NBK Update: NBK Rocks

I thought I had already posted this; apparently it was stuck in draft..my bad

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What: Related to last post

Time: A couple of hours after publishing the post

Who: NBK

I was contacted by the wife of the former Head of the Customer Service Manager of NBK. Now, she doesn’t work for NBK nor does her husband anymore. But I guess his sense of responsibility and care for NBK is so strong that it even his family members care.

So, she got all the details from me (oh, and get this, she DID NOT ask me for the EXACT TIME). She called her husband, who called his former colleagues and got them to sort out my problem.

I got home that night and noticed there was a comment by a customer service representative on my previous post and the next morning I checked my account and lo and behold, the money was there!!

I was shocked!!!

So, here’s the story of two managers: The present branch manager of the Salmiya branch tells me to go to the police to have my problem solved; the former Head of Customer Service of NBK solves it for me in less than half a working day.

It’s true, the reputation of any organization is in the hands of its people. I was about to go and close all my accounts at NBK because of the words of one manager, but now I believe they have the best customer service because of the actions of another.

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I also received a call from an employee at my NBK branch who apologies for the inconvenience…no not that same employee one who told me she can’t help me because it is too much paper work!! It was someone named Adel. Thank you Adel. And thank you NBK

I’ll be moving to London in 2 weeks and sincerely hope the staff over there are more like Adel and less like that Ms. EXACT TIME.

NBK sucks!!

Where: NBK Salmiya Branch

Who: NBK Manager

When: This morning

What did she say: It’s best you file a complaint against us at the police station!!

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Background to the story:

So I go to deposit KD 600 in my account using their ATM on a Wednesday night. After the stupid machine took my money it gives me an error signal and says I should contact my nearest branch. So I do. I go to my nearest branch after the Eid holiday and the customer representative takes all the details except for the EXACT TIME. I couldn’t remember the exact time, it was a whole week ago. All I remembered was that is was after dark on the Wednesday before Eid.

So she calls me the next day:

Her: Ma’am, which ATM was it?

Me: The one on the right.

She calls again the next day

Her: Ma’am, you have to remember the EXACT TIME.

Me: I have a terrible memory. I don’t remember the EXACT TIME.

Her: But You have to; I checked until 4 in the evening and couldn’t find it.

Me: We’ll, it was after 4; it was dark.

Her: Ma’aam I can’t check all those hours. It’s too much paper I have to print. Give me the EXACT TIME.

Me: So, you are telling me I have lost my KD 600 because it is too much work to find the error the ATM machine made?? What am I suppose to do now? Go to the central bank?

Her: no, no, no, need. But if I don’t find it you would have to talk to my manager.

She didn’t call me for 4 working days!!

So this morning I go to the bank again. After being made to wait for 35 minutes, another customer representative takes me to her manager.

NBK Manager: Ma’am, you have to tell us the EXACT TIME.

Me: [huge sigh]: If I knew the EXACT TIME, why do you think I would hide it from you??? I don’t know the EXACT TIME.

NBK Manager: Well, you have to try to remember it. We will try to search again from 3 pm to 3 am on Wednesday. But if we can’t find it, it’s best that you file a complaint with the police station!!

Okay, my question is this: How many errors do you get on that ATM per day? If it’s less than 10, it should take you 5 seconds to find it. If it’s more, there’s something wrong with your system, update it!!! I am going to leave Kuwait in about 3 weeks, I don’t have time to file a complaint!!!!

PS. I wonder who I pissed off that Karma is getting back at me by making my life cross paths with these imbeciles at NBK

Smell of Ramadan

Dear Mom,

I can’t believe how I never realized how much of my world was colored in by you. 262 days have passed since you have left and since then colors seem to have faded from my world. I refused to acknowledge Nowrooz this year but that was understandable since I still in a confused state—only 116 days had passed since your departure when Nowrooz arrived. But my birthday was going to be different; I was determined to celebrate my it with you. I went to the same restaurant you took me to last year. Remember when you had arranged for permission to leave the hospital for 4 hours. You told the doctor it was your daughter’s birthday and you had no intention of celebrating it in the hospital. You were in your wheelchair and all dressed up by the time I got to the hospital.

