2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

A couple of weeks back I posted about how you could now renew your driving license online. To test it out for the blog I decided to renew my long expired motorbike license and the whole process ended up taking less than 5 minutes. The only thing left was to pick up my driving license from any of the machines located around Kuwait and I decided to pick mine up from Avenues. Well, things didn’t go smoothly for me.

So here is what happened. I went to the machine to print my new motorbike license, I put my Civil ID in, I logged into my account and then the machine asked me to insert my driving license. When I insert my motorbike license it rejects it saying it was expired, when I insert my driving license it accepts it and then pulls up an image of my just renewed motorbike license and asks me if I want to print that. But, if I choose to print it then the machine would keep my driving license which I need and print out my new motorbike license instead. The machine should be taking my old motorbike license and printing out a new one but for some reason it wants me to trade my driving license for a motorbike one.

The support guy at the machines told me he hadn’t come across this issue before and didn’t know how to solve it and that I should head to muroor 3aseema (Kuwait City traffic department) to try and solve my issue. But since I only wanted to renew my motorbike license so I could post about my experience on the blog, I’m obviously not gonna go through that hassle.

Even though I ran into trouble with this whole renewal thing I do think under normal circumstances this process works really well and smoothly. If you’ve managed to get your license renewed and printed let us know about your experience in the comments below.

A lot of exhibits are taking place this weekend. Tonight is the last night for the Palestinian Cultural Exhibit and it’s also the last weekend for the international book fair so don’t miss out on them. There are also a few musical events taking place so check the full list of events below:

Thursday
Fareed Abdal – A Solo Exhibition
MNWR – An Exhibition by Hafez Gallery
Exhibition: Cemetery of Banned Books
“East Ahmadi Market” An exhibition by Huda Abdulmughni
Nuqat – State of the Elastic Mind
44th International Book Fair
Al-Sawaber Exhibition
50th Palestinian Cultural Exhibition
An Installation by Nawar N. Al-Kazemi
Dome Grand Opening Event (Future Kid)
The Poetry Night
Seeing Sounds by Vinyl Destination

Friday
“East Ahmadi Market” An exhibition by Huda Abdulmughni
Nuqat – State of the Elastic Mind
44th International Book Fair
Dome Grand Opening Event (Future Kid)
The Big Bazaar
Trashtag x Jahra Reserve
Only As the Sun Sets – A Video Installation by Dr. Eman Al Shawaf
Al Souq Market
Fall Fest

Saturday
MNWR – An Exhibition by Hafez Gallery
Exhibition: Cemetery of Banned Books
“East Ahmadi Market” An exhibition by Huda Abdulmughni
44th International Book Fair
Guided Tour: Old Kuwait City
Burger Festival Kuwait
Come Play with Us!
Open Track at Kuwait Motor Town
Locura – A Spanish Music Event

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.

Screenshot from Ford v Ferrari

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

New This Weekend:
Ford v Ferrari (Le Mans 66) (8.3)
Knives Out (7.9)
Marnie’s World (5.5)
Mercy Black (4.9)

Other Movies Showing Now:
21 Bridges (5.7)
Abominable (7.3)
Behind the Trees (N/A)
Charlie’s Angels (3.7)
Doctor Sleep (7.5)
Frozen II (7.1)
Joker (9.4)
Last Christmas (6.6)
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (7.0)
Midway (4.9)
One Piece: Stampede (8.3)
Playing with Fire (5.1)
Terminator: Dark Fate (6.5)
The Addams Family (5.8)
The Shed (4.1)

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

IMAX Movies Showing Now:
Amazon Adventure 3D (6.6)
Backyard Wilderness 3D (8.4)
Turtle Odyssey (7.7)
Volcanoes 3D (6.6)

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

There are only a few more days left before the book fair is over so I dropped by yesterday to check it out. Not sure if its only me, but the book fair felt smaller than the previous years, at least when it came to English books. There just didn’t seem to be as many English booksellers as the previous years and even the large Arabic publisher’s exhibits seemed smaller than the previous years.

But, it’s still worth passing by and checking out. For more information on the book fair click here.

I rarely ever post commercials on my blog because 99.9% of the time they’re usually pretty lame. But, these new Slice commercials on the other hand are really funny. There are four videos in total and all four are in Arabic sadly, so if you can’t understand Arabic you won’t get these.

Check out the remaining two below.

When I was in Dubai a couple of weekends ago I got a Wizr t-shirt printed for me and a friend similar to the one Keith Wells had back in the 70s (the author of Wizr). I got it done at Virgin Megastore in Dubai Mall and it only took a few minutes to print each t-shirt. It was like an inkjet printer for t-shirts and the quality of the print was pretty incredible.

