2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

A couple of days back I had just finished having lunch at Salhiya and as I was leaving the area by car I spotted the Finger Sushi sign on one of the buildings. I hadn’t noticed the sign before and since I was driving I made my friend note down Finger Sushi on my phone so I could check it out later once I got back home. That same evening around 1AM while watching the movie Non-Stop, I came across the note Finger Sushi on my phone and decided to see if they had a website or instagram account I could check out. I ended up finding both and right away what caught my attention was the fact that they’re open 24 hours a day. Me and my friends always have a hard time finding a place that isn’t McDonalds that is open after midnight and a 24 hour sushi place is exactly what we’d want late at night. So I paused the movie and gave them a call just to confirm that their dine-in is open 24 hours and not just the delivery and the guy on the other end of the line said I could come by any time of day and eat. So I decided once the movie was over I would head to Finger Sushi and try it out.

It was just after 2AM when I left my house and headed into the city. I put some Chet Baker on and took the scenic route arriving at the restaurant around 2:20AM and obviously, I was the only one there. There menu is very basic with just 7 makis, some salads and a handful of side dishes. By 7 makis I actually mean one kind of maki but you get to choose if you want it salmon, crab, shrimp, tuna, chicken, meat or vegetable. I decided to go with the salmon maki and asked them to make it spicy, the chef recommended I choose the red colored rice if I wanted it spicy but I decided to stick with white for the salmon and ordered another spicy crab maki with the red rice. I asked the chef what the sweet salmon salad was and he told me it was similar to the popular salmon avocado salad except with a different sauce. I ended up going with that as well and a side order of edamame. The cashier asked me if I wanted chopsticks which I replied yes to and he then asked me if I wanted soya sauce which I also said yes to. Turns out both are chargeable items costing 100fils each.

While waiting for my order to get ready I took some photos of the place trying my best to make it look cooler than it actually is and while I was admiring my handiwork, the waiter calls me up and hands me over a tray with my order. All the items I had ordered were nicely packaged so I took a group photo and then opened the packages for one more round of photos before I proceeded to munch away on the food.

I started off with the edamame which is impossible to go wrong with and once I was done with the edamame I started on the sweet salmon salad. This honestly was the worst thing I ordered and I have no idea why the chef would even compare it to a salmon avocado salad at other restaurants since its nothing like it. The salad was mostly lettuce with four or five small cooked and dry pieces of salmon covered with Lays chips. Not even the sauce could rescue the salad from disaster so save yourself the disappointment and skip the salads all together. Once I put the salad aside I started on the makis.

According to the chef all their makis plates come as six pieces with each two pieces having a different sauce on top. I’m sure you could stick to one sauce if you want to but for your first time you’d probably want to have the three different sauces so you could get an idea of what they all taste like. The makis also all come covered with crispy tempura. I personally wanted to order my maki without the sauces and the crispy tempura but since I was going to write about the place I decided to keep everything as it was. All three sauces tasted fairly similar and they were strong enough to overpower the flavor of the whole maki. It didn’t matter if there was crab or salmon inside I couldn’t tell the difference. On the other hand the red rice gave it an interesting flavor since its prepared using rose water.

Overall it was pretty much what I was expecting from a 24 hour fast food sushi place along with a bill that fit the experience:

6 Piece Salmon Maki – KD1.200
6 Piece Crab Maki – KD1.200
Sweet Salmon Salad – KD1.000
Edamame – KD0.750
Soya Sauce – KD0.100
Chopsticks – KD0.100

Total: KD4.350

It’s the perfect place for late night munchies and I would go back again with my friends when every other place is closed. But, I would save my money and avoid the salad next time as well as having the makis without the crispy tempura or the sauces. Finger Sushi is located in the same building as Opera Cakes and Sahara Hotel which is on your left hand side once you leave the Salhiya area [Map]. They’ve been open for just over a week now and you can find them on instagram @fingersushi or online at fingersushi.com.

Post by Amy Freeman

So I spent the last week in Korea as I was part of a team that made it to the Crossfit Games Asia Regionals. It was a fantastic experience to be a part of something as huge as that and to top it of, my very good friend ended up winning 1st place in the female individual category.

As some of you might know, Crossfit is a mix of disciplines and to be good at it, you have to be the strongest, the fittest and the fastest at many different exercises including, conditioning work, olympic lifting and gymnastics.

While I watched my friend enter the second to last event, she looked very calm and you could tell that she had a strategy in mind. So there I was thinking man this is insane, not only does she have to be the best at everything but she also has to think about her strategy and not get caught up in everything else that is going on around her. Plus, this was day 3 of the competition and her body was nailed, more than nailed her body was totally broken. Now that’s an athlete.

Long story short she won that event and went on to take out 1st place overall.

