2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

The Kuwait Harps are starting a new season of Gaelic Football and are looking for new faces to join the club. Gaelic Football is a form of football derived from the Irish ball games. There are some major differences between regular football and Gaelic football like the fact Gaelic football is played with 15 players per team and you can also hold the ball with your hands.

The Kuwait Harps hold weekly training sessions for both men and women on Wednesdays and Fridays at the American International School. They compete primarily in tournaments based in the Gulf region and new players are always welcome and immediately feel at home within the club. The majority of the current squad were actually new to Gaelic Games when they first arrived in Kuwait. While many clubs in the Gulf region can depend on a strong pool of Irish players, this is not the case in Kuwait. While a core of the club may be Irish, it relies heavily on the support of players from the international expat community. Kuwait Harps Players have come from Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, Canada, USA, Australia and even Sudan to name but a few countries. So if you’re interested in joining the club, here are some details:

When: Wednesday 6PM to 8PM – Friday 10AM to 12PM (Women) and 12PM to 2PM (Men)

Where: American International School [Map]

For more information email [email protected] or visit their [Facebook Page]

A couple of days back I posted about Edfa3ly which I said was “the cheapest way to ship lightweight packages from the US”. Well its gonna get even cheaper now since they emailed me last night letting me know they’ve set up a coupon code for my readers to use.

If you use the coupon code “248am” on their website, they’ll waive the international shipping fees and Kuwait customs fee for any order below $50.

Terms and conditions for the coupon:
– Only one coupon can be issued per person per account
– Limited to max $50
– Valid until August 22nd

So if you were planning to order an item using them now would be the perfect time. Here is a link to their [Website]

Scene from the cult classic, Crash

Earlier tonight I saw the hashtag #7FavFilms floating around on twitter and decided to participate naming my seven favorite movies of all time. But after sharing seven I realized I had missed so many movies and there was no way I could choose just seven. So I started putting together a list for myself, just to kinda see what I would come up with. I ended up with the list below and since it took a lot of effort to put together, I figured I might as well share them on my blog.

Below are various film genres and each contains just seven films. I figured I’d set myself some sort of limit and seven would fit with the original hashtag. So check it out, some of the choices are predictable, some won’t make sense to anyone and I’m sure I’ve also missed a ton of great films. But this is my list right now:

Action
First Blood
Rambo: First Blood Part II
Rambo III
Cobra
Bloodsport
Tango & Cash
Commando

Adventure
The Goonies
Stand By Me
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Planet of the Apes
Lord of the Flies
The NeverEnding Story
Jurassic Park

Scene from the funniest movie of all time, Monty Python The Holy Grail

Comedy
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Groundhog Day
The Big Lebowski
Office Space
Airplane!
Hot Shots!
The Naked Gun

Drugs
Trainspotting
Carlito’s Way
Dazed & Confused
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Requiem for a Dream
Up in Smoke
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle

Foreign
City of God
Oldboy
The Triplets of Belleville
Fucking Åmål
Waltz with Bashir
Downfall
Shutter

Mob
The Godfather
The Godfather: Part II
The Godfather: Part III
Goodfellas
Casino
Scarface
Heat

Other
Kids
Vertigo
Sneakers
Menace II Society
The Darjeeling Limited
Magnolia
Natural Born Killers

Scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind

SciFi
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Alien
2001: A Space Odyssey
Blade Runner
The Thirteenth Floor
Akira
Waterworld

War Films
Apocalypse Now
Platoon
The Deer Hunter
Full Metal Jacket
Das Boot
Hamburger Hill
Empire of the Sun

Weird
Inception
The Lost Highway
Memento
Donnie Darko
Birdman
Pi
Crash (1996)

I have no idea who would buy this but Xcite are selling a PS4 that is half covered in gold for a whopping KD4,599. On the bright side (I guess) is that you can take it on installments for just KD293 a month over two years…

Thanks Grant

When I first heard that IKEA was serving grilled lobster alongside their usual meatballs and chicken nuggets, I thought it was funny, but then I became curious. Was it any good? So yesterday I decided to pass by and try it out.

It was a bit crowded when I dropped by for lunch since they had a buy one get one free offer on their meatballs dishes. When my turn finally came up I asked for the grilled lobster and noticed the woman next to me look at me and smile as if I had just told a lame joke. But, the look on her face when I got handed my lobster dish was priceless. IKEA is the last place you’d expect to find lobster on the menu which is why I was so curious to try it.

