2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Last night I passed by Sultan Center in Boulevard to pick up a Christmas tree, but when I got to the top floor where the Christmas decorations would be, the shelves were all empty. I asked one of the staff where the Christmas trees were and he told me that the baladiya had told them to remove them. I didn’t think much of it and decided to walk over to Ace Hardware on the other end of the mall. When I got to Ace it was the same situation, all the Christmas decorations were removed and the shelves were empty. I figured ok, someone must have been in Boulevard and seen the Christmas decorations and complained, which is why the shops Boulevard were asked to remove the Christmas stuff.

Then I decided to head to Daiso in Souq Salmiya. As I’m walking into Daiso I spotted Christmas trees on the opposite end of City Center. I was like great I can pick up a tree from here. Once I got close to the trees I noticed staff were busy packing up all the Christmas decorations as well. They still hadn’t packed the trees so I picked one up and then headed to Daiso. Once in Daiso I noticed they were also packing up their Christmas decorations. So I asked the staff there and they told me the same thing, that they were told to remove the Christmas decorations.

Looks like its going to be one of those years where Christmas is banned in Kuwait. I’m hoping the shops in Avenues haven’t been told to remove their Christmas stuff as well. There were some Christmas tree ornaments I was hoping to pick up this weekend but now have to head there today to try and get them before they get taken off the shelves.

If you’ve ever wanted to see the rare Mercedes Gullwing in person, Mercedes currently have one temporarily on display.

The Mercedes dealership recently renovated their main showroom in Al-Rai and part of the new look is a display area in the middle featuring two cars. The first is a replica of the Benz Patent-Motorwagen which is considered to be the first practical modern automobile and was built in 1885. The second car on display is a 1956 Mercedes 300 SL “Gullwing” which is on loan from the popular plastic surgeon, Dr Adel Quttainah.

The car is nicknamed the “Gullwing” because of its doors which open upwards. They’re pretty rare cars and can cost anywhere between $1,250,000 to $2,000,000. Some rarer examples of the car have sold for three times that amount as well.

The new dealership is actually pretty nice and around double the size of their previous showroom. They had a lot of cars on display including the Maybach by fashion designer Virgil Abloh, which is the sand colored car above.

If you want to check the cars out, the showroom is right next door to Xcite in Al-Rai, right on the 4th Ring Road. Google Maps

AAB World, my favorite photography store, recently opened a new store called AAB World Marketplace that specializes in selling certified used cameras and lenses, new old stock products, as well as open box items.

I passed by the store last week to check it out and they had a pretty large selection of cameras and items on display. The used cameras and lenses are carefully selected and rigorously tested before being put up for sale. They also have little notecards in front of them with a description on the condition which I thought was pretty cool.

Their “new old stock” products on the other hand are brand-new items that have just been in their inventory for an extended period of time. They’re being sold at discounted prices and could be very useful for people with old cameras or drones.

Finally, their open box items are products that were part of their showroom displays or maybe items that had their packaging damaged during shipping or customs checks.

With the opening of their marketplace shop, AAB World now also have a permanent trade-in service. You can bring your photography gear and their team will evaluate your items on the spot. If you agree to the evaluation, they will offer you a voucher which you can redeem at their stores.

The trade-in items are what they end up offering as “Certified Used” at the AAB World Marketplace and each item goes through rigorous checks and comes with a 3-month warranty.

The AAB World Marketplace is open daily from 10AM to 10PM except on Fridays when they open at 2PM. They’re located in the basement of Symphony Mall in Salmiya in place of where their old service center was. Their Instagram account is @marketplace.aab

If you’re looking for something to do tonight, Bon Jiri has a small bottom drawer drawing exhibition featuring 7 artists and 14 artworks. Generally the vibe at their small events are very cool so pass by if you feel like doing something. @bonjiri.yakitori

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

Thursday, November 30
Pinocchio – The Panto
Murouj Perfume Market
The OUTLET Expo
Kuwait International Bookfair

Friday, December 1
Pinocchio – The Panto
Murouj Perfume Market
The OUTLET Expo
Kuwait International Bookfair
Messilah Equestrian Club Show Jumping Event

Saturday, December 2
Pinocchio – The Panto
Murouj Perfume Market
The OUTLET Expo
Jusoor Run 2023
Messilah Equestrian Club Show Jumping Event
Kuwait International Bookfair
Authentic Palestinian Art Event

The third season of the British series Slow Horses is out. If you’ve never watched it before you should since it’s great. The show follows a team of British intelligence agents who are basically MI5 rejects. It’s an easy show to start watching, has an IMDB rating of 8.0, and you can watch it on AppleTV+.

