2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Major legal changes to the Kuwait Labor Law (6/2010) were issued today (July 9) and they’re to the benefit of employees. I have simplified the most important points and explained them below:

When can you apply for a holiday (paid leave)?
Previously: You can apply for leave after working for 9 months
Now: You can apply for leave after working for 6 months

How do you calculate the amount of leave days you have?
Previously: 6 days a week, even if Saturdays are not working days
Now: 5 days a week, employer can’t include weekends
The minimum amount of leave days a year by law is 30 days. With the new law if you take 30 days off that would amount to a total of 6 weeks since weekends can no longer be included in your leave.

Termination indemnity for Kuwaitis
Previously: When you quit your job the company would deduct the amount they paid towards your social security from your severance package
Now: Employer cannot deduct you social security payments from your severance package
Some companies are now issuing cheques for the previous employees with the amounts they had deducted

Kuwait is progressing noticeably and these new updates to the labor law are a great change.

For any legal inquiries, please email me on [email protected] and my team or I will get back to you within 24 hours.

Post by Fajer Ahmed – Legal Counsel
The legal opinions expressed in this post are those of the author Fajer. Opinions expressed by Mark or any other writer on mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com are those of the individual’s and in no way reflect Fajer’s opinion.

Photo by Mohammed AlSultan

My mum moved to Kuwait back in 1968 to work as a personal trainer at a local gym (yup, she was an OG PT) before joining Kuwait Airways as a flight attendant. My dad on the other hand moved to Kuwait in 1972 and worked as a self employed interior designer. They eventually met, got married, had kids and continued to live here until last week, when my parents moved out of their apartment and left Kuwait for good.

People always ask me if I have any plans on leaving. The thing is, eventually, all expats have to leave Kuwait.

Even though my parents were living in Kuwait for nearly 50 years, they had as much rights and benefits as someone who just moved to Kuwait last week. They still needed a sponsor, they still needed to renew their papers every year and they couldn’t own any property.

I was thinking how depressing that must be, living and working in a country for nearly 50 years and still have to put up with so much bureaucracy. Not only that, but they moved to Kuwait when it was expat friendly, and then watched it over the years turn into a country that dislikes its expat population (not all of you), thats difficult to take in as well. If you can’t get permanent residency or own property after living all your life in a country that doesn’t want you here in the first place, how can you retire in it?

I’ve already been in Kuwait for 38 years and I call it my home, but the reality is, no matter how long I’ll be here for, Kuwait can sadly never be my home and eventually, I’ll have to leave as well.

A short while ago fire was reported at the construction site of Avenues Phase 4. Firefighters are currently arriving at the scene, no open flames can be seen from the main road (as of now) but theres lots of smoke.

According on an engineer from the site, the fire is located in the “Forum” area of Avenues Phase 4 which you can see on the map above.

I’ll update this post with more pictures and information as I get them. Hopefully this doesn’t turn into a major fire like last weekend.

update: Looks like the fire was put out before it spread

Thanks Dragos

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

New This Week:
Science Fiction Volume One: The Osiris Child (6.5)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (8.2)
The Dinner (4.9)

Other Movies Showing:
2:22 ♦
Despicable Me 3 (6.6)
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:

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.

“Way Too On” is a new music video by Kuwaiti rapper Element that was released a few days ago. If you like his music make sure to check out his website aboveallelements.com for more tracks and information.

Yesterday my brother asked me if I knew what the Arabica Coffee symbol % was. I thought I had shared it on the blog before but turns out I hadn’t. In case you’ve ever wondered what their % sign represented, it’s basically the coffee plant simplified, check out the image below. Smart.

Does anyone know where I can find an OBDII scanner for the car in Kuwait? They cost peanuts on Amazon but figured someone must sell them locally? Preferably a bluetooth one.

OBD stands for on-board diagnostics and is the term referring to the car’s self-diagnostic and reporting capability. If your engine light comes on, you can plug in the OBD scanner and the car will tell you what caused the engine light to come on. The OBD can also give you real time information about your car like car speed, engine temperature, fuel rate etc..

If you’re looking to go out to sea with a bunch of friends and don’t own a yacht then this may be of interest to you. Silsan is a marina company that has a bunch of yachts available for rent. Their prices start from KD15 an hour and can go up to as much as KD85 an hour depending on the size and kind of yacht. They also have different departure points like Salmiya and Khiran. These prices are per hour, per boat and not per person. So its KD15 if you’re 2 people or 8 people as long as the number doesn’t exceed the yachts maximum carrying capacity. These prices also includes the crew.

To check out what yachts are available to rent click this [Link]
To book a yacht you can call them up on 25650674

Since I last posted about the new Kuwait airport in May, a lot of progress has been made based on satellite imagery from Google Maps. Since I could now clearly see the outline of the new airport, I decided I’d overlay our current airport just to get an idea of how big the new airport is going to be.

I managed to fit six of our current airpot over the new one (same scale). This means the new airport is roughly six times bigger than the current one!

To view the updated satellite imagery, click on the following link from a mobile device (desktop will show old imager) [Google Maps]

While we’re on the subject of airlines…

British Airways
Not sure how its possible but BA always seem to have the cheapest business class tickets to the States; at least to LA, and by always I mean whenever I want to go. And I’m talking like 40-50% cheaper than anybody else. So if you’re planning on traveling to the States check out their prices now since there is a promo running. [Link]

Qatar Airways
If you missed out on the Qatar Airways offers during Eid it came back yesterday. I got a ridiculously great priced ticket for a trip to Europe next month, literally half the price of competition. So again if you’re looking to travel soon, check their prices out as well. [Link]

Etihad
Finally, in case you missed this bit of news yesterday, you can now carry electronics onboard your flights to the US if you’re flying with Etihad. They’re the only airline in the region which you can now carry electronics onboard US flights. [Link]

Wataniya Airways is getting close to relaunch and they’ve updated their website with the first three destinations they’ll be flying to which are:

Azerbaijan
Georgia
Sarajevo

If someone had asked me to guess their first ten destinations, neither of these three would have made my list. They seem like such low traffic destinations to be flying to but supposedly they’re popular destinations for conservatives. That’s interesting, and smart.

When Wataniya Airways launched the first time around they were flying to popular destinations like Beirut and Dubai so they were competing with a number of other airlines. This time around it seems they’re trying to carve a niche for themselves and now I’m curious to see what else they’ll be adding.

Here is a link to their [Website]

Thanks Abdullah

Galaxy Juice are one of my favorite local bands and they just released a music video yesterday for their new single ‘Awaken The Sunshine’. It’s a pretty nice video and the track is really great so check it out.

If you like their music follow them on [Instagram] [Twitter] or [Facebook]

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!