Since 3/4 of Kuwait are now on instagram, I’m sure all of you had encountered the infamous, most annoying comment of last week: Please like 9orat el3o6or ele eb profily.
Dear companies, we realize that the use of Social media outlets have been great for your business. I personally salute you for being modern and on trend. I don’t blame you for holding out competitions at all but please, for the love of god, I beg of you DO NOT have competitions where people with the most number of likes win. PLEASE!
First, its unfair. Some pictures are truly horrible, simply an eyesore that lacks any creativity. Yet horrible pictures win because the person who submitted it is either very popular, have a huge extended family, or simply a shameless beggar who would stop at nothing to harass people, over an over and over and OVER again, for a like.
Why don’t you choose the best pictures yourself? Its not hard, gather the pictures, have 3-4 people from your management vote on them and announce the winners instead of having us, the poor instragrammers, ruing the day you have decided to hold a competition and counting the day until the competition is up.
And you, you beggars, have you no shame? No dignity? Really wallah? You think your horrible picture deserves to win what exactly? A bottle of perfume? Can’t you go and buy it yourself? Its not a Rolls Royce, or a Park Lane penthouse. Have you no regards to other people’s feeling? A bottle of perfume is the price for your own dignity, now that’s it?
If you’ve been annoyed by those instragrammers asking for votes, don’t be shy let it out here.
Yesterday evening we were sitting outdoors in our tiny corridor/make shift tiny garden. Drinking tea and enjoying the post rain weather when a white car pulls out in front of us in the street and the driver honks to grab our attention while Read more »
Ever since I’ve crossed to the iPhone territory earlier this year I have been very happy! My iPhone is dazzling! I keep wondering why it took me so long to purchase one (it was the touch screen thing). The iPhone is like the super device that is not supposed to do anything wrong.
HOWEVER! There is one small minor problem which is unbeliveable! The mail client on the iPhone is crazy! BIG Time!
First I noticed that it didn’t retrieve my emails unless I prompt it to update and do so. Then I played around with the settings and push notifications trying to make it recieve an email the moment it is delivered to my inbox. No such luck. I would update the bloody thing and nothing will come up while my inbox does indeed have many emails waiting to be read.
I made my peace with that. So the BB would receive my emails a second before it would appear on the computer, the iPhone won’t. Emails are not everything on earth right?
Until one day it started.
I received an email that I’ve read quickly on the go. I remember being happy about it. I decided to get back to it later and read it thoroughly. Later on the day I’ve searched all the folders on my email, on the iPhone and on my pc, but I couldn’t find it. Not even in the Trash or the Spam.
It simply vanished. I couldn’t believe it, iPhone wouldn’t do that to my emails for sure right? I must have imagined I recieved it, there is no record of it coming into my inbox whatsover.
Then it happened again! And again! And again and again and again and again! To this date within 2 months of usage I’ve lost nearly 20 emails! I can’t have imagined all those emails arriving to my inbox! I am very careful when I open and close them because I am aware they might “vanish” into thin air! I searched for them carefully! To no Luck!!!
Is this normal? Is it only my iPhone? Is it every iPhone? I can live with the delayed mail delivery, but why on earth is it hiding my emails from me? This is a major catastrophic fail in an email client provided by a leading company like Apple! Do you have any solution for that? Help?
Selfridges chocolate hall had, since last December, been selling two new “peculiar” flavors of chocolate: Marmite and Tabasco!
I am not a fan of marmite at all so there is no way on earth am I going to try its chocolate, urgh! But the tabasco one? Every time I pass by I look at it, grab it, imagine it would taste like chili chocolate, almost buy it, then put it back because I don’t like tabasco either. Tantalizing for sure but I am very picky and wouldn’t want to waste money on a bite of chocolate when I can buy many more other types of chocolate.
What do you think? Have you tasted any of those chocolates or known someone who did? Would you buy them either to consume or as a cruel souvenir joke for example? Would you taste any of them?
