2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003
Someone posted an interesting query in the Kuwestions section, what is the oldest restaurant in Kuwait? One reader suggested Mais Alghanim which is possible since its been active since 1953, but I’m curious if there is anything older that is still around and active?
The two photos here were taken from the Mais Alghanim photo gallery [Here]
According to a recent article in The Telegraph, Kuwait is one of the top 20 fastest growing travel destinations in the world. The article doesn’t mention why or how that came to be, and I also couldn’t find their original source of data, so I don’t really have more more information other than the ranking. Kuwait was also the only Arab country to appear on the list which you can check out below:
The top 20 fastest growing travel destinations
1- Sierra Leone +310%
2- Nepal +39.7%
3- Iceland +39%
4- South Korea +30.3%
5- Moldova +28.6%
6- Chile +26%
7- Vietnam +24.6%
8- Japan +21.8%
9- Liechtenstein +21.7%
10- Kiribati +21.6%
11- Kuwait +20.7%
12- Madagascar +20%
13- Cyprus +19.8%
14- Georgia +19%
15- Turks & Caicos +17.5%
16- Cook Islands +17.1%
17- Slovakia +16.9%
18- Kenya +16.8%
19- Tanzania +15.6%
20- Indonesia +15.5%
For the full article click [Here]
Thanks Hind!
The Assima mall and tower which is currently under construction in Kuwait City (across from KIPCO Tower) caught fire earlier today. The fire started in the afternoon and by the time I passed by in the evening, the whole site was engulfed in flames. Solo Pizza, Sola Taco’s and A’s Chicken were forced to close down since their shops are located right behind the construction site.
So if you were wondering what all that smoke coming from the city was, now you know.
Update: Below are some epic photos taken earlier tonight by a reader. Thanks Ricardo!
Update2: According to KUNA, the fire started around 3:30PM and it took 180 firemen to put it out. [Link]
Update3: Now that the fire is out the damage to the site looks to be pretty extensive. According to a reader, the shoring around the site is completely burned and the “shores” are collapsing. Before you start digging to create a hole for construction, you first have to stabilize the sides so they won’t collapse. That process is called shoring. The shoring is composed of steel beams with wooden planks between them [Like this] that hold up the sand walls. The wooden planks are now mostly burnt and the sand walls are collapsing into the site as you can see in the picture above. Thanks Dragos!
The movies below are now showing at either Cinescape, Grand Cinemas or Sky Cinemas:
New This Week:
2:22 ♦
Despicable Me 3 (6.6)
Overdrive (5.5)
Other Movies Showing:
Deep (5.1)
Mr Frog (N/A)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (7.0)
The Mummy (5.8) ♦ ★
Transformers: The Last Knight (5.4)
The movies below are also now showing at the Scientific Center IMAX theater:
New This Week:
Dream Big 3D (7.9)
Other Movies Showing:
A Beautiful Planet 3D (7.9)
Humpback Whales 3D (7.2)
Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Secret Ocean 3D (N/A)
Numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at time of publishing.
★ is for movies I’m interested in. ♦ implies movie might contain censorship.
Jaber recounted an incident that took place in January 2017, while she was in Egypt training for her masters degree. She asked a close friend to take care of the cheetahs, but a fire broke out in the apartment and the fire brigade saw the wild felines and reported them to the police.
“I directly called somebody high-ranking at the police station of the district to replace the mention of ‘cheetah’ with ‘big cat’ on the complaint. It is necessary to act very quickly, so that the wasta works,” Jaber tells MEE.
Owning exotic animals is illegal in Kuwait yet these guys are parading them in this article for Middle East Eye and on their personal instagram accounts. Then to top it off they talk about how they have wasta to help them stay out of trouble and give examples of situations where their wasta helped them out. I really do hope because of this article they’ll all get arrested and their animals taken away from them. [Link]
The Central Bank has placed eight ATM machines around Avenues to dispense money for Eidiya’s. The ATM machines can dispense KD1 and KD5 notes in addition to the usual KD10 and KD20 notes. Four of the machines are located in Grand Avenue (pictured above) while the other four are located in the 2nd Avenue near H&M.
Distributing money (eidiya) to children during Eid is a popular tradition not just in Kuwait but throughout the Gulf.
Thanks LadyB!
