It has been a long time since we have had rain in Kuwait, and that fun hail storm the other day. There is something that I like about the rain, it feels like the air was cleaner. I do enjoy driving in the rain, so Friday morning I woke up to go riding and found it raining outside, that didn’t really stop us. We still went to breakfast, and I do love driving in the rain. The best part was the empty streets that early in the morning, I was enjoying the drive and the music as I was driving to the Avenues, every once in awhile the tail of my car would slip out on a turn and it is fun to control that. Even breathing that fresh air felt nice outside, and it wasn’t too cold, just cool enough.
I think now it has been a decade since these big sunglasses came into fashion and they have just change form a bit but still remain big. There is something I don’t like about these sunglasses and I think many people would agree with me, these big sunglasses are deceiving. There is something about these sunglasses that I can’t seem to put my finger on, all that I know is that they manage to give a woman a different look.
There have been many a times where a woman has taken her sunglasses off and you get that reaction where you think she should have kept them on. Its not like you are looking into Medusa’s eyes but you get the picture. They are deceiving and I have never liked that they have gotten into fashion on other hand they look really good on women such as Victoria Beckham, some may she isn’t good looking but I think she has a very nice facial features. All that I am saying is that those sunglasses are very deceiving and gives an alluring look to the person wearing it, and I have always protested to this deception.
Sometimes I think I’m going to pop the vein in my forehead when driving in Kuwait. There are drivers who have never been behind the wheel before leaning left or right, and these microbus drivers who act like they didn’t do anything wrong after leaning into your lane completely.
Women driving as if they are the only people on the road and are untouchables. The thing that drives me nuts are people on their mobile phones who are oblivious to the other cars around them. This one women hit a car today because she didn’t hit the brake and wanted to get something out of her bag next to her, I saw this next to me today, and it could have been avoided. The police that switch on their lights for no reason just to get ahead and then drive like normal. I basically want a baseball bat and beat these people senseless, or until I am satisfied.
The Kuwait Architectural Student Association (KASA) is holding its Sixth annual exhibition, entitled “Strata” in Al Corniche Club on the Gulf Road. The exhibition features the work and projects of the students of the department of architecture in Kuwait university, Aiming to display the talents and potential of these soon to be architects.
The opening will be on Monday, March 16th at 7:30 p.m., and the exhibition will be up until the 20th. Opening times of the hall are from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Its rare to see these types of events in Kuwait but I’m looking forward to this one. I was looking at the previous exhibitions and there is alot of amazing work, check out the link for previous work.
Link: KASA
 
Thanks to Mosan for the post, I didn’t know there was a P2BK Video. I have to say the event was successful and is growing, now they need to find a venue which can accommodate a larger amounts of stands/stores and somewhere of similar quality as Rayah Ballroom. The video is pretty cool, I’m surprised I didn’t see it before, and I know some of those people. You do feel really good about them and you do hope for the success of their businesses.
Link: YouTube
Now this turned out to be an interesting event, I knew a lot of people were going to go. But that wasn’t the case, I think all of Kuwait was in that small hall. The event opened up around 5:30 pm, I got there around 6:30 pm and there was barely enough room to walk.
There are three rows with multiple shops in each row, it reminded me of the old Kuwait streets with shops and open stalls. With the room split in half you can choose which side to walk first. I kept stopping at different stalls taking pictures and turns out a lot of people I know had stalls there. It was a great show of the different talent in Kuwait and all the different types of stores. There were clothing stores, catering, sandwich, chocolate, design, furniture design, hobby shop (R/C Cars, Planes, & Boats), Extreme Sports, Technology Design Firms, Cinematography, Exhibition Studios, Fine Arts, Publications, Photography, and the list goes on. Honestly I was surprisingly amazed from all these talented people, and the creative booths. I think even for the second year this expo has outgrown the size of that hall. There were a lot of nice booths with creative designs, and the best part were the amount of charismatic people. I think the make up booths were lost on me, but you could see all the girls piled up there. It got a little crowded later on, so I would recommend people to go as early as possible and it shouldn’t be missed.
