This is one of my favorite streets to walk around while in London, it is also one of the most insanely expensive streets in London. The list of expensive boutiques on this street would scare anyone’s savings away. But I just love this street, its so authentic and pure British high end streets, and Europe’s high end luxury jewelry and boutiques. There are a couple of restaurants on the street over which are pretty good, and a couple of good places around the corner to check out. Window shopping at some of these stores would require you to sell your car, but there is always something good to look at. The best part is the walk and taking a look around, then continue to New Bond street which does have some nice stores as well. London is a city that is made for walking, I really do love walking around there.

A lot of people have either friends or family stuck in this strange situation. I never knew that Volcano can do this much damage, I just remembered that helicopters get clogged in it from Dante’s Peak but other then that I never knew the rest of the stories that have been flying around. The reason they grounded all the planes and halted all travel to the European airports is because of the ash in the air, all the way up to 40’000 feet so the planes can’t fly over it or under it, and if they flew through it they may not make it through. Ash is basically made up of grounded rock, glass, and sand which acts like sand paper against the body of a plane and cement when going through the plane engines. The blades on the engine are also sanded down which causes more friction then causes the engine to catch fire which in turn destroys the engine. After a plane fly’s through the ash it comes out looking like a bare metal plane sanded down to its core, that’s if it makes it through the ash. Now with a lot of planes grounded, all types of water and ground transportation has been overloaded. Everyone trying to get across via boat or train to one location or another is insanely full. Even the transportation companies in all the different European countries are charging exuberant prices because they know some people will pay for it in this extreme situation. And all these delays are having an affect on many countries which aren’t directly affected by the ash.

Kuwait’s businesses and people have been affected by this delay but people don’t realize to what extent. I kept asking about these delays and it really added up very quickly as to the extent of the effect.

Delays:

• Delays from delivery companies such as DHL, UPS, FedEx, Aramex, UShopWeShip, SkyNet, and TNT. You can’t get any of the packages in your mailbox and if you need send something via courier it isn’t going anywhere for this moment in time.
• A large amount of meats, fruits, and vegetables aren’t being flown in, we ate at Meat Co and there were some steaks which weren’t on offer because they weren’t delivered.
• Many flowers aren’t offered at flower shops because flights can’t take off from Holland

I really think they should rename the Volcano, I think it needs more vowels to make an audible sound.

Link: BigPicture

I have a package from MyUS shipped through DHL which came in with 4 Hard Drives, a motherboard, some ram, and 4 Blu Rays. All the Blu Rays are animated movies, Green Lantern, Dante’s Inferno, Halo Legends, and Justice League Crisis On Two Earths. I have come to the conclusion that you can only buy cartoons on Blu-Ray or DVD into Kuwait so they won’t stop it. Bt I was wrong, it has been two days since they said they would get clearance and I told them its only a cartoon why would you stop it. They really drive me nuts, and they wonder why there is so much torrent downloads in Kuwait, people are honestly willing to purchase but if you make it this much of a headache then they won’t buy online. Put a 5% tax that has to be paid and that is it, no inspection nothing, Customs is supposed to make money for the country rather then waste time inspecting toys and other items. It will probably be clear in a day or two but this is seriously very annoying, and I just bought these because I like these animated movies so much that I decided to buy them. They don’t care about the other items, I have had more electronics shipped in in one box before without it being stopped at all but for movies they stop it.

I have tried a lot of shipping companies and very few have been as consistent as MyUS with all my products and taking care of the shipments. The best part of MyUS is consolidating all your items into one big heavy box and so the shipment comes out to be cheaper then expected. What I really like about them is that they pay attention to the details, they send you an email with all the items that they recieved and when they consolidate the items they either keep the invoices together in the box and list the accumulated value which makes it easier for customs. They ship through three options, UPS, FedEx and DHL, and usually Fed Ex has the cheaper charges and they are very consistent in their shipments always 3 to 4 days from the moment it hits their mailbox. For small items that I don’t care how long they take I send it over to Aramex since it cheaper but it takes an average of a week to ten days, another decent service is UShopWeShip from what I heard, but the nightmare I just heard about is DHL since they changed their pricing structure without notification from Mark’s post. Overall MyUS has been consistent and they are very accomodating, and I’m going to stick to them even though they are a bit more expensive in the small items, but what I do is try to order a few items together for a heavier weight one shot and then shipping them, it has worked out to be cheaper then Aramex. Whenever I ordered a model or a large computer part Aramex would charge me an arm and a leg but with MyUS its within reason.

Link: MyUS

Since opening in Kuwait I have been to Office Depot a few times, its not 10% of the size of the Office Depots I have seen in the states but its a good change to have inside the Mall. Its come to the point where Avenues is majority clothing or food and not much else, but Office Depot is a refreshing change and I wanted to pass by to pick up some post its and paper since I was heading to the Avenues in the first place.

Its good they have a nice selection of printers, with Brothers being the one with the most features and more reasonable pricing. I like how they have a huge selection of paper and the different kinds of packaging and folders that you can have, I picked up an expandable plastic folder to use to organize my bills and other paper work. I can’t resist looking at USBs and external hard drives and they had a nice selection. Another part of the store that I really like is the pen and pencil section, I’m very particular about pens and pencils, I like to have ones which have a certain amount of ink when used on paper and how it feels. Then there was the calculator section which reminded me of my old scientific calculator and having to store formulas in the memory and all. Overall there should be a few different stores within the mall and its desperately needing a change, maybe a big book store would really help.

FREE CITY official launch on Tuesday the 18th of August, 5-10 PM, Exclusively at Pink Moon, Across from Seif Palace.

Pink Moon Boutique is one of those boutique stores in Al Seef Mall Strip in Kuwait City by the sea side, its a entrepreneurial Kuwaiti business which has been around for a little while now and I’m always up to supporting these ambitious people and I do like their store. Most of the time its for the female patrons but they have brought a new clothing line an LA based Loungewear line which is unisex, some very cool and comfortable sweats and hoodies, sizes available from S-XXL.

Link: PinkMoonBoutique