Category: Kuwait

Woke up at 5:30AM to walk my dog and it was freezing cold. I was literally in my shorts and t-shirt shivering. I guess winter is here early this year.

Like many of you I have been visiting IKEA in Shuwaikh since I was a kid. Sadly at the same time this post gets published (5PM) IKEA in Shuwaikh will have closed down for good. Tomorrow IKEA will reopen but at a new location in The Avenues mall. I was lucky enough to pass by IKEA for lunch today and see the original IKEA for one last time before they closed their doors. It was really strange walking around and not see any furniture on display. I took some pictures with my phone so check them out. [Pictures]

I was planning on going to the 4×4 event which is currently being held at the Mishref Fairgrounds, but after checking out some pictures taken there I don’t think I am gonna anymore. It looks really boring compared to the one they held last year at Marina Crescent. [Pictures]

The Strong Man Competition is going to be held at the Hilton Kuwait Resort this Friday the 10th of November. The event starts at 10AM to 5PM. For more information and pricing you can contact Hilton on 3725500.

update: Admission is KD12.5 and that includes food and drinks.

update2: here is the poster of the event. (Thanks Moustapha) [Poster]

Just found this online store called Lo3baty which turned out is located in Kuwait. They aren’t selling much just one product, a radio controlled helicopter. Looks cool and its cheap but I am guessing its tiny. I emailed the owner asking if he would send me one so I could review, haven’t gotten a reply yet. [Link]

note: I don’t think its the same Lo3baty as My Toy located in Muthana. The reason is if it was the same I would think they would atleast have their contact numbers and shop address on the site. I also did a whois on the domain name and the information there is fake. If it was the same My Toy as Muthana they would have had the correct whois info. I think this site is just someone taking advantage of the Lo3baty name but isn’t actually connected to the real Lo3baty in Muthana.

Four girls went on a trip to Cambodia last February and got really touched by the poverty and injustice they saw over there. When they got back they decided they were going to do something about it. The girls decided they would hold a fund raising photography exhibition which would include all of their shots that they took while they were there.

The exhibition is taking place at “Beit Lothan” which is located adjacent to Marina Mall and begins on the 6th of November and ends on the 8th starting at 6PM.

Their pictures will be on sale for KD30 each. All the money they make will be donated to the Schools for Children of Cambodia (SCC) charity.

Click here to view the poster of the event

I live in Salmiya, Salam Mubarek Street. The “old” Salmiya. I live right on the main shopping street and have been living on this street for most of my life.

Pre 1990 I was living in the building that had A&W, after 1990 I moved to the building across the street from it and thats where I have been living ever since. As you can imagine, I know the street very well. How well?

I remember The New Super Market before it closed down, I remember when Dairy Queen was open here and then shut down and Jashanmal opened instead. I remember buying my Thermos metal lunch box with the Dukes of Hazzard picture on it from there. I remember the night A&W opened with Mister Donuts right next to it. I remember when Majda el Roumi the famous singer came to open a perfume store right across the street from my building. I remember Hungry Bunny, I remember how after they renovated a cookie store opened inside it which had the best chocolate chunk cookies ever. I also remember the sad day when that cookie area inside got closed down.

I remember the high end stores like Channel, Versace and Cartier. It was a high end street and Rolex and Mercedes are still open here today serving as a reminder to what was once a beautiful street. I remember when Kids R Us opened and I remember what was there before it opened and after it closed. I remember the most popular music stores of their time, Soul II Soul, Bells and Swan Lake. I remember buying my original copy of Windows 95 from Computer World, I remember the small video game store on the ground floor of the same building, he had a NeoGeo in the display and I used to watch the Samurai Showdown demo play while I gazed through the glass hoping to own the system one day. I got my first Swatch from Fay stationary, I remember getting my Peter and Jane books from Family Bookshop. Fay shutdown, Family Bookshop is surprisingly still open.

Well my Salmiya isn’t what it used to be. All the upper scale stores shut down and everyones attention moved up to the Sultan Center area. All thats left here are low end stores all selling the same shit. The whole street has turned into a garbage dump. The sidewalk tiles are damaged, the trees look unhealthy, and the worst thing of all, Salmiya is slowly slowly losing its soul.

I was taking a late night walk just a while ago and I noticed the building that housed Swan Lake was going to get demolished. Thats when I realized I need to do something.

Why do old buildings get demolished and not refurbished? Salmiya (and Kuwait even) would look so much nicer if the old buildings were just redone up. Look at what was done with Beirut. They could have demolished everything and sprung up modern glass buildings but instead they decided to keep Beirut’s soul intact. Why can’t that be done here? My Salmiya really has a lot of history, how many other shopping streets in Kuwait can even begin to compare. No other has sidewalks wider then here nor is any other street located in such a good location. No other street has as much history! The Swan Lake building has a style, it can be cleaned up, updated and reopened but instead its going to get demolished and replaced by a cheap ass low end tiny crappy wannabe mall.

I want to be elected as the mayor of Salmiya. I would clean it up, repaint it, re-tile it and revive it. I don’t know who the mayor is now (if there is even such a position here in Kuwait) but I do know that he can’t be a true Salmiya dweller or else he wouldn’t let it die and rot like this. Vote for me, I won’t let everyone down.

I went to pick up my cheque from Dent Xpress for the monthly banner and on my way out the owner gave me a black 80GB iPod video as a gift! It was a thank you gift because he got a lot of referrals from my site.

I am so giddy, although I have a black 60GB iPod video (which will now go to my younger brother) the new one is scratch free, has a larger hard-disk and a much better battery life. I think the battery life is the most important thing because watching videos drains a lot of battery.

