Category: Information

Kuweet.com is like KuwaitBlogs.com except instead of tracking local blogs it tracks local tweeters. A lot of people in Kuwait have recently jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon including politicians so Kuweet is a nice site to be able to keep track of all their tweets without needing to have your own twitter account.

What is twitter? I think the easiest explanation is that its like blogs except every post is limited to just 140 characters.. perfect for people who don’t enjoy or have the time to read a lot of long posts. [Link]

Note: If you have a twitter account and want to be added to Kuwait just follow @Kuweet

Yesterday some magazines arrived to my Aramex Shop&Ship mailbox in the US and now the magazines are with me. Thats US to Kuwait in under 24 hours!

Cold Stone Creamery are finally opening up for business at the end of the month. They will be located at the Avenues food court opposite Johnny Rockets in phase 2.

I got an email today at 4PM from a reader about a dog that was stuck on a roof of a building in Khaitan. The dog had been stuck up there for a few days and it looked like it was nearing its end and needed to be rescued right away. Here is a snippet from the email:

I’ve got a stray dog emergency on my hands and thought you might be the right man for the job. Im not super good at explaining directions in Kuwait which is why I have not already placed a call to Animal Friends or PAWS.

There is a dog stuck on the roof of a building. I can see him from my kitchen window.

I really pray that you can help. Several residents have tried climbing up the wall below the roof to reach him. But he backs off. My own 12 year old son tried and he almost fell off the wall.

The dog barks all night. I just checked on him and I can see his chest rising fast. His breathing is labored. I don’t think he has much time left.

Here is how you can find him, but please keep my address details private.

XXXXXADDRESS REMOVEDXXXXX

Now the haris of this building has a reputation (so I have heard) for throwing live kittens from the top of the roof! It’s only a matter of time before the barking at night gets on his nerves and he kills this dog.

So I quickly forwarded the email to Animal Friends and sent one to Nataly as well who ended up calling them up and explaining the situation. Within two hours of getting the email Animal Friends not only managed to rescue the dog that was stuck on top of the roof but also managed to rescue a second dog which they found nearby.

Animal Friends are an incredible organization in Kuwait but really do need as much help as they can get. I know many of you have emailed me asking how you could help out financially so I got their bank account information so you can now easily transfer to them your donations. Any amount will make a difference so please if you care about animals help them out. By the way they don’t just save dogs they save all kinds of animals. They’ve got a 4 month old baboon for example whom they’re building an enclosure for which you can check [Here]

So please help them out, here is their bank information:

Name: Ayeshah Waleed Al-Humaidhi
Address Line 1: P.O.Box 71, Safat 13001
Address Line 2: Kuwait
Account: 16205133
SWIFT: BKMEKWKW
Bank of Kuwait and the Middle East (BKME)

Choowy Goowy will be opening up at the Avenues hopefully this Wednesday. This will be Choowy Goowys first store and they’ve really come a long way since I first reviewed them over three years ago back in January 2006. They will be baking cookies at the Avenues store so you should be able to pick some up as they come out of the oven. The pictures above and below are just sneak peak shots of the store taken with a Nokia E71. They still haven’t removed the wooden paneling that currently surrounds the store so it was pretty hard to get anything wider than these shots.

Update: I just realized that a lot of readers might not be aware of the fact that Choowy Goowy have cookies called Mark&Nat. Back in November 2006 Nat and I were invited to Choowy Goowy to create our own cookies. After some experimenting and having some friends try out our creations, the oreo cookies were voted as being the best and so Choowy Goowy decided to make these cookies and call them Mark&Nat with jar labels matching our blog. You can read about our experience [Here]

I’ve got a friend who works at the Commercial Bank of Kuwait and according to him CBK terminated the contracts of all their employees. Supposedly they are now going to have to sign new contracts but no one knows yet what to expect. No bonuses? Salary Cuts? No one has been told what the new contracts will state…

Update: Buzberry just posted a letter from a CBK employee which you can read [Here]

A user in the forum just posted that the cast of the new Star Trek film were in Kuwait (includes Sylar from Heroes, Eric Bana and Simon Pegg). I am guessing they’re here to meet the US army or maybe in transit to Iraq? In any case I wish I had spotted them so I could have taken some pictures with them!

Here is the link to the post in the forum. [Link]

Update: I need to move to Camp Arifjan!

About 440 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines will get to see the newest Star Trek movie at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, on Saturday — about a month before its stateside premiere, Army and Air Force Exchange Service officials announced Friday. [Source]

Update 2: Faisal sent me a link to a post on Socialite Life with pictures of the cast in Kuwait. Wish I was in one of those pics! [Link]

Update 3: Here is a video! [YouTube]

The guys from Kuwait Extreme successfully completed in the Marathon Des Sables, a self-reliant 254km footrace through the Sahara desert over the course of one week. This is the first team from the Gulf to participate the 2009 Marathon Des Sables.

