Category: Kuwait

Last month I posted about the indoor RC track that just recently got set up by the Kuwait Science Club and today I finally got to pass by and check it out. When I got there I met up with Nawaf from the Science Club who was setting up his car. He took me through the whole set up process step by step explaining how everything works. These tiny radio controlled cars work pretty much like our large cars with similar features. They even have tires with different softness and hardness like proper race cars.

Once we were done setting up the car he let me take it around the track. Some of the drivers there were averaging around 10 seconds a lap and I think I managed to break their record for the slowest lap ever. Once I get back from my vacation next week I’ll be taking my own car to the track at least once or twice a week since it’s like the perfect summer activity due to the fact the indoor track is air conditioned.

Now the exciting part is that this year I will be participating in their outdoor buggy practices and races which are held from October to March at their super large outdoor track next to 360 Mall. They will be teaching me everything there is to know from building a car to setting it up to racing it. I will be driving the Xray 808 which is the car I had my eye on last year (pictured above) so it should turn out to be a lot of fun.

For information on the Radio Control Car Club of Kuwait click [Here]

Update: If you’re interested in getting into this hobby you can call or SMS Nawaf on 99625805

I was in Phase II of the Avenues when I heard what sounded like a movie being played loudly in the middle of the mall. I followed the sound all the way up to the second floor near where Kenneth Cole is and found something called the XD Theater. Turns out for KD3 you can watch a short 3D movie that’s around 5 minutes long. It’s kinda like a small movie theater in the middle of the mall.

So today I wore my Shake Shack t-shirt to the gym and on my way I took a picture and posted it on my twitter. To my surprise, one of my followers on twitter replied back telling me that Shake Shack will be opening in place of Le Pain Quotidien at Avenues. I quickly SMS’d my Alshaya insider to confirm and it turned out to be true.

Of course I was upset since I’ve been promoting Shake Shack ever since I first found out they were opening in Kuwait and instead of getting the information first from my insider, I ended up getting it from a twitter follower. My insider did tell me though that they were planning to have the branch open by end of the year and that I would get more information regarding that next week.

I also found out two more things, one is that they’re planning to open a second branch of P.F. Chang’s next to Al Corniche Club. My guess is they will probably open up where I Love Souk used to be located. Finally, I also found out that Pinkberry will be opening their Marina Mall branch before Eid next month. That’s everything I got for now.

A couple of weeks back one of the power plugs at home melted and started smoking. Luckily Nat was in the house at the time and smelled something burning and managed to turn off the plug before anything serious happened. A few days after that there was the fire incident that happened in my office building. Because of these two events I decided I should be “fire ready”.

I have a small fire cabinet in my apartment. I didn’t put it there, it came with the flat and it had 3 empty fire extinguishers inside which I never replaced or even threw out (they looked nice in the cabinet). I decided it was time I got them filled so I took the 3 empty canisters and headed to Rihab Complex in Hawalli. I had seen some fire supply stores on the first floor behind the video game stores and figured they would refill my canisters. Well, turns out although they do refill empty fire extinguisher bottles they wouldn’t refill mine since they were around 25 years old and so weren’t compatible with their machines.

So, I decided to get some new bottles. I figured they were going to cost me an arm and a leg but was completely surprised by how cheap the fire extinguishers turned out to be. There are two main types of extinguishers I found, powder and CO2 based ones. Both put out the same kind of fires but according to the salesman the powder one is cheaper but messier while the CO2 extinguishers cost more but don’t leave a mess. I ended up picking up two small 1KG powder fire extinguishers and one larger 2KG CO2 extinguisher from the shop pictured above. There are around 6 to 8 fire supply shops next to each other which means you can haggle on the price. The 1KG powder extinguishers cost KD2.5 each while the 2KG CO2 extinguisher costs KD8 (4KG powder costs KD8 as well), I picked three of them up for KD11.

So now you know where you can pick up fire extinguishers from and how much they cost so there really isn’t an excuse why you shouldn’t also be fire ready. I put one of the small extinguishers in Nat’s car since she didn’t have one (my car came with one) and I am now going to pick up a few more extinguishers this weekend for my parents home. Its better to be safe than sorry.

Found the following message on a one Dinar note I was carrying.

Dear Ahmad, if u receive this message while u’re single, call me. I’m sorry – Rasha

I wonder if Ahmad ever ended up reading it…

A friend of mine is selling his Lotus and NegativEffect put this video together for him. I love the sound the car makes… [YouTube]

Note: My birthday is coming up if anyone is interested hint hint

According to local blogger NicoleB there was an oil spill in Mangaf a couple of days back. I haven’t read about this in the news yet so I am guessing they’re trying to keep it a secret.

This morning when we went to the beach, I saw a bulldozer arriving and one car after another going to the beach. Getting closer I saw workers in coveralls walking along the shore, digging the sand and throwing stuff in the water to soak up the oil – I guess.

