Author: Mark

Earlier today I got an email from Saveco about their new store that’s opening in Avenues Phase 4, entrance 28. Funny thing is I was actually in Avenues Phase 4 going down the escalator of entrance 28 when I got and read the email. Since I was already there I decided to check out the location and snap some photos.

Not sure why they’re planning to open in Avenues when their main store is located down the street unless they’re planning to close that location down. Since I always park at entrance 28, this location will be a convenient place for me to pop into on my way out of the Avenues, so I’m not going to complain.

Saveco in Avenues is opening this Thursday at noon.

As I mentioned in my last Ferrari post, in the lead up to my Ferrari Portofino drive, the local Ferrari dealer and I decided I’d test drive the two previous models first, the Ferrari California, and the Ferrari California T. I wasn’t really excited to drive the California T after driving the California because I assumed they would be too similar. I didn’t think there would be much to write about but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I was lucky enough to pick up the car on Thursday last week when the weather was still perfect. It was going to rain that evening but it was clear during the day and the sky was really beautiful which really helped my shots come out great. Actually, the color and the lines of the car also helped with that as well. The California T looks similar to the previous California at first glance, but there are some defining differences. On the exterior, the biggest change would be the front lights and the slightly more aggressive styling on the side. While on the inside, the biggest change would be the updated entertainment system and the steering wheel. In my last California post, I mentioned how one of the things that made the car feel normal was the lack of buttons on the steering wheel. In the California T, the buttons that control the turn signals, lights and wipers are now all back and located on the steering wheel. Definitely overwhelming at first but you quickly get used to it and then wonder why other car manufacturers don’t do this as well.

But, the biggest change with the California T takes place under the hood. The T stands for turbo and the California T has two of those connected to a V8 engine producing 553hp and a 0-100km time of just 3.6 seconds. The car felt a lot faster than the first generation California and handled a lot better. The car felt a lot stiffer during turns but yet somehow still managed to eat up potholes comfortably. Really the only issue I could think of if I was being picky is the exhaust sound, I wished it was louder at normal cruising speeds. The car was a lot of fun to drive and while with the first California I dropped it back to the dealership earlier than I was supposed to, with the California T I actually wanted to keep it for the weekend.

The next Ferrari I’ll be taking out is the newer Portofino so I’m pretty excited about that. I saw the car on display at the dealership and it looks even better than the California T so can’t wait. The car I drove in this post is actually a 2016 model and listed on their for sale on their pre-owned website for KD59,000. But the dealer does have one starting at KD43,000 and you can check it out along with the one I drove and the rest of their pre-owned lineup [Here]

The Cross Cultural Diwaniya have a discussion coming up this Wednesday on Kuwait’s urban infrastructure. It’s a perfectly timed discussion after all the chaos that occurred last week because of the rain. So if have an opinion or want to hear other peoples opinion on this subject, register for this event. For more info, click [Here]

As I previously posted, starting January 1st, Al Mulla Group will be the new distributors for Mercedes-Benz in Kuwait. There has been a lot of talk on where their showroom will be but this current rumor seems to be the most plausible one.

Volkswagon just moved to a new showroom in Al Rai (pictured above), so the rumor is that the Acura dealership will now move into the old VW showroom, leaving the current Acura showroom for Mercedes to take over.

To me, this makes the most sense since the Acura lineup is fairly small, and I don’t think is doing so well in Kuwait, so the old VW location should help cut down on their overhead. The current Acura location is actually pretty nice and spacious so should be enough for the full Mercedes lineup, at least until they build them a new larger location.

Update: Looks like the above isn’t a rumor anymore. A short while ago Acura sent a message to their customers informing them that the dealership is moving to the old VW showroom (including their service center).

A friend sent me the drone footage above of the Fahaheel Expressway flooded in Mangaf. The highway is completely submerged underwater and looks like a river. It’s supposed to rain worse tonight… [YouTube]

Thanks XBS

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A post shared by KUWAIT UPTO DATE (@kuwaitup2date) on Nov 9, 2018 at 9:29am PST

I was on the Kuwait sub on reddit and people were talking about the floods in Kuwait. I had no idea what they were talking about since I’ve been home all day so I popped open @kuwaitup2date and turns out Fahaheel got flooded earlier this evening from the rain. No idea how it happened but it’s horrible, it’s a legit flood.