Has anyone seen anything similar in Kuwait? The printer kind is called a “Direct-to-Garment Printer” but the only ones I’ve seen in Kuwait use heat transfer with an end result that isn’t so great. With direct-to-garment printing, the t-shirt ends up looking like it was printed in a fashion production line.

If you don’t know what the Wizr is, click here.

EDO used to be my favorite Japanese restaurant in Kuwait back when they were open in Shaab (pictured above). The space was cozy, the food was great and there really wasn’t much competition back then. But, when they closed their Shaab location and moved to the Sahara Country Club I stopped going because it was just too far and I really didn’t like the space anymore, it was just too open and it lost all it’s coziness.

Photo by @mohamadchehimi

But, last month EDO closed down their Sahara location and the rumor I’ve heard is that they will be moving to Al-Khaled Complex in Salmiya. That’s where GIA is located right now and where the Italian restaurant Vigonovo used to be. I passed by Al-Khaled Complex last week and looks like there is a lot of renovation going on so hopefully this rumor is true.

If it is true then I think Al-Khaled Complex is a much better location for EDO. Until they reopen, if you miss EDO they’re still delivering on Talabat.

For those of you reading my blog while living in the U.S. and missing Kuwait, you can now order KDD milk from Amazon.com and have it delivered to your doorstep. The three flavors available are banana, chocolate and strawberry and you can purchase them as a 6-pack or large box of 18 packs. They’re not cheap though, a 180ml x 18 pack is being sold for KD9 while if you were in Kuwait you could pick up the larger 250ml x 24 pack for KD3.6. But if you’re in the U.S. then you don’t really have a lot of options.

KDD ice cream and juices are disappointingly not available on Amazon. I know if I lived abroad I’d miss KDD ice cream the most but I guess exporting it to the U.S. would be a lot more complicated than shipping milk.

Here are the Amazon links if you’re interested:

KDD Banana Milk 6-pack
KDD Banana Milk 18-pack
KDD Chocolate Milk 6-pack
KDD Chocolate Milk 18-pack
KDD Strawberry Milk 6-pack
KDD Strawberry Milk 18-pack

via Reddit

Last night Kuwait Motor Town opened up registration for an open track experience for this coming Saturday. As of this post there are still slots available so if you’re interested in participating with your car, you need to book like right now.

Here is the link.

If you weren’t aware, there is currently a plant-based meat craze that’s taking over in the U.S. with brands like Beyond and Impossible both being the two most popular plant-based meat suppliers. Even fast food brands like McDonalds and Burger are both hopping onto this trend and South Park had an episode about it a couple of weeks back.

Locally, plant-based meat hasn’t really picked up yet but there are now a couple of places that offer it with one of the newest being Holy Cow. Holy Cow is a new vegan burger bar concept by the people behind the popular vegan delivery concept Clean Eats. It’s basically a burger restaurant except they’ve swapped out all the animal-based proteins with plant-based ones so you still have your meat burgers, chicken burgers and fish burgers except they’re all vegan.

They just opened up a couple of weeks back so they’re still in their soft launch phase so open only from 6PM to 10PM on Carriage. If you’re looking for a new vegan option or just curious to try plant-based meat then check them out. They’re on instagram @holycow.kw

I can’t imagine a weekend getting busier than this. This has to be the largest things to do this weekend list I’ve ever put together, there is just so much going on! The Nuqat creative conference starts today, the 44th International Book Fair started yesterday and GulfRun GP starts tomorrow and the RunKuwait Charity Race is on Saturday. Check out the full list of events below:

Thursday
Fareed Abdal – A Solo Exhibition
Korean Art Exhibition by Ms. Lee Hyang
MNWR – An Exhibition by Hafez Gallery
Exhibition: Cemetery of Banned Books
“East Ahmadi Market” An exhibition by Huda Abdulmughni
Nuqat – State of the Elastic Mind
44th International Book Fair
‘Fate or Heaven or Whatever You Want To Call it…’
Al-Sawaber Exhibition
Ruins to Reality – VR Experience
Hamlet
Movie Screening by Zeina Daccache
The Juke and Friends Live at IFK

Friday
Korean Art Exhibition by Ms. Lee Hyang
“East Ahmadi Market” An exhibition by Huda Abdulmughni
Nuqat – State of the Elastic Mind
44th International Book Fair
‘Fate or Heaven or Whatever You Want To Call it…’
Ruins to Reality – VR Experience
Hamlet
GulfRun GP at Kuwait Motor Town
White Expo GulfRun Market
DJ Set by Cascou
Fun Turkish Language Exchange
Musical: Wicked
Stargazing in AlSalmi Desert

Saturday
Korean Art Exhibition by Ms. Lee Hyang
MNWR – An Exhibition by Hafez Gallery
Exhibition: Cemetery of Banned Books
Come Play with Us!
“East Ahmadi Market” An exhibition by Huda Abdulmughni
Nuqat – State of the Elastic Mind
44th International Book Fair
‘Fate or Heaven or Whatever You Want To Call it…’
Ruins to Reality – VR Experience
Hamlet
GulfRun GP at Kuwait Motor Town
White Expo GulfRun Market
Choreography of a Desert Fountain Exhibition
Guided Tour: Arab Organization Headquarters
Music Performance by Bisher
Caffeine & Wheels
RunKuwait Charity Race

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.

