Author: Mark

I’m currently in London for the week and I haven’t been here since 2022, before we got Apple Pay in Kuwait.

One cool benefit I realized I now have on this trip is that I can use the London Underground by just tapping my phone on the yellow card readers. I don’t even need to double tap the side button or even activate Face ID, I just take my phone out of my pocket, touch the yellow card reader and it automatically takes the money from my account and lets me through. It also works if you have Google Pay but I haven’t tried that.

Another cool thing I got to try on this trip is the eGate at the airport. Because I have the Canadian passport and I was alone, I was able to use the egate at passport control which meant I didn’t have to wait in any line and was through passport control in under a minute. Anyone who’s had to wait in line for an hour at LHR knows going through in under a minute is just insane.

Other than that its freezing and wet over here right now. I keep forgetting how cold it really gets outside of Kuwait and so I never pack enough winter clothes.

This past week felt long and exhausting but if you have the energy for it, here is this weekends list of different things you can do:

Thursday, February 29
Artisan Expo at Al Shaheed Park
Perfume Expo
Ramadan Food & Household Exhibition
Campfire Kashta
Scientific Center Green Market
Disney’s Peter Pan in the Courtyard

Friday, March 1
Artisan Expo at Al Shaheed Park
Perfume Expo
Ramadan Food & Household Exhibition
Scientific Center Green Market
Sharing is Caring Bazaar
BLS Spring Market

Saturday, March 2
Qout Market
Artisan Expo at Al Shaheed Park
Perfume Expo
Ramadan Food & Household Exhibition
Much Ado About Nothing
Scientific Center Green Market
Sharing is Caring Bazaar

I started watching Constellation this week. Not sure I like it, there are some interesting moments, but there’s a lot I also find really boring, mostly the none space scenes.

Dune: Part 2 is out this weekend, I’m at the airport now heading to London so I’m planning to watch it there. I’ve also filled my iPad with a ton of shows to watch on the plane including Mr & Mrs Smith, Obliterated, House of Ninjas, and the latest season of Formula 1: Drive to Survive.

Let us know in the comments if you’ve watched anything interesting this week.

Movies at the Cinemas
The movies below are now showing at the local cinemas:

New This Weekend:
DarkGame (5.9)
Dune: Part Two (N/A)
Inside Man (5.5)
Fast Charlie (6.2)
Stopmotion (6.4)
The Holdovers (8.0)

Other Movies Showing:
Argylle (6.2)
Bob Marley: One Love (6.5)
In the Land of Saints and Sinners (6.1)
Madame Web (3.8)
No Way Up (5.3)
Red Right Hand (5.3)
The Ancestral (4.3)
The Beekeeper (6.8)
Wanted Man (4.7)
Wish (5.8)
Wonka (7.4)

The classic film below is currently showing at the 1954 Film House:
Goldfinger (7.7)

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

Last week I was given access to the Tareq Rajab Museums’ private photography archive, and over the coming weeks I’ll be sharing my favorite finds. But, since it’s raining today I figured I’d share the first batch of photos taken after “The First Flood”.

I posted about the first flood back in September, but the photo I had found then was low resolution. That’s why I was pretty surprised to come across three high resolution photos in the Tareq Rajab Museum’s archive.

In Kuwait, the year 1934 is sometimes called Sanat Al Haddamah (the year of destruction) since torrential rains caused a lot of destruction to the old town of Kuwait.

Within only an hour, Kuwait witnessed unprecedented torrential rains that reached 300mm and caused raging floods and waters that swept away a third of the mud houses in Kuwait.

These three photos show the aftermath of the flood.

According to an article on Arab Times, Kuwait Airport is ranked the 7th worst airport in the world according to Skytrax, the airline and airport review and ranking site. I tried to figure out how Arab Times got their top 10 list but I couldn’t figure it out, on another list also by Skytrax, Kuwait is ranked the 6th worst airport.

