Friday I had a little vibration as I was speeding above 80 kph in the Landcruiser, usually the car is pretty smooth so I wasn’t sure what was going on. Friday night I didn’t enough time to check out the balance and alignment. I’m 100% sure that the alignment is off since I have been a little rough with the car, and any bump or hole is fair game when I’m driving in the Landcruiser.

So I decided to pass by Hunter to check my alignment and wheel balance, since they are the best at it in the market. They took off the tires on the right side and my front tire had this little bump coming out of the side, seems like I hit something a little too hard. He saw my front tires and said I drive aggressively since my front tires had very little tread left and my rear tires still had some life. After about 38’800 Kms I decided to change all four tires, but I thought I would do it at a later stage but to my surprise he had the tires that I love. Recently Michelin/BF Goodrich have brought in the BF Goodrich All-Terrains which are the best all rounds tires I have ever used, thats what I used while in the states. And they have just started bring them in, in different sizes to Kuwait not just for the H2.

My Yokohama Geolanders lasted a very long time, they are good tires overall, more street oriented and for overall use. But they weren’t too goo on wet surfaces or for use in the desert or dirt roads. Now the BF Goodrich All-Terrains are fantastic in the rain, have an aggressive looking tread but is very quiet, its great in the dirt, and fantastic traction. My original tires were 265/65/R17 but I went for the larger BF Goodrich 275/70/R16 which a bit wider and taller, and it fit snugly in the Landcruiser’s wheel well. With the difference in size there isn’t too much of an effect except that when reading the speedometer your probably going a little slower then what is stated, but other then that the car is perfect. I drove about 120 Kms today without it rubbing in any situations and I was a bit aggressive with them today, and I was happy with the extra traction, and I especially love the aggressive look in comparison to the older tires. After the tires were installed I no longer had the vibration issue and all is well, but I still need to an alignment which I will do later. Got each tire for 60 KD for a total of 240 KD, and an alignment with the Hunter computer will cost an extra 20 KD which I will do at a later stage. I love these new tires.

I have had a very busy time over the past couple of weeks and I haven’t had a chance to move my beemer in a while, so I decided to go for a little drive and get the blue devil cleaned up. Being busy with work and spending the weekends by the water I haven’t had much time to move the car, and you should always take a day out of a week or two to drive your car, its not healthy to keep it parked. So after a short drive I decided that my boy needed to cleaned and prepped, so I drove over to Al Falah Car Wash.

It had some dirt spots and some dust since I kept it under a cover for a while. When I first started the engine it sound like music to my ears, and now I remember why I always get a ticket when driving this machine. I always have the urge to drive faster, it pulls you, you push harder, your blood is pumping and it feels damn good. So I thought it would be best to get off the street soon. They started washing the car, soap as usual, then really getting the grime out of the wheels and getting rid of that annoying brake dust.

I enjoy when they dry of the car using high pressure air to get the water out of those annoying spots that spray water as soon as you drive leaving dry water trails. They got the tire and wheel shine after drying the wheels and tires, one guy working the interior with a brush for the A/C and cleaning it out thoroughly. I never get tired of that brand new car look, I love taking care of my car. Al Falah is my favorite one and only spot to bring out that blue shine.

Ramadan is officially upon us, I for one love Ramadan, you get to see a lot of family and a lot of good food. It seems we have a lot of hot Ramadans to look forward to over the next 5 years at least. Whats not surprising is that a lot of people are spending their Ramadans outside of Kuwait since they still have family vacation, a good amount of people are back, you can tell from the traffic but still some people are out of town. I hope everyone enjoys their Ramadan with their family and friends and many more to come.

There is no question that we have issues with our Internet Service in Kuwait, and with a country that is wealthy and hungry for better service we just can’t seem to get good quality in most cases. We are luckier then most countries in the middle east but its still no excuse for bad service, our infrastructure needs a major overhaul and it was supposed to be complete by 2007 but I don’t we are going to see that. Luckily our GSM operators have offered Internet service such as Wataniya, Zain, and Viva, some better then the other in different locations. Then there are the normal ISPs which are doing well in some areas and struggling in others. Click the image below for some detailed info about the regular ISPs.