I was searching online for the post code of my new apartment when I found this website with Kuwaiti post codes (link). What is interesting is even though I didn’t find the post code for Al-Zahraa I found the post code for… Jazeerat Um Al-Namil!!!!
Now who on earth would send a postal pacakage to um al-namil? El namil? La o block 1 b3d!!! eshm3na um al-namil mo um al-maradim mathalan? I’ve never ever received a single package to my home addresses when I lived in Bayan, Jabriya, or Zahraa, or in our mailboxes in Mishref and Dhahiya! Would anyone who is residing in Um Al-Namil expect to receive anything?
Anyways if you wish to send a post card -or a pif paf- to the ants in Um Al-Namil island you now know the post code. Its 73921, block 1. Sukkan el3a9ema b3d y7leelhom. I wonder which da2era intekhabiya ohom?
Lets say that there is a movie that you’ve been waiting forever to see. Its finally released, you finally get tickets, You make it to the movie just in time for it to begin. The theater is booked full. You are equipped with your favorite snack and drink. The show begins.
Suddenly… there is something tingling around your nostrils. An odor so bad it fills your eyes with tears as you suffocated trying to gulp for air. Its from the person sitting right next to you. They smell horrible, they must have just cooked their lunch and come. Something garlicy and spicy and very smelly indeed.
Then the odor intensifies. There is a newer odor. Something temporarily but lethal coming from the same person. You rue the day you came to sit in this chair watching this damn movie for one and a half hours. You want to leave but then you have to convince people to leave with you. You will lose your tickets. You might not have a chance to come back and watch this movie you really want to watch. Yet at the same time you are dying slowly and you no longer follow the plot of the movie because you are busy trying to breathe for your life.
So what did I do? Cursing, I wrapped my entire face except my eyes with my 7ejab which is scented with dehen oud. Even though I was fully wrapped my neighbour’s “temporarily” odors kept creeping back into my nostrils. Bloody hell!
What would you do if you were in the same situation and if leaving the movie was not an option? Tell her off? Ask the management to kick her out? Bring a mask just in case? Even nachos do suffocate people sometimes… good grief!
Something weird is going on and I cannot put my hand on it.
A few days ago my Blackberry died on me. Every single piece of information or data was wiped forever from the device. All my contacts, emails, applications, passwords, images, phone numbers, messages, everything was gone in a blink. Nothing was left. Nada!
So I make do with what little data I could conjure up from my memory. Things go smoothly again until yesterday when my Blackberry dies on me again! This time it simply won’t open up! It has been on the charger -which is fine btw- for over 24 hours and no matter what I do it won’t work.
Surprise of all suprises the Blackberry is NOT the only thing that is not working. Suddenly, on the same day, my landline phone dies on me as well for no apparent reason! It just sits there like a piece of junk without any response!
So its just the Blackberry and the normal phone? No! The dvd player! The brand new glossy Samsung DVD player stops dead in its track while showing a movie and that’s it! On the same damn day! We turned it off, on, plugged it out, shook it, blown into its, plugged it again. No response, nothing, NADA!
How is it possible for three of my favorite electrical devices to die unexceptionably on me on the exact same day? Just like that? Is it a surge of electricity that maybe fried the circuits? Or something more creepy? or a 3ain? or just a string of bad luck?
Has anything like this happened before to you? Its so weird!
I read this piece of interesting information on Cosmopolitan magazine yesterday and thought I should share it with you. Apparently if you have the flu and you brush your teeth with your toothbrush there is a good chance that the bug lingers on your toothbrush and could possibly come back to reinfect you. ‘So its better to throw out your toothbrush and get a new one as soon as you are cured to make sure you don’t get infected again!
Now this might explain why whenever I get the flu it would disappear for a few days then repeatedly comes back again and again and again for a month or two! I never threw my toothbrush away! Now that I am supposedly on my long awaited annual vacation yet I am suffering from such a bad case of the flu I can’t lift my head off my pillow, I am adament on throwing away my toothbrush as soon as I feel better just to make sure I don’t get it again.
