Posted By Yousef

macworld san francisco 2008 is 15 minutes away, I really hope there will be an update to their pro laptops line. most of the predictions are saying there won’t be any. I’m kinda curious as to what this year’s solgan “There is something in the air” means!? we’ll find out soon 😀

For LIVE coverage Click here or Here.

Mishary was never a coffee fan, although she alsways liked the crema that formed at the top of espresso served in the coffee shop near me. I thought he won’t ever be, but i guess i was wrong. Corp Coffee made her change her mind once and forever. Just the other day Mishary went (along with his wife, his brother and Me) and bought his first coffee machine after reading these pink coffee makers reviews. He bought a bigger machine than mine, it looks good and has some additional features. it also has a place to put the little coffee cups (or shots? what do they call them? liglasat liz’3ar malot ilgahwa!) and the machine keeps them warm too!

Here is a picture of the Machine

We went to the only branch in Kuwait, its located in SunCity in Shuwaikh (or 9un 9ity as some Kuwaitis like to pronounce it).. the branch is tiny but has a large variety of Machines and many accessories to go with them.

I was tempted to buy me some of the accessories like the capsules container (shown below)

The Nespresso employee was friendly and explained all about the machines and how to use them. He offered us some coffee samples and some chocolate afterwards (me and INM were very happy with the chocolates 😉 )

Mishary also wanted to buy the Aeroccino (coz the machine doesn’t have it built-in… IMO it is better to use a separate froth-maker than the ones built in, coz not only they do a better job, they’re easier to clean as well). but the froth maker was out of stock, so the guy offered to deliver it once they have it back in stock (great service)

tkasroonha bil3afya 😛

Nespresso‘s Official Site

Spaghetti with chicken and mushroom/cream sauce!

The Ingredients:

-Chicken Breast.
-Your favorite type of Pasta.
-Mushroom.
-Spinach.
-Habanero pepper.
-Mashed Garlic.
-Olive Oil.
-Whipping cream.
– 2 tsp parmesan cheese.

Important note: the portions of the ingredients are not specified coz it differs everytime i cook.. i came to understand that it all depends on how hungry i am 😀

Ok, now, first of all you boil your pasta and set it aside. then take out the biggest frying pan and start by using some olive oil (and butter, if you’re not worried about your cholesterol level), add the sliced chicken, stir until it becomes white.. add the mushroom and garlic, stir for another 5 minutes, add the habanero pepper (be sure to slice it and remove all the seeds, its extremely hot, so one piece is more than enough). pour in the whipping cream, season it with salt and white pepper, let it simmer for 5 minutes, add the parmesan cheese and then finally add your pasta.. oh and don’t forget to add the spinach leaves at the end.

it should look something like this

if you know the basics about cooking you wouldn’t face any problems, but if you’re beginner, then …. well… there is always hardee’s! 😀

Posted By Yousef

It was one interesting ride from Dubai to Kuwait! it took us 11.5 hours to enter the Kuwaiti borders. my friend INM and me got up yesterday at around 5:50am, we both took quick showers and headed out. we were on the highway on our way to abu dhabi by 7:15.

we reached UAE-Saudi borders by 11 o’clock. the guys at the border were very nice and friendly, we passed with no problems whatsoever.. we were very happy and relieved, and then the saudi border appeared…. I hate them! the way they talk, the way they look at you and the way they went through our bags. we were told to get the bags out and lay them on the bench. he looked in the car, opened every drawer and looked under everything, then took a look inside each one of our bags and then said something..

INM: here is the passport, you go, i’ll wait in the car.
Me: where? what did he say?
INM: he said he wants you to take a look at your laptop.
Me: Reallly? when? I didn’t hear him say that?
INM: no he did, he wants to take a look at your laptop.

