I won an eBay bid on some 35mm slides of Kuwait taken back in 1978 and thought I would share them. Most of the slides are of a motorcade but I’m not sure who was visiting.
There are UK flags up on the roads but it couldn’t be the Queen since she visited in 1979. I thought maybe the British Prime Minister back then, James Callaghan, but I also couldn’t find any info about him visiting Kuwait. So if anyone has any idea who this might be, let me know because I’m curious.
Ever since Alshaya shut down a bunch of their restaurants in Avenues I’ve been curious to see who will take over those prime locations. The first one seems to be Adidas, they’ve taken over the Café Coco location in Phase 3 across from Harvey Nichols.
I’ve heard rumors about whos taken over some of the other locations but nothing solid yet. I do know that Avenues is asking the new tenants to put up their coming soon hoardings right away so we’ll soon know whos opening what and where.
The 2020 Formula 1 season finally kicked off last week after being delayed due to the Corona pandemic. The second race of the season is taking place later today but like last year, you’re pretty limited to how you can watch it here in Kuwait. The only network in our region that broadcasts the races is MBC Action but it’s in Arabic and I couldn’t find a way to stream it online. The other (and better) option is watching it directly on F1 TV.
I’ve posted about F1 TV before but I mentioned you needed a U.S. credit card to sign up since live broadcasts aren’t available for Kuwait. But, my U.S. credit card expired and I still haven’t gotten my replacement card so I was worried I wouldn’t be able to subscribe again this season. Turns out you don’t need a U.S. credit card!
If you’re on an Apple device and have a US Apple Store account, then you can subscribe to F1 TV from inside the app and pay for the subscription using your Apple Store account. It’s a neat loophole that should make Formula 1 broadcasts easily accessible to more people.
The new Land Rover Defender is finally in Kuwait, around a month late from it’s original scheduled arrival. The Defender has been completely redesigned and although I wasn’t sure about the design in the photos, in person it does look really great.
From my understanding, the first shipment is all sold out but the dealer has one model on display and I think they have another white one for test drives.
It’s definitely a car I’m considering swapping out my FJ for. Prices start at around KD16,000 but can nearly double in price depending on the specs. The one in the photo is priced at 25,000 but you can also build your own and price it out yourself on the local Land Rover website.
The other day I posted a link to photos showing Entertainment City taken over by mother nature, but I figured it wasn’t very recent since when I passed by the park a couple of weeks back there was some sort of demolition taking place. The video above though is more recent and shows what’s really happening to the park. According to one of the guys in the video, it’s getting completely demolished and the land turned into an empty sand plot as part of the handover process.
This is really sad like all the other landmarks in Kuwait that are getting demolished one by one except maybe this might even be sadder. I’ve been visiting the park from when it first opened in the 80s and kept going even towards the end of the parks life. I really believe the issue with the park was the lack of maintenance and not because the rides weren’t exciting. Towards the end most of the rides were just not working and so people had no reason to go there. I wish they kept the park and just renovated it and expanded it but not completely demolish it like this.
I was told there was a warehouse in Entertainment City where the old arcades from the Ice Skating Rink and Entertainment City were being stored. If anyone knows anything about this let me know. Also if you want to see a video of the park during its better days, watch the video above starting from the 8:34 minute mark.
Architectural photographer Abdulraouf Murad visited the abandoned Entertainment City and captured some pretty cool photos including the one above showing nature taking over the park. The park has been closed since 2016 but I was there a couple of weeks back and there was construction working taking place in the parking area so maybe the renovation project is back on track.
Check out more photos of the park on his account here, here and here.
The original McDonalds location on the Gulf Road is turning into a Burger King and Pizza Hut. The building is looking pretty nice so far and I saw it a few months back at night while they were testing the lighting and all the vertical lines around the structure were lit up by LEDs. I just hope it doesn’t end up looking tacky and ruining the Gulf Road landscape.
The Ministry of Public Works have updated their complaints app with a brand new interface. The new app looks much nicer but also makes it easier to submit a complaint. The app is called “MPW Emergency 150” and it allows you to submit complaints related to public infrastructure like street or sewage issues. The app is available for both Android and iOS devices.
Now if only the Ministry of Interior can release a similar app…
One of my favorite local apps is the PASS App. Pre-Corona the cashless parking app was extremely practical and I used it all the time but now during the pandemic, the app makes even more sense. The way the app works is you top it off with credit, and then add your cars to it. Once you get to a parking lot that supports PASS like the 360 Mall parking lot, the parking gate will recognize your car and automatically open to let you in. On the way out you don’t have to interact with the cashier either, once you approach the exit gate it just opens up and the PASS app charges you. All the payments are handled digitally through the app which during this pandemic makes the app a must-have.
But, if that wasn’t enough they’ve recently added another new and cool feature, pre-booking your parking spot. This Friday when I passed by the Avenues I wasn’t sure if it would be busy or not so I pre-booked a parking spot with the app. When I got to Avenues I headed to the Phase 4 PASS Prebook lot and the gate automatically opened to let me in where I found plenty of parking (it was actually empty except for one other car).
