Category: Information

Last Wednesday I decided to head to the car auction in Ardiya. They were auctioning the 60+ cars I posted about earlier that week which were confiscated from one guy. Many of the cars were now classics and so I went with a friend who was interested in one of the cars so we could try and bid on it. The experience was pretty interesting to say the least.

This must have been the most popular car auction ever held in Kuwait due to all the hype built up around the cars. I’d guess 99% of the people there, and there were A LOT of people, had never been to an auction before including myself. Due to the number of people they were expecting to show up, a makeshift setup was put together across the street in an empty lot.

The auction was meant to start at 3PM but ended up starting shortly after 3:30PM. Basic rules were announced at the start, if you win a bid you must come up to the front and give them your civil ID card. You then get it back once you pay for the item. You need to pay on the spot. Knet only, no cash. Pretty simple although no idea how you can pay KD30,000 for a Ferrari Testarossa on your Knet card since I thought there was a 10,000KD limit? No idea.

The whole experience was really casual. The cars weren’t there, so if you hadn’t seen them last weekend in person at the police lot and noted down details like the license plate number, then you were pretty much screwed. There was just a list to go by which you had to print out yourself from their Instagram account or just keep looking at your phone. Most of the items on the list were misspelled and many lacked any details. For example, there were three BMW 8-series for sale and the only way to tell them apart on the list was with their license plate number. So if you hadn’t written down their plate numbers when checking the car out you were out of luck.

The auction moved fairly quickly but because we were right next to the mosque they had to stop twice for a prayer break. Not sure if that’s what they usually do or if they had to do it because we were right outside the mosque and the mosques speakers were louder than the auctions. By 7PM we had gone through two pages worth of cars and it was getting pretty chilly. There were no outdoor lights so the auction turned into a moonlight auction. The majority of the people must have been there for the two Ferraris since most of them left once they were sold. By the time I left only the first few rows of seats were filled.

My friend didn’t win the car, he was interested in a Volvo which he was willing to pay up to 2,000 for but it ended up going for 2,700. I had my eye on a 1997 Alfa Romeo Spider but I wasn’t going to pay over 250KD for it and the car ended up going for 350. Overall I had a good time, it was an interesting experience for sure.

If you ever want to go to a car auction you can find out about upcoming ones on the Instagram account @mzadmoj. The location of the auction is at the Deposit Reserve and Judicial Arbitration Sector Building in Ardiya, here is the location on Google Maps. They usually have the cars on display there it’s just this specific time that things were a bit different due to the circumstances. Let me know if you have any questions below.

I buy my beans from %Arabica just because that’s what I’m used to but there are a lot of other coffee bean roasters in Kuwait who also roast green beans in house for espresso. Below is a list compiled by radaaitor which I’ve arranged in alphabetical order:

%Arabica
48East Roastery
Air Roastery
AJ’s Roastery
Alameed
Albadawi Coffee
Altitude Roasters
Bait Qahwa Co.
Black Horse Coffee
Coffee Choices
Coffee Jug Roastery
Coffee Masters
Collective Coffee Company
Earth Roastery
House Of Beans
Jumo Coffee
Methods Roastery
My Habit Roastery
Origin Roasters
ORU Roasters
Pause Coffee Roasters
Rawi Coffee
Richards Coffee Co.
Roots Roastery
Stockroom Coffee
United Coffee Roasters
Vol. 1 Roast Lab
Wjaar Roastery

If I missed a place let me know in the comments. Also if you could recommend your favorite beans/roaster that would be helpful for anyone looking to try new beans. Personally, I get the Arabica Blend beans from %Arabica because it’s the same blend they use for their in-store coffee. I like consistency and I know their blend will always be consistent because it’s what they use themselves.

Also, the photo on top isn’t my setup but a friends. Super cool coffee corner and he even imports his own green beans and roasts them himself at home using an Aillio Bullet R1.

A couple of days ago the Public Authority for Civil Information (PACI) updated the Kuwait Mobile ID app with the option to add a digital copy of your driving license. The instruction to do it are only in Arabic so here is a quick how-to:

1) I’m assuming you already have the app and are registered. You need to make sure you have the latest version of the app since the previous versions didn’t have this new feature. The new version was updated 2 days ago and is version 1.9.0.

2) Once logged into the app click on credentials. If your verification level is “Medium” you will now be presented with the option to scan your face similar to how you set up Face ID on the iPhone.

