Author: Mark

Blast From The Past, the burger concept born out of the Oak and Smoke kitchen launches today. I generally don’t post about new burger places because they’re a dime a dozen now, but, Oak and Smoke actually make really good burgers, probably some of the best of any restaurant so I have very high expectations.

Their new concept Blast From The Past is only delivery to begin with, and only on Cari. If you’re looking for a new burger place to try you can check out their menu on Instagram @bftpkw

The poster below is of the first-ever Kuwait International Book Fair that was held 47 years ago in Kuwait back in November of 1975 (source). The current book fair taking place at the Fair Grounds is #45 and I passed by it last week to check it out.

This year the event looks a lot better than before since the standard booths seem nicer, or maybe they’ve changed the carpet but either way, it just looks visually better overall. There are English books but not many and isolated to a small corner in one of the halls. It’s still worth passing by and checking out especially since it’s going on for another 6 days. For timings and more info check out my previous post here.

The famous contemporary circus ‘Cirque du Soleil’ is coming to Kuwait next month bringing OVO, their production inspired by the world of insects. The show will be held at The Arena with tickets starting at 25KD for the bronze seats and going up to 125KD for the royal seats.

It’s a family-friendly show and they will be performing in Kuwait over five days, from December 14th to December 18th. If you want more information or are interested in getting tickets, here is the link.

The Arena only

Below is this weekend’s list of events taking place. If I missed anything let me know in the comments.

Thursday, Nov 17
Kuwait International Book Fair
JACC: The Tiger Who Came to Tea
WAGMI Talk Sessions
Plant a Tree at Boulevard
Healing Circle

Friday, Nov 18
Kuwait International Book Fair
JACC: The Tiger Who Came to Tea
Gulf Run
Sailing: Friday Sunset Cruising
Doll Making Workshop
Grounding Beach Art
Football: Belgium vs Egypt
Disney Store Meet & Greet

Saturday, Nov 19
Kuwait International Book Fair
JACC: The Tiger Who Came to Tea
Gulf Run
Operation Turtles Beach Cleanup
Treasure Hunt at Al Shaheed Park
Family Medicine 5K Race
Storytelling Through Songwriting
Art Sandsation
Al Andalus Retro Poster Workshop
Ceramics Workshop: Qahwa Cups
Cooking Class: Fried Chicken 101
KTAA Fall Bazaar
Disney Store Meet & Greet
Grand Mosque Tour

Exhibitions
The Divine Agent by Lilia Nour
Ghada Al Kandari x Mercedes Benz

Activities
Albohayra Farm
Ascend Rock Climbing
Indoor Karting
Little Jungle
Murouj Farm
Movement Classes at Omni Studio
Roller Blade at Roller Hub
Yoga at Darātma

Museums to Visit
Abdullah Salem Cultural Center (ASCC)
Amricani Cultural Center Museum
Bait Al Othman Museum
Tareq Rajab Museum

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

New This Weekend:
Joker (2019) (Re-release) (8.4)
Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend (N/A)
Super Furball 2 (6.4)
The Bunker Game (3.5)

Other Movies Showing:
Black Adam (7.5)
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (7.4)
Boonie Bears: Back to Earth (5.9)
Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile (6.5)
Prey for the Devil (5.0)
Smile (6.6)
The System (3.6)
The Woman King (6.3)

The classic films below are currently showing at the 1954 Film House:

Classic Movies Showing:
The Shawshank Redemption (9.3)

The films below are also showing at the JACC Cinema:

Classic & Indie Films Showing:
Beirut Hold’em (6.1)

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

The 45th book fair started today at the Kuwait International Fairground and will continue until November 26th. The fair is located in halls 5, 6, 7 and 7B and the timings are as follows:

Daily: 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM and 4:30 PM to 10:00 PM
Friday: 4:00 PM to 10:00 PM

The first ever Disney Store in Kuwait and the Middle East is opening at The Avenues this weekend. They’re having a meet and greet with some Disney friends at the store. They just posted the schedule up on their Instagram and the meet and greet is taking place on November 18th, 19th and 20th.

If you want to take your kids to meet some Disney characters, the store is located in the Grand Avenues adjacent to Gia and you can check out their Instagram account for the full schedule @disneystorealshaya

The World Cup 2022 starts in just a few days and the only way to watch it legally at home (from what I’m aware) is through beIN Sports. Fifa+ doesn’t support Kuwait and KTV hasn’t announced if they’ll be broadcasting the games for free as of this post.

There are two ways to watch the games on beIN, if you already have a beIN receiver and a subscription, you can add the World Cup package to your existing subscription as an add-on. If you don’t have a Bein box then you have two options:

beIN Sports
Subscribe to the World Cup 2022 stand-alone package with beIN but this setup isn’t going to be cheap since the stand-alone package will cost you $225 without the receiver.

TOD Tournament Ticket
TOD is a subscription-based streaming platform that launched early this year. They exclusively host beIN SPORTS content and offer a World Cup 2022 package for $80. With this subscription you get unlimited access to beIN SPORTS channels MAX 1-6 from the 1st of November to the 31st of December. Their app is available for both iOS and Android devices and supports the ability to cast onto your television using Airplay or Chromecast.

If there is an alternative way to watch the World Cup 2022 legally, let me know in the comments.

The Touristic Enterprises Company is nearly done constructing a container park on Salmiya’s Blajat beach which they’re calling “KWT FAN BOX”. The container park is being built to broadcast the World Cup 2022 matches which are going to start on November 20th and continue into December.

The container park will have various entertainment and sports activities, cafes, and restaurants as well as five screens broadcasting the games. Four of the screens will be distributed around the container park with a fifth main and gigantic 11x6m screen located in the center. There will be 1,500 parking spots available which hopefully should be enough or else there will be even more major congestion on that already heavily congested street.

Some of the restaurants and shops that will be opening at the park include:

300f
A Store
Al Rifai
Ebn 3amy
Face/Off
Froyo
Haagen-Dazs
Illy Cafe
Joy Cafe
Kalemat
Lulu’s Tea House
Meme’s Curry
Ole
Ratio Cafe
Rib Eye Steak House
Sakura
Saray
Shake Shack
Starbucks
Tuta Sushi
Yoosee’s Chicken

KWT FAN BOX is expected to open on November 20th but I passed by yesterday and it looked like there was still a lot of work to be done so I’m very curious to see if they’ll manage to finish on time. Once it does finish the park will be open daily from 10AM until midnight.

Ticket prices are as follows:

Entrance ticket per person: 2.5 KD
Entry is free for children under the age of five
Entry is free for the domestic workers accompanying a family
For groups of 4 people or more, the entrance ticket is 2 KD per person

Here is the location of the park on Google Maps. To stay posted on the project, check out their Instagram account @kwt.fan.box

Update: KWT FAN BOX is now open.

Over the weekend I visited Riyadh to check out the Noor Festival. Noor means light in Arabic and I think they have around 44 different installations located all around Riyadh for this festival. Some of the installations are really epic and I mainly went to check out two, the one above by SpY Studio, and the one below by Arne Quinze.

All the installations are free to check out although for some it seemed like they required to get free tickets so I did, but then nobody was checking for tickets.

I only wanted to spend one night in Riyadh so I was rushing from one place to another to check out the installations. It was Friday which meant there wasn’t much traffic which was great. The Arne Quinze installation was located around an hour outside Riyadh in the middle of nowhere so that took the longest to get to. It was actually located on the same road into Riyadh coming from Kuwait (I only realized the second day on my way back to Kuwait) so if you leave Kuwait around 11AM you could get there just in time for sunset, check it out, and then continue into the city.

I got to Riyad around 1PM had lunch, checked into my hotel, had coffee, and then drove back out of Riyadh for an hour to get to the installation and another hour coming back. I also spent an hour at the location because there was a second installation (photo above) right next to it, So the Arne Quinze installation took the most amount of time to check out but it was definitely worth it.

Finding the different installations was easy since Noor Riyadh has an app showing all the different installations on a map. All the locations open up on Google Maps so find them was simple. I say you’d need 2 nights in Riyadh to visit most of the ones you’re interested in, especially if you want to do other things in Riyadh. I wanted to also visit Riyadh Boulevard City (tickets from here) and have dinner there at Public (it was great), but that meant by around 10 PM I decided to stop checking out the installations and head there, without Boulevard City I would probably have been able to check out maybe 2 to 4 more installations I was interested in.

Traveling to Riyadh is easy as I’ve posted before and if you live in Kuwait then it’s really easy to get an evisa. There wasn’t any traffic at the borders leaving Friday morning but there was traffic coming in on Saturday afternoon and I ended up spending 30 minutes at the Saudi side of the border.

For more information on Noor Riyadh and to download the app, visit their Instagram @noorriyadhfestival and their website riyadhart.sa/en/noor-riyadh

The last day of the festival is Saturday, November 19th.

Kuwait Motor Town will be hosting the final round of the 2022 24H Series endurance race early next month and tickets just went on sale for it.

The ‘Hankook 12H Kuwait’ is a 12-hour uninterrupted race that starts at 12 PM and goes on until midnight to ensure competitors experience racing during the day and night. The race takes place on Friday, December 2nd, but there are qualifications and practice sessions the day before. Tickets start at KD3 for a one-day pass, and KD5 for both days. They also have VIP tickets.

If you’re interested to find out more or buy tickets, visit the KMT website kmt.kw

Is it me or is everyone else also constantly getting spammed by Alshaya brands? I don’t generally give out my phone number to businesses so I don’t get that much SMS spam, but I had to give my number to West Elm because they had to deliver my furniture and since then I haven’t been able to stop them from spamming me. I’ve tried calling them and asking to be removed, I’ve sent them messages on Instagram and I’ve even tried blocking them on my phone but nothing seems to work. I used to get a message every now and then but recently they’ve started bombarding me a lot more frequently and its become extremely annoying.

Dear Zain and other telecoms, if you offer a service where for a certain monthly fee I could block all spam messages from my phone I’d be willing to pay and so would others!

Kuwait is in the news again and this time censoring the film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. There were three scenes cut, the first is a 10-second LGBTQ scene where one of the female characters kisses another female character on the forehead. Another scene cut out is of a woman giving birth and the final scene removed involved the line “A god to his people.”

Only one minute in the 2 hour and 41-minute film was taken out which isn’t too bad, but the odd thing is, Kuwait is the only country in the region that doesn’t have these scenes. Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar all are showing the unedited version of the movie. How bizarre. Source

Over the weekend Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group announced that they will manage a luxury hotel in Kuwait projected to open in 2028 (source). Mandarin Oriental, Kuwait will be located in a new iconic 80-story tower designed by the award-winning architects, Foster & Partners, the same architects behind the NBK headquarters building across the street from Hamra Tower. The hotel will feature 159 guestrooms, including 33 suites, and 10 serviced apartments, with views of downtown Kuwait City.

One rendering of the new tower was released and you can see how huge it looks in the skyline shot. The exact location wasn’t revealed but my guess is that it will occupy the property highlighted above since there’s been a rumor for years now that a gigantic project was going to occupy that area. In case you don’t recognize that area, it’s on the same street as Little Ruby’s, across the street from Crystal Tower where Burger & Lobster is located (Google Maps). The building that currently houses Burger & Lobster will supposedly be demolished as well to make room for this.

The Belgian football team who are competing in the World Cup later this month in Qatar will be playing their last friendly game this Friday in Kuwait against Egypt. The match is taking place at the Jaber Al-Ahmad International Stadium and tickets are currently on sale starting at 10KD.

If you want to watch the game live, you can buy tickets from here.