2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003
This is this weekend’s to-do list, if you’ve been looking for a desert activity then the Car Boot & Dine event is the one to check out:
Thursday
Kuwait Motor Town Open Track
Friday
Car Boot & Dine [Location]
Ultimate Frisbee Pick Up Game
Saturday
Car Boot & Dine [Location]
Trashtag Messila Beach Cleanup
Trash Hero Subiya Cleanup
If I missed an event let me know.
Earlier this week I posted a list of car and bike brands that were acquired by BNK and one of the brands I listed was Vanderhall Motor Works. Vanderhall is an American vehicle manufacturer that produces three-wheeled roadsters and yesterday I took a spin in one around the block.
I’m really not a big fan of three-wheeled cars but was curious to try one, and having tried one now, I’m still not a fan. It’s not a motorbike or a car and there is no way to avoid potholes in a three-wheeler. The roadster is hot looking but would look ten times hotter if it had four wheels! Definitely a toy car.
If you’re interested, they’re going to sell for around 10-14K at the local dealer depending on the model and you can get more info by visiting their instagram account @vanderhallkw
The Kuwait Municipality recently launched the Baladia 139 mobile application to report issues. Currently, the issues you can report are waste removal related but hopefully, they’ll add more categories soon or at least an “Other” section. This is what they have to say about the app:
Baladia 139 application is developed by Kuwait Municipality offering mobile users one more way to report selected issues to Kuwait Municipality.
With Baladia 139, reporting an issue is as easy as snapping a photo with your smartphone, adding detailed information and hitting submit. The location of your request will be automatically detected and sent to Kuwait Municipality, so a team can go and handle your request at the earliest.
The app offers the following service request categories:
• Garbage Removal
• Abandon Cars Removal
• Building Waste Removal
• Furniture Waste RemovalFeel free to submit and track the progress of your requests via Baladia 139 application.
If you’re on iOS you can download it here.
If you’re an Android user you can download it here.
Thanks Fahad
Over the weekend I picked up the brand new Porsche Taycan to review. I’ve been curious to try the Taycan ever since it launched because I think it’s the best looking fully electric car on the market right now by far (sorry Tesla owners). I was hoping the color combo of the test drive car was white exterior with a black interior similar to the launch photos, but the car I picked up was a metallic blue with a beige interior. Not the most exciting color combination and I was actually worried it would be difficult to shoot but the shots eventually came out great.
The Taycan is Porsche’s fully electric car. It’s not a hybrid, meaning, it doesn’t run on a combination of electricity and fuel, this is a 100% electric car similar to how Teslas are. My worry with electric cars always obviously is running out of power and being stuck on the side of the road. The Taycan fully charged has a range of over 400km, but when I picked up the car from the dealer, it only had a 77% charge. Kinda sucked cuz it didn’t help with the anxiety of running out of range. When reviewing cars I tend to put on a lot of mileage on the cars very quickly so I can get a proper experience with it. I had a whole day of errands to run and I wasn’t going to let a partially charged vehicle change that. So I decided I’d not focus too much on the range and just enjoy the car.
The interior felt very familiar right away because it still resembled a normal Porsche although all the buttons had been replaced by a large touch screen and the gauges were fully digital. There was a feeling of familiarity because it felt like a regular car and wasn’t stripped out like a Tesla where all the car controls moved to a tablet-like screen. The interior looked hi-tech with three displays, one in front of me where the analog gauges would usually be, a large screen in the center of the dash, and finally a large screen built into the center console which has all the controls. There is an extra option to add a passenger screen which I think would make the interior even more futuristic but the car I drove didn’t have it. I’m generally not a fan of touch screens for controls, but I wasn’t too bothered by the controls on the Taycan. The screen was large enough to make all the buttons big and easy to touch, plus there was haptic feedback so I could tell if I had pressed a button properly or not.