3) Once you are done with the verification process you will then have the option to add your driving license. I have two, a motorcycle license as well as a driving one so I have both showing in the app now.

The reason you want to add your driving license to Kuwait Mobile ID is that in case you forgot or lost your driving license, this digital version will now be accepted by the police.

On a side note, why is the new Sahel app only in Arabic???

Assima Mall, the new mall located in the city right across from Solo Pizza and Kipco Tower is now open. Even though the mall is open, the majority of the stores are still under construction and haven’t opened up, but it’s still worth visiting and checking out because it’s such a nice-looking space.

Here is a list of places that are currently open. I might have missed a few but the list should still give you an idea of what to expect if you visit:

Aeropostale
Aldo
Atyab Al Marshoud
Bershka
Beverly Hills Polo Club
Boggi
Calvin Klein Jeans
Charles & Keith
Explorers Base
Faces
Grey Fashion
Hush Puppies
Ikea
Intersport
Jysk
Kiko
L’Occitane
Lakeland
LC Waikiki
Levi’s
Nespresso
Paul
Pull & Bear
Rituals
Riva
Rullart
Sephora
Sketchers
Stradivarius
Sun Glass Hut
Super Dry
Swims
The North Face
Tiramixu
Toby’s Estate
Tommy Hilfiger
Zara Home
Zara

The parking is also open so it shouldn’t be an issue finding a place to park. If you want to pass by and check the mall out, here is their location on Google Maps.

Back in July of last year, Adidas took over the Café Coco location in Avenues Phase 3 and a few days ago, the store finally opened up. The new location is actually a ground floor extension to the pre-existing Adidas store that was located upstairs in the SoKu area of Avenues. A lot of people didn’t know there was an Adidas there because it was tucked away, so this new extension right on the main strip provides a lot more exposure.

The ground floor space with the large upstairs area now makes it the largest Adidas store in Kuwait by far. If you want to pass by, it’s right across from Harvey Nichols.

For the first time in the Middle East, six writers from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia will have the opportunity to turn their dream project into an Arabic-language TV show. The National Creative Industries Group (NCIG) in partnership with Netflix have created an intensive program designed to incubate six creators to turn their TV series ideas into pitch decks ready to present to Netflix in six weeks.

If you have a TV series idea you think would be great for Netflix, submissions to apply for this program opens tomorrow (November 1st).

Selected participants will receive:⁣
– Mentoring and masterclasses led by best-in-class industry professionals⁣
– Sessions with the Netflix development team⁣
– Training and certification by the world-renowned New York Film Academy⁣
– The opportunity to pitch final projects to the Netflix team⁣
– For Saudi-based participants, all travel and accommodation in Kuwait will be covered⁣
⁣
For more information, click here.

Note: This is open to people residing in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, expats included.

Just a quick note in case anyone is trying to google this information. If your car is older than 1980, you now can only get your car registration renewed at the main Assima (Capital Governorate) Traffic Department. Previously you could get it renewed at other traffic departments like Jabriya but not anymore. I went last week and I really don’t like that place. Super busy, long lines and the whole place is crumbling.

Earlier this year the Ministry of Interior launched a separate English Instagram account for non-Arabic speakers. If you don’t follow them, the account is @moi_kuw_en

Earlier this year Virgin announced they would be entering the Kuwaiti telecom market, and looks like it’s happening now because they just launched their social media channels with the message that they’ve landed.

Before you get your hopes up you should know that Virgin Mobile will be operating in Kuwait as a mobile virtual network operator. This means that they won’t have their own wireless network infrastructure and instead will be buying services from STC at wholesale prices, and then reselling them. Put in even simpler terms, Virgin will be using STC’s network in Kuwait. So if you have issues with the STC network, you’ll have the same issues with the Virgin one.

If you want to check them out on instagram they’re @virginmobilekw

One of the nicest museums in Kuwait, Al Salam Palace opened right at the start of the pandemic and so had to close again soon after. But, after a long delay, the museum is now open again.

Unlike other museums, Al Salam Palace isn’t a walk around freely museum but requires you to be part of a tour. They have two kinds of tours available, a standard tour or a VIP tour.

