You’ve probably seen the Land Cruisers 70 series on the road, they look like old cars because they originally came out in the early 80s but Toyota actually still builds them today with just minor changes. They’re probably one of Toyotas best sellers locally and on more than one occasion I’ve passed by the dealership only to be told the whole range was completely sold out. It’s mind-boggling which is why I’ve always been curious to drive one. Why are they so popular?
Personally, I became a big fan of the LC70 after coming upon Andrew White’s youtube channel. I was at one point considering getting a Land Rover Defender when I found one of his videos where he compares the two. Soon I was watching hours and hours of videos of him talking about his LC70 and all the stuff he’s done to it on his YouTube channel. At one point I was even contemplating renting an LC70 camper vehicle similar to his and going overlanding in South Africa.
My FJ is turning 9 years old in a few months and so I’ve been looking for a possible replacement for the past few years. Whatever I replace the FJ with has to be comfortable, durable and spacious. I was considering the 4-door LC70 because I loved the way they looked and their simplicity. The exterior hasn’t changed much since the early 80s so the cars don’t really get old in the same way the Mercedes G class or Land Rover Defender don’t get old. So last weekend I borrowed a friend’s 2-door Land Cruiser to test drive, and after giving it back I’m not sure I want one anymore.
The problem I had with the car was that it was just exhausting to drive. I drove the LC70 an hour out into the desert and then an hour back, and it felt like I had just gone on an 8-hour adventure. I can’t really pinpoint why the car exhausted me so much, it might have been because of the simple seats or the rough suspension, it might have been because the AC wasn’t cooling properly or maybe because the cabin noise was just too loud. Most likely, it was because of all of the above combined. Because the car hasn’t really changed much from the 80s, it lacks a lot of comforts. There’s no sound isolation which meant the interior was pretty noisy, it also meant there was no weather insulation so although the AC was blasting ice cold air, the car interior just wasn’t getting cold enough. The ride was pretty rough even on highways and the car I drove had an upgraded suspension so I can only imagine how much worse the ride is with the stock setup. The car was draining, even on short trips, driving felt like a chore.
On the other hand, I really love the way the car looks and I also love the barebones interior. Do we really need 3D surround view, heads-up displays, lane change and parking assist, massage chairs and digital dashboards? No, we don’t. The interior cabin although not that spacious was very bright and had incredible visibility because of the large windows and very small pillars. Most importantly though, the Land Cruiser felt like it would take a lot of abuse (and it can). But my favorite thing about the car has to be the fact when you’re buying an LC70, you’re actually buying a brand new vintage car.
The Land Cruiser 70 series starts close to KD9,000 and goes up past KD12,000 so they’re not cheap. You also don’t have many options locally, for example, the car comes with either a grey or beige/brown interior but the local dealer only gets the beige/brown one. Exterior colors are also limited to like 4. Do I love the car or do I hate it? I’m not really sure. I want to say I love it, but would I trade my FJ for one? The answer is no.
Yesterday the New York Times published an article relating to Kuwait, but like most of the times we make the news, it wasn’t for a good thing. The New York Times had an article on the increase of book bannings that have gotten so extreme, we’re actually banning books that are not banned in Saudi Arabia. If that’s not absurd I don’t know what is.
Some of the books that were banned were written by local authors, so it’s not just foreign books that are being affected by this recent banning. Over 4,300 books have been banned so far since 2014 with 700 of them being banned just this year alone. Check out the New York Times article with more details on this [Here]
Last month I posted about an emergency lane tragedy where a mum lost her 4-month old child to a speeding motorist. The mum had pulled over into the emergency lane because of a problem with her car when a driver who was speeding in the emergency lane crashed into them. The mum has now written about the tragedy in the Kuwait Times. You can read her article [Here]
Does anyone have a Bang & Olufsen CD player they want to sell? Doesn’t matter which model, if you have one let me know! I’ve got like a million CD’s and just an old Technics discman to listen to them with.
Thursday night I passed by Digits in Marina Mall and picked up the new iPhone XS a few hours before the official launch. Digits always hook me up with a phone ahead of launch and even discount the phones for me because they know they’re going to get publicity from me. I like this arrangement because it means I don’t need to wait in line or worry about the phone getting sold out. This year I actually had another company approach me with a better deal on the new iPhone, but my history with Digits goes way way back.
