From June 8th 2005 … More than a year and a half ago -

المنتخب الدولة

منتخبنا و رياضتنا كلها مثل وزاراتنا و مثل ثقافتنا و مثل فننا و مثل تعليمنا و مثل أي مجال آخر يحتاج الى تخطيط من الدولة …… عايش على البركة

دولتنا ديناصور يحتضر! العنصر الوحيد الحي في بلدنا هو الاقتصاد. و للأسف ليس بسبب التخطيط العظيم، بل لأسباب خارجية كارتفاع سعر النفط و انفتاح السوق العراقي

حال منتخبنا حال أي وزارة، اذا ذهبت لأي وزارة لوجدت فوضى و سوء ادارة و انعدام تخطيط و عدم وجود أي أهداف!! من ستلوم؟ الموظف الذي يستقبلك و يأخذ أوراقك؟ اذا كانت المسألة بهذه البساطة لتعدل الوضع بمجرد استبداله. و لكن أن يبقى الوضع في جميع الوزارات هكذا باستمرار فهو بالطبع مسؤولية الادارة! الحال نفسه مع المنتخب، سيتغير الفريق و سيتغير المدرب و لكن الفشل سيستمر!! و للأسف، المسؤولين عن تدهور الرياضة الكويتية و وضعها في الحضيض معصومين عن الخطأ، و النقد كفر أو انتحار مهني

سؤال بسيط، ماذا سيقنع المسؤولين عن الكرة الكويتية بالتنحي عن كراسيهم؟؟ كأس الخليج في أرضنا و حصلنا على المركز الأخير بدون احتساب اليمن!! الكأس التالي احرزنا المركز الرابع!! خسارة مذلة من المنتخب السعودي 3-0 مع الرأفة!! خسارة أقوى ب4-0 أمام كوريا على أرضنا و أمام جمهورنا!! احراز هدفين و دخول 10 أهداف علينا في خمس مباريات بالتصفيات! نوادينا تعتبر لقمة سائغة لأي فريق عربي أو آسيوي! منشآتنا الرياضية تقارن ببنغلادش! ملعبنا لاستضافة كأس الخليج يعتبر أسوأ ملعب استضاف البطولة منذ دورات عديدة!! وعدونا ببناء استاد جابر الرياضي ليستضيف كأس الخليج في ديسمبر 2003! و ها نحن لا زلنا ننتظر! اخفاقات متتالية تزداد سوءا كل عام!!؟

هل يعقل أن تكون الكويت، التي كانت رائدة في المنطقة، أن تكون الآن مثالا للفشل و التدهور في الرياضة و المسرح و التعليم و … و… و؟!؟

الطاقات موجودة، و الطموح متوفر، و الشباب الكويتي متعلم أكثر من غيره، و من الممكن أن يحقق المعجزات اذا توفر الجو المناسب. لكن للأسف .. الدولة ديناصور متهالك، و انعدام النظرة المستقبلية المتفتحة محبط

من سيطلق رصاصة الرحمة؟ و متى؟

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I wrote that article more than a year and a half ago, I was in Qatar for work, and I remember watching the Kuwait - Korea game alone in my hotel room. It was a 4-0 loss, I was devastated and I remember I had so much anger in me. I went straight to an internet cafe across the road and I wrote this down as quickly as possible without really thinking beforehand, I was just very angry.

Since then, we have -

Continuing on the environment theme…..

I went to the jam3iya a couple of days ago, and bought alot some stuff for the house. I was on the phone at the cashiers and didn’t pay attention to when the guy was putting my stuff in the plastic bags. When I got back home, I was carrying the stuff from my car to the apartment, and I got worried that I bought alot more than I needed from the number of plastic bags. I carried the stuff back and was shocked to see how they filled every bag!

One plastic bag has 2 SMALL bottles of water, another had a bar of chocolate and 1 yogurt, another had a ketchup bottle and another condiment! All the stuff from the three bags could’ve been put into one bag with more room for something else too!

Why the waste?? I noticed the guys who put the stuff in bags are really more than happy to use as many bags as possible, as if the more bags, the more work they seem to have done!

Plastic bags are major problem for our environment. You see them all the time floating around the water whenever you’re in the sea. They are non-biodegradable, which means “Material that, left to itself, will be NOT be decomposed by natural processes.“  which is obviously a major problem in the long term.

All around the world, countries are taking steps in getting rid of these non-biodegradable plastic bags. France, Ireland, and South Africa are just a few heading in that direction. Plastic bag reduction programs are in effect in several places around the world too.
A simple solution to this problem here for us is to add some sort of incentive to coops from the union of coop society, or whoever supplies them with the plastic bags. The less bags you order as a percentage, the more you get rewarded by the government as encouragement for environmentally friendly programs. It would cut their cost as a coop and it would help the environment!

