Author: Mark

Gia is a small new cafe that’s opening soon and so far it looks very cute. It’s opening in Al Khalid Complex in Salmiya, a complex which I think has so much potential to be a great trendy spot. Not many places like it anymore..

Spotted these newly installed escalator screens at Avenues Phase III. So now every time you take the escalator down to your car you could pretend you’re back in London about to take the Underground.

[Vimeo]

All the birds in the video were recorded in different places around Kuwait. I knew there were a bunch of bird enthusiasts in Kuwait and after watching the short film I understand why. Who knew we had so many unique birds here? The film was shot by Jassim Muqeem and you can check out more of his stuff on his website [Here]

I was having trouble finding sprinkles for the upcoming “The Belly” post when a friend of mine told me about a place in Shuwaikh that specializes in baking called Tavola. Not sure why sprinkles are difficult to find but I headed out to Shuwaikh looking for Tavola and found it after calling them up and getting directions over the phone.

Once I walked in I headed right to the back to their baking section and I just stood there for a minute or two with my jaw wide open. The employee there asked me if he could help me with anything and I told him I just needed a minute to absorb the place in. It was incredible, they had everything including stuff I didn’t know you could even buy. They had like a million different cupcake and muffin cups, tons of stuff from Wilton like display packaging and stands for your desserts, they had cookie cutters, molds, baking books you name it they had it.

Once I was done picking up what I needed from their baking section I decided to explore the rest of the store. Turns out they’re the dealers for two brands I love:

Zwilling J.A.Henckels
Boushahri used to be the agent years ago and they also had a little small store at Radisson SAS but then they disappeared. Turns out Tavola picked the brand up and they had a large selection of their products on display at the store.

WMF
WMF is used by a lot of luxury hotels worldwide and is a great brand for stainless steel pots, pans and cutlery plus a lot of kitchen accessories. I definitely need to go back and pick up some items for my kitchen.

They’re also the dealers for Bodum, Leonard, Alessi and Peugeot mills. I’m in love with the store, it’s one of those places where I was like I need to share this with everyone.

If you’re interested they’re located in Shuwaikh behind London Market and their phone number is 24825761. They have a map as well as photos of their different products and brands on their Instagram page [Here]

For other places I’ve previously focused on click [Here]

Update: They’re also the dealers for Cuisineart. Also here is their location on [Google Maps]

I noticed Lakeland at Marina Mall is selling Roombas. They had two models, the Roomba 630 and the Roomba 390 which washes floors. Sadly, both models are ridiculously priced. The Roomba 630 is being sold for KD200 (KD99 on Amazon) and the Roomba 390 is for KD269 (KD142 on Amazon). Amazon ships the Roomba internationally and it will cost you just KD28 to ship the Roomba from the US to Kuwait via DHL. So that’s a considerable saving compared to buying it locally.

I used to have the really older model back in 2003. If you don’t know what a Roomba is click [Here]

Anwar Jawhar took part in an Ironman competition at the beginning of this month and he ended up qualifying for the Ironman World Championships. Anwar took part in Ironman 70.3 Cebu in Philippines and qualified for the world championship by winning in his age group 25-29 years old. He finished 1st place in the group out of 150 triathletes and was ranked 28th overall out of 2500 total participants including professional triathletes and the current world champion.

The Ironman 70.3 race held in Cebu Philippines consisted of a 1.9km swim followed by a 90km bike and finished off with a 21km half marathon run. Anwar Jawhar became the first Kuwaiti and GCC national to ever qualify to the world championships which will be held in Las Vegas on 8th September 2013.

I’ve run with Anwar before and after like 8KM I would be dead on the floor and he would have already run like 15KM as his warmup without breaking a sweat. Super fit is an understatement.

If you’re interested, you can follow Anwar on Instagram @anwarjawhartriathlete to keep up to date with his progress in the world championships and his triathlon career.

Two articles, one on PetaPixel the other at the Daily Mail. Both include photos from Kuwaiti Instagram accounts…

Thanks Wishbone

Bandaid is a local country/rock band composed of medical students including Kuwait country musician Ibrahim Al-Mazeedi whom I first posted about back in 2010. He’s come a lonngggg way since then since their single Break Free is actually pretty good, check it out. [YouTube]

Follow them on twitter @bandaidq8

According to Gallup’s global employment data, Kuwait ranked 3rd world wide with the highest population working full-time for an employer. Generally wealthier countries are more likely to have larger percentages of their population working for an employer, while poorer countries tend to have larger percentages of the population working for themselves. In Kuwait’s case considering the fact that it’s also difficult for an expat to work for themselves and the fact an expat can’t remain in Kuwait without a job is probably what’s pushing the employment percentage up. UAE who have a similar situation to Kuwait don’t rank far behind in 5th place. Check out the full list and details on this Gallup [Here]

via reddit

So yeah, what was supposed to be a routine upgrade scheduled for 3AM turned out to be a disaster with the site being offline most of the day. Things are back to normal now finally.

RMDN by +Aziz, a Kuwaiti songwriter living in New York. [Vimeo]

Last week the Jawbone dealer sent me the UP wristband to tryout and review. The Jawbone UP tracks your sleep and movement patterns and I am going to start this review by saying I am not UP’s intended user. The UP is meant for casual users who want to get a rough idea of how many calories they’re burning or how active their lifestyle is. Since my lifestyle is already pretty active I need more accurate data which the UP can’t provide me with since it doesn’t monitor your heartbeat and it doesn’t have a GPS to track distance. But, after having used the UP for a week I ended up liking the device and I’ll explain why a bit further into the review.

The UP reminds me a lot of the Nike Fuelband and it should because they both basically do the exact same thing. Both the Fuelband and UP track your movement patterns and then converts that data into pretty graphs. The biggest difference for me with the UP is that it also tracks sleep patterns which is something that I was really interested in. When you run the app for the first time you enter various information about yourself and then you choose two targets, the amount of hours you would like to sleep and your daily target for steps. The defaults are 8 hours and 10,000 steps and I left them that way. Throughout the day all your movements are recorded by the wristband but you can also help make it more accurate by telling the wristband what activity you just performed.

Within the UP application on the phone you have the option to log specific workouts like a run or a weight lifting session. You select the kind of activity you performed based on preset ones along with the intensity of the activity and also the duration. The application then calculates how many calories you burned using published MET values. This isn’t very accurate because you have to estimate the intensity of your activity and so you’ll only end up with a ballpark figure which should still be fine for the majority of people.

Sleep tracking is a very interesting aspect of the UP. Before you go to sleep you put the device into sleep mode and when you wake up you just turn sleep mode off. UP then takes your nighttime movement data and plots them out for you. My aim was to get 8 hours of sleep every night but based on the data my average has been less than 6 hours. UP also lets you know how long it took you to fall asleep and how much light and deep sleep you’re getting. Finally UP can also help you take a proper power nap during the day. By pressing the button on the UP twice and then holding it down it will turn on power nap mode which based on your previous nights sleep will calculate the optimum duration for your power nap which could range from 27 to 45 minutes. When it’s time to wakeup the UP vibrates.

Synchronizing the data between the UP and the app is a simple process, there is small cap at the end of the UP band which when removed will reveal a headphone connector which plugs into the phone. The wristband is also water resistant which according to the Jawbone website means I can shower with it but I actually swam with it all day over the weekend and it’s still working perfectly fine. Actually the website says NOT to submerge it in water so if you do so you do it as your own risk. Battery life according to Jawbone is 10 days and based on my experience that seems about right.

So yes the UP isn’t very accurate but I personally still loved it and the main reason being is I’m wearing it like a normal bracelet, a fashion accessory. The UP looks good, I don’t have to remove it when I shower or swim and other than charging it once every 10 days the UP doesn’t require any maintenance. It’s like a nice looking bracelet that has the added value of letting you know approximately how active you are while also letting you know how much sleep you’re getting.

If you’re interested in the UP you can order one directly from the dealer by calling them on 97337221. It costs KD45 and KD2 for delivery. You can also check out their Instagram account for other ways of ordering [Here]

Damn, why don’t we have these kinds of races anymore? [YouTube]

I don’t have the photos in a larger size since they’re all screen grabs taken from this video. I’ve already contacted the guy who made the video to see where he got the photos originally from so hopefully he gets back to me. For now you can check out all the old photos below.

Also make sure you check out the fire departments official Instagram account which is pretty active [Here]

KMWFCT Opening Ceremony – Behind The Scenes

I didn’t know about this until just a few moments ago but last week was the Kuwait Mini World Futsal Club Tournament and the opening ceremony looked pretty impressive. The video above is of the making of the ceremony and once you’re done watching that you could watch the actual opening ceremony which was around an hour long [Here] (starts at the 18mins mark)