2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003
After a slight change of plans, the Filipo The Filipino pop-up event is going to take place tonight and tomorrow night. The menu will be comprised of contemporary dishes that have been injected with some Filipino soul, so should be interesting experience. The event will be taking place in a warehouse in Shuwaikh so if you want more details, click [Here]
I noticed recently more and more gyms are opening up focusing on just one sport so decided to list all the ones I am aware of. If you think a certain gym needs to be on this list then let me know in the comments below.
The next step is for someone to come up with a membership plan that gives people access to a bunch of these gyms.
Combat
Combat Athletics
Sidekick Academy
The Hook
Vikings MMA
Crossfit
Circuit+
CrossFit Euphoria
Crossfit FDT
Crossfit Flare
CrossFit Q8
Desert Fitness
Microgym
Neon Fitness
Pilates
Arc
Spinning
Lyfe Cycle
Ryde
Yoga
Alive
Daratma
P5M
The Yoga Center
I’ve had the Nintendo Switch gaming console for nearly a week now and so I figured I’d give my first impressions on it in case you’ve been contemplating on getting one.
GET ONE!
So far in my short time with the Switch I’m loving it. I purchased two games for it, the first was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (of course) which has been scoring a 10/10 on all gaming sites. The second game I purchased was the racing game Fast RMX which is similar to the old Wipeout series except a lot faster.
I’ve been spending on average around 5 hours a day playing Zelda and I love how with the Switch I could be playing on my TV one minute, then put a UFC fight on TV and continue playing Zelda off the Switch’s built-in screen. I love how I can be sitting on my couch playing Zelda, but then leave the house and take the Switch with me so I could continue playing while waiting for a friend to meet me at a coffee shop. The Switch is a home console and a portable console at the same time and thats easily my favorite thing about it.
Battery life has been perfectly fine with me since when I do play on the Switch when on the go, its usually for short bursts. Since the Switch uses USB-C to charge, I can charge it with a battery pack if I’ll be playing for longer than 3 hours at a time like when I’m traveling. My MacBook Pro also uses USB-C to charge, so when I travel, I’ll charge the Switch using my laptop charger saving me the need to pack the Switch charger. The size of the Switch is pretty big compared to a phone or a Nintendo DS, but yet it somehow still manages to fit into the back pocket of my skinny jeans. I ordered a case for it from Waterfield which should be arriving next week, so that should make carrying it around easier.
If you’ve been thinking about getting the Switch then just go ahead and make the plunge. There aren’t that many games on it right now but honestly, Zelda alone is worth getting the Switch even if no other games come out on it ever again. Finding a Switch for a reasonable price on the other hand is going to be a challenge. If you can’t order one online then you’ll have to keep looking for reasonably priced one locally. The cheapest I found was on Al Fuhod for KD139 and Konami-X also had them for KD140. But, both are currently sold out and both probably had them that low for promotional purposes. Online is still your best bet.
If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to play polo, the Kuwait Polo Club offers polo training, horseback riding and horse training. The cost is KD40 for an hour, but if you’re interested in multiple lessons than you could negotiate a better deal. The price includes a horse and all the gear and equipment needed. The club is located in Abdalli Farms so you’ll have to commute quite a bit for these lessons.
Polo in Kuwait isn’t accessible to everyone due to its cost and location but its still good to know that if you want to learn how to play then you can. For more information you can check out the Kuwait Polo Club [Website] or find them on instagram @kuwaitpoloclub
Virtual Reality has been something people have been dreaming of for as long as I remember and it feels like in the past few years, VR has been pushed hard with the likes of Oculus, the HTC Vive, and to some extent Microsoft’s Hololens. What makes the PlayStation VR (PSVR) special though is that it doesn’t require a powerful computer, it’s priced reasonably well and it’s relatively simple to set up without needing you to tinker too much with the settings. So it was easy to take up X-Cite’s offer to send my brother and I a PSVR to test out and write about.
The PSVR headset looks good, the build quality doesn’t feel cheap and its comfortable once you wear it. On the other hand the amount of cables it takes to set it up is unfortunate. This isn’t something you’ll leave lying around once you’re done using it for the night (unless you don’t mind clutter). As someone who is married and has three cats I have to pack it away every time I’m done using it. The reason for this clutter is that the PSVR doesn’t plug straight into the PS4. A processor box is included with the PSVR that includes an HDMI splitter, so you have thick cable running from the headset to this processor box, an HDMI cable from the PS4 into the processor box, another HDMI cable from the processor box to your TV, a USB cable from the processor box to the PS4 and a separate power cable into the processor. Oh and that doesn’t include the Playstation Camera cable which you also need for the PSVR.
Clutter aside, I was excited to try out the PSVR. I had a little bit of experience with the Oculus so I know how cool VR can be. I played a couple of games using the PSVR, Batman: Arkham VR, Driveclub VR, Rez Infinite, the Call of Duty: Jackal Assault VR, Super Hypercube and some games on the demo disc that came bundled with the headset. One thing you have to get used to when using the PSVR is that the visuals aren’t as crisp as what you’d get on your TV, there’s an annoying fuzziness that you’ll notice in most games and in some cases, games blur things in your peripherals (Batman suffers from this).
