2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003
KNPC gas stations have started fitting nitrogen air to use for filling your tires up. So is nitrogen air better for your tires? Well firstly to take advantage you’d have to completely empty the air out of your current tires and fill it with nitrogen, but even then you won’t see any benefits according to Tiff from Fifth Gear. Check out his video below.
So regular air or nitrogen air, same same.
Yesterday I mentioned I found an old copy of a Kuwait TV Guide from 1989, what I failed to mention is that I bought it from an antique shop. I thought I had posted about these antique shops before, but when I searched through my blog, I couldn’t find anything about them. There is a basement in old Salmiya near Marina Mall filled with shops that sell antiques.
I passed by there last week since I needed to pick up a few items to use as props for a clients photoshoot, and thats when I got the old TV guide and a few other things. The shop I was in actually had a whole bunch of old TV guides along with a whole lot of old magazines and newspapers (even books) from the 50s and 60s all the way up to the 90s. I ended up buying a few things, a copy of “Majala Al Kuwait” from 1975, two 8-track tapes, the old TV guide and most importantly, a 7-inch vinyl record for the song “Haydoo – Our Camel, Lovely Camel”. If you aren’t familiar with the history of this song, I posted about it back in 2006 and its still an interesting read today. Here is the [Post]
Off of my head I think there are around 8 shops located in that basement all of which sell old memorabilia. There is one store that specializes in old records and another in old coins and rare bank notes, but most sell stuff you grew up with as a kid. In between all this randomness you’ll also find some super odd things like Nazi memorabilia.
The opening hours of the shops are pretty random since from my experience the owners are rarely there. But the building caretaker has the keys and will let you in if the shops are closed. If you find something you like he can take a photo and whatsapp it to the owner to get you a price but it also makes haggling more difficult. If you’re interested in checking these places out, the shops are located in the basement of a corner building near Marina Mall. The ground floor has shops that sell hair products but the basement is all antique stores. Here is the location on [Google Maps]
Off Road Performance (ORP) is a 4×4 aftermarket parts specialist that’s located right here in Kuwait. They are my go-to place whenever I need to upgrade anything in my FJ Cruiser and I’ve been using them ever since I found out about them back in 2010. They carry a bunch of popular 4×4 brands like FOX, Warn, Teraflex, KC Hilites, Bushwacker, Fabtech, Mickey Thompson and a lot more.
A couple of weeks ago, ORP launched an online shop which I found out about over the weekend and I’m in love with it. I also hate it a bit since I’m now worried I’m going to be on the website all the time looking for items to buy.
The website is clean looking and easy to flip through but my favorite aspect of it is that once you choose one of the sections (pictured above), you can then choose your car from a dropdown menu and the website will only show you parts that are compatible with your car. This small feature makes flipping through all the items a lot more efficient.
I’m so glad they setup a full fledged online store instead of going with the easier route of just turning their instagram account into a shop which is what a lot businesses tend to do. So if you’ve got a 4×4 and are looking for parts for it, check out their website [orp.com.kw]
Anybody who’s been to the Arabica coffeeshop in downtown probably noticed an opening soon hoarding across the street for a place called Skinny Fork. It had been under construction for the longest time, at least I noticed it ever since I first started passing by Arabica. Last week it finally opened and I got to pass by yesterday and try it out.
As you can guess from the name its a healthy restaurant. I was with a friend so we ordered a bunch of things including:
Kalafel: kale, chickpea falafel with tahini (KD1.300)
Lentil Tacos: brown lentils, cabbage, raw walnuts, spelt flour tortilla (KD2.500)
Messy Chickpea Burger: chickpea, avocado, homemade cashew sauce, oat bun and sweet potato fries (KD3.750)
Tropical Avo Dip: avocados, mango, lime (800fils)
Everything we had was actually pretty good and priced reasonably well. The place is small and cozy but I wish there was more natural daylight. They’re in their soft launch phase at the moment so their opening hours are bit tight if you’re planning to lunch there in the middle of the week. As of this post they open during the week only from 9AM to 2:30PM, Saturday 10:30AM to 4PM and they’re closed on Friday.
