2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Agi Architects was awarded with a “A’ Design Award” for their proposed hospital design which is pictured above.

You can find out more about the Kuwait Children’s Hospital design [Here] and you can read about the award [Here]

Kuwaiti sailors fix the old Kuwaiti flag on a dhow during preparations in Kuwait City on July 11, 2012, for the upcoming annual Pearl Diving Festival, meant to honor the nation’s former trade mainstay.

Kuwait’s on the main page of cnn.com under “Daily Snapshot” [Link]

Early bird registration just opened for this years Flying Start Triathlon. They’ve got two levels of competition, The Sprint and The Olympic. If there wasn’t any swimming involved I might have been able to compete in The Sprint level but I can barely swim a lap around the pool before collapsing from exhaustion.

The event takes place on the 19th of October but early registration earns you a 20% discount. If you’re interested to find out more head to their Facebook page [Here]

Late last month while at the Avenues I spotted the Vuzix Wrap at Xcite and since I’ve always wanted to try one of these before I contacted them so I could get one to review. The Vuzix Wrap is a video eyewear which basically means you watch video through tinny screens that are fitted inside the glasses. According to the package, watching videos using the Vuzix Wrap will feel like watching a 67″ screen siting 3 meters aways. After playing around with it for a week I have my personal opinion on video eyewear’s in general as well as this specific model.

The Wrap works with regular AA batteries which means you can use them wherever you are. The batteries are fitted into a small external compartment which you could keep in your pockets and the Wrap is connected to the batteries using a wire. The Wrap comes with earphones as well which you need to plug in separately into each side of the eyewear. Inside the box Vuzix also includes an adapter to connect the glasses to Apple devices like the iPhone as well as RCA cables so you could connect it to a videogame console or your TV receiver.

I downloaded Truth in 24 II from the Apple Store (which is the sequel to an incredible documentary btw) and watched it on the Vuzix. At first I was expecting it to feel weird and uncomfortable like trying to watch a 3D movie with 3D glasses but the experience was actually pleasant. I’m not sure if it felt like watching a 67″ screen from 10 feet away, but the screen definitely didn’t feel like it was 2cm’s away which is what I was expecting. These kind of glasses could be pretty useful when traveling on a plane since you can watch whatever you want in complete privacy and also zone out from your surroundings since once you have the glasses on you’re pretty much watching TV in your own little room.

But there are a whole bunch of things I didn’t like in the Vuzix Wrap. The video quality left a lot to be desired, other than the fact the screen resolution is low, I felt the contrast lacked with the blacks looking more like grays. I tried to adjust the settings as much as I could but I wasn’t able to improve on it that much. Another issue I had was with the earphones. First you can’t connect your own earphones which is a let down and second I found the included earphone wires to be too distracting. Each earphone plugs into a socket thats located in the front of the glasses so the wires were touching my eyebrow and face while on their way back to my ears. The eyewear along with the various attachments also felt very plasticky and cheap but the biggest issue I had with the Wraps were how stupid I looked wearing them. If you sit on a plane and put these on people are either going to think you’re Ray Charles or some douche with horrible taste who thinks its cool to wear sunglasses inside a plane. This is why although they would be practical to use while traveling, they might be better off being used in the privacy of your home where you can play Xbox on these glasses without having to hog the living room’s TV.

I’m pretty glad I finally got to try video glasses on and I kinda understand how Google’s Project Glass is going to end up working. Price wise Xcite currently have a special offer on these glasses until the end of the month and they’re selling them for KD89.900. If you want to check them out they have them on display at the Avenues branch OR even better you could try to win a pair. All you need to do is just leave a comment below and tonight I’ll choose a winner using Random.org. Good luck!

Rules: Only one entry per person and please make sure you use a working email since the winner will be contacted by email. If winner doesn’t respond within 24 hours another winner will be randomly chosen.

Update: Comments are closed and I had Random.org choose two numbers, a winner and a backup winner in case the winner doesn’t respond.

Winner is #94: Abdullah
Backup is #20: Ahmed

Lulu are opening a new location in Dajeej Farwaniya right next to Sears. From the outside the location looks pretty huge although I’m not sure if it’s going to end up being their largest branch in Kuwait. What I like about the location though is that it’s closer to Salmiya than their Al Qurain branch which is currently my favorite. This would be their fourth location in Kuwait and according to a worker I spotted on site they should be opening right after Ramadan.

The other day I found out that Kuwait is going to have its first female Olympian swimmer and it got me thinking… who else is on Team Kuwait? Who are the other athletes that are going to be participating next month in the summer Olympics? Does anyone know?

Team USA have an amazing website listing all the sports they’ll be participating in as well as who will be representing them. We don’t have to have anything fancy like that, just a simple list would be enough since right now we don’t even have that. I just got the domain teamkuwait.com and as soon as I have a good amount of names I’m going to start uploading them there but I need your help.

If you have any idea who is going to be participating at the Olympics next month please email me or leave a comment below.

