Let go of my Eggo!

Yesterday night I purchased a Braun toaster from City Center so today I passed by Sultan Center and got a whole bunch of Eggo Waffles. I first got into Eggo back when I was in Canada and I saw an Eggo Waffle ad staring Charles Barkley who was my favorite NBA player back then. I decided to buy it and try it and I loved it. It was my favorite snack for a long time but then suddenly for some reason I stopped getting it. Today was the first time I got Eggo in years and I used my new toaster to heat it up and then I spread some Nutella on it and it was fucking amazing!! Now I think I am going to have it as my midnight snack.

Humid

What happened to the weather, the humidity outside is unbelievable. I just checked the weather forecast and it says 83% but it feels more like 100%. I had plans to go biking but this weather killed my mood. I couldnt go outside and shoot either because the lens would fog up so I took this shot from the inside of my house, its the humidity on my window.

Stuck in Traffic

I past by Hawalli tonight to get some computer supplies. I ended up getting stuck in traffic so I started taking some shots. Just before I got home I witnessed a fight which I posted about on 2:48AM. Sadly I had my camera on manual focus and couldn't take any decent shot of the fight. Today is Day 350 of the project. 15 days to go.

Have You Ever Been Mellow

I had a healthy lunch today at Chilis as part of my new healthy diet plan. I had a cup of chicken and mushroom soup, a turkey sandwich, a corn on the cob and a small bottle of water. Later on when I got home I had melon for desert. I took todays shot outside Chilis, I deliberately over exposed the shot since I wanted most of the image details to wash out like the floor for example. I didn't have my tripod with me and I figured a normal shot with no tripod would come out really boring so thats when I decided to spice things up a bit and shoot the shot over exposing it to see what kind of interesting mood I could get. I got mellow.

Mein Kampf

Was buying gum from the Marina Crescent bookshop when I noticed they had Mein Kampf and The Davinci Code in Arabic. I found that weird, a few months ago The Davinci Code was banned in Kuwait and now its available in Arabic. Notice thought the Arabic cover is cheaper then the original one, they couldn't even get the color right.

The Two Cops

I was on my way to lunch at McDonalds on the Gulf Road when I spotted this fresh car wreck. Seems the driver was speeding like crazy, lost control, hit the curb, and flipped upside down into the middle of the road. The driver of the car must have been taken to the hospital before I arrived because I didn't see any ambulance or anything. I parked my car near by and walked to the scene with Nat to take some pictures. Before we got to the scene I told her not to speak in Arabic because I wanted to use my "I am a foreigner and don't understand a word you are saying" approach on the cops incase they stop me from taking pictures. So I get to the scene and their were two cops, a black guy and a white guy. The white guy was talking on the phone and the black guy was just looking at me. I took out my camera to take a picture and black cop came towards me yelling something out in Arabic. I yelled back "Can I take a picture?" he was like "what?" as in he didn't understand a word I was saying. I asked him again "Can I take a picture?" and pointed to my camera. He said yeah yeah take. So I started setting up my shot when the second cop saw me and came walking towards me yelling "mamnoo mamnoo" meaning its not allowed its not allowed in Arabic. I told him "Why not I just want to take some pictures" and then the other black cop told him in Arabic that I just wanted to take pictures and then I would leave. The white cop told the black cop come on man you know its not allowed and then he walked off continuing to talk on the phone. So I ignored the cops request and continued taking my pictures while listening in on the conversation the cop was having on the phone. Basically what I heard was that they wanted to leave the scene of the accident to go have their iftar but there was no one else who wanted to come in their place and the tow truck driver was no where to be found. In the end they parked one of their cars in front of the wrecked car and turned on the sirens, then they got into the second cop car and drove off leaving the accident scene unattended to. I have a closer picture of the car on 2:48AM if you are interested and you can check it by clicking here.

Halim Choueiry

I just came back from Burger Boutique. I was met up with my university design professor Halim Choueiry who has been in Kuwait for a couple of days now on business. He now teaches at the Virginia Commonwealth University and is a really good friend of mine. I don't think there is any designer in the Middle East who is a better designer then he is. He is leaving tomorrow back to Qatar but I will be seeing him again in February during Tasmeem Doha where Bruce Mau will be giving a keynote. Anyway, here is Halim's biography from the ICOGRADA website, he rocks:

Halim Choueiry
ICOGRADA - Vice President

Originally from Lebanon, Halim Choueiry is a design educator and practitioner based in Qatar. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the School of the Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar. Having obtained a Bachelor's and two Master's degrees, he is undertaking a PhD in Design at Brighton University in the United Kingdom. Halim also runs his own design studio, Cinnamon, which specialises in cultural patterning identification, visual development of bilingual corporate identities, and the simultaneous typographic representation of Latin-based languages and Arabic.

