This is one place that reminded me of being in a movie, rarely do you get the chance to shoot these types of weapons let alone shoot at a facility this cool and entertaining. Most gun ranges have a small amount guns for rent and a few in Las Vegas where you can shoot some mean guns, but Machine Guns Vegas is a gun range on another level, lets call tactical entertainment because this isn’t your run of the mill shooting range.

You greeted in the open seated area, and we booked the Full Auto Experience which included the VIP Room and 8 Machine Guns and a few guns thrown into the mix. Honestly there was so many weapons to choose from and half of them I didn’t know but I liked the way they looked and we got a few recommendations from the guy working with us to shoot which guns and which ones are a different experience. There was one weapon which I thought was a bit too much for me, a fully automatic shotgun, that honestly was above my capabilities, so Bu Faisal took it and made some big holes.

The Guns We Shot:

• M60 – Felt Like Rambo
• M249 SAW – Schwarzenegger vs. The Predator
• M4 – Right On Target
• HK MP5 – No Aim What So Ever! lol
• FN SCAR – Loved This Gun
• SPAS 12 – Fully Automatic Shotgun, Scares the Crap Out Of Me!
• KRISS SUPER V – Very Funky Weapon
• 410 Shotgun – Felt like a Cop Movie
• Desert Eagle .50 AE – Almost broke my Wrist

Price Per Person was $575 and we were two people, took us about 1.5 hours to shoot all those bullets and it was well worth it. You have the gun range all to yourself and shoot as much as you can and you can keep adding more weapons and getting more bullets, the fun just doesn’t end. If we didn’t have a 4 hour drive back to Los Angeles we would have kept on shooting, it was honestly the best shooting range I have ever been to. And I love the targets, they were very creative, zombies and bad guys, and sometimes you have to save the cheer leader but you end up putting holes in her too.

Link: MGV

At Abu Dhabi International Airport, sleep comes for about $13/hour! A thoughtful initiative by Abu Dhabi Airports Company (ADAC), Abu International Airport terminals 1 and 3 is now hub to “GoSleep” sleeping pods for passengers to take a quick nap.

Now they really are thinking ahead and the comfort of the passengers, even if its only 10 of them at the moment. In Dubai International Airport they have the SnoozeCube which is a bit more expensive per hour, basically a small room with some amenities, but this pod is really a sleeping pod. I wouldn’t mind using it watch movies comfortably while waiting for my next flight if it was available in a lounge. I don’t think we would be seeing this in Kuwait Airport any time soon, also I don’t think they would have any space to put them. What nice about these pods thats different about a room is that they recline into a full sleeper so you can stretch your legs or you can have them slightly reclined, a relaxed way to spend a few hours, something I’m willing to try out but I haven’t been to Abu Dhabi International Airport yet.

Link: ADAC

Lamborghini is celebrating its 50th anniversary in style, and that includes a gathering of 350 ‘raging bull’ branded cars, which would take the tour starting from Milan up until Bologna, the end-point being the headquarters of Lamborghini! You know what, not all Lamborghinis were welcomed to join its 50th Anniversary Grand Tour. The brand had allowed only the modern and vintage model entry, that too with a valid license plate.

Thanks to the filtering, the fleet of supercars from the brand has been an interesting mix: 350 GTs, 400 GTs, Miuras, Espadas, Jaramas, Urracos, Countaches, LM 002, Diablos and Murcielagos. The five-day long tour from May 7 to May 11 would pass through breathtaking landscapes of Lombardia, Toscana, Lazio, Umbria and Emilia Romagna, stopping over in Forte Dei Marmi, Grosseto, Roma, San Giustino Valdarno and Bologna, where they will arrive on May 10.

So many beautiful machines in this event, out of the 350 beautiful Italian machines participating there are a few that are participating from Kuwait. How much better could it get to have a high speed escort across Italy being led by a Lamborghini Police Car. I spot four cars from Kuwait in the video, three together in the middle of the video and one orange one towards the 3/4’s of the video. So many beautiful colors, and some of the machines are a bit over the top but still fun, loved the sound of the exhausts in the video.

