Social Slave

360 Mall won RLI’s “International Shopping Centre of the year” Award for 2011. The Global Awards ceremony was held at the Museum of National History in London on 9th June and the mall designers, RTKL Associates Inc. also won the “Designer of the Year” Award in a separate category.
 
The award recognized the contribution made by 360 Mall in design and operational excellence and they won against three international finalists: National Harbour – Washington, USA, Forum Istanbul – Turkey and Odysseum – France.

Just read this bit of news online that over 150 passengers were stranded at the Kuwait Airport for about four days because the Kuwait Airways flights to Mumbai got cancelled due to some technical problems. These were transit passengers flying in from different countries who had a connecting flight through Kuwait and on top of it all they had to face racial discrimination and extremely rude behavior by the ground staff.

Technical snags and cancelled flights isn’t anything new for Kuwait Airways. They should either privatize already and completely revamp their services or just close down.

[Link]

Yesterday J.K. Rowling launched a mysterious new Pottermore website that only has the logo with the message “Coming soon” and her signature. The site also has its own Twitter account @Pottermore.

There’s no news about when the site will launch or what it’s about. One of the fansites, the Leaky Cauldron, got a preview of the new site and they said that “it is one of the most amazing, engaging, and breathtaking additions to this fandom imaginable.”

I’ve read and watched them all, so I am curious to know what this will turn out to be. Maybe this is the Potter Encyclopedia that Rowling was planning to write after the last book, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

[Link]

Al Sayed Al Essawy, a 25 year old Egyptian who proclaims to be the “strongest man in the world” wants to battle a life-sized lion to revive tourism in Egypt! He believes that this fight will draw tourists and improve economy since the country is suffering from a steep drop in visitors after the revolution.

Whether the Egyptian Gladiator will actually fight the lion remains in doubt. The Ministry of Tourism and the Society for the Protection of Animals in Egypt did not approve the fight and they want to make sure that such barbaric acts don’t take place in Egypt.

[Link]

So it worked? MP Ahmad Al-Saadoun had pushed the MOC two days ago to check up on the Internet Service Providers and their unauthorized policies of setting bandwidth limits and the high internet charges since there happens to be no legislation or law that regulates them. Turns out that the Communications Sector of the MOC is actually conducting a study to reduce the internet charges by reducing the monthly capacity fees provided to the ISPs via Gulf cables in exchange for quality service to the internet user.

According to Al-Watan, the study will be submitted to the Minister of Information and Communications Sami Al-Nisf over the few coming days so lets wait and watch what we’re going to get out of this. No caps low prices? And why not? It’s about time that Kuwait’s internet services get their act straight and keep up with the global standards. We’re not in the 90s anymore so the overpriced low-bandwidth service just won’t do.

Here is a first look at Angelina Jolie’s new ad for Louis Vuitton’s Core Value campaign from Women’s Wear Daily. The ad is shot in Cambodia, the birthplace of her oldest son Maddox, by Annie Leibovitz. It features a barefoot, makeup-less Jolie dressed in her own tee and khakhi pants floating on a marshy lake in Cambodia’s Siem Reap province on a wooden boat holding her own six-year-old monogrammed Alto bag.

The Alto bag is actually a discontinued style but LV’s executive vice president Pietro Beccari said that they are considering to re-edit it. Angelina was signed on for the LV ad for $10 million and she donated a portion of her fee to charity.

The ad is the latest installment in Louis Vuitton’s ‘Core Values’ campaign which launched in 2007 and focuses less on fashion and more on classic Vuitton ideals such as travel and craftsmanship by featuring special people and their special journeys. LV will post a teaser video tomorrow that will link to Angelina’s interview set to air on the Cambodia Journey later in the month.

View other ‘journeys’ [Here]

I just read the most ridiculous news of the day on Kuwait Times. A Saudi cleric is seeing some very imaginative and unmentionable things in the design of the new King Abdulaziz Airport in Jeddah! Just a few days ago it was Salwa Al-Mutairi and her crazy suggestions to trade in sex slaves to ‘protect’ the Kuwaiti men from commiting adultery. And now we have Dr. Ali Baqna Al-Shahrani who is claiming that the new airport design is a ‘western-conspired pagan design’ and is abusive to Islam because it reminds him of a woman’s intimate parts and the Air Traffic Control tower resembles a man’s intimate parts! He even goes into extreme details explaining that the aircraft landing and taking off move in a way that the spermatozoa does!

This is totally insane and one hell of a sick imagination! Wonder what all he sees in people and things around him?

Check out the [Video] and the [Transcript].

Yesterday MP Ahmad Al-Saadoun spoke about the unfair internet service in Kuwait and how the unlicensed internet companies have taken their own decision to set a limit for the internet users. He urged the Minister of Communications and Information Sami Al-Nisf to put an end to these policies and stop the internet service providers from cheating the users out of their money.

I hope they take some real action and stop the un-Fair Access Policy set by the ISPs.

[Link]

Nasra Yussef Mohammed Al-Enezi, the Kuwaiti woman who set fire to the tent of her husband’s second wedding in revenge has been sentenced to death penalty by the Supreme Court for killing 57 women and children.

The ruling is final unless the Amir reduces the sentence to a life term. If the sentence is carried out, Nasra will be the first Kuwaiti woman to be hanged in the Kuwait’s history.

The final design for the London 2012 Olympic torch was unveiled at the St. Pancras Station on June 8th by the The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG).

The torch is designed by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby of the East London-based design studio BarberOsgerby and is shaped into a curved triangular aluminium tube which has a lace-like mesh complete with 8,000 holes, one to represent each torchbearer. The triangular shape symbolises the three times that London has staged the Games – 1908, 1948 and 2012.

The 70-day Olympic Torch Relay will take the Olympic Flame on an 8,000 mile journey across the UK carried by 8,000 torchbearers starting at Land’s End in Cornwall on May 19, 2012.

[Link]