In other related news, Marks & Spencer announced earlier this week that they will spend $450 million in the next few years in an effort to become more environmentally friendly.  Their announcement said that they will -

cut energy consumption, stock more products made from recycled materials and buy foods closer to home, reducing air freight.

Tesco, another giant UK retailer, followed suit saying that they will also increase their efforts.

Obviously I dont expect our coops to take drastic measures, but I hope someone like The Sultan Center, City Center, and the upcoming Carrefoure take small steps, at least when it comes to plastic. Carrefoure were part of an effort in Singapore in encouraging the use of reusable bags instead of plastic.

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Im glad to say that I have cut down alot on my electricity use at home in recent weeks, and hope to continue with that more as time passes.

Again, everyone can make a difference, at the jam3iya, just tell the guy to put more stuff in each bag, they will do it and you would have helped. I asked yesterday at Sultan Center and the guy did it, and it was actually just easier to carry too!
Again, look at how we contribute to pollution as Kuwaitis, and close the light bulbs you don’t need!
earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/country_profiles/cli_cou_414.pdf

* Jan 15th UPDATE*

First of all, thanks for all the great responses either here on comments, through email, or even by phone. A friend of mine who could be called an environmentalist and is studying the field sent me this, its worth reading -

Individual Kuwaitis are HUGE (relatively) contributers to global warming. Kuwait has the THIRD highest CO2 emissions per capita (after Qatar and UAE). Don’t go blaming the oil industry, its not just them. In fact its mostly the free electricity hand outs that Kuwaitis get. Don’t take my word, here is data: Out of the 65 million metric tons of CO2 that Kuwait emitted in 1999, the largest portion, 21 million metric tons, were from “public electricity, heating production and auto-producers”. We don’t need heating (yet), and I have definitely never seen a made in Kuwait Car…so? Please turn the lights off.

As for CO2 from transportation and the effect of the individual Kuwaiti: Do you remember the last time you visited a household that only had one car? only two? only three?!?

Source: earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/country_profiles/cli_cou_414.pdf
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Its the middle of January, and we’re getting a really really cold winter. Colder than usual I think but its nice, and checking the forecasts on weather.com, next week is supposed to be around 2 or 3 degrees.

On BBC radio this past week, small bits of news also scare me more. They had an interview a couple of days ago with a British vine yard owner, who was talking about how much he loves this global warming, and how the hot weather is making him grow better grapes for the wines. Then today they were talking about how a chess match between a guy from London and a guy from Moscow might be ruined because the ice sculptures used as chess pieces kept melting!! In the middle of January!!

So I checked the weather in both countries. In London, its 10 degrees, and the 10 day forecast shows it to be warmer than Kuwait!! In Moscow, its 5 degrees! We’re talking about MOSCOW!! scary shit! Actually, another proof of how scary it is, Moscow is turning into a tourist destination, even in winter! Also, someone I know just came back from Boston, and they were saying that last week people were wearing shorts, it was 70degrees F, which means 21 degrees Celsius!!
If you didn’t think 2006 was bad, think again. It was the hottest year ever in the US, according to their National Climate Data Center.

This has continued and the effect has been felt mostly by ski resorts in Europe and the US. In Switzerland, ski trials for World Cup have been canceled for lack of snow, and an excerpt from the article says -

“Waiters in Vienna, where the mercury rose to 60 degrees — just edging out Rome’s 59 degrees — put tables and chairs back out on the sidewalks. Bulgarians basked in the sun on balmy 62-degree Black Sea beaches.”

In the US and Canada, the ski resorts are also counting their losses. (article from Canada, article from US). It is getting so bad that scientists are saying that you should ski now as much as you can, because by 2075, the skiing season might shrink to only 2 months as this increase in temperature continues.

On the BBC, they had an interview with a real estate analyst in Spain, who was talking about how this temperature shift might be disastrous to the Spanish economy. Spain has been growing and has built more housing units per year than any other country in Europe. If the weather stays warm in countries like England and others, the demand for a summer home in places like Spain is likely to decrease. Also, the temperature rise is affecting the summer weather, making it unbearable for tourists, which could kill off tourism appeal in Spain.

Even animals are getting affected by this weird weather! This excerpt tells more -

“With unusually high temperatures, dazed bears in Moscow zoo have just dropped off for winter hibernation after months of insomnia while peacocks in a Bulgarian zoo have laid eggs, reckoning spring has long since arrived.”

African countries have had longer months of flooding, much more than the usual.

