2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003
Kuwait is on its way to become “a country with the strongest and fastest Internet in the Arab world” through the use of optic fiber cables, reports Al-Qabas daily quoting a source close to the Sate Ministry for Services. The source pointed out that majority of the advanced countries provide Internet with a speed of 50 gigabytes, whereas the ministry will provide 100 gigabytes starting from August. [Source]
And somehow I’m still stuck barely getting 10Mbps because I live in Salmiya.
Over the weekend while chilling poolside in Dubai I had my iPhone X on the side of the pool with me because I was expecting a work-related email. I didn’t think it would be an issue since I knew the iPhone X was water resistant up to 1m deep for 30 minutes and other than a few splashes every now and then, my iPhone wouldn’t be anywhere that deep. I even watched a video on YouTube of a guy submerging the phone in 20ft of water, then throwing it in the washing machine before freezing it in a block of ice in the freezer so I didn’t think a few splashes of water would be an issue at all. Turns out I was wrong because somehow my iPhone X now has water inside it.
The amusing part is that last week my mum messaged me while on vacation asking me if she should get one of those waterproof bags to use with her phone for taking underwater photos. I told her she didn’t need to since her iPhone 7 was waterproof. She was like are you sure??? And I was like yeah of course and then sent her screenshots of articles talking about how the iPhone 7 is waterproof. A couple of days later I get the message below from my sister. Clearly I got hit back with karma.
So now I’m back to using my old iPhone 8 and the smaller screen makes it feel so dated compared to the X. Not only that but I deliberately don’t have any social media apps on this phone so I feel so disconnected from people. I’ve got bowling tonight with friends and I’m having trouble organizing things without WhatsApp and I have another friend who is having her baby any day now, and she could have had it already and I wouldn’t know.
But I kinda like the phone like this since it partially feels like I’m detoxing, but also partially feels like I’m being punished for being so stupid to get my phone wet. So learn from my stupid mistake and don’t get your iPhone wet unless it’s by accident.
Screenshot from Tag
The movies below are now showing at Cinescape, Grand Cinemas, Sky Cinemas and VOX:
New This Weekend:
Ant-Man and the Wasp (8.0)
Loving Pablo (6.2) ♦
Monsters Busters (7.2)
Tag (6.9) ★ ♦
The First Purge (5.5) ♦
Other Movies Showing Now:
Adventures of Petey and Friends (2.8)
Avengers: Infinity War (9.2) ♦
Deadpool 2 (8.1) ♦
Escape Plan 2: Hades (3.8)
Incredibles 2 (9.2)
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (6.8)
Masha and the Bear (7.9)
Maya the Bee: The Honey Games (5.6)
Ocean’s Eight (6.3) ★
Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero (7.4)
Sicario: Day of the Soldado ★ ♦
Solo: A Star Wars Story (6.3)
The Little Witch (6.3)
The movies below are also now showing at the Scientific Center IMAX theater:
Amazon Adventure 3D (6.6)
Amazing Mighty Micro Monsters 3D (7.4)
America Wild: National Parks Adventure (5.9)
Dream Big 3D (7.9)
Hurricane 3D (7.0)
Solo: A Star Wars Story (6.3)
Tiny Giants 3D (8.0)
Watermelon Magic 3D (7.4)
Numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at time of publishing.
★ is for movies I’m interested in. ♦ implies movie might contain censorship.
The new support terminal (T4) was inaugurated a short while ago. This new terminal will be handling all the Kuwait Airways flight to help reduce the load from the main airport terminal. According to my source at Kuwait Airways, the new terminal will be active and fully operational from August 8th of next month.
I’ve attached some photos to this post taken by Sarah Alsayegh. I’ll hopefully be getting a tour soon and will take more photos and post more information then.
PS: Supposedly the terminal isn’t this dimly lit, but instead the photographer retouched them to this effect.
Update: Here is the location on [Google Maps]
Update2: Here are some more details:
– Shaded parking for over 2,000 cars connected to the terminal via an air-conditioned bridge
– 50 check-in counters
– Special check-in counters for people with special needs
– 16 self-check-in machines
– Terminal has first and business class lounges
Not sure who’d want this but if you’re interested, they’re selling a box of 12 for KD63. I’m trying to get a hold of one to review just out of curiosity but here is the link to the local dealer’s [Website] if you can’t wait.
