2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Gatwa W Gahwa is a cat cafe thats soft launching this coming Saturday. They’re located in the basement of Galleria 2000 in Salmiya and they have around 10 cats which you can hang out and play with. The idea of a cat cafe isn’t new, I got to experience one around 5 years ago when I was in Japan, but this will be the first cat cafe in Kuwait and only the second in the region.

The price for spending time and playing with the cats is KD3.5 for half an hour or KD5 for an hour. They will be offering discounts for those who wish to stay longer and even a monthly membership for those who want to come in everyday. You’ll also be able to book the whole place for book readings or even cat yoga. I was there earlier today and the cats are super cute and really playful. I was pretty surprised at how beautiful some of the cats were, for some reason when I heard they were rescued cats I was expecting to find a cafe fill with street cats but instead all the cats I interacted with were so cute and fluffy.

They’re soft opening from this Saturday and their timings during Ramadan will be 12PM to 4PM and then 8PM to 12AM. After Ramadan their working hours will be 11AM to 10PM. They’ll also have an online reservation system up and running this weekend. For more information check out their instagram account @catcafeq8

PS: Remember Abdulai? He now works at the Cat Cafe!

Update: Their website and reservation system is now online [Here]

Yesterday I headed to Em Sherif with Fajer the lawyer for futoor. I had pre-booked a few days earlier but was on a waiting list and luckily a table freed up so we went. If you’ve never been to Em Sherif before in Beirut or Dubai, it’s basically an upscale Lebanese restaurant with a set menu. The Kuwait location just opened up a few weeks ago in Bida’a behind Palms and I’ve been meaning to try it ever since I found out about it.

Photo from their instagram account @emsherifkuwait

The interior is beautiful and very tastefully done but star of the evening had to be the food. The amount of food we ate last night was just insane, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten that much before. The dishes kept coming one after the other and by dish #22 I had to ask the waiter how many dishes in total they were. They serve a total of 35 dishes, thats basically a 35 course meal and it’s crazy. I was falling into a food coma before I even finished having lunch. They really should give you a medal or some sort of certificate for completing the set menu, kinda like how you get a medal just for completing a marathon.

The service was also superb and just the overall experience was fantastic. The cost is KD25 per person (soft drinks not included) and it really is great value for money. Right now, this is by far my favorite Lebanese restaurant in Kuwait and I’ll definitely be going back.

For reservations you can call them on 90977997.

Flight compensation legal services company AirHelp ranked 76 airports by punctuality, quality, service, as well as the social media sentiment of over 130,000 tweets over three months this year. According to the final result, the Kuwait Airport ranked the worst in the world.

I mean I agree that the airport is not the best in the world but the worst seems pretty harsh. Somehow Dubai also came 7th which doesn’t make sense and Los Angeles which I think have a great airport came in 10th. Check out the full article [Here]

Thanks AJ

My favorite local animal rescue organization K’S PATH is sadly closing down. I wasn’t told why, just that the staff were informed yesterday, and that today they would make an official announcement. Once they do I’ll update the post with more details.

Losing K’S PATH is going to be a great loss for animal lovers in Kuwait. They’ve rescued everything from chickens to eagles and I’ve always recommended them to anyone looking to get a dog or cat. This is really sad news.

Update: K’S PATH just announced their closure officially, below is a snippet from their press release:

K’S PATH announced this morning the decision to close K’S PATH by the end of six months that is December 2017. All animals at the K’S PATH shelter will be adopted out in Kuwait or will be rehomed in international shelters. No animals will be put down. Citing reasons for closing K’S PATH, Sheikha Fatima M. Al Sabah explains that the K’S PATH team has worked very hard for the past 12 years to protect Kuwait’s animals and the environment and thankfully, much has been achieved through the years. Therefore the decision to close the Society is not based on financial or administrative reasons or as a result of any problem; but this decision was made based on the knowledge that Kuwait’s animals and environment will be cared for by compassionate people in the community. She further adds that the new animal protection and environmental laws passed by Kuwait’s Parliament reflect the progressive approach of the Government authorities to foster future generations that appreciate Kuwait’s natural heritage.

