Happy 2008

What is wrong with this video?

Bollywood Coming to Kuwait

According to the press release:

Kuwait, Dec 27: A group of Indians here are in search of talented and enthusiastic people for various positions for a mega Bollywood movie to be shot in Kuwait.

The movie unit is in search of actor, dancer, singer, cinematographer, composer, writer, music director, sound engineer, lighting technician, make-up artist, hair-dresser and extras.

The movie will be produced in Kuwait with prodessional Bollywood crew.

Those interested may contact 7585764 or logon to: www.TalentSearchQ8.com for further details.

Press release link.
You can apply for the movie here.

I hope the movie turns out to be as cool as this one:

Chargepod - From Mess to Bliss

This is my mess:





This is what I need:





You can buy it here.

Bangladesh Group

Bangladesh group performing at a local winter camp in Kuwait.

Seven Popular Myths Debunked - and a few of my own

The following medical myths where proven untrue by scientists:

* People should drink at least eight glasses of water a day
* We use only 10% of our brains
* Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death
* Shaving hair causes it to grow back faster, darker, or coarser
*Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight
* Eating turkey makes people especially drowsy
* Mobile phones create considerable electromagnetic interference in hospitals.

Full article here.

A few of my own follow:

Mobile phones are not dangerous in airplanes, I had my mobile phone turned on in my carry on luggage and nothing happened to the airplane.

Eating Vegetables make you lose weight, if this is true, why are cows so fat?

Playing video games is a waste of time. Actually, I played a lot of video games and I got great hand eye coordination and an appreciation of the technology involved, therefore my time was not wasted.

Google Talk is Speaking In Tongues.

Google Talk, google's chat client and messenger is speaking different languages. Google has introduced new chat bots that are added as your chat friends. Whatever you type to these chat friends gets translated to the language choosen. Among the choices are:

ar2en, en2ar (Arabic<->English)
bg2en (Bulgarian->English)
de2en, en2de (German<->English)
de2fr, fr2de (German<->French)
el2en, en2el (Greek<->English)
es2en, en2es (Spanish<->English)
fi2en (Finnish->English)
fr2en, en2fr (French<->English)
hi2en (Hindi->English)
hr2en (Croatian->English)
it2en, en2it (Italian<->English)
ja2en, en2ja (Japanese<->English)
ko2en, en2ko (Korean<->English)
nl2en, en2nl (Dutch<->English)
ru2en, en2ru (Russian<->English)
uk2en (Ukrainian->English)
ur2en (Urdu->English)
zh2en, en2zh (Chinese<->English)

For instance, invite en2zh@bot.talk.google.com, open a chat with it, and then whenever you type something in English, the bot will repeat the same in Chinese (say e.g. “hello” and the bot correctly translates to “你好”).

Here is an example of me translating English to French:





For more details you can go to Google Talk's blog, here.

The Best Songs of 2007

Eid Mubarak to all.

I hope you all visited family and friends and collected enough eediyah to open a little trust fund.

The year is almost over also and we have a long holiday. To help you pass the time, here is the Best 50 Songs of 2007 taken from the Rolling Stones article found here, placed in a convenient YouTube widget thingy.

Kuwait inflation hits 15-year high

Article Here.

KUWAIT (AFP) — Inflation in oil-rich Kuwait hit 7.3 percent in the first nine months of 2007, the highest figure for 15 years, the state KUNA news agency reported, citing official statistics.

The figures said the overall inflation came from price rises in products and services, notably housing (12.5 percent), education and health (12.3), drinks and tobacco (9.6), transport (7.3), clothing (5.1), food products (4.8) and other products and services (2.5).

========

That means, if you where earning 1000 KD last year, you are actually earning this year the equivalent of 927 KD because of the 7.3 % inflation.

If you are a family guy or gal and need to treat your kids, send them to school, and buy a house, your 1000 KD income is really worth 807 KD this year if the majority of your spending is on housing, education and health for your family.

Bono and Africa

Bono, lead singer of the rock band U2, is famous throughout the entertainment industry for being more than just a little self-righteous.

At a recent U2 concert in Glasgow, Scotland, he asked the audience for total quiet.

Then, in the silence, he started to slowly clap his hands, once every few seconds. Holding the audience in total silence, he said into the microphone, 'Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies.'

From the front of the crowd a voice with a broad Scottish accent pierced the quiet ...

'Well, f -- ckin stop doin it then, ya evil bastard!'

Stolen Borrowed from here.

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - Some Pictures

The scenic pictures of Iran, that I posted a while back [Link] where well received, here are some beautiful pictures of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Siwak-F Review

While shopping around the local cooperative, I found a new toothpaste called Siwak-F.




The toothpaste has all the benefits of regular toothpaste with the extra bonus of having siwak extracts. Siwak is that desert bush that grows in the desert, the twigs are cut and used to brush your teeth. More information about siwak here.

Here is what a Siwak twig used for brushing looks like.



I use siwak when I have a twig around me but I also brush my teeth with the regular toothbrush, so I was curious to try the siwak laced toothpaste. I nought myself a box and rushed home to try it.
The open box comes with a regular toothbrush which is quite convenient.





There is also a folded paper describing the benefits of Siwak.





After a heavy meal of Chinese Noodles, sweet and sour shrimps, breaded shrimps. I rushed off to brush my teeth with the Siwak toothpaste. The results where clean shiny teeth, a funny aftertaste ( but that could have been the Chinese food) and overall good results. I give the Siwak.F toothpaste a five tooth award.

