2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Over the weekend I was invited by Toyota to attend the GR Yaris Cup. I didn’t really need an invitation since I was planning to go anyway to meet up with some friends, especially since a couple of the drivers are from our circle.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the GR Yaris Cup, it’s a racing series where 12 drivers compete against each other across multiple races. What makes it different from other races is that all the cars are built exactly the same. They’re Toyota GR Yaris cars that have been modified specifically for racing. With every driver competing in the same car, it becomes a true drivers race since it’s no longer about who has the faster car.

I initially thought this was a race series introduced by Toyota Japan, but this weekend I found out it was actually created by the AlSayer Toyota dealer and later adopted by other countries. This is now the third season of the GR Yaris Cup, and after the success of the first season, other markets wanted to bring the series to their own tracks.

It’s a great event to watch because the races are short and the cars tend to stay close together due to identical performance. That makes every lap exciting, especially when they come past the grand stands as a group. The races take place at Kuwait Motor Town and are always free to attend. There are usually activations and food trucks on site as well.

This past weekend Toyota gave us an early sneak peek at the new 2026 GR Yaris, which is finally becoming available to purchase in Kuwait. The car is being officially launched tonight and will most likely sell out tonight as well since I know a lot of car enthusiasts who want one.

The next GR Yaris Cup race will take place in January and it’s going to be a big one since it will run alongside the popular Gulf Run weekend and White Expo Market. I’ll be posting more about that next month, but for now you can check out some photos and learn more about the series on their official accounts @toyotakw and @gazooracingkw or visit the website.

The Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR) recently opened the first phase of its Eco Park project, a government initiative aimed at supporting urban greening and promoting sustainability in Kuwait. The Eco Park focuses on improving green spaces in urban areas while also supporting research related to desert development and urban planning.

The park officially opened earlier in the month but I kept postponing my visit because of the weather. But, on Friday when I saw the sun was out I decided to pass by and check the park out and take some photos.

It’s fairly big, depending on what you’re comparing it to. It’s much smaller than Shaheed Park and Shuwaikh Park, but bigger and more interesting than most neighborhood parks.

When you first walk in, you’re greeted with a list of rules, including a no pets allowed notice. I’m actually fine with that. I walk my dog in that area and although I always pick up after him, I know a lot of people don’t. I’d rather have a dog free park than constantly worrying about stepping in poop. Inside the park there are plants and flowers everywhere (but no grass), and two artificial lakes, one large open air lake and a smaller shaded one. On the other end of the park is a large open space that looks like it could be used to host events or activities like yoga sessions or outdoor workouts. There’s also a pathway marked with no entry signs that leads toward the second phase of the park.

I couldn’t find the park’s opening hours listed anywhere, and I didn’t see any security or staff on site to ask about the timings. I reached out to KISR on Thursday to check, but I haven’t heard back yet. That said, I drive by the park daily and haven’t seen the gate closed so far.

If you want to pass by, the park is in Salmiya, facing the Gulf Road, in front of the Cliffs Tower and just before Dar Hamad. Here is the location on Google Maps.

I just found out that the Max Amini comedy show, which was supposed to take place this Thursday at The Arena, has been canceled. According to The Arena, the show was canceled for reasons beyond their control. My guess is that it might be related to issues surrounding some of the recent shows, but if I find out more, I’ll update this post.

On Friday, I woke up to a notice from Instagram saying they had removed one of my posts for violating community standards. Apparently, their AI misread my post about Ozempic prices in Kuwait versus other countries and thought I was “selling prescription weight-loss injections.”

I was given the option to appeal the decision, which I did. A couple of minutes later, I received a message saying my appeal was rejected. I’m guessing the appeal was also reviewed by AI, because I was then given the option to submit the post to an “Oversight Board” for review. I did that, and I’m now waiting for a response.

The issue is that my account now has some restrictions. Most of them don’t really affect me, except for one important one, I can no longer mark my ads on Instagram as a “Paid Partnership.”

I always mark paid posts as paid partnerships and also add my own “Promoted” badge so there’s no confusion to what content is paid for and what isn’t. Yesterday, while posting an ad, I found out about this new limitation, so I ended up added the hashtag #paidpartnership at the bottom. I think that’s a fair compromise for now until Instagram sorts this out.

It’s pretty scary knowing that Instagram’s AI can misinterpret a post and automatically limit your account, or even shut it down. I understand using AI to flag content for a human to review, but I didn’t realize it had this much power. A lot of people rely on Instagram for their livelihood, me included. In this case I was lucky AI didn’t suspend my account or something and just restricted some features. In my previous job Instagram suspended one of our restaurants accounts because AI thought we were pretending to be a pharmacy which went by the same name. Took us forever to get it back online.