So far this is the list:
Swimming: Faye Sultan
Shooting: Mariam Erzouqi

Update: Thanks to Buz Fairy, this is the full list of Kuwaiti athletes participating in the Olympics next month:

Shooting:
– Fuhaid Al-Daihani in Double Trap (men)
– Abdulla Al-Rashidi in Skeet (men)
– Talal Al-Rashidi in Trap (men)
– Maryam Erzouqi in 10 meter Air Rifle (women)

Track and Field:
– Ali Al-Zankawi in Hammer Throw (men)
– Mohammad Al-Azmi in 800 Meters (men)
– AbdulAziz Al-Mandeel in 110 Meter Hurdles (men)
– Salsabeel Al-Sayyar in 100 meters (women)

Table Tennis:
– Ibrahim Al-Hassan (men)

Swimming:
– Yousef Al-Askari 100 meter freestyle/backstroke (men)
– Fay Al-Hussain in 100 meter freestyle (women)

Final tally is 11 Kuwaiti athletes, 8 men and 3 women.

Update2: Here is an article about Yousef (pictured below) who is currently a high school student in Florida. [Link]

After posting about On Cost the other day I decided to pass by and check it out myself. From the pictures (and logo) it looked like Kuwait’s version of Costco and on some level it is but mostly it isn’t. The place turned out to be a lot smaller than I was expecting it to be. There also isn’t an electronics section, a clothing section or a hardware or home-ware section. The way everything is displayed thought make it looks like a Costco but it’s more of a supermarket then a full fledged all in one retailer. I picked up a label maker from their small office supply section. I got it for around KD3 less than I had seen it somewhere else.

Finding the place was easy. Just take the 6th Ring Road and if 360 Mall is on your right keep heading straight past the Jaber Al-Ahmad International Stadium. Keep driving until you pass the new Kuwait University campus on your left (currently just hills and hills of sand) and then after that in a bit you’ll see a sign for the 604 exit. Once you take the exit stop at the traffic light and then take a left and pass under the bridge. Then keep driving straight until you get to a roundabout, you should spot what looks like a huge ass mall in the middle of the desert on your right, that’s the vegetable market and On Cost is located there.

Update: Here is a link to the location on [Google Maps]

Dubai III timelapse from Richard Bentley on Vimeo.

At the 2 minute mark Dubai actually looks like a scene from Blade Runner.

Short but interesting report. [YouTube]

Qatar has retained its position as the Middle East’s most innovative economy in the annual Global Innovation Index 2012 (GII).
…
The study, commissioned by leading business school INSEAD in partnership with other firms, scored 141 countries based on the degree to which their economic environment enables innovation, as well as actual innovative outputs.
…
Saudi Arabia was ranked 48th (up six places on 2011) while Kuwait was the lowest ranked GCC nation at 55th, down from 52nd last year.

Ouch! [Link]

Originally I was planning to write a small post on my experience with the Synology backup drive and maybe compare it to my Drobo but in all honesty, the thing turned out to be a lot more than just a simple backup drive and so the tiny post has turned into a much bigger one.

Synology DS1511+ Web Interface

Firstly a quick brief about what the Synology DS1511+ is. In it’s most simplest form it’s an external backup hard drive that can take up to five 3TB hard drives and has data protection which means if one of the five hard drives fail my data is still protected. But the DS1511+ (from here on I’ll just call it the Synology) is also a mini server and so doesn’t require to be connected to a computer.

Xbench disk test

Performance wise the Synology turned out to be a lot faster than my Drobo. How fast? Copying a 2.48GB file from my computer over FireWire 800 to the Drobo took 4 minutes and 30 seconds. Copying the exact same file over gigabit ethernet to the Synology took just 42 seconds. That’s over 10 6 times as fast!

So yeah if you’re looking for a backup drive to put all your important files onto it and still have your data protected in case the drive fails, the Synology is great. But, the Synology is also more complicated to setup than the Drobo. Cost wise they’re selling the Synology drives in Kuwait for cheaper than Amazon and you can find them at either Blink (where I got mine from) or Cameo. Cameo also has the newer but slightly more expensive DS1512+.

Now that I got all that out of the way this second part is what REALLY makes the Synology cool. Continue below for the second part of this review.

The AlJazi Villas are the villas located right in front of The Village in Abulhasaniya. I always thought they looked interesting from the outside but was curious to know how the inside looked like as well. Conveniently, I just noticed ArchofKuwait have pictures of the interior as well as some information on how the project originated. They’re pretty cool villas and you can check out the photos [Here]

Back in January I posted that Kim Kardashian would be coming to Kuwait for the launch of Million of Milkshakes by the end of the year and last night she confirmed on twitter that she’s coming in October. I think that’s pretty cool since we don’t get that many celebrities in Kuwait.

Ama Traveller just posted pictures and information on a new place that opened up in Kuwait called “On Cost”. Judging by the pictures and her comments it looks very similar in style to the very popular large US retailer, Costco. Need to pass by and check it out myself but you can check out her post and pictures [Here]

Omarker posted a video on his blog that was taken a few days ago onboard a Kuwait Airways flight to Jeddah. The video isn’t so great but you can see that the oxygen masks were released and you could also hear some strange engine sounds. [YouTube]

According to The Buz Fairy, Al-Qabas reported that the minister of transport asked Kuwait Airways to ground three of its ailing Airbus planes due to multiple and repeat maintenance and operational issues.

It’s times like this I wish Wataniya Airways was still around.