2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003
Kuwait is to increase the prices of gasoline by as much as 73 percent from September, showing how the oil price slump is affecting the energy-rich Gulf state’s finances.
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Kuwait’s cabinet said on Monday that the price for the ultra gasoline grade would rise to 165 fils a litre, from 95 currently, the super grade to 105 from 65 and premium grade to 85 from 60, state news agency KUNA reported. [Source]
Ouch, thats a pretty steep hike.
Legendary Kuwaiti shooter Fehaid al-Deehani has refused to carry the Olympic neutral team flag at the Rio Games opening ceremony, where the Gulf state’s athletes cannot march behind their own emblem.
Kuwait is suspended by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and other leading federations such as FIFA, football’s world body, over government interference in sport.
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According to Kuwaiti media, the IOC asked al-Deehani, who took trap shooting bronze medals at the 2000 Sydney and 2012 London Games, to carry the Olympic neutral team flag.
But the Kuwait army officer turned down the request.
“I am a military man and I will only carry the Kuwait flag,” he said. “I cannot carry the IOC flag.”
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The Kuwait Olympic Committee on Sunday called on the government to start dialogue in a last-gasp bid to get the Kuwait flag in to the Rio opening ceremony.
Hussein al-Mussallam, vice chairman of the committee’s legal and international relations commission, told AFP it was time “to sit down together and review things in a positive way”.
He said “the interests of Kuwaiti athletes should come above all else”.
“I am speaking on behalf of the KOC and not in the name of international organizations,” al-Mussallam added.
“The time has come in front of everyone, the Kuwaiti government and the ministry for youth and sports, the Kuwait Olympic Committee and the Olympic Movement Kuwait to sit together for the national interest and for Kuwait to return as it was.”
Al-Mussallam also appealed for all sides to “stay away from personal issues”.
“The Olympic movement has a role to deal with the government in the interest of sport. The government has to hear the point of view of international organizations and the United Nations and the opinion of the Kuwaiti Olympic movement.”
The official said that Kuwaiti athletes want to compete in Rio “under the flag of our country, so and we demand the sports minister respond to the advice of the International Olympic Committee and to stop the implementation of the conflicting articles in the Kuwaiti sports law”. [Full Article]
I’ve been having a hard time finding the final list of Kuwaiti athletes that will be taking part at the Rio Olympics. The article above lists the following:
Abdulrahman Al-Faihan (Trap)
Ahmad Al-Afasi (Double Trap)
Khaled Al-Mudhaf (Trap)
Saud Habib Al-Kandari (Skeet)
Fehaid Al-Deehani (Double Trap)
Abdullah Al-Rashidi (Skeet)
Abdulaziz Al-Shatti (Fencing)
Abbas Al Qali (Swimming)
But, the list isn’t accurate since they leave Faye Sultan out who will be competing in swimming as well. That means there might be other athletes missing as well. So far though, 9 Kuwaitis will be at the Olympics this year.
According to a friend of mine, he was driving down the 2nd Ring Road a couple of nights ago and got stopped at a traffic light. There was a cop walking amongst the cars looking for violators or potential violators and because my friend was on the phone, the cop told him to park on the right hand side where some cops were handing out violations. Since my friend had just recently renewed his car registration, the registration paperwork was with his driver. So what was supposed to be a ticket for talking on the phone while driving turned into a car impoundment. So they loaded up his car onto a trailer with a bunch of other cars, all standard stuff so far but here is where things get interesting.
So my friend calls his mum to come pick him up. When his mum arrives the cop saw that his mum had come to pick him up so he called my friend over and told him to go to the trailer and pay the driver KD10. The trailer guy will then drive down the street away from the main road and dismount his car for him. And it wasn’t just my friend, there were 5 other guys who were told to go pay the trailer guy KD10 to have him dismount their cars down the street from the checkpoint.
If you were going to let the guys off the hook why not just dismount the cars right there? Why dismount them down some side street away from the main road? And then on top of that why do they have to pay the driver KD10? The whole thing sounded a bit shady to me so I wanted to post about it and hear some opinions on this.