It’s one of the reasons I prefer my blog here, I’m in control and if something happens my hosting provider Wavai are a WhatsApp message away. And it’s happened before where the blog went down or I messed something up, I’d just contact them and they sort out the issue for me. When I contacted Instagram support and spoke to a real person about my issue, they couldn’t do anything about this since they told me they didn’t have the authority and I needed to wait for the Oversight Board’s decision.

Hopefully the Oversight Board are real people who will see the mistake and get my account restrictions removed.

One thing I find lacking in Kuwait is luxury men’s spas. I get a manicure and pedicure every couple of weeks, and I used to have a favorite spot in the city, but I stopped going around eight years ago when the quality dropped. So when a new luxury spa called Rainforest Park reached out to me, I was intrigued.

Rainforest Park is located in Burj Jassem across from Al Shaheed Park. It’s a very chill tower in the afternoons with plenty of parking. The spa itself is on the mezzanine floor, tucked away in a quiet corner. Once you walk in, you’re instantly met with a calming interior.

Given the name, you’d expect a connection to the rainforest, and it’s definitely there. The space is filled with lush plants, hardwood flooring, and materials that give the place a premium feel. There’s even a huge aquarium filled with exotic fish.

After checking in, I was led into a large room where my seat was waiting for me, a comfy leather spa chair that wouldn’t look out of place in a private members’ club. I was also served tea, water, and a snack. I then put on my AirPods and caught up on some YouTube subscriptions while getting my manicure and pedicure.

It was a very chill and comfortable experience in a beautiful space. One of the reasons I enjoy getting my nails done is that it helps me relax and slow my pace down. Some people do yoga or meditate, but this is what works for me, which is why the experience matters so much.

Other than manicures and pedicures, Rainforest Park also offers a range of other services including relaxing and specialty sports massages, foot reflexology, facials, a royal Moroccan bath, and body scrubs. Although Rainforest Park itself is new, it’s part of the Kingsley Spa Group (@kingsleymenspa), which also operates @rainforestmenspa (different from Rainforest Park) and @theorganicspakuwait. So while the space is new, the team behind it has plenty of experience in men’s spas and clearly knows what they’re doing.

If you’re a guy looking for a new premium spa, give Rainforest Park a try. The first twenty people to call and book and mention 248AM will receive a special gift. Check them out at @rainforestparkspa

Kim Kardashian’s fashion brand Skims is popping up in Kuwait starting today. The pop up is organized by Ounass, the luxury fashion and lifestyle retailer, and is located at 360 Mall. It will be running until December 20.

The way the pop up works is that you can check out the Skims collection on display, but if you want to purchase anything you’ll need to scan the QR code on the price tag. The QR code takes you to the Ounass app where you can complete the purchase and have the item delivered to you.

Skims has been surrounded by controversy recently regarding new store openings which from what I understand was based on fake news. But for those interested, the pop up is located in the original phase of 360 Mall near Bloomingdale’s.

Hopefully it’s not gonna be raining all weekend because there are a few cool outdoor activities taking place. Check out this weekends events below:

Thursday, December 11
Sahara International Show Jumping Show
Jazz & Coffee Festival
RAPUNZEL – The Panto

Friday, December 12
Sahara International Show Jumping Show
Jazz & Coffee Festival
RAPUNZEL – The Panto
Voltaire Winter Market
GR Yaris Cup 3

Saturday, December 13
Sahara International Show Jumping Show
Al-Mubarakiya Women’s Photowalk
Mirror House 12th Art Festival
Journey to Christmas
Qout Market
Jazz & Coffee Festival
RAPUNZEL – The Panto
Qesati – Owning Your Life
Meteor Showers Stargazing Trip

Earlier this year Dean & Deluca closed down in The Avenues. They’d been open since January 2009, and I remember posting about it back then and loving the grocery section. But the café was always the most popular part of Dean & Deluca, which is why they’ve now kinda brought it back.

D&D Cafe is an Alshaya home-brew concept that’s based on the Dean & Deluca Café. D&D doesn’t actually stand for Dean & Deluca, but it’s more of a homage to the brand it’s replacing and makes it easier for previous customers to connect with. The menu brings back all the popular dishes from the old café, but in what I think is a better location with a much nicer interior.

The new café is located across from Abercrombie & Fitch, in the space where Bouchon Bakery used to be. It’s a corner spot in the Grand Avenue which gets a lot more daylight than the old location.

