Category: Kuwait

A friend recommended I try shawerma from a place in Salmiya called Happy Duck. At first I was hesitant but then I thought to myself, what if this back alley place with a stupid name turns out to have really good shawermas? I decided not to discriminate and give the place a shot.

I passed by the place late in the evening, it wasn’t too hard to find, I just took the exit on the Gulf Road right before were Crepaway (now called Divas) used to be located. The location wasn’t bad, they had ample parking space and no traffic around them. I went down, ordered two shawermas and a coke, came back to the car and started eating them.

My first impression was that the shawerma was really greasy. I munched away and went through the first shawerma without encountering anything out of the ordinary but when I hit the second sandwich something tasted really weird. Kinda like the chicken was under cooked or something which grossed me out so I threw it awat. I didn’t like their shawerma at all.

The price of their shawerma is 250 fils which competes with my two favorite shawerma places at the moment, Badar Al Badoor and Al Ghader, but Happy Duck is not even in the same league as them. Final score is a 1.5 out of 5.

This is one of the cheesiest videos I’ve seen in a while but its worth watching because its that bad. The story is about a high school student in Kuwait who feels Kuwait resembles O.C. (Orange County). [YouTube]

Tonight I noticed a temporary tattoo stand in the Marina Mall food court where they airbrush different designs onto your skin. Seeing the tattoo stand made me think, how come we don’t have tattoo parlors in Kuwait? I remember ages ago someone telling me its illegal but I doubt thats the case, why would getting a tattoo be illegal?

Picture by kitty27

So you see the above Think Pink advert and you don’t think much but then you see the below Think Fruit advert and it’s like wait a second!

The funny part is they are both located next to each other. The Think Fruit is for Masafi while the Think Pink is for Sweet’N Low.

Thanks Anas!

Although there are a ton of shawerma places near my house Dodo is the place I frequent the most. The staff are friendly and quick and they also have a wide range of sandwiches to choose from. Personally my favorite sandwich at Dodo is their chicken shawerma.

I don’t know how accurate this story is but I remember being told that the owner of Dodo was also the owner of Barakat, my favorite shawerma place back in the day when they were open in the old Salmiya near Fay (opposite Hardees). I think its true because one of the employees of Barakat now works at Dodo but it could be just a big coincidence. Dodo is a Lebanese restaurant that serves Lebanese style of food ranging from falafel to burgers to shawermas. One of the advantages of having shawerma at a Lebanese place is the garlic, and the garlic at Dodo is pretty damn good. As I’ve said before, there are only three things in a shawerma, the bread, the chicken and the garlic. The bread is easy to get right so no worries there. The chicken although the taste of it is important, even if you mess up you can cover up your tracks with good garlic since the garlic can cover the taste of the chicken. Now I am not saying there is a problem with the chicken at Dodo, on the contrary, the chicken is really good but the garlic is where its all at.

The size of the shawerma is pretty small and I usually have 3 to fill me up sometimes with a side order of their fries. The price of each shawerma is 300 fils which is cheap and I think with the quality of their shawerma they could easily price it at 350 fils and no one would complain especially when their most recent competitor, Vila Fayrouz Express charges 750 fils for theirs. All is not perfect though, Dodo suffers from lack of consistency which pisses me off. Sometimes I feel the chicken is undercooked and I hate it when that happens but luckily it doesn’t happen often. Final score is 4 out of 5. Dodo is located near La Baguette on Baghdad Street.

This is a documentary that was uploaded to YouTube by NiceQ8i on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The documentary has tons and tons of footage taken after the war showing all the devastation that took place. Even if you don’t have time to view it all at least try to skim through it.

Documentary part 1
Documentary part 2
Documentary part 3
Documentary part 4
Documentary part 5

Image taken from GulfWar

I don’t know what they’re called, I just call it the egg chair. Gallery Vanlian opened up (finally) at The Avenues and they are selling the egg chair for KD450. It’s not really comfortable to sit in but looks pretty cool. They have some pretty random stuff there my favorite being the Bodum kitchenware.

Last month I posted about how Bazaar used an illustration for the cover of their dining guide without crediting the illustrator, without paying for the image and without permission from the artist. They replied thanking me for finding the artist and that they contacted him and were going to reimburse him.

Well they did contact him but the amount they offered to pay the artist was just $200. Considering that rights managed images start at a $1000 and upwards then you could imagine how low $200 is. Anyway the original artist had this to say about the whole incident:

I have been invited to comment the case with Bazaar copying an image that once was created by me. The image was used without my permission. I was therefore never compensated financially and for good reasons I assume that I was never mentioned in the credit line. I was made aware of the unauthorized usage before Bazaar contacted me.

When they contacted me they offered to compensate me financially. I am sure they found that the compensation was fair but I have a different opinion. In fact we are in a position where we don’t seem to be able to reach an agreement. I have therefore decided that it is not worth to take this any further due to the cost and time that I would have to spend on this.

I have also decided that I will not accept money that Bazaar offers me since that would be accepting the terms of how they have used my image. So case is closed.

I think it is vital to defend the copyright law for many different reasons. In most countries it is seen as self-evident that you shouldn’t use an image without paying for the copyright, but from what I can tell by following the debate on this website I understand that Q8 might not be one of those countries. The sad thing is that in countries where the copyright law is not taken seriously the originator has little or no chance at all to protect his work.

I am a freelance illustrator and my only source of income is the images I create. I have a family to support and bills to pay. If I manufactured, let’s say bikes and someone took one of my bikes form the warehouse and used it without telling me, how would you characterize that? Should the unauthorized use of images be treated differently?

