Drifting in Kuwait

I had seen in a blog that a drifting track that was going to be opened in Kuwait.  It was suggested that one would just be able to show up with one’s car and drift around.  This got me SO excited, I started changing my carsearch route.  Who needs a pretty /fancy car when my wife’s not here anyway? No longer interested in a sleek E-class coupe, I had dreams of getting an old-school Starion or an S2000 and fitting it with the full complement of “tuner” accessories…

photo credit: zanthrax-dot-nl

But alas– “drifting” is not exactly what I had hoped:

Chatroulette!

Yes, everyone is doing it.  Or talking about it.  Well, hopefully not middle aged white america just yet. Anyway, in my sudden loneliness after my wife left from her visit, I figured I may as well try it. Once over the initial fear of running into someone I know in some stage of undress, I fired up www.chatroulette.com.

Intentionally, I hadn’t read any background on it before. Sadly, I quickly realized it was not the dream world of talking to someone in some wondrous and interesting part of the world about what they think about the African Swallow or whether Obama should have hit Netenyahu with his shoes– no no, it is, for the most part, the worst the internet has to offer: penises of old men.  If you’re going to bare your entire body to the world in front of a camera, at least go and work out, man!!  Sigh.  It could have been so good.  It really gets boring quickly as person after person “next”s you;  and echoing the thoughts of Casey Neistat, I funnily found myself  being relieved when men got rid of me within the first 2 seconds, but hurt when it was pretty women!  I also found it funny that out of only 3 conversations, two people I spoke to had their videos blanked out.  When I went looking online for some explanations, I found this fantastic video:

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9669721&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

(chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo)

I knew people had to do  had to be better than what I’ve found, and surely I found this list of  24 Best Chatroulette Characters that have been spotted on Chatroulette. And 30 more (scroll down to “Is This  a Sign?”) Sure enough, some celebrities do show up as well.  And I don’t know how much luck they’ll have, but  police are taking notice as well, and will hopefully find some of the idiots that are on there for real mischief.

Meanwhile, I came across this hillarious article on the 10 People You (Don’t Want to) Meet on Chatroulette. Of course, any of these characters  are more likely to be happened upon than the aforementioned celebrities!  Hopefully, you are REALLY lucky, and come across this brilliant piano-player that will sing to you instead!

Cheers,
-r-

Update 1:  Speaking of roulette, Mark posted this today: “I see dumb people.”
Update 2: Ran into this Techchrunch’s writeup on Chatroulette today, where they did some fun statistical analysis, and found a site that mapped chats called Chatroulette Map

Fire in Mangaf!

Last night we went to the scene of a fire before the firefighters.

Actually, we were driving around and Virginia looks up through the sunroof and says “the sky looks really…misty today.”  Sure enough, as we go around the circle and come towards the  gas station we realize that the building beyond it is on fire!  Smartly, the station workers did a precautionary shutdown of the place.

It seems something in the kitchen of Al Bustan Al Turki restaurant must have caught on fire, as the flames were visible in the equipment outside, and the smoke was shooting up the exhaust vent at the top of the building. It was all brought under control quite quickly, though; but what’s amazing is that the people in the building never evacuated! Instead, they peered down from their windows at the fire /commotion below!

Update:  Drove by there tonight (Mar 15) and their sign was lit up, so maybe they are already running again?