My friend Talal who is a student in Dubai just wrote us saying there is a big issue going on with all the Kuwaiti credit cards (Visa, Master, and even Visa electron) that’s been used in Dubai within the last 6 months. He said they’re suspending all the cards and issuing new ones due to recent theft incidents.
He also said that NBK is going to send him his card via DHL, and that if someone who’s in dubai and in desperate need for cash, they can lift the block on his card just temporarily in order for him to withdraw some money and then block it again right away.
Did you guys know about this thing? I didn’t. All I know is that they’re replacing all of their cards with new ones with a chip in them. Sort of an update and not something serious.
Thanks Talal.
Update:
I just spoke with someone from NBK and he confirmed that there have been many pretty big hacks and theft incidents on credit & debit cards used in Dubai in the past 6 months. And it’s happening with all the other banks too, not just the NBK.
On friday we went to thba3iya to our friend’s relatives shalaih to see their collection of RC planes.. and what a collection they had! They had all the RC planes you could imagine. Big and small. mostly très big. They even built a runway for their planes. Read the rest of this entry »
As the topic said, 7asafa walla, it was really good policy. If no one know whats the policy is, then its simply that if you bought something from Amazon and its price on the site dropped within 30 days of your purchase then you could contact them and get a refund for the difference.
Thanks Ahmad
UPDATE:
Here is an email that confirm the above which Mark got when he requested to get a refund on the difference for his camera:
“Hello from Amazon.com.
Thanks for writing to us about the recent price change on “Nikon D90 DX 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera with 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED AF-S VR DX Nikkor Zoom Lens”. I recognize you have a choice of retailers and appreciate that you prefer to order from us. Unfortunately, we do not have a post-order price guarantee.
I’ve reviewed your order and see that the price change was significant and you just received this item from us. Under the circumstances, I’ll make a one-time exception for you and issue a refund for the price difference in the amount of $46.99.
Please understand that I’m issuing this refund because of the exceptional circumstances, and I’m doing this for you against our standard policy.
WHY DON’T YOU HAVE A PRICE GUARANTEE?
While we don’t always beat the best available price on every product, we do offer deep discounts on many thousands of items. From time to time, prices on some items will change due to special offers from suppliers and manufacturers or our inventory and sales volumes. When we can offer a lower price for new purchases we will, but we cannot extend these discounts to completed orders.
Thanks for shopping at Amazon.com. We look forward to your next visit.
This sign was on a small one room building near where we stay in france. For years we’ve been passing by without paying much attention. A couple of years ago Mom started telling me about this guy, who turned to be a great french philosopher. Apparently he stayed in our area when he was young.
I just googled and read about him. He wrote many books. I read that he invented modern autobiographies. I skimmed through his Confessions book and the first thing he wrote was a bit of a turnoff:
“I HAVE begun on a work which is without precedent, whose accomplishment will have no imitator. I propose to set before my fellow-mortals a man in all the truth of nature; and this man shall be myself.”
No imitator, huh? I bet he’s turning in his grave with the debut of every new autobiography and reality show.
Then I read a line that made me laugh:
“I believe no individual of our kind ever possessed less natural vanity than myself.”
I’m sure when this last line is put in it’s context may come off less self-absorbed/conceited, but still I find it hard to accept that someone would say something like that about himself and still think he has low vanity..
The ‘Great Kuwait Sunset Challenge‘ has been launched a few days ago by our fellow blogger, intlxpatr. If you have good sunset photos and you wanna participate in this challenge, you can do so by sending her an email and she’ll post your pictures and we’re all gonna vote, somehow, and she’ll decide which photographer has the best shots.
I’ve learned that photoshopping an image is considered cheating, and I also learned that I don’t have a single good sunset photo! except the one above, but that is photoshopped to death, so..
I will try and take some pictures of sunsets. You do so too!
For more information on the challenge or if you have a question, go to intlxpatr.
I’m sure we’ve all seen Zain’s new backup ads by now with the old man and his old wife. It created quite a stir when they first aired during ramadan.