I have been featured on design blogs all over the world. I take it that most of the people who are publishing my work there are very young. But they all have something in common – they contact me before or shortly after publishing my images and very often they write “Copyright Bo Lundberg” . What is it that they understand and that some publishers don’t?

Another aspect is that when I create an image it is commissioned by a client. They are paying for the usage of the images. To illustrate what can happen when people copy my images I would like to give an example. Once I had a call from a publisher in the US that I had done more than 80 illustrations for. They were extremely upset with me since they had found all my illustrations in another book printed in Asia and now they were contemplating on suing me. What had happened was that someone just ripped my images from the original book and created a whole new book, obviously without informing me. I managed to reason with the original client but as you might understand it was quite a situation to have been copied and then facing a possible trial.

I wish all the designers in Q8 good luck in your efforts. And to those who commission work I would just like to ask you to think twice before using an image without authorization. In the long run – who wants to work as an illustrator or photographer if you are not compensated and protected by copyright law?

Bo Lundberg

The reason I think we have a big problem here is because Bazaar is one of the biggest and most respected magazines in Kuwait. If they aren’t going to abide by copyright laws and set an example to the smaller publishers who will? They might as well do what Campus Cruise did and just take pictures off flickr and put them on the cover.

Under my Beef Wellington post a reader asked where they could find a blooming onion in Kuwait. The only place I know that makes a blooming onion is Chili’s. They call it the Awesome Blossom.

note: yes it’s currently back on the menu and available

Since its my day off today I decided to go and change the tires on my Wrangler. After a bit of searching I landed at Dunlop and ended up getting my tires from there. I wasn’t planning to get Dunlops but they had a really great offer where if you buy 3 tires they give you the 4th for free. The offer is going on until mid September if anyone is interested and they are located opposite Ace Hardware.

I was sitting at home watching TV when I heard sirens outside. They were getting louder and louder so I looked out the window and saw a bunch of fire trucks coming towards my building. I figured they must have taken a wrong turn but to my surprise the trucks started parking under my building and a crowd started to gather. I was thinking WTF? Their were 8 trucks, a cop car and an ambulance parked under my building so I figured something must be wrong. I took my camera and headed downstairs to see what all the commotion was about.

Once I got downstairs I saw the building keeper (haress) and asked him what was going on. He told me a store inside the mall (I live over a shopping mall) must have had a short circuit but there wasn’t anything to worry about. Fire fighters were running into the building with full gear on so I decided to take a few shots. Luckily the fire was put out quickly before any other stores caught fire.

Wasn’t there a law that got released that says companies can not take the passports of their employees? I thought that there was but I could be mistaken. The place where a friend works now are demanding all employees hand in their passports or else they won’t get paid. Do they have a right to do this?

IKEA isn’t the first place that comes into mind when you think of Indian food but surprisingly, it should. When IKEA was still based in Shuwaikh their restaurant was tiny and had a limited variety of dishes. Now that they are based in The Avenues and have a lot of space they expanded their restaurant not only in size but also in the variety of dishes that they serve.

One of the dishes they used to serve every now and then as their daily special has now become a permanent dish on their menu, the chicken masala.

As I said earlier when it comes to Indian food IKEA isn’t the first thing that comes into mind. Swedish meatballs yes, chicken masala no. Despite how strange the notion of a Swedish furniture chain serving Indian food might sound, they somehow managed to get it right. IKEA serve extremely good chicken masala and they serve it alongside plain white steamed rice. Combined the meal is priced aggressively at only KD1.500! The portion is large and filling and the flavor is pretty darn good. Its currently my favorite dish at their restaurant and a favorite among many. With a cheap price tag, good portion and great flavor there really isn’t much to complain about. Final score is a 4.5 out of 5.

So today morning I received an email telling me that PUMA and Nike were both opening stores in the next few days and two images of the interiors were attached. After corresponding with the sender some more it turns out the stores were actually opening today and that they were in fact individual stores inside the new Athlete’s Foot in The Avenues. So for lunch I decided to pass by and check it out.

The Athlete’s Foot store is located near Va Va Voom. The entrance is around two stores wide but the place is really deep. It’s not as big as GoSport which is humongous but its still around 3 to 4 times the size of Foot Locker. When you first walk in to the place its your typical Athlete’s Foot but after you climb a few steps the store gets divided into 3 smaller stores, a Nike store, a Puma store and an Adidas store (hey are separated by transparent plastic walls).

The Nike section sadly is nowhere as big as the Nike store in the Mall of the Emirates but it’s better then nothing I guess.

I just got an email telling me that in a few days time the first ever PUMA store is going to open up in Kuwait and also for the first time, a Nike concept store. The email didn’t mention where in Kuwait they’re opening but I am assuming The Avenues. Here are two exclusive pictures of both stores.

update: They will either be opening today or tomorrow and it’s confirmed, they are opening at The Avenues.

update 2: OK, another update, turns out they already opened up today morning. Both stores plus an Adidas store are all inside the new concept Athlete’s Foot store next to Va Va Voom. Doesn’t sound as exciting as having individual stores but will pass by for lunch and check it out.

update 3: Hopefully the final update. The stores are SIS (stores in stores). They carry the same exclusive stuff as the individual Puma and Nike stores. Problem with Puma and Nike is that if they open a flagship store they have to be the actual owners which is not possible in Kuwait. So in Kuwait this is the closest we are going to get to having individual stores. Adidas on the other hand are ok with selling you the franchise hence the Adidas store at Marina Mall.