I took a picture of their menu and you can check it [Here] and make sure to check their instagram account for their latest opening hours @skinnyfork
I recently found a copy of Kuwait TV guide from August 1989 and figured I’d scan the KTV2 section and share it on the blog. For those of you who grew up in Kuwait during the 80s you’ll probably remember we had only two channels, KTV1 in Arabic and KTV2 in English. On good days we could also pick up the English Saudi channel and on rare occasions the Bahraini one. KTV2 used to only start at 6PM and then close down by midnight. Much simpler times.
1989 was a good year for TV, going through the guide I came across a lot of my old time favorites including:
Starman
Bionic Six
Charles in Charge (My childhood crush > Nicole Eggert)
Danger Bay
Simon & Simon
TV Bloopers & Practical Jokes
Silver Hawks
Miami Vice
Moonlighting
If you want to flip through the TV guide, I’ve scanned it and uploaded the pdf [Here]
Another busy weekend with a lot of variety, check out all the events taking place below:
Thursday
“La Lune” Summer 2017 Popup Shop
Musical: Beauty and the Beast
Art Stick Liquid Lip with Eliano Bou Assi
Cosmic Circus x Solo Pizza at BARBA
The Divan’s Movie Night: Bab’Aziz
Friday
Hatha Yoga in the Park
Good Game: Magic – The Gathering
Musical: Beauty and the Beast
RBMA presents Ah! Kosmos – Boom Beats & Essa Hashemi
Khaleejesque Magazine Pop-up
Saturday
Yoga with the 3
Musical: Beauty and the Beast
Khaleejesque Magazine Pop-up
International Museum Day
Guided Tour: Grand Mosque
Workshop: Art of Timelapse with Nikon
Introduction to Sign Language
St. Spray Soup
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:
A Family Man (7.0) ♦
Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom (5.9)
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (7.2)
Other Movies Showing:
Fast & Furious 8 (7.5)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (8.2) ♦ ★
Monolith (4.7)
Spark: A Space Tail (5.2)
Smurfs: The Lost Village (5.8)
The Boss Baby (6.5)
The Circle (7.5) ♦
The Lost City of Z (7.2) ♦
The movies below are 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.
A YouTube user going by the name jalili99Q8 has been uploading tons of old videos on Kuwait. The videos range from music videos, interviews, shows, documentaries and more. Personally I like the documentaries similar to the ones I’ve embedded in this post. Most of the videos I’ve come across have been in Arabic, but there are a few English ones and even if they’re in Arabic, you can still flip through them since the music is usually very 70s or Miami Vice 80s which is amazing.
I’ve shared some videos below but if you want to flip through his whole channel click [Here]
Thanks Twit
If you’re a PostaPlus MyBox user then here’s two pieces of good news:
1) They now have an iPhone app that will allow you to track your packages without having to log in every time to the app
2) You can now pay for your packages online (website and app)
The online payment is what I’m the most excited about since they’ve been promising it for a few years now. I hate carrying cash and if I’m not in the office when the delivery guy comes, it always meant someone else had to pay for the package on my behalf. Now at least I can get the payment sorted and just have the delivery guy drop off the package.
If you’re interested in downloading the app, here is the [Link]
The groundbreaking ceremony for the new Kuwait Airport terminal is currently on the way as I type this post out. For those of you who have recently been to the Sheikh Saad terminal, you might have noticed the new road that diverts around the site of the new airport.
If you look at the location with Google Maps you can make out the triangle which will eventually become the new airport (check below for a visual overlap). The new airport is not only happening, but it’s expected to be completed by 2020!
Red Bull Music Academy is bringing the acclaimed audiovisual artist Ah! Kosmos for a night of house and electronic music that will be held on the rooftop of Radisson Blu this coming Friday night. Local artists Boom Beats and Essa Hashemi will also be performing that night.