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:
Camp Hideout (5.6)
Consecration (5.2)
Muzzle (5.4)
The Marsh King’s Daughter (5.9)
There’s Something in the Barn (6.1)
Scarygirl (5.3)

Other Movies Showing:
Five Nights at Freddy’s (6.2)
Freelance (5.3)
Napoleon (7.0)
The Ghost Within (3.9)
The Good Mother (4.6)
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 Hunchback of Notre Dame (7.0)

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

During the camel racing season (October to March) the races take place every Saturday at the Kuwait Camel Racing Club.

The races start at a different time every week but this Saturday they will start at 1:30PM and there will be a total of 9 races.

There is no entrance fee and you can either watch the races from the sidelines, drive up to the starting lines and watch the start of the race, or just drive around the track in your car following the race (it can get chaotic).

It’s really chill, not that busy and everyone is pretty friendly. I tend to drop by anytime I feel like having a photoshoot for one of my cars or if I just feel like driving out somehwere.

Here is the location on Google Maps.

Arabella has gone through a major overhaul, half the place closed down and got rebuilt as a 5-star hotel while the remaining parts got a full refurbishing. The hotel called the Arabella Beach Hotel is now set to open next month and I got a tour of it back in October while it was still getting finishing touches.

I don’t think there is another hotel like it in Kuwait, there are definitely much nicer hotels in Kuwait, but I can’t think of another hotel where your hotel room is right on the sea.

The hotel has a few suites located at the far end of the hotel with just the sand followed by the sea as you can see from the picture above which I took from one of the balconies.

The hotel is pretty small due to the location so they’ve tried to make the best of it. There are two pools, one on the ground floor right next to the beach, this isn’t for the hotel but for the gym which is going to be run and managed by a third party. The main hotel’s pool is actually on the roof and is a much nicer place to be since it overlooks the area. But, they missed a great opportunity for an infinity pool that overlooks the sea sadly.

The hotel’s main restaurant ZO Eatery is also not located in the main hotel building, but instead it’s located across the Arabella courtyard where Ora used to be located.

I was also given a tour of all the rooms. The suites were definitely nice, not that big, but plenty of space and interesting layouts with the one pictured above being my favorite. The regular rooms on the other hand weren’t as interesting, so if I was going to stay there, the suites is where I’d want to be.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the hotel is going to do, I’d imagine it might become a popular staycation location since you have a nice pool on the roof and Five Guys right at the entrance of Arabella, so everything you need.

If you want to read more on the hotel and see more photos, here is the link to their website.

Kuwaiti artist Farah Behbehani was one of seven artists shortlisted for the third edition of Louvre Abu Dhabi ‘Art Here’.

This year ‘Art Here’ explores the theme of ‘Transparencies’ and Farah’s installation titled Hiya (She) is a homage to the 10th-century Syrian Muslim astronomer, Mariam Al-‘Ijliya who changed the face of astronomy by pioneering an early scientific instrument used to measure time and to calculate the position celestial bodies.

Farah’s installation is inspired by the Tughrul tower, a 12th-century brick tomb tower that also functions as an indicator of time. The original brick structure is recreated in colored glass, referencing the tradition of stained glass used in sacred monuments dating back to the Umayyad dynasty. The colors of the 48-paneled glass structure are based on the visible light spectrum, which varies in wavelength across the day. As light permeates the colored glass, it transforms throughout the day, painting its surroundings with a rich interplay of color and light.

Farah Behbehani is also shortlisted for The Richard Mille Art Prize 2023 with the winner taking home a $60,000 cash award.

If you’re in Abu Dhabi anytime in the next couple of months, Art Here 2023 is running till February 18th, 2024.

It’s flamingos and birdwatching season right now. Winter in Kuwait is an excellent time to observe rare birds that you wouldn’t see during the rest of the year with flamingos probably being the most popular one people like to see.

There are a number of spots across the coast where you can watch flamingos in the winter, they start from near the free trade zone and stretch up all the way to Doha. One of my favorite spots to birdwatch is the “Flamingo Observation Deck” which you can find by searching on Google Maps.

The Flamingo Observation Desk is a long stretch of pathway that takes you close to some marshes near the sea, and close to where many birds tend to hang out. Don’t expect to be able to get close to the birds since the closer you get the further they fly away from you. I’ve previously been able to watch the flamingos using my drone, but a better way would be to just watch them from a distance, or through binoculars or cameras with zoom lenses.

