About Mark

This author has not yet filled in any details.
So far Mark has created 11600 blog entries.
21 03, 2019

Things to do in Kuwait this Weekend

2019-03-21T09:51:49+03:00Mar 21, 2019|0 Comments

Below is this weekends list of events and a bunch of interesting things happening including two events at the race track, the Drag Racing Championship and the Open Track. As usual, if I missed anything, let me know in the comments:

Thursday
Exhibition: RE_USE
Visual Art Exhibition at American International School Kuwait
Exhibition: Laura Boushnak | Read | Write
Thriller Live
Kuwait International Drag Racing Championship – Round 2
Food Festival

Friday
Exhibition: RE_USE
Exhibition: Laura Boushnak | Read | Write
Thriller Live
Kuwait International Drag Racing Championship – Round 2
Food Festival
French Bazar
Alsouq Market

Saturday
Exhibition: RE_USE
Exhibition: Laura Boushnak | Read | Write
Thriller Live
Food Festival
Shinsawi: Outdoor Basketball
Yoga & Art
KMT Open Track

If you’d like to share an event on the blog [Email Me]
For a full list of upcoming events click [Here]

Sometimes events get canceled or have details changed so always double-check with the organizers.

21 03, 2019

Movies Showing in Kuwait this Weekend

2019-03-21T07:53:35+03:00Mar 21, 2019|0 Comments


Screenshot from Us

The movies below are now showing at Cinescape, Grand Cinemas and VOX:

New This Weekend:
Five Feet Apart (7.2)
Manou the Swift (7.6)
Mirai (7.1)
The Brand New Adventures of Aladdin (3.0)
Us (7.3)

Other Movies Showing Now:
Alita: Battle Angel (7.6)
BOO! (4.2)
Captain Marvel (6.0)
Cold Pursuit (7.3)
Escape Room (6.4)
Fighting with My Family (7.8)
Greta (6.1)
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (7.9)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (8.6)
Take Point (5.7)
The Hole in the Ground (5.8)
Wonder Park (7.1)

The movies below are also now showing at the Scientific Center IMAX theater:

Amazon Adventure 3D (6.6)
Fly Me to the Moon (4.5)
Galapagos 3D (8.6)
Oceans: Our Blue Planet (7.4)
Penguins (6.7)
Planet Power 3D (N/A)

Numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at time of publishing.

20 03, 2019

7-Eleven now… Eleven

2019-03-20T12:28:16+03:00Mar 20, 2019|17 Comments

Last year 7-Eleven opened their first location in Kuwait, but I passed by it recently and it looks like they’ve rebranded to just Eleven. I guess they either lost the franchise or were never official and so were forced to rename the place. Awkward.

20 03, 2019

Quality of Living in our Region 2018

2019-03-20T09:07:51+03:00Mar 20, 2019|14 Comments

Mercer’s Quality of Living rankings list was recently released and the regional order has pretty much remained unchanged. I thought Saudi Arabia might move up from the previous years because of the recent changes that have taken place there but their ranking hasn’t really changed. Mercer puts together this list by evaluating a number of factors including recreation, housing, economic environment, consumer goods availability, public services and transport, political and social environment, natural environment, socio-cultural environment, school and education and medical and health considerations.

1 – Vienna, Austria
74 – Dubai, United Arab Emirates
78 – Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
105 – Muscat, Oman
110 – Doha, Qatar
126 – Kuwait City, Kuwait
136 – Manama, Bahrain
164 – Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
168 – Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
231 – Baghdad, Iraq

The list above shows Kuwait’s ranking compared to neighboring countries but if you’d like to see how your home country ranks in the world, you can check out the full list on Mercer’s website [Here]

Thanks Basmah

19 03, 2019

Guide: How to update your Civil ID’s name to match your passport’s

2019-03-19T10:45:11+03:00Mar 19, 2019|55 Comments

Recently a decision was made to cancel the use of residency stickers inside passports. Instead, you’ll need to have a valid Civil ID card when traveling as a means of verifying your residency. The name on the Civil ID card has to match your name in your passport or you’ll risk being denied travel in or out of Kuwait. Having weird spellings or incorrect data on the Civil ID is pretty common, so if your info doesn’t match your passport, you now have to fix it. Yesterday someone on Reddit posted the steps below on how to go about doing this:

Step 1) Go to the PACI eEnvelope system website, if the website is in Arabic you can change the language to English, there’s an option at the top of the page

Step 2) Click on non-Kuwaiti Renewal

Step 3) Enter your Civil ID and serial no. which is shown on the back

Step 4) You’ll have to verify your mobile no. so they’ll send you a verification SMS

Step 5) Enter all data required (blood type is optional but if that needs changing too then you’ll need to also upload a lab report)

Step 6) Upload the required documents

Step 7) You’ll be sent an application’s reference number to your registered mobile no., which you can use to track your application’s progress

Step 8) Wait and wait, this will take a few days as your application needs to be checked manually, once it’s approved you’ll be sent a link on your mobile to make the payment of KD5, after that you’ll just go have to go to South Surra to replace your old ID with the new one

Thanks Stafa!