Since the café is still closed at the moment I was given a sneak peek ahead of their opening which is next Monday, December 15. If you want to follow them, their official Instagram account is @ddcafekw

Yesterday I shared a video called Kuwait Nights 1984 created by Faisal Alrajhi and instantly fell in love with it. He created the video using AI, so after sharing his post on my story I got in touch with him to see if he could share his process with my readers.

Due to the length of his project he couldn’t share the full breakdown, so instead we decided to focus on one of my favorite scenes, the Green Island sequence.

Step 1 – Creating the visuals

The first thing Faisal did was create a custom prompt on Google Gemini:

“Create an 8-bit pixel-art scene of Kuwaiti people relaxing, sitting on benches, and walking inside Green Island. Show the iconic tower in the background, kids running in the distance, and palm trees lining the walkways. Use retro warm tones and subtle pixel shading.”

For the pixel-art images, he used the Google Gemini app along with Freepik’s Nano Banana feature. Freepik gave him higher-resolution results, which made a big difference when putting everything together into a video. He also added reference photos he found on Google, like shots of Green Island, to help the AI recreate the scenes more accurately.

Once he had all the images generated, he did some light touch-ups in Photoshop to clean things up, fix small details, and remove anything the AI added that didn’t belong.

Step 2 – Converting stills to animation

Once he had a scene he liked, Faisal then animated the images using an image-to-video AI tool from Freepik.

Step 3 – Creating the soundtrack

For the music Faisal used the AI music generator Suno. He gave Suno 30 seconds of the original song he wanted to use then used the following prompt to convert it into an 8-bit video-game style soundtrack:

“A playful 8-bit track opens with bright, pulsating chiptune synths and a bouncy, syncopated square wave melody. Driving 8-bit percussion interlocks with rapid arpeggios, playful sound effects, and simple bass, keeping the energy high. Short bridge introduces quirky glitch textures.”

Step 4 – Combining the scenes

The final step was putting everything together, he used Final Cut Pro.

So in case you want to replicate this video style, just follow steps 1 and 2 over and over for the different scenes and then combine them using a video editor.

When I posted this on Instagram, someone people left comments hating on the fact AI was used to create this. I think there is a huge misconception or naivety on how difficult and even impossible it would be to create a video like this without AI. One follower left a comment saying that Faisal should have instead “learn how to do pixel art and write music” as if it’s something someone can do by watching a YouTube video and not requiring any talent. I think that comment is actually more insulting to artists than him using AI to create this video. But even if Faisal was a pixel artists, it wouldn’t necessarily also mean he would know how to animate or compose music. Even if he did, the process of creating something like this would have taken months. Hiring a team to create a video like this especially when it’s something just for fun is also not realistic or feasible. AI has its issues, but in this instance it’s allowed someone to create something that wouldn’t be possible without the use of AI.

Make sure to check out Faisal’s Instagram account, he posts a lot of cool tech videos and they’re always informative. @f_alrajhii

AlooChat.ai is a new Kuwaiti startup that’s trying to rethink how customer support works in the AI era.

Customer service has changed a lot over the years and today we’ve gotten to a point where we now start a chat with a business and expect an instant reply. That change is exactly what AlooChat noticed, and they’ve built their platform around helping businesses move into this new AI-powered support world.

Unlike old-school bots (which I really really dislike) that only followed rigid scripts, AlooChat runs on advanced language models. It can understand tone, intent, and even the emotion behind a message, and then respond in a way that feels natural instead of robotic.

It works for both large companies and small startups, allowing them to handle more queries while keeping costs under control.

AlooChat isn’t trying to replace human agents, instead, it works with them. The AI handles the repetitive questions and simple requests, freeing up the human agents to focus on problems that actually need a person. And when an issue does require a human, the platform passes it over smoothly.

AlooChat works in multiple channels including WhatsApp, Instagram, email, and even website chat widgets. This allows businesses to keep everything running from one place.

So if you start seeing improved customer support in Kuwait then it’s most likely they’ve started using AI to help communicate with customers. If you’re curious, you can try it out yourself. Click here or visit AlooChat.ai

I’m planning to go camping next week and need to pick up some new gear to add to what I already have. Even though next week’s trip is in the desert, I’m also hoping to camp in Saudi this year and maybe Failaka, where the image on top was taken by @diam89. There isn’t much time to order anything from Amazon for next week, but thankfully we do have a lot of local options.

Most of the brands sold in Kuwait lean more toward the budget end, but my favorite outdoor brand is Nemo Equipment and we luckily have a local dealer for it, although their selection is a bit limited. I bought a NEMO tent 13 years ago and still use it today so always try and buy their stuff when I can.

