back to the 80's

i've finally got an internet connection at home that's worthy of letting me never go back to jabriya video and just download everything i wanna watch. strange thing is till now i haven't downloaded a single new movie, some are fairly new but for some reason i find myself downloading movies i haven't seen in almost 20 years. talk about feeling nostalgic, and not only that, am now actually understanding the movies (my english being far better than it was pre-american education). so in some ways its like seeing them for the first time...i found this video that has everything that was the 80's, for those who grew up in that time would no doubt feel a bit of reminiscence for our childhood years...if you do, heres a list of some of the top movies of the 80's, i recommend you give yourself some free time to download a few and enjoy...

worst job ever?

am sure a lot of you have been complaining about going back to work today after the holidays...well if you're one of those people, just be glad you're not this guy

what? me write

come twitter with me, lets twitter lets twitter away

as i was checking out ansam's twitter thing, i decided to do a twitter too, and twittering as i did, i found a thing to do...so come and join me and you can twitter too 

french burgers

yesterday me and two friends had burgers at the new french place in avenues phase II (i simply cannot remember the name) the red cafe across from dean & deluca between Hagen daz and caribou, yeah it's open now. anyways, me and two other friends went there and had to wait approximately 15 minutes for a table. we usually hate waiting for a table especially if we were hungry enough to eat a whole ghoozi, each. but this was a new place newly opened and we thought it might be worth the wait. at least we were trying something new. and because it was new to us, naturally we ordered half the menu. we had onion soup for appetizer which was good if you like onion soup. i ordered warm goat cheese salad (yes i ordered a salad), wasnt that bad but when you eat the cheese you are going to know that it really came from a goat, and not in a good way, but i guess thats just how the french do it. oh i loved the bread basket, am a bread lover and i appreciate a good selection of french bread. for our main dish we ordered hamburgers, medium well of coarse. mine was, as you can see, didnt have lettuce or tomato because i like it this way. the hamburgers were in my opinion the best thing we tried at that place, but maybe am saying this cuz of my prejudice towards hamburgers, but if your a hamburger lover you know your just gonna have to try it. we also ordered the calamari dish and spaghetti bolo(naiz), both of which werent any good and not recommended by the bored kuwaiti food tasters club. we would have tried some dessert but unfortunately as it stood, there wasnt any room in our over extended bellies for it. i think there would definitely be a next time if only to sit there and have coffee and dessert, cuz also the seating area is nice and you get a good view of all the passers by, which could prove popular in kuwait.  

ps: polls has been updated!

the iphone wins...for now

i have been struggling for a while now trying to decide which phone i was going to make mine. i have been using the old iphone for a little more than a year now and have gotten so used to the touch screen and all that other iphone shit that whenever i touched another phone my insides twist with disgust as to how can anyone feel satisfaction with a button keyboard or those very small screens that dont react to your every touch! this is the ultimate reason why i choose to stick with apple. it was either that or the blackberry bold, and the only reason i considered the bold was because of the habba status. i just felt everyone has one and i was being left out. bs i figured the biggest reason kuwaities love it oh so much is cuz of the bbm, and i realized none of my close friends have it so what use is it to me to get it and not bbm anyone? also the first question on the polls blog was which u prefer, iphone, bb or an old school phone and to my surprise the blackberry came in last, iphone second and old school nokias and Ericsson's were by far the most preferred mobile of choice. since i wasnt gonna go back to using a conventional phone i decided that, for now at least, i'd stick with the iphone. 

Also a great thing about it is when i plugged the new phone into my laptop i got a msg prompting me to either restore my old phone settings or not. not knowing exactly what that would do i said yes! and to my delight it restored all, i mean alll of my old phone settings. Contacts, ringtones, all the applications i downloaded, all the settings, past emails, and it even copied all the sms msgs i had on my old phone and put them in the new one. Heck, all the missed calls and internet bookmarks and youtube favourites were copied too. it did make me feel, for a bit at first, that i just wasted 260 KD on the same exact phone, but thats just to show you how easy and convenient it is changing phones without the hassle of setting things or copying sim card and all. over all, it was a good choice and am happy with it, but i cant say i wont get a bb in the future, cuz you really never know.

they sell reeses!