I started off by heading to Shuwaikh to quickly take some photos of the car in case I didn’t have time later that day but also so I could post some photos on my Instagram story. I then headed to Avenues for some Christmas shopping before heading to Bayan and different parts of Salmiya for some more errands. Anytime someone would message me on Instagram to ask me how the car was I had one response and that it was fast. The model I drove was the Taycan Turbo which does 0 to 100 in 3.2 seconds, that’s faster than my Lotus which is a difficult idea to grasp. It’s also not only fast 0 to 100, the car keeps acceleration effortlessly as long as you have your foot down on the power. One cool Porsche feature is the fake electric sound that you can get on the car. Electric cars don’t make sounds but for an extra KD150, Porsche will fit the car with the Electric Sport Sound option which adds a futuristic humming-like sound that makes the car sound like you’d expect an electric car to sound like in an 80s movie. It sounded super cool and I obviously had the option turned on all the time. I tried capturing the sound but didn’t have any luck but you could check out this video on YouTube if you want to hear it.
I ended up driving quite a bit of distance on the car, even headed over the Kuwait bay bridge to the other side to take some more photos of the car and by the time I had finished with the car and brought it back to the dealer, it still had around 28% battery left (120km range). I loved the car and if I was in the market for an electric car the Taycan would be an easy choice for me over the Tesla because of the looks alone. But, I wouldn’t go for the Turbo model which starts from KD47,300. Nobody needs a 4 door sedan to be that fast. Instead, I’d recommend the 4S model which starts from KD33,900. When I built my own car on the Porsche website with all the options I wanted the car came out to KD42,000 which is still way cheaper than the base Turbo model. So that would be my recommendation, get the Taycan 4S pimped out with all the options you want.
Due to the pandemic, all racing at the Kuwait Motor Town track had been put on hold but they’re finally back! There will be two open track events to end the year, one this coming Thursday the 24th, and the next on the 31st. The dates were announced yesterday but tickets only went on sale this morning and sold out in a few minutes. I was literally refreshing the website all morning and so managed to quickly buy tickets for both days, but a lot of people I know either managed to just get a ticket for one day, or weren’t even fast enough to get any tickets at all.
Because of the pandemic, they’ve got new rules for this season:
I can’t wait, this is gonna be a great way to end this bizarre year.
Top photo captured by @hamed__ashkanani
Big Ramy who started training at Oxygen Gym back in 2010 has become the new Mr. Olympia 2020 Champion. It’s such an incredible feat, basically, the equivalent of winning Miss Universe or the UEFA Championship, but in the bodybuilding world. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was bodybuilding his goal was to become the greatest bodybuilder in the world, that meant becoming Mr. Olympia. He eventually won it 7 times.
A few years ago I posted about how Kuwait was the new bodybuilding mecca of the World and Big Ramy just proved this to be true.
I was just thinking a couple of days ago on different people who started in Kuwait and gained worldwide success, the two people that came into my mind were @pinot and @nouriflayhan since I know them, but Big Ramy is now another local success story.
Sheikh @nsaalsabah with his wife Sheikha Hussa Alsabah prepared to open Dar al Athar al Islamiyyah museum in 1983 pic.twitter.com/IuObpQJyT9
— نوح (@kwt80s) June 24, 2020
The behind the scenes video above is of Sheikh Nasser and his wife Sheikha Hussa during the preperations to open the Dar al Athar al Islamiyyah museum back in 1983.
Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al Sabah passed away yesterday aged 72.
Last year BNK become the dealer for Volvo cars and since then they’ve been busy acquiring the rights to more brands in Kuwait. So far from what I can tell these are the brands they’ve gotten so far:
Aprilia
Moto Guzzi
Polestar
Vanderhall
Vespa
Volvo
I haven’t seen the Vanderhall on the streets yet (pictured above), but I did see a Polestar a couple of times on the road last week. Vespa, on the other hand, existed in Kuwait before and I had one, but the previous dealer closed down and BNK instead has now taken it over. I loved my old yellow Vespa but sold it after I bought my first Datsun 240z.
Someone on Reddit shared a vintage RCA ad for air conditioners that mentioned Kuwait. They shared a black and white version but I managed to find a colored version which you can check out here. If you want to read the text on the ad click here.
