A little over a month ago I was driving on the inside of Mishref going to the NBK by the co-op. Its an internal road leading to it, two lane going and two lane coming. As I was driving down on a Saturday morning at around 8:15 am, I just needed to get some cash to pay for a few things and they have a drive through ATM. I was going about 30 kph, not in a hurry to get anywhere since I had only a few things to finish in the morning.

I could see the coop on the left side of the road about 300 meters down, and about 30 meters ahead there is a U-turn coming around. There was a Nissan Patrol on the other side of the road as I was driving, at that point I’m about 10 meters form oncoming u-turn when the car turns into the u-turn, and I thought that the person would stop, but I was completely wrong, the car continued and at this point I was traveling at 30 kph with about 7 meters from the U-turn and I slammed the brakes and made a hard right to avoid the car. I thought I could cut into the second lane but this lady went right through and I hit her car’s front end, I went on the garden of the first house went through the bushes to end up in the drive way of the second house. I was fine, the airbag didn’t come out, I was angry, very angry, I tried opening my door but because my left fender was pushed back I had to kick out my left door to get out.

I took a look at my car and I was devastated, my car was very damaged, but hamdilla I was fine. I called 777 then remembered it was 112 and reported the accident, they said go to a police station, I told them my car is not moveable and we need a police officer urgently. I was very very angry and tried calming myself, what kind of idiot would make a u-turn without stopping with a clear view of an oncoming car within a 7 meters of the u-turn and not even trying avoid me when she looked. The front left side of my Landcruiser was damaged and I hit her right fender and tire. The funner part is that my front bumper was coming off but the paint wasn’t damaged because of the Huperoptik protection on it.

(This is a very long story)
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Kuwait Charity Run and Bayt Abdullah Children’s Hospice Have Teamed Up To Bring To You In 2011 Kuwait 1st-Half Marathon.

Its exciting to see events such as these in Kuwait, and all for a very good cause. The half marathon will be on Saturday March 19th starting at 8am. There are many professional and keen runners that have prepared for the 21km run, this is Kuwait’s 1st half marathon. They also have a 10km run for those who want to participate but have not trained for the 21km. All registration fees will be donated to Bayt Abdullah’s Children Hospice

I have been very happy to see the support that Bayt Abdulla has recieved in Kuwait, and I hope it continues to grow. I for one will be excited to see this marathon, I will donate but not run since I’m horrible shape these days.

Link: KuwaitCharityRun

This is shocking and very sad news that is going around. Wataniya Airways will be announcing its Bankruptcy very soon and shutting down completely and will no longer be operational. I honestly thought they would be able to reorganize themselves and adjust their issues to get the airline back on its feet. I didn’t think that it would reach this point, and I don’t care what others may say Wataniya Airlines had excellent service and I was very happy traveling on their airlines, they made it enjoyable to travel again. Now we are back to the old options of Jazeera Airways, Middle East Airlines, and Emirates Airlines for travel within the region.

If you have purchased tickets from Wataniya Airlines you only have 45 days to get a refund for any tickets. And it will probably insane over the next few weeks if this is the case.

My hat goes off to Wataniya for an amazing advertisement, for 50 years of independence and 20 years of liberation. This ad really gives the feeling of love that we have for our country, and for those who have passed away. There is always a feeling of hope in Kuwait, you can always say we are a creative people and we try hard. I loved the old theater shows we had, they were funny and entertaining, and seeing Sheikh Jaber and Sheikh Saad always brings a warm feeling to my chest. Excellent work putting all this together!

This has been one crazy year with GulfRun 6 and it was a great car show at 360 Mall even with the rain that we got on Saturday. It was a blast and during the rain we went to see a movie so it worked out perfectly, but the great part was people were still checking out the cars in the rain. There are some very crazy machines going to GulfRun 6 this year and the one car that scared the hell out of me was the Corvette ZR1, it is an amazing piece of engineering which literally scares me, I have driven a lot of cars but this one is something else.

This Wednesday was the loading day of GulfRun and this time we met up at Tilal Complex in Shuweikh which didn’t have enough parking for so many cars but it worked out at the end. The amount of cars caused a little havoc but it isn’t too bad for an hour or two before heading out. We left by 6 pm and got to the Agility loading facility in Doha in 20 mins. We were a caravan of about 40+ cars and this was only a partial amount of the cars that were joining us. We got to Doha and loaded up the cars on four trailers in record time, and they were extremely organized, it was fantastic. I can’t wait to get to the track and rip it apart! I’m excited! If people want to visit GulfRun 6 its open to the public just mentioned that you are visiting on the 27th and 28th of January.

Be part of Al Seef Hospital & BMW Motorcycle club – Donate blood

Friday January 14th 2011

From Green Island to Al Seef Hospital

Time: 2:30PM

Blood donation starts at 4:00PM on 15th floor in Al Seef Hospital

I can’t make it this year but I’m hoping for a huge turn out! I already donated blood towards the end of last year for someone in need but there is always a need for blood at the blood bank.