Sometimes the tide is low and the birds are further away, in that case I recommend a good pair of Wellington boots so that you can walk in the mud and get closer to them.

Wherever you decide to birdwatch from, please cleanup after yourselves and don’t leave anything behind. After posting about duck park last time I got a lot of people telling me they visited and it was littered. Don’t leave any trace after you leave.

The Gulf Road waterfront from the Yacht Club in Salmiya all the way to the Kuwait Towers is currently going under a major facelift to include amenities like a dedicated bicycle and jogging path among other things. I posted about that project back in September (pictured above) and you can read more about it here.

Last week while digging near TGIF, workers came across a large number of projectiles and cluster bombs dating back to the invasion. If you’re too young to remember, or you weren’t here back in 1990, the Iraqi army had assumed the allies were going to invade Kuwait from the sea. So they dug trenches, planted mines and had tanks and artillery lined up all across the Gulf Road.

It’s kinda unreal to imagine just a few decades ago the Gulf Road waterfront was covered in mines and trenches. The bombs found were all safely defused but the idea that I was riding my bicycle all these years near unexploded bombs is pretty freaky.

Here is a link to two articles that covered this story. Link 1 and Link 2.

And just to clarify, only the first photo on top is new, the rest were taken in 1991.

A couple of months ago E-Fly, the scooter-sharing service started placing some scooters near my office in the city. Having scooters you can rent and take around the city is actually really practical and now is very common in cities around the world.

When I needed to pass by the Xcite office in Al Hamra Tower to pick up the iPhone 15 Pro for review back in October, I took the scooter instead of driving. Trying to find parking in Hamra during working ours is impossible so instead, I took the scooter that was parked under my office building and rode it down the street and around the corner to Al Hamra Tower. I ended up parking on the curb across the street from Hamra, went in, picked up the iPhone and then was back again on the scooter heading back to the office. Super fast, super convenient and much cheaper than a taxi (around 300fils from Arabica Downtown to Hamra Tower).

This would be something I’d do a lot more of and I’m sure other people as well, if it wasn’t for the fact we don’t have sidewalks. Riding the scooter on the side of the road is pretty freaky. I don’t trust drivers, everyone seems to be in a hurry, and busses are extremely aggressive and the worst.

Although I was hoping to use the scooters a lot more frequently zipping up and down the city anytime I needed to go anywhere, I’ve only really used it two or three times and that sucks. Scooters are fun, they’re affordable and are so convenient. I know there is no hope of us ever getting sidewalks, but I still wanted to vent about it.

This is an interesting and random project, BBT is opening a haunted house next month on the Gulf Road. The project is in collaboration with TEC and is located near where Jeans Grill used to be in Salmiya (the good old days).

The haunted house looks to be hospital themed which gave me Raccoon General Hospital vibes from Resident Evil. In addition to the haunted house there will also be a new BBT location right next to it.

Both the haunted house and the new BBT are expected to open mid next month. Tickets to the haunted house will be through the TEC app. If you want to check the place out it’s still under construction but here it is on Google Maps.

If you weren’t planning to visit a mall this weekend then you should probably reconsider. There are some crazy sales taking place, check out the list below to see which malls and how many stores in each have sales.

The Avenues – Shopping Marathon
Over 150 stores on sale

360 Mall – Luxury Friday
Over 100 stores on sale

Al Assima Mall – White Friday
Over 70 stores on sale

The Warehouse Mall – The Warehouse Friday
Over 28 stores on sale

Al Khiran Mall – The Outlet Friday
Over 85 stores on sale

The Gate Mall – Gate Winter Festival
Over 100 stores on sale

Al Kout Mall – Kout Friday
Over 100 stores on sale

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

Thursday, November 23
Geekcon
Drag Race Championship
Murouj Market
Kuwait International Bookfair
Bugsha Market
Makers Open House

Friday, November 24
Geekcon
Drag Race Championship
Murouj Market
Kuwait International Bookfair
Bunka Friday Bonanza
KTAA Fall Bazaar
Bugsha Market
Classic Cars Gathering
Makers Open House
Al Bohayra Farm

Saturday, November 25
Geekcon
Murouj Market
Kuwait International Bookfair
Wejha November Bazaar
Bugsha Market
Al Bohayra Farm
Classic Cars Gathering
Workshop: Make a Set of Qahwa Cups