Yesterday, I was trying to waste sometime before the screening of shewrite’s dad documentary which kicked major ass (wait for the review). I was at Sultan Center (sharq) doing some shopping, I picked the may and june issues of Icon. The may Issue got a really nice feature on Jasper Goodall, One of my favorite Illustrators.

This is not a design-related post, or wait, maybe it is.

I was looking around, which I don’t usually do in Sultan, and I found a very interesting product arrangments. The yeast shelf is placed exactly in front of the grape, apple and peach juice bottles shelf. Coincedence? I think NOT.

Dear Readers,

Excuse me for how personal this post might be but I need some advice.

I’m facing a probelm and I have no idea what to do. My family forced me into a deal that I’m not sure about. They are asking me to give them a BIG big chunk of salary to ’save’ it. The problem here is, I’m not sure all that money will go to me. It will most probably go as in investment in my family business but (according to them) I will be asked if I agree or not. Of course I can say ‘NO’ but you all know what will that make me look like, the guy who’s turning his back to his family. It’s not like they ‘need’ the money, the just ‘want’ more money.

Saving in general is a very good idea in this very unstapple world but It doesn’t have to be this big, It’s almost 80% of my fucking salary. I don’t have any intentions in getting married, at least for the next 5 years and I’m not planning on opening any major business too. I have been freelancing for the whole past year and I passed by some very dry times. I ‘need’ this salary, you really have to see my car or that ‘bashaar’ mobile I’m still using to know how much I need that salary.

Their execuse is, I blow my salary on ’silly things’ like books, magazines, food and musical instruments. Well, I live a very different lifestyle from my family’s, and If they think these things are silly, well, it’s up to them but these things are the life for me and I can’t promise them I won’t buy more of these things with my new salary.

Now I was given the option to say ‘no’ to the whole deal [and ma raa7 nez3al] but I know for fact that once I do that I will be alienated, I will be an ‘outsider’ and they will never think of me as a memeber of this family. I know becasue it happenned before, and I don’t want to go through the same experience again.

As the end of the month gets closer and closer I find myself helpless and I know I will be fucked if I agreed to this. They did their homework and they were like “OK, You need this much for the car gas and this much for the phone bills … and hey check this out we are giving you extra 40 KDs to play with. This is REALLY more than enough”

So? what do you think I should do?

This Song is dedicated to Amunki.

She’s leaving us (again), Show her some love and give her hugs and kisses.

We will miss you, and hey, one day … one day, I will make that CD :p

“Dat fucker izza fucker” (in all seriousness)
Friend of mine

So? What do you think?
I’m still getting mixed comments but mostly they are positive. If I get enough requests I will post a real picture.

P.S: for those who will say ‘you still got the afro’, well, I used to have a long curly hair but I didn’t update the image.

Inspired by playa hater’s post

I thought this is funny

This is waaaay funnier (from arab times)

Actually after some thinking I can’t fnd what makes it really funny.

I don’t believe in banks, I always keep my money in my pocket. I haven’t used an ATM card in years.

I don’t believe in closets, my clothes are always on the floor.

I think I’m developing a crush on maha al ghunaim.
You might not appreciate her beauty in this picture, If so, check out her photos when she got awarded from alwatan newspaper.

Daaaaamn! (is she single? is she looking?)

One more chick tata thinks she’s hot too

Been living inside this for the whole past year, and I’m still loving it.

Ladies and gents, I want to intorduce you to the ‘Tfeh’ brand. The first time I saw this brand was on my first day at work, as a car bumper sticker. It made me really think, I thought it’s hilarious.

My creative director been selling all kinds of things with the ‘tfeh’ on them back in lebaanon. T-shirts, mugs, lighters, beach towels and that kind of stuff.

Just recently he printed a limited edition patch of 100 of the ‘Tfeh’ t-shirts. They are availble in black and navy blue.

They are for 5 KDs.

I will be taking your orders.
Hurry up, they will get sold out like hot cakes.

P.S: I didn’t design the t-shirts, I’m just getting the word out.

People, I need a big big favor from you.

I need some nice and big images of the following people:

- Waleed Al Awadhi (the filmmaker)
- Ziad Al Refai (the guy who climbed everst?)
- Lulwa Al Qatami (the women’s rights activist)
- Roula Dashti (the women’s rights activist/business woman’
- Al Ejairi (the guy who predicts when is ramadhan)
- Sarah Akbar (the only woman in the team of the oil fields fire fighters)

Feel free to suggest other people to add to this list, We need influnitial kuwaiti figures who have ‘challenged’ something.

Thanks a bunch

Mohammad Khan is giving a lecture TODAY (I don’t know about what) at Kuwait Cinema Club. He directed a lot of big arabic movies (I can only remeber ’supermarket’ and ‘ayaam nasser’).