Image from Arab Times
Last year Alghanim Industries acquired the rights to develop Wendy’s restaurants across the Middle East and it looks like their flagship store in Kuwait is going to be located in Salmiya on Plajat Street. They’ve taken over the site of a defunct food complex and I’m assuming they’re going to be knocking it down and building a large Wendy’s in its place. No idea on when they’re expected to open but I’d guess sometime end of the year or early next year.
via Frankom
Last week I posted about the First Ring Road construction that will turn it into an infinite loop and a reader shared a link to a video that shows how the project will look like once completed. Spoiler: There will be lots of underpasses. Check out the video above or on [YouTube]
Thanks غنيمة
Last week my brother got a flat tire and when he took out his spare tire he noticed that was flat as well. So his choices were:
– Call a tow truck
– Go get his spare fixed and then install it on the car and then drive back to Canada Dry street to get the main tire replaced
– Call a mobile tire service company and have them come over and replace his tire
He ended up going with the third option and called Star Service since it was his most convenient option. Star Service are an emergency roadside assistance service that also do home calls. Say you end up with a dead car battery or flat tire, you would call Star Service up and they’d come over and get you up and running again. If you have a flat tire you could call them up and give them your tire size and brand and they could bring a new tire with them. In my brothers case since his tire was rare, they couldn’t get him one so he ended up buying the tire himself and they then came over to his place to install it for him.
Star Service come over in a small fully equipped van. If you’ve ever had a tire replaced you know that they first need to remove the old tire from the wheel, then install the new tire on the wheel and then get the wheel balanced. Star Service can do all of that inside the van since all the equipment needed is in there. They even have a small generator to power up the computer and the machine needed for the wheel balancing.
ُThe cost to come over and do a tire replacement was surprisingly not too expensive costing just KD10. If you ever get a flat or a dead battery and need their services, they work daily from 11AM to 7PM except for Fridays. Their phone number is 90997823.
Update: Garagee is another company that offers a similar service, their phone number is 50250280 and their instagram account is @garagee.me
Washington Post have an article on muslim female athletes and Kuwaiti athletes are featured prominently in it. It’s an interesting article that highlights the struggle muslim female athletes go through in the Arab world but it also kind of shows how liberal Kuwait is (or can be). Kuwaiti athletes won’t be able to participate at the Rio Olympics this year under the Kuwaiti flag due to the ban imposed on Kuwait by the IOC, but I believe there will be a number of Kuwaiti female athletes competing (Faye Sultan is confirmed), I’m just still waiting to get the final list so I can share it. Here is the link to the Washington Post [Article]
Below are this weekends events and yes surprisingly there are a bunch of things happening:
Thursday
The Divan’s Movie Night: Dr. Strangelove
Friday
Hatha Yoga with Rosie
Kuwait Rapid Chess Championship
Somali Exhibition
Chinese Dance Performance
Good Game: Magic – The Gathering
Saturday
Yoga with the 3
Lift Yourself Bodyweight Training
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 Cinescape and Grand Cinemas:
Alice Through The Looking Glass (6.4)
Central Intelligence (6.6) ♦
Finding Dory (7.8)
Jason Bourne (8.3) ★
Now You See Me 2 (6.9)
Star Trek Beyond (7.6)
Submerged (4.0)
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.
“Masane’a Al-Najaah” which translates to Success Factories in English is a locally produced 33 episode reality TV series that follows 27 young successful Kuwaiti entrepreneurs and their projects. The show is in Arabic without any English subtitles so non-Arabic speakers aren’t going to understand anything. But, on the plus side the series is available online to watch for free. Below are the first 3 episodes, for some reason after the 3rd episode they started splitting the videos up into four 15 minute parts which not only makes it difficult to watch but also to difficult to find and link to.
Update: Here is a YouTube playlist with all the episodes [Link]
Thanks Lightbug
After posting my review of the Micro 3D Printer last week a reader contacted me asking me if I could print something for him. I realized some people might want something printed but don’t want to invest in a printer so this post is a roundup of local places that could print stuff for you in 3D. If you know of any other place, please share it in the comments below.
3D Printing
3DPme – They sell, rent 3D printers as well as print stuff for you
Wain Plus – They can create 3D objects for you as well as print stuff
Other
MB Training Center – They offer 3D printing classes
A new law regulating all Web-based publications including electronic news services, bulletins, websites of newspapers and televisions and alike came into effect yesterday after its bylaws were published in the official gazette. Information Minister Sheikh Salman Al-Humoud Al-Sabah said the law is for professional online media in a bid to preserve Kuwaiti traditions and counter extremist ideology.
The minister urged all those running online news services to register on the ministry website to obtain the necessary license to operate in the country. Under the legislation, all these services must obtain a license from the government before they can operate. Those in existence have one year to comply with the law. Violations committed by these services will be looked in court under the press and publications law, which stipulates hefty jail terms for several offenses.