For us in Kuwait, global warming effects us in more ways than just weather. We were so happy to see oil prices rise to $70 and beyond in the past two years. In recent months, oil prices has slowly been going lower and lower. Even with the decrease in output by OPEC, prices have been going lower, largely because of the warm temperatures, which mean less demand for oil in many European countries as well as the US. The price of a barrel now is less than $53! To see how much of an effect weather has on oil prices, in the past two weeks alone, the price of oil has gone down 11%!
Things are getting bad. I’m really extremely worried about our future and the future of our children. I didn’t even see Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” yet! I know this sounds cliché, but we really do need to do our part as individuals in trying to save our environment. Also, we need to get this issue out there for our politicians. They seem not to even consider this important subject and its effects on our future! We need to get active in seeking ways to minimize the pollution we produce as a country! Just look at Kuwait City’s skyline on a clear day. You will see a very clear smog crowd coming from the chimneys at Doha, which is not that far from where many residential areas are.

After the mysterious dead fish incident a couple of years ago, and the latest reports of our local fish being cancerous, and looking at some pictures of what is being dumped in our sea continuously, this is a very serious issue that will only get worse in Kuwait if we dont start implementing some drastic measures!

These are some pics I took from the new google earth, unlike the old google maps which was limited when I posted the earlier post in 2005 linked in the earlier paragraph.

The point of this post is to try and make everyone think about how serious this issue is. Please don’t think that one person can’t make a difference. There are many ways to do that personally. Trying is the first step.

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Thx to Judy Abbott for this link, sign the petition -

http://www.environmentaldefense.org/campaigns.cfm

heh, well not really, but its good to think so.

In today’s issue, they had 2 pages about سوق الخضار the fruits and vegetable market.

Where did I see someone write about this very recently?? hmmmm?

This is one I uploaded after receiving it by email. I’ve heard about it but haven’t seen it since the movie came out. Very interesting clip from “The Long Kiss Goodnight” (which came out in 1996) that has alot in common with the 9/11 attacks (which happened in 2001)-

Clip from The Long Kiss Goodnight

The second one is my second favorite video after the “Amateur” video. It’s called Tony vs. Paul, and created by 2 guys who used stop motion (taking many many many pictures and then using them after each other to look like an animation) and it took them 2 months of making and editing it -
Tony vs. Paul
Have a nice weekend

خسران بالبورصة؟؟

تحب الأكل؟؟

تفهم بالخضرة أكثر من الأسهم؟؟

أسعار بورصة الخضار -

الأسعار اليومية للخضار - الإتحاد الكويتي للمزارعين

الأسعار اليومية للمحاصيل المدعومة - الهيئة العامة لشئون الزراعة و الثروة السمكية

MASHAER, a company listed in the Kuwait Stock Exchange and specializing in providing Hajj and Umrah services, has had its website hacked and redirected to Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website.

click on image to zoom in

Back at work, and it feels like being dragged to school when we were kids. Not a good day at all.

Anyway, I have a question that I hope some of you engineers can solve for me. It is something that has always baffled me and annoyed me.

Why is it that everytime you’re driving down King Faisal highway (the one between Adailiya and Khaldiya), and get closer to Kuwait City, once you reach the first ring road, your FM radio stations get static, especially BBC and 87.9. Also, very often, whenever Im using the phone there, I get disconnected and the signal goes down to 0 all of a sudden!

Is it because of the Ministry of Information? the Liberation Tower?

Just a stupid question on a stupid day. It really annoys me.

So we got back 3 days go from Beirut, but Ive been sleeping since then so didn’t feel like posting.

Anyway, here are some pics of my trips -

The cliche picture that everyone has to take when there

This picture is taken from where the demonstrators are camped out, they are behind us, for some reason I didn’t take a pic.

This is a view of where AlHariri was assassinated. You can see the huge crater left from the blast!

The rest of the trip was partying and food. LOTS of both.
Comments -

1. I love Beirut.
2. Lebanese people know how to have fun. We were there from the 27th to the 30th, you had thousands of people in tents demonstrating against the government, but at night you can barely find reservations anywhere! People love to party and have a good time! And unlike Dubai, almost everyone is local (very few tourists bcz of demonstrations)!
3. I love the mix of the old and and the new. You walk into alleys that look extremely shady, only to find a restaurant or bar that could be in New York.
4. I feel like an idiot for never going to Beirut before this trip.
5. I love Beirut.

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On a side note, when we got back, we arrived at around 8 pm I think, the temperature was around 7 degrees, and the wind chill factor was freezing! Since I parked at the long term parking, we took the little golfcart/trolley things, and both my wife and myself had the scarf covering our faces. The poor driver was wearing a white shirt and very thick gloves, with one hand on the wheel and the other covering his left ear! So I asked him why the hell isn’t he wearing a jacket in this freezing weather…he said the company doesn’t allow them to wear anything over their uniform!!!

Thats just incredible and inhumane! I hope whoever made that decision at United Projects Company (a subsidiary of KIPCO) gets stuck inside a fridge without a jacket! Seriously, if anyone knows someone at that company, please tell them about this…