2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Anyone who tried getting Sting tickets at exactly 1PM probably ran into the same issue I did, both the JACC and Knet payment gateway websites crashed. I must have been one of the first people into the booking page since all the seats were still available. Originally I wanted to get Platinum seats but the max budget me and my friends had set was KD75 a ticket and the Platinum were selling for KD175 which was over our budget. So I quickly scanned the ticket prices and found Silver for KD75 and booked 6 seats in the front row. I then proceeded to the checkout page excited that I had gotten great seats, I filled in my knet details and then nothing. It got stuck on “Processing…”

I had multiple tabs open trying to reload the ticket booking page while my Knet order continued to process. When the booking page popped back up to life for a minute I noticed the seats I had chosen were showing as taken, so I figured I still had a chance for my order to go through. Around 20 minutes later with the JACC site still down, my Knet order timed out with an error. At that point, I kept trying to reload the booking page until it finally came back to life. I tried to book the seats the same seats I had originally picked but they were already taken so got similar ones just a few seats down. It was too intense of an experience.

Regarding ticket pricing, below are the prices of all the tickets that were available for sale:

If the JACC website can’t handle this much traffic they shouldn’t launch all the tickets for all their upcoming events on the same day at the same time. They could have made them available at different points throughout the day instead of all at once so their server could handle the traffic. Hopefully, they’ll consider doing that the next time around. For now, I’m just glad I managed to score some good seats for me and my friends.

Update: Since I published the post they shutdown the ticket booking for Sting (and 7 other events) and kept pushing back the relaunch by an hour. I just checked now and they’ve decided to split up the ticket purchasing for their 8 events into half. The first 4 events will go back on sale in around 5 hours time (at the time I’m writing this) while the second batch of events that includes Sting will go back on sale in 2 days time.

Super busy weekend with lots of things going on so check out this weekends list of events below:

Thursday
Exhibition: The Box
Watercolor Exhibition: Yasmin Al-Mutawa
42nd International Book Fair
IGN Convention 2017
Winter Fest
DAI Film Night: Beasts of the Southern Wild
The Divan’s Movie Night – Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust
Modern Heritage Festival: Lena Chamamyan

Friday
42nd International Book Fair
IGN Convention 2017
The End of Year Gift Bazaar
The British Academy of Sport 4th International Basketball Tournament
Fall Festival
Battle of the Bands – Round 2

Saturday
42nd International Book Fair
IGN Convention 2017
Bēhance Kuwait 2017
Al Corniche Winter Bazaar
Guided Tour: Old Kuwait City
BSK Pink Saturday 2017
MarketSpace
Clean Eats Picnic Time
Photographers Bazaar 3
Voices & Verses

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.

The movies below are now showing at either Cinescape, Grand Cinemas or Sky Cinemas:

New This Week:
Bounty Hunters (5.3)
Breathe (7.0) ♦
Coco (9.1)
Johnny Frank Garrett’s Last Word (5.0)
Marrowbone (6.5)

Other Movies Showing:
Earth: One Amazing Day
Jigsaw (8.4)
Justice League (8.1)
Monster Island (5.0)
Murder on the Orient Express (6.7)
Suburbicon (4.7) ♦
The Foreigner (7.2) ♦
Thor: Ragnarok (8.2)
Victoria and Abdul (6.1)
Wonder (7.2)

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

A Beautiful Planet 3D (7.9)
America Wild: National Parks Adventure (N/A)
Dream Big 3D (7.9)
Extreme Weather 3D (6.6)
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 popular musician Sting is coming next month to perform in Kuwait. He will be performing at JACC over a period of two days. As if this post tickets are yet to go on sale, according to their website they’ll be on sale on Thursday, November 23rd (tomorrow) at 1PM.

I’d expect the tickets to sell out fast so if you’re interested in getting tickets, you should probably do so as soon as they go on sale. For more information, click [Here]

Watersouq is a website that focuses on just one thing, bottled water, and I like that. It’s very specific but because they’re very focused they do it pretty well. I think they have nearly every water brand that’s available in Kuwait on their website so even if you’re looking for an obscure brand, you’ll probably find it listed there. They also seem to have a bunch of deals going on like buy 10 boxes get 2 free or buy 20 get 6 free which is great if you’re buying in bulk for your office or large home.