Some guys in a Pickup stopped beside me and told me not to let the dogs in the water, because there’s oil. But it’s not a problem. Mh. Right.

I checked the beach past Mangaf, direction Fahaheel. The oil was slowly arriving there as well.
I can’t find any news online and probably won’t at all.

Was down there this afternoon again, the workers were sitting on the beach. An oil spill response vehicle was there, two boats out in the ocean, but no action.

You can read her post [Here] and check out pictures of the spill [Here]

I passed by the new Lulu Hypermarket that opened up recently. The place is huge and I found a ton of stuff that I hadn’t seen before. I do all my shopping at Sultan Center since they have a lot of imported US and UK products but I will probably be adding Lulu to the list now. This is just an example of what I found at the first fridge once I walked in: Diet Coke “caffeine free”, Diet Coke with lemon, Diet Coke with cherry, Fanta Zero orange and Fanta Zero lemon, Sprite Zero, and Dr Pepper Zero. They also had a whole variety of Tropicana juices I hadn’t seen before (and for a reasonable KD1.600) and even the UK brand Innocent. I didn’t take any pictures after that fridge since there were “No Photography” signs everywhere (not sure why). I did manage to snap a picture of a strange fruit I found, hadn’t seen one like it before (pictured at bottom of post).

To get to Lulu you take the 40th and then exit on the 208 heading towards the Wataniya Airways airport. It’s located on the main road so you won’t miss it. Check out some more pictures below.

A reader emailed me an article in which Kuwait asks BlackBerry to block around 3000 porn sites so I went to myself what? I opened my browser on my BlackBerry and typed in playboy.com and hit go and guess what? It opened! Why didn’t anyone tell me about this before? I never knew I could access blocked sites on my BlackBerry.

Kuwait has asked BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) to block pornographic sites though will not suspend services like other Gulf states have threatened to do, a local newspaper reported Tuesday.

RIM has given “initial approval” to block 3,000 porn sites at the request of Kuwait’s communications ministry, the al-Jarida daily said, quoting a source it did not identify by name.

It said the Canadian manufacturer asked the ministry to give it until the end of the year to implement the block.

It’s also good to know that the BlackBerry service won’t be blocked in Kuwait. Here is a link to the [Article]

Thanks Deborah

Dear Mark, Readers and Valued Kabab-ji Customers,

We would like to express our sincere respect and appreciation to the blog post comparing Kabab-ji with its competitors as well as the constructive feedback received by the blog readers.

At the start, the comparison shown within the initial blog post was misrepresented, we contacted Mark and he took the kind liberty to amend the post which is now accurate and resembles a fair comparison.

As mentioned within the amended blog post, it is true, we do focus and pride ourselves when it comes to high quality meats that are delivered to our customers at the highest quality standards.

We are passionate about our meat and care about where it comes from. We distinguish ourselves within Kuwait by utilizing Australian bobby veal meat which is an extremely tender & lean nutritious meat produced in South-Eastern Australia , inspected and certified for export by AQIS (Australian Government Quarantine and Inspection Service) and AUSMEAT (Meat-Standards Australia). No meat leaves Australia without accreditation and certification by the above bodies, on every shipment.

Being meticulously selected from Australia, our Hallal bobby veal meat is unbeatable in terms of quality. Most importantly, the animals used are growth hormone and antibiotic-free, are fed a vegetarian diet and of course, are humanely raised.

Furthermore, once the meat arrives to Kuwait, our production facility specialists handle it with utmost respect and attention to the BRC standards which is a leading global product safety and global certification program, which our production facilities strictly follow on a daily basis. You can read more about BRC on their website: https://www.brcglobalstandards.com/

In the end, yes, we may be a bit more expensive when it comes to our products, but our customers are also paying for unparalleled quality and flavour, with safety measures on a global standard.

Thank you once again for your initiative and we will do our best to continue offering our valued customers with the highest quality products and services.

We look forward to receiving feed forward from Kebab-ji fans and comments that can help us improve and better serve our valued customers.

Please do feel free to contact me directly on 97285651 or email me at [email protected]

Best Regards,

Miguel Angel Estevez- Gonzalez

KFG – Group
Director of Operations CD & IDD innovation Officer

Al Jazeera English have uploaded the documentary “Kuwait: The class of 1990” on to YouTube. It’s 47 minutes long so I haven’t watched it yet but should do so tonight. [YouTube]

Thanks Moey

My new camera arrived in the mail today, the Panasonic GF1 (pictured above next to my Konica rangefinder). It’s a micro four-thirds camera which mostly means it has a larger sensor than point and shoot cameras and also has interchangeable lenses. I ordered my GF1 with the bright 20mm f1.7 prime lens and I think this will be the only lens I will be using with the camera.

