There was one point in time where I was between jobs, so I had some time off and I took full advantage of it. I remember those days, I was getting a lot of work and errands done and meeting with a lot of people for potential work and yet having a lot of time to myself. I even remember riding during the week which was a lot of fun. That was a good time, but now it seems like a distant dream.

On The Back Burner

• Major Gaming – Halo 4 & StarCraft 2
• Playing the Games that are in still in their wrappers
• Watching Anime
• Cleaning Up My Office
• Catching Up With Movies
• Getting Some Computer Automation Done (Syncronization Details)
• Take A Cooking Class

Personal time is a luxury that I don’t really have, even sleep these past few weeks hasn’t been at the top of the list so there are days where I just crash, I just shutdown, even an earthquake couldn’t wake me up (I have slept through an Earthquake while traveling recently). I have been thinking about taking time off work for about a week and then telling everyone I am out of town and then just get things done at home while enjoying every moment of free time, but that probably won’t be happening. I would like nothing better then to abuse the internet I have at home, on this vacation I wouldn’t want to leave the house if possible except for Riding and food.

During this little adventure of ours we had a vast experience across the UAE and crossing multiple times in Oman. It was an adventure of discovery and it was well worth it, going from city to city to get to the best riding roads I have ever been to. I have been riding in the best places in the US and honestly they do not hold a candle to the amazing locations in Oman & UAE. Aside from the roads and how clean everything was, every time we can to a security check point or interacted with them, the moment they found out we were Kuwaiti the tone totally changed and they were more then nice to us. And on the roads people would move aside 90% of the time and give us way, I mean every kind of person, we ran into a few idiots on the road but they were only 10% and were few and far apart compared to Kuwait who are 90% idiotic and rude on the road. I always knew Emaratis were nice people, and Omani’s were very respectful and kind as well but what happened to us was different then the normal situation

Omani Incident

During our ride I had a GoPro Camera mounted to my helmet, and as soon as we reached the Omani boarder heading to Khasab I switched it off but it was still mounted. When we got to the passport control, the officer asked about the camera and if it was recording, I told him it was mounted and switched off. I told him he could check if he would like but he said my word is more then enough for him. I know that it would have been a different situation if we were at the Saudi border. So after we crossed I switched on the camera and we went on our intense ride on the road by the sea on our way to Khasab which was breath taking. I saw an old sign that said military check point, but we didn’t think twice about since it looked old and we kept on pushing hard through the corners until around the next hill it turned out to be a full on military checkpoint with a small platoon of men. We slowed down quickly since we were coming in fast and they jumped on the road. Their captain came out quickly pointing at my helmet as I was slowing down, and they were talking to us sternly asking for IDs. Of course keep in mind that with our helmets on they have no idea who we are or where we are from. I had my passport with me and I was so thankful that I had that lovely blue passport with me. The moment they saw the color they said “Oh Kuwaitiyeen” and they relaxed right away, I was taking off my helmet and the captain came to me apologetically asking if my camera was recording I said yes since we were recording the ride. He said he is sorry but he didn’t want the check point showing up on the video and I said it wouldn’t be a problem, he asked if it would erase the whole thing I said yes and he apologized it didn’t take me 2 minutes to do that and I knew were gonna have a chance to hit those curves again. He argued with us to have coffee with him and food because of this, we spent 2 minutes on the security part and 10 minutes thanking him and excusing ourselves from stopping to keep on riding. They were more then nice to us and after that whenever a military vehicle saw us coming they would pull over to the side and let us pass. It was amazing, and when we rode back past them they stopped the cars and waved us through. Just because they knew we were Kuwaitis, what could anyone say, they went over and above being nice to us the moment they knew we were Kuwaitiyeen, I wish people were that nice in Kuwait.

Emarti Incident

Every time we went to somewhere new we would ask where is the best place to go to get some coffee and we usually get pointed to a nice mall, and a majority of them are nice. This was the fourth day on our trip and we were in Fujeirah, we went to a mall about 5 mins away called City Centre, very simple and pretty much all Al-Shaya’a brands so we stopped in Starbucks for a few cold drinks, and some of the guys wanted coffee. We were probably the only guys in jeans who were from the GCC, we sat there for a little while. Then one Emarati guy walked right up to us asking us how are we and if we were from Kuwait, at first I thought he knew one of the guys because of us very nice approach. We told him yes and from that point forward he told us we have to have dinner with him at his house, we thanked him and said we were still riding and he then said then coffee, you can’t just come to Fujeirah and not have coffee at my house. Honestly I was beyond surprise, what can you say to someone so nice, it was just something else. After we excused ourselves he gave us his phone number and said you aren’t familiar with the area and if anything happens and you need anything be sure to call me right away. What can you say to that, just extremely nice, I just couldn’t wipe the smile from my face. You can’t blame me for loving these people, not all Emaratis are like this but a lot of them are very kind.