Now why didn’t any of the doctors or dentists ever share this information with us before? Oh well Cosmo, walaw inah its my least favorite magazine out there, ma ga9arat o shared this information with its readers o I am sharing it with you. You’ve been warned, change the bloody toothbrush.
One of the things we enjoy doing is taking long car drives, exploring new things and finding absurd things. Last weekend after breakfast in Ayyame in the Village we drove around f7a7eel and Mahboula and reached the famous Mecca street which is equivalent to share3 el ma6a3em in Salmiya. I saw many Read more »
I first noticed this 7ejab style when I was in the airport this last Eid holiday. A Kuwaiti lady with her children were rushing in to check into their flight and she had this look. Its not the turban look no. Its a cotton 7ejab wrapped exactly like every one else except that its folded at each ear in a way that the entire ear shows. Of course on each ear lobe there was a huge gleaming earring. Showing the earrings is the purpose of this look after all.
I dismissed it as one lady with that look. But then over the Eid holidays in the malls I’ve seen more and more women wearing that exact same 7ejab style! Cotton, covering everything except the two ears peeking from below the two folds on the side, and huge earrings to decorate the ear lobes, reminding me of the old song in fereej el3atawiya “Tarchiya weya Tarchiya 9arat Tarachee el sha3biya!!!”.
The look is weird and I don’t like it. I’d rather people stick with their turbans if they wish to show off their ears. O ykon a7san if they take off that little piece of cloth and toss it somewhere else. Ya tet7ajeboon 3adel ya malah da3i hal halagat.
Next thing we’ll see is two horns peeking min t7t el7jab. Y3ni new look!
For the past week or so I’ve really had a very hard time getting up from bed. It doesn’t matter what time I go to bed: 10, 11, 12… the result is always the same. I would have a very deep almost dreamless sleep and nothing on earth would wake me up. When I eventually wake up I would wake up tired and sleepy and most likely I would nap in the afternoon and sleep early that night too!
Surprisingly I am not the only one! My husband, my work colleagues, my friends… all suffering from the same symptoms! My theory is the weather: the good weather has more oxygen and the change in weather have blown off our biological clock or something? Does that make any sense?
Are you having trouble getting up in the morning? Do you have any idea why? Most importantly, do you have a solution other than sleeping early?
As a blogger and also as a freak magnet I got MANY weird comments. Some are funny, others are rude. I am sorry I used to delete the very early rude comments from my blog or I would have shared them. Yet I still delete the X-Rated comments and would never show those. Below is a collection of some of my favorite weird comments. Enjoy 😀
From the post “Do you think this look is pretty?” Where I drew a mock up of girl with scary tattooed eye brows, I got this hilarious comment! Its my ever favorite comments!
O in remembrance of the above comment, when I posted yesterday about the “Habba Alert: 7ejab Bu Tafkha Version 2″ with a drawing, I got this hilarious comment. It made my day wallah, looool 😀
This is my 2nd favorite comment because it was my first rude comment as a blogger from 2009 😀 I look at it fondly now and remember it with a smile 😀 Its from the Trader Vic’s post, remember when it was opened? Well I went there, had a horrible experience and said it was too tacky! Ma 3jabha el 7achi el ekht…
When I announced that my perfume combination won on 52 degrees Perfume Competition, someone wasn’t very happy and didn’t think I should be either!
When I announced Prime & Toast and Pizzetta’s Gluten Free menu, which was something I was campaigning for, I got this comment. I have nothing but pity for her mentality.
I also clearly remember this one from the Fatburger… Never Again post. I tried their veggie burger and it was HORRIBLE! Sorry fat burger but it was. Again I got a disgruntled comment.
This one was from the Blogging Dilemma post and is also memorable because it came out of the blue. It was followed by more and more comments.
Not to forget this comment I got when I first started writing Dathra. It was on a post called “Lost in Translation: Badliya or a new word“.
On my “Big Blogging Rant” when I complained that the fuss regarding bloggers had gone out of hand and that someone had insulted me by trying to dictate what I should write, I got this angry stalkerish comment.
La o she had supporters too!