I went there with my laptop and entered his office. 2 guys were in there, one sitting at a computer checking the passports and stuff and the other guy is sleeping. I said my Salam’s but nobody responded, so I said SALAM ALAIKOM! i woke up the sleeping beauty.. he took one look at me and left the room.. another guy came and started asking me questions:

Officer: open up the laptop & go to search….. (he was gazing at my screen like he’s never seen one before in his life)
Me: ok…
(1 minute went by and he’s just gazing with no expression on his face)
Me: you know this isn’t windows *pointing to the screen*.. this is Macintosh..
Officer: yes yes i know.. this is not windows.. this is VISTA! i know..
(STUPID STUPID!!)
Me: no this is something else.. not windows… not Vista…..
Officer:……………….. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Officer: ok now tell me, what do you have in there?
Me: music, movies, some college projects…
Officer: no no lets be honest here, just tell me whats in there..
Me: as I said, i have music, lots of music files and some college related…
Officer: i want you to be honest
Me: I am being honest.. you won’t find what you’re looking for in my laptop
(he gave an awkward smile)
Officer: yakhoy latwakhethna a7na ma6loob minnnah ina infatesh.. bla bla bla
Me: no its ok, you’re doing your job.
Officer: you know what, just stay here for a while and then leave, lets pretend that I went through your laptop, but just don’t tell anybody.
Me: ok, sure, i won’t….. (we’ll see about that 😛 )

We entered Saudi Arabia and INM took over the wheel. we were expecting to get bored and exhausted but that didn’t happen (we slept like dead people when we got home 😀 ) but when were on the highway we were mostly happy.

INM didn’t want to eat anywhere (he is a bit picky… just a tiny bit), and i wanted to experience the cheap food.. you know the kind of food you eat when you’re with traveling with your friends.. the grilled chicken and saltless rice? those kind of nice cheap food? I wasn’t about to give up this part of the adventure! so we stopped at one of the restaurant that had “stomach ache” plastered all over it… 15 minutes later we were back on the highway and this time i’m back on the wheel.

2 hours later we were here 🙂

30 minutes later we were here 😀

we reached kuwait just as the sun disappeared.. it was a very nice trip. thanks INM 🙂

I’m currently having problems keeping up with my study plan. The finals are here! 3 down and 3 more to go.. Fun is not an option for me until the end of the next week. Inshallah I’m going to be done with the exams by the 5th of january.

My friend INM is coming over on the 6th to help me out with some stuff, and we’re going to head back to Kuwait Via land transportation for a change 😀 we’re going to drive back to Kuwait! this should be interesting! 2 guys with not so many things in common, locked in a car for 12 hours… I can’t wait!

Posted By Yousef

This is weird! once you start working on your face, you’ll find out many things you’d like to change! lol its a very easy program, just go to their website and start drawing yourself. I enjoyed the experience, it was.. enlightening to say the least 😀

Note: The person above is supposed to be me, I tried my best to draw my face according to what i think i look like! (itha ma ashbaha fa ma77ad lah shi’3il!!)

Credit goes to Mark

Edit By Mishary:

Thanks Yousef for providing us with the link, i did my best o hatha ely 6ala3 weyay. a3teged it reflects me in the past not now, i think when i was in the jam3a? Right Yousef.

Interesting Facts about my favorite cartoon character:

Home: MARS
Spaceship: The Martian Maggot
Pet: Commander K-9 the space dog.
Plan: To blow up the earth with his Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator, since the Earth blocks his view of Venus.
Weapon: a small pistol that fires either bubbles of pliable plastic or energy beams.

Posted By Yousef

Finally, the Net is back!!!! sij laigalaw, you don’t know what you got till its gone! I’ve got so many things I want to do.. I want to check every site out there, check all of my emails and reply to them all (even the ones that don’t need replies) and download every possible file! I missed having the world at my finger tips! 😀

My internet problem is not going to be fixed soon. I called and complained many times, but today the nice lady ba6at’ha and told me to adjust to life without internet, she said “problems like this one never get solved quickly, its going to take up to 20 days to be solved”. yafar7ety! 😀 i’ve been having low connection for about 10 days before it stopped working, so, i’m guessing it’ll need another week to get fixed..

I’m in a cafe (pic shown above) in city center dubai. i just had lunch in the noodle house (yes again). Mishary, hold on tight! i’m gonna be posting a lot more.. SOON!… just wait for 10 more days 😛

We’re listed! At LAST! 😀  

You can check us out Here, Thanks to Nibaq.

