Category: Kuwait

I got home after work and took Geo my dog for his walk when I noticed three kids abusing a small white puppy. So I asked them who the dog was for and a kid answered that it was his and that he wanted to sell it. I asked him how much and he told me KD5. So I called Nat and told her that we were going to rescue a dog and that she should call Animal Friends League to see if they could pick it up.

We got some towels, food and water for the puppy which turned out to be really hungry and waited for a call back from Animal Friends so we could see what to do next. As a backup I told Nat to give PAWs a call but as usual no one from PAWs picked up. Animal Friends called us back and told us no one could pick up the dog tonight but we could drop it off at the International Veterinarian Hospital which we ended up doing.

It was a pretty cute and playful dog. Nat decided to call him Grumpy like the Smurf since it had a grumpy look on its face, probably from all the abuse it got from the kids.

Animal Friends League is a non-profit organization that rescues animals and strives to improve the quality of their lives in Kuwait. So please if you would like to help them out either with a donation or other means visit the following link to find out how. [Link]

I found out about this yesterday and couldn’t wait to try it over lunch. A McGangBang is a chicken burger shoved inside a double cheeseburger and believe it or not, it turned out to be delicious. It wasn’t very messy and although I was expecting the chicken burger to slide out of the sandwich, it didn’t. This is highly recommended.

via Kottke

IMPORTANT: You can’t actually order the McGangBang from McDonalds because it’s NOT on their menu. You need to order a double cheeseburger and a chicken burger separately and then combine the two yourself. If you are really hungry you could order a double Quarter Pounder and shove a McChicken inside it but I haven’t tried that.

Has anyone heard of a burger place in Kuwait called Smokehouse? Its on exit 211 in Mahboula, block 1. Supposedly they have really good burgers. I also heard a new burger place opened up in the Avenues in place of where GBK used to be.

Update: Someone from the Smokehouse commented the following…

At The Smokehouse we specialize in Southern BBQ. We serve a variety of smoked and barbequed meats, southern style sides and a selection of desserts. And Mark we do have three different burgers on our menu. We are located in Mahboula block 1, off exit 211of the Fahaheel expressway. Our website www.smokehousekw.com should be up within a day or 2, it has a menu as well as directions and map of our location. If you need help finding The Smokehouse call us at 97340070 or 97340080.

Abdullah from the blog P0ach.com sent me these pictures to share with everyone. There are 10 pictures in total and they all have their descriptions underneath. This is the first time I display the pictures this way so if anyone has any problem viewing them or if the sites template looks strange please tell me so I can look into it. Click on continue below to see the pictures.

Thanks Abdullah!

I was out of the country when the military parade took place recently in Kuwait but a reader of my blog who was at the event took some pictures which I’ve uploaded online. To check out the pictures click [Here]

Thanks Salem!

And this is why I will never eat at Hardees again… or until I forget about this. A forum user ordered a burger from Hardees and ended up not finding one bug but a bunch of bugs in his sandwich! [Link]

I love watches so when the owner of Q8 Chrono emailed me the link to his site I quickly went to check it out. It’s kinda like Q8car.com except for watches or at least thats the kind of site I hope it turns into. The site lists a lot of new watches and also around 20 used watches (which is my favorite section). There is a pretty decent used watches market in Kuwait but all the stores that sell them are scattered around Kuwait. Having them all online on one site would be pretty practical. The site is still being worked on and the owner still has many things he wants to implement but for now you can check the site by going to Q8chrono.com

I hope the used section gets updated often and there should be a way of contacting the site if I want to sell a watch or maybe an automated form? I also just realized the used watches section is 2 pages long, you need to click on older entries at the bottom to get to the second page. Not very practical, he should ditch wordpress and set up a proper e-commerce site.

Update: Ok found the contact information, it was on the main page but there should be a link to the contact info on every page.

I was emailed the following:

Throughout the coming months there is going to be an eventful calendar of activities at different Starbucks locations. Ranging from insightful and inspiring photography exhibitions, to fun live music performances and gigs and many other more art forms to be included and surprises to be later announced.

Each weekend the photography exhibitions will take place in 3 Starbucks stores across Kuwait so choose the closest to you and come encourage young creative youth in Kuwait and spend a great weekend at Starbucks..

The schedule of events and locations are to be found for reference below:

6 -7 March
Starbucks Al Bidaa:
Ammar Al Othman & Samar Al Bader

Starbucks Behbehani Villa – behind Church – Kuwait City:
Saleh El Gaith & BaderAl Ajeel

Starbucks Mishref Coop:
Abdula Al Foudary & Nawaf Al Saleh

13-14 March
Starbucks Avenues (by Fountain):
Maha Al Asaker & Jarrah Al Boloshi

Starbucks Kuwait Free Zone:
Saleh El Gaith & Bader Al Ajeel

Starbucks Palms Spa & Resort:
Samar Al Bader & Sherifa Ben Ali

20-21 March
Starbucks Al Bidaa:
Maha Al Asaker & Jarrah Al Boloshi

Starbucks Salem Al Mubarak – Opposite Al Fanar:
Bader Al Ajeel & Ammar Al Othman

Starbucks Hilton Al Mangaf:
Abdulla Al Foudary & Nawaf Al Saleh

27-28 March
Starbucks Behbehani Villa – behind Church – Kuwait City:
Sherifa Ben Ali & Maha Al Asaker

Starbucks Palms & Spa Resort:
Jarrah El Boloshi & Saleh Al Gaith

Starbucks Marina Mall:
Ammar Al Othman & Abdulla Al Foudary

For more information visit their Facebook group [Here]

Thanks Maha!