Since I am a horrible dishonest hypocrite, why on earth do you come back to my blog o la follow me on twitter b3d? Weird people. Anyways moving on…
When I welcomed Prime & Toast as a blog sponsor, this girl was furious.
Naturally I tweeted about the comment, I am allowed to complain aren’t I? So she retaliates again.
Clearly an obsessed stalker w3liya. Only she doesn’t have the courage to actually confront me on twitter. Coward. Moving on…
In my “Habba Alert: Men Wearing Bow Ties” post, someone who disagreed with me told me so, BUT, he ridiculed my opinion by making a reference to my liking of coffee flavored frozen yogurt. Shako? Madry wallah 3elmi 3elmkom!
Moving on, from the “10 Things That Never Go Out of Style in Q8” I talked about not liking the smell and result of 7enna. Clearly I offended 7enna lovers in Kuwait. Apparently if I say I don’t like it it means I am trashing it!
I do have much more but I will have to dig deeper. I also have the crazy tweets I get on Twitter. Will make a 2nd post soon 😀
Whenever we walk into an electronics store my Butootee heads straight into the newest tablets or phones section and starts jabbing away at the touch screen. I have developed the habit of running before him and screaming “Don’t Touch it! Shoof! Wa9ekh Wa9ekh” before he does. He however always ignores me and touches it anyways and he insists I try the device too! G63! Not in this life time!
I hate touch screens, specifically public touch screens because of the amount of grime I see on the screens. I believe they can be dirtier that the toilet especially if they are as dirty as the Motorolla thing I saw last weekend above! God knows why these fingers are greasy and where they have been last, or whom do they belong to! Why can’t stores offer cleansing wipes for their devices like makeup stores do bdal hal galaga? This is disgusting, simply disgusting.
Do you touch electronic devices or touch screens?
We were driving around last weekend when we saw the strangest hybrid of trees ever. It looks a dead palm tree portruding from a bushy Conocarpus trees! There were a group of them as well. Mo chenna za7ma shway :p
I came home to find my No3man dolly clad in a scarf, Tuareg Nomad style :p When I asked him why he said that since the dust has been away for unusually too long he was not going to take any chances o ‘Ga3ed Yezaheb Eldowa Gabel elFal3a’.
Ella 9ej wain el’3bar? Alf el 7md le Allah though 
2003 was the golden year for internet shopping in Kuwait. The days where I was in Aramex’s office daily picking up huge shipments with competitive prices from all over the world, going home and enjoying the contents. Every thing was smooth and easy. I even subscribed to Vogue and Marie Claire magazines and I got them monthly, promptly using Aramex.
They raised their prices, over and over again. They suddenly discovered the Kuwaiti customs and made a big point of having shipments stalled there. All the while I stuck by them, made excuses for them, even stopped buying stuff online just because I didn’t want to go through the hassle of the Aramex frustration.
I am sad to say that this shipment that would be arriving sometime in the next millennia would be my last with Aramex. Not that it would matter to them seeing that many depend on them still, but in my case I have had enough.
I order stuff and have it delivered via FedEx or DHL, it arrives in 2 days WITH CUSTOMS! The last time I ordered with Aramex it took the shipment FOREVER to arrive because it was continuously taken off the plane in New York.
I ordered my birthday gift for my self, a ton of cooking books to prepare for Ramadan and my new diet (post). It arrived to my Aramex mailbox on the 15th of July, Shipped out of New York on the 17th of July, arrived to Dubai on 18 July and has been stuck there ever since!
I’ve been calling, over and over, every day they tell me the shipment is supposed to arrive this morning to Kuwait, then its just customs. Yet the shipment is still in Dubai. On Tuesday 19 July I saw the Activity Update “Shipment forwarded to Ardia, Kuwait” so I was happy. I called Aramex’s office at 6 PM to make sure it was in Ardia so I can go pick it up only to get the answering machine that they are closed.
Weird, I call over and over, I know they close at 8 PM not 5 as the answering machine said. I drove all the way to Ardiya and reached there at 8:30 PM to find them open saying they close at 9. I ask to pick up my shipment and they say its just being forwarded to Ardiya from Dubai, it is still in Dubai and didn’t make it here. Well excuse me, you could have explained that on the PHONE had you picked it up.
