Two weeks ago I received an invitation from to attend the premiere of their latest 3D movie “The Last Reef” translated and narrated by the amazing news anchor Mr. Yousef Mustafa. (Note: Headphones with the English version of the movie are available for Foreigners or those who do not speak Arabic)
A week ago (February 5th 2012 to be precise) I was invited by the lovely people from , one of the first online “Khaleeji” lifestyle magazines to unveil their very first print issue at 360 Mall which is now available practically everywhere.
The event featured printed pages from their magazine showcased in 360 Mall with everyone going around checking out the beautiful artwork/photography and getting a chance to meet with the lovely creators. I arrived that day early and got a chance to speak to most of the lovely people behind this venture. I spoke with Fouz Al Sabah one of the main team members and the creative director, and got to understand that they are aiming to release this magazine as a quarterly issue aimed at being more of a “coffee-table” magazine rather than a time-bound magazine you see everywhere. They want to give their readers pieces which will always be there and have some amazing pictures to go with them simply so you can save that magazine and refer back to those images and well they didn’t fail in that area at all.
It has been a while and I’ve been meaning to write but I kept procrastinating and postponing the transfer of the photos from my camera to my computer and when I did, I enjoyed my Instagram shots more than anything else but I’m slightly off topic here. Let’s start over.
Earlier this year, the blogging team from invited us to celebrate the winner of “The Cutest Baby Blogger Instagram Challenge” at which is located in 52 Degrees in Al Tilal Complex. So on a Thursday evening of January 5th , my sister #3 (aka ) and I headed over there to have a lovely dinner with friends and well I can honestly say that they are more like family as well.
My sisters and I arrived very early, even wasn’t there yet but nonetheless we took it as an opportunity to walk around a bit and have both sisters of mine get scared from a cat (yes they don’t like cats). But soon enough Dudette made it and started setting up when we were just walking in. The place was beautiful and all ours! We monopolized the place to the final extent, had provided us with lovely name badges (not that most of us needed them) but did the most awesome thing by placing comments underneath each one :P I was known as “The Sabyak Baby with Garfield Touches” (roughly translated as ‘The Tomboy baby with Garfield touches’).
Just a short recap, I’ve been posting about events I attended in a short series I’d like to call “Previously” I hope to be wrapped up with all of them during the week so I can move on to bigger fish to fry.
Who: BEST Al Yousifi
What: Grand Re-opening of Al Rai Branch with SUMO
When: October 30,2011 evening time
Where: Al Rai Branch next to Lulu Hypermarket
What Happened:
So previously BEST Al Yousifi invited the female bloggers to get to know us, but that was not the only thing the meeting was about, it was mostly an invitation to their grand opening of their new showroom in Al Rai right next to Lulu Hypermarket.
What was special about this event was that they had flown in a Japanese Sumo wrestler “Yama” for the opening and everyone was in awe of how big he was (but for me I felt he was an okay size maybe I’ve been desensitized by modern day television, he weighed more than 300KG). I was welcomed by the lovely Ms. Amtar and the marketing team where I was given my name badge and given a quick tour of the place before heading to the temporary location where the bloggers were waiting until our numbers were full. When there were quite a few of us there, Mr. Abdulaziz Al Yousifi, the President of BEST Al Yousifi welcomed us and gave us a little history about the place and asked for our opinions. Later on we were shown back into the showroom to meet with the Sumo Wrestler.
Everyone was lining up to take pictures with him while a few of our blogger friends attempted to tackle him and bring him down. Unfortunately no one was able to unseat him as the victor. The awesome thing about the pictures was that BEST was printing out the pictures taken with their photographer and giving them out to the Bloggers instantly (Gosh I miss the good ol’ days of instant photography you would have hard copies of your pictures to look at whenever you want!)
After the pictures we were given a tour in their store which was recently expanded and re-opened for customers making it the largest electronics store in Kuwait! This was my very first time to visit a BEST Al Yousifi store and I must say that I really enjoyed the visit.
Thanks to Ms. Amtar Suhail and the marketing team at BEST Al Yousifi, it was a lovely event and may you have many more successful store openings. And thanks for the gifts as well!
P.S. I’ve been there so far 4 times and counting! I like to spend my salary on electronics! :P
P.P.S. The largest TV was there which was 152″ and was being sold for 183,000KD the price of a house really. I wonder who would buy that!
P.P.P.S. My ultimate best coverage of the event was at 7ajiDude’s Blog [] and PinkGirlQ8′s Blog []
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Just a short recap, I’ve been posting about events I attended in a short series I’d like to call “Previously” I hope to be wrapped up with all of them during the week so I can move on to bigger fish to fry.
