2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Kuwait along with Armenia, Belarus, Venezuela, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Mongolia, Russia and Serbia is participating in the 2014 Tank Biathlon in Russia. The championship is being held in four stages:

The first one – an individual race – will be held from August 4 through 6. August 4 will see the first crews competing in three races with four tanks in each. The first race will include tank crews from Angola, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Serbia. The Russian national team will be performing in the second race along with teams from China, Kuwait and Armenia. The first day of the championship will end with a race among the crews from India, Belarus, Venezuela and Kyrgyzstan. The individual race envisages a seven-kilometer three-round itinerary.

The second stage – the sprint – will be held on August 8-9. The sprint distance, as is traditional in biathlon, will be the shortest one: three kilometers. It will be this stage that will set the sequence and temporary start-time gap in the pursuit race.

The third stage – the pursuit race – will be held on August 11-12. This type of biathlon race will be based on the results of the sprint (individual start) race.

The final stage will see the first four teams resulting from all three stages identifying the winner during a relay race. Three crews from each national team will make three four-kilometer rounds on one tank (with crew replacement). [Source]

[YouTube]

I didn’t know such a competition existed and Kuwait seems like the odd one out amongst the 12 countries. Video from the first day of the championship is already online, you can see Kuwait come in at the 2:14:44 mark.

Thanks Abdul

The first part of the documentary on Kuwait that is airing on British Airways this month has been uploaded online in full HD. It’s nearly 12 minutes long and you can watch it above. [YouTube]

So you know that parking lot in Salmiya I’ve posted about that’s filled with graffiti and is now getting demolished? Well whoever is demolishing the building messed up, not just once, not twice, but three times!

As you can see from the photos, the demolition has damaged the still brand new unopened mall in three different places.

What probably is worse is the fact that the demolition area isn’t cordoned off which means kids from the neighborhood could just walk into the demolition site or just go up the easily accessible stairs of the partly demolished lot. Sadly it’s not a big deal because most of us here have grown accustomed to the lack of professionalism involved in demolition. On a similar topic, a reader the other day left the following comment under the Family Bookshop post:

Speaking of demolishing. An Indian that works for our company became paralyzed from the waste down just this past month because the building next door was being demolished. The side wall of the building fell into their building knocking down the wall to his room.

That’s messed up.

A couple of weeks ago, me and a friend where looking for places to travel this coming October and Cuba was on the top of our list. We didn’t manage to do much research other than finding out which airline would take us there but, the local travel blog Hello 965 just posted some information on Cuba including how to get there and what to do once you’re there. So if you’re ever considering flying to Cuba, this post should interest you. Check out her post over [Here]

Someone recently spotted a Porsche 918 Spyder from Kuwait in London and recorded a video of it. Not sure what hotel is in the video but based on all the Kuwaiti cars parked there you’d think it was a hotel in Kuwait. The Spyder starts at KD265,000 but the one in the video is a modified Oakley Design model and might possibly be the first and only Spyder in Kuwait at the moment. [YouTube]

If you’re looking for a good branded bike in Kuwait you really don’t have much options other than Trek. I actually had to order my bicycle online due to this fact but things are starting to get better. VIB is a small bike store that opened around a year ago in the Al-Rai area but recently moved to Salmiya and opened up shop right next to Extreme Sports (the Trek dealer).

VIB carry two brands of bicycles, Olma and the race winning Orbea which is the more popular brand and the one that a lot of top racers use. Back at the Beijing Olympics two gold medal winners were on Orbea bikes for example. They carry both road and mountain bikes and seem to have a large variety to choose from. Prices vary but most of the ones I checked hovered at around KD300.

If you’re interested in their bikes, they’re open from 10 to 1 and then again 3 to 9. Their phone number is 55219829 and here is their location on [Google Maps]

On the occasion of the Kuwait Invasion I thought I would share a very informative article on the Kuwaiti Resistance. The article was published by the Middle East Quarterly back in 1995 but is actually taken from a book called “Days of Fear“. It’s very interesting to read although it’s a bit long. I actually had to send it to my Kindle so I could read it since I don’t generally read articles this long in a web browser.

The article contains intricate details on the resistance and lots of accounts of their heroic actions, many which I hadn’t heard of before. Here’s a snippet just to give you an idea of the kind of stories that the article contains:

On some occasions, Kuwaitis had no choice but to take severely wounded Resistance fighters to the hospitals, sometimes only steps ahead of the Iraqis. In one incident, a youth shot in the head was admitted as a traffic accident victim. The Iraqis knew that someone had been wounded and would end up in a hospital, so they searched the operating rooms just as he was about to undergo surgery. The patient was obviously in a bad way but the Kuwaiti doctor could not risk telling the cause of his wound. The patient’s x-rays would clearly show the bullet in his head, so the Kuwaiti doctors played a trick: One of them left the room, ostensibly to get the images that were just then being developed, but actually x-rayed his own head and showed the film to the Iraqi, who was satisfied by this ruse and left the hospital staff to get on with its work.