The grilled lobster costs KD4.750 and comes with a side of steamed vegetables or french fries. And unsurprisingly, you get what you pay for. The lobster was super dry, tough and bland, it didn’t even taste like lobster. Definitely not something I’d want to have again. My recommendation? Order the meatballs instead.

Thanks Grant

UPDATE: There have been major changes to the service since this post. Edfa3ly are no longer the cheapest option to ship, they no longer charge by the 100grams and they are now more expensive than PostaPlus.

A couple of weeks back a US mail forwarding company called Edfa3ly contacted me to let me know about their service. Since I had already reviewed countless of similar shipping services, I really wasn’t interested in reviewing another. But, turns out this shipping company had one feature that caught my attention. While services like Aramex’s Shop & Ship and PostaPlus’s MyBox charge per 1/2kg, Edfa3ly charges per 100grams, so I decided to try them out.

If you haven’t used a service like Shop & Ship before, they usually have a minimum weight they charge which is 1/2kg. So if your package weighed 50 grams you would still be charged 1/2kg. The charge varies from company to company, I use PostaPlus currently and they charge KD2.5 for the first 1/2kg while Aramex charges KD3.250. Both PostaPlus and Aramex also charge KD1 on top of that as a customs clearance fee so the cheapest you could ever pay with PostaPlus is KD3.5 and KD4.250 with Aramex. So if your item doesn’t cost much and doesn’t weigh much, it’s not feasible to order it all the way from the States.

I have a bunch of stuff on my Amazon wish list that I need but don’t bother ordering because of this very fact. For example there is a rubber eyecup for my camera, it’s a tiny rubber piece that costs around KD3 so it wouldn’t make sense to order it and then pay at least KD3.5 on top of that for shipping. But since Edfa3ly charge by the 100grams I decided to order it. Unlike other forwarding services, you don’t need to sign up to Edfa3ly. You just go to the website, enter the URL of the item you want to buy, fill out some information and then pay for the item and they will order it for you and ship it to Kuwait. So I did that and this is what the total came out to be for my order:

Item Price: $10.7
Customs Fee: $0.54
Edfa3ly Fees: $0.54
Shipping Fees (1.33 dollar(s) per 100gm): $1.33 (0.05 kg)

Total Price: $13.11

So shipping from Amazon to Kuwait cost me just $2.41! You don’t pay US tax, you don’t pay US shipping and you don’t pay a local custom clearance fee. Instead you just pay the cost of shipping from the US to Kuwait plus an Edfa3ly fee which is 5% of the item cost. I had a package shipped to me and delivered to me in Kuwait within 10 days and just paid around 750 fils for shipping. Thats insane! I’ve got so many tiny cheap stuff I need to buy now like a new Dremel wrench since I lost mine or these tiny plastic rivets for my Datsun. Suddenly so many more things seem accessible.

So if you’re looking to order items that don’t cost much and weigh under 1/2kg, I can’t think of any better alternative. Here is a link to the Edfa3ly website [Link]

Due to the fact the video is filmed on somebodies couch and the drone uses the old police insignia, it’s fair to assume this is someones personal project and not a new police surveillance tool. [YouTube]

I don’t know where to begin with this. Back to the Q82 is a Kuwaiti spoof of the Back to the Future movies or at least I’m guessing it’s a spoof. I just watched the trailer and although some parts kinda look like they might be funny, I’m more concerned with the fact they can’t agree on the name of the film.

The poster above calls the film “Back to the Q82”, the trailer title on youtube is “Back to Q82” but in the actual trailer it says “Back on Q82”. Guys, let me decide on your behalf, we’re going to call the film “Back to the Q82”. Also Q82 doesn’t work even though it’s a play on Q80 (Kuwaiti). They’re using 82 instead of 80 because thats the date they travel back in time to but it sounds really weird. Also you spelled trailer wrong on youtube and the car in the poster is different than the car in the movie. Urgh whatever, this is driving me nuts. The movie comes out in theaters on July 7 and I’ll sadly probably go watch it just out of curiosity.

Update: ummm I just realized we are in August, so either the movie already came out last month or they mean July 7.. 2017.

Update2: For some reason the video uploader made the video private. Anybody else have a copy?

Thanks Ahmad and Forzq8

Just a heads up in case issues with the blog start popping up this weekend. I’m currently migrating my blog from Rackspace to WP Engine.