Standard Tour (English or Arabic)
Duration: 120 minutes
Cost: KD8

VIP Tour (English or Arabic)
Duration: 120 minutes
Cost: KD20

The English tour is only available on Sundays which is going suck for anyone with a day job since they’re only open from 10AM to 4PM. But, it’s a great place to visit so if you’re interested in booking, their website is aspm.com.kw

For a sneak peek at what’s inside, check out my previous post from when I took the tour. Link

So last week I posted about DesertCart and ever since that post I’ve been searching for other items I want but wouldn’t be allowed to ship with Aramex. While adding one such item to my cart, I got an option to ship for free if I agreed to become a DesertCart Plus member where for just 5KD a month I would get unlimited free shipping. That didn’t make any sense. Does that mean I could order a bowling bowl every day and not pay shipping for it? I decided to investigate things further.

Firstly, DesertCart already has a flat shipping rate of 3KD for items valued under 30KD and free shipping for items over 30KD. That alone is a great deal. But when you read the fine print on their website, (which also applies to their “unlimited free shipping” offer) you’ll see the big “but”:

We have a flat 3 delivery charge for all orders below KWD 30. If your order is KWD 30 or above, your order is delivered for free! You can see the final cost of your order after adding an item to your cart. If the item you have ordered is oversized, an extra shipping charge may apply. If your item exceeds a courier’s standard dimension or weight, they may charge an additional fee. We will communicate this with you before we charge your order.

I highlighted in bold the sentence that caught my attention so I got in touch with customer support via their live chat to get clarification on what exactly constitutes being oversized? What a frustrating and waste of time that was. Their support staff seemed to have been trained to maneuver around a straightforward answer but I kinda managed to squeeze out a number from them, 1-1.5KG. According to the first live chat operator (yup I contacted a bunch), as long as the item was below 1 to 1.5kg, they would ship it for free.

That’s actually not a bad deal, 5KD a month to ship an unlimited number of items that weigh around 1KG. But why isn’t that information on their website, why not make it clear or mention it in the fine print? I needed someone else to confirm that to me. So I got in touch with customer support a second time on a different day and no matter what I asked I couldn’t get an accurate answer from them. Instead, I was fed with the generic answer below:

We do not have the option to check if the item is considered oversized. Normally, if the item has large dimensions or is heavyweight, the international merchants apply the extra shipping charges before shipping the item.

At this point, we notify the customers if they are willing to proceed with the order by accepting the additional shipping charges or the customer can cancel the order from the order status page.

The merchant can only confirm the shipping charges once we proceed with the order.

When I highlighted to them that the “merchant” is Amazon and they don’t charge extra for heavy items, they responded to me with the following:

We are not affiliated with Amazon. Desertcart ships products from merchants around the world mainly from the UK, US, and India, and some from local UAE merchants. We cannot confirm what are items considered as oversized as the merchant can only confirm the shipping charges and not us. But in my experience, items that are 5kg is considered as heavyweight and the merchant might ask for the extra shipping cost

This is where their lack of transparency really bothered me. They ARE a storefront for Amazon and they ship the items to their warehouse (forwarding address in Delaware) before shipping to the UAE and then to Kuwait. You can copy-paste any product name no matter how it’s written on Amazon and DesertCart will pull up the exact same item, with the same photos and the same reviews. The customer support person got very defensive when I called them an Amazon storefront.

They were also still being very vague about what weight wouldn’t be eligible for free shipping and the fact you need to purchase the item, pay for it, and then be told if you would pay shipping is bad practice. So I kept at it trying to find out more, I decided to give them a call which didn’t result in anything new either since the person over the phone was also programmed to reply the exact same way. They recommended I email them which I did only to be also given a generic reply.

I really want to like these guys but they’re making it really difficult. They’ve also scored terrible on Scam Detector which doesn’t help their case either.

But, I still wanted to see how this free shipping works so I decided to order a lightweight and cheap item that I needed but wasn’t worthwhile to ship with Aramex, an adapter for my tire inflator. Even trying to order that was a horrible experience. The item on Amazon would have cost me around KD2.200 with tax and shipping to my Aramex address. The price on DesertCart was listed as KD2.900 which is slightly more but they need to make money as well plus currency conversion, etc, so that’s fine. But, when I would select the item to add it to my cart, the price would jump up to 7.5KD (check above). It kept happening over and over and not only with this item but with others as well. I can’t tell if it’s a buy-in their system (they have a ton of them) or if that’s part of their business model. I’d search and find an item I want and the price would say 3KD, when I click on it changes to 5.9KD. It was very frustrating. But after exiting the page and coming back in, and trying it out from the iPhone App and different browsers, I finally managed to click on the item and not have it triple in price. I added the adapter to my cart, chose to become a DesertCart Plus member (it’s free for the first month), and placed the order with free shipping.

