Took a few vacation days to catch up with some rest and headed to family in London. I still have a lot of work to do but luckily they can all be managed by emails so my presence isn’t required. It took a while to find a seat on the British Airways flight and it was packed full of people, I passed out almost the whole flight since I didn’t sleep the night before finishing as much work as possible. As soon as I landed I scrambled to immigrations since I knew it was going to be a long line and luckily I beat a few people to immigrations and by the time I went to baggage claim my bags were out, I haven’t seen Fast Track operational at anytime so we always get stuck in a long line. I changed into a thick sweater, scarf and a beanie before landing but the cold slapped me right in the face as soon as I exited terminal 5, it was a cold crispy feeling and I knew it will be fun. I’m looking forward to walking around and going to a few movies, I know I’m going to go pick up some bike gear while I’m here.

The last few weeks have been insane! I just can’t believe how meetings I have been to and how long some of them take, and I had to fly to Dubai out of the blue for an urgent meeting, I took the night flight instead of the 7 am flight, it would cut too close to my meeting and any delays would have been a huge problem. I really didn’t feel like taking off since I had too much on my plate already, I wished I could have cloned myself to manage everything that I had to do. Sleeping isn’t an option these days and writing reports, visiting family and getting some personal work done, all before a Eid trip. I honestly felt like I have been running for the past few weeks with very little breathing room but I love when I get work done, and I know I keep saying this but there isn’t enough time in the day. And this weather is just amazing, I hope it continues to be this good until at least April but thats probably hoping for too much.

At one point in Dubai Airport I fell asleep at the Gate and the Wataniya Airways staff woke me up to board the plane back to Kuwait. I was one of the first people there but the last to board. I was so exhausted by the end of the day that I passed out. It was a choice between being hungry and being sleepy, I couldn’t even wait for food, I passed out before take off and I leaned my chair back not caring that we haven’t even moved from the gate yet. I’m hoping to catch up with some rest in the next few days!

One recommendation, if you have lots of work in Dubai and want to check out late I recommend that you stay at The Address Club Rooms or Suites. They have an excellent policy of your check out time being the same as your check in time. So I came in at night around 11 pm then my check out is 11 pm the next day. So I had meetings from 9 am until about 3:30 pm, I went back to my room and napped for about 30 minutes before taking my time to check out which is fantastic. The normal room is 114 KD but the Club Room was 154 KD, but I would have paid for half a day which would cost an extra 70 KD because they charge half the normal rack rate, so overall its much better to get the Club Room if you need to check out late. I for one don’t like packing up and leaving early from the hotel and going to meetings and dragging my carry on with me, even if I’m going to walk around the mall.

You never know where the time goes, there should be a more hours in the day to do things. I think I got a combined 8 hours of sleep in the last four days and haven’t sat still for the past three days. I have been up at 6 am every day and passing out by 1 or 2 am in the morning. This has been a fun and productive weekend and I got a lot of work done and got to see family which was great, I wanted to spend some time doing nothing but that didn’t seem to be on the menu. Friday morning I had a ridiculous amount of fun riding the Ducati hard in the early hours of the morning and their were more then 250+ motorcycles on the road and a majority of them were at Arjan complex in Bida’a in the morning. After that I had a ton of work to do, and I still managed to meet up with family, had to deal with some unexpected events but it was a good weekend. Still I do wish I had some time to chill in front of the computer and do almost nothing but read up, every time I finish some articles on GoogleReader they pile back up again since I miss a few days of online surfing. I think one of the factors keeping me away from indoor activities is the AMAZING weather we have been having, I think it is the best weather I have seen in a long time, it wasn’t like this last year, and I want to take advantage of it, I keep driving with my windows open, I even sat outside with my laptop and a nice cold glass of lemonade. I’m loving this weather, just wish there was more time in the day to enjoy it!

Link: Flickr

Every once in a long while do I have a day that I do nothing but watch TV shows and this Friday was one of them. From 1 pm until 11 pm, all we did was watch shows, we literally didn’t move from our spots except for food. It was the laziest day that I have had in a long time and it was perfect, and lots of good shows to watch. Everything was new except for Smallville, that is the one show we were catching up on. A great combination of action, comedy, and adventure for the day and they were all great shows and I’m looking forward to more episodes.

• 2 Episodes of Fringe
• 6 Episodes of Smallville Season 9
• 3 Episodes of Hawai Five-0
• 2 Episodes of The Defenders
• 5 Episodes of Outsourced

When I took a vacation I thought I would get things back in order, get some gaming in and watching some anime. I barely keep up with the shows as well as movies, I’m traveling a lot for work staying late. At the end of the day I’m even too tired to go riding. There are days I just want to stay playing video games all day, when I was int he states I played a lot of Halo Reach and since I came back I haven’t had a chance even though I really want to play the game, it requires dedication and time to play Halo and I don’t want to just play 20 minutes and stop, I usually end up playing for hours. Then there is all the anime that I am missing and I’m going to try catching up with all that I have missed but I don’t know when that is going to happen.