As I reflected on the 3 days of watching these world-class athletes, especially my friend who I had watched prepare for this day, I gave myself a metaphorical kick up the ass and I have been taking the inspiration from watching these amazing people into my workouts and my approach to training in general.

You know what its like when you have been training for a while and you workout most days and you try to keep yourself honest but you let a few things slide every now and then? Maybe not sticking to your rest time, maybe changing an exercise that you don’t like for one you do like or maybe doing 6 sets of sprints instead of 8, the list goes on and it doesn’t make you a bad person but sometimes you have to be honest with yourself when this is happening and go get inspired so that you can set some goals and achieve some greatness.

For me last week I got inspired and since then you bet my workouts are the toughest they have been in a few months. I’m lifting with purpose in EVERY set, my tempo is on point in EVERY set, my technique is flawless in EVERY set, today was so hot outside but I ran anyway and the biggest one for me; doing the exercises I absolutely suck at. I might be able to bench 80kg, but my body weight, gymnastics and ring work sucks ass and that embarrasses me.

When you get inspired, you’re able to clearly pin point what is important to you and the next step is then to set goals, create a plan and achieve what you want. Sometimes internal motivation is enough but sometimes you may need the support of a friend, trainer or coach and that’s ok. You just have to figure out what you want, what you need and then create a plan.

When setting goals make them SMART:
SPECIFIC – Make sure you know exactly what your goal is in every last detail. For example. I want to Deadlift 2 x body weight for 1 rep.
MEASUREABLE – You need a way to measure your progress, like body fat or maybe a one repetition maximum.
ATTAINABLE – You should put steps in place such as mini goals that all help towards achieving the big goal. This could be like making sure you prepare food every Saturday afternoon for the following week so you don’t get hungry and fall off the wagon. Minimize risk!
REALISTIC – Make sure you seek expert advice so you know your goal is achievable for you. For example, if getting strong is your goal, talk to a trainer about a realistic goal for you. If fatloss is your goal then going from 100kg and 30% bodyfat to 60kg and 16% bodyfat in a month isn’t realistic, so seek expert advice if you are unsure.
TIMELY – Set a specific date for your goal and stick to it. Don’t make it ‘sometime in August’. Make it the 20th August, for example.

Happy Training Kuwait.

Post by Amy Freeman, a Strength and Conditioning Coach from New Zealand and currently a Personal Trainer at Inspire Pure Fitness in Kuwait.

Over the weekend a video went viral showing an endangered sea turtle being killed on a beach in Kuwait. In the very graphic video (which I won’t share on this blog), one man is seen sitting on top of the large turtle with a small kitchen knife in his hand while his family and friends can be heard in the background encouraging him to cut off the turtles head. You can even hear a voice of a woman and a child in the video, both in support of the killing. Once the perpetrator starts cutting off the turtles head, a second man comes into the video frame to help hold the turtle down. Once the head is cut off the child in the background yells out that he wants the head while everyone else watches the now dead and decapitated turtle bleed on the beach.

The Environment Public Authority (EPA) is now offering a KD3,000 reward to anyone who can identify the people in the video. It’s a very horrific crime but animal abuse sadly isn’t very rare in Kuwait. Last year some guys were driving around with shotguns shooting and decapitating stray dogs and then posting pictures all over Instagram and they were never punished so I am hoping this time around the perpetrators will be punished and made an example of.

Most of the articles on the sea turtle killing are in Arabic but KUNA have a poorly written piece on it which you could read [Here]

I was able to get a hold of two tickets for ‘The Wanted’ music event that is being held by Ooredoo this coming Saturday night and I’m going to give them away to one of my readers. Although some of you might not recognize the band’s name you’ve most likely heard one of their songs before. They are an English-Irish boy band and their two most popular songs are “Chasing The Sun” and “Glad You Came” which you can hear below.

[YouTube]

So if you want to win these two tickets, all you need to do is leave a comment below with the name of your favorite song by them. You’ll only have until midnight tonight to leave a comment since after that I will be using random.org to choose one winner who will get the two tickets. Good luck!

Rules: Only one entry per person and please make sure you use a working email since the winner will be contacted by email. If winner doesn’t respond within 12 hours of receiving the email, another winner will be randomly chosen.

Update: I closed the post for comments last night and using random.org this morning the winner was chosen which is comment #177 (Tareq). If Tareq doesn’t respond to my email in the next 12 hours a second draw will take place. Thanks for participating everyone and sorry you couldn’t all win.

Update2: The original winner didn’t respond to my email after 12 hours so using random.org I drew another number and the second time the winner was #209 (Ozair).