You can read the full statement [Here]

Cinescape have finally given their website a much needed facelift and just in time before Eid. The new website makes looking for, and booking a movie a much faster experience with a lot less clicking and page reloads.

When you first enter the website you have all the movies currently showing listed, if you’re looking for movies playing in a specific Cinescape location, you just click on the location on the left sidebar and it will filter out all the movies not playing in that location without having to reload the page. Booking is also a much quicker process now with the quick book option and overall you can do a lot more now without having to leave the main page. The website also looks pretty great on mobile browsers.

The only thing that seems to be missing in the new redesign is the banned movies section. Cinescape used to have a page where they would list all the movies that were banned by the MOI and it seems they’ve now removed that in this new version of the website.

If you want to check out their new website, click [Here]

The video above is an interview that Generation Iron Fitness Network held with Arnold Classic winner, Brandon Curry on why he thinks Kuwait produces so many great body builders (specifically Oxygen Gym).

Brandon lived and trained in Kuwait before and he thinks Kuwait produces a lot of amazing body builders because of two things; The first is that Oxygen is one the best equipped and body building focused gyms in the world. The second is that when body builders move to Kuwait from their home countries, they are a lot more focused. There aren’t as many distractions like family and the whole social life they had back home. In Kuwait its basically eat, sleep, train and repeat. That actually makes a lot of sense.

With the introduction of compact drones like the DJI Mavic and the super tiny DJI Spark, I’ve recently been considering getting into drone photography myself. They seem super practical to travel with and I could really have taken advantage of one on my trip a couple of weeks back. I’m currently checking with Fajer the Lawyer to see what the latest laws on flying drones in Kuwait are, since I know last year they proposed a bunch of things. Until she gets back to me I figured I’d ask my readers, do you fly drones and if yes, have you run into any issues with cops or people?

Also on a side note, if anybody is bored of their Mavic and wants to sell it, let me know!

New bylaws were passed yesterday that now allow some businesses to operate legally with a license from their homes (aka home business). There are some requirements to obtain this license including the following:

– Kuwaitis only can apply for a home license
– Must be older than 21 years old
– You need permission from the home owner
– The license is mostly for services such as designers, calligraphist, illustrators, photographers, web and app developers, watchmakers, gardeners, technicians, event planners, translators, museums, and so on.
– No cupcakes, or burgers or any other food businesses can be licensed from homes

The Ministry of Commerce does not want to turn residential areas into commercial areas, they still want homes to be homes but a lot of businesses don’t involve a lot of interaction with customers or require customers to come over and so it doesn’t make sense that those businesses require a commercial space. The ministry has stated that the above law will come into effect first day after Eid.

I want to dedicate this post to my dear friend Ahmed Al Gharabally who recently passed away. Ahmed was a lobbyist and an activist that worked really hard on bringing this law to life through @legalizekw, a campaign that was launched to make home business in Kuwait legal. May you RIP Ahmed. It is great to see young Kuwaitis actively suggest new laws, and the new and young minister of commerce and industry Mr. Khaled Al Roudhan has done a wonderful job listening to their suggestions and attending their events.

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.

eSports is a form of competition that involves video games and it’s a scene thats blowing up pretty big worldwide with teams making millions of dollars off of sponsorships and prize money. If you do a quick google image search for esports stadiums you’ll find photos of large stadiums and arenas packed with people watching gamers compete against one another (similar to the one below). It’s pretty insane really and regionally it’s also starting to blow up. A number of eSports competitions are being held locally and around the region, and one Kuwaiti team has been making waves recently, Evolve Gaming.

Evolve Gaming was formed early this year and is composed of 6 members aged between 17 and 26. Recently they came first in the largest Overwatch tournament in the Middle East and Africa destroying the competition. Overwatch is a multiplayer first-person shooter and Evolve Gaming beat the popular and more established Dubai based team YaLLa eSports 3-0. Even though YaLLa has sponsors, a large fanbase, more support and a proper e-gaming atmosphere, the Kuwaiti team managed to beat them with ease and just a couple months after being formed.