The movies below are now showing or will be showing over Eid at either Cinescape, Grand Cinemas or Sky Cinemas:
During Eid:
Deep (5.1)
Mr Frog (N/A)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (7.0)
The Mummy (5.8) ♦ ★
Transformers: The Last Knight (5.4)
Movies Showing Now:
Alien: Covenant (7.0) ♦ ★
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul (3.3)
Don’t Breathe (8.3) ♦
Fast & Furious 8 (7.5)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (8.2) ♦ ★
Hacksaw Ridge (8.8) ★♦
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (7.2)
The Boss Baby (6.5)
The Circle (7.5) ♦
The movies below are also now showing at the Scientific Center IMAX theater:
A Beautiful Planet 3D (7.9)
Flying Monsters 3D with David Attenborough (7.6)
Humpback Whales 3D (7.2)
Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Secret Ocean 3D (N/A)
Journey to Space 3D (6.5)
Kenya 3D: Animal Kingdom (6.0)
Mysteries of the Unseen World 3D (7.5)
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 2001 when I first moved back to Kuwait from university and started my first job, the first thing I did with my very first salary ever was buy an alarm clock. It wasn’t just any alarm clock, it was the Nakamichi SoundSpace 3. The alarm clock had a CD player and was composed of three square shaped pieces, two were clocks, one for each side of the bed, while the third piece was the subwoofer. It cost me KD220 back then which was basically half my salary, but I used to love the Nakamichi brand and this was love at first sight. The picture above is the oldest picture I have of the alarm clock and its from 2003.
The alarm clock stayed with me for 16 years, and in that time I went through 4 jobs, 4 different blogs, a marriage, a divorce, 5 cars, 3 apartments and 2 dogs. Last night after watching an episode of the show “Hoarders“, I decided I would finally throw the alarm clock out. Now I regret it of course.
It’s pretty sad and reminded me of the old IKEA lamp commercial. I sometimes ask myself if I was to start all over again, would I be able to leave all my things behind? After throwing out my beloved alarm clock, I think I can. This post is dedicated to you alarm clock, goodbye.
If you were hoping to watch Wonder Woman over Eid then you’re out of luck. I just got confirmation a few moments ago from Grand Cinemas that Wonder Woman has been banned in Kuwait. The reason given to me was because the lead actress Gal Gadot is Israeli.
Update: I’ve deleted all the comments and closed this post up to new comments. This post is just an announcement and I’m not interested in turning it into a political discussion.
I’ve had my Lotus Exige now for nearly three months and during this time I had a bunch of things done to the car in terms of upgrades and improvements. This post is mostly for people trying to google info on the Lotus, so if you’re not into cars in general, just skip this post. Before I get into the specifics of what I’ve done to the car, I do want to highlight one aspect of owning a Lotus that I wasn’t expecting, the amazing community.
The Lotus Community
The Lotus community has been pretty great so far, from the local dealership to online forums and even the main Lotus factory. Everyone is just so friendly and helpful. Like I’ve already mentioned in my previous posts on the car, the local dealer Alghanim has been incredible, I’ve got the brand manager whom I whatsapp whenever I need anything and is now more like a friend then a brand manager, I also have the same Lotus technician I deal with every time I’m at the garage whom I’m on a first name basis, so the whole experience feels very personalized. I’m also in contact with the only other Exige owner in Kuwait at the moment and we’re planning to meet up soon for a photoshoot. I want to see what he’s done to the car and show him what I’ve done. There is another Exige arriving any day now and its going to a guy who’s connected to my circle of friends as well and then there is another Exige arriving by the end of summer that will belong to a close friend. So we’re going to have a pretty great little Exige community popping up here in Kuwait soon.
But its not only in Kuwait where I’ve been having a great experience with Lotus people. When I first got the car I contacted Lotus in the UK regarding some questions I had with the AC, a guy called Tony who is their ‘Technical & Training’ guy responded to me within a few hours. When I emailed him some feedback regarding the AC system, he forwarded my email to their electrical and HVAC department so they could check it out. They actually care about their customers and since we are a small community take all feedback into consideration. A couple of days ago I had another question which I emailed him and again within a few hours he got back to me. Someone at the Lotus factory is replying to my emails in a few hours, I mean I don’t reply that fast to people who email my blog, it’s really impressive how personal the whole experience feels.
The people in the forums are also amazing. Since I got the car I’ve been an active user in The Lotus Forums and I’ve been trying to contribute to the community as much as I can [eg 1, 2, 3 and 4]. Since there are only a few hundred Exige (V6) owners around the world, there really isn’t much documentation and reviews online on various accessories and upgrades you can perform on the car. So whatever I’ve been doing, I’ve been documenting and sharing with the community.
The Upgrades
So like I mentioned at the start of this post, I went through a first round of different upgrades for the car, below is a list of what I’ve done so far.
