Happy New Year

Merry Christmas

Eidkum Mubarak

Hope everyone has a great week whatever your celebration is, and hope 2007 is MUCH better than the crappy year that was 2006!

I will be away for a few days now, I am posting this from Beirut … believe it or not I am probably the only Kuwaiti who has never been to Lebanon before!! Anyway, Im here now, for a friend’s engagement, and to be honest in two days I am absolutely loving Beirut and I have no clue why I haven’t been here before!

Ok, I hope everyone else has fun, and I will be back to blogging in less that a week…

Enjoy!

نحن حزب محبي السوشي لا نطلب منك أن تشاركنا محبته

ولكن نطلب منك ان لا تقلل من قيمه من يحبونه

نفتح يدينا اليك بالسلام

ونمد يد المصافحه

و ندعوك ثاني ايام العيد

بدعوة مفتوحه في طهران ماكي

و بدعوه خاصه من الشيف نجاديتو سوكوهامي

My cousin just came back from the US to visit, and he emailed me a while back saying that he has a unique birthday gift for me. Knowing him, when he says unique, it will be unique! So I saw him two days ago, and he gave me my gift.

I mentioned the movie UHF once before when talking about Weird Al’s video. One of the reasons I like the movie is that it reminds me alot of the time we used to spend at my grandparents house watching movies with my cousins. Also because its just plain stupid and crazy, my kind of comedy!

Anyway, the gift I got was a signed copy of the UHF DVD, personally signed by Weird Al Yankovic!

I couldn’t stop laughing at the gift!

Its been so long that I forgot that Fran Drescher from The Nanny was in the movie along with the once very popular and now infamous Michael Richards, Seinfeld’s Kramer!

Anyway, it really is a great gift, lots of nostalgia plus being a very personalized gift!

صفحة 52 من جريدة الوطن (يكرم السامع) قسم الفنون

link

Commenting on this would be too easy….so enjoy it as it is! lol

TIME magazine’s newest issue cover.

Their annual Person Of The Year is always highly anticipated and always causes controversy. Past winners have included the likes of Ghandi, JFK, Hitler, Arafat, Clinton, among many others (the full list is in the link) ..
This year, TIME has picked us as the person of the year. By us I mean myself by writing on this blog, and by you checking this blog, and by everyone else who has participated in changing the face of technology by ….

“bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it’s really a revolution.”

I think this is a perfect choice for this year. Blogs, YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia, Facebook, and so on, are just a few examples of the weapons used in this revolution by each of us. And they really have revolutionized the way we live.
This has been proven beyond doubt here in Kuwait especially during this past year. From the passing of the late Emir Shaikh Jaber to the issue of succession of power to the hugely popular issue of the voting districts, all these important events have been monitored very closely and followed and even sometimes initiated by us the Web 2.0 generation!

The effect of internet was so powerful that websites run by young Kuwaitis were able to change the future by getting the people involved and the members of parliament behind them in the Nabeeha 5 campaign. Also, during the days after the late Emir’s passing, the only source of updated, accurate, and unedited information (January) was the internet from Sa7at AlSafat’s website, which was also as influential in the nabeeha 5 campaign, along with many many websites which I cannot name otherwise I will spend another hour writing them all, but you know who you are!

The effect of the internet on how we live and think is something that always interested me, and this year has been exceptional in the effect it has had. You only need to take a quick look at the blogs or YouTube to see how much of an effect these individual contributions have had on our lives.

So, congratulations everyone on your win, and congratulations to TIME for picking a brave choice!

In my last post, I talked about how Qatar nationalized more than 30 athletes for the Asian games. Basically they got people from different regions for different sports, for example they brought Bulgarians for weightlifting, Kenyans for running, Chinese for chess, and so on (perfect stereotypes I know but its true).

Everyone in the comment section spoke disapprovingly of that action even some Qatari guests of the blog. It does not represent their country, how can someone support and feel proud of someone who they just bought for the games to represent their country!?

Anyway, that was the subject there … In today’s post, it is a very different subject but related in many ways. Today I want to talk about the opening and closing ceremonies for the Asian Games in Doha 2006.
To get straight to the point, it was a fairytale ceremony, and by far the best ceremony I have ever seen for any competition. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen..period! I only caught glimpses of the opening ceremony earlier this month, since I saw it was an opening ceremony I didn’t even bother to keep the channel on and switched to watch something else. When I read the newspapers the next day talk about how great it was I didn’t pay attention either because they say the same after any ceremony, especially if hosted by a GCC country. But when I went to work the next day, the few people who saw it couldn’t stop talking about how great it was. (I am downloading it at home as we speak).

Two days ago, I was lucky enough to catch the closing ceremonies from the start. I couldn’t stop watching in awe and I couldn’t stop sending messages to everyone I know about it! Almost every message I got back was “I want to cry”.

It was nothing less than spectacular! The show itself, the performers, the story, the TV directing, everything was amazing!

The quality of the production and the scale of the production was same as or better than Cirque de Soleil. Basically, if I knew the show would be that good, I wouldn’t mind traveling to Qatar just to attend that! The theme was a 1001 Nights with many of the stories being acted out on a very big scale!