They’re saying the weather is going to get worse so I decided not to risk it and moved my Lotus to a multistory lot next to my house so it would be parked a floor above ground. Although my building’s basement has never flooded, after watching the videos from Fahaheel I’m not risking it.

If you’re curious to know what has been happening in Fahaheel, check out @kuwaitup2date since he’s been posting a lot of videos.

Screenshot from A Private War

The movies below are now showing at Cinescape, Grand Cinemas, Sky Cinemas and VOX:

New This Weekend:
A Private War (7.0)
Overlord (6.9)
The Grinch (6.1)

Other Movies Showing Now:
A Star Is Born (8.5)
Ana and Bruno (7.1)
Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (6.3)
Halloween (7.5)
Hunter Killer (6.6)
First Man (7.7)
Johnny English Strikes Again (6.7)
King of Thieves (6.0)
Smallfoot (6.8)
Summer of 84 (6.7)
The House with a Clock in Its Walls (6.0)
The Meg (5.9)
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (5.4)
Venom (7.1)
Zoo (6.7)

The movies below are also now showing at the Scientific Center IMAX theater:

Amazon Adventure 3D (6.6)
Amazing Mighty Micro Monsters 3D (7.4)
Oceans: Our Blue Planet (7.4)

Numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at time of publishing.

Carriage updated their app today bringing with it two major changes:

1) The app no longer plays a video on launch
2) The app now saves your credit card details

The video on launch was super annoying so glad they got rid of it. The second update, on the other hand, is a pretty big one. If you go to your profile settings you can now add your credit card to the app. This also works with Knet even though the app will treat it as a Visa card. You add your Knet card to the app and when checking out, choose credit card as your payment method. If you added your card correctly, you should get a small pop up asking you to select the card you want to use to place your order. No more having to type out your card number again.

With Deliveroo launching really soon I’m guessing we’ll be seeing a bunch of new features and possibly promotions and an updated pricing system from Carriage. Should be fun!

If you’re looking for clams then there is a company in Kuwait that sells clams imported from New Zealand. They sell various sizes of clams as well as mussels all from the Cloudy Bay Clams brand. Prices start from KD6 for 1/2kg and you can find out more by clicking [Here]

What I’m curious to know is what the story is with local clams. I’ve heard they’re not allowed to be sold, I’ve heard they’re banned, and I’ve also heard they can be sold just hard to get. Does anyone know anything about this?

The first batch of Suzuki Jimny’s sold out in Kuwait overnight so a lot of people missed out on them. But, I just found out the dealer is getting their second shipment at the beginning of next month. The manual gearbox version was priced at KD5,200 while the automatic version was KD5,500. If you really can’t wait till next month for some reason, there is a car dealer in Sharq selling the green one pictured above for KD6,700 which is over a thousand more than the dealership. Crazy..

PEKO PEKO is a new restaurant that opened up this past weekend and it’s one I had been waiting to open for a few months now. That’s because PEKO PEKO used to be called RAW before they closed down this past Ramadan for renovations. RAW was one of my favorite sushi places and so I was disappointed they had closed down but also curious to see what they were going to open up instead. The chef is the very talented Abdullah AlYaqout so I knew whatever he was cooking up was going to be interesting.

While RAW was a purely Japanese eatery, PEKO PEKO is a Japanese eatery but with East Asian influences. What this means is you’ll find more than just your typical sushi on the menu. With so many sushi places in Kuwait and some really good ones, they probably realized that they had to do something different to stick out and I think they did a pretty good job based on what I tried. The menu I had was the tasting menu and so was fairly limited and didn’t include the prices, but I pretty much liked 8 out of the 10 or so dishes I tried.

I’ll be heading back there this week again to try their full menu and maybe post about the place properly, but for now, if you’re looking for a new restaurant to try then check them out. They’re in their soft launch phase so they’re currently open only from 6PM to 10PM (but daily). For pictures and a link to their location, check out their instagram @eatpekopeko

When it comes to Ferrari convertibles, I’ve had a bit of bad luck. The first time I took out a Ferrari convertible to drive, it was the Ferrari 458 Spider, a beautiful car that I happened to take out during a terrible dust storm. I did end up with some eerie desert shots of the car, but still, I would have loved to have driven the car up and down the coastal road on a beautiful day. I was later offered the Ferrari California, but it was in the summer and I had to pass on it, then again this past summer I was offered the new and gorgeous Ferrari Portofino to test drive, again I was super tempted but had to pass since it was too hot to drive with the roof down.

