2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Local Motors, the American company behind the Rally Fighter car uploaded a new video yesterday in which he mentions briefly that they are opening an exclusive dealership in Kuwait as well as a factory where they will put these cars together. If that does happen I think it would be pretty cool since a local factory in Kuwait could then easily supply the other Gulf countries with Rally Fighters. [YouTube]

Just a reminder there are three events that start today.

4th Kuwait Riders Bike Show
2014 ITTF World Tour Kuwait Open
Al Hamra Chill-Out

The 2014 World Press Freedom Index is out and it’s not good news. Even though Kuwait still leads the region in press freedom, Kuwait dropped down from 77th place all the way to 91. The reason? The arrest of two citizen journalists. Here is how Kuwait compares to our neighbors:

91 – Kuwait
96 – Israel
106 – Lebanon
113 – Qatar
118 – UAE
141 – Jordan
153 – Iraq
163 – Bahrain
164 – Saudi
173 – Iran

Check out the full list [Here]

Thanks yousefq8

According to the person in the video this incident took place today. The plane took off from London (my guess it was heading back to Kuwait) when it was forced to return and make an emergency landing after a hydraulic problem. [YouTube]

Saw the tshirts above in my instagram feed and loved them. They’re designed by the doghouse collective and will be available for sale tomorrow evening at Q Cafe in Kuwait City.

via @kookeejeejoh

Gazelle Club was THE club in Kuwait back in the 60s and up until the 1990 Gulf War. I went there only a few times back in the 80s and so have very faint memories of the place. I actually remember only two things, one was a large trampoline I used to play on, and two a very disturbing incident where a kid fell off the swimming pool slide, hit his head on the floor and later passed away. Gazelle Club was located in Fintas and got destroyed by the Iraqis during the 1990 invasion. I never understood why it was never rebuilt again.

The photos below are ones I found from a bunch of sources (all listed below) and show Gazelle Club during it’s greatest days as well as the current state of the club.

via @gharabally, @amerhilal, Kuwait-History and Gazelle Club on Facebook

This didn’t happen in Kuwait but in Qatar. Just a random video to start the day. [YouTube]

I was recently approached by Entrepreneur Middle East to contribute to their monthly magazine and I got the beautiful letter below today from the editor in chief which I thought I would share:

————————————–

A Vested Interest: Mark Makhoul is the Goto Reference on All Things Kuwait

As the Editor in Chief of a magazine like Entrepreneur Middle East, I find it a necessity to bring forward the best and brightest across the MENA region when it comes to contributors. This is where Mark Makhoul, Founder of 248am comes in to the picture.

After faithfully reading the current 248am posts for the past year (and the well-stocked 248am archives of endless content), I see Kuwait as a happening and interesting place in the GCC, albeit a lot less publicized. Mark really has managed to capture both the coolest hidden factors of Kuwait, and the most relevant goings-on in everything from business to hospitality. Through 248am, Mark has actually convinced me that Kuwait might even be my next weekend destination in the GCC for an interesting getaway.

Since Mark acts as a de facto brand ambassador for the Gulf nation of Kuwait and its capital city, I asked him to be our authority on the new, the now, and the relevant as of March 2014.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading his work in Entrepreneur ME as much as I will.

My Best,

Fida Chaaban
Editor in Chief

There are new gyms opening all the time in Kuwait and most of them don’t usually interest me but, when Abdulmohsen Al-Babtain (of Sidekick Academy) emailed me about a new gym he was opening called SPARK, I knew there was going to be something different about it. Actually I really shouldn’t be calling it a gym because it’s more than a gym which is why they prefer to use the term athletic center.

When you first walk into SPARK there’s a small fitness store on the ground floor with stairs on the side leading you up to the main floor of the gym. I met Abdulmohsen on the lower level and followed him up the stairs to the main floor. I was expecting it to be a small specialized gym similar to the two gyms I’m currently enrolled in, Core Fitness and Circuit+ but when I got to the main floor I was shocked. The place was huge, 2,400m2 huge. I got introduced to the head coach right away who took me on a tour of the space. The majority of the space looks very similar to your everyday gym, they had a TRX station right at the start and tons of cardio machines on the far right. Then from one end of the gym to the other they had top of the line Hoist and Bilt fitness equipment followed by a small room at the very end for spinning classes.

But, where things get more interesting was a space in the back corner that occupied around 25% of the gym floor. The space is surrounded by a high black metal fence with a large sign outside saying no one can enter without a coach. Behind the black fence is over 400 square meters of professional indoor turf, the only indoor training ramp of its kind in the world, two 50-meter sprint lanes, a sand pit for simulating training on the beach and a corner with four Woodway super treadmills, one of which can hit can hit 40 km/h.

Finally theres a small room also at the back which they call the SPARK LAB. The lab contains a bunch of scientific equipment that can perform functional screening tests, body composition tests, wingate anaerobic capacity tests and full metabolic testing. One of the equipment is called Bod Pod and is used to calculate your body composition. It’s one of the most accurate ways of measuring your body fat percentage, around 8% more accurate than skinfold calipers. I got to try it out during my full physical assessment and after sitting in the pod for a few minutes the machine printed out numbers that included my body fat percentage, my Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) and Total Energy Expenditure (TEE). Turns out if I sit on my computer all day I can burn 2,246 calories or up to 3,649 with very high activity. Pretty cool.