Someone emailed me about an exhibition thats taking place in Kuwait for a “digital artist” called Anwar Ghader. So I googled him to check out his work when I found a cool post on Projekt Cyan showing how in under 10 minutes you can replicate one of his work. I really dislike how some people take a picture, apply a few Photoshop filters and then call it art. That’s not art, what I posted the other day is art. So if you want to find out how to create your own digital art like Anwar click [Here]

Update: Just so there is no miscommunication. The reason I don’t call Anwar’s work art is not because it was easy to create or because it is ugly or anything of that sort. Its because of the way the work was created. If I take an image and using the software Rasterbator I create something nice, does that make me an artist? If I use Obama Icon Me to create a cool looking poster, does that make me an artist? So why is it art when Anwar (or any other person) uses live trace to create the work?

I promise this will be the last photography related post for this week but I’ve really been wanting to post this ever since I saw the pictures on Nibaqs blog. Someone Verity Cridland scanned and restored photos they she had taken of Kuwait back in the early 1960’s and then uploaded all the photos onto her flickr account. There are a lot of great pictures there so please check them out. [Pictures]

Thanks Nibaq!

A reader yesterday emailed me a link to a website of a Kuwaiti illustrator called Ahmed Al-Refaie. I checked out his work and was blown away so I emailed Ahmed and asking him if he could tell us a bit about himself and his illustrations and this is what he had to say:

Currently, Im about to graduate from Kuwait University “English Literature”. I don’t like it, but certain circumstances forced me to since there was no Graphic Design in KU. My name is Ahmed Al-Refaie (22) (Kuwaiti, although that does not matter, an artist is an artist no matter the origin ), my art is called vector art. I’m self-taught, never attended any art related classes. When I was 10, I started sketching, beginning of high-school I began graphic design, but this current style you see all around my website started in early 2006. Usually my art was varied in style and that is what I think of as a corrupted aspect of an artist. So I made and refined my own style. My website does not include my old works. For more technical details, I use a mouse, keyboard and Photoshop CS3 ( I always get the question “do you use a tablet?” ), just a good ol’ Apple mighty mouse. I was a bit into 3D using 3D Max but quickly lost interest as there are many giants in that field, its just not for me. That said, my work is completely raw, no pictures, filters, I do however reference body gestures (sometimes) but the image used is removed and I recreate the whole thing.

I think the guy is extremely talented and I think its about time KU setup a design department. There are a lot of talented young people and it would be sad to see them all taking random majors like English Literature or cooking just because they don’t have design.

Here is a link to his deviantART gallery [Link]
Here is a link to his personal website [Link]

K5 has an interesting post about this cool little store he found called Nawader Al Kuwait. The place has a huge collection of vintage Arabic vinyl records and also vintage radios and record players. The place also has other random items, personally I am interested in the painting of the musicians above so I might pass by tonight to check the place out. You can see more pictures and information about the place on K5’s blog [Here]

I got home after work to find a bunch of retards fighting under my building. I parked my car in the basement and walked up to the ground floor to find around 20 teenagers (16-18 year olds) shouting, screaming and shoving each other around. I watched them for like 5 minutes and then decided to go upstairs and watch them from my balcony. A lot of fights erupt next to my building because there is a billiard place in the building next door that attracts a lot of the wrong crowd. There is also a prostitution ring that operates in that same building but they only open for business like once a week and its a pretty tightly run ship with high end customers so they never cause any problems (I should post about them one day). The billiard place on the other hand just attracts all these trashy kids that want to fight for the dumbest reasons.

While watching the fight from my balcony I heard what sounded like one guy yelling at who I thought was one of the Bangladeshi janitors in my building so I went back downstairs to make sure no one did anything to the workers. Turns out the workers were inside the building away from harms way but the fight outside had turned really violent with guys holding cutters and some guys bleeding. I live in a shopping mall in the old Salmiya street and these guys were basically fighting in the backside, then moving inside the mall and then back out to the front of the building onto the main Salmiya street. It was ridiculous! So I asked the landlord if he had called the cops and he told me yeah when the fight had first started but no one had come yet.

20 minutes later and the cops still hadn’t showed up. Actually the fight dispersed and everyone ended up going their separate ways and the cops never showed up. I went back up to my apartment while the janitors started to clean up the blood stains. Unbelievable.

Yesterday I posted about how disappointing the Teshkeel Comics theme park looks like and today I found a post on another blog about the Cartoon Network theme park which already opened and looks pretty cool. I can’t seem to figure out where its located though. You can check out pictures of the Cartoon Network on the blog P0ach by following this [Link]

Global Finance magazine just released a list of the world’s 50 safest bank and the only bank from the region that made the cut was NBK which came in at #44. The German bank KfW topped the list at spot #1 while HSBC came in at #19. For the full list here is a [PDF]

Thanks Abdullah!