We’ll see how it goes, I’ll also try and order a few more items of varying sizes to see what will pass and what will be considered “heavyweight”. I’ll post another update once everything arrives. If in fact, this all does work out, they might be a good option to ship items that Aramex won’t as well as ship items that aren’t too heavy. Let’s see.

If you’re looking for something to do this weekend you should consider passing by the Amricani Cultural Centre and check out their museum. Amricani is part of the Dar al Athar al Islamiyyah who have a collection of more than 20,000 items of rare Islamic art. Some of these rare items are displayed at the Amricani in rotation, changing every couple of years.

The exhibition area is located on the top floor and spans countless rooms, a lot bigger then you would expect it to be. You can choose to book a tour or just walk in and explore by yourself.

Here are their timings:

Monday to Thursday and Saturday: 10 AM to 7 PM
Friday: 2 PM to 7 PM
Sunday: closed

If you want to book a tour, send an email to both: [email protected] and [email protected]

Here is the location of the Amricani Cultural Center on Google Maps.

Kuwait Little Theater started back in 1948 in Ahmadi under the name KUOCO Independent Players and is considered to be the oldest community theater in the region:

The first recorded theatrical activity in Kuwait’s oil era dates back to 1947 when a group of Kuwait Oil Company employees met in the old Magwa Club and called themselves “The KUOCO Independent Players”.

Their first production in 1948 was staged in a large nissen hut located in the Ahmadi Industrial area. Rehearsals were usually held in the producer’s or a member’s home. As the building was also the local cinema the sets were often built and painted and then assembled on stage at the last minute.

In 1950 KOC provided the group with a small hut next to the cinema with a mere 18-inch high platform serving as a stage. The hut was so small that it came to be known as Kuwait Little Theater.

Two years later the group moved to larger premises, (the former KOC food store known as Spinney’s on the Main Street), and this nissen hut has gone on to become the permanent home of ‘Kuwait Little Theater’.

Sadly, KLT no longer exists having closed down years ago (I think 2014) because the KLT hut which was still being used contained asbestos and so was no longer safe.

Recently I came across old photos as well as a list of every production that KLT held from 1950 up to 1990 which I’ve decided to upload to flickr. You can check everything out by clicking here.

Also back in 2010, I posted about a documentary that was released to celebrate KLT’s 60 year anniversary. You can check out that old post here.

A couple of weeks back a video of tires burning at the tire graveyard went viral. The problem is the video of the fire that went viral was actually from the huge 2012 fire at the tire graveyard. Back then all the tires were piled up together in one large pile (check out the photos here) but after that big fire, they started separating them which you can see in the satellite photo here.

Even after separating them fires continued to break out just not as big. Even the satellite image linked above has a fire in it, thats how often fires were occurring.

But recently, after a fire broke out back in April, the EPA decided to start moving the tires to a new location and piling them into smaller piles with a much larger distance in between to try and prevent any chance of a large fire breaking out.

A follower shared a link to the @trtworld account which recently shared photos of this new graveyard and I thought the pictures looked great which is why I’m sharing them here. This is currently a temporary solution until more recycling centers are built or the tires exported. For a few more photos, check out the trtworld post here.

Thanks Nidal and Syed

A few weeks ago I decided to finally upgrade my toolbox with a proper set of tools. Over the years I’ve been buying tools as I needed them and that has resulted in a bag full of random brands, missing pieces, and duplicate items. Since I use my tools a lot because of my cars, I decided to reboot my toolbox and put together a nice set of some great brands and great tools.

There are two very popular hardware stores in Kuwait, Ace Hardware and Bin Nisf, but there are a ton of other smaller or more specialized stores in Kuwait which is mainly why I wanted to put this list together. There isn’t one store that carries everything so if you want to build a kit with the best of different brands you’re going to have to visit different locations. Below is a list of my favorite places that carry some great brands, most of them are only available in the stores they’re listed under. I’ll only be listing the brands I think are worth mentioning, for example, Bin Nisf carries a lot of brands but not many quality ones. Also, some brands like Bosch, Dewalt, Stanley, Makita, etc are sold in all hardware stores so I haven’t mentioned those as well. Check out the places below: