2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Thanks Wahab

According to a recent news article, Microsoft is claiming that the Windows Phone outsold the iPhone in Kuwait. Thing is I don’t know anyone who has a Windows Phone. I think the last time I saw someone using a Windows Phone was a few years ago and it was a friend visiting from Dubai, but even he’s back to the iPhone. [Article]

Thanks Tuan

Just a bit of positivity to start off the day (yes my day starts at noon). Local startup FishFishMe have secured $200,000 from investors to expand their operations globally. FishFishMe is an online platform to book fishing charter boats and they’re already pretty global as it is but with the new investment they’re hoping to expand even more while also improving their current offerings. If you haven’t checked out FishFishMe before you should, here is a link to their [Website]

Goes to show, a good idea is a good idea no matter where you’re based.

The American chain Denny’s is coming to Kuwait and the Middle East. Their first location is opening next year in UAE followed by locations in the rest of the region. They’re known for serving breakfast, lunch and dinner 24 hours a day so hopefully they won’t be opening up in a mall. [Link]

One of my favorite news sources Quartz just published a list of the cheapest beer prices in the world as well as the most expensive. On the list of cheapest beer prices, Saudi Arabia came fourth which kinda makes sense since I know non alcoholic beer like Barbican are super popular there. Quartz also put up a list of the most expensive beers in the world and thats where Kuwait comes in.

According to their data, the price of 0.5L of draught beer is $6.48. Problem is I don’t know of any place in Kuwait that serves draught beer (that’s beer from a tap). Quartz assumes the reason the price of beer in Kuwait is expensive is because it’s illegal and link to a post of mine from last year in which I had published the prices of alcohol in Kuwait (taken from a newspaper). Problem is if the price was based on illegal alcoholic beer then Kuwait would top the chart. The price I had posted was around KD150-KD180 for a case. A case has 24 cans and KD150 is around $530. 24 cans x 330ml = 7.92L ÷ 0.5L = 15.84. $530 ÷ 15.84 = $33.4. So the price of 0.5L of beer in Kuwait is $33.4 which is a lot more than $6.48.

Anyway check out their article [Here]

Since we’re on the subject on how much cooler Kuwait was back in the day, the video above is of an Offshore Powerboat Race that was held in Kuwait back in 1990, a few months before the Iraqi invasion. [YouTube]

I was searching for random stuff on eBay when I spotted a bunch of different sellers selling old postcards of Kuwait. I saved the most interesting ones to share below. Notice how much greener Kuwait was back in the old days? Also you might notice some of the postcards feature the Kuwait Towers while still under construction. The postcard I decided to highlight above is of “The Yachting Club”. [eBay Link]

There are two images of the back of the postcards with writings. I don’t know what language they’re in (my guess Bulgarian and Italian?) but if anyone can translate them to English that would be fantastic. Also what happened to all the seagulls??

Update: A friend noted the seagulls might have been super imposed on that shot. Looking at it closely I can’t seem to find any shadows of the seagulls so that’s probably the case.

K’S PATH were called in to a school in Salmiya yesterday to capture two baboons that were on the loose. The two baboons had climbed into the school from the streets forcing the children to stay inside until they were caught.

That’s just so random…

Rift is a short film produced by a GUST student and his friends (Good Mango Productions). The short film (less than 3 minutes long) is about a young man who witnesses a murder. It’s not the first time I’ve posted their work but this is their best one yet. [YouTube]

This happened a couple of hours ago, a car crashed into a bakery at Al-Rumaithiya Coop. Check out the video below. Both photo and video are from @alihassan80

I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up getting beaten up. You can’t pull off crap like this and get away with it. [YouTube]

Thanks Diego

Update: Early this morning the guy uploaded the video below revealing the victims of his pranks were actually his friends. I fell for it I got to give him that. Not a bad job at all, can’t wait to see what else he has coming up.

[YouTube]

Below is this months schedule for Cinemagics rooftop movie nights. If you’ve never been to them before, they’re held twice a week, every Thursday and Saturday on top of the building that has Xcite in old Salmiya. A couple of the movies from this month were supposed to show last month but got canceled so they’re showing again this month. Check out all the movies and their timings below:

Thursday, January 9th 2014 at 7:30PM
REPO MAN
Considered one of the more unique Science Fiction films, and a standout essential film of the 80’s, as well as being ranked #7 on the top 50 cult films of all time, Repo Man follows a Punk Rocker who after getting fired from his job as a clerk, becomes a repo man and is jolted into a new lifestyle that he quickly begins to enjoy. All that is flipped on its head when he meets a girl who tells him of a 64 Malibu that contains four dead aliens and that there’s $20,000 for the man that can repossess it.

Saturday, January 11th 2014 at 7:30PM
CACHE
Winner of Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival, Cache comes from the mind of visionary filmmaker Michael Hanneke (whose Amour won him universal acclaim at the 2012 Academy Awards). This film, starring Juliet Binoche follows a married couple who are terrorized by a series of surveillance videotapes left on their front porch.

Thursday, January 16th 2014 at 7:30PM
SURPRISE FILM OF THE MONTH
Every month we’ll be playing a surprise film, where you won’t know what you’re watching until just a minute before the film begins. One thing is for sure, every month the surprise film will be either my favourite film of the list, or the most unique in one way or the other. This month’s film was won and was nominated for over 30 awards worldwide including the Oscars, Golden Globes, Independent Spirit Awards, and the Baftas. A unique, hilarious, bizarre, and poetic little film.

Saturday, January 18th 2014 at 7:30PM
PIETA
Winner of the Golden Lion (Best Film) at the Venice Film Festival, Kang-do is a heartless man who has no living family members and whose job is to threaten debtors to repay his clients, the loan sharks who demand a 10x return on a one month loan. To recover the interest, the debtors would sign an insurance for handicap, and Kang-do would injure the debtors brutally to file the claim. One day he receives a visit from a strange, middle-aged woman claiming she is his long-lost mother. Over the following weeks, the woman stubbornly follows him and he continues to do his job. But he is slowly moved and changed by the motherly love expressed from this woman.

Thursday, January 23rd 2014 at 7:30PM
TALK TO HER
Winner of over 27 awards worldwide, mostly for Best Film or Best Foreign Film, Talk to her is considered by many fans of the legendary Pedro Almodovar to be his best film. Two men meet by chance at a private clinic, each looking after a woman in a coma. Marco’s girlfriend Lydia was a bullfighter who was mauled, and Benigno looks after a young ballet student. The lives of the four characters flow in all directions, past, present, and future, taking them to an unsuspected destiny.

Saturday, January 25th 2014 at 7:30PM
OFFSIDE
Winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, and carrying a 97% score on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Offside follows a group of girls who try to sneak into a football stadium to watch a World Cup qualifying match. Female fans are not allowed to enter football stadiums in Iran on the grounds that there will be a high risk of violence or verbal abuse against them. The film was shot in Iran during a real live match, but its screening was banned there.

Thursday, January 30th 2014 at 7:30PM
TOUKI BOUKI (Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project)
Every month, we’ll be playing a film from the World Cinema Project. Established by Martin Scorsese in 2007, the World Cinema Project expands the horizons of moviegoers everywhere. The mission of the WCP is to preserve and present marginalized and infrequently screened films from regions generally ill equipped to preserve their own cinema history. This month’s film is Touki Bouki. With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. In this French New Wave–influenced fantasy-drama, two young lovers long to leave Dakar for the glamour and comforts of France, but their escape plan is beset by complications both concrete and mystical. Characterized by dazzling imagery and music, the alternately manic and meditative Touki bouki is widely considered one of the most important African films ever made.

Cinemagic is organizing these events as part of its efforts to contribute to the development of an internationally competitive Kuwaiti audio-visual production industry, partly by bringing the filmmakers and audiences together and by increasing the public’s interest in – and appreciation for – the art of film-making. Cinemagic movies are screened in the old Salmiya, on the rooftop of Xcite and LG [Map]. There is no entrance fee. Here is a link to their Facebook group [Link]

[YouTube]

GulfRun 9 is coming up later this month and the team behind it decided to release the teaser video above. GulfRun is an annual motorsport event that started back in 2005 as a weekend getaway for a group of friends passionate about automobile racing and since then has been taking place on a yearly basis. GulfRun is currently the longest running event at the Bahrain International Circuit. For more information on GulfRun visit their website [Here]

Starting today, the blogs forum is now called “Community”. With this name change comes a host of other changes all with the aim to make the community more user friendly as well as more pleasing to the eye.

You can access the community by clicking the link in the navigation strip up on top or by typing community.mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com in your browser.

There are still more changes and additions coming to the blog which I’ll be rolling out one by one in the coming weeks.

Just found out from Frankom that you can now book your driving test online via the MOI website. It’s great how the government is moving more stuff online but not sure why they’re still sticking with the 90s style geocities website look. [Link]