Category: Information

Cinemagic who are entertaining people every Wednesday night with movies have now created a Documentary Night which is going to be held every Tuesday. This week they will be playing Al Gore’s controversial Academy Award winning Documentary about Global Warming, “An Inconvenient Truth“. The location is the same, Bait Lothan in Salmiya and the movie will run from 7:30PM till around 9:30PM.

As always, attendance is free of charge and they encourage you to invite guests. Seating is limited, so make sure you come a little early. Snacks and refreshments will be served.

Yes I know I already posted at least two different opening dates for Carrefour before but they just kept pushing back the opening dates. Now according to a user (Rocker) in the forum the new launch date is this Tuesday.

update: Here is a picture of their full page teaser ad from the Arab Times. [Pic]

I just got the following in my email:

We have created a new website to express the current issues with Kuwait in a few simple words: www.wtfq8.com

You can anonymously submit your own WTFs (What the fuck) here: https://www.wtfq8.com/add.php

-K.

There are already some cool WTFs on the site. My favorite is Muhajababes!

Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were recently added to PayPal! [Link]

Thanks Yousef

I got the following email from Cinemagic:

Dear All,

You are invited to attend “Short & Sweet”, Cinemagic’s weekly screening event. The events will take place at the Cinemagic Courtyard in Bait Lothan, Salmiya, on Wednesday 9th of May, and will run between 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

This week we will be screening “Children of Heaven“, a 1997 Iranian film that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1998.

It deals with a brother and sister and their adventures over a lost pair of shoes, while also touching upon the more serious subject of the political situation in Iran as well as class differences between the rich and the poor and daily urban life.

In 1998, the film was the first Iranian film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but lost to the Italian film Life Is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni.

It was successfully shown on numerous film festivals and won awards at the Fajr Film Festival, the World Film Festival, the Newport International Film Festival, the Warsaw International Film Festival, and the Singapore International Film Festival. It was nominated for the Jury’s Grand Prize at the American Film Institute’s festival.

For its part, Cinemagic Kuwait, is organizing these events as part of its efforts to contribute to the development of an internationally competitive Kuwaiti audio-visual production industry, partly by bringing the filmmakers and audiences together and by Increasing the public’s interest in – and appreciation for – the art of filmmaking.

As always, attendance is free of charge and you are encouraged to invite guests. Seating is limited, so make sure you come a little early. Snacks and refreshments will be served.

Yazan Al Ghazzawi
PR & Marketing Manager
Kuwait Cinemagic

Tel: (+965) 574 3253
Cell: (+965) 722 2416

www.cinemagics.com

I passed by the jewelery exhibit tonight at the Mishref fair ground to check it out since my cousin who recently came in from Thailand had a display there (ZoRaB). On the way in to the exhibit I found a huge shawerma stand outside so I went up to a guy there and ordered myself two shawermas. The guy turns to me and tells me these shawermas are not for sale, they are for management upstairs! I found that strange, actually not really that strange since this is Kuwait but still, a fancy jewelery exhibition and the management upstairs have their own shawerma stand right outside?

So I walked in to the exhibit hall and right at the entrance the Kuwait Customs had a display. Again this felt out of place but I figured I would get closer and check it out. I have to say, its one really strange display. The backdrop of the display had a collage of pictures from their most famous drug busts I think. There were also a couple of pictures of alcohol busts, you know the very cliche 200 bottles of red label on the floor and 3 Bangladeshis posing behind them. Now the cool part was the magic section. They had a display of magical items they had caught, its seriously the silliest stuff. There was a horse shoe, some rings, a few rocks and a lot of handwritten notes. I think those were curses or something. On the far left they also had some pharmaceutical items (they looked like adrenalin shots) and three fake DVDs. I still don’t understand why they had a display set up at a jewelery exhibition, maybe for comical relief.

The jewelery exhibit itself was kind of dull but I am also not really a jewelery person. The exhibition ends today (Monday) so if it is your kind of thing maybe you should check it out, the customs stand itself is worth the trip.

As I mentioned previously, for the Young Lions competition we had to come up with an advert for the WFP. I just wanted to bring to attention their “Food for Education” program where WFP provides meals at schools so hungry children are encouraged to attend. For only $34 a year you can provide a child with a meal at school for an entire academic year. You can donate online via their website and even have it automatically deduct from your credit every month to save you the hassle of manually donating monthly. Its for a good cause and its only KD10 to feed a child for a whole year so check out their website and donate if you can. [Link]

Virgin Megastore is open again and I think this time around they are taking censorship to the extreme. I think thats what I would do if I was them, I would want to show people how ridiculous censorship can be. The CD cover above is of the Buddha-bar CD, they’ve censored the Buddha’s face!

update: I have been told censoring the Buddha is not something new.

I got back from Dubai last night and since I averaged around 5 hours sleep a night I was really exhausted when I got back. Here are s

The Flight
We took the Sri Lanken airlines to Dubai for two reasons, the first was because it was an early flight (before the 2 hour delay) and the second because I was told the Sri Lanken airlines is owned by Emirates they are the same. Well they aren’t. I think all the old Emirates planes get handed down to the Sri Laken airlines. The two planes were old and setup very similarly to the Kuwait Airways ones meaning no entertainment jukebox of the Emirates with over 300 things to watch. If you want to drink water on the plane its not bottled but out of a jug, even Jazeera Airways gives passengers bottled water and for free.