I also snapped a funny photo of one of the event organizers who was confused by some wiring problem up above. On another note be aware that there are over 50 photos to this post, so it might take some time to load.
For three weeks I have been putting my 7MB connection through the hoops. Downloading at full capacity, streaming HD content while making simultaneous downloads and uploads.
This is an example of the connection going with multiple downloads working, as you can see it peaks around 900 – 960 Kbps, when the connection was 4MB I was constantly downloading at 400 to 500 Kbps, with 7MB I’m getting a little bit more but not as stable as before. The downloads average range from 700 to 850 Kbps, but still its a lot more then before. Qnet has managed to provide a really good stable connection at this speed, meaning it doesn’t disconnect but it does slow down sometimes. I think they are working out some kinks but these speeds are pretty good for Kuwait. Now to wait for ADSL2 which is coming sometime over the next year or two to increase our bandwidth with our current MOC setup.
Over the past couple of months I have started getting these numbers below for most of the international calls I’m receiving. This is points out to the Voip Gateway that M.O.C is installing and using, meaning they are using Voice over IP for our international calls instead of the traditional methods, which cost a fraction of the price for the Ministry yet they still charge us the those ridiculous pricing per minute, and their billing is usually completely wrong.
- 22263060
- 22256891
- 22260790
- 222xxxxx
Calling into Kuwait from any country is usually a hassle, you get the voice saying “All calls to this country are busy now, please try later”. It happens where ever I am, for some reason they haven’t managed to improve the countries infrastructure over the past 20 years but they have managed to start using Voip and not implement it correctly or smoothly. Our Communications systems need a major overhaul and a real maintenance plan, not just fixing it when its broken. Its funny, MOC gets to use Voip for its personal use but makes it illegal to use in our country, and most of the electronic (Computer/Network oriented) items are always held at customs due to this stupid rule. We have too many idiots working in MOC with little to no working knowledge of Telecom or Network systems.
Recently my card was red flagged for having suspicious use, it seems my card security was compromised in Dubai. Unluckily for me, they locked my account without any notification while I took off to the states. I wasn’t aware of all this. I tried using my check card a few times while I abroad and it kept getting rejected, and calling Kuwait from abroad is a bit difficult. After calling they told me that my card was copied in Dubai somehow and unauthorized amount was taken from the account, yet I wasn’t notified. I could only withdraw after I make a phone call and waiting for them to open the account. I manage to work with that and the accept the situation.
When I came back, I went to the branch which had my new card waiting. When I went they told me it was canceled because it has been there for a month, so I have to wait about 3 days for a new one, but it wasn’t ready except after 10 days. I don’t know where these banks print their credit cards, but can’t they expedite these cards? Nobody has offered a service to print cards faster for banks?
Not having access to your money isn’t the worst of it in my opinion, changing your online login is the worst part. I logged in and I could no longer perform any online service without having to reorder an ePin and wait three days. Seriously the banks in Kuwait could not think of making this a simpler experience.
This always happen every year I make an upgrade, I went to InfoConnect Expo to see Qnet prices and so decided to upgrade to the 7MB connection. I asked them to do a line test on my connection, turns out my limit is 8MB down and 1 MB down, meaning I have to take something below 8 MB, and 6MB would be playing it safe, I thought I would push it a little with the 7MB.
Same thing happened last year, I upgraded from 2MB to 4MB and the line was down, took them a week to sort it out. I do appreciate that they do have decent prices, and their phone support has improved greatly over the past year. I have called with problems before, and the customer service department were very helpful.
Now my connection dropped from 4MB connection to a 786 Kbps connection. They told me its a port problem, something on their side and so hopefully they can sort it out soon. I told them to note that I already changed the phone cable inside the house, and the one from the exchange to the DB of the house, and this is a direct line. I took all precautions to make sure this line gets as little interference as possible, its a fax line which is used for internet so it doesn’t need to go through a PBX.
Now I have to wait for them to sort things out, I just hope to be able to use the 7MB connection very soon, I’m eager to use it. I keep forgetting that my friend has a 16MB connection in his house for $34, such a difference, but still Kuwait is oddly in a better situation then most countries in the Middle East because of the larger choices we have.