During its debate in the Assembly in January this year, the minister insisted the law is aimed at regulating electronic media and it will not apply to personal accounts, like those of bloggers. Under the law, the owner and director of all online services must be Kuwaiti. Violations can be penalized by jail terms of up to 10 years if these services call for the overthrow of the country’s regime. [Source]
Thankfully I’m not included in this since I run a personal blog. If I did fall under this new regulation it would turn out to be such a complicated mess since I’d have to register the blog as online media outlet and I might not get approval for it. And then even if I did get approval I wouldn’t be able to own the blog because I’m not Kuwaiti. The whole thing doesn’t make sense though, you can’t regulate or control the internet.
Yesterday I had a meeting with TAP, (the local electronic payment company) since they wanted to let me know of some new things they’ll be introducing in a couple a months time. I can’t disclose any of it for now but while meeting with them I did manage to get some details on their current services. To be truthful, I wasn’t a fan of TAP before my meeting and that’s mostly because of the ridiculous no desktop browser rule they had in place. Basically on more than one occasion when I wanted to pay for an item using their service, the link the seller provided wouldn’t work from my computer. Turned out their service would only work when using a mobile phone browser and I thought that was the dumbest thing ever. There was no technical reason for it, they just decided not to allow people on desktops from using their service. Not very practical especially when I would link to workshops on my event page that required TAP payments. Thankfully, this annoyance will be solved with their upcoming updates.
With that rant out of the way, what I wanted to write about in this post is how their payment system is actually really great for home and small businesses in Kuwait. When I was starting a company and wanted to setup a payment system for an online store, the fees involved were ridiculous. Firstly you needed to be an officially registered business which means home businesses couldn’t setup an online payment system. Secondly the cost involved was just too high, depending on the bank you would pay a setup fee of around KD750 (KD1,000 in some cases), then a monthly fee ranging from KD25 to KD50 depending on the bank and then on top of that a charge per transaction, 1% for debit cards and 3% for credit cards. So if you’re just starting up those fees could be pretty brutal.
TAP on the other hand offer two services for home and small businesses and in both services you do not have to be an officially registered business.
GoCollect
The first service is called GoCollect. Say you have an instagram account and you sell cupcakes out of your home, when someone places an order with you through whatsapp, you would provide them with a link that will send them to the TAP website where they could pay you either with a debit card or credit card. There is no setup fee for this service and you can sign up to it from the TAP website. You could be up and running in less than 24 hours. TAP make their money with transaction fees, they charge 200fils 2.5% per debit card transaction and 3% for credit card transactions. TAP gets your customers money and then deposits it into your account. You don’t have to be dealing with a certain bank either, they work with all local banks.
GoSell
The second service they offer is called GoSell. This is for small businesses that have an online store. Say you’re selling tshirts and you created an online shop using one of the online services like Shopify, Magento, WordPress or whatever, TAP would provide you with a plugin (or API for pros) that would allow you to integrate their payment system with your ecommerce website. They charge around KD300 to set this up for you, maybe a bit less, maybe a bit more depending on the size of your business and then like with GoCollect, they charge 200fils 2.5% per debit card transaction and 3% for credit cards. No monthly fees.
If you’re a home or small business or thinking of starting a business then this is currently the easiest way to setup a payment system. If you want to find out more you can visit their website for more details [Here]
Update: I was informed by TAP to replace the 200fils debit card transaction fee in my post with 2.5% since they don’t have a fix rate. Depending on the size of your business and your negotiation ability the debit card transaction fee could be 200fils, could be 1%, could be 2.5% etc.. it varies
Awhile back I was talking to my friends dad who’s been in Kuwait working on the local infrastructure since the 60s and he told me that when the First Ring Road was originally conceived it was meant to be a loop. I don’t remember the exact conversation but they ran into issues (I think a politician didn’t want a bridge overlooking his property or something along those lines) and the project never got completed. Now the project is back on track and those of you who work in the city have probably noticed a lot of road closures. Last week the road from Dasman roundabout to the First Ring Road was shutdown and dug up and yesterday the Dasman roundabout itself was dissected (pictured below) so construction can start there as well.
I’m going to try and get official pictures of the project but once construction is completed it should look something similar to my drawing on top. I’m guessing as well that once the project is completed you should be able to loop the First Ring Road without stopping at any traffic light so I’m curious to see how they’re planning to connect the current end of the First Ring Road which ends at Souk Mubarakia to the new extension which starts near the Grand Mosque and Kuwait Stock Exchange. I checked the Projects Explorer on the Ministry of Public Works website and according to the information I found there, once this project is completed there will be a total of 5 bridges connecting the current end of the First Ring Road to the start of the First Ring Road. I couldn’t find a completion date nor could I find renderings of how the project will look like also once completed but I’m trying to get my hands on them.
If you have any renderings or more information please share it.