The local Acura dealer now has an NSX in stock. It’s by far the most interesting car in the Acura lineup but at the asking price, they just have too many great and more exciting competitors *cough* McLaren 570s *cough*.
The dealer is selling the NSX for KD65,000 and it’s just the one displayed above. They’ve only ever imported three to Kuwait, one was sold to someone in Dubai and the other two were sold locally.
Last week I was given a very detailed presentation on the new terminal that’s under construction as well as a site visit to see the current progress. There was a lot of information presented but for this post, I rounded up what I thought was the most interesting. So here we go:
– The terminal is shaped similarly to other airports around the world for the same reason all cars have 4 wheels, it’s a shape that works really well for airports. But like all cars have 4 wheels, there is still a big difference between a Ferrari and a Kia and this applies to airports as well. Although airports can be shaped similarly, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll all function the same way.
– Eventhough the terminal is huge, you still won’t have to walk much. The distance from the terminal entrance to the center of the terminal is around 150m. The furthest a passenger has to walk once inside is 600m. That’s one of the advantages of the triangular shape of the terminal, less walking distance for the passengers.
– The original plan of the terminal was to open with a capacity of 13 million passengers a year with an ability to expand that up to 25 million if needed. The plans have changed now and the terminal will now be able to handle 25 million passengers from day 1.
– The terminal will have a level of service rating of “A”. Dubai, for example, has a “C”. The level of service is calculated using a variety of things including the distance between passengers in the terminal, facilities, wayfinding etc.. For an airport of this capaciaty, its generally very difficult to get an “A”.
– The terminal has enough gates to handle 21 Airbus A380s (above) but also has the capacity to handle 51 smaller aircraft all at once (below). Thats possible because the majority of the gates can either take one large plane or two smaller ones without having to make any modifications.
– The terminal will have over 5,000 underground parking spots dedicated just for the passengers. Our current airport in comparison has around 1,500 that is also shared with the airport employees.
– Nothing is off the shelf, everything is being custom designed and made for the terminal. There are some things that have never been done before even for Foster + Partners, so its a learning experience for everyone involved in the project.
– Landside is airport lingo for everything before immigration and security, airside is what they call the area after. There will be no mall located in the landside part of the terminal but the airside will have a retail space larger than Trafalgar Square (pictured above).
– There will be 44 immigration desks and 26 security screening machines just for economy travelers. Premium passengers will have their own immigration and security checks in a different area.
– The footing of the building (the foundation base) is 5m deep. I had no idea if this was a lot or not but I was told by architects and engineers that this is crazy deep, usually the footing is around 1m max. The reason for this is the footing has to support all the arches which support the whole roof and structure of the terminal.
– Speaking of arches, there are 800+ arches being used in the building.
– The airport will have a floor for arrivals and another for departures so the two don’t mix. The departure dropoff and the arrival pickup area outside the airport are 500 meters long each and composed of 4 lanes. So they both have 2KM each of temporary parking.
– The rendering above of the expansion of T2 where the terminal is mirrored is just to show that there is room to expand but the final design of the expansion terminal might look completely different.
– Nobody knows what DGCA will do with the current airport once T2 is up and running.
– The terminal is currently 1% behind schedule but the contractor has a catch-up plan in place.
– Contractually the airport is expected to be completed by September 2022. It might finish earlier but September 2022 is whats in the contract. Once the airport is completed it will be handed over to DGCA and it could then take up to a year for the airport to open and function.
I took random pictures at the site as well as screenshots from the powerpoint presentation. If you’d like to see them then click [Here]
Below is a video presentation I found of the airport as well that features a lot of animated renderings.
If anyone has any questions, let me know in the comments below.
Last night I was showing my friend the wine app Vivino (its creepy good btw) when I noticed they had a list of best wines trending in Kuwait right now. The app is super useful when it comes to buying wines since you just take a picture of the bottle label and the app then pulls up information on the wine including ratings, reviews and price. You can even take a picture of a wine list and it will get you the ratings for every wine on the list.
I’m guessing their top chart is based on what people in Kuwait have been scanning and damn we’ve been buying some expensive wines here. If a bottle of wine costs $2,000 abroad, how much does it cost in Kuwait? I’m so curious.
