2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Dine-In Records is a local online record store with a decent collection of albums. I’ve previously posted about two other local stores, Vinyl Destination and Misfits and although Dine-In has a smaller collection than both of those, the three combined give you a larger variety of albums to choose from. Prices start from KD10 and you can check out their collection on their website dineinrecordskw.com

Of course, if you want older or used records you still have the option of the Antique Basement.

Li3ib is an app that allows you to book different sports activities around Kuwait. During regular days you could use the app to book tennis, squash, basketball and volleyball courts, football fields and also rent bicycles. But due to the closure of everything sports at the moment, the only thing available is bicycle rental.

I actually wanted to wait and post about this app once sports stadiums reopened so people can make good use of the app but, because the weather is so good right now I know people will want to take advantage of the bicycle rentals. All you need to do to rent a bike with the app is choose a date and a drop-off time and they’ll deliver the bicycle to you and pick it up again the next day. Renting a bike for 24 hours is KD10 which is really reasonable.

If you’re interested in any of the sports I mentioned above or want to rent a bicycle easily to go out riding this weekend, download the app using this link.

A new only organic specialist supermarket opened up yesterday called Danke. The supermarket carries a variety of organic foodstuff as well as biodegradable and recycled household items. Yesterday actually happened to be the first day they opened and so they were still busy setting up the place. The bakery for example was not functional last night but should be up and running by the time you read this post.

They’re in a soft launch phase but other than the freezers and the bakery the shelves were all stacked with products from various brands including Alinor, Allos, Bauckhof, Biovegan, Byodo, Lubs, and many more. They also had a small fresh produce section.

The owner happened to be there while I was checking out the place and he told me that although Danke is a local brand the concept was brought in from Germany. That would explain why all the brands I saw were European and mostly German. While trying to dig up info on the brand I noticed they also have an app. I just installed the app and it seems to contain all their products but not sure if it’s working yet. You can download it and check it out yourself here.

The place looks great so it’s worth passing by and checking out. They’re currently open from 8AM to 12AM and are located in the basement of Burj Jassem in Kuwait City. If you don’t know where that is, here is the link to Google Maps. They’re also on Instagram @danke_kw

Just a quick update, I removed yesterday’s post on my own accord. I wasn’t forced to remove it. I stated what I had to state and my readers read it so it’s done with. But when a post like that blows up and goes viral outside my regular reader base, it can easily get misinterpreted by people who don’t know me or the blog, and that brings a different set of issues that I don’t want to deal with. For everyone that reached out with support yesterday, thank you, it meant a lot.

Now back to our usual programming.

Have you gotten your loved one a Shani today? [Link]

Good Game, the popular tabletop gaming store which opened back in 2013 in Sanabil Tower has now moved to a much larger location in Salmiya.

I loved the previous store but it became too small for their needs and so they had to find a new spot. The new place is pretty huge with lots of tables and chairs, a small snack bar, and a pretty large retail area.

Other than selling boardgames they also rent them to play in-store. The price varies from game to game but they’re mostly around 2-4KD for unlimited playtime. You just go with your friends, pick a game to rent, and then just play for as long as you want, with no time limit.

The new Good Game is located in 8 Mall in Salmiya, opposite Marks & Spencer. They’re currently open 12PM to 8PM and closed on Sundays, but check out their Instagram for the latest opening hours @goodgamekw

Since the gyms are closed I figured I’d post about Apple Fitness+ and how much I like it. Last month I decided I’d get back into yoga, I used to do it frequently a few years ago and then just stopped and never got back into it. Last year I tried doing yoga while watching a YouTube video and didn’t like the experience, but in September Apple released Fitness+ so I decided to try it out and see if it was any better. To use it you need to have an Apple Watch set up on your phone, I didn’t have an Apple Watch but I had borrowed one from a friend last year to try it out and I guess my phone still thought I had it. I couldn’t get Fitness+ working on Apple TV or my iPad but it was fine on my phone which was ok for now since I could stream from it to my TV. I decided to try a yoga exercise and to my surprise, my experience was great!