Link: Ansam518

Getting in a queue is a simple process but getting things done in the ministry is a bit of jungle when you don’t know where to go. I had to sign a couple of documents and have them verified, it seems like a simple two step process but I ended up going to about 6 different people. In the begging I took a number and sat on bench until my number came up on the LED Screen only to notice that it wasn’t really changing. When I spoke to the guy he told me that the queuing system wasn’t working correctly so they had to shut it, and the lady at the window would only see you if your number was called, so if your number wasn’t called then you can’t see the any of the staff to have your papers done. So basically they had a nice break for the rest of the day if it wasn’t fixed, one guy started shouting to get his worked done after waiting for 20 mins. I went to one lady since she was a bit older and looked somewhat normal compared to some of the women there, and asked her nicely since I had to go back to work and couldn’t back again this week. She decided to help me since what I needed to have done would only take 15 minutes of her time. And a lot of people were getting worked up, and by the time I left it turns out that somebody just unplugged the counting system so that the numbers won’t keep iterating throughout the day. The usual chaotic visit at any ministry complex.

Link: Flickr

Looking at all the different projects that been completed in the last 5 years you can see construction projects, financial projects, media development, business development projects, telecommunication development. So many different kinds that I don’t know how to list them all. Saudi talks about projects in the billions of dollars while Bahrain completes these important project within a certain budget and does a fantastic job when seeing the end result. Qatar is on an insane boom of every kind, and UAE is still continuing with the projects the planned out and scrapped the ones that didn’t work. In all these countries you can see all the different kinds of projects and the result of their completion, but in the case of Kuwait. In the last 5 years Kuwait has re-tendered and canceled so many projects that I honestly lost count. I can’t remember any major project that has been completed in the last 6 months. Kuwait is stagnant, in place and no change even though we all want to progress forward. They have been talking about Fiber to Home for the past 8 years with no result in Kuwait while Oman is connecting fiber between very distant cities as well as other maritime projects. Below is my ranking of countries based on project completion, the funny is that Kuwait has the highest number of running projects but a very low successful ratio. All the Gulf countries have passed Kuwait in regards to progress and development, and our government has yet to do complete any major project. For how long was the first ring road stuck with no construction of projects then suddenly everything came alive in 6 months ago.

Projects Completed By Ranking:

• Qatar
• UAE
• Saudi Arabia
• Oman
• Bahrain
• Kuwait

Its becoming more and more difficult to open a business in Kuwait and get the right paperwork done. I remember one time taking over a year to get everything sorted with the company and we knew the right people to help out. An individual would get lost in the process between all the government entities and these people would run in your circles, I remember one time getting stuck for a month about the name of the company.

One major problem we have is that they don’t define small business and have a different rules and applications for them. They make it impossible for you to operate and very difficult to move forward. Now if you want hire labor for your company or need qualified staff you can’t hire from outside the country, you can only choose from inside of Kuwait. So you have a very limited pool of talented people that you can work with or you have a high cost to hire qualified people. And I have yet to see the government make a move on those people trading work permits and bringing people and treating them as slaves, what is sad is that a lot of these people are not educated so they don’t know who to complain to or what to do. To hire people from outside of the country you need at least 1 Million KD as the capital of the company or a government contract.

The new labor laws make it nearly impossible for a company to operate and limiting its capabilities. The main problem is that they don’t take a perspective of the businesses and choose a direction which is more efficient, I remember reading a paper of a student talking about the 10 rules which can be efficiently brought down to one rule with no exceptions so people can get their work done. But they love exceptions in Kuwait so that people can be owed favors, its really a vicious circle we are stuck in at this time.

With all that is going on it is really crushing small businesses in Kuwait and making it very difficult for them to prosper. Someone might have a good product or service but at this point there are so many hurdles that make it nearly impossible to operate a profitable business. Lately there are a lot of desert start ups and I’m happy that people are trying, there is always hope, and there are way to get your business off the ground but right now there is no real support from the government or the tools in place to help. I’m just frustrated with all this.

The last month of insane snow and cold in Europe and the US has shutdown airports and turned shipping into a logistical nightmare. I hear people complaining about not getting their items on time or not getting them at all. In my case its a mix of both, everyone from UPS to FedEX and the smaller shipping companies are facing issues in this weather and losing packages in the process. In my case one screen mount has been lost since it was delivered about two weeks ago to Aramex, I gave them the tracking number and hopefully it will reference something inside their system and they find it. Its been an annoying process but Christmas and New Years coming up means that there a lot less employees working meaning that they won’t find what they are looking for right away. I’m just hoping they find it soon as I would really like to mount my computer screens to the wall.

Currently Missing:

• Screen Mount
• Streetfighter Animation Book

I’m just hoping I get my things soon.