Now the reason I found the gym interesting is because instead of just focusing on muscle gain or weight loss, they’re focusing on athletic performance. They’ve brought in coaches from around the world (one was a Florida Gator coach) and they want to help improve athletes in Kuwait from runners and basketball players to wannabe Olympians. For example I could go to them and tell them I want to improve my sprinting speed or I want to be able to jump higher and they’ll help me achieve my goal.

The gym is already open and their prices start at KD70 a month which is very reasonable. They also have personal training but that would cost an additional KD20 per session or as low as KD15 depending on how many sessions you would be taking. It’s a mens only gym but they are opening a women’s gym in the coming month or two and it’s going to be even larger at 3,600m2, have more facilities and will be located in KIPCO Tower in Kuwait City.

SPARK is located in Shuwaikh right on top of where Shuwaikh Market is [Map] and for more information you can call them on 22282058.

Arabian Business released their yearly list of the world’s richest Arabs and three Kuwaiti families made the top 50 list:

The Kharafi Family
Rank: 7
Wealth: $8.5 billion

The Bukhamseen Family
Rank: 11
Wealth: $6.8 billion

The Alghanim Family
Rank: 28
Wealth: $3.4 billion

Before writing this post I checked to see if I had previously posted about the Kharafi family and turns out I did back in 2007. Nasser Al Kharafi was ranked #52 in The World’s Billionaires list back in 2007 with a total worth of $11.5 billion.

Check out the full top 50 World’s Richest Arabs list [Here]

Fatima Al Qadiri is a multi-talented Kuwaiti artist and musician whom I’ve posted about a number of times before. Her latest project, the underground dance supergroup Future Brown were featured in The Guardian a couple of days back which is pretty cool and then last night they performed in Hackney, London as well. Check out the article as well as one of her tracks [Here]

Thursday night I passed by the Souk Al-Mubarakiya Festival for the second time to meet up with a friend and while taking a shortcut to avoid the crowds I ended up passing by a very unique pen store. It didn’t look like much from the outside but something caught my eye and I ended up walking in.

The store, not very big maybe 3×4 meters was just covered wall to wall with displays filled with pens and just two brands, Parker and Shaeffer. I was in awe, the displays were filled with a lot of intricate items, like they’ve been gathering up over the years and I had so many questions but the shop keeper was with a customer so I waited overhearing the conversation. The shop keeper was telling the customer how the Parker pen he was buying was made in the USA and was from the last series that was produced in the States back in 1984.

Once the customer left I started talking to the shop keeper who was called Gomes. According to Gomes the store originally opened back in the 50s but he had been working at the store since he came to Kuwait in 1977. It used to be located in a different part of the souk but that building had gotten demolished and they had moved into the current store in 1988. The store still contained a lot of old stock or in other words, vintage pens. Gomes had taken it upon himself to display some of the most vintage pens in the display cases with little hand written notes (in a beautiful handwriting I must say) about the pens. Over the years he’s also collected trinkets from here and there and he kept adding them to the display cases and now they’re all full of random objects that add so much character to the store.

I told him how much I loved the store and how I had been coming to the souk since I was a kid but how I never m
noticed the store even though it was on the main road. I didn’t buy anything since I was on my way to meet up with my friend but I did promise him I would come back. If anyone is interested in visiting the store it’s located across from the Green Land vegetarian restaurant in Souk Al-Mubarakiya. They’re open from 8AM to 1PM and then again from 4PM to 9PM and the store is called Al-Muneefi. Here is the approximate location on [Google Maps]

The manager of the Brazilian football team has joked that if Brazil doesn’t win the World Cup this summer he’s going to move to Kuwait and seek political asylum. I think that would be a fantastic idea and while he’s here maybe he could help out the Kuwait football team. [Article]

The Sochi Winter Olympics starts later tonight and if you live in the Middle East then you have two ways of watching it.

OSN
If you’re an OSN subscriber you’ll be glad to know that OSN signed a last minute deal to get the rights to broadcast the games. They’ll be broadcasting them over 4 channels – OSN Sports 1 HD, OSN Sports 2 HD, OSN Sports 3 and OSN Sports 4. They will be in HD and have Dolby Digital sound. [Source]

Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU)
If you don’t have an OSN subscription you should still be able to watch the Winter Olympics although not as conveniently (OSN have a TV Guide). The ASBU also acquired the rights to broadcast the 2014 Winter Olympics. According to the ASBU website, Kuwait Television is part of the ASBU group of channels so although I don’t have the KTV schedule I’m guessing they’ll be broadcasting some of the games on the sports channel. If not there are a host of other countries from the Middle East that are part of the ASBU and they all don’t require any subscription. Get the full list [Here]

I’m personally going to mostly be watching curling and luge but the whole schedule of games is available on the Sochi [Website]

Update: According to a reader you can also watch the games on Abu Dhabi Sports.

Shakshooka Nomadic Farmers Market
Kuwait Yacht Show 2014
Painting Smiles 2
Startup Weekend Kuwait
Q8CON Convention
Guided Tour: Grand Mosque
Graffiti in The Garden: Arabic Graffiti with Yousef
Seollal Event (Korean lunar new year’s day)
Souk Al-Mubarakiya Festival
Cinemagic: Goodnight and Good Luck
Cinemagic: Vicki Cristina Barcelona
Art Exhibit: Scattered, Gathered
Art Exhibit: Stages of Ascent
Remal Sand Sculpting Festival
Proud 2 be Kuwaiti 2014