io81

A friend of mine came up with an idea for a new conventional Dry Cleaners, he wanted to use the net with the store. Creating a laundry store on the net basically. So i researched the idea and it sounds good but i faced resistance when people started telling me “who would log on a site instead of just getting to the store instead dropping of your laundry?”. Personally i think registering online and getting serviced without leaving your home is great, and if the price would be cheaper that’s another plus. The dry cleaners next to my house washes a shirt for 500 fils, which i think is fine but if the price would go even lower that would be better. So my idea is to try to cut cost down to provide a cheaper per garment price and introduce something else: A “green” dry cleaner! i got the idea when i read what was the basic liquid used in dry cleaners; its called Perc or perchloroethylene. This shit is harmful in many ways, skin disorders, considered a carcinogens in Canada, and it should be handled in certain methods with restirction on usage. The employees handling such chemicals should have health insurance coverage and protective wear. After reading such shit, i started thinking is their any laws/restrictions/khara:P in Kuwait that protects consumers or the employees from such harmful substances, is this harmful substance disposed in a safe method? 

So i continued reading and found out something called Wet cleaning which is considered a cleaner approach to dry cleaning. It uses sophisticated machines that use computers to clean clothes and use water instead of the Perc. So many dry cleaners in the US and Canada are adopting such methods and are satisfying their green earth friendly consumers. So again i thought would an idea like such work in Kuwait, becomingthe first green laundry store in Kuwait?  You see when smart, knowlegble government employees have a sense of respect to the environment and introduce such laws or restrictions, business then start coming up with new ways to counter such constructive laws such as a green laundry. But i guess in Kuwait its all about Allah Kareem.

Watching tv one day i came across an ad that explained that you got a chance to apply for funding if your business idea gets accepted, after i have checked out the website sponsored by MIT i started thinking about an idea but i wanted it to have a social twist to it. So i came up with two ideas which i will explain but please if you got better one add them and we may contribute in some way and if we win, your names can be added as the founders of the idea, yes there is a prize for the winner (15,000KD) which will be invested to start the business. I do have some kind of meshed thoughts but i cannot put them into an idea. Let me brief you on what i personally had in mind; my main goal is to increase awareness in the Kuwaitis society, it may be both Corporate or Community wise, but i have it meshed up with Corporate Responsibility (CR), to push companies to accept some corporate responsibility towards the community and make its employees who are part of the community to contribute to people working in the labor class. It can be called as a switching function, where i give certain employees a day off by taking their job in a later shift, ie: giving an employee at costa a break today and i take his later shift, or doing the same with the employees who clean the streets. Then instead of every company in Kuwait trying to show off some CR, we can organize them in a more strategic long term programme. Where a true programme is setup-implemented within these organizations to perform real CR instead of using beach clean ups as PR stunt. Thats one idea which sometimes feel good and other times feels stupid, so i keep the rest of that idea in your hands. The second is completely different and it came to me because i was pissed off about not finding certain books that i would like to buy in Arabic. Then the bomb that pissed me off is that why does our government have the right to tell us what to read and to not. Why should i even consider not reading a certain book because a religious guy in the ministry thinks its bad for me, then maybe i should read the book and make my own @#$%^&% mind if its bad or good. So the thought took a regional perspective and then i compared Kuwait to the rest of the GCC, yes we do have a little better censorship system but other dont and we all (GCC) got the Internet. Why not create a site like google books for Arabic books to get published on the net for Arab people to read what they please. So feel free to bash the ideas as much as you want. 

