Category: Information

The new food court called Tick-it Lounge 6 that includes Potbelly, Pinkberry, Starbucks and a new place called Tick-it has finally opened up at the airport. Local blogger Baba 3od has more pictures and information [Here]

Last week I had a shipment of wireless surveillance cameras get confiscated by Kuwait Customs. For some odd reason they’re cracking down on the import of any kind of surveillance equipment and to get an exception you’ve got to do a small runaround. This post will show you how to get that done quickly.

Aramex passed me my package clearance paperwork on Wednesday and I headed to the Kuwait Airport cargo area the following day. At first I thought clearing the package was a similar process to clearing other packages from customs so I printed a map I had created and instructions I had posted a few years back and started using it as my guide. But I quickly found out that was the wrong process for this case and instead I needed to head to the Aramex office in the cargo area.

[Google Maps]

The Aramex office is located right at the other end of the cargo area and you need to walk there under the sun since there is no shaded pathway. I highly recommend you go there in shorts, a tshirt and a baseball cap. Seriously it’s a miserable walk. Once I got to the small Aramex office the guy there signed the documents and told me I should head to another office back on the other side of the cargo area where they will have my package. So I walked back in the blistering heat and quickly found the second office by asking someone. Once inside I handed my paperwork to an officer who then went to a back room and brought out my shipment. He filled up a bit of paperwork, handed me one of my cameras from the box (I had ordered 3) and told me I should now take the paperwork and the camera and head over to the Kuwait security department near the VIP airport.

[Google Maps]

I walked back to my car and drove around the airport twice until I found the building. It’s located opposite the long term parking lot but to get to it you need go in by car from near the airport arrivals entrance. Once I got to the heavily protected compound (it has high walls topped with barbed wire and security cameras pointing in every direction) I then had trouble finding parking space. They have a tiny parking lot that was fully packed so I was forced to park in a no parking zone right next to a your car will be towed signed. Once inside I headed into the first building but turned out it was the wrong one and needed to go into the second white building that was a short walk away.

I went inside to this second building and headed up to the first floor and then walked all the way down to the end of the corridor and into an office on the left side (before the couch). There were two officers sitting, as soon as they saw me they told me I needed to go into another office two doors down on the left where someone would fill in a request for me. I did that and came back to him and he looked at my box and asked me why I got the camera? I told him I wanted to be able to monitor my apartment in Lebanon while I’m in Kuwait. He was like why didn’t you buy it locally? I told him I couldn’t find this specific model locally and it’s always cheaper online anyway. He was like ok, go next door and photocopy your civil id card and come back. I did and two minutes later I get back only to find the officer gone. The second officer who was sitting on the couch told me he’d be back. 10 minutes later some other officer comes and decides to finish up my paperwork. I had to write a letter stating that I was planning to use the cameras for personal use and then had to sign it and give it to him. He then finalized my paperwork and I had to go back to the Kuwait Airport cargo area back to the office that had my package. I showed them the paperwork there and was then allowed to take my cameras and leave.

While there I noticed a variety of other cameras that were held. One guy I met had ordered a helicopter with a camera built in while I noticed another guy was trying to clear a spy camera. So if you’re planning to order any kind of surveillance camera you should know there is a high probability it will be held right now but clearing it isn’t too difficult. The whole process took me around an hour and a half but should take you less now that you know where to go.

Partnerships Technical Bureau (PTB) has stated it expects the Metro to begin operating by 2020, and that the first phase of the development will extend more than 54km and be serviced by 28 stations, nine of which will be underground.

We finally got a date! [Source]

[YouTube]

Ajarco Services & Equipment are planning to do a cleanup of Kubbar Island tomorrow, the details are below:

We would also like to take this opportunity to announce our Second KUBBAR Island cleaning campaign that is scheduled for coming Saturday 26th of May 2012 to clean up the remaining debris and other litter.

During this event you can test drive our New 2012 model ARGO HDi Special Edition amphibious ATV (www.argoatv.com).

All are welcome to volunteer for this event (up to 10 persons, first come basis), and those people who would like to join us with their boats can team up with us at the Island.