18 03, 2019

Draewil Car Booking App

2019-03-19T11:54:28+03:00Mar 18, 2019|23 Comments

Draewil is a car booking app similar to Uber and Careem, but is meant to compete more with the likes of Grand Limo. They got in touch with me a couple of weeks back and asked me to try them out, and it was perfect timing since I had to drop my Lotus off at the garage to get new brake pads.

One of the biggest advantages Draewil has over Grand Limo is the app itself. It looked better, worked a lot faster and payment is automated since you can add your knet card to the app. I got KD20 credit loaded up into my account by Draewil, and so decided to splurge by ordering their Luxury category vehicle. Draewil has three categories to choose from, executive, luxury and SUV with the availability of each being different as well as the cost. I had dropped my car off at the garage in Al Rai and needed a car to drop me off to my office in the city. Their luxury vehicle needed around 17 minutes to get to me which was long, but ok in my case since I still had some paperwork I needed to sign.

I ended up being picked up by a brand new Lexus LS which is cool, but I was actually hoping to be picked up by one of their new Audi A8’s since I hadn’t been in one of those yet. The car had plenty of legroom and was immaculate, but that makes sense since Draewil is fairly new so their cars are all brand new as well. The ride from Al Rai to Kuwait City ended up taking 18 mins and cost me KD7.250.

The second time I tried them out was the same day when I wanted to head back to the garage to pick up my Lotus. I ended up ordering their executive car and had it pick me up from Crystal Tower in the city. There was a vehicle in the area so it took just 2 minutes to pick me up. This time I was picked up by a Genesis, another car I hadn’t been in before. Surprisingly, the car was as comfortable as the Lexus and even felt a bit more spacious since the Genesis didn’t have a large TV console between me and the driver. The journey again took 18 minutes, but because I chose an executive vehicle, the price came out slightly cheaper at KD6.

So would I use them again? Yeah, probably. I don’t generally use cabs a lot only when I need to drop my car off somewhere like when I want to get detailing done or if I’m servicing it, so I can afford to splurge on a cab on the rare occasion that I need one. The biggest advantage to me for using Draewil over similar luxury car booking services is the app, I like it a lot. It’s really easy to use, I’ve already added my most used destinations to it like my office, my home, the garage etc and I’ve also added my knet card to it. The service is also new so their cars are brand new and they’re still adding more vehicles to their fleet on a monthly basis. At the moment Draewil is only out for iOS devices, but I was told an Android app is being released before the end of the month. If you have an iPhone, you can download the app right now from the Apple Store by clicking [Here]

17 03, 2019

Online Driving License Renewal Soon

2019-03-17T11:21:30+03:00Mar 17, 2019|23 Comments

Back in January I read that the driving license renewal process will be moving online similar to how the Civil ID renewal process is right now. Looks like its going to happen soon since a few days ago while renewing my car registration I spotted the driving license renewing machines above. This service is going to be available to Kuwaitis first followed by expats at a later stage. Hopefully, by the time I have to renew my license in May this service is going to be up and running because the process right now is a complete mess.

Previously, expats were able to renew their license for 10 years but a couple of years ago they limited it to match your residency (so 1 or 2 years) and that caught the traffic department off guard. They weren’t prepared for the amount of people who would be renewing on a daily basis and so the process became an unorganized mess with extremely long lines and multiple visits. Just thinking about renewing my license is giving me anxiety right now…

17 03, 2019

New Look!

2019-03-17T08:32:45+03:00Mar 17, 2019|47 Comments

Yesterday I launched the new and improved look for the blog which I worked on with the team at Wavai. I tried to keep everything mostly in the same place, I just cleaned up and simplified the layout a bit. The biggest change is that the blog is now finally mobile-phone friendly. If you access the blog from your phone (which 65% of you do), then you’re going to see a much simpler and clearer 1-column layout.

There are a lot of issues that still need to be worked out with the new design, and I’m still working on a lot of random little things behind the scenes so please be patient. It’s probably going to take a couple of more weeks for me to finish everything. Once I’m done with the main page I’ll work on applying the new look to all the other sections on the blog like the Events page and Classifieds. For now, let me know what you think.