City Center Opening (T - 1)

So the big City Center is scheduled for it's 'soft launch' tomorrow! Finally, after months of construction, Bahrain's biggest mall is ready to welcome customers. Given though, it's not 100% complete; some of the shops won't be ready till the official launch in (hopefully) December, and the indoor waterpark + 2 hotels will finish sometime in 2009.

(click for large size)
Anyway, with a bit of free time on my hands, I decided to see if I can sneak a peek inside the closely guarded secret that is City Center. The place feels like some sort of special army base, since all the entrances are closed and heavily secured. The only possible entrance is the one through which all the employees/construction workers go, so I decided to head there:


The place feels like it's own community; it's got it's own roads, people walking around, huge parking lots. Huge place. Anyway; that proved unfruitful since, to actually get into the mall, you needed to go through a bunch of offices, all of which had employees not happy with my reason for coming (Uhhh, can I just like, look around?).

So that was that, and I decided it wasn't worth getting physical and beating them down to get an inside look. Got in my car and started to drive off, until I realized there was one side of the mall I assume no one had thought of securing off...

Yes! The desert side!


And so I drove all the way through the wilderness till I reached it, and somehow I was faced with a large lake that I had to cross:


With a touch of a button, my car magically turned into a boat, and I crossed the lake to the other side... (ok, not really, I just found a bit of land that I could drive across).




Lots of constructing going on to finish things for the soft-launch, as well as a bunch of deliveries arriving just in time. I tried to grab a few of the boxes and run, but I was given evil looks by the security guards...

The whole place seemed closed off, and I figured I would never get a chance to see the inside, until I spotted a small, open unguarded door on my way back to my car:

Finally, my chance! I ran through with my camera in hand, only to be faced by a number of ugly, mean-looking security guards! Took a quick shot before they dragged me out...


So there you have it! Exeeeeecccclllluuuhuuusive from ammaro.com, your first look inside City Center Mall! Launch is tomorrow, see ya there!

Running Out of News

We all know the Gulf Daily News; my most favouritest bestest newspaper in the World, who love to turn the most un-newsworthy acts into huge issues:

Baby camel still missing after crash
MYSTERY surrounds the whereabouts of a baby camel, which fled after being involved in a road accident in which two people were injured. The accident happened near the Al Jazira Supermarket, Budaiya, when the camel reportedly fell off a pick-up truck, into the path of an oncoming car, on Saturday.

Oooooohhh... Mystery... How I love a good mystery...

It is understood the camel shattered the car windscreen, slightly injuring its Indian driver and a passenger. The camel was last seen running into bushes near Bushehri Gardens, but there has been no trace of it since.

It is understood? What the...? It's pretty obvious to tell if a windscreen has been shattered or not, what do you mean "it is understood"?! Did it take a bunch of intelligence agents researching hidden clues to figure that one out?

Traffic police called an ambulance and the injured car occupants were treated on the spot, but not taken to hospital.

If they were treated on the spot, I think that pretty much means they weren't taken to a hospital, no?

"We made sure the two men were treated but we are not aware of what happened to the camel," said a traffic official.

Of course you're not aware! It's because "Mystery" surrounds this whole case!

A witness, who was at a nearby cold store, said the camel fell off a pick-up but the vehicle did not stop.

No no no no NO! The guy was not a WITNESS. The word witness insinuates that there was some sort of crime, or some sort of exceptional occurrence. Seeing a camel falling off a vehicle that did not stop doesn't make you a "witness". It makes you a guy who saw a camel falling off a vehicle that did not stop.



Gulf Daily News; Adding Spice to your Every Day Life

Google = 10

It's the 7th of September, and the big G is now 10 years old. Hard to believe that back in 1998, the internet king didn't even exist, and finding stuff online wasn't really that simple. Sure, Yahoo was around, plus a number of other weirdly named search engines (Lycos, Altavista) that have since died out, but none have really done what this behemoth has managed to do.

Google's business-model managed to quickly grow the company from an above-average search engine, into a global corporation with a market-cap of $142 billion, generating over $16 billion in annual revenues. They've managed to buy numerous innovative start-ups (everything from YouTube, to Picasa, to the core engine of their Google Earth service), created their own widespread services like Gmail & Orkut, and are pushing the barrier with cloud-computing, their new internet browser (Chrome) and the soon to be released Google cellphone. Yup, they sure do seem to have everything.

Now for Google's humble beginning: two university students started up Google in a friend's garage, and in a few short months, boom! The idea was actually envisioned back in 1996 though, which is a little annoying because that was when I created my first website. Sadly enough, theirs has managed to make them billionaires, mine has not. (If you really want to take a look at my website, which I don't advise, you can check it out here. Good for a laugh).

Anyway, we have Google to thank for quite a bit of the innovation/streamlining of the internet, because honestly, back then it was a bit of a crappy place. Take a look at Google's original page, for example:

Yeah... That's pretty crappy looking alright, but that's actually pretty simple and innovative in comparison to whatever else was out there on the internet. Let's take a look at a global corporation like McDonalds, for example. They must have had something that looked good back then, no?


Err... No... And dammit, my eyes hurt!!! But if you think that's bad, you need to actually browse their site; check out the funny animated dude and the cheesy comments, the crappy drawings, and the supposedly different adult/kid links that both lead to the same place (click on the Mcdonalds page to go there).

It didn't stop there, here are just a few other websites that looked amazing back in the pre-Google days:

MSN (Yup, Microsoft!)

Lego, lovely.

Either way, let's just be glad that the internet isn't what it used to be back then, and thank you Google for being part of what makes it what it is today.

Congratulations to Google on your 10th.

(Written on Blogger, a Google service. Bloody hell, they do own everything, don't they!?)

Injured Ant

From todays' Gulf Daily News (Letters Section)

Poor thing..!

In response to E Sankar (GDN, August 28) regarding her poor sick pigeon, I would like to inform her that I too am in need of urgent help.

I stepped on an ant this morning and I think I broke its right toe. I gave it a drop of water but I think it needs urgent medical attention. Can someone please help? It is at present under my left yellow Adidas running shoes.

I sincerely think the above issue is of great importance; hence I am taking my time in sending this letter to the GDN.

Ateekster

Lovely. Nice to see people still have a sense of humor during the holy month.

On a totally different note, the new issue of HalaBahrain Magazine is out, covering things to do, places to go, events, entertainment and much more! Check it out, like, right now:

More Fun @ the Olympics

And I thought Takeshita was a bad name...

This guy's got it worse. No matter how well he's doing, whenever the crowds start chanting his name, he can't help but be reminded.....