I started doing yoga with an instructor called Dustin and I just clicked with his style right away. I liked his pace, I liked his soothing voice and very chill demeanor and I’ve now started doing yoga with him practically on a daily basis. Apple Fitness+ is basically the same thing as watching an exercise video on YouTube except for the fact that it’s organized really well in the app and if you have an Apple Watch, the app connects your heart rate monitor to Fitness+ and you get a data exchange between the two (you can see your data on the TV as well). I really didn’t care for the Apple Watch, not really a fan of it nor do I like collecting data while working out since I tend to become data-obsessed and it ruins things for me (it why I stopped rowing for cardio and why I had stopped riding my bike for a long time). But I really am enjoying Fitness+ a lot. It’s become my go-to now after finishing up my weight lifting at home.

I mentioned at the start how Fitness+ was somehow working for me on my phone because at one point I had an Apple Watch set up on it? Well, that didn’t last long and it started giving me errors and not letting me stream onto my TV. I didn’t want to stop using Fitness+ so I decided to buy an Apple Watch so I could set up Fitness+ properly. Fitness+ requires an Apple Watch Series 3 or above to work so I looked around for a cheap second hand Apple Watch or a cheap brand new one since all I needed it for was Fitness+. In the end, I found out that Xcite in Jleeb had a Series 3 Apple Watch in stock, size 38mm, and selling for KD64.5 with a free additional strap. This was the cheapest new Apple Watch I could find so I ended up picking that up and setting it up with my phone. Now Fitness+ works on all my devices including Apple TV and my iPad. I also picked up a couple of Manduka yoga blocks from Ananda since I’m currently as flexible as a concrete brick.

Fitness+ has a bunch of workouts you can pick from other than yoga including Hiit, core, strength, treadmill, cycling, rowing, dance, and mindful cooldown. You need an Apple Watch to be able to set up Fitness+ the first time but after that, you don’t really need to wear the watch unless you want to know how many calories or monitor other data. In addition to an Apple Watch, Fitness+ costs $9.99 a month but it came included for me with my Apple One premier plan. Yes, you can use YouTube but I tend to like services focused on one thing and Fitness+ makes finding a workout, bookmarking and following a specific trainer all very easy. Plus if you want to track your heart rate and calorie count then the combination of the Apple Watch and Fitness+ works great and you can also get various notifications on your watch like when you’re past the halfway point of the workout or when you’ve achieved a new record.

Since gyms are closed, Fitness+ could be a great alternative especially if you already have an iOS device and an Apple Watch. They have a free trial period so you don’t need to commit to a membership unless you think you’d use the service.

This has to be the coolest gym-related idea ever and the timing of it is perfect with gyms having been forced to close down now. Mobile Crossfit Box is a portable gym that you can rent out for you and your friends! It’s a fully decked out gym with everything you need from different kinds of cardio machines to barbells, kettlebells, dumbells, boxes, squat racks, and pull up bars.

The price is 40KD per hour and it can handle up to 4 people at once so it’s 10KD per friend. They also have a drop-in fee of 10KD which I’m guessing means if the truck isn’t fully rented out you could drop in where it’s parked and use it. For more info or too book the gym check out their instagram account @mobilebox_kw

via @notnorrah

Eissa & Jude is a small local husband and wife business dedicated to creating high-quality wooden toys to inspire mindful play. They’re representing the Gulf so the wooden toys are inspired by everything they grew up with in our unexplored desert. I like the aesthetics of wooden toys and I like how it’s made locally and related to our environment although for realism sake, I would add some wooden cutouts of garbage bags in an effort to represent Kuwait’s desert more accurately.

Eissa & Jude don’t have an online store yet but they are currently available at the children’s pop-up store Bonboni’s in Salmiya. Check out their Instagram account for more photos and details @eissa_jude

I’ve got a friend who signed up both his parents for the vaccine at the same time, his mum is Kuwaiti while his dad is older and an expat. His mum got vaccinated while his dad still hasn’t gotten an appointment. So now I’m wondering if they’ve started vaccinating expats or if they’re prioritizing Kuwaitis first.

Does anyone know if they’ve started vaccinating expats who aren’t health care workers?

Update: The comments have been locked

February marks two blogging anniversaries for me. February 6th, 2003 is the date I published my first blog post on my first blog Qhate.com, and February 19th, 2005 is the day I published my first blog post on this blog.