I’m a very nostalgic person and I’ve got a lot of nostalgia with Digits. I’ve been a customer of theirs since before they were called Digits, since before they were called Mac&More, since way before the iPhone or iPod ever existed, back when their store was simply called Apple Computer. Back then they were located across from Salhia and had beautiful beige Power Macs on display which I sadly never got to own. But, since the very beginning, they’ve been hooking me up with stuff like when I got my Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh from them or when they let me take their Think Different banners after their Salhia store closed down. And then I got my 15 seconds of worldwide fame because of them when my pictures of their abandoned store made their way around the web. So yeah, I’m a big fan of Digits and very loyal. I think their service center is great and I just love dealing with them which is why I’m always promoting them.
This year I had two options of phones to choose from, the iPhone XS and the iPhone XS Max. I was pretty tempted to get the Max but I already thought the regular XS was too big and so I knew I’d struggle with the Max. Since I sold my water damaged iPhone X around 3 months back I’ve been using an iPhone 8. I loved how small it felt and how I could easily reach all four corners of the screen with my thumb, but I did miss the full screen and I majorly missed the ability to switch between apps by just swiping left or right at the bottom of the screen. Although I was tempted to get the Max because it was a new phone and would give me more to write about on the blog, I knew the regular XS was the one I really should get. Judging by the poll I held on my instagram story though, it looks like the majority of you would prefer the Max.
The XS and X are virtually the same phone. Even though Apple could spend an hour talking about the differences, in reality, there isn’t that much of a difference. The only thing you might notice being different is the camera, the new camera is an improvement over the previous one but unless you’re taking two photos with the two different phones in the same spot and then compare them side by side… you won’t really notice a difference. Battery life still isn’t that great, when I went from the X to the 8 I was kinda surprised at how much better the battery life on the 8 was, I could spend all day on the phone and the battery wouldn’t drop down past 50%. With the X and now the XS, I could be down to 50% by lunchtime.
But truthfully, I’d rather be on the X or XS over the 8 any day. The iPhone 8 and any non-fullscreen iPhone really do feel and look outdated compared to the new iPhones with the fullscreen. Although I loved the battery life on the 8, I don’t mind the sacrifice for a larger and better screen. So moving from an iPhone 8 (or 7, 6, 5 etc..) to an XS is a no-brainer, the question really is if you have an iPhone X now, is it worth moving to an XS? The answer is no, not at all.
Bayt Lothan, the community center that became an important part of the local culture scene was completely demolished over the weekend. Bayt Lothan closed down around 2 years ago and then earlier this year it was partly demolished. Now the whole building has been razed to the ground.
Bayt Lothan was considered by many a historic building and at one point in time used to house Sheikh Sabah Al Salim, the former Amir of Kuwait.
For those of you who didn’t believe me or think no way a place called Eggslut would be allowed to open in Kuwait, well, I was right. The hoarding for the first Eggslut store in Kuwait just went up in Crystal Tower, they’re opening right next to Starbucks.
Eggslut is an LA-based gourmet food concept where all the items on their menu feature eggs.
The Untitled Deli belongs to two of my friends and ever since they opened I’ve been nagging them to get on Carriage, and finally, they did. They also added a bunch of new sandwiches to their menu.
It’s been a while but the weekend list is back! I’m personally going to The IMPROVengers tonight, the opera tomorrow, and then the carnival on Saturday and Marketspace as well since its taking place down the street from where I live. Check out this weekends list of events below:
If you saw the large cloud of black smoke coming out of the city today, it was from the new under construction NBK tower which caught fire earlier today.
I was watching it from my office window before realizing my car was parked in their lot next door so I went to make sure my car was safe. When I got to my car I remembered I had my new Sony A7 III in the car so I ended up snapping some shots and also posted a bunch of videos on my instagram story.
I think all the workers came out safe and there were some who stayed behind to help the firefighters out by using the emergency fire hoses in the parking lot next door.
When JACC first told me Herbie Hancock was coming to Kuwait, the name sounded familiar but it didn’t ring a bell until I was going through some of his songs and came across Cantaloupe Island and Rock It. That’s when I realized, I already knew his songs, I just never knew they were his!
Herbie Hancock is considered a jazz legend whos been making music since the early 60s. He’s won 14 Grammy Awards including album of the year as well as winning an Academy Award for original soundtrack. Next weekend, Herbie Hancock will be performing live over two nights, Friday October 5th and Saturday October 6th at the Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Centre. Tickets start at KD35 for the bronze and go up to KD75 for the VIP seats. Once again I’ve teamed up with JACC to giveaway 4 platinum seat tickets worth KD265 to two of my blog readers. So there will be two winners for this giveaway and each one will get two platinum tickets for the Saturday evening show!