Link: LuxuryLaunches

There were too many good places to try out while in Los Angeles, and sometimes you don’t have all the time needed to check them all out but this is a few of the places that we went to and the food was amazing at all of them, all depends what you are looking for and honestly it was hard not to stuff myself every time we went to these places.

Lunch/Dinner

• BOA – Amazing Steak Place On Sunset Blvd – The Japanese Wagyu beef was amazing
• Lala’s Argentine Grill – On Melrose Place – Pure Argentinian Grilling, Meat At Its Finest, If you love steak you will love this place
• Umami – Amazing Burger Joint – Simple menu, don’t miss the Bub Burger or Truffle Burger
• Il Postaio – Amazing Italian off of Canon Drive in Beverly Hills – Casual, I went and ate there in bike gear
• The Apple Pan – Greasy Burger Place – If you love Burgers you will love this place
• Via Veneto – The best Italian place on Venice Beach, you can’t miss this place it really is amazing, a unique type of Italian, not your usual and we loved it.

Breakfast

• Toast – Amazing menu, lots to choose from and great outside seating, best on Sunday Brunch
• Joan’s On 3rd Cafe – Great selection of sandwiches and great seating indoors, cafe & marketplace

Of course we passed by In&Out because everyone keeps asking if we did, but for me that place is just a bit over hyped and I had one next to my apartment for years so there are other burger places that I prefer, but for a quick burger it does the job.

Over the last two years I have been driving more and more in Dubai, following the speed limit is hard but at least traffic is moving. And because there are an insane amount of cameras I honestly don’t know the speed threshold of the cameras, like in Kuwait you can go to about 20 km over the speed limit and the camera won’t go off, I don’t know how it is in Dubai. I have had one speeding ticket in two years which isn’t too bad, it was for going 100 in a 60, when I thought the speed limit was 80, it was a 600 AED fine which isn’t too bad after all that time.

The taxis in Dubai are something else, they cut you off, lean on you and get aggressive on the roads especially at hotel and mall entrances. Especially just on my last trip these guys were acting like idiots trying to get into an entrance which is barely moving because there was so much traffic. At one point I just started pushing the car through without a second thought, in Kuwait they wouldn’t even come close to pulling something like that but in Dubai they act like crazy drivers and it keeps getting worse. Dubai is supposed to have the most organized taxi service, and I use them a lot but when they drive on the road they are maniacs.

I think there is a lot of inherent dislike towards Microsoft, they have just done too many wrong things over the years and Apple has done an excellent job of painting them as idiots with their Mac vs. PC ads over the past decade. Also it doesn’t help that Microsoft made Microsoft ME which is probably the worst iteration of Microsoft out there, Vista was pretty bad too off the start, but got progressively better.

Microsoft does try and in this case they launched the Microsoft stores, after all this time they know that Apple is successful with their stores and every Apple store employee is supposed to know everything about every product that Apple has and they inherently love Apple. So people love the Apple stores.

Recently I had a chance to spend some time in an Apple store and this one had people in it. I have recently gotten into the Windows Phone 8 and so I decided to venture into the store and mess around with the machines. I played around with the Microsoft Surface Pro and it is a very interesting machine, very solid and smooth, I liked how it felt. they had a selection of hardware from Acer, Asus, HP, and Sony, not including the Windows Phone section and the XBox Section. People get a hands on feel for Windows 8 across different hardware and the Windows Phone 8 platform as well.

Microsoft is really trying to make you feel that you are in one environment, that everything is connected and they are trying to connect things but they aren’t there yet. Apple doesn’t release a feature unless it knows it works 100%, except for Apple maps, that was a blunder that Apple has never seen, but Microsoft would rather release a broke feature then no feature, that is their problem from my aspect.

