With the introduction of Zain’s 4G Router people had options for their homes and remote locations. 4G has drastically changed people’s options, even with the caps it isn’t too bad. But at this point the links have gotten somewhat saturated still it’s faster then land lines, you get between 10 to 20 MB on a constant level when nobody’s online you might get 25 to 30 MBs.

For my case I can only get up to 0.5 MB on my land line so that isn’t an option and fiber has been promised since 2008 and I wouldn’t be holding my breath for that. WIMD has been the best and most consistent option for me, they are company who are genuinely trying to improve their services.

I have had a 20 MB subscription with them since they first opened over a year and a half ago and after about a year it would get as far as 14 MB and wouldn’t come close to 20 MB. That was after February when my subscription was renewed. The service would go down every once in a while but no longer then 30 minutes at most and their support is very responsive. But that happens at most once a week sometimes the whole month is fine.

In June of this year I was contacted by WIMD Sales for my 20 MB Subscription to reduce it to the 15 MB Subscription since they couldn’t retain the 20 MB Speed, and they refunded my the difference right away, even discounting the period from February until June which is very surprising for an ISP. So instead of the 1250 KWD that I paid, they refunded me the difference of 400 KWD down to 850 KWD even though it has been four months since the subscription started. Then on top of that since June onwards my connection which would hit between 16 to 18 MB on downloads consistently without any issues.

They do have some technical issues but they are working through it and the issues aren’t repeated, they are growing their bandwidth because the service speeds in my case has improved. And their service has been constant, unlike what I have seen from Mada who came out strong out of the gate but invested in the wrong technology and failed to improve upon it, ending up with some very crappy services. In my opinion WIMD has excellent service and for some people I know they have had bad experiences because of their location, but in my case honestly it has been fantastic and I hope they keep this up and gain more subscribers because of it.

This was a very pleasant surprise, That Al Salasil has opened WH Smith at Kuwait Airport. It is a lot better then the previous magazine store they had there which was a bit depressing. They had a decent selection of English books, some Arabic and a respectable amount of magazines overall.

I’m looking forward to more books being brought into Kuwait, even though a lot of bookstores have shutdown over the years there is still large amount of people that like buying books. Lets hope that this business venture with WH Smith turns out to be a successful one, I’m happy to see a store like this finally open in the airport.

Subway is usually my choice for a quick sandwich which isn’t too heavy and keeps me somewhat satisfied. Recently I have had a few of the Chicken & Turkey sandwiches which tasted slightly strange, it tasted like fish. Then again it tasted “fishy” again, and I put the sandwich down and didn’t continue it. It was a disappointment in my case, there was no food poisoning or matter like this but the taste really threw me off. I haven’t had Subway in 5 days which is unheard of for me since I usually have a 6-inch sub almost every day at the office but at this stage that will be coming to a stop since I could really smell fish on the chicken.

Over the last couple of years Kuwait has been an area of people unrest because of social issues, so now this year they have diverted people’s attention to foreigners. That they are the cause of many of the issues, and the masses believe anything at this point which is very sad.

Foreigners have been in Kuwait as a country since we declared our independence in 1961 and before that, but now after so long they are trying to make it even more difficult for foreigners to live in this country. There is a large part of foreigners who want to work in Kuwait and make money to send it home, but there are many more who want to live in Kuwait and make it their home. We are making it more intolerable for everyone who is trying to make a living here.

Out of all the foreigners that I work with and that I know many of them have grown up here and only know Kuwait, and they honestly love Kuwait. They have been here since they were kids and can’t picture themselves living anywhere else. People who are investors in this country who have made their wealth in this country who have been here for most of their lives, and now their kids have grown up but at 18 years old they can’t get a license since they are foreigners, even though they have been living here all of their lives.

Foreigners in Kuwait are now feeling that they might not have any future here, that they have to find a place for their children, they will work here until they can’t. Instead of trying to convince them to invest in our country and to keep their money in the country they are sending it out as fast as possible, their lives are getting tougher and the public servants are getting ruder, and I didn’t think that was possible. I hope things get better soon because over the last 9 months things went from bad to worse in the Ministry of Social Affairs and other government entities as well.

There has been a package for GCC Data Roaming since the beginning of the year by Zain. Sometimes it works with the carrier and sometimes it doesn’t, but I would say that it works 70% of the time which is pretty good. 150MB for 7 KD across the GCC which I thought was perfect, honestly you don’t use too much and it doesn’t cost as much as a car if you use too much data, I remember some bills going over a 1000 KWD because of mistakes with billing which are insane. So these packages for data roaming are reasonable if you didn’t purchase a local land line.

To my surprise when I went to London they also had a 7KD package but it was for 100 MB on Vodafone, honestly that wasn’t too bad. I was pleasantly surprised about it. I switched on my data roaming and within minutes it was working on Vodafone’s network in London, truth be told Vodafone’s network isn’t too great but no one really is in London. But it was just enough data to get WhatsApp working as well as a few emails through as needed, it does the job and I’m happy they are making these deals with other telecom companies, at least now Zain is taking advantage of their size and influence and working out deals with other telecom companies to benefit the customer. I’m not sure if that package works for all of Europe or not, but those people traveling during Eid will know when they get there.

I got my hands on the Fasttelco Aloo service a few weeks back now and its turned out to be much better then expected. The Aloo service is an ISDN service based in Kuwait from Fasttelco, you can have a local land line number attached as SIP line to any SIP capable App like Media 5, Bria, or Zoiper. The local lines start with 2220XXXX, these are the regular lines. It works great across 4G & 3G while driving, didn’t disconnect at all.