One thing I found interesting was the back of the iPod was engraved with the Dent Xpress logo and phone numbers. I don’t think he did this on Apple.com because they can’t engrave logos. I need to find out where he got the iPod engraved because I could imagine a lot of people would be interested in customizing their ipods like this.

Anyway thank you Dent Xpress!

Cajie has taken a ton of cool 4 pictures of the Go Karting race which I posted about 2 days ago. Check them out. [Pictures]

update: Here are tons of pictures taken by K.TheKuwaiti

Coming to Bahrain has really depressed me. I have always felt this and I said this the last time when I went to Dubai. Consumers in Kuwait are treated like idiots.

Skyscrapers. In Bahrain they look more like the stuff you would see in Dubai, which is a good thing because they are very modern and futuristic looking. They aren’t rectangular blocks but more like creative spaces. In Kuwait our skyscrapers just look dull. Even places like Water Lemon, Johnny Rockets and Nino’s look wayy cooler in Bahrain. A lot of things seems better designed here.

We also seem to lack luxurious hotels. I briefly visited the Ritz Carlton Hotel here and there really isn’t any hotel in Kuwait I think that could match it when it comes to luxury.

Toys R Us. How is it Bahrain have a huge one and we have a crappy tiny one? How come we don’t have any toy store thats as big as Toys R Us here which by the way isn’t really big compared to the ones in the US and Canada.

I also walked into a tiny bookshop at the Seef Mall. I walked out with 2 books and a magazine. You know when was the last time I bought a book in Kuwait? I think 2 years ago. How come a small tiny bookstore at a local mall had a better quality of magazines and books then Virgin and the bookshop in Muthana combined?

Boring designs, no luxury hotels, small toy stores, and generic books and magazines. It feels like some people in Kuwait think we (the consumers) are not worth the effort. You know why? Because we don’t complain.

If you pass by the Ice Skating ring parking lot in Kuwait City you will notice the huge parking lot has turned into a race track. This Thursday there will be a 25 hour Go Kart race in the parking lot. It will be the third year this race has been held.

My contact at Alghanim Automotive sent me the following email to publish on the blog:

Hey, some news for you and your audience. The new Lumina’s and all new Caprice’s are in Kuwait!! You know how popular with Kuwaitis these cars are. They will be launched in the next couple of weeks all over Kuwait. Not only that, there is a new Epica and the new SUV that just came out, the Captiva. The Captiva will arrive end of December and is a very sexy SUV. I tried the new Lumina and OMG… it’s a freakin’ monster under the hood. The buttons, dials, and inside trim quality is so far above what you’re used. Honestly, it’s German level stuff (and im not talking VW) inside and outside. The time of big, ugly, floaty, gas guzzling American cars is way over. We’re planning to take on Audi A6 with the Caprice.

Here are pictures he attached to the email.
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Yesterday a friend at my office tried buying a ticket online at the Jazeera Airways website. When she hit the final submit button after putting in her credit card details she got a page with an error. So, she redid the process over and over until it finally worked. Once she was done she checked her email and found that she had purchased 5 tickets. It turned out even though she was getting an error the order was still going through. She has been trying to contact Jazeera since yesterday to report what happened but the lines are always busy.

Today so far the same problem has happened with 4 other people I know including k.thekuwaiti. Everyone who is also trying to contact Jazeera is getting a busy tone. Someone was also telling me the line yesterday at the airport for people waiting to buy a ticket was a kilometer long. Thats just crazy.

I just came back from my bank. I went to check and see if Showtime honored my cancellation request and canceled my standing order with the bank but it turns out they haven’t. I no longer have Showtime at home since I canceled my subscription over 2 months ago but they are still taking money from me every month!

The employee at the bank was very helpful because he had gone through the same situation with United Networks which is also owned by Global Direct the same company that owns and runs Showtime. He told me what many people are doing is canceling their credit cards so that Showtime stops billing them but I wouldn’t be able to do that because Showtime take the amount straight from my account and not my credit card. So, the employee gave me some numbers at Showtime to contact but he told me they rarely pick up and to keep trying.

Dealing with Showtime has seriously been the worst experience I have ever had with any company ever! I am really trying to think of a company that treated me worst but can’t think of any at the moment. My advice is to stay away from Showtime and any other company that is run by Global Direct like United Networks and ZakSat.

update: Just got off the phone with someone at Showtime. He was very friendly and helpful. He apologized for the mixup and told me they would refund me the extra months they have taken and make sure they cancel my subscription for sure. Finally!

Auction it TODAY is basically a company that will take care of selling your stuff on eBay. A Kuwait branch was announced awhile back but they just very recently opened up shop. I called them up to get an idea of how their service works and this is what I found out. Just a note, I am not 100% positive about the information below because the person I spoke to wasn’t very clear over the phone. But this basically what I understood from him.

1) You bring your item to them

2) If you don’t have an idea how much your item is worth they will research and find out how much its worth on the market

3) They will take a picture of your item, post it on eBay and take care of shipping the item to the buyer and everything else

4) In return they take a commission fee. If your item sells for under $500, they take 38% commission. If your item sells for more then $500 they take a 30% commission. The commission fee is negotiable if you have a lot of items.

5) If you list your item without a reserve and no one buys it. You pay them only KD2. If you list and item with a reserve price and no one buys it, you pay them KD7.

Auction it TODAY is located in the Free Trade Zone near Movenpick , Building D-14. You can call them on 4613325.

I personally think its a cool service but the commission rate is just absurdly high. Is this normal? I have never used a service like this before so 30% could be the standard rate and I wouldn’t know.