When looking around your home, room, car etc etc you can see how many comfort we own. When i see such services being marketed to people i keep thinking how much of our brains are we utilizing. Do we really deserve such comforts to ease our minds more, or are we supposed to increase our synapses in our brains. When looking at the emirates suite on-board service, i just think cant we get a good old fashioned comfy seat and a nice book to read. Some consumers plan there trips because the Emirates airlines has the best entertainment system. I’m complaining because when sometime i just sit at home and watch TV, after a couple of hours you feel bad inside thinking what did i do to increase my brain usage. I honestly think that a book is much more satisfying to the brain than TV (witch includes sound and image) compared to pure quietness. Average human brain usage revolves around 3 to 4% utilization, Einstein used about 6% of his brains capacity. I just think sometimes if we continue living the way we are, we may lose some and go back to 2%. Just imagine whats going to happen in 500 years ahead? How much would our brains be working at and what would it produce if it was at 16% or more? Just a note, Sir Richard Branson just flew his first Virgin Atlantic plane using biofuel. Wanting to create a better enviroment and running an airline business at the same time. Just compare the two different  visions of Emirates airlines and Virgin Atlantic. 

Last Thursday i was watching Alwatan TV, they do have nice programing but this is not the case. I watched this show where there is this family affair lawyer (abdul jalleel something) , explaing these cases about ladies that have been victim of men taking advantage of there kindness and so on so on… the thing that comes to mind is that “is Kuwait becoming like other western countries?” well who knows, do you know? do i know? This guy goes on TV and starts showing Kuwait public that we have such cases, thats fine with me but not explaining how much percent these cases are from our society. We sure do know that divorcee rates are high using statistics from the Ministry of Justice. Surly divorce cases like such are interesting to watch, it atleast affects 55% of the population. But to find such extreme stories of theft and talking them to a major Kuwaiti show on prime time is a shame. Why its a shame, because Alwatan TV has his sights on ratings and not any thing to do with society. If they think making the Kuwaiti mainstream think that every marriage proposal is a possible theft scenario waiting to be unfolded, we surly have chaos on our hands. But by all means its free TV and they can do what ever they want but atleast give respect to jerry springer who has the rights of such ludicrous show:P

Watching the show on Thursday: So when listing to one lady, explaing how the guy tried to come with his family to marry her, his family members kept on dying before he visited her. So thats why he had to get married in a more discrete way and take advantage of her, so offcource the guy is lying so he can marry this lady that claims she is a victim, a friend just looked at me and said why didn’t she look for the obituaries. Can i say more or shall i say love is blind! 

Most have tried Facebook and or have an existing profile, compared to the others like Hi5, myspace and the rest, surly Facebook made it to the top. But now it seems they got greedy, most of you heard about the privacy incident with Facebook, and that they want to use your buying patterns to be released to friends in your Facebook, which i witnessed first hand. Honestly i think this is a major breach of personal privacy, i was on amazon yesterday and saw a new popup that stated, that my wish list is for the public to see. I guess this has something to do with Facebook. I had friend profile on Facebook that showed what they are planning to buy from amazon, i mean yes i have some books on my blog but that does not mean i dont hide others too. Your personnel search queries on Google can be used one day, i mean this list can go on and on…Day by day, i feel that Facebook is loosing its subscribers. Its becoming a place where your digital self is portrayed and can be used, manipulated or hacked by others. I just wish if we in Kuwait had some laws that would protect such issue and can backfire on there US counter parts. Its always the US that pushes for reform and new laws, but when its vice versa the whole game changes. Sure Facebook has its advantages but is disadvantages are growing too. Try to be careful and switch off applications that monitor your buying patterns, or like the one on amazon.

I’m a regular at costa, nothing against the others but i just like the taste of their coffee, anyways one day i was ordering my coffee at costa and while waiting for the order i noticed a email sent from the management with a reference to all costa employees it said: “No employees are allowed to take a holiday starting from December 1st to the 8th of January.” There reason was that they are expecting higher sales due to eid and the new years holidays, WHO does not expect an increase in a spending in such times. What bothers me here is that half of costa’s employees are Christan’s and the end of December to them is a religious and family oriented holiday. I cant understand how such a company can make such a decision and ruin its employees holidays, believe me such tactics will back fire and only profit the managers handling such business in the short term. I wish some how that the costa management in the UK can see such discriminative orders.