In addition to design consultancy, Halim publishes Comma, a quarterly pan-Arab graphic design magazine. He has won several national and international design competitions and has extensive experience in judging for student competitions and advertising awards. His involvement in international events includes conducting design conferences and chairing Creative Nights, a workshop series held throughout the Arab countries. He is dedicated to bringing about changes in the approach and look of graphic design in the Middle East and the Gulf region.

Cannondale

Yesterday evening I dropped our bikes off at the Cannondale dealer for a service since we hadn't ridden the bikes for a couple of months now. I purchased the two bikes for me and Nat last autumn when the weather was good but when the summer came we couldn't ride our bikes because of the extreme heat. Now that the weather is cool again we really want to bike again so tonight we went back to the dealer to pick up the bikes and hopefully we will start biking again starting this weekend. The first time I posted about the Cannondale brand was back in April 2004 on my old Moblogging from Kuwait website. These bikes are amazing, extremely light but very strong and the finishing is so clean that you can barely see any of the welding. The bikes weigh less then 10KG which is light enough for Nat to lift over her head with one hand if she ever needs to for some odd reason. If you are interested in biking and are looking for some great bikes then you can call the Cannondale dealer at 4826723 for more info or pass by the showroom. They are located in Shuwaikh, take the first right after the McDonalds on Canada Dry street and you will find them on the corner of the first roundabout.

Mac City

A new Mac store opened in Kuwait called Mac City. Someone told me its supposed to be the largest Mac store in the Middle East, if it is then thats very sad. I past by Mac City tonight expecting a "city" but all I found was a regular shop. I was expecting a large store with loads of Mac's on display and a comfortable atmosphere where I could go mingle with other Mac users. What I got was an average sized store, with only 4 different Macs on display and an atmosphere that wasn't comfortable at all. The store felt very sterile and unfriendly. It was obvious they wanted the store to look like an Apple store but they forgot one important thing, personality. When I walked into Mac City there were two employees, one was in his late 40's while the other was in his late 30's. They didn't seem friendly nor did they look cool. The shop was also very quiet, there wasn't any music playing or anything and every footstep me and Nat took could be heard. We didn't feel comfortable, we quickly walked around checking the prices of the various products and then we left. I wasn't impressed, I was disappointed and not just because of the terrible atmosphere but also because of the prices. Mac City is just like Mac & More, Virgin, IOC and Kamal Sultan... over priced. Mac City had nearly all the Griffin Technology mac accessories but ALL of them were more then double the price of what you can find online. The prices of the Apple hardware were also exactly like the other over priced Mac stores. 2GB nano is KD110, 4GB is KD130. 1GB shuffle is KD58 while 512MB is KD49. 14" iBook is KD578 while the iMac starts at KD574. There are a whole bunch of Mac stores in the market already, this store doesn't differ from them. So far the cheapest Mac store is zMacShop followed by Solize. The best atmosphere is also zMacShop and thats because the 2 guys who run it are young and friendly. Mac City is just one big disappointment. For those of you who want nano's, wait a few days and you should be able to get them from zMacShop for nearly KD50 cheaper.

Made in China

There is a very common habit in Kuwait when it comes to ripping off western brands. Here is one perfect example, a barber called DisnyLand and yes they even managed to spell Disney wrong.

Old Kuwait

Tonight I passed by and had breakfast at Casper & Gambini. Yes breakfast at night. I had a cheese omelet with a glass of fresh orange juice and it was amazing. Over breakfast a friend of mine told me they will be demolishing the old Kuwaiti houses next to the Amiri Hospital where the Karizma Art Gallery is located. I think thats very sad and old houses like those should be preserved. Todays picture is an example of what kind of houses I am talking about. They should preserve the old Kuwait, there isn't much of it left and once its gone its gone forever.