All arrangements for food and beverages will be made by us only thing which volunteers are requested to bring is their backpacks.

All this will depend upon the weather condition so please check our facebook page (fb/ajarco) for timely updates.

If weather permits we will be leaving the docking harbor at Fintas behind coast guard building around 11 am and all are requested to reach there before 11.

Please let us know if any further assistance is required.

The amphibious ATV sounds like fun. Check out the video above of their last cleanup and visit their Facebook if you’re interested [Link]

The National Youth Project website has been updated and it’s now available in English. Most importantly what this means is that if your Arabic isn’t that great you can now submit your own initiative idea in English via their website. Check out their English website [Here]

The National Youth Project have also uploaded their new commercial to their YouTube page which you could watch below.

[YouTube]

Just found out that they’re planning on solving the Al-Bidaa roundabout congestion by building an overpass over the roundabout. According to the article in Al Jarida, this project will take around two years to complete after all the approvals are given.

Now if someone can also solve the parking issue that would be great. [Link]

I have a lot of information to share about my trip to Audemars Piguet and I’m going to try and keep it interesting and informative since I know not everyone is into watches like I am.

First just a bit of history on how that Swiss valley where AP is located became such a hotspot for all the watchmakers. The Audemars Piguet facilities are located in Vallée de Joux which is considered to be “the heart of Swiss watchmaking”. In the early 1800’s a watchmaker moved into the valley and started producing watches and when his business started booming he needed to hire help. The valley was full of farmers who spent the summers busy outdoors farming but the winters indoor not doing much. So, the farmers got into watchmaking since the basic tools to get started didn’t cost much and even their children started learning and working with watches at a young age. In other parts of Switzerland farmers were making music boxes during the winter months but they were making watches.

Once we arrived to Vallée de Joux which is just over an hour drive from Geneva, we were taken to the AP Restoration Department followed by the Museum. The restoration department is where they work to restore old watches back to working condition while trying to preserve all their original parts. A lot of the watch parts aren’t available anymore so if anything is missing or needs replacing not only do they have to hand make the parts but they always try to remake them using the same technique they were originally made with. While we were there we were lucky that the head of the department was working on a vintage pocket watch that contained a Grand Complication movement dating back to 1899 (pictured above). A simple watch movement is a watch that indicates the hours, minutes and seconds. On the other hand a calendar is a complicated movement, a moon phase, an alarm, a minute repeater (tells time using chimes) are all complicated movements. A Grand Complication is a movement that contains a whole bunch of complicated movements all together in one watch. I’ll try to list everything the watch above does so here it goes: It has clock watch with grand and small strike, minute-repeater, split seconds chronograph with minutes counter, alarm, jumping seconds, flying seconds and perpetual calendar. Yeah that’s a lot of things and this is a watch that was created back in 1899. It’s currently valued at around 3 million Euros.

After leaving the restoration department we headed to the museum. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside but I did manage to take the one below of a poster that I saw hanging on the wall (I want it). The museum is housed in the original AP building from the late 1800’s. Although it’s full of interesting pieces, this was probably the most boring part of the whole trip for me because I couldn’t wait to get out and head over to their main production facility. If anyone knows where I can find the Ali with Arnold poster please let me know.

Lakeland, the UK kitchenware store is now open in Marina Mall. I haven’t passed by the shop yet but the blog 965 Malls did and they have a ton of pictures up of the place. Check out their post [Here]

Last June I posted about Magnolia Bakery opening in Kuwait but I didn’t know where. But, Magnolia Kuwait recently opened a twitter account and according to their latest tweet they announced they’re opening in Hamra Tower. I’m not sure when they’re opening but since the mall is now open I’m guessing its ASAP.

The Q80 High Street blog has pictures of all the stores and restaurants that are currently open at Al Hamra Tower and pictures of ones that are opening soon. I personally need to pass by and check out the Adidas Originals store since it’s the first one in Kuwait. You can check out her post [Here]

According to the Environmental Performance Index done by Yale University, Kuwait was one of the weakest performers and came in 126 out of 132 countries. What’s confusing is that Lebanon came in 94th place but the pollution there is so bad that we recently had an incident where one river turned red while another turned white!

