If you’ve been hanging out in the city recently, you might have spotted various yellow colored posters around the coffee district with the hashtag #FilipoTakesKuwait. Typing the hashtag in instagram will lead you to @filipothefilipino where you’ll find very little information as well. So what is it all about?
Filipo The Filipino is going to be a pop-up event thats going to be taking place over two days early next month. The guys behind it are bringing in a Filipino chef from the Michelin Star restaurant “L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon” to serve a menu he created that will include deconstructed popular Filipino dishes like Adobo and Halo Halo.
The event will be taking place at the beautiful Al Khaled Diwan thats located right next to the Sadu House on the Gulf Road. For more details on the event including exact date and a map, click [Here]
There is a low detail 3D walkthrough video of the new Terminal 2 airport available online. It’s divided into two parts, first part is arrival to the airport, checking-in and then heading towards your gate. The second part is getting off the plane and heading to the baggage pickup area. There is no audio in the video and you can skim through it without missing anything important.
Guys, if you feel like having a delicious donut, DOH! has a popup at the Food Buzz market thats taking place today and tomorrow at KIPCO Tower. I finally got to try their donuts and damn it was so good. Definitely worth the million calories.
The rendering above is of the new and approved design proposal for the Palace of Justice which was unveiled a few days ago. I think it looks incredible good and I’m so glad they didn’t end up going with a ridiculously tall skyscraper like the new Central Bank building. The project is going to be overseen by the Amiri Diwan which means we can expect it to be completed in the next couple of years.
If you’re looking for a new Mexican place to try out, a Tex-Mex place called La Flor recently opened up in Abu Hassiniya. It’s a small authentic restaurant that’s currently in it’s soft launch phase since they’ve only been open for around a month now. I passed by with a few friends for dinner, one of which had been there a few times already and loves the food. I’m not big on Mexican food myself but their table side prepared guacamole was pretty good and their soft taco was alright. Maybe @randybgoos’s can let us know what he thinks about the place since he’s a big foodie himself AND from Texas.
If you want to try the place out yourself, they’re located in Divonne Complex and their instagram account is @laflorq8. Here is their location on [Google Maps]
Some of you might have already heard about this but for those of you who haven’t, a proposal was put forward to transform Salem Al Mubarak street in old Salmiya (where I live basically) to a pedestrian only street with brand new futuristic looking buildings.
As someone who’s lived on this very street for 30+ years, and as someone who truly loves and experiences this street every single day, I can with full confidence say… none of this is ever gonna materialize.
There is a higher chance that Kuwait will beat UAE to building the first city on Mars, than there is for old Salmiya to transform into this wonderland.
I’m not being pessimistic, I’m just being realistic.
The street is in shambles and the municipality doesn’t care, nobody cares and these renderings to me are a joke, they’re making a mockery of the current situation. It’s like some rich kid passing through some poor village in Africa and decides to stop to take a selfie with some street kids pretending to be helping them out for his instagram account before driving off in his convoy to a luxury resort.
It’s insulting.
There is no way on earth the transformation project will ever happen without demolishing the whole area, kicking out all the low income expats and then rebuilding the street from the ground up, the main street AND all the back streets as well. The metro project? That’s gonna happen. The railway project? That’s gonna happen. Kuwait building a city on Mars? That’s gonna happen. But this Salmiya project, it’s never gonna happen.
If you want to see more renderings on this concept as well as get more information, check out this thread I started on [SkyScraperCity]
There is an underground pedestrian passageway in the city that connects four different street corners together. The passageway is located across from Pick Yo and I was just telling a friend of mine a few weeks back that they should start opening up cafe’s down there. Now it looks like that’s going to happen since a hoarding was recently put up down there teasing a new concept. I tried to find out more about the place but all I was able to get is that they will have coffee and some communal aspect. I’m curious to see how the place will function in the summer since the underground area doesn’t have functioning AC and I doubt whatever opens there will have interior seating. Maybe with all the recent foot traffic the underground has started getting because of all the coffeeshops, the municipality might have decided to fix that area up.
Yesterday while getting my FJ serviced I decided to pass by the dealerships check out if there was anything interesting. One thing I found surprising was the fact a lot of dealerships still had 2015 cars that were unsold. So for example Jeep had a brand new 2015 Grand Cherokee SRT for a heavily discounted price of KD16,000 while a new 2017 model goes for KD24,000. Same with Nissan who had 2015 model year 370’s selling for a heavily discounted price of KD9,000.
Anyway, the cars below are the ones I figured car fanatics might be interested in:
Nearly forgot about this but 12 years ago today, I started 248AM and published my first post. Here’s a line I wrote two years ago but one that still holds true today:
I don’t know how long I will be doing this for, I just know that I really love doing it and I’ll keep doing it as long as you keep coming back here to read what I have to say*. Thank you everyone for being the best readers a blogger could hope for.
Dear Tourist Enterprises Company, could we please have 90s throwback nights once a month at the ice skating rink?
Back in the early 90s, the ice skating rink was one of the coolest places to hang out in Kuwait. There used to be an arcade over there filled with gaming machines, pool and air hockey tables as well as a small restaurant that served simple food like burgers and fries. The ice skating rink itself used to be packed with people and there was even a DJ that would be pumping out the latest hits. Walking into the ice skating rink felt like walking into a club with now classics like SNAP! – The Power or Soul II Soul – Back To Life blasting loudly over the speakers.