Random Pics - But Funny

Here are some funny pics I came across. I especially like Kalashnikitty :-)

Microwave Beams Fries Cars

One beam pulsed in a burst lasting just 50 nanoseconds is enough to disrupt a vehicle's electrical system. The radiation can overload wires or damage or upset the car's central microprocessor.

In tests on four vehicles, the researchers were able to disable cars from 10 to 50 feet away. Full Article Here.

This device is developed by Eureka Aerospace, a California company that specializes in Radio technologies. They plan on selling these devices to the Military and Police force in order to help stop cars entering restricted areas, or disable cars that are being chased by the police.

The technical details can be found here.

I suggest they release this device to the general public like me. I have a problem with stupid drivers cutting me off, or driving like they owned the road. Also, my neighbours feel they can freely park on my pavement whenever they feel like it. The neighbours do not park in a "sorry I had to park here" way, but instead in a blatant, block my door and garage entrance, sort of way.

I did not find any "Place an Order" button on Eureka's site, otherwise I would have bought one and fried all those pesky cars.

Water +Balloon

Do you like water ?
do you like Balloons ?

What do you get if you put these two together ?

Check it out here.

Safat is Down :-(

The most popular Kuwaiti blog aggregator safat.kuwaitblogs.com is down because of some problem with the web hosting company dreamhost (boo dreamhost). When you try to go there, you get the following message:
---------------------------------

safat is being fixed

I've created a new temp aggregator greg.kuwaitblogs.com You will be redirected in 10 seconds.

The reason I got this email from Dreamhost support:

Hello, Queries against your kwblogswp were once again causing incredibly high loads on your database server 'scar'. Because of this I have been forced to disable access to your database. Please optimize your queries for performance and optimize your code to perform as few queries as possible. Once you've done that, we can re-enable access to your database. However, please keep in mind that if we have to disable access to your database again, it will be permanent. We simply cannot continue to allow one person to cause problems for a large number of people. Thanks! Jeremy
-

I replied over 17 hours ago that I fixed the problem and they still haven't gotten back to me. Working on alternative but even thats giving me issues. So please hold on for a little while and we should be back up soon. -nibaq

-----------------
What can you do now to get your Kuwaiti blog daily dose and support your addiction? Well you got different choices, such as:

greg.kuwaitblogs.com - the temporary site set up by nibaq unitl safat gets fixed.

248pm.com - the aggregator set up by Mark

Dwen with the Kuwait tag selected.

Kuwait iopblogs where you would get a some Kuwaiti blogs including yours truly.

That should help you with your withdrawal symptoms until Niqab puts things back in order and the universe is one and whole again.

Guitara Music

Remember the Kuwaiti Band Guitara, who had a hit a while back with "ya Ghali", and who where also copied by Bollywood with the Movie Song Ya Ali?

Well, if you like Guitara's music, you can download it all from their website Guitara.net

Joseph the Human Beatbox

Who said you need instruments to make music. Presenting Joseph:

How Moral are you?

Here is a fun little quiz gruesome dark quiz testing how moral you are.
It deals with life and death situations and how you would sacrifice someone to save yourself and the greater majority.

Try the quiz here.

I will not post my results, but feel free to post yours in the comments.

Husband and Wife Joke

A husband and wife are sitting quietly in bed reading when the wife looks over at him and asks a bold question.
WIFE: "What would you do if I died? Would you get married again?"

HUSBAND: "Definitely not!"

WIFE: "Why not - don't you like being married?"

HUSBAND: "Of course I do."

WIFE: "Then why wouldn't you remarry?"

HUSBAND: "Okay, I'd get married again."

WIFE: "You would?" (with a hurtful look on her face).

HUSBAND: (makes audible groan).

WIFE: "Would you live in our house?"

HUSBAND: "Sure, it's a great house."

WIFE: "Would you sleep with her in our bed?"

HUSBAND: "Where else would we sleep?"

WIFE: "Would you let her drive my car?"

HUSBAND: "Probably, it is almost new."

WIFE: "Would you replace my pictures with hers?"

HUSBAND: "That would seem like the proper thing to do."

WIFE: "Would she use my golf clubs?"

HUSBAND: "No, she's left-handed."

WIFE: -- silence --

HUSBAND: "Shit!!"

Pakistan's Got Talent

Kashif from Pakistan goes to the talent show, "America's Got Talent", and blows them away with a Bollywood dance. Being new to Bollywood style dancing, the audience first gave him weird looks, then got into it and ended his performance with thunderous applause.

Don't Give up on Vista

I got a new laptop. I turned it on and to my shock horror surprise amusement. I thought, let me give Vista a chance. I tried to start a few programs, and I got a multitude of dialog boxes asking me to confirm each and every action to keep me safe and warn me about potential security threats. "Are you sure you want to do this ?", "Your information might be exposed", "You are going to an unsafe link", "Do you want coffee?", "Do you need a jacket to keep warm?". OK, the last two are my own.

After a few hours of this ordeal, I started swearing at Vista. "Vista is the bloody operating system, it is running on a high powered dual core brand new laptop, if I need to tell it how to keep me safe then I don't need it.

I had 2 choices, downgrade to Windows XP or try Ubuntu. I did not have any important data on the laptop so I downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu Gutsy gibbon and booted up with my freshly burnt CD. It booted up and gave me the option to install, which I happily did.

Surprisingly, Ubuntu detected all my hardware even my Bluetooth, and worked seamlessly. I started playing with it and so far so good. No problems, no crashes, no freezing and no irritating dialog boxes. I installed some software for Ubuntu and never did it ask me to reboot as Windows always does.

I think I will stay with Ubuntu for a while.

Iran - Some Pictures