A concern I had was motion sickness and nausea. I have a sensitive stomach and I tend to get motion sickness quite easily and so was expecting to get sick playing Driveclub VR, Eve Valkyrie or Call of Duty Jackal Assault. Surprisingly though I didn’t suffer from motion sickness in any of the games I tried. Mark on the other hand got motion sickness ten minutes into Resident Evil 7 and then got motion sickness again a minute into his first race in Driveclub VR. This is something you should take into consideration before spending money on VR so find a place to try it out before you buy it.
The Habitat Museum at Al Shaheed Park is now officially open to the public. The museum showcases the unique beauty of Kuwait’s plants and animal life by taking visitors on a journey through the local ecosystem. It’s located in the same building as the escalators that take you to the parking lot (the far end one) and right across from the restaurant Table Otto.
The opening hours are:
Monday to Friday: 4PM to 9PM
Saturdays: 12PM to 7PM
Sundays: Closed
For more photos of the interior taken by the photographer Niccolò Guasti, click [Here]
Over the past couple of months I’ve been getting emails and tweets from readers asking me if the internet provider WiMD shutdown. None of their social media accounts work anymore so people are assuming they must have closed down. Well the answer is no, they haven’t closed down. Instead, WiMD have just done a pretty terrible job at letting people know that they’ve renamed and rebranded to B.Wireless.
Last year WiMD purchased the internet provider GulfNet and a couple of months ago WiMD rebranded GulfNet to B.Online, then rebranded WiMD to B.Wireless and then created a mother company called B.Global which both now fall under. It’s kinda B.Confusing just because of the fact the names are so generic and they renamed their social media accounts but didn’t really tell anyone. I’m a WiMD customer and I didn’t even get an email letting me know about the rebranding or renaming. The only reason I found out is because their marketing manager had told me they were going to rebrand and then sent me the presentation to check out. Not even the WiMD website mentions the renaming.
So if you want WiMD, their new social media accounts are:
Instagram: @bwirelesskw
Twitter: @bwirelesskw
Their website is still wimd.com.kw
Was watching a video on BBC on How plants can lessen the impact of dust storms in Kuwait when I spotted the scene pictured above. Too bad Kuwait canceled its plans for a nuclear power plant…
Over the weekend I got to try Corny’s smashed lemonade and corndogs over at the baseball tournament and damn they were good. Corny’s Smashed Lemonade and Corny’s Corndogs both belong to Josh who also has Corny’s Shaved Ice. He just recently started serving lemonades and its by far my favorite lemonade in Kuwait.
Watching Josh make the lemonade is pretty entertaining since he has a cool contraption a friend of his created for him that smashes the fresh lemons in front of you before he adds ice, sugar and water to it. He serves the lemonade in a huge 32oz cup which means you’ll be drinking nearly a liter of lemonade. Even though that’s a lot I was still tempted to get a second serving after I was done with my first one. And then the corndog, it was so good that I was already planning to order my second serving while I was still midway through the first.
You can watch Josh make lemonade in the entertaining video above which he posted on instagram. He used to work in real estate hence the great sales presentation. Josh pops up at random events with his concepts so you can follow him on instagram to find out where he’ll be next if you want to try one of his products. His instagram accounts are:
This is kinda related to my previous post, Portarage is a local roadside assistance app that allows you to request help if you run into car problems. The app has four different kinds of assistance you could call for:
– Tow Truck
– Flat Tire
– Petrol
– Battery
A couple of years back I had posted about a similar app called Winch but that’s no longer available or working and was only for calling a tow truck. Portarage should be a better alternative since not only can you request a tow truck but you could request a jump start, help fixing a flat tire or call for fuel in case you run out.
The app is available for both [iOS] and [Android] and is free to download.
I ran into a mechanical problem on my way to work this morning in my Datsun. As I was driving down the Gulf Road, my accelerator cable broke. Luckily I was driving fast enough so I could change lanes all the way to the right and then coast through a green traffic light until I managed to take the exit into the Chili’s parking lot. By then my car was going super slow but it still had enough momentum for me to find a spot and park my car. I checked under my dash right away and saw the frayed cable. I was upset but calm since I know with old cars you need to have patience and mine barely gives me any trouble anymore considering I drive it everyday and I’m not really gentle with it. After a few minutes of contemplating what I should do, I decided I would just try and fix it myself since I kinda knew what I needed to do. Cut the story short, I connected the cable back to my pedal but then ran into an issue with the cable no longer reaching my carburetor. So then had to move my cable bracket closer to the carburetor and readjust the location of my throttle spring and got everything working. If you want to see all the steps I tweeted them: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
It took around an hour and I felt a sense of accomplishment when I was done, but thats not what this post is about. While I was working on my car in the Chili’s parking lot, two guys came up to me and asked if I needed any help.
The first guy looked a bit “3agaidi”. He pulled up in a white Hyundai with fully black tinted windows as I was about to start work on the car and asked me if everything was ok and if I needed any help. I told him I was good and explained to him what the problem was. He offered to drop me off to Shuwaikh or home if I wanted to but I told him I was going to fix the car myself. He then told me he had a 79 Datsun himself, but that he uses it only for “استعراض” which roughly translates to, “I do burnouts in the middle of public roads”. He was pretty nice though and left after a few minutes by driving out of the parking lot the wrong way (of course).
