2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

I’m still out of the country on vacation so posting is going to be slow till I’m back. But, I did come across an interesting TikTok account that might be my favorite at the moment.

@jahra.removals is an instagram account I’m guessing run by the Jahra baladiya or someone that works there and it’s basically non stop videos of bulldozers destroying illegal structures constructed there. There is a bit of ASMR involved and what I love is the fact there is no prep work, the bulldozers just destroy things as they are.

@jahra.removals #بلدية_الكويت #بلدية_الجهراء #فريق_الازالات #ازالة_المخالفات #قسم_ازالة_المخالفات #سعد_العبدالله #جنوب_سعد_العبدالله #الجهراء ♬ الصوت الأصلي – jahra.removals

Clearly other people are also entertained by these videos with a few having over half a million views and one video (above) with 1.7million views.

Here is the link.

Dunes is a new project by TEC located in Blajat and its going to be a beachside kashta experience.

There will be different kashta setups to pick from and they will include catering. The menu will be two kinds of cuisines catered by Meat Moot and L’ETO

You’ll be able to book a kashta through the TEC app either for the whole day, or just for breakfast, lunch or dinner. They’ll also be open daily from 10AM to 11PM.

Dunes is expected to open in the coming two weeks, to stay posted follow them on @duneskwt

B.SOCIAL is a new bakery that just soft launched in time for New Years.

They’re a cake shop but not an ordinary one, you can customize cakes based on anything and everything that comes to your mind. They want to be your go-to place whenever you need a customized cake for a special occasion. You can customize your own cakes by contacting their number on their instagram account, and it will be delivered by January 1st onwards.

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A post shared by 𝗕.𝗦𝗢𝗖𝗜𝗔𝗟™ (@bsocial.kw)

The name B.SOCIAL is inspired from the concept of cakes being the focal point in any social gathering. They will have 3 product categories to start with; Bento, celebration cakes and customized cakes. They also just released a special New Years cake they’ve created.

The cake is for chocolate lovers since it’s composed of 6 different layers of chocolate, and large enough for 6 to 8 people. If you’re looking for a special cake for this New Years, this could be the one.

For more info and to order the cake, check them out @bsocial.kw

There isn’t much happening this long weekend, but if you’re in Kuwait and are looking for something new and fun to do, you could try skydiving.

Kuwait Skydive has been open since 2017 and I remember when they first launched they were charging 160KD for a tandem jump (that’s when you jump while attached to a professional skydiver). That price eventually dropped down to 99KD, and now it’s dropped even further. They currently have an end of year offer where you could skydive for just 79KD.

For comparison, I paid 80KD to skydive in Cape Town years ago, and in Dubai, it costs around 200KD to skydive right now. So 79KD is a great price, and if it’s something on your bucket list, this is a great chance to check it off.

The skydive center is located in Khiran and so the view while jumping is of the Sabah Al Ahmad Sea City. The whole experience takes less than 2 hours from start to finish. Once you arrive to the center you’ll first be asked to fill in some paperwork before getting a quick orientation and your jump harness ready. The plane ride up is around 15 mins long, and then once you jump, you free-fall for around a minute before the parachute opens. After that it’s a chill 5-7 minute ride back down.

The Kuwait Skydive center is open everyday this long weekend including January 1st. They’ll be open from 9AM till sunset and it’s highly recommended you pre-book your jump online before arrival. To book a jump, click here.

I watched the recently released sci-fi film Rebel Moon a few days ago on Netflix, not sure why it got negative reviews it was actually pretty entertaining. I also finished rewatching the old World War II mini series Band of Brothers, and just started on the follow up to it, The Pacific.

So far I think Band of Brothers was a much better series, only because it mostly took place on the battle fields while The Pacific has a lot more stories that take place off the battlefield. Both are really great shows and you should watch them if you haven’t before (they’re on Netflix).

Both those shows are 10 years apart and now around 10 years later, they’re releasing another companion to the series called Masters of the Air. It comes out next month and you can watch the trailer below.