Who: Al Zanki Enterprises
What: Crush It! Seminar
When: October 26, 2011 Morning & Evening
Where: Marina Hotel & Salwa Al Sabah Hall
What Happened:
The big day of learning all about how social media can turn anything into a successful business as long as you knew how to use the power for good had arrived. And thanks to the sponsors , the Bloggers who were part of the “Crush It” project were given a free pass to attend the seminar, but that was not all. Bloggers were also given a special chance to meet up with in person and get to ask him questions and get to know him before the seminar. Therefore this is what happened:
The day started off at 11AM in Marina Hotel Meeting Rooms. We were attending the special get together with and the team of Al Zanki Enterprises which consisted of (lovely to meet you by the way!) and (it was a pleasure although didn’t get a chance to personally talk to you). and Khalid were a bit late but that didn’t matter because when he got there he made sure to give us new material that would not be available in the seminar as we were going to be there later so it was kind of giving us an appetizer before our main meal! Basically we were given advice as to “How to crush your passion” and how he turned his father’s small business into the big business it is today, by having found a “passionate” aspect of it. It was lovely and we got a chance to take pictures and sign our books (although I didn’t have the book with me and even if I did it would be an e-Book, try signing my iPad :P)
Afterwards, we were given a break and since I had met my favorite blogger girls (oh okay I don’t have favorites but you were my favorites for the day) , , (from 7ajidude) and I all decided to grab lunch before the big seminar. It was a hassle trying to decide what to eat especially since we had a vegetarian (ehem ) between us and so we finally made a decision to head over to the Avenues and grab some Elevation Burgers. It was absolutely fun especially since got lost in the way and we waited close to an hour for them to show up but when they did it was party time!
Unfortunately I had to run out on the girls and head into the office prepare my pages and then head back to the seminar. It was awesome. I was late though. The official time to start the seminar was around 5-ish however it actually started close to 6:15pm as people were running late (yours truly included) it was a big turnout, bigger than I had imagined. I also got a chance to run into ex-colleagues and friends of mine there which was simply AH-MAHZING (those who I consider friends were Ah-Mahzing the others were okay though :P)
The seminar started, told us a brief summary of his life and how he crushed his passion and afterwards we were given a Q&A session with him. It ran a bit too long because I personally felt that most questions were repeats and applicable to the person themselves but in the end it was beautiful. Important things that were discussed were the fact that: social media is the big thing now and taking over the role of traditional media; companies should humanize logos and allow for a better method of communication with their customers; customers require value and noto to be considered as just another number; small gifts to say thank you for a customers purchase goes a long way in establishing a long and healthy relationship; don’t quit your job just because you hate it and think it’s time to follow your passion you may never be able to find it but try to work on something you love while having your job; constantly google yourself and your business to see how good or bad you’re doing; take positive and negative feedback with a grain of salt and know that what’s negative could always be fixed from your side; and most importantly do not absue social media as emails have been abused lately it’s not a ‘push’ system for advertising it’s a ‘pull’ in which you pull in the customer’s feedback.
That was not all, in the middle of the seminar , one of the sponsors of the event held a draw on an iPhone 4S and an iPod Touch 5th Generation (White) and unfortunately I did not win it was amazing. Also at the end of the evening our lovely Social Media team at also held a draw of their own in which the prizes were an iPad 2 (which from HiKuwait won), HTC Sensation, and a Blackberry Bold 9900 (which won) and again I did not win any gadget at this event. It’s a failure, no I’m just kidding.
All in all, it was an amazing event although it went on long but I had fun and learned quite a bit from it. Thanks to Hind & Khalid for extending us with this lovely chance to meet and thanks to for granting us the tickets to attend the seminar.
I will be starting a “Previously” category in the next few days in which I write about previous events I went to but was too lazy to blog about. I loved each and everyone of them but I just was too lazy to write about them much. Therefore I will give you the ultimate summary of them all in a cool funky way I hope, and share my photos. Of course my fellow bloggers who have attended have written their posts but I just want to share it with my awesome readers!
Who: BEST Al Yousifi
What: Girls Night Out
When: October 25, 2011 in the evening
Where: Kei Japanese Restaurant
What Happened:
I was invited along with a bunch of other female bloggers to attend a “meet-and-greet” dinner with the lovely people from BEST Al Yousifi at the Japanese restaurant. Being a Japanese franchise the theme of the restaurant was awesome. Time was spent chatting and getting to meet other female bloggers without the spying eyes of male bloggers. (Sorry but boys suck :P No really I’m kidding!) Chatting wasn’t the only thing on the menu we got a chance to try or rather I got a chance to try out Japanese food (I have never had any and I don’t think I will again!).
We were delivered “bento” boxes which had different pieces of japanese food inside and I had the Shrimp Tempura thing the rest was literally Japanese to me! [Note: I do not like to try out new foods if I am not comfortable]
The night then ended with a nice meeting with the president of BEST, Mr. Abdulaziz Al Yousifi, in which he asked our opinions on different things going on and just had a very nice open conversation. We got to know more about him and his company than a walk in their stores would. And I got to impress him with my geekiness as I believe I am a full-blown geek hehe.
All in all, it was a great event and one I would love to repeat again. This was sort of like a prologue to the next event we were to be invited to by BEST Al Yousifi.
Thanks to Amtar Suhail for the invitation and the marketing team!
a 28 year old Kuwaiti Gadget Freak who is obsessively in love with Apple Products so much that she probably has everything made by Apple. Currently she's being a lazy bum and putting off writing and everything else but when she does this is her space where she likes to vent and release everything, so welcome to it.
A blogger for the past 8 years and still loving it.