If you’re looking for camping or outdoor gear, I’ve listed the places I know that have a good selection along with some of the brands they carry. If I missed a place let me know in the comments.

AAW
Campingaz, Coleman, Magma, Snow Peak

Ace Hardware
Bestway, Coghlan’s, Coleman, Mr. Heater, Pavillo, Wenzel

Al Azame
Barebones, Leatherman, Nitecore, Teton, Thaw, Victorinox

All Degrees
Biotite, Black Diamond, Osprey, UCO

Alyash
Sells mostly Alyash brand

Camouflage
Sells mostly Camouflage brand

Camp N Sea
Bestway, Coleman, Dometic, KingCamp, Naturehike, Nemo, Outwell, Teton, Thaw

Decathlon
Sells only Quechua brand

DreamTeam
Gerber, Leatherman, Nebo, Nitecore, Olight, Pelican, SOL

Naturehike
Sells only Naturehike brand

ORP
ARB, Biolite, NEMO Equipment

Outdoor Kuwait
Camelbak, Campingmoon, GSI Outdoor, Jera, Solo Stove

The Ministry of Interior has warned of strict penalties for individuals found wearing, using, or displaying items that promote or encourage narcotics-related activities, including through images, symbols, writings or logos.

According to an official notice issued under the “Safeguarding Our Homeland” campaign, violators may face fines of up to KD 500. The warningapplies to goods, printed materials, clothing, accessories, and any other items bearing content that incites or glorifies drug use or narcotic crimes. source

I can’t believe this is actually real, it sounds like something they would have announced back in the 90s along with banning CDs with explicit lyrics.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Faisal Alrajhi – فيصل الراجحي (@f_alrajhii)

Made using AI but still very cool, makes me wish we had AI back when I was working in advertising. Link

When I was in Japan last month, one of the things that caught my attention were the Gashapon machines, which were basically everywhere. Gashapon machines (also called gacha) are toy vending machines that dispense cylindrical capsules with a small toy inside. Each machine usually focuses on a specific theme, and within that theme there are variations. The capsules are blind boxes, so you won’t know which variation you’re getting until you open it.

In Japan the machines were everywhere, and you’d just look for one that had something you related to or wanted. For example, I spent most of my trip looking for a machine that dispensed Land Cruiser toy cars, while my wife was after the Polly Pocket machines trying to collect the different variations.

When I got back to Kuwait, I thought it would be fun to bring gacha here, and while talking to the owner of the Korean restaurant Sinjeon Topokki, she told me about @gacha.vault, a local business that had already done exactly that.

Gacha Vault was started by Naser Aljutaili after a trip to Japan in 2023. He and his daughters went crazy for the gacha machines, and once he returned to Kuwait he decided he had to bring that experience back and he did. He’s installed the machines in various places around Kuwait and built a pretty solid fanbase. The toys in the machines get swapped out once or twice a month, or sooner if a collection sells out. They import their high-quality gachas from Japanese brands like Bandai and Takara Tomy, so their selection is similar to what you’d find in Japan right now.

Their machines are currently available at the following places:

Cozy Den – Qurain Market
Game Store – Al Kout Mall
Good Game – Sanabel Tower
Meme Curry – Mall 30
Meme Curry – Avenues Mall
Meme Curry – The View

They’re also going to be in more locations soon since they recently partnered with a big brand (he didn’t tell me which one). They also pop-up at different comic cons and events.

The machines are fun and an easy way to experience a bit of Japan in Kuwait so if you spot one, try it out.

I’m sure you’ve heard of UPayments by now. If you’re starting a business or already running one, their name has probably come up more than once.

What makes UPayments interesting is how much they’ve transformed over the years. They started off as a simple payment solution, but today they’ve become a full ecosystem that a lot of businesses rely on. And now, as a subsidiary of NBK, they’ve grown into one of the most trusted and regulated payment providers in Kuwait. That alone gives a lot of confidence to anyone trying to build a serious business.

When you’re choosing a payments partner, there are plenty of options out there. But reliability, security, and long-term stability are things you can’t compromise on. That’s where UPayments really stands out. They’ve gone from being “another payment solution” to becoming a solid growth partner for businesses of all sizes.

Only after that transformation does it make sense to look at what they actually offer today. Their services cover pretty much everything a business might need:

• Online invoicing and payment links for instant collection

• A full e-commerce platform to help you launch and run an online store

• Payment gateway APIs and plugins for easy website and app integration

• Smart point-of-sale devices for in-store payments

• A property management and rent collection system for landlords

If you’re running a small business or planning to start one soon, UPayments is definitely worth checking out. You can find more information on their website upayments.com