I’ve been with Rackspace for over 9 7 years now and they’ve been super great, probably the best customer service I’ve ever deal with but, my server (basically the computer that my blog is running on) is also over 9 7 years old. When was the last time you kept a computer or laptop for that long? Never of course but in my case to upgrade the server was going to end up tripling the price of my already super expensive hosting. It just wasn’t feasible financially so I just left it. Last year my traffic increased considerably and this year it’s also been increasing steadily and my server can just no longer keep up and it was either being very slow or just completely unresponsive.

Then, around a month ago I got approached by the WP Engine local agent. Wavai. They offered to host my blog with them while also helping me manage all the maintenance work. The “WP” in WP Engine stands for WordPress which is the blogging software I use for 248AM. So as you can imagine, since they’re very focused on one software, they’re experts when it comes to hosting blogs like mine. We already started the migration process yesterday (Thursday) and all my sections have been moved already. We are now about to migrate the main 248AM blog which is why I’m posting this. The website might go down for awhile and somethings might not work the way they should. In case that happens you’ll now know why.

Once everything is up and running things should be a lot faster. Already without any optimization my subsections all load up more than twice as they previously did. I’ll post a more detailed and geeky update on what we’re doing/did exactly once everything is up and running normally again.

Update (Sat/10:00AM): The process is 90% complete. Nearly everything has been moved including the main 248AM blog. If you left a comment anytime between this post and now then it might have been lost since until last night depending on where you lived you were either accessing the old server or the new one.

Update (Sat/12:00PM): Shifting my domain control from Rackspace to Namecheap. Site might not be accessible for a short while and my email doesn’t seem to be working right now.

Update (Sat/2:00PM): My email is working again. Some of the blog sections (like classifieds) are currently not working depending where you live and what ISP you’re using.

Update (Sat/11:00PM): Everything seems to be working fine now.

The movies below are now showing at Cinescape and Grand Cinemas:

New This Week:
Cell (4.4) ♦
Manhattan Night (6.2) ♦
Nerve (7.2)
Riot (5.2)
The BFG (6.8)
The Fall of the Krays (4.1)
The Neon Demon (7.0) ♦

Other Movies Showing:
Alice Through The Looking Glass (6.4)
Finding Dory (7.8)
Jason Bourne (8.3)
Suicide Squad (8.2) ♦
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows (6.3)
The Conjuring 2 (7.8)
The Legend Of Tarzan (6.7) ♦

Numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at time of publishing.
★ is for movies I’m interested in. ♦ implies movie might contain censorship.

Yesterday, Kuwaiti athlete Fehaid Al Deehani won gold at the Olympics coming first in the men’s double trap shooting event. Sadly since Kuwait is banned from the Olympics, Fehaid won the medal as an independent athlete competing under International Olympic Committee flag, an achievement by itself since no other independent athlete has ever won gold before. No Kuwaiti flag was raised and the Kuwaiti anthem wasn’t played during the medal ceremony.

Kuwait has competed in 12 Olympics since Mexico City in 1968, winning 3 medals in total, 2 bronze and 1 gold with all 3 won by Fehaid.

Yesterday I finally got to pass by and check out the Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Center. Those of you who’ve been following the blog for awhile will remember I was the first to break the story on the cultural centre back in May 2014 after my visit to Al Salam Palace. Yesterday was the first time back since then and damn what a difference two years makes.

Firstly the project is basically done. I mean it was done a couple of months ago but they pushed the launch till Q4 of this year so they’re now using the extra time to make sure everything is close to perfect once it’s finally open. I visited all four of the buildings and I’m now even more excited about the cultural centre than I ever was. The whole project is so beautifully designed with each building having a different style interior than the other. I am not sharing a lot of photos in this post because most of the rooms were getting a final coat of paint so everything was covered in plastic and there was lots of scaffolding everywhere. That includes all the theaters but I already shared some great shots last week so you’re not missing out on anything.

Behind the 4 buildings is a super super long and large corridor that stretches from one corner of the project to the other. One side of the corridor is connected to the indoor parking while the other side connects to the buildings. This means in the summer you can go from your car to the theaters or library without having to walk much under the sun or in the heat. The whole exterior structure is extremely photogenic and I’m very interested to see what photographers will manage to do with the place. Inside the ceilings are very high with lots of large spaces and hallways. I can already visualize large crowds of people gathered waiting to enter a theater or after a show is done, just socializing in these large spaces.