But, recently while talking to the Ferrari team, I brought up the Portofino again. I really wanted to take the car out but turns out their test drive vehicle was in Oman for an event and wouldn’t be back in Kuwait for a couple of weeks. So we came up with a cool idea, I’d do a heritage drive of a sort. While waiting for the Portofino to arrive to Kuwait, I’d take out the older Ferrari California, and then the newer Ferrari California T before finally taking out the Ferrari Portofino. Three Ferraris, obviously I wasn’t going to say no.

I ended up picking up a red (Rosso Corsa) Ferrari California last week on a beautiful day. The sky was blue and the weather was cool so first thing I did was drop the roof before leaving the dealership to run a few errands. People have a love and hate relationship with the California with most of the hate coming from Ferrari enthusiasts. Now that I’ve driven a few Ferraris I can understand where the misunderstanding of the California comes from. While all the Ferraris I’ve driven have been pretty aggressive and intimidating, I found the California to be fairly chill. As soon as I sat in the car I felt comfortable, mostly because the controls were similar to other non-Ferrari cars. With the Ferrari’s I had previously driven, the steering wheel contained all the buttons for controlling things like turn signals, wipers, lights etc.. It’s a bit overwhelming at first to see all these buttons when you’re used to having levers behind the steering to control these things. It takes a bit of getting used to but the California had a fairly normal steering wheel with just a Start/Stop button and the ride control switch. It felt more like a normal car and I think it’s little things like this that put off the Ferrari enthusiasts.

Driving the California didn’t feel scary either. The California wasn’t crazy fast and felt very manageable and friendlier than say the Ferrari 488GTB. The ride wasn’t harsh, and the car didn’t look aggressive nor did it feel like it was trying to get your driving license revoked. It felt like a beginners Ferrari which is why the car appeals a lot more to women. In fact, when I posted pictures of the car on my instagram, all of the positive comments I got that included heart eyes emojis came from my female followers, while all the puke emojis came from guys.

The California is a car you could use daily, it clears speedbumps easily, it has back seats which are fairly usable and it has a folding hard top which I always prefer over the soft ones. Would I buy one? No I wouldn’t, if I was to buy a Ferrari it would for sure be the GTC4Lusso or the older FF. Actually, if we’re being hypothetical here and talking about convertibles, then the Ferrari convertible I’d want is the Ferrari 488 Pista Spider. But that’s not gonna happen.

The Ferrari California I drove was a 2014 model and is part of their pre-owned collection. All their pre-owned cars are approved and certified by the special Ferrari Approved Program so you’re pretty much buying a used car that’s as good as new.

The car I drove is listed on their website for KD35,000 and you can check it out along with the rest of their pre-owned cars [Here]

The music streaming service Spotify is now officially available for Kuwait and the Middle East. Previously to get Spotify to work in Kuwait you needed to go through a VPN to create an account and then use a US credit card or gift voucher to get the premium features to work.

Signing up is currently invite-only, but you could request an invite by clicking [Here]

Update: Looks like they’ve temporarily disabled the invites so the signup link might not work for you.

Update2: They’ve disabled the invite form completely and Spotify also contacted me to let me know the following:

Spotify’s ultimate goal is to be available in every country. We know how passionate music fans are in MENA, so we are looking forward to launching there soon, and connecting artists and fans across the region. Watch this space…

Update 3: Spotify is now active in Kuwait and no invite is needed. You can sign up for a free account or a premium account which is just $4.99, that’s cheaper than the US version.

The other day I was on the 4th Ring Road when I got stuck in traffic behind a huge trailer with Antera written on the back and PlayStation logos on the side. So I decided to check them out on Instagram and turns out they’re a gaming truck.

Inside the trailer are reclining chairs and large 65″ flatscreen TVs. They have PS4’s with the most recent games as well as online play capability. They also offer non-gaming activities like watching movies or live sporting events with beIN.

According to Antera the truck can hold 10 adults or 12 children and they provide snacks and beverages. The cost of the service is KD60 on weekdays and KD75 on weekends (2 hours minimum). I think it’s a cool idea and could be a lot of fun to park outside a kids birthday party. If you want to find out more you can check them out on instagram @antera.tech

My favorite local band Galaxy Juice released a new music video last week called Pantagonia. It’s a track from their upcoming EP and like all their previous music videos, it’s pretty weird and trippy so check it out above.

If you like their music you can follow them on [Instagram] [Twitter] or [Facebook]