The Prebooking parking fees at Avenues is 500fils per hour from the moment you book your spot (not from the moment you enter the parking) and you’re charged per hour till you leave or cancel your booking. This makes sense since they don’t want people to book spots but then not show up. Although Avenues parking is free, booking a parking spot makes the Avenues experience a lot less stressful when you know you’re guaranteed to have a parking spot waiting for you.
I don’t recommend a lot of local apps on this blog nor do I like installing a lot of apps, but, I highly recommend this one. You can download it by clicking here.
I’m currently in the process of restoring my wooden steering wheel on my Datsun 240z and needed to get Spar Urethane and fine sandpaper. So Friday morning I dropped by Ace Hardware and True Value where I managed to find everything I needed. Once I was done I decided to pass by Avenues since I was in the neighborhood and surprisingly, it was a pretty good experience.
Avenues wasn’t busy at all Friday morning, there were no queues to get into the mall and everyone inside was walking around with masks on. The only queue I saw while there was at Starbucks but that’s about it. I ended up passing by L’Occitane and picking up some hand cream before leaving and not once while I was inside the mall did I feel unsafe or uncomfortable.
Even when I was at Ace Hardware and True Values I didn’t feel uncomfortable shopping. Ace was the busiest I’d ever seen it but since the place is so big it didn’t feel crowded at all. They even had all the cashiers open so even when paying you didn’t have to wait in a queue.
So if you’ve been holding off going shopping until things calmed down, well looks like things have calmed down.
A day before our three-week total lockdown I got a delivery from Amazon, the NEOGEO Arcade Stick Pro. It’s an arcade stick pre-installed with 20 old-school NEOGEO games. I’m a huge fan of NEOGEO ever since I was a kid since it was an unattainable gaming console back then due to the costs involved which was extremely high. Back in the 90s a single game could easily cost over 100KD for example, so paying 40KD for a NEOGEO arcade stick with 20 games included seems like a steal.
But, I really wasn’t interested in the games that were included, instead, the reason I wanted to get the Arcade Stick Pro is that someone found a way to install even more old-school games onto it.
Like all the classic mini-consoles that have gotten released over the past few years, the Arcade Stick Pro runs off USB power and connects to your TV via an HDMI cable. I spent hours and hours the first week of lockdown going through nearly 2,000 classic games from the 80s and 90s one by one. Whichever game I liked or reminded me of my childhood, I put aside to create my ultimate old school gaming playlist. The Arcade Stick Pro was obviously best at emulating NEOGEO games but it also did a great job of emulating other home consoles and arcade systems like CPS1, CPS2, and more. I wasn’t interested in emulating home consoles though since I could do that with my SNES mini and my Odroid Go Advance. Instead, what I really wanted to do was emulate games I used to play in the arcades when I was a kid and shooting scrollers (both horizontal and vertical) like Blazing Star and Mars Matrix which the Arcade Stick Pro did a phenomenal job with.
If you don’t want to copy your own games onto the Arcade Stick Pro, the system comes with 20 fighting games built-in and an additional 14 bonus games which includes a bunch of Metal Slug games and Super Sidekicks. The Metal Slug series alone would be worth the $120 price tag.
There aren’t really any negatives, except for one major inconvenience. With my SNES Classic mini system, I have it set up next to my TV and I bought a wireless controller for it. This means I can sit back on my couch and play games comfortably without having to worry about running power and HDMI cables. With the Arcade Stick Pro, the actual controller is the console so you need to have power and HDMI running to wherever you’re sitting. So if your couch is 3 meters away from your TV, you need a 3 meter long HDMI cable running to your couch and a USB cable to power up the system. It’s a hassle and anytime I think about wanting to play on it I have to think about setting it up. A second issue that might be a problem to some people but isn’t for me is 2-player games, if you want to play 2-player games you need to purchase an extra controller for it which is another $25.
I really do love this arcade stick and it made the lockdown a lot more bearable for me. If you’re looking for an affordable arcade stick that can run some of your old favorite NEOGEO and arcade games, this is a pretty great option. The stick costs $120 on Amazon and I think I paid KD14 for shipping and customs. I wasn’t able to find it here but Rihab Complex was also closed back then so they might have it now.
The CAP Bookshop which carries publishers like Taschen, Assouline, and Thames & Hudson is now online. Sadly though, the process of ordering a book isn’t as simple as adding it to your cart since the website just lists all the books they have and their prices, but to order a book you need to send them a DM on instagram.
Still, if you’re looking for an Architecture, Art, Design, or Fashion book you’d be hard-pressed to find a better collection anywhere else in Kuwait. Here is the link to their online store, and their Instagram is @capbookshop
You could of course just visit the store now that they’ve reopened, they’re located inside Life Center in Shuwaikh, upstairs next to CAP.
Is LV or Rolex that important to have to visit the stores early morning on the very first day the malls reopen? I saw a video of the Rolex line at Salhiya and it’s even worse. So bizarre.