Evolve Gaming is currently ranked as the #1 Overwatch team in the Middle East and Africa and so I got in touch with them recently to get an idea of what our local scene lacks and how I can help. According to a team member I spoke to, one of the biggest issues we have locally is the lack of awareness. Even though the eSports scene is growing rapidly abroad, locally not a lot of people know about it although its starting to pick up with a few gaming tournaments taking place locally like the Kuwait’s eSports Tournament and the Hydra Entertainment Tournaments. Evolve Gaming is hoping large companies will realize this is a growing market and help it grow even quicker by sponsoring local teams and tournaments. By having large companies sponsor local teams and events, it would bring a lot more attention to this sport which will also encourage more teams to formed and more events to take place.

Hopefully my post will help bring a bit of exposure to their community. If you’d like to follow Evolve Gaming they’re active on twitter @EvolveGamingKW. If you’re also a company that is interested in sponsoring Evolve Gaming or a tournament, get in touch and I’ll pass you their contacts.

This is a short film showcasing one of the best wetland reserves in Kuwait, the Al-Jahra Natural Reserve. With scenes similar to the one pictured below you wouldn’t guess this was Kuwait. So beautiful.

Last week the Public Authority for Civil Information setup shop at our offices for a few days and offered all the employees their services including setting up an e-Signature. Since it didn’t involve any effort, I decided to setup my e-Signature, but even after reading the documentation on it [Read it Here], I still have no idea what this will be used for.

Basically the procedure to setup my e-Signature just involved creating a pin for my Civil ID card. My Civil ID card now has a pin code in the same way your ATM has a pin code, except unlike my ATM card I have no idea what I can use this pin for. One follower on twitter told me KOC employees use it with a specific machine they have to get their salary statements and other documents. Do you use it? If yes, what for?

Yesterday Apple updated their MacBook Pro lineup and so I decided to post a quick update on my experience with the Touch Bar. If you’re trying to decide if you should get the MacBook Pro with or without the Touch Bar, this is my quick feedback after using it for nearly 6 months, it’s worth getting.

Since I got the MacBook Pro I’ve been experimenting with it a lot, customizing it to my liking and trying to understand how to make best use of it. After 6 months, I’ve basically resorted to using it as a secondary display, and I like that. For the past few months I’ve been using my Touch Bar with the setup you can see in the image above. I have half of the Touch Bar working as a stock ticker keeping me posted constantly on how my stocks are doing, while the other half dedicated to my music controls and an emoji shortcut button. The area further to the right of that can’t be customized and includes Apple mandatory shortcuts like volume control, screen brightness, spotlight shortcut etc..

I’ve customized my Touch Bar to permanently display the above information in nearly every application since I realized I wasn’t using the default shortcuts that apps would display. Some programs like FaceTime I leave it at the applications default display since I like the information thats displayed, in FaceTime’s case the amount of time I’ve been on the call for. I actually like how customizable the Touch Bar is although I’m using the third part software BetterTouchTool to be able to do that.

So if you’re trying to decide if you should get the Touch Bar version of the MacBook Pro or not, I’d personally recommend you get the Touch Bar version. Other than making your laptop look a lot more futuristic and different from the MacBook you’re replacing (I’m assuming you already own a MacBook), the Touch Bar does have functionality and you’ll love the ability to customize it. Want it to display the name of the song you’re listening to? You can do that. Want it to have custom shortcuts? You can do that. It’s really flexible so if you like to tinker and personalize stuff you’ll love it.

A couple of months back, Fitbit sent me their latest fitness tracker to review, the Alta HR. I’m a mechanical watch kind of guy and so don’t own an Apple Watch so figured this would be a good alternative. I’d be able to keep wearing my mechanical watches on one wrist, and a fitness tracker on the other.

The Fitbit Alta HR is a pretty great looking tracker, it’s slim and looks like a regular rubber bracelet and so can be worn on the opposite wrist of your watch and not look like you’re wearing two watches. The biggest selling point for me with the Fitbit was the fact it had a heart rate monitor. I’ve been going to spinning quite a bit and was curious to know how many calories I was burning exactly. Since the Fitbit could monitor my heart rate, I assumed it would be great at that one job… it wasn’t. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

The Alta HR has a pretty simple and straight forward screen that can display the time, your heart rate, how many steps you’ve done, how many calories you’ve burned and a bunch of other information. You flip through the screens by tapping the screen and using the Fitbit app on your phone, you can even customize what information you want to show on the screen and in what order. So in my case the first screen would show me my heart rate, second screen the calories burned, followed by my active minutes and finally the battery life.