If you want to check out the top 10 wines in Kuwait right now, click on the link below.
Looks like I was lucky last week to fly out to Beirut and back with Jazeera. According to my readers and Jazeera Airways themselves, a lot of their flights got canceled last week due to a number of circumstances.
Originally I had heard it was because IATA cracked down on Jazeera after finding out they were flying their planes without proper servicing as well as flying their crew for longer hours than allowed. But, Jazeera Airways yesterday issued a statement denying that and clarified what actually happened. According to them, it was a combination of bad weather, a technical issue with one of their planes and the combination of both problems taking place at the same time that caused a crew shortage as well.
Everything is back to normal now so if you have a flight booked with them you shouldn’t freak out. For more information, you can check out the Jazeera Airways statement [Here]
There is an instagram account that sells VHS and Betamax players here in Kuwait but he’s selling the Betamax ones for around KD50. I just have this one cassette I want to see whats on it so I really don’t want to buy a whole player just to do that. So if any reader by odd chance has a Betamax player, please let me know!
Yesterday I got a very detailed presentation on the new airport terminal that’s being constructed along with a site visit (you can check my story on instagram @mark248am). There is a lot of information I need to figure out how to condense into a post, but for now, I wanted to share the slide above.
If you’re wondering how large the new terminal will be, the picture above is a comparison of T2 next to The Avenues.
Screenshot from Ocean’s Eight
The movies below are now showing at Cinescape, Grand Cinemas, Sky Cinemas and VOX:
New This Weekend:
Escape Plan 2: Hades (3.8)
Maya the Bee: The Honey Games (5.6)
Ocean’s Eight (6.3) ★
Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero (7.4)
Sicario: Day of the Soldado ★ ♦
Other Movies Showing Now:
Adventures of Petey and Friends (2.8)
Avengers: Infinity War (9.2) ♦
Deadpool 2 (8.1) ♦
Distorted (5.7)
Incredibles 2 (9.2)
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (6.8)
Masha and the Bear (7.9)
Peter Rabbit (6.5)
The Little Witch (6.3)
The movies below are also now showing at the Scientific Center IMAX theater:
Amazon Adventure 3D (6.6)
Amazing Mighty Micro Monsters 3D (7.4)
America Wild: National Parks Adventure (5.9)
Dream Big 3D (7.9)
Hurricane 3D (7.0)
Solo: A Star Wars Story (6.3)
Tiny Giants 3D (8.0)
Watermelon Magic 3D (7.4)
Numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at time of publishing.
★ is for movies I’m interested in. ♦ implies movie might contain censorship.
Back in the 80s the British School of Kuwait used to be called Sunshine School. It started off as a nursery before eventually turning into a middle school. My class I believe was the second class to graduate from the school (Junior 4), but it was also the last class since the 1990 invasion happened and the school ended up closing down. Once the war was over it reopened again as BSK.
This past weekend while in Lebanon I found a bunch of photos, two of which I’m sharing here. The first one on top I believe was taken at Sunshine School when it was still a nursery, based on my age in that picture I’d say around 1980-1981.
The photo above was taken at their second campus. In total, Sunshine School had three campuses, the third one is still around but I think the first two were demolished ages ago.
If you’re in any of the photos by some weird chance let me know. I have another photo I scanned this weekend in which I found three current friends of mine in not knowing they were in my class back then.
Here are the photos above in full res [Picture 1] [Picture 2]
I had heard of the store Arts & Craft awhile back but never passed by it until just last week. A friend of mine was looking for a linen canvas roll and after searching all the art shops in Dasman Complex to no avail, we decided to pass by Arts & Craft to see if they had it. They did… along with a ton of other stuff.
Arts & Craft is a huge two story shop carrying everything you could think of related to arts and crafts. There are of course a lot of places that sell arts and craft supplies in Kuwait for example, Dasman Complex has a bunch of stores, Jarir has a pretty decent section and then stationary shops like Mogahwi also sell arts and crafts supplies. But, what makes the store Arts & Craft so unique is the sheer amount of variety all in one place.
If you’re looking for any kind of art supplies related to painting, drawing, printmaking, calligraphy, various crafts and more, then they should be your go-to place. Their store is located in Shuwaikh on Canada Dry Street [Google Maps] but, they also have an online store you can check out at artsandcrafts-kw.com