Ostrich

I am going to start tagging my silly illustration everywhere. I am gonna start with elevator walls since once the doors close I usually have at least 15 seconds of privacy. 15 seconds is all I need to take out my thick marker and draw this silly illustration on the wall. Now I just need to come up with a name for it since I have had people ask me what it was and I didn't know what to tell them. Maybe it could be an ostrich?

Under the Tent

Just came back from dinner. I was invited to my wife's agencies ramadan dinner which was held at Hilton. It was pretty cool and it was held inside a large tent, but now I am tired and I have work tomorrow (unlike them) so I am gonna go off and sleep. Today is day 340 of the project, only 25 days left!

Tangerine

Today I bought a clamshell iBook for $75. A friend of a friend had one lying around in the shop and he wanted to sell it and I was asked if I wanted it and I did ofcourse. I formatted it and installed OS9.2 on it. Its working allot faster then I expected it. Tomorrow I am gonna install Linux on it since there are no decent browsers for OS9 and OS10 will run really slow on it. I am so happy I bought this, it was such a good deal.

Gallery

Tonight me and Nat past by the "Dar El-Fanoon" Art Gallery in Kuwait City behind Casper & Gambini. My dad has some items on display there for the exhibition that starts tomorrow, so me and Nat decided to go and get a sneak preview of it. I really like the gallery because the interior is very cool. The gallery used to be an old house so the architecture of it is very traditional Kuwaiti. Wish that place was my house.

Svenska

Today I was planning on shooting in Kuwait City since I wasn't able to yesterday. I went and had McDonalds at the Ice Skating ring, figured this way I could have a quick lunch in the city and then quickly shoot in the area between 5:30 and 6PM when the sky would be at its best. My plan failed again because of the humidity. The camera lens kept fogging up and I wasn't able to shoot anything. I was barely able to shoot todays picture of the day which is the vibrant yellow roof of the ice skating ring. Oh and even if the weather was nice, I had also forgotten my tripod at home. Today was just not my day.

Rendered

The weather was very humid tonight so I wasn't able to do a lot of shooting. I was planning on going back down to the city again but decided to stay in Salmiya and shoot here. Opposite Salmiya Palace on the seaside there is this thing, I don't know what its called but its a fountain with this tall tower over it. It's hard to explain so here is a picture of it. Anyway I took this shot off to the side of the fountain. I used a long 15 second exposure while using my tripod. It was around 6PM which I have realized is a good time to take night shots since with a decent amount of exposure time the sky lights up into a nice blue. I think the picture looks like it was rendered in 3D on a computer.

Dream with me

Today I past by the port next to the fish market to take pictures of the fishing boats. The pictures came out fine except that most of the boats were tinted green in the picture due to the artificial lighting in that area. At first when I saw this picture the colors looked weird, but now I think it looks pretty surreal. The green tint of the boats combined with the colors of the sky and water are giving the image a very dreamlike feel. So, I decided this would be my picture of the day instead of the other nicely colored McDonalds sign which is now todays B-Side.

Intestine

I went down to Kuwait City around 5:30PM because I needed to check out something. While I was there I took this shot of some decorative lighting. This shot has some really nice depth of field since I shot with the aperture fully open at 1.8f.

Say "Hi" to Yaris

Tonight there was a Toyota launch event outside Centerpoint opposite Fanar mall. They launched a new car called the Yaris aimed towards young people. To summarize the event, there were lots of people, lots of traffic and the weather was very hot. Oh and I missed the Apple keynote for this!

adidas

Had lunch at Marina Mall today and then decided to walk around the mall a bit even though the stores were still all closed. I was passing by the Adidas store when I noticed how funky the sneaker display looked so I took the shot.

Dunkin

I can't wait for Dunkin Donuts to open. In Lebanon I used to spend a lot of time there and its actually the only place I had donuts at. We used to pass by Dunkin Donuts at night on our way clubbing and then once we were done we would pass by again for breakfast, it would be morning by then. Reminds of the McDonalds breakfast ad where they show a young guy and an older man both having breakfast and the copy went something like "The start of his day, the end of your night". I feel like the older man now.