The fact that this project was completed in just two years is insane. I have no idea how they did it, probably by throwing lots of money at it but whatever their formula was, they need to apply it to the new airport. Below are the photos I’m sharing for now, once most of the work is done I’ll pass by again and reshoot. If you have any questions you could ask me and I’ll try to answer it with the best of my knowledge.

When I originally purchase my Datsun 240z, it had an old cassette player and just two crappy speakers in the rear, one of which didn’t work. I was happy with the cassette player since I still had some tapes but because one of the speakers wasn’t working, I went and bought a pair of cheap ones. A week or two after that my cassette player stop working, and I think the speakers I got had something to do with that. I tried finding another cassette player on eBay but either they weren’t old enough (to match the car’s era) or they were just ridiculously overpriced. So I decided to just do a complete overhaul of the car stereo since I was spending so much time driving the car anyway.

I had two objectives, the first was that whatever I decided to do, it shouldn’t mess with the look of the car. The second objective was that I didn’t want to spend an exuberant amount since I already did that with my FJ. So I limited my budget but still tried to get a decent sound. So after a bit of research I went with the following:

• Pioneer MVHX560BT Digital Media Receiver KD30
• 240z Front Speaker Panels (the 240z only had speakers in rear) KD28
• Rockford P1650 6.5-Inch 2-Way Full Range Speaker KD16
• Rockford Fosgate Punch P152 5-Inch Full Range Coaxial Speakers KD17
• Alpine KTP-445U 4-channel Power Pack Amplifier KD35
• Kenwood KSC-SW11 Compact Powered Enclosed Subwoofer KD42

The Pioneer head unit was perfect since it wasn’t very expensive, had bluetooth and was around half the size of regular units which meant I could hide it in my glove box. That way I could keep the old cassette player visible keeping with the car’s era, but behind the scenes I would have a much newer system running the show. Now when I turn the car on, the head unit automatically connects to my phone via bluetooth and I then can control the music and volume all from my phone without ever needing to open my glove box.

For the speakers I went with Rockford Fosgate because they were affordable and had gotten a lot of praise, plus there was a bit of nostalgia involved since I installed Rockford Fosgate components in my car back in university. For the amp I went with the Alpine model because it was small enough to hide under and behind the dashboard while still being powerful enough to run the speakers. Finally I got a tiny Kenwood subwoofer that fit perfectly behind the passenger seat and away from sight.

The result? The music sounds so much better now obviously but the interior still looks the same so you can’t really tell there is a powerful sound system in the car. I didn’t install the stuff myself, instead I went to my favorite car audio guys Zaharat Al Naseem. It took maybe an hour for the whole install and they did a great job of hiding all the wiring.

For those of you interested I’m starting a build page for my 240z where I will document everything I’ve done and will be doing to it. You can access that [Here]. Also again for those interested, I have a build page for my FJ, its around 4 pages long and I’ve been updating it since 2010, you can find that [Here]

At the prospect of swimming under the Olympic flag, he balked: “The thing is, I made the Olympics because of Kuwait and because of the [swimming] federation, and all the funds came from the federation, so I’m very thankful for that.” Yet by May, that seemed moot anyway. He figured he would need three months of training to resume utmost shape. Stresses mounted. The end of his swimming would mean the end of his government-allowed “sports leave” in Dubai.

The Washington Post have published a thought provoking article highlighting the affect of Kuwait’s ban at the Olympics on Kuwaiti athletes (or at least one Kuwaiti athlete). The situation is pretty sad but hopefully things will get sorted out by the next Olympics. [Link]

Last week I posted a video of a classic Nissan Skyline doing a burnout in front of Big Ben. Since that video I’ve been trying to track down the guys and I think I finally found them. Well kinda, I think I found three different groups of guys doing this Europe trip. I combined some of their videos below which includes two more of the Big Ben burnout but from different angles. The picture above was taken from one of the touring groups and I thought it was strange since it looks like they did a river crossing? How did they even end up in there…

Anyway you can check out a lot more photos in the accounts below:
@kuw_sd
@fawzi_77
@kuw_ta
@ashtrackya
@__92_q8
@a__k4
@v_190
@910_q
@__51172__
@ajmy_q8
@q8.j1

You can check the hashtag #اشتراكيه_2016 as well since they all seem to be using it.

Also, you’ll notice some cars have Saudi plates. I believe thats because you can’t import and register the cars with Kuwaiti plates since they’re not old enough to be considered a classic car. I think a car must be 30+ years to be considered a classic and be allowed to be imported and registered. So as a loop hole, they keep them with Saudi plates.