Last year should have been the most challenging year of the blog since being stuck at home and not going out as much should have hampered my ability to post about stuff. But, looking at the data, last year I published 415 posts compared to 442 the previous year so it wasn’t that bad and that’s probably due to the fact there were a lot of Covid related posts. I got nearly 4,000,000 page views last year with the busiest month being May. May is when we had the full 24-hour lockdown with the 2 hours to go out and mingle, that’s also when private supermarkets became available on moci.shop.

I still wake up every morning at 7AM to publish my posts before heading to work. It’s a good routine that has been working really for me. I also just realized I’ve been blogging for nearly half my life, such a bizarre feeling.

Anyway, thank you to all my readers, hopefully, this year is going to be a lot better for everyone.

There are a few beautiful strips of beach I ride my bike next to on the Gulf Road that are filled with trees that provide nice visual greenery as well as shade in the summer for beachgoers. Whenever I ride my bike past those areas I think about how pretty it is and how it doesn’t look like Kuwait which is one of the best compliments you can give something here FYI.

Yesterday I found out that they’ve started removing the trees on the beaches! Sorry, I shouldn’t say removed since you might think they were relocated somewhere else, instead the proper word I should be using is bulldozed. They bulldozed the strips of the beach with the trees and killed everything.

The video above shows how those beaches looked like before they were demolished just to give you an idea of how pretty they were. Why does Kuwait hate trees so much? It’s really upsetting, I’m trying to care less and less about Kuwait but it’s not easy to do especially when I’ve spent the past 40 years caring about this place.

When I saw this photo I realized I haven’t really seen that many photos of the Kuwait Towers under construction. I think that’s pretty weird for such an important building that there aren’t many photos (at least online) documenting the process. The construction of the Kuwait National Assembly building on the other hand which was completed a few years after the Kuwait Towers is well documented and I was even able to buy a book detailing the whole construction process.

Boom Diwan is an ensemble of traditional Kuwaiti musicians who combine Kuwaiti bahri (sea) music with global jazz. This Saturday they will be teaming up with South African jazz pianist Nduduzo Makhathini and I’ll be streaming their performance live on the blog.

Event by NYUAD Arts Center
Date: Saturday, February 6th 2021
Time: 7PM
Location: YouTube and Facebook

The event will take place at 7PM on Saturday so check back then for the YouTube link or, watch the stream on Facebook.

Here are more details of the event:

For this performance, Boom.Diwan will collaborate with and feature special guest pianist Nduduzo Makhathini, the first ever South African musician signed to the legendary Blue Note Records. The two will co-compose a suite that will be performed as an immersive ritual of music, the visual, and dance that takes into account ideas about the self, the community, and the spiritual in the face of modernity. The music touches on ideas of cosmopolitanism, community, dialogue, and healing.

Founded by applied ethnomusicologist Ghazi Al-Mulaifi, Boom.Diwan is a collaborative global jazz ensemble that revives the cosmopolitan tradition of the Kuwaiti pearl diving music of the Indian Ocean trade. With influences spanning Zanzibar to Calicut, improvisation, fluidity, and dialogue are at the center of Boom.Diwan.

At its core, Boom.Diwan is comprised of Al-Mulaifi on vocals, percussion, and electric guitar and members of the Mayouf Mejally Ensemble, who are the among the oldest and most widely respected pearl-diving music ensembles in Kuwait and the GCC. For this performance, they will be joined by Steven Bedford (NOON) on electric bass, and Claude Cozens on drum kit. Improvisation and cross-cultural collaborations are the foundation of Boom.Diwan’s mission.

Update: Here is the YouTube stream!

Below is this weekend’s list of things you can do. Not as many things going on as last week, but I might have missed a few things, let me know if I did.

Thursday
Treasure Hunt at the Museums
CAP Collection: Spotlights Exhibition
BBT Picnic
RECCO Night Garden at Green Island
Tandem Skydive

Friday
Sunrise Beach Yoga
Camping 101
RECCO Night Garden at Green Island
Tandem Skydive

Saturday
Saturday Morning Sailing
TrashTag Beach Cleanup
Camel Races
CAP Collection: Spotlights Exhibition
RECCO Night Garden at Green Island
Tandem Skydive
Boom Diwan x Nduduzo Makhathini