They also told me it was arriving on the plane tomorrow, Wednesday the 20th.
I called yesterday morning they told me it had arrived in Kuwait, but it didn’t go to customs yet. OK fare enough.
I call today, and GUESS WHAT! Apparently the plane was overstocked with passengers luggage, which has priority, and my shipment was taken OFF THE PLANE! Since there was no other plane coming out of Dubai that day, the shipment is STILL IN DUBAI SINCE 18 JULY!
Are you kidding me? The same fiasco again? When is it getting on a plane insha2 Allah?! So you are charging me 42 KD which I’ve already paid online for a shipment when you don’t even have your own plane and have to rely on commerial planes?
What do I need to do to get the bloody shipment out of Dubai? Go there my self? Take it out and get it home with me? Seriously?
By the way I asked your operator on the phone today when it was supposed to be rescheduled, and she kept me on the phone for a long time, too long a time, very long in fact that a user came to my office, I showed him something, and he went away while I was on hold. I hung up the phone later on not knowing what would become of my package. Knowing you Aramex, I am not surprised with your delayed services. It will not arrive before Ramadan. It was a Birthday gift, but its my really for I should have ordered it a month in advance because your shipping means hitchhiking for luggage space availability on airplanes in the summer time when all the planes are logically full to the brim with passengers. Yes, its my fault, not yours.
Good buy Aramex. I am so sad to say this, but truly good buy. Just deliver this shipment and that’s it, I promise you one more user will be lost so less shipments will come your way. Maybe then you can provide a better service for your exaggerated prices.
Oh and please don’t ask me to email you, I already did. Unless you can have my shipment out of Dubai and at my door tonight, then don’t bother.
Did you know that in some countries Poppy Seeds are banned because they are considered a type of narcotic… oh yeah… be careful the next time you decide to eat a Poppy Seed Muffin 😉
This picture is dedicated to Day two of The Diet Ninja Camp.
Yesterday I was in 360 Cinescape when I saw an exhibition of the Cinema’s History and artifacts in Kuwait. It is so worth a visit and I enjoyed it very much. What caught my attention however is the stars who once sang in cinema Al Andalus. I knew Abdul halim, fairuz,om Kalthom sang there in the golden ages of Kuwait. I didn’t know that bands like Boney M did too! O someone who looks like the Opera’s Pavarotti but I am not sure and that guy who screams in Rocky Movie and sings living in America -dunno his name-!
I am trying to imagine Kuwaiti men i the 70’s, big hair or long hair with Charleston trousers filing in to Al Andalus cinema and dancing to Daddy Cool and No Woman No Cry! What happened? Why do we have to board a plane to Dubai and Abu Dhabi to listen to good music? In the SIXTIES and SEVENTIES of the past CENTURY we had bands playing in our country… why can’t we have the same in the 2nd decade of the 21st century? He who wants to listen can go listen, he who doesn’t want to can stay at home. Live and let live!
I want to see Ballet, Swan Lake, Lord of the Dance, Opera, Fairuz, something… anything in my own country. It’s not my fault I was born too late in the 80’s y3ni!
FINALLY! We have been wondering -and frankly secretly agonizing- about what this building was going to be for YEARS! Yes years on end… I marvelled at the beauty of the modern design of the building, I imagined it a funky house, a stylish Villa Moda like store, a fruniture store, a catering store, a haunted house. It was a shame to see its beauty go to waste by standing there empty for years…
And today, finally, we saw a sign. It says some kind of five star Eastern restarutant? I hope for the building’s sake its more Le Notre and B+F than Dawwat. At least now we can breath a sigh of relief, its about time our curiosity’s flame has been extinguished, 9ej Legafa bs shinsawee b3d.
Have you been passing by this house and wondering as well? Do you know why it has been standing there all these years?