Let me know what you watched this week in the comments below.

Movies at the Cinemas
The movies below are now showing at the local cinemas:

New This Weekend:
Alice in Terrorland (8.0)
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (6.0)
Priscilla (6.8)

Other Movies Showing:
Migration (7.5)
Napoleon (7.0)
Thanksgiving (6.9)
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (6.9)
The Inseparables (7.0)
Wish (6.0)
Wonka (7.4)

The classic films below are currently showing at the 1954 Film House:
Anastasia (7.1)
Die Hard (8.2)

The numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at the time of publishing.

Dubai’s burger concept SALT is opening their beach pop-up next week at the new Blajat project in Salmiya.

The pop-up is located right on the sandy beach and has both indoor and outdoor seating. The pop-up will be there for 6 months.

Both the Blajat and TEC accounts just dropped a teaser video awhile ago, you can check it out on their accounts @tecq8 and @blajatkw

Starting last week, you can now explore the Grand Mosque without a tour guide.

From Sunday to Thursday, visitors can tour the Grand Mosque without a guide from 9AM to 12:30PM and then again from 4PM to 6:30PM. No booking necessary. You just need to head to the visitors lounge, register your basic info, and pick up a badge to enter the mosque.

If you want a guided tour, both English and Arabic tours are available from Sunday to Thursday at 10AM, and then again at 5PM. No pre-booking needed and the tours are free of charge.

Dress Code: No sleeveless shirts nor shorts for men, and full-length cloaks and headscarves for women

Location: Google Maps

Instagram: @wpickw

Kuwait has some interesting and scary folklore but most of it is being forgotten. So here are five horrifying creatures you might not know about:

Hemarat Algayla
This terrifying monster also goes by the simpler name Um Homar (Donkey Lady) and tells the story of a half-woman, half-donkey creature who seeks out and devours kids. The monster sleeps most of the day and night but wakes up to hunt at noon when the sun is at the highest point in the sky. Mothers would tell this story to stop kids from going out in the strong sun and get heat exhaustion. The story was a way to scare them to stay inside when it was the hottest time outside.

Tantal
While Um Homar hunts during the day, Tantal hunts during the night. He was known to shape-shift and if he spotted a child out after dark, he would take the form of whatever the child feared the most and then chased them until the child dropped dead from their heart giving out. It was a way for the parents to keep their children at home after dark.

Al-Seolu
This monster was described as a Nubian slave who came back to life with giant teeth and a large appetite for children. He goes out hunting during the night near the sea looking for kids who are out alonem and once he finds one, he drowns them and then eats their corpse. Back in 1910 there was a bit of a scare in Kuwait and people became more terrified of this monster because a child had drowned and was never found leading people to believe he was eaten by Al-Seolu.

Um Al Sa’af Wa Alleef
This scary old lady is a witch like character that is composed of palm leaves and can fly. She was believed to have frighten badly behaved children who disobeyed their parents. She hides up in the palm trees amongst the branches and when the branches shake because of strong winds or heavy rains, the parents would scare the children telling them she was up there looking for naughty children to kidnap.

Bu Darya
This water demon goes by the name “the Father of the Sea”. He was half-man half-fish who roamed the deep seas. At night Bu Darya will swim to the surface near boats and thrash about in the water while screaming for help. Once a sailor tries to assist what they believed to be a drowning human, Bu Darya would grab the sailor and drag him under water and hold them there until they’re dead. Bu Darya also attacked pearl divers so he could steal their pearls and was known to drag sleeping fishermen off their ships to eat them.

