Category: Kuwait

Ummmm has anyone noticed Google Maps recently? They’ve updated the satellite imagery of Kuwait and the satellite must have passed over during one of our duststorms because all the satellite imagery is now just yucky brown. Link

Yesterday I listed a bunch of landmarks that were demolished over the past few years but I didn’t mention Messilah Beach since I’m not really sure whats going on there. It’s meant to be closed for renovations but I don’t know if they’ve completely demolished it or not. Based on Google Maps, it looks like it’s still there but in any case, the video above is a 3D animation of what Messilah Beach will eventually look like once it’s completed.

Just going off the video it looks like it will be a less approachable more premium beach. What was great about the old Messilah Beach was how affordable and accessible it was to everyone. I used to go there when I was in school since it was the only nice beach we could afford.

The new renovated Messilah will contain:
6 Restaurant blocks
Swimming Pool and Wet Recreation areas
Jogging Track
Hard and Soft Landscaping
450 Car Parking spaces

Over the weekend the US Embassy in Kuwait posted a message by President Joe Biden in support of Pride Month and as you can imagine, that didn’t go well.

As of this post, there are over 21,000 comments under that Instagram post with the majority of people being really upset about it. The story was picked up by the international press and is now making its way around the Internet.

I was curious about whether the US Embassy in other Arab countries also posted a similar message supporting Pride Month, and if they did, what kind of reaction people had to it. Below are two lists, one relating to Instagram posts and another relating to Twitter:

US Embassies Pride Post on Instagram
US Embassy in Bahrain – Yes (633 Likes – 4.8K Comments)
US Embassy in Egypt – No
US Embassy in Jordan – No
US Embassy in Kuwait – Yes (2,930 Likes – 21.8K Comments)
US Embassy in KSA – No
US Embassy in Lebanon – No
US Embassy in Qatar – No
US Embassy in the UAE – Yes (609 Likes – 1K Comments)

US Embassies Pride Post on Twitter
US Embassy in Bahrain – Yes and Banner (18 Likes – 73 Comments)
US Embassy in Egypt – No
US Embassy in Jordan – No
US Embassy in Kuwait – Yes (1,009 Likes – 2.3K Comments)
US Embassy in KSA – Yes (560 Likes – 1K Comments)
US Embassy in Lebanon – Yes Retweet (39 Likes – 99 Comments)
US Embassy in Qatar – No
US Embassy in the UAE – Yes (41 Likes – 156 Comments)

A few interesting things. Firstly this wasn’t a universal message posted on all the embassies’ social media accounts. The US Embassy in Bahrain went a step further and replaced its Twitter banner with a Pride Month one. Finally, one thing is pretty apparent from the lists above, Kuwait’s social media response completely shattered the other Arab countries when it came to comments and likes. I’m now curious to see what’s going to happen next if the US Embassy doesn’t remove the post, are we going to boycott US products? Doubt it.

I’m guessing everyone felt this morning’s earthquake since, unlike the previous ones that have hit Kuwait before, this one was fairly strong.

An earthquake of magnitude 5 struck Kuwait, the ministry of information tweeted on Saturday.

The ministry said “the Kuwait National Seismic Network recorded an earthquake measuring 5 … southwest of al-Ahmadi, and it occurred at exactly 04:28:02 a.m. Kuwait time (0128 GMT), at a depth of 5 km (3 miles)”.

The Kuwait’s Fire Force also said that there was no damage as a result of the earthquake. Source

According to some sources online, the earthquake measured a magnitude of 4.4 but according to the Kuwait Institute of Scientific Research (KISR) it was actually a 5.

On Saturday I was at the Toyota dealer service center picking up my car. I get there early and head towards the glass office of the customer service person whom I’m supposed to pick up the car from. I knock on his door and see he’s on the phone, he tells me he’s finishing up with another customer on the phone and to give him just a few minutes. I’m like sure and I go back out and wait outside his office.

As I’m waiting, a fireman comes and stands outside the guy’s office. In my head, I’m thinking that maybe I should be nice and let him go in ahead of me since he’s a fireman and is busy saving lives, putting out fires, and helping cats down from trees. As I’m finishing that train of thought, the fireman starts banging on the glass window of the office and yelling at the service guy to hurry up and get off the phone. I realized that I probably don’t have to be nice and give the fireman my spot since it looks like he’s going to push ahead of me in line anyway. So to make it clear to him that I’m ahead of him, I tell the firefighter that I’m also waiting for the guy to finish.

A few seconds later, the fireman angrily barges into the office and yells at the customer service guy to get off the phone because there are customers waiting outside and tells him he’s going to give him five minutes to do so. The fireman leaves the office yelling loudly at how the service guy is on the phone while there are customers waiting. Another Toyota employee came out from another office to see what all the commotion was about and saw the fireman yelling so took his papers and told him he’d help him.

At that point, I had a realization, any job in Kuwait that involves having to deal with customers, is probably the most dangerous job in Kuwait. From Shop&Ship customer service people to delivery drivers, I can’t imagine how much abuse they have to deal with on a daily basis from entitled people who think the quickest way to get things done is with threats and yelling. That’s one job I don’t think I’d last a day in.

