2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

The Onam Festival is back and will be taking place tomorrow Monday the 4th of September. Onam is the biggest and most important festival of the state of Kerala in India and it’s also celebrated here in Kuwait. A few Southern Indian restaurants in Kuwait offer the traditional vegetarian dish the Onasadya during the festival and below are some of those restaurants.

Caesar’s Dakshin Restaurant – Jeleeb Al-Shuyoukh, Al Jawhara Building
Price: KD3.500
Telephone: 24319191, 24310303 [Map]

Udupi Restaurant – Fahaheel, Green Tower
Price: KD2.250
Telephone: 25456565 [Map]

Saravanaa Bhavan – Fahaheel, Humoud Towers
Price: KD2.500
Telephone: 23929099 [Map]

If you know of any more places serving Onam, let us know in the comments.

I just got back from having dinner at Dai Forni, the new Italian restaurant at the newly opened Four Seasons Hotel. The hotel just opened up a couple of days ago along with the restaurants Dai Forni, Elements, Al Bandar and Al Soor lobby lounge.

Dai Forni is currently fully booked for the next 5 days because of Eid, but you could call and reserve spots for after Eid. Sintoho the Pan-Asian restaurant is still not open for now but will be opening in the next 2-3 weeks.

Four Seasons is located in Kuwait City opposite Discovery Mall [Google Maps] and their instagram account is @fskuwait. Their phone number is 22006000.

For more pictures of the hotel, check out my previous post [Here]

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

New This Week:
American Made (7.5) ★ ♦
Birth of the Dragon (4.1)
Inhumans (N/A)
The Dragon Spell (6.2)
The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature (4.5)
Wind River (8.0) ♦
Wish Upon (4.7)

Other Movies Showing:
Annabelle: Creation (7.2) ♦
Blind (5.2) ♦
Bling (4.6)
Bushwick (6.4)
Dunkirk (8.6) ♦ ★
Kidnap (6.0)
Logan Lucky (7.5) ★
Security (5.8)
Seven Sisters (6.9)
The Beguiled (6.9) ♦
The Emoji Movie (1.7)
The Hatton Garden Job (6.6)
The Hitman’s Bodyguard (7.3)
The Recall (5.1) ♦
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (6.7)
War for the Planet of the Apes (8.5) ★

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

A Beautiful Planet 3D (7.9)
Dream Big 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.

Now that Game of Thrones finished for the season last night, I thought it would be an appropriate time to share some great new shows I recently watched.

13 Reasons Why
This show first aired back in April but I just got around to watching it a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t sure at first if I’d like it but I got hooked right away. 13 Reasons Why is about a high school girl called Hannah who ends up committing suicide. Before she died, she recorded 13 tapes with each tape discussing one of the 13 reasons why she decided to commit suicide. The show is 13 episodes long with every episode covering one tape and I loved that format. Although a lot of people found the show disturbing when it was first released, but I don’t think it’s that bad. Actually the only thing I found disturbing in the show was her suicide scene which I forwarded through anyway since I don’t like watching emotional scenes like that (or rape scenes for that matter). If you have Netflix, watch this if you haven’t already.

Atypical
Atypical aired a couple of weeks ago and I binge watched all 8 episodes back to back in one day. I loved it and its right up there in my top 5 or 6 shows of this year but thats probably because the show deals with autism, a subject I’ve been fascinated with for some time now. The show follows an 18-year old high school student called Sam, who is autistic and has decided to try and find a girl friend. The result is a lot of super awkward scenes and some really great development of characters including the dad who’s played by Michael Rapaport. This show is also on Netflix, and is also a must watch.

Ozark
Starring one of my favorite comedians Jason Bateman, this show is far from being a comedy. Ozark is a super dark drama in which Jason Bateman plays the role of a financial advisor that ends up relocating his family to the Missouri Ozarks after his dealings with a drug cartel go wrong. It’s such an out of character role for Bateman especially when he’s mostly know for his character Michael Bluth on the television sitcom Arrested Development. But Bateman played the role so well that now its going to be awkward for me getting used to him again as Michael Bluth when the 5th season of Arrested Development premiers. This is the last show on my list here but if you had time to just watch just one, this would be the one I’d recommend.