Thursday
Cinemagics Rooftop Movie: Thief
SHREK The Musical
Exhibition: 50 Years of Printmaking
Exhibition: Once Removed – Kevork Mourad
Exhibition: The Tour – Barry Iverson

Friday
Kuwait Scapes
SHREK The Musical
Wayans Brothers Comedy Show

Saturday
Shakshooka Nomadic Farmers Market
SHREK The Musical
Cinemagics Rooftop Movie: The Great Beauty

If you’d like to share an event on the blog [Email Me]

Wataniya Ooredoo are bringing the music group ‘The Wanted’ to perform live this coming Saturday at an invite only event that’s going to be held at their Red Dome near 360 Mall.

I’m not a fan of ‘The Wanted’ but I’m curious to why they can bring big bands to Kuwait and no one else can? A couple of years back they brought the musician ‘Ne-Yo’ and now this.

A few months back I posted a collection of old Kuwaiti postcards which I had found by mistake on eBay while searching for something else. This time around I found a larger collection of old Kuwaiti postcards but I was deliberately looking for them.

What I find fascinating about these old postcards is the fact they highlight important locations and buildings of that era, ones that are forgotten about or don’t even exist today. That’s why for this post I’ve highlighted these two specific postcards, one of the Carlton Hotel and the other of the Phoenicia Hotel. According to this old scan from a 1966 magazine, Phoenicia was the a beautiful place where you could experience the most beautiful days of your life. Good times, check out all the postcards below.

To purchase any of these postcards visit this [Link]

Yarmouk became the first healthy city in Kuwait this month by fulfilling the requirements of the World Health Organization (WHO). Some of the requirements they fulfilled included:

– Fighting against obesity
– Having a walk marathon
– Beautification and cleaning of the city
– Setting up a well-equipped walking track
– Planted trees
– Saved power and water
– Washed streets with water and soap
– Organized exhibitions for young entrepreneurs a
– Established an environment-friendly park
– Organized cultural, social, educational and health symposiums and lectures
– Urged people to donate blood
– Combatted smoking
– Fighting swine flu

I think thats really great now if only the same formula could be applied to my area or other areas around Kuwait. Checkout the article on KUNA [Here]

Photo by Samira

As part of the blogs expansion I’ve added a bunch of new sections to the blog and because I know it can be annoying to keep clicking every section to see if there is anything new, I decided to solve that issue by updating the middle column. After playing around with it for awhile now I’m finally comfortable with the way it looks and the function it provides.

If you take a look to the right side of this post you’ll find “More from 248AM”. These are posts that aren’t on the main blog page but instead posts that have been published in one of the other sections. So if you’re looking for more content to read, keep your eye out for articles that pop up over there.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Cairo for a friends wedding and since the wedding was taking place at the Four Seasons, me and my friends all ended up staying at the same hotel as well. I hadn’t been to Cairo since back in 2008 when I went down to film the Wataniya Airways launch commercial and back then I stayed at the Grand Hyatt Hotel which I really didn’t like. The Four Seasons is literally across the street from where I stayed last time but the experience this time around was worlds apart.

The last time I was in Cairo the city was full of tourists but this time there were barely any. Even when we went to touristic places like Khan Al-Khalili and the Pyramids we barely saw any tourists and the hotels are obviously affected by this. When we were at Four Seasons the hotel was mostly occupied by people attending our wedding and people attending another wedding that was also taking place there and from what a friend told me, the prices the hotel was charging for the rooms was around 40% less than they used to charge when the city was bustling with tourists. I ended up staying in the Diplomatic Suite which turned out to be a lot larger than I was expecting it to be. When you first walk into the room you have a small hallway with a guest bathroom and a small closet. Right after the hallway is the main living space with a large LCD screen, a couch which unfolds into a sofa bed, a work area and a large terrace overlooking the Nile. At the far end of the room is a doorway that leads you into the bedroom where theres a second large LCD screen, a huge walk-in closet and a large marble clad bathroom with two sinks. I think this was pretty much the largest room I had ever stayed in at a hotel.

The hotel as a whole felt a lot like a cruise ship and some of my friends treated it that way by not leaving the hotel the whole weekend we were there. Other than the restaurants and the pool, the hotel also had a bar, a club and a department store all located on premises. The pool area is where we spent all our mornings tanning and recovering from the night before by relaxing on their really comfortable lounges. The only downside to the pool area and actually one of the only issues I had with the hotel is the fact by 12:30PM the sun ends up behind the hotel casting a shadow over the pool area and basically putting a stop to any tanning that was taking place.