Tickets to the event are KD10 each but I’ve teamed up with Red Bull to giveaway two tickets to my readers. All you need to do to enter the draw is leave a comment below mentioning which energy drink is hosting the event. I will stop accepting entries in the comments section tomorrow at noon and then randomly choose one winner and notify them via email.
For more information on the event as well as the artists, click [Here]
Rules: Only one entry per person and please make sure you use a working email since the winner will be contacted by email. If winner doesn’t respond, another winner will be randomly chosen.
Update: Post closed for comments and using random.org I drew a number which was 42. The winner of the two tickets is “AP” and I just sent them an email. In case he doesn’t get back to me another number will be drawn.
The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report for 2017 by the World Economic Forum is out and Kuwait pretty much comes in last place in the Middle East with the only other country that performed worst being Yemen. Below is Kuwait’s world ranking compared to other Middle Eastern countries:
29 United Arab Emirates
47 Qatar
60 Bahrain
63 Saudi Arabia
66 Oman
75 Jordan
93 Iran
96 Lebanon
100 Kuwait
136 Yemen
Going through the data I found one thing pretty shocking, under the section “Environmental Sustainability”, Kuwait came in before last position world wide in 135th place. We also were at the bottom of the list when it came to “Cultural Resources and Business Travel”, “Natural Resources”, “International Openness” and “Prioritization of Travel & Tourism”.
The highest position we reached in any category was 31st place for “ICT Readiness” (information and communications technology). In that category Kuwait came first world wide in “Mobile-cellular telephone subscriptions /100 pop.” and third world wide for “Mobile-broadband subscriptions /100 pop”.
If you’re interested in read the whole report you can download it from [Here]
The Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Centre is currently one of the largest cultural and science projects in the world and once complete will house four museums, Natural History, Science, Islamic and Space.
Construction of the museums was already completed and currently the exhibits are being fitted. As you can imagine, there is a lot of logistics that goes into a project of this magnitude. Here is an excerpt from a recent article on the museum fit-out specialist BECK who are working on this project:
On international projects, there is a greater demand for technology, the use of more demanding and higher materials specifications, higher density of exhibits to floor space, the need for continuous communication on every level and the need for staff to be on location 100 per cent of the time.
This is illustrated at the Sheikh Abdullah Al Salam Cultural Centre where one small area is a live rain forest with soil, irrigation and newly planted trees (combined with specially manufactured scenically created trees and plants), which all back up to a one million litre aquarium with acrylic panels that are 500mm thick to contain the water.
“We have more than 150 multi-media requirements and about 20 films to be shot. Because of the climate there are only really two months that you can film in Kuwait – January and February – to get a good quality image. So, if you have a two-year project you have four months to do all your filming. If you miss that slot you delay the project for a year.” [Source]
If you’re interested in reading more articles similar to that then here are a few you could go through, if you know of any more let me know about them:
BECK – international museum fit-out: breaking the boundaries of what’s possible
International museum fit-out – UK specialists taking on the world
The Hub – from UK blockbusters to mega projects abroad
The cultural centre is slated to open by the end of the year. For renderings and more information on the project, click [Here]
If you missed the car park drift competition this past weekend, someone made of a video of the whole thing and uploaded it online. It’s a pretty good video (minus the music) and Sirbb Circuit seems like the perfect venue for this event. [Vimeo]
Staged in Kuwait, my favorite local community theater group needs a new home since the rent is increasing at their current location. Over the weekend they posted the following message on their Facebook group:
HELP! SIK needs a new home. With rent prices climbing and climbing we have to vacate our studio rehearsal space this summer, leaving the future of all our activities in jeopardy. As a not-for-profit group working on very small margins we have been very lucky to have our rent frozen for the past five years allowing us to use a villa basement as rehearsal room and storage for everything that we bring to the stage. From kids drama classes to evening and weekend rehearsals, we run a busy program and desperately need to find a new place to call home. If you can help with great real estate contacts, offers, suggestions or the like – please get in touch via messenger. Our sixth season hangs in the balance and without a new home ‘Beauty and the Beast’ may well be the last show you get to enjoy from Staged in Kuwait.
If you can help then get in touch with them [Here]