The store was a fun experience and honestly they have a good range of products, and the staff who are there are good but they are lacking a bit in information, sometimes I know that I knew more about a product then they did which shouldn’t be the case.

This turned out to be a surprising feature on Lufthansa, In-Flight wifi that was useable, something I wasn’t expecting. I just flew back form the the US and on the flight back I was supposed to sleep to try to get my sleep in order, but that didn’t work out as I planned.

When I connected to the wireless I had a few emails to shoot and then I was done, I thought the connection was going to be mediocre at best because of previous in-flight wifi experience. I was wrong, to my surprise the connection was good, I was getting speeds from 3 to 5 MB which made surfing decent, I went through all my emails, and started going through my RSS Feeds on Google Reader. Even youtube streaming was working fine to my surprise, not lightning fast but pretty decent.

Pricing:

• HotSpot Pass Sky 1 hour: €10.95 or 3,500 miles
• HotSpot Pass Sky 24 hours: €19.95 or 7,000 miles

I went with the 24 hour option because that worked out perfectly for use on my flight back to Kuwait as well.

After using it for a while, I was very impressed, surfing was pretty good and some high bandwidth websites were operating fine. But don’t expect downloads to do much, overall I think Lufthansa did a fantastic job with the system they have setup. But from their website I understood coverage only works over the Atlantic, US, Europe and Middle East but not all the other regions yet. Also it isn’t on every plane, some planes have it and some don’t.

Just before traveling I bought a MicroSim Cutter since now all my phones are Micro Sims, got it from one of the phone shops on Khalid bin Waleed Street in the city. Simple process, it was on my to do list so a few hours before my flight I cut my US, UK, and then I decided to cancel my BB service at last and I cut that chip too and switched phones around.

Did that really quickly.. too quickly.

I wanted to put the chip in the phones and it looked a little too small. Turns out the guy sold me the iPhone 5 Nano-Sim cutter! I was pissed, now I have to get new Sims and some of them I can’t get except when I land, thats ridiculous. I’m an idiot for not checking, and that guy must have switched them, and then I blame Apple for changing the Sim Card sizes every time they change a number on their damn iPhone! Very annoyed!

I just renewed my passport last year and I still had a valid US Visa for a few more years but my Schengen ran out, and my UK Visa ran out with my passport. The UK visa was straight forward, I submit the required documents and since I scanned the finger prints five years ago I don’t need to do it again.

I’m traveling and going through Germany so I submitted to get the Visa from the German Embassy with my original bookings at the time. I went to Al Qabas Visa processing in Sanabil Tower or Al Babtain Tower as it used to be remembered. Went through the process, it was smooth, they asked for my insurance, and the preliminary bookings. It was several weeks before my travel date which worked out fine.

I get notified after a week that my Schengen Visa was refused because I didn’t have a confirmed hotel booking and for 10 days I don’t have a hotel booking in Germany. I mentioned that Germany was not my end destination and they didn’t even pay attention to that. I was confused and pissed, there is even a stamp on my passport stating that my passport was reject by the German Embassy, on a new passport so that pissed me off.

I go back to them this time with the bookings stating that Germany is not my final destination, and the visa for the final destination is attached from when I originally submitted and if there were questions why didn’t anyone ask me, my cell phone number is on the form. The person at the counter didn’t type that up so they thought I was going to stay in Germany for 10 days without a hotel booking. Great, back to square one but this time instead of 5 days it took 3 days, and I got it after the weekend.

The surprising part was the Visa, the validity of it starts at the date of travel not when it is issued, usually the validity starts when the Visa is issued. And I only got 4 months when my previous one was three years, something is odd, but I will take it for now since I’m traveling soon. Still it was very odd that they are doing this and its not like I have had multiple Schengens before. so its surprising that they gave me such a short Visa validity. It seems they are getting more Anal or they want people to pay more for the Visas, I’m not sure what changed but its very annoying.

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.