To win tickets for this giveaway I’m trying something new this time. The previous method of leaving a comment was driving me insane because I’d get an email for every comment left here. So imagine getting over 400 emails in under a day, it made me hate holding giveaways. So for this one, I’m trying something new so check it out below.
[gleam url=”https://gleam.io/oZLw2/herbie-test”]Win Platinum Tickets to Jazz Legend Herbie Hancock![/gleam]
As usual, please make sure you use a working email since that’s how I will be contacting the winners. If a winner doesn’t respond within 24 hours, another winner will be randomly chosen. Good luck!
I was never a fan of the old Cayennes, not because I was Porsche purist and was upset that they had built an SUV, but because I thought they looked ugly. This new third generation Cayenne, on the other hand, is so hot looking which is why I got in touch with Porsche and asked them to borrow the car for the weekend.
Even before driving this third generation Cayenne I was pushing it off on friends. Anybody with a budget of around 30K I would quickly recommend the new Cayenne because it had two very important things going for it, a great looking exterior as well as a very modern looking interior. And, because the car just came out, you know this current look is going to be around for at least the next 7 years.
The model I picked up for the review was the “entry-level” Porsche Cayenne. After spending a weekend with this standard Cayenne I can tell you, you don’t need the faster Cayenne S or Turbo versions. The standard Cayenne with 340HP is no slouch which is what I was expecting it to be. The S version adds another 100HP on top of the standard Cayenne power and the Turbo version adds 200HP, but if you’re on a limited budget, get the standard Cayenne and use the money saved to fill it up with options. The car handled like you’d expect a Porsche to handle, it was very comfortable on bumpy roads but also stiff enough on fast hard turns. When I posted my Lexus LC500 review last week, a reader suggested I should test the cars by running them up and down the Crystal Tower parking lot so I decided to do just that for this review, as an agility test. If you don’t know the Crystal Tower parking lot, its known for being incredibly tight and people tend to scrape both sides of their cars going up and down the ramps. So I decided to have a bit of fun and mounted three GoPro’s to the Cayenne and decided to go up and down the lot to see how it handled tight turns. It passed! I think next time I should run the test when the parking is full since if the floors are empty it’s actually not that hard to maneuver through the floors.
The interior of the new Cayenne is another place it really shines. I personally think the Range Rover Velar raised the bar pretty high for slick and futuristic looking interiors but the new Cayenne manages to do that as well. The new Cayenne has a pretty huge screen with a really great looking infotainment system that also includes Apple’s CarPlay, but that’s just part of what makes the interior look so modern. The physical buttons in the center console area have now been replaced with backlit buttons and digital screens that are now touch sensitive. The whole center console looks like a giant screen and this helps give the interior such a modern look. Moving to the back the rear passengers have excellent legroom as well as having modern amenities like USB ports. The trunk is also pretty big and the rear seats fold down to make it even bigger but oddly enough, there are no controls in the trunk to automatically fold down the rear seats. I couldn’t find the option to add them either on the Porsche site which is bizarre because this is a pretty expensive car so you’d expect this pretty basic option.
Which brings us to the price. The starting price of the Cayenne is KD24,600 and I know this is going to sound weird, but that’s actually a pretty good deal. I would have expected the car to start much higher so I was pleasantly surprised when I found out how much they cost. 30,000 would get you a Cayenne S but as I mentioned earlier, I’d use the money saved going with the standard Cayenne to add all the options you want and there are A LOT of options to choose from. One of my favorite things about Porsche is how you can configure and build your own car on their website. Their online configurator allows you to spec the car the way you want it while showing you the exact cost, and then you can take your build to the dealership and just order it. I tend to build a Porsche maybe once every couple of weeks just for fun (don’t ask) and the Cayenne I built with all the options I wanted came out to around 31,000 which isn’t that bad.
So yeah I pretty much loved the car. I think like all Porsches the biggest issue with the Cayenne is that it’s going to end up being too popular and so you’ll start seeing a ton of them on the roads. If you want to check the car out and take it for a test drive you can as well, just head to the dealer and book a drive. Also make sure you check out the Porsche car configurator [Here]