This country ranks in 85th place. Results were obtained by analyzing test data between Jun 30, 2010 and Jul 29, 2010. Tests from 120,759 unique IPs have been taken in this country and of 985,263 total tests, 9,776 are being used for the current Index.

All the results are taken from Speedtest.com relative to each ISP, and they have to have at least 10’000 Unique ISP tests for each result and people are asked for their opinions. So we are all using speedtest not knowing that the ISPs are getting ranked which is genius. But in this case you can see from the image above that Qnet has the fastest speeds but the worst satisfaction. KEMS has the 3rd speed but one of the highest satisfactions, even though the difference is small its still a difference in this case. I’m surprised Fasttelco isn’t there, but I think its because they don’t use the speedtest.com testing program so it can’t tally up the data. Overall we need faster internet.

Link: NETINDEX

Everyone likes burgers and a lot of people like meats, but not everyone knows where to get good meat. I’m very particular about meat, especially steaks and burgers, the selection in Kuwait is not that good, we have decent meat but not great. Not until I found Prime Cuts, they have premium quality meats of all kinds. A friend recommended them to me so I called them up. Its a Kuwaiti run concept for a high end delicatessen which has been running and building itself up for over three years, they are suppliers of some restaurants and hotels in Kuwait, one of them being Meat Co.

For the first time I speak to people who are knowledgeable about meat, not just the usual butcher but an chef butcher, someone who knows all the kinds of meat and how they should be cooked and used for what dish. I told them I want to make the best brugers, they recommend to me Australian Wagyu Beef, 80% lean, they have the regular Australian Beef but the Wagyu will result in juicier burgers. They even asked what type of flame I will be working with, if its gas grill or wood or coal, they had a recommendation for each one. So I ordered 200 grams patties of Australian Wagyu Beef which is a bit more on the expensive side. They had all kinds of meat, T-Bone and Ribeye being my favorite types of steak, and the burger of course. They usually make 140 gram burgers which are very tasty, but like them thicker so I ask for 200 grams, they mix it with their own set of spices so the patty is just ready for the grill and give you instructions for storage as well. Now they have shipment of high quality American beef coming in soon, that I want to pick up from them as well when its in.

I will be putting another post about the results of the burgers, but lets say that 8 guys finished over 24 burgers in less then 30 minutes. I couldn’t step away from the grill, they were more like hungry hyenas then normal humans. I can’t blame them really, I’m supposed to be on a diet and cutting back but I had two really juicy burgers but thats for another post. I highly recommend that you call them for high quality and premium meat of all kinds.

Link: Prime-Cuts

Recently I have gone on a little online shopping spree getting a variety of items, from electronics to books. I sent some to Aramex and some to MyUS account, and even from MyUS I shipped some items through FedEx and some through DHL. I basically broke down the shipments to see what would get caught and who would get through.

It seems that people aren’t working in Customs currently because its too hot, so they are leaving the containers outside and still fully packed. All my items arrived in Kuwait but nothing was being delivered, I spoke to Aramex, DHL, and FedEX and they all gave me the same reason, currently nobody is looking at the containers and we have to wait for them to clear it. A day later a few items were cleared such as toys, video games, and print work.

Now what got caught was based on these details:

• Anything heavier then 10 KG – (Netgear Server)
• Electronics – (A Shaver)
• Books – (Comic Book Art & Halo Art)

In Kuwait they are unpredictable and lazy, we have become even worse then Saudi. All the shipping people say its a nightmare to ship to Kuwait when even Saudi is getting more organized then us.