Remember when i have posted earlier about how Kuwait is toping the charts in every way; We are the fifth country in the world in obesity, then we got the bronze:p in Human Slavery, and now for the silver…brace your selves we got to be the second country in the world with the most CO2 emissions per capita!! thats so wonderful isn’t it:) so now we are targeting the gold for becoming the most ignorant nation in the world, and honestly it does not look that far off… anyways i just wanted to point out that the air we inhale every second is the same air some one in the states or Japan inhales too, we are all in it together, we are all living in the same atmosphere and we should respect its existence and believe me even switching off your bedroom light eveyday makes a difference, lets try our best in helping out. What made me type this post is when my older brother called me and said that Kuwait is on the top list after the United States in Co2 emissions, and that statement was on an electrical board in a science museum in Canada. The same piece of information came from the Daily Star too.

If you watch any international news or ads surly you have noticed how everything is going green, hybrid cars are more accessible, Shell advertises green technology and research (which is all bull shit), all over the world entrepreneurs are finding ways to solve the increasing CO2 problem, Richard Branson is paying a 25 million dollar prize for the best invention to reduce CO2 emissions, Al gore won the noble prize for his contribution of Global Warming Awareness, the Los angles area now has small elecrtic stations for cars that run on batteries. So as you can see that this problem is world wide and not only regionally, surly the poor victims of Oman hurricane Gonu have had a first hand experience. Well the only thing i can say is try your best to lower CO2 emission, i know it sounds lame because we cant use a bike to cycle our way to a friends house or maybe we can winter is coming:P, but we surly can stop littering our streets, using less disposable plastic and more glasses, no need to cruise the gulf road 24/7. If you have any interest in such a subject please watch “Planet in Peril” on CNN today at 13:00 and 19:00 GMT, around 3pm and 9pm Kuwait local time.

Hassan ( a med student) and a fellow reader has been very helpful to research about breast cancer in Kuwait and how to find out about regular breast examination checks, please read the following to have a better understanding of mammograms, please take such information serious. Lets stop loosing family members and friends from ignorance when we can prevent such illnesses by knowledge.

Hasan.B says:
June 30th, 2007 at 2:14 am e

Ok, so i tried to get some information regarding checking for cancer, breast and ovarian in particular. What i was told by a very good and known doctor in kuwait is that breast cancer is becoming increasingly common, and that was the reason behind the CAN campaign, which is an educational campaign to increase awareness in the country and not a screening test. A screening test is defined as: “a public health service in which members of a defined population, who do not necessarily perceive they are at risk of, or are already affected by a disease or its complications, are asked a question or offered a test, to identify those individuals who are more likely to be helped than harmed by further tests or treatment to reduce the risk of a disease or its complications.”
The doctor told me that a screening program is crucially needed in kuwait, and one of the goals of starting this campiagn is to pressure the government to establish one very soon. Now, any patient that wants to check for cancer can do so at most hospitals in kuwait and for free!(Ofcourse they are not free in private hospitals, i think each test coasts about 98KD) However cancer treatment is limited to some hospitals, or maybe even one(hussain maki jumah)! Although as i mentioned earlier, tests (ie. mammograms) are free, they coast the government a vast amount of money, i am not sure how much exactly. That is ONE of the reasons why only women 40 years or older are advised to check for breast cancer regularly, women with high risk such as family history are advised to check at a younger age. In regards to younger women, they are all advised to perform self-testing after each menstrual cycle, to check for any mass or lumps, which can be provided in leaflets given out by CAN, or by a simple research on the internet. For more information regarding screening tests for cancer: http://www.cancerscreening.nhs.uk/breastscreen/index.html

I hope what i wrote was of some use, i know i did not answer your questions exactly, but i tried my best.

I saw this clip and thought of sharing it. Its a comparison of Italy and the European Union States, however are’nt we just similar in Kuwait? enjoy….

http://www.infonegocio.com/xeron/bruno/italy.html