The ad basically used the old wife character to portray how she (the mobile) can be easily replaced by the old husband with another mobile incase of loss, damage..etc if he subscrib with Zain’s backup service. Most women (and some men) in my family found it offensive. My mother wanted to write a post on this blog and give Zain a piece of her mind. Other female members of my family were also offended and quite shocked by how degrading to women this whole ad campaign was. Other people had mixed reactions. Me and Mishary had our own little debate where one of us thought it is completely and utterly inappropriate to compare mobiles to women (wives) and the other thought they were funny. We even received emails asking us to say something about those ads. Here is an excerpt from an email we got:
“Zain should stop airing them immediately and apologize to all the people who felt offended by the Ads”
I also asked some of my friends and got different responses. Their responses:
I LOVE it! I laugh each time I see them on tv.
They’re hard to get.
Sexist and offensive.
and this has to be the best response and the most intriguing argument I got:
The ads ruffle some insecure feathers. It plays on typical and old stereotypes. Our grandfathers used to think somewhat similarly about women; they’re replaceable. And this what annoyed the Kuwaiti females the most.. It would’ve been offensive if they hired a young couple to do the ad, but they didn’t, they made them old, and that is how (most) old Kuwaiti men used to think about women anyway.
ma3alaina.. We’ll let you decide for yourselves. Participate in the poll on the right sidebar to answer this question:
In January of this year I visited Kuwait for the first time in my life. It was not a long ahead planned visit. The decision to go was influenced by coincidental circumstances and made only 2 days before my flight took off. Because I was never in the Middle East before, I looked forward to it as a very interesting possibility to see more of this part of the world.
One of the only few facts I knew about Kuwait was from years back, 1973 to be exactly. Being an 11-year old boy I remembered that Israel was in war with some Arabic countries (the Jom Kipoer war) and due to that conflict The Netherlands were embargoed oil supply. Kuwait was one of the leading OPEC countries who denied to sell oil to The Netherlands. As a result of that our PM Joop den Uyl, took some hard measures to deal with this problem and did implement an official ‘no-driving Sunday’. Even though it took some time to get use to it, it became a special and welcome variety of our usually weekend spending. With the whole family we went to the high-roads to roller-skate and bicycle on this new ‘car-free’ playground. Together with lots of other children we had a great time enjoying ourselves in the cleanest air of the week.
At that time I was too young to realize what the political background of the issue was. The only thing I remembered was the sound of fear and fright in the voices of my parents regarding to the subject of ‘war’. Being in the middle of the cold-war and still in fresh memory the second world war, there was a lot of fear for another ‘Great War’. Unexpectedly I was introduced at that time in the world of global-politics. Especially by the honorary-consul of Kuwait, the most respectful Sir Mahmoud Rabbani. As no one else would be able to, he explained the point of view of the Arabic countries to the Dutch television viewers in a very clear way. For this achievement there was a lot of respect for him among the Dutch people. In retrospective, I think, he was one of the most unfortunate diplomats of his time. For accepting an invitation in a cynical television program, in which he did receive a copy of a funny song ‘Kiele kiele Koeweit’ (a Dutch totally innocent song about the oil crisis), Mahmoud Rabbani was heavily criticized by the Arabic countries he represented. This was really a pity; it was mainly because of him that the Dutch got so much more understanding for the problems of the Palestinians. But may be that’s the fate of a popular diplomat abroad.
Having Kuwait now visited twice, I must say that I’m still overwhelmed by the hospitality, warmness and the liberal thought of the Kuwaiti people. The second time I was accompanied by a television crew for making a documentary about a 10-year old Kuwaiti soccer player ‘Sayed’. The crew and I had a very nice time and great fun shooting the scenes with Sayed and his family all around the country. What an amazing talent has this boy! The film was broadcasted in The Netherlands already and received many positive reviews.
Due to these positive experiences I hope to visit Kuwait again soon, but at this moment I have only one (urgent!) question for the Kuwaiti Government. ‘Can you please cut back the oil supply again?’ It’ll bring back some wonderful memories of my youth and also helps the battle against Global Warming. Thank you in advance!
Marcel
What an interesting piece huh? I loved that he liked Kuwait and had positive things to say about his visits. As for his request, I highly doubt the government would consider such requests.
Here is a trailer of the documentary they did with Sayed.
For more information about the documentary visit Soccertalents.
Thank you Marcel for sharing your experience with us.
At our last Ghabga my friend brought some sushi that are homemade. I didn’t know they were homemade till he told me so, and I can’t say I was surprised when he said they have a sushi business, coz they all looked very professionally done. Now I’m not a Sushi expert, I never went to a japanese restaurant (well maybe once or twice), but I liked them all. I especially liked the orange ones with the spicy crab sauce and sprinkles of brown garnish stuff.
To look through the menu take a look at their website by clicking HERE.
On August 19th 2007, an oil tanker off the coast of Australia split in two, dumping 20,000 tons of crude oil. Senator Collins, a member of the Australian Parliament, appeared on a TV news program to reassure the Australian public. This actual interview is so funny, you’d swear it was a ‘Monty Python’ skit.
It just proves… Once a politician, always a politician!
My father just gave me a book ‘40 Years In Kuwait’ by Violet Dickson / Om S3ood. I’ve been going through it’s pages for the last hour and a half and I would like to share this paragraph on p147 with you guys:
We went to our yearly camping spot in the desert (Arifjan), but this year camp was different for me coz I had an objective in mind; I wanted to collect every flower, dry it, and then put in the special preserving package Mr. Horwood gave me and then send them to the Kew Museum in London.
I saw a purple plant, it wasn’t too rare, “Khzama,” was what 3amsha used to call it. Khzama means nose earrings, It is called that coz it’s seed look like a Khzama. I sent the first batch of flowers after the spring of 1933 to the museum and it turned out that this specific flower wasn’t known before and had no records, and I was very happy to learn afterwards that Mr. Horwood (Museum manager) named it after his last name and mine’s, he named it “Horwoodia Dicksoniae.”
This is the flower Mrs. Dickson (Om S3ood) saw and sent to london 75 years ago.
This is the new e-Go device from ZAIN. It is said that it’ll have a flash memory built into it and some other stuff. I love how small it is! I’ll keep you updated once I learn more.
It is said that this porsche was the first in Kuwait and the whole gulf region as well. This picture dates back to 1956, it shows the owner, Mr. Murad Behbahani (RIP) sitting behind the wheel, and his brothers Mohammed and Redha Behbahani.
Our last poll was ‘What is your favorite Ramadan dish?’ Over 200 people decided the following:
Harees / Yereesh 32%
Tashreba 29%
Muchboos 16%
Em6abag 3%
I don’t care 20%
The tashreeba, my favorite, won the second position. It so deserved to be a #1
Our new poll got to do with Ramadan too. The Gergai3an is an old Kuwaiti tradition, where kids go door to door, on the 13th, 14th and 15th of every Ramadan, singing a traditional tune and in return get a handful of goodies (chocolates, nuts..etc.) We all went gerge3ing when we were kids and I remember that we couldn’t wait to measure our bagfuls of goodies and see who got the most.
So, What do you think of Gergai3an? You can submit your answers using the poll on the right sidebar.
A couple of days ago my brother mentioned this Mcdonald’s fries lookalike, he said the fries looks exactly like McDonald’s and it tastes really good for a frozen home fried french fries. This weekend when we were in Chabd, we did a little barbeque and coincidently there was this McCain fries on the table, so I tried it. Now, I liked it, it tasted really good, nowhere near as good as McDonald’s, but it was reallly goood. I just did some googling before writing this post, and you know what? IT IS the fries McDonald’s use! the same manufacturer at least. McDonald’s use McCain’s Fries.
From McDonalds site:
MacFries from McCain were found to be one of the best. The award means that McCain fries, produced for McDonald’s to strict specifications, can now be used as a benchmark by other McDonald’s fry suppliers worldwide.
This year’s Ramadan marks the 29th anniversary for Alroudan’s tournament, a yearly Ramadanian football tournament. And this time, according to a friend of mine, they will have many former football champions among the honor guests list. I’ll mention 4 of the most famous ones:
I loved that he liked Kuwait and had positive things to say about his visits. As for his request, I highly doubt the government would consider such requests. 