A comment I kept getting from some people was that yeah thats what money gets. OK, that might be true, but it also takes guts to take the ceremonies to that level. It could also be considered as an investment to Qatar, for reasons that I will get to later. In Kuwait, we have money, but we will never ever come close to doing something spectacular like that!! I can predict exactly what any future ceremony will be like ….. I see 2000 kids from elementary school wearing dara3aat for girls with lots of gold and small boys wearing dishdasha and ghutra holding ribbons and waving while singing about Kuwait and the emir. I know we’ve all seen that before, but trust me it will not change in the near future if we had a choice!

When we had the Gulf Cup a few years ago here in Kuwait, the ceremony was a typical ceremony that could’ve been done in the 60s and no one would notice the difference. Also, the money allocated for the tournament was apparently moving around and ended up going to certain pockets, and the few members of parliaments raised the issue but nothing happened with diwan al mo7asaba as far as i know. So saying that they spent on it is not an excuse, we have money but we have thieves in charge who steal the money and dont give a shit about the image of the country as long as a half assed job is done and they remain in their chairs.

Picture from the opening ceremony at the Gulf Cup we hosted last.

Back to the investment by Qatar. They spent ALOT of money on this ceremony obviously (DAE, the company that was in charge of the show), but there are a couple of good reasons that this makes sense to them. First of all, every single person who saw the show anywhere in the world (the Asian games is the second largest event in size after the Olympics) is in shock and has a certain view of Qatar after the games as a very modern very young up and coming place. The image they got after the games cannot be measured in dollars. Another major reason this investment makes sense is that Doha is competing to host the 2016 Olympics, and they showed how well they can host an event, and in 10 years they can host an event 10 times bigger.

Speaking of the Olympics, the ceremony in Doha was so good that it got the China 2008 Olympic committee nervous (source 1, source 2). It will be very very hard for anyone to reach that level again!
I have nothing but total respect to the organizers of the games. Unfortunately the only thing that ruined the ceremony was Ahmad Al-Fahad attending and giving a speech!

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This whole issue of how Qatar has proved itself and put itself on the map made us get into a discussion the other day about Kuwait and its future.

Personally I am very pessimistic and see no reason for hope for us here. My opinion is that it will be very hard for us to convince our children in the future that Kuwait was once the leader in the region! We were exporting culture in poetry, music, tv shows, and we even had people coming from abroad to study in the great Kuwait University back in the 60s and 70s!!

We will be like Egypt. Our parents still love Egypt and see the greatness in it because they lived during that period and saw it at its prime, whereas our generation and younger generations have a totally different view of Egypt to the point where it doesnt seem like Egypt was once as great as they say! With all due respect to the people of Egypt, it is a country in a very bad shape and noone wants to be like them! Will our children see Kuwait as we see Egypt??

What do these people have in common??

Israf Khan Amer Salem ALBadri

James Kwalia Chepkurui Ziad Benlouaer
Hakan Nuraydin Richard Yatich
Chen Zhu Onèsphore Nkunzimana

Angel Popov Waleed Hanfi

Riaz Khan Souroush Khalili

Mohammad Siddiq Ahmed Abdulla

Mohammed Sayid Zandavi David Nyaga

Yani Marchokov Thomas Kosgei

Angel Ivanov Bekita Muwangua

James Kipkemboi Katui Badar Areef

Jafar Khan Sayedabbas Zandavi

Abduljabbar AlMaalem Daniel Kipkosgei

Sebastian Quintana Elijah Kosgei

  Abdulla Obaid Koni
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Yes, you guessed right….they are all athletes representing Qatar in the Asian games in Doha.

The athletes above come from - Kenya, China, Bulgaria, Tunisia, Pakistan, Sudan, Turkey, Iran, and probably alot more countries!

The names I have on are their real names, otherwise known as “other names” on their profile!!

Now I have nothing against nationalizing people who benefit your country, but there has to be a limit for the scale of something like that! To have 3 or 4 people is fine, but more than 30 athletes from abroad is pushing it! I didnt look at every single name in this list, and I didnt put all the others I saw….take ur time to browse through it and enjoy it!

I guess winning has to come at any cost!?

بعد ما يتأكد خبر ساحة الصفاة انشالله اليوم أو غدا …

أقترح من القيادة استخدام أسلوب جديد غير الـ”معلب” المكرر اللي المهم أنه ما يزعل أحد … على حساب الجودة و الإختصاص المؤهلات المطلوبة للوزارة المعنية

خلونا نجرب أسلوب جيش دولة فيجي بعد الانقلاب اللي شالوا فيه حكومتهم و طريقتهم المبتكرة لتكوين حكومة جديدة

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A friend of mine sent me a few pictures of a gift he got when he ordered some special meal at Hardeez.

Supposedly, when you order this meal, you get a free DVD movie. Sounds like a great deal! Right?

Ok, not only is that extremely cheap by Hardeez to have fake films as gifts, but it is also illegal! We keep hearing about laws and regulations and about the ministry raiding Hawalli and other places that sell films that break the copyright laws, what about something like this? A major food chain giving away cheap quality VCDs!