they sell reeses peanut butter cups here! i couldnt believe it. dont know if they have been doing so for a while wana tawny aktishif bs these little things were an obssesion of mine back in 92 and 93 when we were living in DC and i was chucking them cups down like they were m&m's. athkir 9ij kint atfanan eb the way i eat them. talk about a nostalgic moment.  kint wagif bljam3iya with the cashier sliding my stuff on the scanner and el bnaya ele wagfa waray et7i6 her things on the belt, that is when my eye noticed a small thin rectangular orange thing, 2 of them god bless her soul, sitting infront. needless to say i told the cashier to freeze while i ran down the aisle looking for them cups. there they were, hundreds of them sitting there. so i took two (am trying to lose wieght, ha!) and went back to pay for me stuff. below is one of me fav old time commercials, how do you eat your reeses?

are hamburgers really that greasy?

bored kuwaiti polls blog

just cuz i was bored i have gone and did a polls only blog. so if you find yourself bored and with nothing to do, go visit there, answer some questions or just suggest a poll you would like to see done and enshala i will do it. whenever am bored.

polls blog

bored kuwaiti goes to cba

this has been an easy week so far compared to the previous 2 months of hell i've been through bl dawam. basically all i have to do is go to the kuwait university job fair in cba for our company and sit there and answer peoples questions. we will take your applications and cv's 6ab3an bs you can forget about getting a job offer from us at this time. as a matter of fact, almost all of the companies who are participating in this job fair are not offering any jobs at the moment. hell, even Global has a booth there lol madre laish. yimkin el wa7eedeen ele ga3d ya3600n job offers are NBK for part time call center jobs or viva for i dont know exactly what. but i really felt bad for a lot of the graduating students, i mean where are they gonna go? seriously a7is radaina 3ala ayam awal ele the only 2 places you can aspire to work in blkuwait are the government or banks (not even that now) or get in the family business, if you have one. a7is it's a good time to start your own business now. anyways, too bad bacher is the last day, back to the office the day after.   

update:

Quit for a Day-Day

now for starters let me just say that while quiting smoking is simple, it is not easy, especially here in kuwait. simple? yes cuz all you really need to do in order to quit is stop, i mean really decide to stop and distract yourself from thinking about it. easy? not close. the reasons why it's not a walk in the park is because it is after all a medically proven addictive substance, and you know the thing about addictions, that they are hard as hell to get rid of. the problem with a cigarette is that it is both a physical and mental addiction. we all know about nicotine, but the mental addiction is what in my opinion the hardest to get rid of. 

i used to smoke for a couple of years before i had surgery to remove my tonsils which is the same time i decided to quite. medically, nicotine should have been completely out of my system and the addiction completely gone after 3 months, or so i read. i stayed cigarette free for almost 2 years. if you've guessed that this wasnt the end of it then you're right. i still remember the first cigarette i had in almost 2 years. i coughed, at first, as any first time smoker would have, but then slowly but surely my lungs adjusted to the smoke. i became what people would call a casual or social smoker in kuwait, ya3ni adakhin bs bildowaniya. that went on for a while gradually taken small steps moving away from the casual or social smoking till full on smoker. the final conversion occurred after i started my current job. we joke around in the office that it is a requirement to work here for you to be a smoker. i do admit, i met more than half the people i know in the office all from the "cigarette break". what more is it became an excuse for us to take short breaks, which we all loved so much. 

i had a wake up call about a month ago when for two days straight a simple act like breathing felt like someone was digging their knees into my chest and not easing up on it (this is the usual feeling smokers have after waking up in the morning) but this time it lasted more than the morning coffee, which i have to admit scared me. i went to the doctor afraid of what i might find out. it turned out to be some illness between bronchitis and asthma  brought upon mainly from direct smoking, second hand smoking and our beautiful yellow colored weather. it's not as serious as i first feared el7imdila bs never the less it was still bad enough. now i've had 28 smoke free days. technically, am one third the way to be completely rid of my nicotine addiction, it's just i wonder how long it would take for me to get rid of the mental addiction. so far i found that exercises and eating helps. i just hope i get to do one more than he other, the healthy one that is.  

blogger blind test

yesterday the same client with the good looking interior performed a cheesy blind test for some of it's employees to test which type of cheese they would like best (something tells me labna isnt considered cheese but more like yougert? i dont know you tell me). i wanted to be a part of the blind test bs unfortunatly i had to do my own work at that same time and couldnt get away, i wasnt even able to watch it either.