Image on top is of a painting by Nawaf-Alhmeli @nawaf_art

Note: Original less detailed version of this post was published in 2011

Below is a list of places I found that offer Christmas-themed lunches & dinners as well as cakes. If there is a place you know I haven’t listed, let me know so I can add it:

Dine-In
BBQ BROS – KD15
Hilton Kuwait – KD19.900
Jumeirah Messilah – KD23
Kerala Express – KD2.650
Radisson Blu – KD21
Symphony Style – KD20
Thakkara – KD2.650
Vigonovo – KD15

Xmas Cakes
Baker & Spice
J’s Bakery
LaBaguette
Madison & Heig
November & Co
Paul
Sable

Back in July, Chipotle announced that they had signed an agreement with Alshaya Group to open locations in the Middle East next year. The initial plan is for two locations each in Dubai and Kuwait.

According to a source of mine, Chipotle’s first location in Kuwait will be at The Avenues in place of where Blaze Pizza was located, near Gait and VOX Cinema.

All the Blaze Pizza locations in Kuwait recently closed down and I’m assuming permanently. Blaze, I believe, was Alshaya’s third attempt with pizza, the first two being 400 Gradi and Spontini (I loved Spontini) both of which also closed down.

I reached out to Alshaya for confirmation regarding Chipotles first store and they responded stating they would not comment on speculation, but that as they’ve previously mentioned, Chipotle is set to open in Kuwait in 2024.

This week I started watching the animated series Scavengers Reign on HBO Max and it’s amazing. Very interesting, very creative and extremely weird. The series follows different crew members who evacuated a damaged deep space freighter and got stranded separately on a beautiful but dangerous planet. Watch it.

Let me know what you watched this week in the comments below.

Movies at the Cinemas
The movies below are now showing at the local cinemas:

New This Weekend:
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (N/A)
The Sacrifice Game (5.4)

Other Movies Showing:
Boudica: Queen of War (4.4)
Invitation to a Murder (5.1)
Little Bone Lodge (6.1)
Migration (7.5)
Napoleon (7.0)
Role Play
Silent Night (5.9)
Thanksgiving (6.9)
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (6.9)
Wish (6.0)
Wonka (7.4)

The classic films below are currently showing at the 1954 Film House:
Anastasia (7.1)
Die Hard (8.2)
Die Hard 2 (7.1)

The numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at the time of publishing.

This is a bit of an odd one, but I haven’t used Google as my primary search engine in three months. Instead, I’ve been using a search engine called Kagi and I love it.

I first heard about Kagi through the blog Daring Fireball or maybe his podcast “The Talk Show“. I tried it out for a few days and liked it, so I subscribed and I’ve been using it since.

I like Google a lot obviously and I’ve been using it ever since they launched. My favorite search engine before Google was HotBot which was launched in 1996 by Wired Magazine, but I haven’t used anything other than Google since. I tried Bing, I tried DuckDuckGo but neither of them did anything for me.

This past year I’ve been experimenting with trying new things that could possibly improve my online experience. Earlier in the year I dropped my favorite browser Google Chrome for Apple’s Safari. It’s been nearly a year and it’s still something I’m getting used to. Google Chrome had become too bloated and on Macs, it drains the battery a lot quicker than Safari. So I dropped it. It was difficult at first mostly because of some extensions that are only available for Chrome, but it’s been a mostly positive experience and I’m glad I’m now using Safari. It’s so much faster and feels lighter.

With Google, my issue was that it became harder to find what I wanted quickly without having to first sift through a bunch of shitty websites that are filled with Ai generated content, or I have to dig past sponsored posts to get to what I want. So I decided to try Kagi and it works really really well.

I started with the free trial which is limited to 100 searches but I went through it really quickly. I then had the choice to pay 5$ a month for 300 searches, or 10$ for unlimited searches. I went with the unlimited searches which was the right choice because looking at my search usage, I’ve exceeded 300 searches every month.

Usage
Oct 2023: 739 searches
Nov 2023: 1319 searches
Dec 2023: 643 searches

Setting up Kagi as my primary search engine on Safari on the Mac and on my phone was a bit of a hassle since Safari doesn’t have Kagi as a search engine for me to pick from, but Kagi have an easy step by step guide which did the trick.