…But what am I doing? I was going to talk about Ramadan. … though I’m not sure what Ramadan? This is not Ramadan. Not the Ramadan I am used; I’m used to your Ramadan. Your Ramadan is:

1. Hearing you wake up Shahram for sahary
2. Hearing Iranian radio doa during sahary
3. Coming home 2 hours before iftar and seeing you watching Kuwaiti dramas
4. Hearing you summarize the episode even though the summary usually took longer to tell than the actual episode itself
5. Seeing you get all teary eyed and emotional over the dramas
6. Seeing you laugh with all your heart over the Kuwaiti comedies and translating each line for me
7. Seeing you warm up milk just before iftar
8. The dates, cheese, walnuts, sabzy (parsely and other green vegetables) and freshly baked bread
9. Getting all of us non-fasting people to breakfast with Shahram so he won’t feel lonely J
10. Seeing the colorful table you had set for dinner even though only two people usual fasted during Ramadan
11. Setting with you and watching Iranian dramas together
12. Laughing and crying together over the storylines

Now I come home and I hear no sound of Kuwaiti drama from behind the door. I turn the key, come in and stare at the silent dark tv screen. No color. I look at the dinning table. No sabzy, no walnut, no warm milk. No color. No sound of doa during Sahar. No color. Watching Iranian dramas but no crying. No color. Watching Iranian comedies but not laughing. No color.

Ramadan has no color without you.

UPDATE: (21st Aug)

1. I saw cream caramel yesterday in the supermarket. That’s another smell of Ramadan I will never feel again–the smell of freshly made cream carmel for iftar

Rangoli

Ok, here are a couple of things I love:

1. Great food (with the taste buds I have, almost all cuisine –except for seafood–is classified as great food in my book)

2. Great music (especially Persian and Indian)

3. Great ambiance (sth cozy, exotic, and soothing)

So put all 3 together and you have the restaurant I went to last night…and the bonus part is that the music was live…yep 4 musicians..and the take requests…I requested 1 song (zengi ek safar) and my mom 3 songs (an AMir Khan and Kaloj song from the film Fanaa; a song from the film Darkaan, and a sonu Nigaam song)…oh and the male singer sounds a bit like Kishor Kumar

Here are some pics and videos of Rangoli at Radisson Sas (they don’t have a website   )

PS. plz excuse the quality of the pics and video, they were taken with my mobile

Rangoli's Menu

First page of the menu

The musicians at work

The restaurant is build around the base of this dhow. The Dhow itself is another restaurant

Musicians getting ready

That butterfly was not edible

The entrance

The dessert

PS. I’ll upload the videos soon

Finally updating the post 24 Oct 2011:

The new 7 wonders of Nature: Iran’s Mount Damavand and Kuwait’s Failaka Island

Good old mother nature (or daddy nature for the sake of not sounding sexist) is taking part in a beauty pageant and is asking you guys for your vote

Since the site has a scary “INFORMATION ON REPRODUCING AND COPYING THIS RANKING INFORMATION” clause I am refraining from putting my copy and paste talent to good use here and will just c ‘n p their url: http://www.new7wonders.com/nature/en/liveranking/#bottom

I wanted to blindly vote for Mount Damavand from Iran and Failaka from Kuwait, but apparently I have 7 votes in the following categories and  have to cast all my 7 votes at once

Mount Damavan’s current ranking is 8 in group C and Failaka’s current ranking is 21 in group B

BUT for both of them their status is currently pending!!

OSC Status: Pending
We have been approached for the formation of an Official Supporting Committee (OSC) for this nominee. However, the applicant does not fulfill all the New7Wonders of Nature requirements for an OSC formation. If YOU are an official administrator of a public entity or could enroll such a public entity, please fill out the OSC fax application and fax it to us.
WITHOUT AN OFFICIAL SUPPORTING COMMITTEE (OSC), A NOMINEE CANNOT PARTICIPATE IN THE NEXT STAGES OF THE NEW7WONDERS OF NATURE CAMPAIGN.

Who’s the official supporting committe in Iran and Kuwait? Please fill in the form so I can continue with my bias voting process…please

Hectic week: Work and Sony Reader

Here’s a free word of advice: Be careful what you wonder about coz the opposite might just happen to you!!!

So a couple of posts back I wondered if it is normal to sleep 16 hours and still feel sleepy afterwards…well guess forces of nature thought it would be fun for me to discover what it would be like to sleep only 2.5 hours a night for 3 nights and NOT feel sleepy afterwards!!!