We went to ALQasr Hotel in Dubai, we wanted to try new things! we’re tired from the same old same old cafes and restaurants. we went there and stayed in the lobby, I drank tea and my friend ordered their marshmallow Hot chocolate… they ran out of marshmallows, so he got none.. he he he..

Anyway, I took some pictures with my new Bayotiful camera, and I would really like your input. feel free to criticize and I’ll feel free to edit your criticism 😀

So, Mishary… does this look familiar? 😉

Aaand, this is my favorite 😀

The Hotel’s Link

SPOILERS AHEAD

The movie’s title was “The Golden Age”, a thing we never saw throughout the entire movie, there was no golden age in that movie. the whole freedom and prosperity were enjoyed after we left the theater, coz it ended when england prevailed. all we saw was the terror. the terror of a catholic king, trying to force the nations around him to submit to Christianity as He knew it, claiming its God’s will. see here is where the new (more efficient) form of terrorism first came to the scene IMO. not individual terrorist, not a group of people, But a whole nation of terrorists! killing and invading countries with the excuse of following God orders (more like following the nations’ interest imo). in the old age it was about whatever threatens Catholicism, and now its about what threatens certain nations’ national security… History repeats itself.. I guess..

Anyway! King philip of spain, a real catholic, wants to invade England and restore christianity in its most pure form. he’s doing so by plotting a very evil plan of letting Queen elizabeth execute Queen Mary of Scots (Mary Stewart) and by doing so, he’d find an excuse to invade and kill Q.Elizabeth. Mary was, according to the movie, writing secret letters to help plot the assassination of Queen Elizabeth. the letters were intercepted by Queen Elizabeth’s people and were eventually used against Mary, which ultimately led to a swift trial that ended with the beheading of Mary. And the war began.

overall I liked the movie and recommend it. I generally like movies that have historic events (I like them less if there were lots of killings), Cate blanchett did an oscar worthy job. She was nominated for an oscar in 1998 for the same part (this movie is a sequel, in case you don’t know).

Movie’s Site

We went, me and loco, to an egyptian restaurant, Grand Abu Shaqra. its my first time in Dubai’s branch, I went many times with my family and friends to Egypt’s branch. I liked it back then and I was curious as to how good its gonna be in Dubai. I remember loving their béchamel sauce.

We ordered many things.. loco ordered lentil soup (he always order soup for starters.. i7ib i7is inahwa birmothan). we shared makarona bil béchamel (which was amazing!). and then we ordered the main dishes 😛 2 white rice (shown above) and 2 tajins, molokhiya and bamya.

We liked it there (loco not so much). I liked the atmosphere (we sat out) and I liked the service. I would definitely go back there again 🙂

I loved using torrents when I first knew how to use them. but with time it got harder to find the files i want, especially with my service provider (Etisalat) blocking every useful website out there (they blocked flickr. the reason? still unknown!). I gotta finally find a way to change provider to the Simply Switch, like everybody around.

But now with the new Xtorrent, I can search for the files without looking for any torrent’s site, it has a built in search engine to find the best possible torrents. I just launch Xtorrent, type in the file I want and I’m done!

Search Everywhere,
Easily Xtorrent is all about search. Type keywords in and the results show up right in Xtorrent. One click later and you’re downloading your content. It’s ridiculously easy… and it’s only in Xtorrent.

Source: Xtorrent

we were still in sheikh zayed’s road at 7:25, so obviously we weren’t going to catch the check-in’s dead line (7:30). I told my sister in law to call the airport just to check if there were any delays on their plane’s schedule.. we were desperate! and my brother prayed for their flight to get delayed by 1 hour. and what do you know!! his prayers got answered! their flight was indeed delayed until 9:30! which means their check-in’s dead line was also pushed an hour to 8:30!