So other than the recent tire issue, the desert pollution and the Mishrif sewage problem, what else is really so bad that we rank this low? I’m not surprised we rank low just surprised it’s at the very bottom of the list. [Link]

Thanks Erik

Yesterday I passed by MRC, a metal and recycling company to check out how everything works. It’s one of these things I’ve always been curious about which is why I emailed them to see if they’d give me a tour. Their recycling center is located in Amghara and it was segmented into two parts, plastics and metal.

Plastic
You can easily tell you’ve arrived at their plastic recycling facility since you’ll be met with huge piles of colorful empty plastic containers divided into different groups depending on the color. They export both the plastics and metals for recycling abroad but before they can send the products out they need to be prepped. With plastics that process involves a few stages. The first thing they do is shred the plastic into small pieces. They then wash these plastic pieces in a large pool and are left to dry. Once the plastic pieces dry they are placed into another machine that melts them into long plastic strings which get chopped up into very tiny pieces. Those pieces are filled into sacks and then exported to different countries where they are recycled (mostly China).

Metal
For metal the process is a lot simpler than plastic although it’s a much more larger and difficult process since it involves large metal objects such as cars. Like plastic the metal gets exported but before they can export it all the metal needs to be shredded into very tiny pieces. After a bit of safety prep I was actually allowed up onto the large claw crane that was picking up cars and tossing them into a pile. I sadly wasn’t allowed to control it but it was still cool being up there. The cars and other metal objects are then placed into a large shredder, the first part chops the metal object into big pieces and then the second part chops them into tinier pieces.

If you’re interested in recycling MRC have a program called NewAir which they’ve tailored for companies. They will collect and recycle your waste products which include paper, cartons, plastic, metals, PET bottles, cans, electronic items and more. To sign up to NewAir to get more details you can visit their website [Here]

Some people have emailed me regarding the new devices that have been installed next to the speed detector cameras on the highway. There is a rumor that these new devices track your speed from one camera to another. I don’t believe that is the case. From what I gathered by checking the manufacturers website of these devices, their speed detecting cameras have an option for adding a secondary camera which is what these are. My guess is they’re just taking two pictures simultaneously (or sequentially) of speeding cars either for better accuracy or in case they have trouble reading the plate number in one of the photos.

Photo by Edgar

Update: A reader emailed with an interesting bit of information. According to him he takes the King Fahad Road (40th) from the First Ring Road every morning and drives past all the cameras going 150KM/h. He told me that the first camera on the King Fahad Road doesn’t take a picture, the one after that does, then the one after that doesn’t while the one after that does. This happens all the way till the end of the highway. I’ve always had a theory that only one side of those double sided camera boxes actually contains camera while the other side is a dummy. If what he says is true then that theory is correct and if you’re driving back the opposite way, the cameras that didn’t go off previously would go off on the return.

A reader posted in the forum the other day on how a point and shoot Canon camera he ordered online got impounded at customs. DHL weren’t able to release the item for him so he had to go clear it himself and after 2 and half hours of running around he was finally able to do so.

So I checked on this and it turns out right now the Canon and Sigma dealers have raised an issue with customs and are demanding that only they are allowed to import their brands. I am not sure if they’ve done this to stop shops like AAB Photo from taking away from their sales (and individuals are being caught in the crossfire) or if they’re actually trying to stop everyone and anyone from purchasing their brands online. Hopefully we’re not the targets and this is just a temporary measure but in any case if you’re planning to order Canon or Sigma products over the internet you should either put your plans on hold until the situation settles down or be prepared to clear the item yourself.

According to a reader who worked on Failaka for a number of years before he left Kuwait, the KPTC ferries that shuttle between the mainland and the island never operated correctly. He took the picture on top around a year ago and according to him the KPTC ferry pictured above is supposed to carry a maximum load of around 42 passengers but as you can see in the picture there’s lot more than that (over 300 according to the reader).

Makes you wonder what would happen in the event of a disaster. Would there be enough life jackets and life rafts available for every passenger?