The Hotel
We stayed at the Sapphire Hotel which was located very close to Dubai Media City where the Young Lions Competition was being held and it was also close to the Mall of the Emirates. The hotel felt more like a furnished apartment because I had a small kitchen, large fridge and even a washing machine. The staff weren’t good communicators and they all felt untrained. They have Internet access in all the rooms via Wifi and it costs 15 Dhms per hour. Problem was that even with my very sensitive MacBook I was only able to get a decent signal from inside the closet located near the rooms main entrance. Finally, no cab driver had heard of the hotel so every time we took a cab we had to give the driver directions.

Lina’s Cafe
Had the Turkey Fillet with cheese sandwich on Wednesday for lunch. It was so good we actually went back Thursday to have the exact same thing for lunch again.

The Butcher
Wednesday night we had dinner at The Butcher in the Mall of the Emirates. I had the steak fillet which was above average but nothing special. The restaurants name is cooler then the food.

Chicago
Virgin Megastore in Dubai don’t sell the Arabic book Chicago, which was the book that supposedly shutdown Virgin in Kuwait. Borders on the other hand which was located a few stores away did sell the book. I should have gotten a bunch and sold them here in Kuwait on the black market.

Cabs
We took a lot of cabs in Dubai since it was our only mean of getting around. Cab drivers were mostly friendly and easy to converse with except for one driver who turned out had been in Dubai for just a month and reminded us a lot of Borat. One tip, if you are leaving Mall of the Emirates at 10pm and notice there is a long long long line of people waiting for a cab in a very orderly fashion… don’t wait with them. Just walk 20 meters to the main road and grab a passing cab from there, it will save you at least 30 minutes of waiting. Seriously the line was as long as those at six flags or Disney. I should really have taken a picture! Vallet parking at the mall is 50 Dhms (KD4).

Aï Zone
Found a really cool pair of Prada sneakers at Aï Zone, there was no price tag on them so I figured if I have to ask then I probably can’t afford them.

Passport Covers
One quick question. At the Dubai airport they had a large stand selling passport covers. Now my question is this, can I use a passport cover of a different country on my passport? For example can I buy the Russian passport cover and then use it to cover my Canadian passport?

American University of Kuwait which is located in Salmiya is having a carnival/open-day this Thursday from 10am till 5pm.

Someone emailed me a video today showing a really freaky looking baby. You can check the video [Here] but its not for the faint of heart.

It turns out the baby had a severe skin disease and that these babies are usually called Harlequin Babies. I found a lot of information about these babies online and its really sad. If you are interested in finding out more here are some links. Again they are pretty graphic so you might not want to check them.

Video from HalaQ8
Video from Google
Pictures and information
More pictures
Wikipedia entry

I started watching this documentary/movie called The Last Flight to Kuwait which talks about the British Airways flight 149 that landed in Kuwait just as Iraq was invading back in 1990. I don’t know how accurate it is but it looks like its based on facts.

There always was a conspiracy surrounding the reason the BA flight landed in Kuwait. According to Wikipedia the flight landed after the invasion had begun but according to the documentary it landed just before. In any case, the documentary talks about the reason the plane landed in Kuwait which was because there were eight MI6 (the British secret intelligence service) agents that the British government wanted to position in Kuwait. It sounds very plausible especially since there is no other reason why BA didn’t cancel the flight like every other airline that night.

If you can manage to get a hold of the movie its definitely worth watching. The movie is a combination of real footage from the war, reenacted scenes and interviews with some of the passengers and crew of that flight.

Q80Boy sent me an email telling me that last night at 9:30PM, Virgin in Marina Mall was shutdown because they were caught selling inappropriate movies. Can anyone confirm this? It’s confirmed!

update: I just got back from Marina Mall and Virgin is closed. There are red stickers all around the place and two A4 photocopies of the closing order which you can view [Here] and [Here]

I passed by the MV Agusta dealer today for the first time. My friend is looking to buy a naked bike and he wanted to check out the MV Agusta Brutale. The dealership is pretty cool and like TriStar very friendly and passionate about bikes. They have a limited edition Brutale, number 222 out of 300 called the Brutale America. They also had a limited edition F4-1000 Senna on display, again limited to just 300 pieces worldwide. The coolest bike there though was the pearl white and black F4 R312. The 312 is the max speed the bike can hit and it just looks amazing and its not to expensive either at around KD7,600. The Brutale 750s (not the limited edition one) costs around KD4,950 before discount. Pretty cool prices for such beautiful bikes.

I think I spent around 2 hours there with my friend, even Marzouq ended up joining near the end and I think he will end up posting a bunch of pictures since he had his camera with him. The picture above is of the pearl white and black F4 R312 which I took off the MV Agusta website.

Here is a link to the local dealers website. [Link]

Here is also a video of an MV Agusta owner in Kuwait trying to reach the max speed of his bike but only managed to hit 295KM. He had a tank mounted camera which is pretty cool.

[YouTube]

I have one of these in my office and I always assumed the whole inside was filled with liquid and that a bunch of little pyramid shaped objects had the words of wisdom on them. Turns out I was way wrong. [Link]

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