You get different different choices of lines:

• Normal Line 70 KWD
• Silver Line 120 KWD
• Gold Line 200 KWD
• Platinum Line 500 KWD
• Diamond Line 1000 KWD
• Royal Line 5000 KWD

This is a one time payment for those lines above, then its 60 KWD a year for the service. The yearly service rate is a reasonable rate compared to what you can do with the line. I purchased a Gold Line for a number that is easy to dial and remember. I plugged the line directly into the Android internet calling, it would ask if the call is through the internet or through the phone line, when I choose internet it uses my FT Aloo line which works perfectly. We tried it on two phones but only one could be used.

The best use of this phone is when you travel, it doesn’t matter what line you have on your phone as long as you have data. So when I’m abroad I can divert my Kuwaiti line to the FT Aloo line and it will ring where ever I am as long as I have data in the country that I am in. One point though, even if it doesn’t connect the line will still ring and miss you service from Zain won’t show the line that called you because it was diverted. Still the ability to use this line abroad is fantastic and well worth it.

Fasttelco 1838485

I always like to grill steaks, burgers, hot dogs, and all other kinds of meats, its something that I love doing and especially since a few specialty places opened up in Kuwait. Grilling is an art form, and I know everyone loves ordering their meat well done but thats so wrong, you don’t get the taste of the steak or burger, and sometimes in Kuwait they burn it so it drives me nuts. So I prefer to cook my own when I can, and if I can’t then I go to either OFK or Meat Co because they are the only ones that get it right every time. But if your like me and want to grill at home, then these are your choices for meat supplier, each one has their own taste and some are better then the other but I can’t just can’t get enough of the grill so I will always keep trying to grill whenever I can.

Specialty Places (Ranked Top To Bottom):

• PrimeCuts – Best Steaks Available from Every Cut you can think of, my favorite is the Rib Eye Wagyu 200 Gram, and the burgers are really good, they come in any size, you can have the Wagyu or the normal, but I prefer the normal because its juicier.
• Fuddruckers – They only have burgers and their burgers are very juicy when cooked right, and their bread is out of this world. It’s a matter of prefrence but I prefer PC burger over Fudz.
• RareCuts – I recently saw them and wanted to try them out, their steaks aren’t bad but aren’t as good as PrimeCuts for some reason, I don’t know why even though I tried different steaks, PC was better. The burger I had from them was too salty, and strangely chewy, and I cooked two burger differently but they just didn’t get the right consistency for my taste.

Super Markets

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There is not real taxi monitoring service in Kuwait. Like the RTA in Dubai, every taxi driver fears the RTA, they have a lot of power on each individual taxi or the company as a whole. In Kuwait its only the police and no real monitoring from other authorities. For the past several months Abdelfatah has been taking licenses away from expats and blaming expats for the traffic when in reality it is the government employees who are causing 90% of the traffic. Their solutions never tackle the root of the problem because they don’t want to knock on the road doors, they want to make it seem like they are taking action in the public’s eye.

Now lets tackle the Taxis in Kuwait, most of them run without their meters, and they carry multiple passengers over many stops without a questions. When in reality it should be from point A to point B with the meter running. They make up values and charges as they see fit. There are a lot of Taxis in Kuwait and there is a need for them, but a bit too many from what I have seen.

A majority of the Taxi companies in Kuwait are owned by people working the Ministry of Interior, colleagues of Abdelfatah, that is why they get their way and some of these taxis don’t give a crap the way they drive, they say their boss is a policeman whenever they get into an accident. Most of these Taxi companies have a limit of 30 permits per company, that is the rule that seems to be in place, but in reality they are upwards of 100 taxis, and a few are at 200 taxis. There is a need in Kuwait for proper transportation management, but abuse of this kind seems to be coming from the employees of the Ministry of Interior. If people are complaining about traffic, then this is the beginning of the problem, more Taxis then they are permitted to have, and taxi services are not being supervised or regulated by the right authority to keep the service level up.

I’m all for applying the laws on the books, but you have trouble with that when a large percentage (more then 10%) of the police are illiterate and barely have any knowledge of the law. Then they abuse the power they have against expats because Abdelfatah wants results. But it doesn’t seem like anyone is tackling the Taxis which is one of the main problems at hand.

The first day is always a tough day, waking up early in the morning and heading into work like normal. It was 54 Degrees today, made it hard to hold onto the steering wheel. This is going to be another tough month, but as usual the streets were empty in the morning but lots of traffic at 4pm. Hopefully everyone has a good Ramadan this year, I’m keeping it simple this year. Going to work and going to the gym, that is the goal for this month, I want to be consistent with it.

Recently we needed a few items for the office so we decided to pick it up from Abyat. We were fixing up the waiting room so it need a carpet, a few tables, and some print work they had available.

It’s simple there with everything available to you in all the different sections, we even picked up some lights from there to replace the old ceiling lights we had.

Some items were to be sent out for delivery, and the next day there was a mistake they sent the wrong color carpet but everything else was fine.

So we didn’t sign the delivery note, and the whole order wasn’t that large but the man took it back and they sorted it out the next day with the right items. But throughout that time the Customer Service called us, the Warehouse Manager called, and the person in charge of the section called. They really followed up which is excellent on their end to my surprise, and this was sorted and done without us even bothering to call them, and it was just one item so it wasn’t a hassle to sort it out in our case, but they made a fuss about it and got it done. It’s rare to see service such as this in Kuwait and I was impressed.