If you’re on the highway right now you might be noticing a large plume of black smoke in the distance. Turns out tent city which is located next to Friday Market in Al Rai caught fire.

@kuwaitnews has some more footage here and @alqabas are also posting updates.

Over the weekend Oula and Alfa fuel stations started closing some of their fuel pumps and operating just one for each lane due to a lack of staff. This started causing long queues at the pump with some people waiting 45 minutes just to have their car filled with fuel. It’s odd that this started happening at both stations at the same time, but they both seem to want the same thing, either to start charging for the service of filling your car up, or turn the stations to self-service ones.

بالفيديو | أزمة بانزين في الكويت و السبب قلّة الأيدي العاملة#محطات_البانزين#الكويت pic.twitter.com/J1vO1F2t5A

— سرمد | Sarmad (@Sarmad) May 26, 2022

Oula posted a story yesterday stating that their Al-Omariah station now operates on a self-service system. Their plan it seems is to want to charge 200 fils for people who want fuel filled up by one of their employees which makes sense but, based on the comments on their Instagram, people don’t want to pay and would rather drive to an Alfa station instead. Alfa on the other hand hasn’t posted anything on their account while KNPC posted last night saying that basically nothing will change and nobody is gonna start charging for service.

Personally, I find this whole thing just odd. We all used to fill up fuel ourselves like 20 years ago and it’s a normal thing around the world so I don’t understand why there is so much hoopla around this.

Back in February, a Kuwaiti lawyer filed a lawsuit against the MOC demanding the blocking of Netflix due to the Arabic movie Perfect Strangers. The lawyer believes the movie goes against local religious and moral values and so wants Netflix banned in Kuwait. Well, the first day of the hearing is today.

I highly doubt Netflix will get banned but you never know here. Good luck Kuwait!

One of the guys at my office just shot this pretty cool timelapse of the dust storm hitting the city. We had a great view since our office looks out at the sea so we saw the storm coming from the North. Check it out below.

Shot by @Oa4_

I’ve had these photos in my archive for a couple of years now, I forgot where I got them from but I guess it’s about time to share them. Some of the photos are really great but I’m not 100% positive about the date of the photos.

They’re a mixture of photos ranging from 1975 to 1977. I think 1977 because in one of the photos you can see the Kuwait Towers in the background and it looks like construction on it was completed, but that only happened in 1977. But in other photos, you can see the dates 1975 and 1976 so it’s a mix.

No matter the dates the photos are really great and with all the silly drama with yoga taking place now, vintage photos like these are now more important than ever to share. You can view and download them all in hi-res by clicking here.

In addition to the photos, there is also a video taken from the AP archive showing the 1975 parade. Usually, I’d say bring back the parades but even if we did, I don’t think it would ever be the same. Kuwait was so different back then.

Kuwait is in the news again but for the first time in a long time, it’s actually for good news. Yesterday the constitutional court overturned a law that criminalized “imitation of the opposite sex” which was used to prosecute transgender people.

Back in 2007, the National Assembly voted to amend Article 198 of the law to criminalize “indecent” gestures in public and imitation of the opposite sex. Other than the fact the law was deeply discriminatory, it was also overly vague and should never have been accepted into law in the first place according to Amnesty International.

With the way things have been going recently, I’m personally surprised the law was overturned so I guess there is hope.

Update: Commenting has been closed

For the past few weeks, I’ve been preoccupied researching, interviewing, and scanning photos related to Kids ‘r’ us and I think I’m finally ready to share all my findings. For those of you too young to remember, Kids ‘r’ us was a huge and very popular toy store that opened in Kuwait (Dajeej) back in the early 80s. They later opened smaller locations around Kuwait including one in the old Salmiya souq which was popular after the 1990 invasion. A few weeks ago I got a comment under one of my old posts from a person called Khaled Al-Qutub saying he was part of the original team that opened Kids ‘r’ us. So right away I got in touch with him by email and later by Whatsapp to get his story. Here is everything I’ve managed to gather over the past few weeks.

Background
Firstly let’s get some background information out of the way. Kids’r’us was not an imitation of Toys “R” Us nor was it inspired by it. Kids’r’us was Toys “R” Us. Why we have a different name, logo and mascot isn’t very clear, from what I was told they wanted to create a new more relatable brand for the Middle East, but if that was the case then why would you go with a koala bear for a mascot and not say a camel or another animal from our region? Alghanim was granted a limited right to open Toys “R” Us stores (Kids R Us) in Kuwait and 13 other countries located in and around the Middle East that included Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen (source). From 1982 to December 1993, Alghanim opened four toy stores, all in Kuwait. Kids R Us lost over 2 million Dinars over the 11-year period from 1982 to 1993, and turned a profit only in one year of this period. (source).