The team members are Zed Alrefai, Reyad Malallah, Khalid Alsayer and Ahmad Almajed. Their participation was to raise awareness and, through sponsorship, to fund The Kuwaiti Association for Learning Differences (KALD). The team was sponsored by: ALSAYER GROUP and Eastpak and supported by Extreme Sports, Caribou Coffee, Pro-Vision Sport Management, Artistic View, Dr. Zuhair ALNasar, AMAC, LOfat and Garmin.

The Marathon Des Sables:

This arduous event known as “the toughest footrace on Earth” takes place in the largest desert in the world Sahara desert over seven days covering a distance of 254 km on foot.In addition all athlete must be totally self reliant, carrying their food, water, medical needs and camping equipment for the entire duration of the race in their backpack. The race itself; which is equivalent to a marathon a day, is in fact broken into various stages, the most extreme of which is a distance of 84 km in a 24 hrs period. The real challenge is the weather which all athlete are exposed to sandstorms, high humidity as well the temperature could reaches 50 C during the morning and goes below -0 C at night.

Link to facebook group: [here]

Posted by K.

I noticed something recently with my Aramex Shop&Ship mailbox which actually pissed me off until I got a phone call awhile ago explaining to me what was going on. For the past two weeks I’ve been buying a lot of stuff from Amazon and eBay. The problem I was facing was that I would have lets say four packages in my US mailbox waiting to be shipped to Kuwait but then Aramex would only ship one of them. This usually happens during periods of time when people shop online a lot like before Christmas or Eid so it didn’t make sense why it was happening now. Now what confused me with all of this is that the rest of the packages ended up shipping the next day but then all four of my packages arrived to Kuwait at the same time. It didn’t really make any sense.

So after a few emails complaining I got a phone call today from Aramex and it turns out they’ve done something new. Basically they only have two cargo flights a week out of the US. This is why they ship the stuff to Kuwait twice a week. Two weeks ago they struck a deal with Kuwait Airways where they are now able to ship some items to Kuwait on their planes which from what I understood are daily flights. Aramex is limited by the kind of mail and the amount of mail they can ship on those flights so thats why they were “choosing” what to send from my packages. Anything that can’t be sent on those daily Kuwait Airways flights remains in the mailbox until a cargo plane is available to take them to Kuwait which is twice a week.

In short, some of the packages from now on will ship the day after they arrive to the box while others will continue to be shipped only twice a week. Thats pretty cool.

Note: For those of you who don’t know what Aramex Shop&Ship is, its a forwarding mailbox which Aramex sets up for you in the US or the UK and any package that gets sent to that mailbox gets forwarded to you here in Kuwait.

If you don’t want to answer your secret question every time you log into Watani Online here is how to get rid of it.

Step 1 – Log into your Watani Online account as usual

Step 2 – Once you log in click on Manage my WOL Security Key on the left hand side

Step 3 – Click on Register you computer then on OK

Step 4 – Thats it. Next time you log into Watani Online from the same computer you won’t have to answer your secret question.

I’ve had my Wrangler for 4 years now exactly and I’ve noticed an interesting trend with my dealership after they merged with Al Mulla who are renowned for their terrible service centers.

– An oil and filter change originally used to cost me KD8. I would pop into the quick service center and come out 30 minutes later. It was still called Behbehani Motor Company here.

– An oil and filter change later became KD12. I would pop into the quick service center and come out an hour later. This is after Behbehani Motor Company and Al Mulla merged.

– An oil and filter change now costs me KD16. I now pop into the quick service center and come out two and a half hours later.

Yesterday I passed by a new concept store which my friend set up called i love souk. It turned out to be a pretty cool store that sells a bunch of random funky items like design books, vintage clothing, accessories, artwork and more. They’re also authorized dealers for Lomography and American Apparel.

They’re located outside Al Corniche Club to the left of Athletes Foot right on top of the Al Sabah Art & Design gallery. Their main ilovesouk.com website is still not up but there is a small section with pictures about the store on the Al Sabah Collection website which you can check [Here]

[YouTube]

Two days ago it rained pretty heavily in Kuwait and in some areas it rained hail which I posted a picture of but, I just found a video on YouTube showing one area (South Jaleeb) that got hit by hail so hard it actually looked like it snowed.

[YouTube]

Update: Buzberry has some pictures which you can see [Here]

A friend of mine told me the other day that Caribou Coffee got the rights to Cheese Cake Factory cheese cakes in the Middle East and today I got an email confirming this. In total, Caribou Coffee will be bringing in 15 different types of cakes. They will be introducing this partnership on April 6 at the Kuwait City branch (next to Johnny Rocket’s across from Salhiya). The slice of cake will be priced at KD1.950.

Thanks David!

Note: The cheese cakes are currently available at Caribou Coffee but I guess the official launch is April 6..

Update: 4thringroad posted it first [Here]

I knew there were dog fights in Kuwait but I didn’t think they were being held in public, during the day and at a popular place like the Friday Market. Where were the cops?? This is sick! [Link]