We called the airport again to check if the check-in too was open for an extra hour, just in case, and they said YES. so, now that we can finally breath better and take our time, we thought of using the extra time to go for a quick dinner at The Noodle House in the emirates towers. that plan was immediately shot down by my brother, “we don’t have much time!” he said.. 😀 saj wallah! lol *i don’t know what we were thinking, I guess we were just so happy with the delay*

at 8 o’clock we were at the airport saying our goodbyes. I called loco on my way back and told him all about the deadlines and how it all worked out at the end. 20 minutes later I was very close to my apartment and then.. BANG! I got this sms from my brother “we missed the plane”. I immediately called him and it turned that although the plane’s departure time was pushed back for an hour, the checkin time stayed the same!! it stayed at 7:30! the guy in the Jazeeraairways said that they should’ve checked in by 7:30 no matter how many hours the plane gets delayed…. can you believe this? I mean what if it got pushed for 4 hours?? why on earth would I want to check in and then wait in the duty free for HOURS to board the plane? jazeera airways suck. BOYCOTT anyone?

anyway, I turned back and picked them up. we wanted to waste some time until their 2am flight (on emirates airways this time) so we ended up having dinner in The Noodle House afterall! 3ala ra’ey ilmasal, “God works in mysterious ways” 😀

My brother and his wife are here for the weekend. I went out with them and we had dinner in Segreto, an italian restaurant in souk madinat jumeirah. the food was great! the service was nice but they were slow with the courses. they had to offer free “courtesy of the Chef” samples just to keep us from eating their heads off.

today my brother called me and told that he forgot his credit card in the restaurant! and the state of emergency began! I called the the restaurant many times and they assured me that they haven’t received any lost credit card. I even talked to our waiter and he too said that he’s sure there were no credit cards in the lost and found and that we took the card for sure. My brother had recently got that credit card after working so hard to improve his credit score, he used a company to help him with his credit score here is a full review seen here.

the calls were non stop between me, my brother and the restaurant.. but when my brother called me the last time, he started talking about how he never really put the card back in his wallet after paying.. and that he called the NBK and deactivated the card…. I was tracing back my thoughts as he was talking and thinking about the things we were doing while he was signing the bill..

i remember looking at his signature.. I was standing… we were ready to go.. but he was looking at the bill… i was looking at the credit card….. I picked up the card… the card is in my hands… i slipped the card in my pocket….

. . . YALALHAAWL!!!

Instinctively I rammed my hand in the pocket.. and there it was.. the card was in my pocket the whole time!

I finally bought it!!! 😀

Its not what I originally wanted.. not the D40x (which apparently a little less featured than its competitor’s the Canon EOS 400D, A.K.A. Rebel xti).

I went to Jacky’s the electronic store in Emirates mall yesterday. its the official agent for Nikon’s cameras. I went there and annoyed the hell out of the sales person, I asked about everything, the warranty, the features, the free gifts 😉 and spent 20 minutes just bargaining with him and trying my best to lower the price. he won ofcourse…

Earlier I talked to Mishary and his brother about which camera should I go with, coz seriously I was torn and couldn’t make up my mind. Mishary was very straight forward “the canon has more features? go with it!”, INM on the other hand was like “you’ve spent months just researching the Nikon and trying it in stores, so you should go with it.. you obviously want it more”.

later when I bought it Mishary said “congratulations”, while INM said “WHY!!! I wanted you to buy the Nikon so I could buy the Canon!!”. . . . thanks a lot INM for the precious advice… NOT! 😛

ultimately my thanks goes to Ahmad for his educated advice (even though he admitted his bias toward Canon himself) but I think I made the right choice 🙂

Here are the unpacking process

I played with it for hours. my first thoughts were “what have i gotten myself into!” but after the first hour I got used to it.. I still think there is a very LONG way for me and so many things to learn about my first DSLR! but I’m happy that I can finally begin the real learning process. 😀

140 slides to be studied within 2 days. i studied them and on the day of the exam i forgot them all 😀 how nice! Thank God the exam was done with yesterday and I only have to live with the consoling fact that EVERYONE else in the exam did as bad or worse as I did 😀

Ellen was interviewing Jenna Bush, the president’s daughter. She asked her if she can call her parents at any time and Jenna said that she can. Ellen then put her on the spot by handing her the phone and asked her call her “parents”! Jenna was worried about getting in trouble.. President Bush took it very well.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH5fHOGst-E&rel=1]