6th or 7th, it doesn’t matter really. Previously another airport and airline review site, AirHelp, had ranked Kuwait Airport the 2nd worst in the world, but suspiciously after that ranking, Kuwait stopped appearing on their list.

I’m traveling tomorrow with British Airways from Terminal 1 and not really looking forward to it, although truthfully, since Terminal 4 and the Jazeera terminal opened, Terminal 1 has been pretty chill. It’s just visually an ugly terminal with nothing to do once inside.

While on the subject of airports, I remember reading online somewhere that the fee for long term parking at Terminal 1 got increased from 2KD per day to 5KD per day, can anyone confirm that?

UPDATE: Due to the bad weather, the air show has been postponed till tomorrow, February 26.

The Kuwait Army has a number of events taking place today at the Kuwait Towers on the occasion of National & Liberation Day:

2:00 PM – Military Band Performance
4:00 PM – Airshow
4:30 PM – Folklore Band Performance

The Kuwait Army are also displaying some of their military vehicles in the Kuwait Towers parking lot for the public to explore.

If you want to head to the towers but don’t want to get stuck in traffic, then it would be a good idea to park in the city, in the area around Hamra Tower for example, and then walk over. @kuwaitarmyghq

Over the past couple of days there have been rumors floating around about Elon Musk coming to Kuwait. It’s being reported by some local news sites which I hadn’t heard of before, which is why I’m marking this as a rumor for now.

Allegedly, Elon Musk is expected to visit Kuwait in the next few days for discussions aimed at establishing Kuwait as a global hub for artificial intelligence.

This is where things gets strange, there is a secretive GPU cloud startup in Kuwait called Omniva that have plans to build a huge data center in Kuwait. The company is headed by big names who came in from companies like Amazon AWS, META and Microsoft. The data center which is under construction is located at the entrance of Sabah Al Ahmad Sea City (Road 278). source

I reached out to Elon Musk and Omniva to confirm all this, but I haven’t heard back from them yet.

The first phase of the new refurbished waterfront has now officially been completed. The first phase stretches from the Green Island all the way to the Kuwait Towers and has been given a complete facelift with new sidewalks, dedicated jogging and bicycle paths, as well as new lights, bins, benches and more.

The second phase of the project is from Green Island to Al Shaab slipway and is expected to be completed in October.

Runners will be glad to know that the running track is cushioned so it will be easy on your knees. Both the running and bike paths have distance markers so you can also tell how far you’ve run or cycled. For more pictures, click here.

Here are this weekends events, let me know if I missed anything:

Thursday, Feb 22
Winter Garden Market at Al Shaheed Park
Hala February Market at Murouj
Classic Car Show at The Promenade
Fireworks at Khiran Mall
COMFEST
K-POP Night

Friday, Feb 23
Winter Garden Market at Al Shaheed Park
Hala February Market at Murouj
Celebrations at ASCC
Al-Farsi Kite Festival
Classic Car Show at The Promenade
Fireworks at Khiran Mall
Cars & Coffee at Green Island
COMFEST
Khalifouh Heritage Village

Saturday, Feb 24
Winter Garden Market at Al Shaheed Park
Hala February Market at Murouj
Celebrations at ASCC
Al-Farsi Kite Festival
Classic Car Show at The Promenade
Korean Market at MADANG
Fireworks at Khiran Mall
COMFEST
Khalifouh Heritage Village

Sunday, Feb 25
Winter Garden Market at Al Shaheed Park
Hala February Market at Murouj
Celebrations at ASCC
Al-Farsi Kite Festival
Free Entry to Scientific Center
Fireworks at Al Kout Mall
Khalifouh Heritage Village

Monday, Feb 26
Winter Garden Market at Al Shaheed Park
Hala February Market at Murouj
Celebrations at ASCC
Al-Farsi Kite Festival
Free Entry to Scientific Center
Drone Show at The Walk
Hike Mutlaa
Khalifouh Heritage Village

I’m obsessed with Masters of Air. After the first two episodes I wasn’t really that impressed with the series since I had just finished watching Band of Brothers and The Pacific, but now that I’m 5 episodes in, I don’t want it to end.