What I Would Do With A Lot Of Free Time:

• Ride As Much As Humanely Possible!
• Watch all the anime and tv shows that I’m missing
• Play all the unplayed XBox 360 & PS3 Games!
• Go the gym
• Clean up my room
• Catch up on the pile of books
• Reorganize My Network
• Reorganize all the Cables, Wires and Hardware
• Reorganize all the folders stored on my Network, I’m getting lost as to where I stored what item

I have gotten used to iTunes for all my iPad needs and music downloads, luckily I do have a US Credit Card that I use with the account. But every once in a while the account acts up and says that my Credit Card is denied, when I call the Credit Card company they tell me nothing is going on, and everything is fine. I try again and still the same issue, I tried different cards and the same problem. Then I leave it for 24 hours and try it again, and everything works like normal. Its very strange.

There was a little news a little while ago that some accounts which have iTunes and paypal attached got fraudlent charges of ridiculous ammounts. One guy got charges up to $800’000 which is insane, but he managed to sort it out between paypal, iTunes, and his bank so he didn’t get completely screwed but it is scary. When this strange account thing started happening a few months back I changed all my passwords on all the accounts that I’m using with iTunes just incase, because I was a little freaked out. Then it just happened again so I emailed Apple about the issue with my account.

There reply was good and reaction type was great, within a few hours they told that they had some minor glitches in the system and reset my account so everything is fine. Also because of the incovenience they gave me credit for 6 free single songs which is fantastic. I would have been happy with them just fixing my account but they went above and beyond that.

Taking some time off the internet has left my Google Reader pile up to a readiculous number. I think at this point it has easily gone northwards of 7000 articles to catch up with. Some article I skim through and some I actually read, and I really don’t like hitting the “Mark as Read” button so I end up taking the time to go through them or at least scroll through them. At this rate I think it will take me two to three weeks to catch up with all the articles and its a hell of a lot. I really wish Google Reader had a more descriptive tag then “1000+” so that I know I really am making a dent in some of these feeds, for some sense of online accomplishment. I’m just going to have to keep pushing through until I get under 1000.

Its been a little while since I have been online or at my computer to make any posts. I took a very nice vacation in California for the last 21 days, and during that time I barely sat at a desk or had a laptop to work on any posts. I tried to have as much fun as possible and go out as much as I could, I tried seeing as many movies as I could as well. Just got back from a 16 hour and 35 minute flight from San Francisco to Dubai, not including the short trip from Dubai to Kuwait which feels like a short trip to the supermarket in comparison. I will be back to posting normally, I have a lot to post about, thank you for everyone that emailed and asked if I just disappeared off the face of the planet but I think I was having too much fun for my own good. Still it wasn’t enough, it has been the first long vacation I have taken in almost two years and it has been much needed. I literally purged my brain of all work and any other responsibility as soon as I walked through immigrations & customs at San Francisco when I landed in the beginning of September. I didn’t even read anything from GoogleReader, and I’m looking at it right now and its the most I have ever seen, I wish the GoogleReader went above the “1000+” mark so I can know that I am denting it since its probably around 5000 to 6000, and I will go through them when I have a chance. Having the iPad 3G with AT&T service in the US basically made the laptop useless, I almost never was on a computer during my stay since the iPad 3G provided for all my internet needs, searches, email, and any type of connectivity, I basically lived off the iPad and I would recommend anyone traveling to the US to get the 3G version with them since their is 3G coverage in most major cities and locations.

Going off on a long trip you always wonder what you have forgotten, I don’t think I have forgotten anything yet. Packed up all my cloths and my carry on for a long trip, headed to the airport with plenty of time. My flight take off time was at 6:05 pm so its before futoor and I have been up since 8 am and hungry as hell. After check-in I wondered why I don’t get a starbucks since I’m hungry but then I remembered I’m fasting. Got to the lounge and I was one of the few non-foreigner sitting in the lounge, I’m assuming most people prefer to travel after sunset. The plane was a little delayed but not too bad, as soon as I got to the gate they took my ticket and slashed the seat number from 9J to 2J, I wasn’t sure why but I didn’t bother. When I got to the plane I found out that they upgraded me from Business to First Class which is great, that hasn’t happened to me in years and I was surprised. When I asked why they said its because of my Skyward Card, I was happy and got comfortable. I was just waiting for the prayer time to break my fast, and as soon as it did I asked for a date and water, then prayed in my seat. As soon as the plane took off the steward brought my food right away since he saw I was hungry as hell, I ate like a starved man, and the food hit the spot before settling down to watch a movie.

When you break your fast on an airplane the last thing you want is airplane food so I decided to just have a date and a glass of water and wait until I landed. This is what I call the Tricolore, three types of rice and chickens to match. I was looking forward to laying back after eating that dish and watching some tv. I know some of you might be wondering about my diet, it is still going on and I am maintaining a weight around 92 KGs. The next step is going to be consistently exercising but that is going to be a plane for a later stage. But that really hit the spot.