Having a 90s throwback night once a month would be a great way to bring people back to the ice skating rink, DJ Bonita even volunteered to take charge of the music, blasting us with all the great 90s hits. Imagine how much fun that would be? So TEC, lets set it up!
My favorite coffee place Arabica just opened up their second location in Kuwait and it’s HUGE. The new location which they’ve called the Arabica Roastery consists of two main areas, the main coffeeshop with interior and outdoor seating, and the roastery where they’ll be selling beans to businesses (B2B) as well as offer training on how to make coffee.
Arabica will also be selling coffee making gear at this location. So for example you’ll be able to buy an AeroPress or a coffee dripper from them, and they’ll show you how to use them properly and get the best tasting coffee out of them. With the new location they’ve also introduced new items on their menu, most notably Matcha Latte and baguette sandwiches.
The new Arabica Roastery is located in Shuwaikh on the same street as Lilly Center and right next to the newly opened Healthy Feast. Their opening hours as of this post is from 4PM to 10PM. Here is their location on [Google Maps] and their instagram is @arabica.kuwait
One of my favorite healthy restaurants just opened up in Shuwaikh a few days back. Healthy Feast is a whole foods restaurant that serves fresh, local, organic and gluten free dishes. I probably pass by their Bneid Al Gar location once a week or so but that location is pretty tiny and difficult to have a conversation with someone without everybody around you eavesdropping. Their new location is a lot bigger and they’ve even added new dishes to the menu.
The new Healthy Feast is located in Shuwaikh on the same street as Lilly Center and right next to the newly opened Arabica Roastery. Their opening hours as of this post is from 3PM to 10PM. Here is their location on [Google Maps] and their instagram is @healthy_feast
If you want to read my previous post on Healthy Feast, click [Here]
Around 10 days back there was a rumor going around that Talabat went under a cyberattack. I got a few messages saying that Talabat accounts were hacked and that users credit card and Knet information was compromised. I figured that was bullshit because Talabat doesn’t save our bank details, I wish it did so I wouldn’t have to enter my Knet information every single damn time I order something. A couple of days later, the Talabat CEO issued the following statement:
“We are aware of the rumors circulating today around Talabat, and would like to reassure our customers that these are absolutely false. We have experienced no disruption within our system and no customer issues have been reported around this. Our online payment is processed via trusted third party platforms and we do not store any banking information on our system. As a business that was established in Kuwait in 2004, data security is paramount to our business model and we have made security and privacy a core part of our structure.” Abdulhamid Alomar, CEO, Talabat
After that things kinda went quiet until yesterday people started leaving comments on the blog and emailing me asking me if Knet was down. Then, this morning a reader emailed me telling me the twitter user DedSec (@DedSecIsHere) had been taking credit for the recent attacks. Based on what I could put together from his tweets, he had previously contacted people at the various institutes warning them of security holes only to be ignored. So I decided to get in touch with him via Twitter and find out what was going on.
First thing I needed to do was verify he was who he says he was and not just someone pretending to be the hacker involved in the recent attacks. So I asked him if he could prove it to me and he replied asking if he should bring down my banks website. Literally 45 seconds later, my banks website was down. Freaky.
According to DedSec, he had been contacting and warning different government and private institutes of their cybersecurity flaws for months now, only to be ignored or told they would fix them soon. But none of them fixed any of the issues he highlighted which left their security vulnerabilities wide open for other hackers who didn’t have the institutes best intention in mind to exploit. Since everyone was ignoring him, DedSec decided to bring down their servers himself so he could grab their attention and hopefully listen to him. He shared with me a list of different businesses that included banks, food ordering websites and telecoms that had security holes, and according to him, the institute with the weakest security system was a payment gateway (lawyer told me I can’t mention which), even though they had received a lot of warnings.
DedSec explained to me that by having a weak security system, it would make it easy to launch attacks on, including “man-in-the-middle attacks” where a hacker can spy on the connection and get the data that is not encrypted properly. So even though your information isn’t saved on their system, there is a potential for it to be read as the information is relayed from your end to their servers end.
@AzizAlW My main goal is to show how bad is the protection, Kuwait has a strong youth with cyber intelligence who are ignored
The more I spoke to DedSec, the more I realized how frustrated he was with the lack of qualified people involved in securing some of our important websites. His pinned tweet states that Kuwait has talented young people with cyber intelligence that are being ignored. He told me there were hacker groups from Iraq, Iran and the USA who have been penetrating our systems and quietly stealing our data. I asked him how he knew that and he replied telling me that he did what IT departments haven’t been doing, and that is checking the server logs for unusual activity.
me and @master_roomi are fixing those problems that i found in the websites instead of attacking them, have a chill day everyone
As I finish up this post, DedSec’s last tweet states that he has now teamed up with Raed Alroomi (@master_roomi), a retired Colonel and information security and cyber crime consultant to fix the exploits he’s found instead of attacking the websites. Hopefully now with Raed’s help, local institutes will finally patch up their vulnerabilities.
Update: Here is an interview with Raed Alroomi that was just posted onto YouTube that discusses the recent attacks. It’s in Arabic but in short, the attacks this week were DDoS attacks, he recommends you don’t use your Knet card online for the next few days until things settle down, and finally he wants to bring all the Kuwaiti hackers and Kuwaiti IT specialist together to volunteer and run penetration tests on the important government websites. He thinks the government should support the local talent and that they should be more involved in securing important local websites.
A busy busy weekend with a bunch of markets and live music events taking place. The IMPROVengers are also back again this weekend. Check out the full list of events below:
