I finished my beginner course on saturday and the only thing left is to have the written exam to get my diving license for beginners.

Lets begin with the review. This time I’ll divide the review to parts and talk about each part separately. There is going to be 5 parts: Safety, Professionalism, Atmosphere, Fun and overall satisfaction.
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It is very rare here in Kuwait to go to a restaurant and have the food turn out effortlessly fantastic. The restaurants in Bahrain are different, they were all amazing. I went to 3 different ones and every single one could put the best restaurants in Kuwait to shame with their amazing food and great chefs. You actually feel like there is someone in the kitchen coming up with their own recipes, unlike most restaurants in here.
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We had lunch at Brasserie de l’etoile. It’s a new french restaurant in the Avenues mall, phase II. The place looked and felt french, even the music played was perfecting the french mood.

However, The mood they were trying to set did not help my dish one bit. My dish was good, going by the Kuwaiti standards, but if I were to judge this restaurant and compare it to real french ones, I’d say they need to take a closer look at some of their dishes and concentrate on getting the flavors right.
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I went in with very low expectations, I expected a disappointing adaptation of yet another great book by Brown, if not his best book, and I think this was the only reason I came out not as disappointed as I should be.

I think the movie was entertaining and is likely to have legions of movie goers praising it for the coming weeks. It is fast paced and high on thrills. However, and just like it’s predecessor, The Da Vinci Code, the movie pales next to the book. There was no time in the movie to squeeze all the information needed, And I think with that pace they were going, the viewer couldn’t grasp how big of an issue things like: illuminati, anti matter and path of illumination really were.

Despite that, the movie surpassed my expectations and I liked it. If you haven’t read the book, or have read it a long time ago (just like myself) then you’re going to enjoy the movie.

Movie censoring: The movie wasn’t censored a lot, except for 1 or 2 key moments, where we were left looking at each other for an explanation.

I was recommended this Spa by Ansam, and since I’m making it my duty to find the best massage place in Kuwait, I went.

The place isn’t hard to find at all, it’s in Salmiya, gulf road, the right after Divas restaurant then the third building on the left. It’s a men’s Salon & Spa, haven’t tried one of those before. It isn’t big, the salon is upfront and the spa is in the back, however it is very nicely designed with a modern feel. The people working there and the reception was very nice and warm. Even when I asked about the possiblity of taking pictures they were all smiles and approved immediately (this isn’t the case most of the times with spas).
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Reading Intlxpatr & Mark’s posts about the newly opened restaurant, Smoke House, was enough to make me want to go there and experience it myself. Before going I asked a couple of friends about the place, and they all said it’s Ok. Nothing more and nothing less, the place is just ok. But I went anyway.

The place is small and had around 7 tables only. It’s in a hard to come across location location and is partially owned by an american (cool factor & authenticity factor). Unfortunately my experience wasn’t a good one. And Here is why:

The food was mediocre at BEST. Nothing special about the food at all:

1- The chicken wings’ (which is considered a specialty in this restaurant) presentation was horrible. The wings looked and tasted like they were cooked a couple of hours ago and then heated up in an oven then served.

2- Their smoke house burger was nothing special. The patty was too dry and the bun was too thick. Even my friend who had this burger a month ago said that it isn’t the same anymore.

3- The ribeye steak, my order, was recommended by the waitress as the house special dish, turned out like a fridays’ steak. I ordered it medium and got a well done.

The service:

The waitress was very nice, but I can’t say the same about the waiter nor the manager. The waiter couldn’t care less when I told him that the wings weren’t fresh, and when I told him I ordered a medium steak not a well done, he just smiled and left.

On our way out me and my friend had a little chat with the manager that went like this:

Friend: The chicken wings was different this time than the last time I was here.
Manager: No it’s the same.
Friend: No, I was here and my friends ordered the wings and it was different.
Manager: No, Thats what you think. I know it is the same.
Me: The wings weren’t fresh.
Manager: No they’re fresh. they were cooked at around 6pm only. (we were eating the wings at 8:30pm)
Friend: The food is different this time, even the burger! I ate here a month ago and everything was good!
Me: see this is my first time in this restaurant, so I don’t know if the way you cook has changed or not, but I just want to say that most of the food wasn’t good.
Manager: (in a very careless tone that lasted throughout the conversation) Listen, I know that my food hasn’t changed a bit, because I cook here, I made the recipes and the dishes and everything… I do everything here.
Friend: and we ate the food, so we know..
Manager: Yes the food I made.
Me: You know, you have an amazing way of arguing with the customers.

Thats when he retracted a bit, realized that he shouldn’t have argued so much, and said the ‘I will try and see what went wrong.. I appreciate your opinion..’ bla bla bla. Too little too late.

The hype surrounding this place was big, and the disappointment I felt, after eating the food and dealing with this disrespectful manager, was bigger.

Their location

A friend of mine recently told me about an asian restaurant, a sort of hole-in-the-wall kind of place. From the outside the place hardly looks like it’s worth it (shakla mayeswa baiza). The sign from the outside was plain old blah, it didn’t look inviting at all. Once we entered, we saw that its a small place with 4 places to sit (two 6 seaters and two 4 seaters). Later and after placing the orders, we had to share our table with a stranger coz we were sitting at a table for six, I didn’t want to relinquish the extra seats but it was hard saying no to a customer standing right on top of me, waiting for me to say yes to the waiter. You get the picture, the restaurant is small.. a la early bird.
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I went along with the family yesterday to Abdulwahab Restaurant. The place is bigger than I had in mind and roomier (o shar7) and in spite of being new, it wasn’t crowded, which is weird considering Kuwaitis’ love for new places.

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I’ve been hearing about this spa for a long time from friends, and as I was telling my friends this weekend that I needed a massage and that I probably will go to The Day Spa, which is my favorite massage place in all O the land, my friend Ban1 told me, for the 10th time, that I should consider going to the one in crown plaza hotel. He said that it is the best place in Kuwait. So, as a massage fan and more importantly as a blogger looking for good material for you readers, I went to Aquatonic Spa and took my camera with me.
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Zain Create have an offer for limited time, if you register before the 1st of april you’ll get KD 5.100 (thats 5 kds and a 100 fils) of credit to download songs off their music store. I went ahead an registered, it was an easy process and I got the promotional 5KDs credited to my Zain Create account. You should all register, there is no need to miss out on this one time deal.

Anyway, I looked around the site, then wanted to download something to try the service out. I went to the top 10 list and found that Fadhel Shaker’s new album is in the #1 spot (Not just that, He is #1 in the top songs, albums, and artists list!) so I went with Fadhel’s new album. I bought the album (10 tracks, each track costs 300fils. You can’t buy the whole album as of now, but it says in the FAQs section that the option will be available soon. It better be). I bought the album and am now listening to 2 of the songs.. the download rate is between 10kbps and 35kbps (I’m using ego 7.2).

I’m listening to Jowa Al Roh right now and the quality is superb. the song is 4:27 long, in MP3 format, 6.2MB, 192 Kbit/s. Obviously good quality. and comes with an ID3 tag with the picture of the album’s cover.

The whole site is very well designed and is easy to use. I love it.. but there is room for improvement. Hear me out if you have a say in this project:

1- I need to be able to tell which song is already downloaded. Like for example as I was downloading Fadhel’s songs, I lost track. There needs to be a sign or a label on the song which has been downloaded so i don’t download it again by mistake.

2- The lack of Mac software is not acceptable.

3- The song sampling is very fast, which I appreciate a lot, but sometimes the play button doesn’t work and I have to refresh a few times before I can start sampling the song.

4- I should be able to download the whole album as a package, coz it was a hassle downloading each track separately. I know it’s coming.. but still, it should be available from the start imo.

5- It says that once I download a song, I should receive an sms immediately, and yet, I downloaded 10 songs, wrote this post and still not a single sms.

I think the service is very good and that Zain did a great job with this whole thing.

Visit Zain Create and get the offer before it expires.

Update:

I was sent an email by Zain replying to the 5 points I wrote above. Here is their reply:

1-Noted will work on it you can check your downloads on my create section .

Finally , try out the streamed channels of Rotana( Audio & TV ) as well on the website & try to download the mobile application from web its compatible with Nokia & Sony Ericson symbian mobiles ,,, blackberry soon ….

Thanks Alia