the test impossible for her to pass because she was a girl.

Basically it turns out you need wasta even for a bike test.

If you pass by the Ice Skating ring parking lot in Kuwait City you will notice the huge parking lot has turned into a race track. This Thursday there will be a 25 hour Go Kart race in the parking lot. It will be the third year this race has been held.

A very easy how-to on giving your resume a facelift using Microsoft Word. When I get a crappy generic looking résumé printed on a 10 year old ink jet printer I usually don’t bother looking at it. But, when I get one thats laid out nicely I always end up reading it. [Link]

Metronatural is the new slogan for Seattle. It took over a year to develope at a cost of $200,000. I am definitely in the wrong line of work. [Link]

In response to the “Get your free donuts” post.

Dear All,
I received email more than I imagined, I cant send to all of you I am really sorry. We will sample tonight in Salem Mubarak Street at 10:00 PM, meet us their and I will make sure that all of you receive.
Sorry for the inconvenience

Barrak Naamani
KKD Brand Manager
Americana

A reader called Fahad also sent me the following email:

I went to Krispy Kreme’s Salim AlMubarak “event” (wednesday 17th 10:00pm) as announced by Barrak (big thanks to him). I mentioned 248am and was treated well, and took some pics (he kept asking when were the pics going to be on the website, i said i dont know inshalla soon), so here’s the set [Pictures]

Update: here is another email from Barak

Dear all,
I am receiving everyday more than 100 emails, we had our last drops yesterday in Salem Mubarak street facing Laila Gallery. We will not be able to do drops any more I am really sorry, but we will OPEN on the first day of Eid in Marina Crescent at 6:00 PM. the first comer will have free doughnuts for a year for free. See you there

Barrak Naamani
KFC/KKD Brand Manager
Americana

If you still haven’t tried the Krispy Kreme donuts please send your address to [email protected] and he will make sure you receive half a dozen donuts for free.

This is a video from Dove’s campaign for real beauty where you see a girl get a heavy makeup and then “fixed” in photoshop before she’s beautiful enough for the ad. [Link] #

Hello everyone, my name is Fawaz and I am responsible for marketing communication at Jazeera Airways, in addition to being an amateur blogger of course. We have been reading your questions about Jazeera Airways on this blog over the past few months. Questions that ranged from “how can we afford fares as low as KD 5?” To questions about our brand name. In an effort to answer all your questions, we recently asked Mark to gather questions you had for Jazeera Airways and in return we promised him that we would answer all of them, exclusively on this blog. Lets start

Mark: How can you afford to offer super low fares?

This is a great question that I will answer in two parts. First, we prefer to fly our planes full of travelers paying less per seat rather than flying with less travelers paying more. Other airlines prefer high fares and less passengers, which does not make sense to us. Why would they want to impact less people? For us, we enjoy flying people and being part of their lives.

The second part involves our business model that works to achieve high efficency and a lower operational cost base. In other words, we do more with less. We achieve our high efficiency by employing

1. state of the art technology to streamline processes
2. hardworking, multitasking, highly motivated team

In sum, we can afford super low fares because our business model is based on volume more than yield, and because we depend on leading technologies and great team to lower our cost.

Follow-up: How are you able to lower your cost?

We are able to maintain a lower cost base and high level of quality and safety through three main ways:

1- Recruitment- We recruit highly motivated and committed team members. This is crucial as it has direct impact on day-to-day cost. Being able to wear different ‘hats’ (so to speak) and do the work of several people is a quality we seek in and build in our team members. That’s why we call our people our ‘high flyers’.

2- Aircraft utilization – Aircraft on the ground do not make money, so we keep our aircraft in the air where they do make money. We achieve this through quick turn-arounds at the gate. Our planes arrive at a destination, wait for our travelers to disembark, board return travelers, and fly back to base ready to take off again in less than 45 minutes.

3- A fleet of single-type fleet: the Airbus A320.