The experience has been really good, I mean it has to be if I’m paying 10$ a month for it instead of using the free Google. All the results I get are relevant all the time. I no longer, or at least very rarely get sent to one of those Ai generated sites and the whole search experience is ad free.

The only time I ever use Google is when I want to search for images. Images.google.com is still better than Kagi’s image search so I always check Kagi first, not find what I want and then head to images.google.

So yeah it’s weird but I don’t Google anymore and surprisingly it’s working out really well. The next step is to try to use Apple Maps over Google Maps just to see if there are any benefits, but I think that is going to be a struggle since Google Maps is pretty great at what it does.

If you want to check out Kagi, here is the link.

Moon Laundry is a premium laundry service that has been open since 2020 and is one of the few I tend to recognize because of their cool branding. Although they refer to themselves as a premium laundry, their prices are actually very reasonable. Their use of the word premium is because of the higher level of care and attention they give to each garment compared to your run of the mill laundry. More importantly, they also have an app.

The app is my favorite thing about Moon Laundry since it makes requesting a laundry pick up very easy. The app even has an option to let the Moon Laundry team count and sort your items after pick up so you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.

After receiving your laundry the first thing they do is conduct a thorough inspection for stains, damages, and special care requirements. If anything is found before a wash, they will contact you and let you know. They will also record any specific instruction or preferences you might have given them when requesting a laundry pick up.

The next step would be to sort your clothes based on color, fabric type, and care instructions. Any stains will be carefully pre-treated before starting the washing process. Once the items are washed, dried and ironed, they will go through one more quality control check before getting packed and sent out to be delivered to you.

If you use laundry services often then you might find their packages interesting since they offer more value at a lesser price. They also work with urgent requests so in case you forgot to wash or iron something you need urgently, they can accommodate you.

Finally, in addition to the regular laundry services, Moon Laundry also offers the service of cleaning handbags and shoes/sneakers.

If you’re looking for a convenient and reliable laundry service, then have a look at Moon Laundry. For a link to the app and more information including special offers, visit @trymoon.app

Below are some of the cool events taking place this weekend, as usual, let me know if I missed anything:

Thursday, December 14
Mirzaam Interiors Expo
The Avenues Sky
The Festive Bazaar
Cofe Fest at Al Hamra
Season Expo at Murouj
‎‏Stars & Milky Way Photography

Friday, December 15
Mirzaam Interiors Expo
Battle Fitness Festival 2023
The Avenues Sky
Cofe Fest at Al Hamra
Season Expo at Murouj
‎‏Stars & Milky Way Photography
BBQ with Madang

Saturday, December 16
Mirzaam Interiors Expo
Battle Fitness Festival 2023
Saracen Race 2023
CAP Movie Night: Stone Cold Justice
The Avenues Sky
Joyeuse Nuit Painting Experience
Wejha Art Center Bazaar
Shakshooka Market
Cofe Fest at Al Hamra
Season Expo at Murouj
The Festive Bazaar

It’s been a super busy week so haven’t really watched any TV. Barely got time to start watching The Northman yesterday, only to realize halfway that I already watched it last year. I did manage to watch episode of Monarch but it was just a filler episode and incredibly slow and uneventful.

Let me know what you watched this week in the comments below.

Movies at the Cinemas
The movies below are now showing at the local cinemas:

New This Weekend:
Boudica: Queen of War (4.4)
Invitation to a Murder (5.1)
Little Bone Lodge (6.1)
Role Play
Wonka (7.4)

Other Movies Showing:
Hypnotic (5.5)
Migration (7.5)
Napoleon (7.0)
Silent Night (5.9)
Thanksgiving (6.9)
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (6.9)
The Inseparables (7.0)
The Marvels (6.1)
Wish (6.0)

The classic films below are currently showing at the 1954 Film House:
Anastasia (7.1)
Die Hard (8.2)
Die Hard 2 (7.1)

The numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at the time of publishing.