I don’t have much details really but I heard it will start at 8.30 PM

KCC is located at the geblyah school, across the street from the National Museum/Planetarium’s main entrance. Here’s how I go to that place, I leave majlis al ummah on my right hand (gulf road, yes) and take the right turn next to this old building (national museum, I guess) I park my car there and go to that little building with ‘majliss el funnon wa aladaab’ or whatever their name is.

Sorry for how sketchy this post is, I’m at work and I got loads of stuff to do.

Supposed to be really good, the guy is really famous (if you know shit about arabic cinema).

I’m supposed to post this, like, 3 weeks ago. Anyway, here we go again. Take a deep breath and read.

Last week I wrote this: Today I left work late, I finished a whole campaign (conception and design). The creative director said something really nice, ‘I will only share with you the glory, other than that it’s your baby’.

There’s only one coffee shop/ restaurant close to where I work. On my first visit I think I saw a blogger who kept giving me looks and shit (yes that guy who got his picture on his profile, I think it was him) and to my surprise there was an anonymous reader of my blog who surprised me later on that night by telling me that s/he saw me and I was wearing that green t-shirt and so and so.

It seems like this spot is a very ‘gez’ hot spot, today while I was stuffing my face with that smoked turkey sandwich there were two ‘monaqbat’ but they weirded the hell out of me. When I entered the place there were two chicks in black however their faces were visible, however, by the time I got my order and I settled on my table I noticed the chicks were replaced by a couple of face-covered ninjas.

Now I’m eating and reading the paper and I lookup and I see one chick with a covered face but the other is not. I was like ‘huh?’ I went back to my paper and ate the rest of the sandwich when I was done I looked up again and I saw that the two chicks exchanged places and the face-covered chick uncovered her face and vice versa. All the while I was like ‘WTF?’ ‘What’s happening here?’ ya know … I mean what are covering exactly? I just saw your face, which isn’t that good BTW … but when you put the niqab I might get fooled by how sexy your eyes might have looked. (so that’s how it works here, hmmm).

Of course they made me feel like a piece of meat starring at me all the time and giving these wicked smiles when their faces were uncovered … fucking tricky (not like they can avoid starring at me, it just comes with the tata). I knew I had the chance to get them both if I wanted, I just didn’t want to degrade myself to their level.

The right button on my PC’s mouse is not working and I’m supposed to be used to the one button mouse (being a mac user and all) but you have no idea how much it sucks to use one button in windows.

I was invited to a bedouin wedding recently. It rocked (with all the 6eeran and the samree band), there were also some improvisational tribal crazy-ass bedouin dance where a 20 something men make a circle and start saying stuff like ‘hayoh hayoh hayoh’ in a very weird way and there are some random people screaming short screams similar to war screams more like monkeys. There would be two guys inside the circle carrying swords and doing some moves, they were pulling some awkward facial expressions. I myself did some sword dancing too (outside the circle) it was fun.

What’s with people coming up to you and start fixing your ghetra without your permission? I was like ‘just tell me there’s something and I will fix it’, It’s rude and no you’re not doing me a favor you’re just making me look more stupid, thanks. It’s just like another guy fixing your tie without asking for your permission. Gay? Well, there were men everywhere, only men but it’s also bedouin, so … yeah dude that’s in jahra so … oh whatever.

Of course there was few gun shootings here and there, which I still can’t understand. I mean people are happy and enjoying the company and this asshole is shooting this gun he can hardly control and scaring the shit out of them. One more thing I can’t understand how many assholes stand around him, ‘look at me look at me, I’m a bad ass I’m not afraid of all this shooting. look at me I might get shot right now but I don’t care because I’m this stupid’.

A while ago I got this ‘blogger invite’ to be a member of this new blog called ‘A whole lot of gerger’. I tried to access the blog but I think it was deleted or something. I wonder who’s behind this blog and why do they want me to ‘gerger’ with them.

YES there was a celebrity blogger, and he even signed my moleskine. He wrote ‘The Best Bloggers’ Whatever that meant, I didn’t ask for something specific and he seemed out of ideas. I didn’t feel like asking him to write something else, I was kinda embarrassed for asking him to sign in the first place.

I was shocked that this guy is a blogger, I mean he’s soooo not blogger if you know what I mean. I got a lot of questions asking what kind of ‘celebrity’ he is. Well I can tell you that, He’s famous in the arab world and he’s known in europe in certain circles. I can’t give more hints than that, he was concerned about his Identity and he wasn’t willing to share it with people he never met. I respect that and so should YOU.