It actually makes sense to buy in large quantities because Watersouq charge KD1 for delivery and an additional 400fils service charge. If this seems like something you’re interested in, here a linke to their [Website]

I cook a lot but there are some cuisines that always seemed a bit too out of reach, and that list sadly used to include Kuwaiti cuisine.

I always believed that Machboos would be way too difficult and too long to make to fit into my weekday cooking lifestyle. But I wanted to learn, so I tasked my Chef CoFounder Yousef Al Munayes to have a stab at making Machboos accessible to the average Jo. He being the whiz that he is, succeeded and I finally made my very first Kuwaiti dish at the ripe old age of 32.

When you break it down you can cook a whole Machboos in just one pot and in under an hour if the ratios are right. A small whole chicken for two can easily cook through in this time period just follow this simple recipe below and enjoy!

Ingredients:
800 gram Whole Chicken (split in half with spine removed)
1.5 Cups Basmati Rice (soaked in cold water for 15-20mins)
2 Cloves Garlic Minced
1 Small Red Onion Chopped
3 Tbsp Machboos Spice Mix (found in any grocery)
Rice Topping (1 Tbsp Rose Water, 2 Tsp Ground Cardamon, Few strands of Saffron)
1 Tbsp Vegetable stock
550ml Boiling water

1. Cook the chicken
Season the chicken with 3/4ths of the spice mix. Heat a deep sautee pan over medium-high heat and add 1 Tbsp of vegetable oil. When hot add the chicken skin side down. Cook for 6-8 mins or until the chicken is well browned. Flip and cook for 4-5 more mins. Set aside.

2. Cook the aromatics
In the same sautee pan used for searing the chicken, add the chopped onion, cook stirring occasionally for 3-4 mins or until the onion is translucent. Add the garlic and remaining spice mix, continue stirring for 1 minute.

3. Put it all together
Strain your rice and add to the pan along with 1 Tbsp of vegetable oil. Gently stir for 1-2 mins, add the boiling water, season with vegetable stock, salt and black pepper to taste. Stir to combine. Top with the seared chicken pieces and cover. Set the heat to the lowest setting. Cook for 30 minutes then take off heat. Open the lid, add the rice topping. Cover and let sit for 10 mins. Serve with your favorite sides and enjoy!

Post by Hind
CoFounder of PantryBee where home cooking is made easy.

I’m having a hard time keeping up with the new car impoundment campaign. When it was first launched they said they’d impound your car for 2 months if they caught you using your phone while driving or not wearing seatbelts. Then I heard the campaign was cancelled a day after they launched it. Now I’m hearing the campaign is back on but that it only applies to men, not women or old people? Whatever the situation is, Kuwait Impound is a website that allows you to find your car after it’s been impounded. So if you got your car impounded and want to know where it’s stored, use this [Link]

Thanks Fahad

“I am here” is a short film (ad) for the architecture firm SSH that showcases their work including the Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmad Cultural Center and the soon to open Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Centre in Shaab. It’s a well-done film that really brings out the beauty of JACC so take a couple of minutes to watch it. [Vimeo]

Farouq Abdul-Aziz, the presenter of the popular show on KTV2 ‘Cine Club’ in the 80s now has a website. The website has a few blog posts by him, interviews and most importantly, original episodes of Cine Club. Right now they have around 7 videos on the website but they’re hoping to upload all his episodes eventually.

I really hope they do that since there is this one Cine Club movie I watched as a kid that I’ve been wanting to watch again but I could never remember its name. All I remember was that it was an adventure/treasure finding movie and the last scene of the film takes place in this mountain where the hero finds the golden artifact only to have to leave it behind because the whole mountain was collapsing. He escapes in a helicopter. That’s all I remember so hopefully I’ll eventually find it.

Check out Farouq’s website [Here]

One of my favorite illustrators who also happens to be a good friend of mine is exhibiting her “Stories of Day & Night” project tonight at Al Makan. Nour Flayhan has been a resident at Al Makan for the past month or so working on this exhibition and it really looks beautiful.

“Stories of Day & Night” is a rewritten illustrated tale of the stars, a realignment, a play on the constellations, a dance of the sun, moons, and stars. So if you’re looking for something to do tonight drop by Al Makan and check it out but the work is going to be on display until the 23rd. For more info, check out Nour’s Instagram account @nouriflayhan

If you’re looking for graffiti supplies then you need to know about this place. Kuz Store is a small graffiti supplies store located in Bneid Al-Qar. The store has been open for a few months now and carries a huge variety of Montana cans, spray paint caps as well as some merchandise including a few Diamond Supply t-shirts.