On the plus side I didn’t get any food poisoning while I was there. Before leaving to Cairo everyone was warning me about how easy it was to get food poisoned and not to have any salads or drinks with ice so by the time I got to Cairo I was planning on not eating for the whole trip. In the end hunger won and I spent most of the weekend having the hotel burger for brunch and then mixing it up with dinner either by eating at the hotel or somewhere around Cairo. The location of the hotel was pretty great since it was right on the Nile which meant the view from my room was spectacular. The staff were all really friendly and professional and you really don’t feel like you’re in Egypt when you’re inside the hotel. A good example on how good the staff is, on the last day after checking out we were waiting outside the hotel for our rides when the doorman noticed one of the girls with us was holding a pair of shoes in her hand. Without her asking he went and got her a paper bag and placed the shoes inside for her. That earned the hotel a lot of points in my book.

Overall I had a great weekend in Cairo and the hotel was part of the reason why. This is the third or fourth Four Seasons Hotel I’ve stayed in and so far they’ve all turned out to be pretty great. There are two Four Seasons in Cairo, the one I stayed in was the Nile Plaza one (not the one with the casino) and you can check out their website [Here]

“CONTAMINATED” is a short film that was written and directed by the Kuwaiti film maker Moe Al-Saeed and a couple of days back he got word that it was officially selected to be part of the upcoming Miami Fashion Film Festival. Moe is the guy behind some great locally produced videos including my two favorites the Happy Kuwait video and BirdTalk: Dance.

He’s is still working on a trailer for “CONTAMINATED” but for now I was able to get the film synopsis:

God Shiva starts the tandav cosmic dance of death to wake the “children” up. She gives them beauty and power. The children blossom and as they reach their crescendo they get contaminated. Their time is up and Shiva destroys what she has once created.

Sounds pretty strange and interesting so can’t wait to see it.

A few weeks back the Red Bull Cypher battle took place in Kuwait where 16 of the best b-boys battled for the prestigious title as well as the chance to compete against the worlds best in Paris. This was the first year Kuwait had a b-girl compete but in the end it was b-boy Seasick who took home the title.

Check out the video of the event below put together by TJCfilms.

[YouTube]

I’ve gone through a whole bunch of sports mixers over the last few years and really wasn’t happy with any of them. The majority would either start falling apart after awhile, not mix my drink properly or worst of all, start leaking. Sports mixers are used to mix protein shakes, energy drinks or nutrition supplements and are pretty common with gym goers. Recently I noticed one of the protein stores I frequent (Health Planet) started carrying the Blender Bottle brand. I purchased a small bottle and I’m in love with it, by far the best sports mixer I’ve ever used. It’s really well made, looks great, does a great job of mixing because of the wire ball wisk inside and most importantly, it hasn’t leaked on me yet. There are two sizes of the sports mixer, 20oz and 28oz. The one I got which is pictured above is 20oz which is the perfect size for me. The price for both sizes are similar coming in at KD6.750 and KD6.950. So if you want to pick one they’re available at Health Planet.

Hello everyone, although I haven’t posted here in a while, I have been reading your questions and emails. Over and over there is one question that is constantly being asked so I have decided to post the answer here, so you can all benefit.

“How can I get a release from my company?”

This question is not as simple as it seems, the answer depends on a few things (I am assuming you work in the private sector and Kuwait Labor Law 6/2010 applies to you):
1) If you have passed the 100 day probation period or not
2) The type of contract you have (specified or not specified)
3) Whether your employer was providing you with your rights as per Kuwait Labor Law

So therefore I tried to simplify the answer in a flow chart below:

I really don’t like how some employers are keeping foreigners here against their will by using a specified contract, putting travel bans against them and doing other manipulative things. This isn’t a perception I have but stories I keep hearing EVERY SINGLE DAY! So my advice to you is, if you want to leave and they won’t let you go, email your boss with all the things they are doing that are against the law or your contract, for example withholding your passport, not paying you on time, not paying you over time, working more than 8 hours a day and so on (Read your rights here)

Also I would like to take some cases pro-bono with a help of lawyer friends, so please email you if you feel your employer is not being rightful!

As for company’s please read this link that has employee rights, you have no excuse to treat foreigners this way.

If you have any further questions please write them below, I will try to answer you here.

Post by Fajer Ahmed – Legal Counsel
The legal opinions expressed in this post are those of the author Fajer. Opinions expressed by Mark or any other writer on mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com are those of the individual’s and in no way reflect Fajer’s opinion.

K’S PATH, the local non-profit animal welfare and environmental protection organization needs your help:

You can make a difference to the lives of 232 shelter animals this summer by supporting our Summer Fundraising Campaign! Help us raise six months worth of food – which totals KD10,000 – by 31st May 2014 for our dogs, cats, horses, donkeys, goats, sheep, ducks, tortoises, turtles, rabbits, ferret and baboons. Your generosity will enable us to continue providing our animals the nutrition they need to be happy and healthy. Please do spread the word and give us a call at 67001622 or email [email protected] to make a donation. Thank you!

Out of the KD10,000 they need, as of this post they’ve raised around KD9,500 which means only KD500 is left. So contact them if you can help them reach their goal.