The Begining
Khaled Al-Qutub was a Jordanian expat born in Kuwait back in 1964. Like many of the original Kids’r’us employees, he was young when he joined the team. According to Khaled, they were around 25 employees and 6 managers that helped launch Kids’r’us (most pictured above). When they joined and visited the store for the first time it was completely empty with just tiles and columns. Over the next months, they had to install all the gondolas (what they call the store shelves), receive the containers, and unload items into the warehouse and onto the shelves. The store was composed of three floors. The warehouse was located in the basement and was 2,500sqm, the main store was on the ground floor and was also 2,500sqm, and there was a small 500sqm mezzanine floor that originally held offices but later got turned into a buy-as-is damaged goods area. The original location is still in Dajeej, it’s now where Sears is located.

Two or three guys from Toys R Us (USA) came to Kuwait to train the Kids R Us staff. They brought floor layouts with them and showed the staff where to put everything. When the toys arrived in the containers they had Toys”r”us labels on them.

Dabdoub
One day while they were busy setting up the store Khaled got called into the office by the manager back then, Rawi Alkhatib, and his deputy Amal Haddad. They had gotten delivery of a large blue box that morning and it was now in the office and they asked Khaled to open it. That was when he saw the dabdoub costume for the very first time. It was huge! Khaled was told that he would be dabdoub and was given some basic set of rules to follow, feel free to do whatever you want to make the kids happy, but you’re not allowed to make a sound or talk. Later after Khaled left Kids’r’us other people took over the job, but he was the original mascot.

The Opening
Before the store opened the employees went around giving out bumper stickers to people on the street telling them about Kids’r’us. A while back I found some newspaper ads for the opening and you can see one of them above.

Kids ‘r’ us officially opened on November 10th, 1983 it was considered to be the largest toy store in the region at that time with over 10,000 toys. According to Khaled, the first day was crazy with thousands of people, families, and children all visiting the store. You couldn’t move inside.

The Work Environment
Khaled only stayed with Kids’r’us for 2 or 3 years and then left. After talking to him I realized I might be able to find other Kids’r’us employees who might also have information and photos to share with me. So I did the most basic thing, I searched LinkedIn. I wasn’t expecting to find anyone but somehow I did, I found another Khaled, Khaled Saqer.

Khaled Saqer joined Kids’r’us around the same time Khaled Al-Qutub left and one thing I found fascinating is how both of them talked so highly about their experience working at Kids’r’us. The Kids’r’us managers must have been really great because the work environment seemed incredibly fun. All the employees were similarly aged, and all with similar mindsets. According to Khaled Saqer they all used to play football together and they used to even come into the store on their off days just to hang out in the back.

Khaled told me he was part of a Whatsapp group with around 14 ex-employees who were still in touch with each other which I was invited to join for research. It’s a group where they shared old photos they come across of Kids’r’us, but mostly it’s just like every other Whatsapp group where they share random videos and memes. During the Gulf War everyone ended up leaving to different places and since then over the years they’ve been slowly reconnecting and finding each other. For example, I ended up connecting them to Khaled Al-Qutub who is now part of their ex-employees Whatsapp group.

Not a lot of them have any photos from back when they used to work there except for Khaled Saqer. Not only did he have photos, but he also had documents and sketches all archived in an old photo album. He even still has his uniform. Khaled was one of the lucky employees to get training in the US, Alghanim sent him to Toys”R”Us in Atlanta for three months where he learned everything and came back and applied it to the store. Most of the photos I was able to gather were from him.

The Demise of Kids’r’us
As I mentioned at the start of the post, Kids’r’us wasn’t a profitable business. During the 1990 Iraqi invasion the Dajeej store was looted and burnt down and after the war, it was never restored. Alghanim also never ended up fulfilling their end of the deal with Toys”R”Us, so in 1993 when the contract was up for renewal, Toys”R”Us handed over the franchise rights to the UAE group Al-Futtaim. But, Toys”R”Us made a mistake and handed over the franchise a bit earlier than they should have so Alghanim took them to court for breach of their agreement, and on July 11, 1996, the arbitrator awarded Alghanim $46.44 million for lost profits (source).

So that’s the story of Kids’r’us. I’ve uploaded all the photos and documents including the floor plans for the Dajeej store to my Flickr account so they’re available to download in high resolution. You can check them all out by clicking here.

They were installed back in 2018 and doesn’t seem people were using them. They might have been ahead of their time since we don’t have a recycling culture here and it’s going to take more than just one machine to change our habits.

The other day I passed by SoMu (South of Mubarakiya) on my way to Bait Ahmed and to my surprise, most of the restaurants and cafes there had closed down including 12 Chutney and Caffeine.

I’m assuming they were all hit hard because of the pandemic and the whole block is deserted now. Pretty sad especially since this time of year it would have been super busy at night.

Photo by TheJessicaness

Looks like cops are getting police buggies to use this winter in the desert. That’s not a bad idea considering how a lot more people have started hanging out in the desert but what I’d also like to see are garbage buggies.

The amount of garbage I came across in the desert last year was just so sad. Since people just like to litter everywhere we might as well have desert cleaners that go around picking up after everyone.