If you had Porsche and a Ferrari and Lamborghini in your drive way, you would need three different specialized garages to service them with three different mechanics and three different spare parts inventories. On the other hand, if you had three Porsches you would only need to contract a single garage to service all three and your maintenance costs would be much lower. Aircraft are the same, though much more sophisticated. Allow me to elaborate.

If an airline had an A320, an A310, an A340, and a 777, they would need certified captains, first officers, cabin crew for each type of aircraft. In this case, if a 777 pilot falls sick with the flu, an A320 pilot cannot just jump in the captain’s seat of a 777 unless she is trained on a 777. Because of this, airlines with multiple aircraft types in their fleet need to have more pilots to cover scenarios like this, more engineers who do nothing but wait for someone to get sick, and spare parts inventories to cover all types. This creates redundancies and inneficiency.

In our case, we have an all-A320 fleet. We do not need to hire more crew since any of our crew can jump in any of our aircraft and take-off and any of our engineers is licensed to work on any of our aircraft, and our spare parts inventory covers all our aircraft.

4- Investment in Technology – By investing heavily into technology, we were able to raise efficiency, reduce operational cost and drive the price of tickets down even further. We currently employ over a dozen world class technology systems and tools that range from the booking systems we use to satellite aircraft monitoring that tells us the status and integrity of each aircraft while it is in the air no matter where it is on earth, and automatically dispatches support teams and parts to the destination airport if the situation required. These are only some of the benefits of having world class Lufthansa Technik engineers and technology working with us and for us.

I just updated my Baba Taher Restaurant review. I was there over the weekend and I managed to catch the place when it was empty so I took a picture of the inside plus a picture of my dish. If you haven’t checked out the review yet now would be the best time. [Link]

I don’t eat at home since I don’t know how to cook nor do I want to learn how to cook. I know how to make the basics which are sandwiches, omelets, burgers and cookies and I don’t see a need to learn how to make other dishes.

Since its ramadan all restaurants are closed till like 5:30PM, this means when I am done with work at 3 I have over 2 hours before I eat. The thing is I can’t go out to eat at 5:30 because my riding lessons are from like 5 to 6:30. Thats why I have to eat at home.

Yesterday while shopping at Sultan Center in Salmiya I decided to pick up 2 packs of Kobe Burger, I have been wanting to try it for a long time now but since I don’t eat at home I found no need to get it. After picking up the burgers I picked up a packet of sliced American white cheese loaves, 1 white onion, a bottle of Heinz Ketchup and some burger buns. Nat didn’t want Kobe Burgers since she doesn’t like thick burgers so I picked up a packet of regular frozen burgers for her.

I have a Kenwood grill at home and I use it mainly to grill my burgers on and this is how I do it:

– I grill the burger for 5 minutes, flip it, let it grill for another 5 minutes, flip it, let it grill for another 5 minutes and finally I flip it one last time for a final 5 minutes.

– Once I am done I put a slice of cheese on the burger, leave it on the grill for another minute then I take the burger with cheese and place it on the bottom half of my bun.

– I then place it in the microwave for 10 seconds so the cheese can melt.

– I then put some ketchup on the burger and top it off with diced white onions

– I cover my burger with the top half of the bun and my burger is ready to eat.

I am sure Gastronomica is better at making burgers then me since if you check out his website you will notice all his meals are very gourmet like. Hopefully he will be nice enough to share a tip or two in the comments below but until he does this is how I make my burgers.

How did the burgers come out? Fanfrigintastic! I like my burgers well done and I was expecting this burger to come out dry but it didn’t. It was soft, juicy and tasted like something you would find at a posh restaurant or hotel room service. It was surprisingly very good and it turned out to be the best burger I ever made.