i've always wanted to be a part of a blind test, everyone does i think, i bet everyone who saw that coke vs pepsi or that starbucks vs jam3iya coffee blind tests has told themselves at one point or another hey i bet i can tell which is which, ashkara i would. well i wanted to test myself and see if i would know. hmmm...i wonder if there could be a kuwaiti blogger blind test. how? i dont know, i guess the way i would do it is for someone to to publish a set of 2 or 3 or 5 posts each from different bloggers and have the readers guess which is which, like safat but without the bloggers names, that is if they claim that they know their favourit bloggers all too well. i mean some people have a unique way of writing and telling a story or posting random things. what we post is what makes our blogs unique right? or is there another reason why we read who we read? i dont know, if you find this interesting then let me know and maybe a blogger blind test could tell us more.

unbelievable!

Woman arrested in Saudi Arabia for driving

Saudi men arrested for seeking female writer's autograph

Saudis order 40 lashes for elderly woman for mingling

the very best part of work is when we're not working

dont you agree?

what would you're dream job be? the one that makes you feel excited to get up at 7 in the morning for 5 days a week for the next 30 years? if you dont have a dream job, what would you change about your current job to make it perfect or something close to it? and if you're unemployed at all, then go ahead, tell us how it feels.

pics

here are a few pics i was able to sneak in, they suck i know, it's cuz they were taking with an iphone, which normaly takes pictures that suck. but it should give you some idea of what i was talking about in the last post

the right side of the entrance from the stair way

and the left side

this is the company's cafeteria with their own gourmet (almost) restaurant, today we had burgers n fries for lunch

the hallways

they have this cool thing that blows a huge amount of air into the toilets...now i dont know exactly why it's there but am sure your imagination can come up with a reason or two behind it.

the infamous interrogation room with all new black chairs, mine is the one on the right

the bulding from the outside, and if you look closely you can see my finger on the edge of the picture

so, tell me what do you think ?

bored kuwaiti goes to sabhan

i wasnt very much pleased when i found out 2 days ago that the company i had to work at for the next 2 weeks would be in sabhan. i've always had bad luck with the places i get, like meena 3bdla or amghara or in the middle of the desert (literally) somewhere off the 7th ring road, so when i heard that i  was going to sabhan i felt a little depressed. (for some reason i thought sabhan was very far away)

so today was the first day going to this certain company and i tell you i was very surprised at how close the place was, i mean it might not be that close but the road going there is against the morning traffic so it doesnt feel so far away. but the real surprise came when i actually got there. picture this, a huge huge block of a warehouse with almost no windows on 3 sides and covered with metal." damn" i thought to myself as i was trying to find a parking space, "this place is gonna suck". so after i parked my car and got out and walked towards the door i entered and suddenly found myself inside a modern new york  style interior design magazine. this place was, if am not too exaggerating here, the best looking interior of an office building i have ever seen in kuwait, and i have seen a plenty. i couldnt even imagine that kuwaiti companies cared enough to spend so much effort and money on the interior design. i imagined the owner must have an interior designer for a daughter who nagged him on doing this office building the way she wanted.  i was so pleased that i even asked for a tour of the building (of which i was ever so abruptly denied) no matters. but i have to admit, the way this place looked cheered me up, i even thought to myself,  this is the kinda place i could see myself working in. so after all that try to imagine my surprise, again, at seeing the room where we are going to spend the next 2 weeks in. 

GREY! bs. thats it. grey. grey walls, grey ceiling, grey door, grey floor, grey door, no windows, grey table and very uncomfortable grey chairs. me and my colleagues have decided to call it the "interrogation room". i swear bs nagi9 ena a couple of officers come in and start torturing us o yakmil el filim.   

now this horror of an image is a pic i found while googleimaging sabhan trying to find a pic that would go well with this post. this painting was done by a syrian artist aptly named "sabhan". so i just thought i would share it with you guys. apparently its art. 