Yep, last week was kinda hectic, here are the highlights:

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Work-Related

Had 2 project proposals to write and prepare a sales presentation for a major deal

TIP: If you looking for good animated smartart templates and designs for a powerpoint presentation, check out microsoft’s own site. You can download them by going to the “New” option in powerpoint-scroll down to the presentation templates—choose “Example Slide Effects with Instructions”

What pissed me off: So my Windows-Vista decided to update itself and download a patch that keeps warning me that my office applications aren’t genuine…get off my back Vista—I Just paid KD 18 online for a genuine copy of Kaspersky and then realized I could have gotten it for : Kd 8 at the Infoconnect exhibition here in Kuwait…my days of paying for genuine softwares are over

My baby arrived

My Sony Reader 700 arrived … my poor baby was held at customs for more than 2 weeks and I had to pay around KD 25 to clear it…but who cares it’s here, it’s here

What pissed me off: Those people at customs had opened it so I wasn’t the first person it saw when it was taken out of the box…I hope it didn’t mistake that custom dude for its papa

TIP: If you are thinking of getting a reader but are stuck between a kindle and a Sony Reader; here’s the main difference between them:

Kindle wins coz–the glare on the sony is a LOT; the kindle’s display looks just like a paper page, hardly any reflection or glare

The Sony wins coz—you can view any pdf format and word documents. On the kindle you would have to convert the pdf and word files before transferring them which for me is quite a hassle.

TIP 2: So my mom also wants her own Sony Reader to read Persian books. There are absolutely no Iranian stores here in Kuwait that sells Persian books…so here’s a site that has a rich collection of Persian ebooks: www.parstech.org

Glare of Sony Reader 700

There are other minor differences between the Kindle 2 and Sony Reader 700:

1. Sony Reader is touch screen (imp for me)

2. Kindle 2 is a LOT slimmer and lighter than the Sony Reader 700 (but for me I like the weight of the Reader; makes it feel more like a book)

3. Kindle 2 has a 3G wireless feature (but it doesn’t work in Kuwait)

4. Kindle 2 has a built-in dictionary (wished Sony had this feature)

5. Kindle 2 has a Text-to-Speech feature; you can get the device to read any material to you (it’s not a human voice, don’t know about you but I am not too much into a robot reading me a bedtime story ;p)

Burger King ad is my sign

So lately I have been toying with the idea of becoming a vegetarian…first I decided to only stay away from meat on weekends, except for chicken, grounded meat and shawaremas

Two days ago I decided to switch the meat-allocated days and only have meat on weekends. No meat at all on weekdays…red meat that is–chicken is way too yummy to pass up.

As I was contemplating the possibility of just maybe thinking about going ahead with the diet switch I saw this ad in the ArabTimes:

WTH??!!! ONLY FOR MEN???!!! Seriously what kind of ad is that? Basically you are telling half the population to stay away from your product??!!! What was Burger King thinking??….but it was a sign form me…so mind made up…from now on I’ll be a vegetarian on weekdays…(except for chicken)

Cinemagic to be screening Baraka

Cinemagic has started their weekly screening again and their first film will be Baraka.

I saw Baraka over a year ago at the Grand Mosque of Kuwait…and I LOVED it. Here’s what I said then: [LINK TO POST ABOUT BARAKA]

Here’s more info on the screening from Cinemagic’s Facebook group:

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Date:	Thursday, January 29, 2009
Time:	7:00pm – 9:00pm
Location:	Cinemagic Rooftop Venue
Street:	Salem Al-Mubarak street
City/Town:	Salmiya, Kuwait

Phone:	……55109767
Email:	……mikodio@yahoo.com, nadia@cinemagics.com

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Cinemagic is delighted to invite you to our weekly screening program. Screenings take place at our new location in Old Salmiya, above LG Electronics.

This Week, we will be screening “BARAKA”.

An ancient Sufi word translated as a blessing or as the essence of life from which the evolutionary process unfolds.

The film is a work of art, which rates amongst the greatest achievements in the field. With the theme of man’s diversity and his impact upon the environment, the film is photographed on six continents in 24 countries including Tanzania, China, Brazil, Japan, Nepal, the U.S, Europe, and Saudi Arabia… It has no story and no dialogue, yet transcends geography and language to provide a sensual and spiritual experience that enables the viewer to look at the world in a totally different way purely through cinema along an ambient soundtrack by Michael Sterns who weaves the images together on a separate plain, producing a hypnotic pathway for the images to flow. Once you allow yourself to be pulled along by this current of sound, the images will link themselves together and the true revelations hidden within BARAKA will make themselves apparent. And what you may take from this film will solely be determined by the life experience you bring to it… may it be full of BARAKA.

For its part, Cinemagic Kuwait, is organizing these events as part of its efforts to contribute to the development of an internationally competitive Kuwaiti audio-visual production industry, partly by bringing the filmmakers and audiences together and by Increasing the public’s interest in – and appreciation for – the art of filmmaking.