Sound System
The first thing I did as soon as I got the car was upgrade the sound system. The car had four cheap-ass speakers and a very basic single-DIN car stereo that didn’t even have bluetooth. So I decided to upgrade the car with the following setup:
Alpine CDE-HD149BT Receiver
Alpine KTP-445A Amp
Focal 100AC Access Series Speakers (Front)
Focal 130AC Access Series Speakers (Rear)
The whole setup looks stock with the amp also hidden in the dashboard so you wouldn’t really be able to tell I changed anything. But sound wise its a huge improvement over the stock sound system and it didn’t really cost me much for basically what is top of the line stuff.
Carbon Fiber Covers for the Engine Bay
This was strictly a cosmetic and practicality upgrade. You can see the Lotus engine through the glass boot and since we have a lot of dust in Kuwait, I have to clean the engine bay every so often so that it looks presentable under the glass. I kept having trouble dusting one of the large plastic covers in the engine bay because it had a rough texture. So I ordered a pair of glossy carbon fiber covers from Komo-tec in Germany, and now the engine is sandwiched between two shiny carbon fiber pieces. If you want to see how the engine bay looked like before, click [Here]
2Bular Exhaust System
This was the biggest upgrade I did to the car, I swapped out the stock exhaust for one by 2Bular. There are three popular exhaust brands for the Lotus, 2Bular, Komo-tec and Larini, all three cost the same so in the end it came down to aesthetics and sound signature. 2Bular won on both those counts for me. The 2Bular exhausts are hand built by a guy called Jim Valentine in Aberdeen and he just does Lotus exhausts and nothing else. It took around a month from when I placed an order, had him build it and then get it shipped and delivered to my door here in Kuwait. Last year he had a backlog of orders and so was taking months to deliver the exhausts to customers which is why I was grateful it just took a month in my case. I had the exhaust installed at a local garage called Gemballa and I’m currently in the processes of breaking it in. It sounds really angry so far, but like the stock exhaust its also valved which means I can have it quiet when I want it quiet, and loud when I want it loud.
Soft Top
This is the last thing I got but won’t be using it till fall when the weather cools down. During the cold months I’ll be removing the hard top roof on the car and replacing it with the soft top. It will make taking off and putting on the roof a lot easier plus it rolls up and fits in the trunk, something I couldn’t do with the hard top. New at the local dealer the soft top costs KD900, but I found a used one on the German eBay for KD400 shipped to Kuwait. I decided it was too good a deal to pass and just bought it and will now store it till winter.
Whats Next?
Nothing, I think I’m done for now. I’m considering getting a small sub for the sound system, but because of the size of the car, it’s gonna be a bit of a headache to install and hide which is why I haven’t pulled the trigger on it yet. Other than that though I think I’m done with all the upgrades. I fucking love this car and I’m so glad I’ve got a friend getting one because we basically spend the whole time now sharing Exige videos and talking about the cars. It’s so much fun.
Back in November, local creative firm Beattie + Dane launched a campaign for Al Munayes Tea called ‘Bou Salem’. It was a hilarious campaign where they created a fake candidate for the parliamentary elections and it ended up going viral pretty much overnight.
Well yesterday, Beattie + Dane won Bronze at the Cannes Lions festival for that campaign. Cannes Lions is to advertising what the Oscars are to movies, its the most coveted and well respected festival in the entire advertising and creative communications industry. Being shortlisted for a Lion is a huge accomplishment by itself, yet alone winning an actual award.
My favorite commercial from the ‘Bou Salem’ series is the one below where he day dreams while drinking his tea, but you should really watch the case study video on top first which explains the campaign and is in English.
‘Flat’ is a new real estate app that just recently launched and unlike most new real estate projects, this one is starting off with a large selection of ads, over 1,500 at the time of this post.
Visually the app is decent looking but I found navigating through the listings a bit inefficient since at any one point you can only see two listings at a time while scrolling. One cool feature I did like though was the ability to find apartments available around you. Say you’re in an area you like, you can just launch the app and click on the “Nearby” option and the app will find apartments available in your vicinity.
Flat is free and available for both iOS and Android devices and you can download them using the following links: [Apple iOS] [Android]
You can also visit their website [Here]
uBuy is a local e-commerce website and their latest commercial (above) made it onto the Reddit front page on Saturday. Not sure if it was shot locally or somewhere else but it’s a pretty funny ad.
Just digitized this video taken at the Kuwait Ice Skating Rink back in April of 1995. 1991-92 is when I frequented the ice skating rink mostly and back then the music was amazing with hits like Snap – I got the Power and Soul II Soul – Back to Life. Still, the video above should bring back memories and if you look closely you can even spot the arcades in the background.