And here is another:

About ten days before the land war, in late February 1991, another gaffe outside Kuwait may have undone much of their good work. The Resistance informed the government-in-exile that it had sabotaged the Iraqi mining of the oilfields, and that most of the wells apart from the Wafra field and a few others were safe. An official apparentlyfoolishly broadcast news of this accomplishment. The Iraqis may have heard the broadcast or may have simply decided on their own that they had to test the circuits for real. In any case, they tried to blow up a number of wells at Rawdatain, in the north of Kuwait, as a test. They failed to explode. The Iraqis then checked the charges and discovered the sabotage. Over the next few days, Iraqi army engineers frantically reset the detonators, and then blew the wells. Overall, the operation was still a victory for the Resistance, for while about 720 wells were destroyed, the Iraqis did not have time to reset and blow the other 300.

As I said the article is pretty long but it’s thorough. Check it out [Here]

Photo: Bob Pearson/AFP/Getty Images

Since it’s the anniversary of the 1990 Kuwait Invasion I always like to share the important links below.

Free Kuwait
This is a website that focuses on the campaign that was led by Kuwaitis in exile and is loaded with photos and information.

Kuwait Invasion – The Evidence
This is a website that contains over 1,200 pictures taken right after the 1990 invasion as photographic evidence to all the destruction caused by Iraq.

Short movie: Hearts of Palm
Hearts of Palm is a short movie set in August 2nd 1990 and deals with Kuwaiti students living in Miami Florida during the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait.

The Class of 1990
This is a short documentary about reuniting class mates years after the 1990 Iraqi invasion.

Homemade video from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait
Video clips taken by a Kuwaiti family during the Iraqi invasion

Desert Storm Photos
Photos taken by soldiers during Desert Storm.

Photo by Adel Al-Yousifi

I’m still on vacation and will get back to blogging next week but I was flipping through some old photos when I found the photos below of The Family Bookshop before they closed down.

It really pisses me off how they demolished the whole block of buildings three years ago taking away a lot of great stores as well as the street’s life from the area. Until this day there’s nothing to show for it except a large big hole in the ground.

They even closed off the sidewalk and parking spots adjacent to the construction site.

The mall that was supposed to be built in that place pictured above (here’s a video as well) was supposed to be completed this year but as you can see below, construction hasn’t even started.

A Kuwait Airways plane carrying 200 people made an emergency landing at Brussels airport Monday after the pilot reported smoke in the cockpit, Belgian news reports said.

The plane, an Airbus 300, was en route to London from Kuwait when the pilot asked for clearance to land, the reports said, citing airport spokeswoman Florence Muls.

“The landing proceeded without incident and all passengers disembarked safely,” Muls said. “Safety services are now examining the aircraft” to see if they can discover where the smoke came from, she added. [Source]

Good thing they’re getting new planes end of the year.

Late last week I posted about how British Airways will be airing a 4 part series on Kuwait this August onboard all their flights and earlier today I was sent the first two and a half minutes of part 1. The intro makes Kuwait look so good and exciting that it makes me want to move to Kuwait even though I already live here. Check it out below.

Update: The video is officially out so I’ve updated the link below with the full video of part one.

[YouTube]

Last week I posted about the graffiti parking lot in Salmiya that is getting demolished. They’ve been bringing it down wall by wall and every time a wall falls down a graffiti work is revealed. Today I noticed the wall pictured above that’s now left standing and I thought it looked really beautiful. It’s not a sight you see very often in Kuwait.

Along with the other projects I’ve already posted about previously (Here and Here), the Al Jahra Hospital is another project that was commissioned by the Amiri Diwan. This hospital is going to have around 1,100 beds and will be bigger than the Jaber Hospital which is also currently under construction.

Major departments include: Accident and Emergency with Helipad on the roof and separate Adult and Pediatric treatment areas; over 20 Outpatient Clinics; Outpatient Procedures including Endoscopy, Pulmonary and Cardiology; Radiology and Nuclear Medicine; Same Day Medical observation unit; a modern Surgical suite with 20 OR’s including 2 hybrid rooms; a Women’s Center including Women’s Surgery, Infertility Clinic and Outpatient services, NICU and Special Care Nurseries, Women’s Surgery. Inpatient beds include Adult, Pediatric and Women’s Center beds as well as 12 unique ICU bed units.

The hospital is expected to take just 36 months to complete.

If you’ve traveled recently you might have noticed the Pearl Lounge at the airport was getting refurbished. Well the makeover is complete and someone from the National Aviation Services uploaded a 30 days time-lapse of the whole processes. I think the new lounge looks better and it also looks like it can fit a lot more people. Check out the time lapse below.

[YouTube]

As I’ve previously posted, Emirates is now flying their double decker A380 plane to Kuwait which is now officially the shortest flight for the plane in the world. The flight is only 1 and 25 minutes long and the video below is a behind the scenes look at the inaugural flight to Kuwait. [Link]