I like the screen because of its simplicity but I hate the responsiveness of it. I have quick view turned off since I don’t want the screen to turn on randomly when I raise or flick my wrist, so to turn the screen on I need to tap it. Problem is, 99% of the time it doesn’t turn on with the first tap, 70% of the time it doesn’t turn on with the second tap, 30% of the time it doesn’t turn on with the 3rd tap either. I have to tap the screen a few times to get it to wake up and thats very frustrating. The other major issue I have with the Alta HR is that the heart rate monitor doesn’t seem to work when I’m sweaty which is when I need it to work the most since thats when I’m working out. During spinning when I’m curious to see my heart rate, I need to tap a few times on the screen to turn it on and when it finally would come on I’d get “–” which means it can’t read my heart rate. Then the screen shuts off again and I tap it a few times to wake it up and I get “–” again. Then the screen shuts off and I tap it again a few times and suddenly its reading my heart rate and showing “148” or whatever my heart rate is at that moment. So much work and in the middle of spinning its really unpractical.

The worst part is it doesn’t seem to be accurate at all. Saturday I ditched my gym and didn’t do any exercise other than binge watch season 2 of “F is for Family” and my Fitbit says I burned 2,995 calories that day. Yesterday on the other hand I had 45 minutes of spinning and my Fitbit says I burned 3,084 calories all day. It won’t do the one thing I wanted the Fitbit to do which is let me know how many calories I’m burning during spinning. It doesn’t make any sense.

On the bright side, it does seem to be good at doing one thing really well, monitoring my sleep. The Fitbit is pretty accurate in knowing when you fall asleep and when you wake up. It also uses your heart rate to monitor how much deep sleep you’re getting, if you’re waking up in the middle of the night and how much light sleep you’re getting. So if you want to monitor your sleeping patterns this is actually a pretty great tracker for that. Another great feature is the ability to vibrate when you get a phone call or message. My phone is always on silent and I tend to not notice it vibrating sometimes. Now my wrist vibrates as well and so I haven’t missed a call ever since I started wearing the Fitbit. Battery life on this thing is also fantastic, it lasts around a week of constant use which means you don’t have to constantly be charging it.

Overall though I’m pretty disappointed with the Alta HR. The biggest selling point for me was the ability to monitor my heart rate and let me know how many calories I was burning but that didn’t work out as planned. The FitBit Alta HR is selling for around KD54 on [Xcite] and KD59 on [Blink]. Here is a link to the official Fitbit Alta HR product page [Link]

A few years ago I posted about my favorite place to print digital photos, Boushahri off of Baghdad Street in Salmiya. Since that post two things have happened, first they merged or got bought out (not sure which) by their old competitor Ashkanani who used to be located across the street from them. The second thing that happened is they changed locations.

Saturday night I passed by their old Baghdad Street location to print some photos and found them closed. So I passed by yesterday morning and they were still closed. I just figured their Ramadan timings were weird and I was missing them. Then by chance last night, I was walking over from my apartment building to the ATM machine in the building next door when I came across their new location. I recognized all the employees before I noticed the sign outside and walked in. Turns out they had just moved to the new location this past Saturday.

Ashkanani can print your digital photos in various sizes, I usually print them in 10×15 and it costs 150fils per photo. For film lovers they also sell 35mm film in their store and they can also develop any size of film including 35mm and 120mm (as long as its color film).

So if you’re looking for a place to develop your photos, here is their location on [Google Maps]. If you’re driving there then I would recommend you park in the lot next to McDonalds across the street.

Update: Found a cheaper and quicker place to develop film. Click here for more info.

I had no idea Em Sherif was opening in Kuwait so I was pretty surprised to find out they had recently opened up. Em Sherif is an upscale fine dining Lebanese restaurant that offers a set menu for lunch and dinner. I’ve been to their Dubai location and it’s always a fantastic experience with really amazing food accompanied by a beautiful interior and mood. In Kuwait they opened up at Palms and costs KD25 per person.

If you’re interested they’re on instagram @emsherifkuwait

Photo by @Greytriangleee