I think we would all agree that there is Starbucks in every corner in Kuwait, to say that Kuwait’s market is saturated is an understatement. But I will admit that I do like Starbucks, depending on my mood I like to have either a Mocha Frappachino or Raspberry Frappachino. A lot of people go in and out of Starbucks at different times, I tend to go every blue moon during the day, I never visit during the night. Well it seems that Al Shaya’a are paying very close attention to their sales, sales at night seems to be dropping based on the marketing scheme they currently have. On my last receipt I got stamp stating I will receive a 25% discount from my next purchase after 7:00pm, and I think that is genius on their end. It seems they are paying very close attention to their trends and how things move with them. One thing I still don’t understand is why they don’t allow tips, sometimes I do want to tip them, but there is no tip jar and they don’t accept it as if they are afraid of the tip or who might see.

Woke up 6:30 am Friday morning hungry, I was surprised I even woke up that early. I kept thinking about food and tried to keep myself busy but at the end I decided that I want to eat out, not the healthiest item but I knew I would burn off whatever I ate. I bbmed Kubayashi since he is always up early in the morning, he replied at around 7 am and was ready to go. We had a choice between Early Bird in Jabriya or Cafeteria Shuweikh, I was more keen on Shuweikh but we thought to check out Early Bird. The location of Early Bird had a ton of construction around it and some people seemed to be waiting, and honestly I don’t want to wait 30 mins to get table to have breakfast, so we turned around and headed to Cafeteria Shuweikh.

The place never changes, except for the main sign out front it even has had the same A/C units for the past decade, you never know which one is really working and which is broken down. You have standard orders, and cafeteria shuweikh isn’t for everyone. I had one cheese and one laham bil ajeen, meat on doe, with one 7 up, the meal is pretty much as bad as it gets in regards to calories and healthiness, but its pretty good. Enjoyed sitting there, and the place always has people at any time of day.

I was driving in Shuweikh and I was hoping that Abyat would be open early Friday morning, but that wasn’t the case so I was hoping to see if Platform was open only to find it gone, its no longer there. At the front of the lot is the rebranded bathroom selling store, and in the place of Platform is a store called Home & Garden. I’m assuming that it sells more Garden furniture and Gardening Items then most stores, and it seems that hardware stores such as Platform can’t survive on its own. There are specialized stores which sells tools Shuweikh but I’m not totally aware of their locations, as it seems the local contractors don’t buy from places such as Platform which was their target. Abyat took a different route and opted to provide home and office materials and interiors as well as some tools, concentrating more on the materials then the tools which has led to its success in this aspect. I was hoping that platform would continue but it just didn’t survive in Kuwait, lets see what Home & Garden will have in store for us.

Now this was a surprise that I wasn’t expecting, I went to the Avenues to pick some Pinkberry since its been a long hot day. I completely forgot that they opened up Pottery Barn in the Avenues so I decided to go check it out. I know that in the states its in almost every major mall, and a few other locations as well but I always loved Pottery Barn. Half of my furniture in my apartment in the states was from Pottery Barn and the other half was from Crate and Barrel. As soon as I walked in I got this odd feeling, something I liked but I wasn’t sure what, I got reminded of my old apartment and I missed it a lot, I just love going back to the states as much as possible.

They built the Pottery Barn store in the first half of the Avenues right next to Zara, and it is a pretty good size. Right away there is a large selection of items and you don’t have to follow the arrows on the floor like Ikea to find your way out. Its built on 2.25 Floors, and the layout is very easy to walk around, a lot of nice things to see. The furniture is all spread out, you have normal living room furniture, dining room furniture, outdoor furniture, plates, throws, and a lot of other accessories. What I like about Pottery Barn is the amount of accessories that they have and all the different kinds, I’m not too fond of their couches even though they look really good. Pricing is a bit on the high side, just as it is with The One in Marina Mall, but I’m assuming that the pricing will drop in due time for the major furniture items, and some items are pretty reasonable. I took a walk around the area and saw some interesting items, and lots of people buying items from the store.

*All Pictures were taken with Google Android Nexus One