Kuz Store is open daily from Saturday to Thursday from 6PM to 10PM and then closed on Fridays. Here is their location on [Google Maps] and you can follow them on twitter @kuzstore

A friend of mine who has been racing bikes for just two years finished 2nd in UAE’s Superbike Race over the weekend. He races in the 600cc category race and is a pretty big guy compared to the other racers (which means more weight on the bike) and yet still came in an impressive second place. I just wanted to give him a shoutout on the blog and you can read the news article related to this on the KUNA website [Here]

In case you weren’t aware, there are English books being sold at the International Book Fair that’s taking place at the fairgrounds. If you visit hall 6 there are two aisles dedicated to just English books. I passed by over the weekend and picked up some beautifully illustrated English books myself: I Want My Hat Back, This Is Not My Hat and We Found A Hat. They cost KD4 each on Amazon but they were being sold for KD3 each at the fair. So pass by the if you’re looking for English books.

For more information on the fair including the timings, click [Here]

Ever since Elevation Burger started offering delivery on Carriage I’ve been harassing them to let me in on their secret, how are they the only ones on Carriage able to deliver in 30 minutes or less? I’m always super curious about how things work and I really wanted to know how they were doing this. My assumption was that they must have worked out some sort of deal with Carriage where their drivers would just camp outside the Elevation stores waiting for the orders because I couldn’t figure out how else they managed this. I finally sat down with Elevation last week to hear how the backend works and turns out, it’s a bit more complicated than that. So there are two parts to the formula on making the 30 minutes or less delivery happen, one involves Elevation, the other Carriage. So how does it work? If you’re curious read on.

Elevation Burger
From Elevations side, to make the 30-minutes or less delivery time they first needed to be able to get the food prepared as quickly as possible. That involved upgrading their kitchens as well as lots of staff training. This allowed them to bring down the prep time down considerably while remaining consistent. By having a consistent and short prep time, Carriage would be able to send their drivers a lot earlier to pick up the food. The second thing Elevation did was to limit the delivery locations to 30-minute radiuses around their branches. This limited their overall delivery radius around Kuwait, but it allowed them to keep their fast delivery speed.

Carriage
The other side of the equation is Carriage. Because they know exactly how long a meal takes to be prepared at Elevation, they are able to disperse their drivers a lot sooner than they would usually do. Carriage also have an algorithm that can predict based on the time of day where most of the orders will come from. So for example Carriage knows that at 2PM a lot of people in one area order a lot from specific restaurants. So they’d send their drivers ahead of time to that area near those specific restaurants in preparation for the spike they’re expecting. Elevation is one of the brands on Carriage that have a lot of orders so Carriage drivers are usually located near their branches. For example at Seef, drivers tend to hang around the parking lot near Elevation because of the fact that location has a number of restaurants like Prime & Toast, Pizetta and The Burger Hub while also being close to other popular restaurants further down the street like Joa, Gia and Eighty Six.

So in summary, the combination of a consistently fast prep time, a lot of branches and Carriage drivers always being close by is how you end up with a delivery time that’s under 30-minutes. Currently, only Elevation seems to be delivering in under 30-minutes but from what I’ve been told, more restaurants are trying to get in on this as well.

Crazy amount of things to do over this weekend with lots of musical events, two comedy shows and some exhibitions and even a marathon taking place. Check out the full list of events below:

Thursday
Exhibition: The Box
Watercolor Exhibition: Yasmin Al-Mutawa
42nd International Book Fair
#WHATIFITWEREME
Back with IMPROVengeance
Modern Heritage Festival: Eskenderella

Friday
42nd International Book Fair
#WHATIFITWEREME
London Symphony Orchestra – Music of the Twentieth Century (Contemporary)
British Ladies Society Bazaar
Stargazing in Al Salmi Desert
The Warehouse Series Vol.1
Charity Gala Concert
Nemr Stand Up Comedy

Saturday
42nd International Book Fair
#WHATIFITWEREME
Yoga with the 3
Gulf Bank 642 Marathon 2017
Car Museum and House of Mirrors Tour
Guided Tour: Arab Organization Headquarters
Born to Walk
London Symphony Orchestra – Music of the Nineteenth Century (Classical)
Kuwait Jazz Collective

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.