Category: Kuwait

The Historical, Vintage & Classic Car Museum is holding their 2nd ever Automotive Photography Contest starting from now till June 2nd which will be the last day you can submit your shots.

The following are the categories of the contest:
Best Photo of a car
Micro Photo of the Car
Black and White
People’s Choice (voted on by the museum visitors)

The prizes for first place are KD500, second place 300 and third 200. Each of the top 50 will also get KD50. The overall winners will also get KD1,000 for first, 750 for second and 500 for third. So there is a substantial amount of money to be won here.

I went through the rules, everything seems ok, the only issue I had was with the following statement:

– When you participate in the competition you will grant the Museum ALL copyright of the images submitted, and you may not reclaim any rights.

At first I thought they meant that they will basically own the photos after you submit them but turns out they just mean they will have the right to use and reprint the images for calendars, posters etc.. without requiring your permission which is fine by me.

I’ll most likely be taking part with my McLaren and Fiat 500 shots if I can figure out where to get my photos printed and boarded. If you’re also interested to participate then download the PDF with the full details of the competition from [Here]

Spotted by a friend at Mubarek Hospital. [Link]

Note: For non-Arabic speakers, it says “ward 10” in Arabic

UFC legend and hall of famer Royce Gracie is going to be back in Kuwait again next month for another Jiu-Jitsu seminar. It’s for men and women and will be held on June 25 and 26. For more information visit the Sidekick Academy Facebook page [Here]

A group of Kuwaiti MPs is heading to Switzerland in a bid to persuade the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to allow the Gulf state to compete in the London 2012 Olympics.

Kuwait, banned from Olympic events and funding since 2010 amid allegations of political interference, has proposed a raft of measures aimed at reinstating its athletes’ in the international sporting event, state news agency KUNA reported. [Source]

Ouch! I didn’t know we were banned from the olympics. That must suck for the Kuwaiti shooters who qualified.

Spotted the above at Sultan Center Shaab. It’s for Alban Dairy and I’m guessing they’ll be selling cheese there but no idea how it’s going to be a cafe. Coffee and cheese? Not sure about that…

The National Youth Project website has been updated and it’s now available in English. Most importantly what this means is that if your Arabic isn’t that great you can now submit your own initiative idea in English via their website. Check out their English website [Here]

The National Youth Project have also uploaded their new commercial to their YouTube page which you could watch below.

[YouTube]

On his regular cruise to the Kubbar Islands, Sheikh Mishal noticed that the beach is in a very bad state due to the litter & trash left over by the visitors and needed to be cleaned up. Teaming up and taking the initiative he organized this event to mark the “EARTH DAY”, they used bags to collect all the refuse dumped along the sand. Soon enough, everyone around at the beach at that time started joining in.

This video shows the exact condition of the beach before the clean-up began and how it looked after this campaign. More and more people in Kuwait are showing initiative in keeping Kuwait clean, safe, and beautiful for the future generations. This was an experience worth sharing and we encourage “one & all” to keep & maintain the heritage of Kuwait beaches.

That’s a lot of garbage for an island with no inhabitants. [YouTube]

A reader sent me a link to this video of an accident that took place on the Gulf Road sometime last month. I’m not sure what the cause was and I really hope no one got badly hurt. The video doesn’t contain anything graphic but it’s might be difficult for some viewers to watch. [YouTube]

via Tuan

The photo above was taken by Ahmad Alnusif’s father and shows the Fatma Mosque being built back in 1972. I found the shot below taken by Cajie also on Flickr showing the mosque today.

I think these two shots work really well as a before and after since the angles match up pretty closely. I’ve actually cropped into Ahmad’s photo above so that it matches todays photo (I hope he doesn’t mind) but you can see the full image in high resolution on his Flickr page [Here]

Just found out that they’re planning on solving the Al-Bidaa roundabout congestion by building an overpass over the roundabout. According to the article in Al Jarida, this project will take around two years to complete after all the approvals are given.

Now if someone can also solve the parking issue that would be great. [Link]

Kuwait will have exhausted all its oil savings by 2017 if it keeps on spending money at the current rate, the International Monetary Fund said in a report published on Tuesday.

The IMF, which held a regular consultation with the OPEC member state in the last two weeks of April, said Kuwait would not be able to save oil receipts into its future generations fund.

Not sure what all that means or how it will affect us directly but according to my Magic 8 Ball, the outlook doesn’t seem good. [Link]

On the bright side, at least they’re rapping in Arabic. [YouTube]

Note: Contains offensive language

The website Home Design Lover have information and pictures of this beautiful house in Al-Nuzha called The Mop House. I hadn’t seen or heard of this house before but I think it looks amazing. [Link]

Back in February I signed up to a 10Mbps connection with WiMD and just over 3 months have passed since then so I figured I’d post a second impression. For those of you who missed my previous posts, WiMD is a local wireless internet provider that uses technology similar to WiFi and WiMAX except theirs works using the 5 GHz wavelength.

Since installing WiMD I got rid of all my other internet connections and have put all my trust in them. That might not sound like a big deal but you have to consider the fact I live my life online and if I don’t have access to internet I start experiencing withdrawal symptoms. Ok maybe that’s a bit extreme but you get the idea.

So how’s the connection speed 3 months later? Browsing websites everything is still super fast, pages load instantly and there is no lag of any sort. Downloading torrents I also don’t have any issues, if I let it download without any limitations it can easily bypass 1,000Kbps. YouTube on the other hand is horrible with WiMD. I’m not sure what exactly is the problem but I can stream an HD video from Vimeo instantly but I can’t watch a non-HD video on YouTube without having to wait ages for it to load. Running speed tests has also provided me with vastly different results than when I first started with WiMD. When I last ran the speed tests 3 months back I was getting results of around 10Mb/s, this time around I was having trouble getting half that. Check out the results below:

But really if it wasn’t for the YouTube issue I wouldn’t have noticed anything out of the ordinary. My biggest issue really is the YouTube problem since it’s ridiculous to have to wait for a low res video to load on a 10Mbps connection. I’ve already contacted support and they told me they’re working on a fix for it and I trust that they are. The speed test results have dropped considerably and what gets affected by this the most is downloads from a single source like say downloading an update or video from an Apple server. Since most of my downloads take place while I’m out of the house or asleep I’m not affected by this but I’m sure it does other people.

The best thing about WiMD and something I make great use of is the upload speed, it’s fast! What this allows me to do is upload files onto the server a lot quicker compared to my previous DSL connection. Nat takes advantage of this the most since she spends a lot of time emailing her clients large files and what used to take her a couple of hours now takes around 20 minutes.

But, like I previously mentioned, I’ve given up all my other internet connections including my very reliable DSL connection because I trust WiMD. I know they’re busy right now working to fix whatever needs to be fixing so I’m not concerned too much. They’ve just started catering to consumers recently and I know for a fact they’ve been overwhelmed with subscribers so it’s only a matter of time before things get back to normal. I’ll have to wait and see but so far I have no regrets signing up with them. They’re the best available option for me right now.

If you’re interested in a connection you can call them on 22475841 and 22475842 or visit their website [Here]

Update: Turns out the problem was the connection from my house to the tower. It’s been fixed and new speedtest results are posted [Here]

This is too funny. It seems Kuwait Airways hands out DVD players with a bunch of DVDs to Business Class passengers because the planes built in entertainment system doesn’t work. Check out more pictures on Omarker’s blog [Here]