It is just that simple! Don’t Touch My Bike!

People in the region do not have a concept of Bikes, they think Motorcycles are like Bicycles, and they just want to get on them for cool pictures or act like they are riding. But it is a very different relationship that the owner has with his bike, touching a man’s bike is just as bad as touching his woman, he will do something about it, and probably with a violent result.

90% of Bikers are very friendly if you ask them to take a picture with a bike, they will take the picture for you. And if you have your kid they will probably put your kid on the bike for you to take the picture. It is two things, the bike’s can be damaged from soneone who doesn’t know what they are doing, and the bike might fall on a child if its pulled the wrong way.

What drives me nuts are the moms who just send their kids to the bikes like they are play things for them and let them climb it. I have had my fair share of altercations with them and they act like nothing is wrong. Your letting a 4 year old grab on to a mchine 10 times his weight and 4 times his height, something will go wrong. One time a child grabbed my bike and burnt his hand because he put it on the exhaust pipe, he is a child he doesn’t know any better but I would expect the mother too.

Then there are people from South East Asia (India & China from my Experience) who have zero concept of personal property. They see the bikes and they just want to get on it and take a picture, I have had my fair share of shouting from afar to get people from throwing their legs on the bike.

There is a special bond between a rider and his machine, that is why they take it very personally, they love and adore their machines, so if you violate his machine expect some to violate you.

This is the first time that I have drank that much coffee in one day let a lone the whole year. I barely drink any coffee at all, not a fan of it, its bitter, and I know a lot of people love it, but I don’t need it the morning but yesterday I need it to keep me going and alive for the day.

I couldn’t get any sleep on Saturday night, even trying to force myself to sleep at 4 am just for a few hours, but I was wide awake, by 6 am I got up showered and headed out. I thought I would finish as much work as possible then go back and crash but then I remember I had a few meetings in the afternoon as well as huge to-do list then dinner with some family, so sleeping went out the door.

So at around 10 am started feeling tired, a coworker ordered some kind of Latte for me which was ok but I didn’t feel a kick. I called for the tea boy and asked him to make a whole dellah (pot) of Arabic coffee and just leave it on my desk. I went through about 14 cups of that thing and I was officially wired, I was at full throttle and getting a million things done and I just kept on going until the evening. Then dinner with friends and family and I still seemed ok, as long as I didn’t sit still or wasn’t doing anything I kept on going but I knew after 6 pm I was running on fumes. Dinner was done around 11pm so went I upstairs I completely passed out which was perfect, total and utter black out, but woke up at 5:30 am which surprised me since I thought I would sleep a lot longer then that.

I made good progress from April until August, with moderate weight-loss while still enjoying what I eat in a moderate way. But when I was going on vacation, that went out the window, and I did have a lot of physical activites, but I left no item on the menu that I would have regret not ordering. I went to town and I ate what I wanted, didn’t think twice about the weight gain because I knew what I was getting myself into.

In three weeks I put on 11 KGs, and I will say it was worth every kilo, I got to have all the different kinds of Burgers I wanted from Downtown Dirty to Gourmet meat. I had every type of Chinese food to the point that the Mama behind counter thought I was her best customer. I tried anything and everything, and I ate popcorn every time I was at the theater, I was like a kid in candy land and I enjoyed every moment of it. I knew that when I get back home I’m going to have to eat extremely healthy and get back on the healthy path and probably regret it later, but at the moment I was a very happy man.

My simple plan now is to eat extremely healthy while I get back to the gym and probably go there more often, biking season is here and I did get a lot of new biking gear so I plan on wearing it, so I need to lose a few kilos to fit into them. I’m happy I did what I did, I just know that now I have to work pretty hard to get back on my path, starting at 109 KGs and heading down.

Going on a break every once in a while is always important to do. I was pretty much offline in a lot of forms, stopped my Blackberry for about a month, barely checked twitter every 4 to 5 days. Didn’t post for about two weeks which was driving me nuts since I had a lot to say. The only real place I was putting a few things up was on Instagram and I wasn’t on that 100%.

When on vacation I wanted to enjoy my vacation, and thankfully I managed to go to a lot of events that were very fun and I got a lot of Riding in during this vacation. One speeding ticket in California over a 30 day period is impressive for me, and it wasn’t too bad.

