2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

The current Municipal Council building would be turned into a museum under the umbrella of the National Council of Culture, Arts and Letters, said Chairman Osama Al-Otaibi Monday.

After relocating to a new one, the old building would be preserved due to its historic significance, Al-Otaibi told a press conference. Source

I’m so glad they realized the importance of the building and won’t be demolishing it. After the decision to demolish Sawaber and the Ice Skating Rink, I wouldn’t have been too surprised if they had decided to demolish this building as well.

The Kuwait Municipality building was designed by the architect Sami Abdul Baki and constructed between 1959 and 1962 by The Arab Contractors. I tried to find information on the architect but really couldn’t find anything other than a design he had proposed for the Martyr’s Square in Lebanon that never came to be. Interestingly, the Kuwait Municipality building features arcs similar to the one in his Martyr’s Square design (check below). So either that was his design signature or, maybe since it was never executed in Lebanon he decided to implement it into this building.

If anyone knows what other buildings he might have designed in Kuwait let me know in the comments below.

Image on top and building information was taken from Modern Architecture Kuwait 1949-1989

There is this app called FaceApp which allows you to change your age, hair color, hairstyle and other features, but unlike other apps that do similar effects, this one is actually incredibly realistic. Like scary realistic. Been having fun with it all morning so if you haven’t tried it out yet it’s available on both iOS and Android devices. Link

There are new ones being constructed near Khiran so my guess is that’s where this happened.

via reddit

If you’re vegan and are looking for a new place to eat there is a new restaurant that recently opened up called Wilgrow. I haven’t been to the place yet since I’m generally only interested in vegan food when my vegan best friend is in town but, going by the pictures alone, it looks like a cute place.

Wilgrow is located in Al-Bidea area at the Dhai Complex and you can find them on Google Maps. They’re open daily except for Sundays. @wilgrow.kw

Photos from @formkw

There’s a new ice skating place at The Avenues called Below Zero. It’s located in the basement right below The Forum (the large dome in Phase 4 where Arabica and Baker & Spice are). Sadly the place is just for children up to 13 years of age which got me thinking. Wouldn’t it have been nice if the whole lower level of The Forum was a large circular ice skating rink? Currently, that space is empty with nothing there except for those open-air elevators and a large robot.

While at the National Library recently, I found a few newspaper clippings related to James Brown when he visited Kuwait back in 1978. I was hoping to find more coverage in the papers but I searched through 1 month worth of AlQabas newspapers and only found a few ads and one article. I’m gonna go back and try to look for more in other newspapers but for now, I’m gonna share the ones I found. One is on top and the rest are below. If only the library didn’t have the most impractical opening hours…

Screenshot from Crawl

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

New This Weekend:
Coconut the Little Dragon 2 Into the Jungle (5.7)
Crawl (7.1)
Escape Plan: The Extractors (4.4)
Stuber (5.7)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (5.5)

Other Movies Showing Now:
Aladdin (6.5)
Anna (6.7)
Annabelle Comes Home (7.0)
Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion (6.8)
Avengers: Endgame (9.2)
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (8.1)
Men in Black: International (5.6)
Red Joan (6.3)
Spider-Man: Far from Home (8.2)
The Secret Life of Pets 2 (6.5)
Toy Story 4 (9.0)

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)
Volcanoes 3D (6.6)

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

Last week I posted about a pet cat called Winston that got lost and later died at the airport after it was taken from its owner to be sent to the cargo terminal.

The cat owner has now set up a gofundme page to pay for her legal fees in suing NAS, the company that the airport uses to transport the pets from the main terminal to the cargo terminal and the ones who lost her cat. She also wants to try and change the procedures for arriving pets at the airport. From some of the comments I’ve read by other people who’ve traveled with their pets, the procedure at the Kuwait airport is inconsistent and in most cases unnecessary.

If you want to support her fight then here is the link to her gofundme.

Virgin Megastore which originally opened up in Marina Mall back in 2002 and then closed down in 2012 is now reopening again, but this time at The Avenues. Their new location is where the clothing store Express used to be located in Phase 1 and should (theoretically at least) prove to be a better location for them this time around.

Very few people know this but back in 2006 Virgin Kuwait bullied me and threatened to sue me over one of my posts. It’s a long story and made me dislike the brand and the company Azadea (who own the brand in the Middle East) for a very long time, but, I’m pretty glad they’re opening again since their Dubai store actually sells interesting things albeit overpriced.

No idea on when the opening will be.

So this is a funny story that recently happened that made me appreciate car detailing a lot more than I already did.

One of the guys in my WhatsApp group has an old 1995 Acura Integra which he’s turned into a track car. He’s upgraded the engine and brakes on it, stripped out the interior to reduce weight and he has a ton of fun with it on the race track. Since the end of last year though he’s had the car parked in a dirt lot outside another friends place gathering dust. Not that it was in good condition before he parked it, half the car was covered in ducktape while the rest of the car really needed a paint job.

Last week the guy whose house the car is parked outside of took the picture above and shared it on our whatsapp group. Right away we started teasing the car’s owner with jokes about how he should scrap the car and other silly stuff. As a joke I suggested he should get the car detailed which he replied to saying he was waiting for a sponsor. Within seconds one of the guys captured a screenshot of the conversation and sent it to another friend of ours who owns Al Falah Car Wash. Al Falah have a detailing service called Showshine which I’ve posted about on the blog before and after seeing the screenshot of the conversation, they responded with “bring it on” in full confidence not really knowing how bad the condition of the car was.