I’m not invested in any of the characters, I actually might only be able to pick one out in a line up, but as long as I’m with them on the bomber on our way to a bombing mission, I’m heavily invested in whomever is on board.

If you’re a fan of the series, check out the @appletv instagram account since they have a bunch of cool behind the scenes photos from the series as well as linking to the actors personals instagram accounts.

Let us know in the comments if you’ve watched anything interesting this week.

Movies at the Cinemas
The movies below are now showing at the local cinemas:

New This Weekend:
Bob Marley: One Love (6.6)
Red Right Hand (N/A)
The Ancestral (4.3)
Wanted Man (4.7)

Other Movies Showing:
Argylle (6.2)
Clown Motel (2.9)
In the Land of Saints and Sinners (6.1)
Madame Web (3.8)
Migration (7.5)
No Way Up (5.3)
The Beekeeper (6.8)
Wish (5.8)
Wonka (7.4)

The classic film below is currently showing at the 1954 Film House:
Titanic (7.9)

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

On the occasion of National Day and Liberation Day, @alshaheedpark in collaboration with @martyrskuwait created a light installation composed of LED roses. There are 1,329 roses in the garden, each representing a Kuwaiti martyr.

The installation is located in Al Shaheed Park Phase II, and if you want to take photos, I’d recommend visiting during sunset so that your photos don’t end up very dark.

I know it sounds weird that I’m asking whats happening instead of telling you whats happening, but I can’t seem to find any information on National Day. There have been fighter jets flying daily so I’m assuming there will be some kind of airshow, but I can’t find any information on it. Maybe one of the Arabic newspapers published something?

I’m looking back at last year’s schedule and there were surprisingly a lot of things happening from the light drone shows, to fireworks and the Saudi Hawks Air Show. Along with the ban on water balloons and water guns this year, it looks like there might be zero things going on.

A reader left a comment recently letting me know that F1 TV Pro now works in Kuwait. If you’re an F1 fan, F1 TV Pro is the best way to watch the races. It costs around $80 for a year and you can watch the practice, qualifications and the races live, as well as the pre race and post race shows among other things.

The app also allows you to also pick between two different English commentary teams, different driver cameras and access to lots of data.

Previously F1 TV Pro would only work in Kuwait if you used a VPN, so this is really good news.

Cinescape is launching their new rooftop cinema tonight and they’re calling it Skyline.

Located on the rooftop of Al Assima Mall, Skyline will be the only outdoor cinema in Kuwait playing new releases and officially licensed films. It will also be Cinescape’s first outdoor cinema since Cinema Al Saifi (Fahaheel 1959, Hawally 1965), and the Ahmadi Drive-in Cinema (1980-2004).

Skyline will be playing current English and Arabic films as well as classics a couple of times a week. There will be 3 movies a day showing every day and you will be able to book them through their app.

Food will be available including exclusive cold weather items like soup, hot chocolate, sliders, pizza and more.

Tickets will be for 5KD and this will be a yearly seasonal cinema, not a temporary popup. It will close down once it gets too hot but then reopen again later in the year once the weather cools down again.

To stay posted on Skyline, follow @cinescapekuwait

Forbes Middle East revealed their annual list of Middle East’s 100 Most Powerful Businesswomen and 7 Kuwaiti businesswomen made the list for 2024. Even more impressive is that 3 of the top 5 most powerful businesswomen are from Kuwait.

Here are the most powerful Kuwaiti women and their position in the top 100:

2. Shaikha Khaled Al Bahar
National Bank of Kuwait Group (NBK Group)

3. Wadha Ahmad Al-Khateeb
Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC)

5. Dana Nasser Al Sabah
Kuwait Projects Company (Holding) – KIPCO

18. Henadi Al-Saleh
Agility

28. Nadia Bader Al-Hajji
Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC)

67. Donna Sultan
KEO International Consultants

86. Nadia Akil
United Projects for Aviation Services Company (UPAC)