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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?

Someone asked that question in the forum and I thought it was interesting. In case you didn’t know, the government gave every Kuwaiti KD200 two days ago. So the question is directed to the locals, how are you planning on spending the money? The funniest thing I heard was that some guys were betting KD200 against each other in rounds of Winning Eleven on the PS2. Easy come easy go..

Amazon just put up a page with all the new iPods that were released yesterday. You can now preorder one of the new iPods and they will ship it to you once they have it in stock. [Link]

Yesterday after work I decided I would pass by Bader Al Badoor for a quick bite to eat. Once I got their though I changed my mind and decided I would try the other shawerma place opposite to it. A friend of mine told me they had better shawermas so I figured I would give it a shot and see.

After trying Al-Ghader and Badar Al Badoor’s shawerma, Burgan was a disappointment. First the place seems to be the least clean out of the three. The interior was very small and even though it wasn’t that packed I still found it difficult to get to the cashier who was tucked away in a corner behind a Pepsi fridge. The employees also didn’t seem the cleanest or the most organized compared to Al-Ghader and Bader Al Badoor. There was a brief argument for example that broke out with the shawerma guy and one of the employees, the employee originally told the shawerma guy 2 shawermas but then gave him a paper saying 6 shawermas because the customer had requested more. The shawerma guy didn’t read the paper and just went and did 2 shawermas. So they were arguing for like 5 minutes on whose fault it was while the customer was outside waiting in his car for his order.

After a brief wait I picked up my shawermas and a can of coke and headed to the car to eat. Its not hard to make a good shawerma, as long as its not greasy, you use good bread and you make sure the garlic doesnt taste like mayonnaise then you have yourself a good shawerma. But, from a good shawerma to a great shawerma it takes a lot more then that and this is where Burgan fails to deliver. While Badar Al Badoor and Al-Ghader both had neutral tasting chicken in their shawerma’s, Burgan trys to be different by giving the chicken some flavor. If you actually look closely at the chicken shawerma skewer you will notice the chicken has what looks like red spice on it. This is what gives Burgan’s chicken this extra touch of flavor but with me at-least this addition of theirs backfired because I didn’t like it. Its not so bad that I wouldn’t eat it, I don’t think I have ever come across a shawerma that I wouldn’t eat but it does make me prefer Badar Al Badoor which is just across the street from them.

Burgan’s quantity of chicken is good, they are not stingy, their Pepsi was also freezing cold but the chicken just tasted strange and the garlic wasn’t strong enough to cover the taste. The shawerma costs 250fils which is standard for a place like this. The final score is a 3 out of 5.

Need directions? Follow Badar Al Badoor’s [Link]

If you are running a blog and are getting a decent amount of visitors you can cash-in by placing banners on your site. One easy way to get banners on your site is with DartMedia who are based in Kuwait. They pay up to KD3 for every 1000 impressions their banners get. So if you get 1000 visitors a day thats KD93 a month. Both Kuwaitism and Zaydoun have been using them for a while now so DartMedia must be treating them well or else they would have stopped using them ages ago. If you are interested in having banners on your site you can go apply on DartMedia’s website. Here is their link. [Link]

Note: Bloggers you are publishers

Found this via Hilaliya, some teacher who was living in Kuwait in the 80s scanned some old pictures he had taken here and uploaded them to his flicker account. Some cool stuff, Kuwait really hasn’t changed much. [Pictures]

Ummmm, don’t know what to say really.. [Link]

Football players whose pictures grace the covers of Madden NFL video games are doomed. I had heard of the curse before but I just saw the facts to back this curse up and its just freaky. [Link]

Saw the funniest thing today on my way back from Marina Mall. A large bus with Bahrain Limo written on the side was parked on the side of the road and a bunch of Bahraini tourists were getting out. Makes me wonder how boring Bahrain must be for people there to be coming to Kuwait for tourism.

Pictures of a badly burnt Lamborghini with the driver and passenger still inside. The two people couldn’t get out of the car because they couldn’t get the doors open since the car was upside down and the doors open upwards. The pictures are really graphic so you are warned. [Link]

Hmmm, I think I am guilty in two areas. [Link]

Someone sent me an email with scans from the menu of a restaurant at the Damascus Airport. As expected there are a lot of spelling mistakes.

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Anyone know of a good medical insurance company in Kuwait? I tried ALICO but they only insure in groups of larger then 10.