A week later they got to see the car in person after it was dropped off to them and I wish I was there to see their faces. They knew it was going to be a challenge, but they didn’t think the car was in this bad of a condition. They started posting pictures on their instagram account and started calling it the “Disaster Car Detail”.

One of my friends even joked that he would give them a trophy if they can get it just decent looking. I dropped by to take some before pictures of the car and when I saw it in person I thought it was a hopeless case. The car had no shine whatsoever, the paint was completely flat and patchy, it was truly a disaster car.

Over the next two days, Showshine worked hard on the car, they started off with a regular wash before moving it into their detailing department to start the difficult process. Finally, when they were done and pictures of the car started leaking into our group we couldn’t believe it. The car looked new and shiny! When I passed by and saw the car in person I couldn’t believe it was the same one. They did such an incredible job detailing the car and somehow managed to bring the color and shine back to life.

My friend who joked that he would give them a 🏆 also kept his word.

For the past couple of weeks, I had been thinking about giving my Datsun 240z which I recently purchased a paint job. But now after seeing what they could do with a disaster car, I’ve actually decided to get the car detailed instead. If they could bring back so much color and shine to my friend’s car, then it should be fairly easy with mine which is in so much better shape.

Thank you Al Falah for going along with this. If you want to get your car detailed their prices start from KD30 (depends on the size of the car). Al Falah are my favorite car wash and they’re on instagram @showshinealfalah.

I was driving so didn’t feel a thing but my friends are telling me they just felt an earthquake.

Update: It was a 5.7 magnitude earthquake that hit western Iran.

The Commercial Control and Consumer Protection Sector has issued a citation against a shop for displaying the ‘homosexual’ logo, reports Al-Rai daily quoting sources.

The daily added, this happened when a number of shoppers complained about the sign and the concerned commercial control department sent officers to run a check and the signboard was removed and the person responsible has been referred to the concerned authority.

The sources stressed the need to abide by the laws in force and its responsibility in applying the law in its context that does not allow any irregularities that conflict with the laws and regulations. Source

You guys have probably already come across this article that was published last week since it went viral on social media. It was pretty vague with no mention of the shop and what was actually removed. After doing a bit of research it turns out the shop in question was Louis Vuitton. I thought they might have had a special display to celebrate the LGBT+ community but I did a bit of googling and couldn’t find any information or photos on a special display LV was using in their stores for this.

So I decided to ask around locally and turns out the display that was deemed offensive was actually not related to the LGBT+ community at all. LV have a window display called the dream catcher which features colorful dream catchers and someone must have complained to consumer protection that LV was displaying the gay pride flag in their display and LV was forced to remove it. The picture above isn’t of the actual dream catcher window display that was removed but one similar I found online and as you can see the colors don’t even match the pride flag or the correct order of the colors. Yet, they were still asked to remove it. So weird.

One of my favorite treats is the mini sized frozen yogurt topped with pistachio sauce from PICK, so when I found out they just released a sugar-free version of the sauce I decided to pass by and try it. PICK swapped the sugar with the natural and zero calorie sweetener Stevia making it slightly healthier and also keto friendly.

The result? It basically tastes exactly the same! Unless I have both the regular version of the sauce and the sugar-free version side by side, I don’t think I’d be able to tell the difference between the two. Not sure how many fewer calories the sugar-free sauce contains, but I’ll probably have it more often now knowing it’s slightly healthier. @pick_kuwait

Over the weekend a video started making its round via social media of a bullfight that took place in Kuwait back in 1972. The video was fairly low quality and the audio was completely broken so I did a bit of research and turns out the original video is actually owned by Reuters and you can watch the longer and much better version on their website.

According to Reuters, the bulls were imported from Spain for this event which was the first ever bullfighting show in Kuwait. The video is from the show that took place on Thursday April 6, 1972 but there were two other shows that took place on Friday 7th and Saturday 8th of April. Below are some more details:

A Spanish bull faced Spanish matadors in Kuwait on Thursday. It was the first time the Arabian Gulf state has seen a bull-fight. The event was organized by the Salmiya Sports Club and sponsored by the Kuwaiti Minister of the Interior and Defence, Shaikh Sa’ad Al-Abdalla As-Sabah.

A large crowd of spectators packed into the arena to see the novel exhibition of bullfighting skills and physical courage. Among those watching were the Speaker of the Kuwaiti National Assembly and other Assembly members. The event was much enjoyed by the spectators.

Aficionados in Spain may know more about the technicalities, but in Kuwait the crowd understood well enough the perfect judgment needed to plant these darts in just the right place.

The show had opened with the playing of the Kuwaiti and Spanish national anthems and the grand entrance of all the bullfighters. There was no doubting the success of this first bullfighting spectacle in Kuwait. Other shows were scheduled for Friday and Saturday.

So if you want to watch the video, click here.

Spider-Man: Far from Home

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

New This Weekend:
Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion (6.8)
I’ll Take Your Dead (5.9)
Pavarotti (7.7)
Play or Die (3.9)
Spider-Man: Far from Home (8.2)

Other Movies Showing Now:
Avengers: Endgame (9.2)
Aladdin (6.5)
Anna (6.7)
Annabelle Comes Home (7.0)
Child’s Play (6.8)
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (7.4)
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (8.1)
Men in Black: International (5.6)
Pokémon Detective Pikachu (6.9)
Red Joan (6.3)
The Secret Life of Pets 2 (6.5)
Toy Story 4 (9.0)
X-Men: Dark Phoenix

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)
Volcanoes 3D (6.6)

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