Mario's World

I noticed a special offer today on the NBK site for Hotel Missoni in Kuwait. They offer a special rate of 79 KWD per night but the Missoni website shows the same room for 63 KWD. What’s special about this offer?

Very often, working on windows can drive you mad. Looks like these guys couldn’t take it anymore. They jut decided to burn the laptops. Must have been inspired by the 7 million tires burning in the desert.

Wonder if my company has any policies on burning laptops.

Actually it’s silly to burn the laptops just because the software sucks! Simply upgrade to Linux. It’s free and it works great.

I came across this video today. Reminded me of the time we watched one of them do about 3 paintings in 10 mins near the Roman Forum.

These street side artists are amazing. Usually, in 5-6 minutes they can dish out some pretty cool graphics. And only using a few cans of spray paint, some tissues and a few templates.

I had my yearly vehicle registration renewal recently and I was really impressed.

After getting my paper work stamped at the test center, I headed over to the Traffic Department in Maidan Hawalli. It was crowded just like all other government offices but the atmosphere was so different … so friendly.

I went over to the first counter to hand in my paper-work and noticed that all the staff there were very cheerful and friendly. All of them spoke “politely” (very rare in Kuwait) and in English (even more rare) to the non-Arabic speakers.

Then I took a seat in the main waiting room and this was the best part. Two of their employees were walking around with rolls of freshly printed “daftars” (registration documents), calling people by name, walking over to them and handing them their “daftars”. They were very jolly and kept everyone entertained with their jokes and other funny comments. Although most of it was in Arabic, it was still pretty entertaining for me.

If the attitude of staff in all the government offices & ministries in Kuwait were similar to this one, I bet all  expats would have a very different (better) opinion of Kuwait.

Good job Hawalli Muroor!

You can just tell how frustrated the guy who painted the sign must have been. Still he was polite enough to add a “please” in there!

Actually, I’m not sure if the “For God Sake” was painted on much later!

Does anyone remember playing Antarctic Adventure? Back in 1986, I was really addicted to this game. I would play it for hours on end on my MSX. Those were the good old days!

I decided to look up this game a few days ago and came across the DOS Game Archive, a site where it was available for download …for FREE. The program wouldn’t work on my Windows 7 machine so I did a little digging and found that DOSBox, a DOS emulator for Windows would do the trick.

The game, although simple, is still addictive …after 25 years. Maybe it’s the nostalgia of playing it after so long. Let’s see how long it lasts.

Pecha Kucha, which is Japanese for chit-chat, is a very interesting presentation methodology when you have a lot of presentations.

Every presenter has 20 slides each shown for 20 seconds and they auto run in the background. That way, in 6 min and 40 sec the next presenter gets to boot you off the stage.

Pecha Kucha Nights seem to have sprung up all around the world including Kuwait!

I wonder to what extent we can encourage more people in the corporate world to use a similar methodology. It’s good because you know that there won’t be more than 20 slides of boredom and there is a good chance you won’t fall asleep in 6 mins and 40 sec. And best of all, the presenters will have to stick to the point or get booted off the stage.

It’s a shame that very few people know to present at corporate meetings and how they love to stretch 30 min. meetings to hours. Frankly I tend to tune out in 20 mins or so unless the presentation is real lively.

We went for dinner to Jade Garden the other night and were quite amused by the live music entertainment. Every hour or so, 4 of the staff gather in the center of the restaurant on that little make shift stage and perform 2-3 numbers for their guests.

When I first saw them setting up the stage, I was expecting some very traditional Chinese songs considering the very traditional Chinese decore. But the more modern English numbers just add to the ambience.

The food was great as usual!

When I came across the term “foldable car”, I was very intrigued. So I had to know more. Hiriko is a great little MIT pilot project which started in Spain. The aim is to build a bunch of tiny foldable electric cars which can shrink to a smaller size when parking (about half the length of a Smart).

There is a lot more to the project it but I found the folding aspect very interesting. What if we could use the same technique and fold all these regular to extra-large cars that we currently drive around. I bet most of our parking nightmares would be over. I can only image how odd a line of folded Hummers or Cadillacs would look like. :)

Personally, I love the concept of these tiny cars and they make sense for cities with narrow roads and little parking. But I would only drive them if every other car on the road was also a tiny car.

This is the first time I’ve come across this song. Its funny and has Kuwait mentioned in the lyrics. The lyrics are below.

LYRICS:
Everybody eat the falafel
all the other food’s gonna topple
everybody’s head’s gonna bobble
when they put in their mouth falafel

Hey baby, have I seen you around?
maybe you’re not from this part of town?
you remind me of falafel, what? don’t turn around
it’s just because you’re both hot and brown

Yes you look good, a real hot lady
you and falafel drive me crazy
let’s go on a date, right now baby
don’t make me wait–I’m not Kuwaiti

You say falafel, I say falafel
you eat potato, it’s taste is awful
like a tomato but must you marvel
at the tastiness of falafel

in a pita pocket or pitter patter–
fried and crispy I’m getting fatter
In a sandwich or in a platter
lunch or dinner, it doesn’t matter

if you had three wishes from a genie
you won’t be wishing for a panini
and not chicken tetrazini
just falafel with tahini

other places you won’t go
eat falafel and you’ll just want more
just a little brown rock but you won’t let go
it’s the only rock a Palestinian won’t throw

Don’t like falafel? I’m gonna fight you
tasty rocks, yeah I’m gonna bite you
eat it all? Oh yes, I would like to
Don’t like falafal? You must be a white dude

CHORUS

well there’s four food groups, you knew it man
but did you know falafel is two of them?
Put one in your mouth, and you chew it then
put another one in, you can do it man

falafel is my favorite food
eat it and I’m in a real good mood
if I could eat it any time I would
it’s like Cleveland, except these Browns are good

meet Denver, that’s the name of my stomach
because it is the home of the nuggets
got falafel? Yes, but where to put it?
put it in your mouth and then you shut it

itching for a falafal morsel
hit the kitchen go through the door so
eat a lot and then you eat more so
get falafel up in your torso

I’d like to have a child, I pray
I’d like to have a boy someday
but if he’s made of falafel, oh, you’d say
I’d have a real tough choice to make

no price on falafal? We can’t have that
tell the cashier they have to tag that
tell the bag boy that he has to bag that
tell your bag mom, and tell your Baghdad

men love falafel, don’t you know?
that’s because it helps your mustache grow
and women voted it #1 meal to go
can you believe it? somebody let them vote

so be the envy of your peers
eating plenty of these spheres
if you need a recipe, then here’s
one you can use for years and years cuz

CHORUS