I tried watching as many movies as possible, some were fantastic and some were disappointing but it was a lot of fun. Now I’m back and playing catch up, and my Google Reader is going to blow! lol

For a lot of people things slow towards the end of Ramadan and the first week after, but in my case it has been insane. I haven’t even had much online time the last two weeks, I’ve been busy getting a ton of work done plus family obligations the last few weeks have been a top priority.

I even had a ridiculous 16 hour trip to Dubai and back for work, and I didn’t even have a chance to watch a movie. The crazy thing is that since Wednesday 7am until about Friday 11 pm I couldn’t sleep, I thought I just my sleeping patterns during Eid but it seems something was off. Those few days were insane, I was on weird power surges, I would get insane energy and a few times I would just take a 20 minute nap and then wake up and keep going. The most frustrating thing was that I was in bed and staring at the wall, I even kept the laptop away so I could try to fall asleep but nothing. I even ate so much Thursday and thought the food coma would put me to sleep and it almost did but I passed the window of opportunity and just didn’t sleep Even Friday night when I did go to sleep I woke up at 5 am and since then my sleep has been somewhat adjust back to early mornings, I didn’t even make up for the lost days of sleep.

The good thing during that time I managed to catch up with a lot of shows, but I still have so many to watch. I think I would like about 2 months of to catch up with everything then go back to normal life. I have managed to

One major thing that has taken me a lot of time is some major home reorganization and clean up. It has taken me days, and it is basically cleaning out almost 20 years with of stuff. Plus I found the old StarTV Satellite receiver from 1991 and a betamax and VCR player in our old storage in the basement. It was taking a lot of time to go through all those items, I even found some old parts from my 1997 Chevy Suburban.

With all things going on, I feel like I’m not getting anything done, but I’m slowly finishing a few of these major tasks at a time. Plus I’m doing a major overhaul of my Storage Unit and Media Player System, so I have that going on as well. Multitasking is the name of the game, and I need to make a few clones of myself to get everything I want done and some sleep.

(The picture is from Yelp Offices, and I love the Mach 5 on the table.)

I think this week is sort of slow motion for people, I think very few people even have gone to work, the roads are empty. The only place that was insanely full was the bank today, so many women taking out Eideyas. The last three weeks have been a whirlwind of work and family obligations, and going to diwaniyas. What made it even more hectic was that we had so little time after evening prayer, there were only a few hours to go to so many diwaniyas so it was sort of like sprinting from one to the other. But I’m cherishing this last week, it has been the only week that I have had the evenings to myself and during that time I’m catching up with a lot of things.

The one thing I am very proud of is that I stuck to the gym work outs during Ramadan, I went every Saturday and Tuesday during Ramadan and I went a few other days to make up for lost days. The one thing I didn’t stick to at all was a healthy diet, I ate what I wanted at futoor and at night, I was hungry and I wanted to satisfy that hunger, and the healthy food wouldn’t have done it for me. Surprisingly during that whole time I didn’t gain any weight, I just checked as of yesterday and I’m at a 102.3 KG which is 0.7 KG less then when I started Ramadan so not bad. My goal was to be below 100 KG by July but I didn’t stick to healthy food, but I will get there soon enough.

Even though this Ramadan was extremely tiring I still love it.

It is here at last, probably one of the hottest Ramadans we are going to spend in Kuwait, but still there is something that I love about Ramadan. To everyone مبارك عليكم الشهر & Ramadan Kareem, this is going to be an interesting one, even though last year was from August until September, I’m sure what people have planned, it seems a lot of people are spending their Ramadan outside of Kuwait because of the heat. I for one don’t have an issue with anything except the thirst that we will face from this heat. I’m not hungry yet, but food is on my mind and luckily during ramadan there is a lot of food to choose from during futoor.

The Dewaneya Media PC has been running for a good 6 years, and I think the age is showing. Since I have made some major changes to the dewaneya I was going for a bit of a hardware upgrade, starting off with the media PC.

New Specifications

• Intel® Desktop Board DH67CF – Mini-ITX – Media Motherboard
• Core i5 2300 – 2.8 GHz
• 8 GB Ram (2x4GB)
• Corsair 90 GB SSD – Sata 3 (For The OS)
• Pioneer BluRay RW

Total 187 KD From Professional Computer

What I Already Have

• Thermaltake Case
• Power Supply
• 2TB HD – Sata 3 (For The Media)

I almost store nothing on my PC’s these days, everything is stored on a network storage device which in this case is the Netgear 24TB Storage Unit. This little Unit is gonna pack a punch with the upgraded hardware and will be able to handle everything that I throw at it. Gonna install Windows 7 on it and from there I’m going to configure XBMC for my network, gonna take some tweaking and getting used to but I’m sure it will work perfectly. Other hardware upgrades are taking place in the dewaneya but that will be forthcoming in another post.