just another BB Pin: 2465050C

do you ever get the feeling that we kuwaities sometimes take things just a little bit too far? as if there is a special gene in our kuwaiti blood that makes us feel good to over do things. i mean am not saying it's a bad thing, it's just a part of what makes us who we are, it's just sometimes i wonder about the reasonableness of certain things. lets take for example some of the crazy scenes i've seen over the national holiday weekend like a horse carriage turned into a water balloon tank parading up and down the streets of bnaider. what i really want to talk about today is the craze over the blackberry phone that has engulfed the kuwaiti mainstream life. let me be the first to admit that, while i dont own one, i did strongly consider buying one for a while. what can i say, the hype has gotten to me before (hence the iphone). but the main reason why i didnt buy it is because a lot of people complain about restarts and bad signals and i really didnt need any of those. anyways, nowadays you cant help but notice everyone is owning one, and i cant see an end to kuwait's love affair with that now famous BB pin. there's even a blog dedicated to blackberry in kuwait, people have started facebook groups and communities for kuwaiti blackberry owners, it is now obligatory to congratulate a new blackberry owner via status change, hell i wouldnt be surprised if sometime in the future girls will start having an "istiqbal" cuz she got a new blackberry, god knows they have one for almost anything these days.  

  i just have one question for everyone out there who has bought or knows someone who has bought a blackberry:

is it THAT good or is it just another case of a kuwaiti haba?

fat footballers union of kuwait

it is a well know fact that if you are, like me,  a guy who loves football, but you happen to be on the wrong side of the scale, the only football you'll be playing is on the short end of a playstation joystick. kwaities have always had a competitive drive in them, they want to win even though there is nothing to win. like in playing regular weekend football. what used to be about playing with friends and having a good time turned to a "must win" game. this competitive drive has inevitably led to the downfall of the kuwaiti fat footballer. from a time when the bigger you are meant the scarier and tougher an opponent you would make has translated into "oh he's fat, his foot must be upside down" (not an actual quote). this, unfortunately has made the old saying true that, the fit keep getting fitter, while the overweight stay home and eat. but the time has come for us to say no more! we will no longer accept getting picked last, if at all. long gone are the days when we stand next to the opposing teams goalie and wait for when the ball falls to our feet by mistake. we will stand up, we will run the field, and we will be the captains of tomorrow.  

were you single on valentines? no worries, just go to...

Al Raya! hurry up cuz tommorow is the last day. almost any guy who has any doubt about wanting to get married needs only to go to this event and his point of view on this subject is certain to take a leap of faith. Just take my word for it.

cooking steak

today i came home early at around 6ish and felt like cooking something for lunch. lately i felt i was getting bored of the same old food routine, i usually have some snack from starbucks or whichever coffee shop near by in mid day then come home late and eat whatever has been cooked earlier in the day. so today before i left i called home and told them to get some steaks out of the freezer and prepare them for me. i like to cook from time to time although i dont get to do it that often bs when i do a7ib atfalsaf wajarib ashya mitnaw3a. today i took the steak and put on it some Dijon mustard and some sweet chili sauce and some other spices and let it marinate a bit, then i put some veggies, tomato, onions, green pepper and garlic on the frying pan. after that, i placed the steak on the veggies. so its like the whole time the steak was cooked on the veggie that was being cooked on the pan. i have no idea if that made any difference but it sure did look good. before it was done i put some rectangular cheese that i bought from sultan center of which i dont know the name of on the steak itself for about 2 minutes so it can melt into the steak. here are a few pics of the cooking:  

 

this is when i first put the steak on the veggies, if u can see some of the mustard and sweet chili on the steak which covered the level of veggies underneath.

this is a pic of the steaks halfway through, u can see its begining to take some color and some veggies appear under it.

this is what it looked like after it was done with the cheese on top. of coarse lazem bo6a6 and some Pepsi with the meal and what is next to the steak is some of the veggies that was underneath the steak that was cooking, which absorbed all the sweet chili and were very very spicy. overall this was better then i expected and it was a nice change from the usual daily meal. its also a bit more satisfying when u cook ur own meal from time to time. 

i guess this is another honesty tag thing, that i like to cook from time to time, and that i am a kind of person that lives to eat good food, even though lately i've been using an iphone application named "live strong" to help me lose weight, yeah can u imagine? a phone helping me lose wieght, wala tekniloojya. it does it by helping me keep track of what am eating. i just write what i ate and it says how many calories i have eaten and how much more i can afford to eat without compromising my 2 pounds a week weight lose target. its good because when u have something that lets u actually think about what ur eating it, well makes u think about what ur eating. so far i've been using it for 4 days and lost 1 kilo with some exercise. am doing this exercise which i found on utube called 300, its simple yet i found in less then a week that its very effective. 

so if u ever have some extra time on ur hand, cook, think about what ur eating, or just do some exercises that will make u feel better.