When I was in the Bairaq Mall last week and as we were about to get into our car I saw a weird thing underneath the back wheel of the car parked next to ours. I did a double take and got closer only to Read more »
Dear KDD,
I’ve been a fan of your products for over 30 years now. I grew up drinking KDD Chocolate milk. I memorized the word Columbia as a child even before i spoke English. I was familiar with the names Failaka and Burgan before i knew what they meant and as a result my eyes lit up in recognition in elementry school when we were taught that Filaka was a Kuwaiti island and Burgan was the largest oil field in Kuwait. All thanks to your ice creams.
But a few days back my eyes fell on the poster above and the first response out of me was NO!
I am not sure if you had customer feedback before embarking on the new campaign but frankly you should have had. Changing the design from the cute patriotic little girl and boy we grew up with to a modern design was one blow. Changing all the names of the ice creams and giving them one name that was Blitz was another blow!
Why would you melt the patriotic identity of a product much beloved by almost all of the Kuwaiti population? Why would you choose a name “Blitz” that is not even pronounceable in the Kuwaiti dialect. I cannot pronounce it even though I can speak English. It is a heavy name and not that appetizing. Do you think people would stop asking for Burgan and Failaka now and start using the word Ebletz? Do you really think when i take my future children to the Co-Op i would point at the ice creams of my childhood and tell them to choose what ebletz flavour they would love instead of Burgan, my favourite, or Columbia, their grandfather’s favourite? If they asked me what the name Ebltez mean, what would I answer with? Frankly, I do not know!
Please KDD, please consider giving our beloved ice creams their own names back. We understand the need to update the look, give the girl and boy a more modern look or like you changed the old checkered design of the ice cream covers into the one unified colored ones. Blitz is suffocating me and many other Kuwaitis and residents of Kuwait. I have yet to find one person who thought the new design and name is a good idea. They say if it ain’t broken, do not fix it. But what you did basically was like taking a beloved Kuwaiti item and cremating it.
I really wish that you would reconsider the request above. I am also sad to inform you that until you do so, I am going to stop buying the blitz range of products simply because they make me ache from the inside. It is like losing a part of my life I am familiar with. Yes, that dramatic.
Thank you so much,
Regards,
Danderma.
P.S. Check the customer’s comments on the same topic in those blogs: 248am, ilSul6ana, Bananaq8
Dear readers, what do you think? Leave your comment here or post your opinion on your blog. Let our voice be heard!
I was reading Alwasee6 newspaper today when i saw a store that sells… well… Naaqa Ice Cream :S
Although they say the milk of the camel is very good, there is no way i would try it… it’s just too weird…
Hal door camel’s milk ice cream?! Uuuurgh! Zain ma sawaw b3d frozen yoghurt min hal camel’s milk!
What do you think?! Would you try it?!
Two nights ago i was grocery shopping in Jabriya Co-Op when i encountered this *New* product!!! Who on their right mind would out of their own free will pick up a bottle of Liban flavoured with GARLIC! Garlic? Of all flaovours to add to a liban in this world, they chose GARLIC!!!
Is it because of the current infatuation with Vampires?! They think it’s going to help in warding off any if it turns out to actually exist?! Seriously!? Garlic?!
Would you try this garlic flavoured liban?!?
I was shopping in Selfridges yesterday when i heard scream and i saw a woman running like the wend, getting out of Selfridges door and disappearing in the crowds while another woman was running after her… after a while the 2nd lady who was chasing the first woman came back and started talking to security. Apprently the 2nd lady was shopping when the first woman came close to her… snatched something which i am guessing is her bag, and ran with all her might infront of all these people. Never mind that there are CCTV cameras every where and that she can be identified!
It is very scary indeed. It could have been anyone of us. Sometimes when i am shopping my stuff are all over the place and i do not really pay much attention… Now this incident will make me think twice before i let go of my stuff or open my bag in public!
I have never been robbed before. Once a couple of European guys tried to open my backpack while standing behind me in the escalator in ODEON but they were too close i felt them and moved away before they could snatch anything. Have you ever been robbed before or known someone who was? In Q8 or abroad? How did it happen?