As always, attendance is free of charge (but seating is limited). Snacks and refreshments will be served.

me bored…so i’m clipping away…

My mission last week was to create more hours in my day…

Well mission accomplished

I managed to add about 3 hours…

How?

By unsubscribing to almost 60 RSS feeds

Yep…my google reader is cluster free now….well almost…i still spend 2 hours a day on the big WWW…
I ‘ll get help soon…

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So here are a couple of articles/news/videos that broaden my horizons recently:

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1. THE GIRL WHO COLLAPSES EVERY TIME SHE LAUGHS

SHE looks like any other student with her life ahead of her – happy, relaxed and without a care

when laughter is NOT the best medicine

in the world.

But 20-year-old Kay Underwood could be paralysed if she gets a fit of the giggles.
The pretty architecture student, from Barrow upon Soar, Leicestershire, has cataplexy, which is a sudden weakening of the muscles brought on by strong emotions.

In Miss Underwood’s case, laughter is the cause, but other known triggers are excitement, anger and, in at least one bizarre case, smugness.

On one day alone, the University of Lincoln student collapsed some 40 times before she lost count.

Continue reading the story here

My reaction: I had a friend in primary school who used to pee whenever she laughed…i wonder if she had cataplexy….hmmmmmm?

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2. Chinese restaurant takes the cake for naming error

Hahahaha…a restaurant in China used an online translator and the ended up with this as the name of their restaurant:

My reaction: I should show this to my students who insist on using online translators

Full story here

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3. Top 15 Amazing Coincidences

Here are my fav one:

Revenge Killing

In 1883, Henry Ziegland broke off a relationship with his girlfriend who, out of distress, committed suicide. The girl’s enraged brother hunted down Ziegland and shot him. Believing he had killed Ziegland, the brother then took his own life. In fact, however, Ziegland had not been killed. The bullet had only grazed his face, lodging into a tree. It was a narrow escape. Years later, Ziegland decided to cut down the same tree, which still had the bullet in it. The huge tree seemed so formidable that he decided to blow it up with dynamite. The explosion propelled the bullet into Ziegland’s head, killing him.

LINK to article HERE

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4. Pizza Ghormeh sabzi

OMG…what genius…someone put my two favorite dishes together…pizza and ghormeh sabzi (or as they say here in Kuwait..shaabzi)…and he won 3rd place in a pizza competition

MY REACTION: I wonder if i cud get Dominos Pizza to make this…hmmmm

YES, I survived, I’m alive, I’m alive…Phew… NOPE, I didn’t die…well not yet anyway

Let me start off by saying I am an excellent driver…I really am…NONE and I mean NONE of my accidents were my fault (despite the police reports )…and NONE of any future accidents I’ll ever be in will be my fault

So, I leave the house at an hour I don’t normally leave, I take a route I don’t normally take, I make a turn that I don’t normally have to make…I hear a loud screeching noise, I turn and out of my window i see a view very similar to this view:

Now just imagine that you see a pic of a a woman driver (with much better hair than this driver) and she is in a White Jeep Liberty approaching me very very very fast

OH BOY, THIS IS THE END…

OH BOY, THIS IS THE END…

OH BOY, THIS IS THE END…

Well…since you are reading this so you probably know it wasn’t the end…but OH MY GOD…what a headache…I could have sworn after the clash my head flipped off my head and bounced off the window several times, then the roof and dashboard before clicking back on my neck.

OUCH WHAT A HEADACHE I HAVE NOW

[3 days later]

Now that my neurons had time to reconnect to my brain I have thunk out the following:

1. Why aren’t there any airbags on the side window…or better yet why aren’t car windows made of soft wobbly things so one would actually enjoy getting their head banged on…maybe something ticklish

2. Why can’t they make cars that detects when it is about to hit another car and then some kind of mechanism comes into play so it leap frogs over it. Aaahhh see if her car had leaped frogged over mine I would be sitting here grinning at the memory instead of going, ‘OUUUUUCCCCH MY HEAD, MOMMY DO SOMETHING” every 10 minutes.

3. So since the axiom goes: ‘Thou shall make a humongous life changing decision after a new death experience’ from now on I’m gonna drive a lot faster…seriously in both my accidents since coming to Kuwait my car was motionless…it’s other people that keep hitting me…so I saw the light…I’m enlightened… the message is that I gotta speed up!!

4. I’m gonna quit trying to lose weight…I mean if I were lighter I would have bounced around a lot more…guess that’s another advantage of being slightly over weight

BTW, I would like to thank all those wonderful people who came to my aid right after the accident. I guess the care I sensed in the voice of these complete strangers spiritually helped to ease the pain. So thank you