On a funnier note, I almost drove over this guy the other day and thanks god, he noticed the car. I dunno where he were looking but he stepped back to the pavement. Now the funny part, I somehow recognized his face, he looked so familiar. The following conversation took place:

me: 7amdelah 3ala el salamah
him: allah yesalmek
me: ta3aaal … a3rfek entah
him: … (huh?)

we shake hands

me: Are you a blogger?
him: No (very assuringly)
me: mashee … ya36eek el 3afyah

Did you notice?

Few reasons why my new job kicks major ass:

1- Fairouz is pumping almost all the time.
2- There’s a big ass library full of vintage graphic deign books, shit from the seventies and eighties. This is like a dream come true. ( gotta read them all) I will try to take pics of the covers and some inside pages sometime soon (within a year from now)
3- No restaurants around (except for that coffee-shop). One more reason why I should make my own ‘healthy’ food at home and bring it with me.
4- I get to do all the fun/ creative jobs. Story-boarding, copy writing, Illustration and conceptualizing for ad campaigns in addition to all the regular duties of a graphic designer.

Thanks to everybody who commented on that ‘art post’, that was fun, we all should do this sometime soon. Next time you should respond to the replies I made to your question. I will just take silence as an agreement with the points I made. Also, the beautiful people who dedicated a whole post for me, big thanks for the free publicity and hey *psst* (when Gigi signs her comments with questioningly, it only means one thing … she’s waiting for answers).

I was working on some juice packaging project with a fellow designer, he’s lebanese, I asked him what are the fruits we’re supposed to make options according to. he said ‘laymoon (lemon), ananaas (pineapple) and teffa7 (apple)’ so I started working on them. By the time I was almost done with them he goes ‘laaa’ … ‘laymoon hellow, moosh 7amed (sweet lemon, not sour). I was like ‘huh?’, he explained, ‘bord2aal … orange’. I said ‘you told me lemon’ (with a blank face) then he was like ‘oh yeah we call it lemon too but we differentiate it by saying ’sweet’. I wasn’t really mad, actually I laughed my ass off on the whole thing.

Nice guy, he just need to stop listening to 3asee el 7ellani.

The meeting was cool, the usual, we sat and talked and had fun. I noticed something, once we leave (usually all together at the same time) we meet down the parking and start another meeting and start discussing stuff again.

The other day, on my way to work, I got a flat tire. It wasn’t ‘flat’, it was totally torn. Thanks god there were some mechanic nearby. So after changing the tire, I continued my trip to the office. I was about to take this roundabout when this guy with a big ass car drives in front of me, I had to stop, the guy behind me crashed into my car. It wasn’t major ‘crash’ but I didn’t know that till I got off my car and checked it out. I asked him to stop, he did. I was like ‘7amdellah 3ala el salmah, 3asa ma shar …. feekum shay?’ … and he said ‘no’ … so I was looking at my car, and checking it out and he was like ‘zain eshtabi al7een?’

Can you imagine? He actually said that.

End of the story, I had to let him go … there was no point in wasting our time and there wasn’t really any serious damage. Also there was no point of teaching manners to someone who had dried sa3abeel (saliva) on his mouth and a project of a growing beard.

Two days ago, I got the most weird SMS.

” ‘7u6bat 3aysha esha3ah “

I was lik ‘huh?’ but I thought it’s a wrong number case.

I coudn’t resist and I replied with

7elfay, min sijjich?

Of course they didn’t reply. :p

can you believe I’m using Mac OS 9.2 at work?

I finally upgraded to tiger, don’t ask me how it went cuz I have no idea. While installing the thing, I got a message saying there’s scratches and finger prints on the CD, which might not be safe to install from. Threre were an option to ignore this message and continue, which I did (I don’t have access to any other copies). I reached, like, 50% of the installation process and I got a message saying I will have to restart and try installing again, which i did. Tried it again, got the same message.

So I gave up and decided to put the whole upgrade on hold till I get a better copy or maybe an original one. I quit the installer and I got asked which disc should i use to boot next time the computer starts working. There were the DVD I was installing from and the HD which somehow got renamed to Mac 10.4 or something like that. I choosed the HD and … data … you got tiger.

It’s kinda glitchy but it’s working. I will have to do a proper upgrade, one day.

Oh my god, you reached this line? Get a life, Write a post, watch some porn and save the world.

Yep, the sixth. Now there’s this big hole between my teeth, It looks like someone just shot me with a fucking shotgun. I can’t imagine how I will get used this ‘hole’, will it ever heal?

Just a little something to remind you guys about the bloggers meeting today at 5:30 at Second Cup near kuwait stock market.

Boys and girls and everybody in between are more than welcome to join us but please remember this is a BLOGGERS meeting.

Here’s a little sketchy map for ya