Kuwait is still leading in the Arab world when it comes to freedom of the press. In this years Press Freedom Inde, Kuwait moved up one point from #78 to 77 while Lebanon who was second last year at #93 dropped down to 101. Check out the full list and more information [Here]
Press Freedom Index 2013
Can you guess what this car was?
GulfRun 8 Recap
Have a Great Shani Day!
Have you gotten your loved one a Shani today?
Events this weekend
Kuwait Riders Bike Show – Wednesday to Friday
Red Bull X-Fighters Jams – Friday
Spring Fair – Saturday
Saudi wins again. [YouTube]
The Ministry of Interior launched a new service where you can sign up to receive notifications on your traffic violations by SMS. They will also send you a notification when your Civil ID or car registration are about to expire among other things.
The subscription fee is KD1 and then it’s 40fils per SMS. If you want to sign up click [Here]
Thanks Fahed
Qumooth Love Singles by dh-c
My good friends at dh-c created a very cool gift set for Valentines day. The set includes a framed drawing of my favorite Kuwaiti character “Qumooth” and a CD that contains a mystery love song (supposedly very cheesy). They’ve only created 5 frames and each comes with a cactus and a jar of salted caramel. If you’re interested in purchasing one they’re available on The Yard’s website [Here]
Fire at the Sabah Al Nasser Coop
I found Trader Vic’s
I’m willing to bet this isn’t the original one.
Review: Kout Way Restaurant
Kout Way is a small Kuwaiti fast food restaurant that opened up last summer in Salmiya. I love murabyan (rice with shrimps) but wasn’t really sure what to expect with a “fast food” version of the dish. Turns out it’s pretty much the same.
I really like how Kout Way looks like on the inside. It has a modern and trendy interior with hints of tradition here and there. Like all fast food restaurants it’s self service, you order at the counter and then go sit down and wait for your meal. I of course ordered the murabyan, I had two sizes to choose from regular or small, I ended up going with the regular size. I also ordered cheese sambousa and cucumber yogurt for my sides.
Regular size it was not that’s for sure. The portion was pretty huge and they weren’t stingy with the quantity of shrimps either. At first I thought the shrimps were just on top of the rice but the more I kept digging into the rice the more shrimps I found. It also tasted pretty good specially considering this was a fast food version of the dish. The cheese sambousa on the other hand weren’t that great while the cucumber yogurt, well it’s just cucumber and yogurt so you can’t go wrong with that.
Overall I really like the place and at KD3 for the regular sized murabyan or KD2 for the small it’s pretty decently priced. The restaurant is located on Baghdad Street right next to Dodo [Google Maps]. They also deliver and their number is 94006767.
The Ahmadi Park Zoo
I didn’t know the Ahmadi Park had a zoo yet alone one that looks this depressing. Based on the pictures a reader sent me this zoo looks even worse than the Kuwait Zoo.
Thanks Meshal
[YouTube]
If you don’t know what the Harlem Shake is, click [Here]
via @hishersq8
Update: Here is a funnier one also from Kuwait
[YouTube]
Kuwait City Museums
Over the weekend I decided to pass by three museums with a friend of mine. All three museums are located right next to each other so you could cover them all in under two hours. There’s actually a fourth museum right next to the Maritime Museum which you could visit as well, the Modern Art Museum, but they were closed when I passed by.
Maritime Museum
Our first stop was the Maritime Museum which is located opposite Souk Sharq. It’s easy to spot since they have to large wooden ships parked outside with a miniature light house [Google Maps]. The museum is pretty nicely designed on the inside, it’s two floors and pretty modern looking with a ship like structure being the main inspiration to the design. They have a lot of sea related items on display from old tools used to build the ships to fishermen gear. Really worth checking out.
Here is their visiting hours:
Monday to Saturday
8:30AM to 12:30PM and 4:30PM to 8:30PM
Friday
4:30PM to 8:30PM
Dickson House Cultural Centre
Further up the road was the Dickson House Cultural Centre. The Dickson House served as offices and residences for the British Political Agents in the early 1900’s. I didn’t like this place much since there wasn’t much to see inside and the whole interior was refurbished but not to the original state. The outdoor yard in the back on the other hand was nice and the Dickson House caretaker Fayez, whom one of my readers nicknamed the Tour Guide Nazi (in reference to Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi) was a really interesting character. I actually enjoyed sitting on the bench in the yard chatting with him more than the actual tour. [Google Maps]
Here is their visiting hours:
Monday to Saturday
8:30AM to 11:30AM and 4:30PM to 8:30PM
Friday
4:30PM to 8:30PM
Amricani Cultural Centre
The final destination was the Amricani Cultural Centre which is located across the street from the House of Parliament. The Amricani was originally the American Mission Hospital and just recently got renovated and opened to the public. Lectures and exhibitions take place there occasionally but when I passed by there wasn’t anything going on. They do have a 20 minute movie you can watch about the history of the hospital but personally I’d go there just to see their freaky looking display. It’s a small corner showing how the hospital used to look like when it first opened but it really looks like a scene from the movie SAW. Definitely worth checking out. They didn’t have opening hours displayed and I couldn’t find anything on their website but my guess it’s similar to the other two museums above. [Google Maps]
Monday to Saturday
8:30AM to 11:30AM and 4:30PM to 8:30PM
Friday
4:30PM to 8:30PM
All the museums above are free of charge to enter.
Fire at The Avenues
According to a friend of mine there was a fire today at Carrefour in The Avenues. The parking underneath was also flooded but not sure if its from the sprinklers or a burst pipe. If anyone has any more information or pictures [Email Me]
Thanks Patrick
Update: According to another source of mine the fire actually started at the Athletes Foot and not Carrefour. Fire sprinklers went off at various spots around the mall and that caused electric shorts as well as flooded the area hence why there was so much water in the parking lot.