The second guy who came up to me was an older American guy. I was halfway through the job and he also asked me what was wrong and if I needed any help. I told him the accelerator cable broke but I managed to reattach it. He asked me if I had enough slack left to get the cable back to the carburetor and I told him I didn’t, but I was working on a fix for that by moving the cable bracket closer to the carb. He told me he was a Suburu guy so he knew a thing or two about repairing cars (car people will understand this). He was with his wife and they walked around looking at the car for a bit before they went into Chili’s for brunch. Now here is the cool part, around 25 minutes later as I had just finished up and was done testing the throttle, the American guy comes back out with an ice cold lemonade! He’s like you’ve been working under the sun so I figured I’d get you a lemonade.
Like seriously wtf? That was probably one of the nicest things a complete stranger has ever done for me. He handed me the lemonade and then walked all the way back into Chili’s. I was thinking like wtf? Since when are people this nice? It also made me feel like such an un-nice person myself. I would never have thought of doing something like that to a complete stranger. I mean, I think I’m a nice guy, but if I was like Level 6 on the nice scale, this guy was a Level 9 or 10. I wish I had gotten his name or went inside to Chili’s after I was done and thanked him again. But at that point I wasn’t thinking straight, I just wanted to get out of the sun and my car out of there and back home. His niceness really only hit me once I was driving back hone drinking the lemonade.
Although my morning didn’t start off great, the experience with the two strangers was really an eye opener. I kinda want to try and be nicer to strangers from now on. I’ll have to check back on this a year from now and see how this plan turns out.
The Kuwait Baseball Softball Challenger League Tournament is taking place this weekend, so if you want to feel like you’re at a softball game in the US for a few hours then you have to check it out. Corny’s Smashed Lemonade is also going to be there, and after watching his video on how he makes his lemonade, I definitely need to try it out. On Saturday there is also the Bark in the Park event taking place. I’m gonna be judging again this year which is always a lot fun. Anyway, check out the full list of events for this weekend below:
Thursday
Comic Con Kuwait
Kuwait Baseball Softball Challenger League Tournament
Horse Show Jumping Competition
Exhibition: Third Identity
Dance for Romance
Music Concert at ACK
Friday
Comic Con Kuwait
Kuwait Baseball Softball Challenger League Tournament
Horse Show Jumping Competition
Hatha Yoga with Rosie
Tai Chi in the Park
Good Game: Magic – The Gathering
Salwa’ Walk and Socialize Meetup
Kuwait’s First Flying Gathering
Saturday
Comic Con Kuwait
Kuwait Baseball Softball Challenger League Tournament
Horse Show Jumping Competition
Yoga with the 3
Guided Tour: Grand Mosque
REVIVE Expo
Karate Kenshinkan & Kung-Fu Sanda
Bark in the Park 2017
Kuwait’s First Flying Gathering
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 and Sky Cinemas:
New This Week:
Kong: Skull Island (7.6) ★
The Devil’s Dolls (4.3)
The Hollow Point (5.4)
Other Movies Showing:
A Dog’s Purpose (4.8)
Don’t Knock Twice (5.3)
Eloise (4.7)
Gold (6.5) ♦
Hidden Figures (7.9)
John Wick: Chapter 2 (9.4) ★
Kikoriki. Legend of the Golden Dragon (6.1)
Kung-Fu Yoga (6.2)
Logan (9.0) ♦ ★
Mercury Plains (4.3)
Ozzy (5.6)
Rings (4.6)
Split (7.5) ♦
The LEGO Batman Movie (8.1)
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.
Bloomingdale’s are soft opening their first store tomorrow (Thursday, March 9) at 360 Mall. They were originally planning to open up early last month but due to technical issues, things got delayed. There isn’t any information on the Bloomingdale’s instagram account but you can follow the hashtag #bloomingdaleskuwait on instagram for updates.
I’ve been a huge fan of Q8Car since as far as I can remember. I always considered it one of the most successful local websites and I personally used to check it a few times a week just because I like cars and I like to know whats out there in the market. I think most guys do this, or at least a lot of my guy friends also do this. Recently though, Q8Car was shutdown and integrated into 4Sale.
I’ve posted about 4Sale before, its an extremely popular classifieds website/app and I love it since you can basically find everything and anything for sale on it. I actually had to uninstall the app from my phone so I wouldn’t end up impulse buying old cars that I’d find and like. 4Sale and Q8Car were owned by the same person and I guess the car section in 4Sale was doing a lot better because Q8Car is now the 4Sale car section. No more standalone site.
I don’t mind this move much except for the fact the car search features are a lot more basic in 4Sale. For example you can’t list all the cars on the website now from oldest to newest which was one way I used to look for vintage cars on Q8Car. Looking for a 1991 Porsche? The only way to see if there is one for sale now is to go through the whole list of Porsches for sale. Not that practical. But anyway, you can checkout the “new” Q8car website yourself by clicking [Here]