Screenshot from 21 Bridges

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

New This Weekend:
10 Minutes Gone (3.5)
21 Bridges (5.7)
Behind the Trees (N/A)
Last Christmas (6.6)
The Shed (4.1)

Other Movies Showing Now:
Abigail (5.0)
Abominable (7.3)
Charlie’s Angels (3.7)
Countdown (5.3)
Doctor Sleep (7.5)
Frozen II (7.1)
Haunt (6.3)
Joker (9.4)
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (7.0)
Midway (4.9)
One Piece: Stampede (8.3)
Playing with Fire (5.1)
Terminator: Dark Fate (6.5)
The Addams Family (5.8)
The Good Liar (6.5)

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

IMAX Movies Showing Now:
Amazon Adventure 3D (6.6)
Backyard Wilderness 3D (8.4)
Turtle Odyssey (7.7)
Volcanoes 3D (6.6)

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

The Public Authority for Civil Information (PACI) has a section on their website filled with statistics. Below, for example, is their list of the top 10 jobs in Kuwait:

Kuwaitis
1- Inspector of Government Department
2- Other authors (no idea what this is)
3- Military Army
4- Correspondent and passport representative
5- Secretary (Clerk)
6- Accounts Clerk – General
7- Other education specialists
8- Data Entry Device Operator
9- Public Writer
10- His own trade business

Expats
1- Servant
2- Private car driver
3- Ordinary laborer
4- Seller on the market
5- Cleaning worker for buildings and residential buildings
6- Manual cultivation worker
7- Electric worker on high voltage networks
8- Nurse
9- Light transport vehicle driver
10- Correspondents, baggage carriers and other parcels

I don’t think there is anything surprising in the list, I’m just surprised we actually have these lists. The PACI page also has other stats like the oldest ages. The oldest male in Kuwait is 115 years old (Kuwaiti) while the oldest female is 119 years old (also Kuwaiti). The oldest male expat is 113 while the oldest female expat is 118.

The most populous nationalities in Kuwait? They are:
1- India
2- Egypt
3- Bangladesh
4- Philipines
5- Syria
6- Saudi
7- Pakistan
8- Seri Lanka
9- Nepal
10- Jordan

Percentage of workers in the private sector?
4% Kuwaiti – 96% Expats

You can check out other interesting stats on the PACI website here.

GulfRun is an annual motorsport event that started back in 2005 as a weekend getaway for a group of friends passionate about racing. Because Kuwait didn’t have a racetrack, GulfRun used to take place in Bahrain and all the cars would get sent there for the weekend event and then brought back once it was over.

But, now that Kuwait has it’s own racetrack, GulfRun will be taking place in Kuwait for the very first time!

GulfRun will be taking place this coming Friday and Saturday at Kuwait Motor Town. As part of the GulfRun event, there will be a market taking place at the track, various car dealership experiences and my favorite thing, Caffeine & Wheels.

If you’re looking for something to do this weekend or if you’ve been waiting for a specific event to visit and check out the racetrack, then this is the one. I’ll personally be there on Saturday for the Caffeine & Wheels event and I’ll be bringing my Alfa to take part in it so if you see me come by and say hello.

For more information on the event, click [Here]

Altersal, the lead singer of my favorite local band Galaxy Juice released a new EP last week along with a new music video which I’ve shared above. This is what he had to say about his latest release:

“You Never listen” is an ep that follows up to my debut album “Wifi Dreams” that was released in January last year 2018. It is a deep expression and reflection of some personal incidents and low points that I was experiencing with my relationships this year so I tried to transfer all my negative feeling and emotions and turning then into a beautiful bouquet of flowers that I can share with everyone’s who’s been through the same hardship in their personal lives and so that they can dance and sing their troubles away just as I did.

Unlike the music I play with my band Galaxy Juice which is a mixture of guitars and synthesizers. This project is more electronic-based and even though the guitar is my first instrument, I didn’t use any guitar or acoustic instruments so this is a full-on electronic synth-based project that I really enjoyed creating.

The project was mastered by a great engineer called Charlie Vella who produced music by one of my fav bands called Twin tribes, so he helped me take my production to a new level that I’m really happy with.

Here are the streaming links to “You Never Listen”: iTunes / Spotify