New S-Class

The new Mercedes S-Class Benz is on display at Marina Mall. When I first saw the car in the press photos online I didn't think to highly of it but now seeing it in person the car looks pretty good, not BMW good but still pretty good. I was able to sneak this shot without the security guards seeing me although I was standing right next to the security desk when I took it. Today is Day 330 of the project.

zMacShop

Tonight I past by the new Apple Store that opened in Hawalli called zMacShop. The Mac store is located in the basement of the Al-Walla complex and it wasn't easy finding the place because it was tucked away in the basement, but once I got to it the sight was unreal. The complex is dirty and packed with a million tiny PC shops that all sell pirated software, cheap hardware and bootleg DVDs. Among this junk lies a beautiful cosy Mac store with its white walls, hardwood floor and trendy black ceiling. I spent over an hour in the shop chatting with the owner and a fellow blogger and they were both extremely friendly and welcoming. We spent most of time talking about how other Apple stores in Kuwait were overpriced and they were telling me about how they didn't want to be like the rest and that if they ever overpriced a product they would feel guilty. They told me they didn't care about making a lot of money and the thing is... they were serious. They really try their best to keep their prices as low as possible and sometimes even sell items at cost price! The whole time we were talking we were sitting on what looked and felt like a Genius Bar at an Apple Store in the States. It was a really comfortable atmosphere and they were telling me about how Mac users come in, sit at the bar and get their Macs updated with the latest software updates. They even have a free wireless connection at the shop which Mac users could freely use. I tried to take a better shot of the place but I only had my fixed 50mm lens with me and as you can see it wasn't wide enough to fit the whole shop in. If you are interested in Mac related products they have the cheapest prices in Kuwait and you can contact them in the evenings on 2617575. For more info you can also check out my previous post about them on 2:48AM. [Link]

The Wizard

I past by Kuwait City tonight for a cruise. Took this picture of the new tower that recently finished. Was expecting the picture to come out good so I didn't shoot another backup picture. Picture turned out pretty crap but I am stuck with it. Oh well...

Nothing to see, Move on

I finished work at 1PM today so I had A LOT of free time to do absolutely nothing. I didn't even go out tonight, I just stayed home installing SNES and Genesis Roms on my PSP and watching movies non stop.

Zero Cars

Look how empty Marina Mall's parking is!

No One

I went to Marina Mall today at 4:45PM to have lunch, no one had told me that this year iftar starts at 5:30. Marina Mall were closed so I went to Sultan Center to kill some time and came back to Marina at 5:30 when they had opened. The coolest thing about Marina Mall at that time is that its deserted except for the Marina Mall employees. It was only me, Nat and this other table with like 3 European kids having lunch. It was very peaceful and I am going to really enjoy my lunches for the next coming month.

SOCOM

Today I got my beta copy of SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo for the PSP. I applied to become a beta tester in August and I got accepted which was pretty cool since I am all the way in Kuwait. BusyNow also got his copy of the game today. He is the only other beta player in Kuwait that I know of, earlier in the evening we both went online and played against some other players from the States and it was amazing. Oh, did I mention that SOCOM is the first and only game so far for the PSP that allows you to play online? I was worried the game would lag and I would get my ass kicked but surprisingly there was no lag at all, as a matter of fact we were 10 guys playing and I was doing fairly well, I was in second place which was unexpected because it was my first time playing the game. Anyway, I need to get back to playing SOCOM now, this game kicks ass.

Pimp My Ride

Around 2 months ago Gizmodo posted pictures of this really cool belt which had an LED display and you could display any message you wanted it on it. Tonight me and Nat were at Villa Moda and I saw the exact same belt. After spending like 15 minutes pleading with Nat to get it she caved in and got it. It didn't come with a manual but I managed to figure out how it works easily. Basically you can have 6 different messaged stored on the belt and each message could consist of 255 characters. The belt can only display 4 characters at a time but it scrolls like a ticker to reveal your words. Its very fucking cool, perfect for clubbing. At the moment her belt spells out Miskan.com but since the thing was scrolling I couldn't grab a decent shot of it. We showed the belt to Rampurple and she laughed and suggested we could maybe setup 3 messages on the thing.. "tipsy" "wasted" and "gone" and just change between them when needed. Lots of possibilities with this belt.

Half a Car

On my way to work today I spotted this car wreck which must have crashed yesterday late at night. The wreck was located at the radar camera across from Shaab Park. It seems the car was speeding and lost control and smashed into the light poll next to the radar camera and the car got split in half. I ran the car's license plate at the Ministry of Interiors website to see if the driver had any unpaid speeding fines and turned out he didn't.