I’ve been wanting to review this lithium jump starter ever since I got it, but I didn’t have a reason to use it until last night. While leaving the gym my car wouldn’t start because the battery had died. Usually in a situation like that you’d start asking cars around you if they had jumper cables and if they could help you jump start your car. Super awkward and involves you having to rely on and get help from complete strangers.

But a few months ago I read about lithium jump starters and decided to order one to keep in the car for situations exactly like the one I experienced last night. Lithium jump starters are small lithium battery packs that you connect to your car’s battery when dead to help restart it. It’s super easy to use, you just turn on the battery pack, connect the red jumper cable to the red terminal on your car battery, the black jumper cable to the black terminal and thats it. You then go back into your car and turn on the ignition and voila! Even if you’re not a car expert its pretty easy to do.

There are different brands of these battery packs with different strengths, I got the NOCO Genius Boost Plus GB40 1000 from Amazon which has 4.5 stars and over 1,300 reviews. The battery is good enough to jump start a car 20 times and the model I got can jump start engines as large as 6 liters (so basically overkill for my needs). This battery packed saved me a lot of time and awkwardness last night and got me out of the horrible humid weather back into my air conditioned car pretty quickly. Even though it’s not something you’d use often, a battery pack like this should definitely be in your car as part of your emergency kit. You can even use it to charge your phone and has a built in flash light.

I’ve seen similar jump starters available locally, but I wanted the NOCO branded one and so bought mine from Amazon for KD29. It’s extremely well built and the overall quality of the case and cables is top-notch. Here is the [Amazon Link]

Yesterday, a Jazeera Airways flight coming in from Riyadh collided with a military balloon similar to the one pictured below (actually might be the very same one). A friend sent me the video above which shows the balloon falling through the air and the damage done to the Jazeera plane. According to Jazeera, the plane continued to operate normally and land safely with all the passengers disembarking normally.

The Directorate General for Civil Aviation is currently investigating the incident to identify the on-ground and in-air circumstances that led to this incident.

The Kuwait Municipality have launched a campaign asking citizens to take photos of violations and send it to their social media accounts so they can fix the issues. They don’t mention the kinds of violations to report, but based on their instagram it looks like garbage related issues, abandoned cars, illegal banners and food related violations. To report an issue you’ll have to photograph the violation and then send it to their instagram or twitter accounts @kuwmun.

It’s a pretty great crowdsourcing initiative, but I just wish the process wasn’t so clumsy. A better solution would be a dedicated app like Deera. The Deera app allows you take photos, share the GPS location, mention what kind of issue you’re reporting and it doesn’t require you to have a social media account allowing you to remain anonymous. It would also make the municipality’s life easier since managing instagram messages isn’t the most practical thing in the world and instagram messaging lacks basic features such as flagging.

What I’d really love is an app like Metrash2 which allows citizens in Qatar to report traffic violations. Now that’s an app I’d have a lot of fun with.

If you’ve been to Murouj then you’ve probably noticed the construction taking place next to their large parking lot. That’s part of the Murouj expansion project and yesterday I was able to get a list of some of the places that are opening there:

Beit Shoukri
Blaze Pizza
Dean & Deluca
Häagen-Dazs
Illy Coffee
Katsuya
Mana by Ubon
Shake Shack
Shishawarma
Solia Mediterranean Food

There will also be a space available for pop-ups. I’m still trying to find out when phase 3 is expected to finish, and once I have that information I’ll update this post.

As you are probably aware by now, K’S PATH will be closing their doors by the end of the year. Since they still have a lot of cats and dogs yet to be adopted, they’ve decided to waive their standard adoption fee and now all adoptions are for free. They’ve got a ton of super cute animals left so if you’ve been considering getting a pet, click [Here]

Does anyone know if there is any place in Kuwait that broadcasts the F1 races live? I don’t think the F1 community in Kuwait is that big but just maybe there’s a place that broadcast the races just because they’re on. Just a few days ago a friend was also asking me for places that played NFL games. Makes me think we really need a sports cafe in Kuwait that isn’t a shisha place.