At the start of the pandemic, I shut down the events section since everything obviously stopped. But, a few things are starting to pop up and I’m going to start posting about them here and once things really take off, only then reopen the events section again. For now here are a few things taking place this weekend:
Friday
Trashtag Kuwait x Solarity
Sound Healing
Straw Blown Acrylic Pour
Yin Yan Yoga
Kuwait Cricket Desert Championship Finals
Saturday
Saracen Race 2020
If I missed an event let me know.
This is super random which is why I find it fascinating. Someone from the roller coaster community (I guess a roller coaster geek?) posted on reddit asking for videos of a roller coaster that used to be in Shaab Park called the Spiral Coaster. Turns out it was an ultra rare roller coaster with only one ever made by Intamin Amusement Rides, a major player in the amusement park attractions industry and based out of Liechtenstein.
The Spiral Coaster was a pipeline coaster meaning the train rides between the tracks as opposed to a traditional roller coaster where the train rides above them. The Spiral Coaster concept was originally designed by the US company Arrow Dynamics and was featured in the National Geographics special on the company. You can actually see the prototype of the coaster in the video above (starts at 16:00). Arrow Dynamics couldn’t produce the roller coaster so Intamin took the concept from them and built it themselves.
Originally the roller coaster was called the Comet and was located inside a recreational complex in South Korea called Sky Plaza from 1996 to 1999. Sky Plaza eventually failed and the building demolished and Shaab Park acquired the roller coaster. Shaab Park renamed the roller coaster to Spiral Coaster and it was active in the park from 2000 to 2005.
Eventually, the ride was marked as SBNO from 2005 to 2017 which is amusement park lingo for standing but not operational. I actually found some pictures I had taken back in 2012 with the ride in the backdrop in poor condition. The area underneath the coaster was used as part of the MILSIM airsoft battleground.
If anyone here has any videos or photos of the ride, please let me know or share it. They’re rare and the roller coaster community would love it.
Kei, the first Japanese restaurant in Kuwait is closing down their JW Marriott location at the end of the month. Kei first opened up 40 years ago and were originally located at the Hilton Hotel in Bneid Al Gar but had to move because the hotel got demolished. They moved to JW Marriott 20 years ago and now have to move again because the hotel is also getting partially demolished. They still haven’t found a new location to move to, so it will be awhile until they’re back again. If you want to pass by one more time before they close, their last day of operation is December 31st.
Regarding the hotel what I understood is happening is that Salhiya Mall will be expanding into the lobby area of the hotel and the first few floors of the hotel will be converted to offices. The hotel will still remain but will move up a few floors above the offices.
A couple of weeks back I noticed a shiny silver box popped up on my usual bike route and turns out they’re smart public toilets. The toilets are pre-fabricated which is why they suddenly popped up out of nowhere and are smart in the sense they have an automatic self-cleaning and washing mechanism as well as the ability to be monitored and controlled remotely.
The toilets look like they’ll be coin operated and I spotted two on my route, one next to the Swimming Pool Complex near Corniche Club while the second one near the new Burger King. Both had two CCTV cameras on the outside I guess to try and deter any vandalism or more likely, couples trying to hook up inside one of the toilets.
Update: A bit of extra info, these public toilets operate on solar power, recycle waste up to Greywater for irrigation and have airconditioning.
Pre-Covid we weren’t known for taking care of our environment and now during Covid with everyone staying here things have gotten worse. People here have a terrible habit of littering be it at the beach or in the middle of the desert and with the increase of kashtas, its become even more apparent. So the EPA launched an awareness campaign in the hopes of making people more aware of the garbage they’re leaving behind.
It’s a great short animation with humor which I think works since more people will end up sharing it. But, it’s in Arabic so not all my readers will get it. @EPA_kw
There is a clinic in Kuwait called DHAMAN that is now offering a saliva Covid-19 PCR test that is also certified for travel. With regular PCR tests, they shove a swab deep into your nose and it can be very uncomfortable. With the saliva test on the other hand, you just spit into a container and that’s it. You get the results within 24 hours and the cost is 40KD. That’s more expensive than the regular swab test but for now, you’ll be paying the premium for comfort. If you’re interested in getting the saliva Covid test click here for more info.
Thanks Fahad