Now the biggest problem with the Kobe Burger is the price. Each patty costs KD1.250 which isn’t cheap if you compare it to other frozen burgers. BUT without getting into the taste or quality of meat please look at the picture above of the burgers on the grill. Do you notice the 2 large patties on the left? Do you notice the tiny patty on the top right? Guess which patty is your average everyday frozen one? These kobe burgers are big and thick. Kobe beef also comes from Wagyu cattle which are “renowned for its flavor, tenderness, and fatty well-marbled texture”. So yes KD1.250 is worth it specially if you have a passion for burgers.

From now on if I ever need to make burgers at home this is the only burger I will get. I can no longer have those crappy frozen burgers that come 8 in a pack. I have been spoilt. Final score is a 4.5 out of 5. I would have given it a 5 but they are a lot messier to cook then the regular burgers because these are bigger and juicier so they spray more grease. This means more cleaning for me which always sucks.

Although Fasttelco have removed the YouTube and MySpace block, a ton of other sites are still blocked including LiveJournal.com!

I am a big shawerma fan and I really enjoy trying shawerma’s from new places. Shawerma is such a simple thing but its amazing how many different flavors and presentation styles there are. I rarely get disappointed when I have a shawerma because they are hard to fuck up. Somehow though the Mishref Coop Restaurant found the secret ingredient to making a crappy shawerma.

Tuesday night I had a recording in a studio in Mishref, once I was done I decided I would treat myself to a shawerma from the Mishref Coop Restaurant. The skewer looked very appetizing so I went ahead and ordered two chicken shawerma and a coke.

It sucked to summarize my experience. The chicken tasted weird, like nothing was added to it when cooked, no spices, no flavor no nothing. The chicken was also very oily and had a weird smell. The garlic was also non existent. I was very disappointed and I would never have shawerma there again.

Final score is a 1 out of 5. It gets a 1 because I ate it and didn’t die afterwards.

For some reason today I feel like moving to Luxembourg.

update: OK scratch that, they don’t even speak English there.

So I passed by the Hawally Traffic Department in Jabriya tonight because the guy yesterday told me to come back today. I got there 5:50PM and waited in line to have my picture taken. After waiting around 20 minutes I finally sat down to have my picture taken when the guy tells me they already have my picture and I need to take my papers to window #6. So I go up to the window and the employee is busy talking on the phone, he signals me with his hand to give him my paper and I do and then I go sit down waiting for my name to be called out so I could collect my license. 6:30PM exactly a guy comes out from the printing room and announces to everyone that the printer stopped working and to come back Saturday. All the employees got up and started leaving.

Now I need to pass by on Saturday. If its Ramadan I should pass by between 1 and 4. If its a regular day I have to pass by between 4 and 7. It will be my forth visit and all I am trying to do is get my license renewed!

Fuzz a blogger posted in the forum about how the 777 emergency service failed his uncle. According to Fuzz his uncle had a heart attack on Thursday and his cousin was the only person with hus uncle at the time and so his first reaction was to call for help by dialing 777. Problem is no one ever picked up. He tried calling them over and over and over but no one picked up the line.

How could no one be there to pick up an emergency phone call? A quick search online shows this has happened atleast one other time. CyberRowdy another blogger tried calling 777 to inform them of a safety problem when a traffic light at a major intersection stopped working. He called them 8 times and no one picked up. Another member in the forum posted that his Aunt passed away last year even though 777 did respond. According to the writer when the response team arrived they refused to touch his aunt because she was a woman and so did not perform CPR on her. They didn’t even help get his aunt into the Ambulance!

I am sure there are more examples where 777 failed to answer and the thing is, even if they don’t answer only one time that is still a MAJOR problem. Personally we used 777 once here at the office and the response time was fast so I myself never had a problem with 777. But, if there comes a time where I need them I would probably want someone to drive me to the hospital instead of waiting for 777.

Fuzz’s uncle passed away on Thursday because no one at 777 picked up the phone. Wouldn’t it have been better if the KD200 given out to every citizen was instead used to improve something as important as the medical service in Kuwait? Instead of donating money to rebuild Lebanon wouldn’t it have been better to first fix an important problem like the 777 emergency department?