A few interesting events are taking place this weekend. There is a comic con event called SuperCon starting from today, there is also the Aeropress Championship which is taking place at Barba on Friday and finally a new indoor market called Market Space thats being held on Saturday. Check out the full list of events below:

Thursday
CAP Collection: Contemporary Sculpture
SuperCon 2017
XE Pro Gaming Tournament
Western Music at Al Hamra Tower

Friday
SuperCon 2017
XE Pro Gaming Tournament
Kuwait Aeropress Championship

Saturday
SuperCon 2017
XE Pro Gaming Tournament
Yoga with the 3
MARKETSPACE by ARTSPACE
Q8 Readers Book Club

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:
Bushwick (6.4)
Logan Lucky (7.5) ★
Seven Sisters (6.9)
The Beguiled (6.9) ♦
The Hitman’s Bodyguard (7.3)
The Recall (5.1) ♦

Other Movies Showing:
Annabelle: Creation (7.2) ♦
Baby Driver (8.3) ♦ ★
Bling (4.6)
Dunkirk (8.6) ♦ ★
Kidnap (6.0)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (7.0)
Security (5.8)
The Dark Tower (7.7)
The Emoji Movie (1.7)
The Hatton Garden Job (6.6)
The Wall (6.3)
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (6.7)
War for the Planet of the Apes (8.5) ★

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

A Beautiful Planet 3D (7.9)
Dream Big 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.

Want to be an instagram influencer? Nowadays buying fake followers, likes and even comments takes only a few clicks of a button. So when I read an article on fake influencers on mediakix last week, I thought it would be worth sharing since instagram influencers are a pretty big thing in Kuwait. The ability to buy followers and engagement so easily now is making it harder for brands to find authentic influencers to deal with which in return is effecting legit influencers as well.

To make things even more complicated, there are support groups of a sort that make it even harder for brands to figure out if the engagement is real or not. Say you want to be a travel blogger, you could join one of these “support groups” which include other travel bloggers and then whenever you post a picture the other travel bloggers will leave comments on your photos and you would do the same back whenever they post a picture.

What I found interesting about this specific article is how they used around $300 to create and build a fake instagram account, and then got brand sponsorship deals. So if the whole influencer situation facinates you, check out the article [Here]

The popular internet speed testing website Speedtest.net has a global index that is updated on a monthly basis ranking mobile and fixed broadband connections around the world. So how is Kuwait currently doing compared to the rest of the world?

Mobile Internet
Rank: 56th
Average Speed: 19.59 Mbps

Fixed Broadband
Rank: 83rd
Average Speed: 14.73 Mbps

I’m actually pretty surprised with the fixed broadband speed since I would have expected it to be a lot lower due to the fact that fiber isn’t widespread yet. Actually I’m also pretty surprised with our mobile internet speeds since I rarely get over 4 Mbps unless I’m in Kuwait City and even then it’s usually around 15-17 Mbps.

Regionally UAE ranked the highest for Mobile Internet coming in 7th with an average speed of 43.98 Mbps while Qatar ranked the highest in Fixed Broadband coming in 49th with an average speed of 27.78 Mbps.

For more information and the full rankings click [Here]

One of the biggest boxing fights of our time is taking place this Saturday, August 26th. Its sort of a crossover fight since Conor McGregor, one of the biggest MMA stars who fights in the UFC is crossing over into boxing to fight the eleven-time five-division professional boxing world champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. If you’re in Kuwait, here are three ways to watch the fight:

OSN: If you’re an OSN subscriber you can watch the fight on OSN Sports Box Office HD. The cost is $20 and here is a link with more information [Link]

Cinescape: Cinescape has partnered up with OSN to broadcast the fight at one of their theaters. Not much information on this yet other than this one post on the Cinescape instagram account [Here]. So you’ll have to check their instagram account before the event for more info.

Online: You can purchase the pay per view on the UFC website. Cost is 30 euros but includes one month access to UFC Fight Pass. For more details click [Here]

The main card will take place around 5 or 6AM Kuwait time so be prepared to either stay up late or wake up super early to watch the fight.

Update: Just to be clear, the fights take place Saturday in the US so its 5 or 6AM Sunday morning here in Kuwait.
Update2: Looks like Cinescape will no longer be broadcasting the fight