The reason I got this camera is because I was looking for one that would help inspire me to take more pictures. I don’t feel comfortable carrying my D90 around everywhere and the Canon G11 picture quality was lacking compared to my D90. I think the GF1 lies somewhere in between the two.

First thing I did when I picked up my camera was pass by this place next to my house and take pictures. One of my favorite features in the camera is that it allows me to take pictures in the square format. Below are some of the pictures I took earlier today.

I purchased the Panasonic GF1 from Amazon, here is the [Link]

I got a phone call today from someone at Kebabji regarding the comparison I did the other day. They told me instead of ordering 2 grilled meat tikka skewers for KD2.390 I could order their savings meal which comes with 3 skewers for KD2.595. They told me only then would it be a fair comparison. They also told me the reason their meat is more expensive is because it’s sourced from Australia. In any case I’ve now revised the review to reflect this new update.

As you can see with the chart below, even with this update Kebabji still provides the least amount of meat for the price. The picture above is also of the 3 skewers from Kebabji. I guess they’re focused on quality more than quantity.

Around 5 years ago I collected some photos of the Gulf War aftermath from various sources online and put them all up in a Flickr group. There are 48 pictures currently which you can check by clicking [Here]

We just had to evacuate our office building due to a fire on the 6th floor. We had to walk down from the 21st floor. Will post pics and more later.

Update: I’m back home now so I can post about what happened. Our office is on the 21st floor of Jawhara Tower behind NBK on Fahad Al Salem street. It was around 10:30 I think and I decided to go down to the grocery to get some water. I took the lift and when I got to the ground floor I noticed a small crowd of people gathered outside the lifts but I didn’t think much. I was on the phone with Nataly and when I walked out of the lift area into the main lobby I noticed more people gathered there and I started to hear the fire alarm. I didn’t know what was going so I told Nat I would call her back. I then called one of my workmates up in our office and told him it looks like there could be a fire in the building since the fire alarm is on and there are people downstairs. He asked me what we should do I told him I would come up and talk to him.

So I casually went back into the lift and headed back to the 21st floor. When I was passing the 9th floor I noticed it smelled like fire. I was like WTF? I got to our floor and I started to tell people there was a fire. We weren’t sure if we should evacuate because everything looked normal on our floor. No fire alarms, no smoke, no smell and nothing unusual. So we were thinking maybe it was just a false alarm when someone noticed the elevators area which I had just come up from was now starting to fill up with smoke. That’s when we started evacuating everyone.

The building isn’t fully occupied yet, I think out of the 26 floors only 10 are occupied. We started heading down the fire escape, it was a long way down and for most of it uneventful until we hit around the 10th floor. That’s when we started to notice a bit of smoke. When we got to the 7th 6th floor we noticed the smoke got a lot heavier and that on the fire was on the 6th 5th floor below us. I snapped the picture above which was of the poor building security guard trying to put out the fire.

We decided to cut across to the other side of the building and take the fire escape on the other side since I figured there should be less smoke and water there. When we crossed and got to the second fire escape we noticed it was filled with construction material. Large rocks, pieces of metal, foam, nylon bags… I wish I took a picture. We cleared some out of the way since there were people coming down that fire escape and the trash was slowing things down. There was a line of people going down the escape and it was moving pretty slow since there was a woman who seemed to be exhausted going down and we were all waiting behind her. Someone was helping her go down but it was still just very slow. By the time we got to the second floor I noticed one fireman coming up that fire escape and then finally we got out of the building.

Now that I am home I am thinking of all the mistakes that occurred like why didn’t the fire alarm go off in the whole building? If I hadn’t gone down to the ground floor by coincidence I wouldn’t have heard the fire alarm and I wouldn’t have been able to warn people upstairs. Also usually when there is a fire the elevators stop working and all automatically go down to the ground floor. The elevators in our building actually allowed me to go up to the 21st floor during a fire! Thirdly the fire escapes contained a lot of items in them which made our escape hazardous and slowed everything down. The security guards although were being brave to try and put out the fire shouldn’t have been doing that, if anything they should have been helping people get out. They didn’t have any masks on or proper gear and I am sure they are all now suffering from smoke inhalation. Hopefully they all made it out ok. I didn’t experience that much smoke and I am already blowing out black sooth from my nose. Because they also had the fire escape door open when they were trying to put out the fire, that resulted in the whole fire escape filling up with smoke and making things dangerous for the people escaping.

This all brings me to my final question. The other day the elevators weren’t working in my apartment building so I took the fire escape down. It was dark so I used my phone to light up the way and there were a ton of obstacles in the way which made it very difficult for me to go down. Who can I call to complain to so they can come and check our buildings fire safety? I am sure it’s illegal to fill up the fire escapes with garbage. Below are some pictures I took with my iPhone of the fire in our office building.

Update2: Sorry just proof read what I wrote and noticed a bunch of spelling mistakes and grammar errors. Didn’t have time to do that earlier. Also the fire turned out to be on the 5th floor not 6th.