2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

TJCfilms has been really busy lately releasing one video after another. His latest is the first episode of a series on the Kuwait Gridiron Football team. American Football that is.

This is the Kuwait Gridiron football team. Not Soccer…NFL style football. They are the official team of Kuwait. These guys are serious and want to take this team to an international level. This first episode of a hopefully ongoing series introduces the coaches, players and the drive and discipline these guys have. They are working hard to get tough so they can take it to teams all around the world and here in Kuwait. Next episode will be about their conditioning exercises.

I for one didn’t know Kuwait had a national Football team. Watch the video above or on [YouTube]

Batman the Dark Knight Rises releases 26 days later in MENA after International release

It seems the reason Batman: The Dark Knight Rises isn’t out yet in the region is because Joseph Chacra & Sons, the Warner Bros licensee of the region decided to postpone the release. The reasons they’re claiming behind this delay is the fact Ramadan is a slow season for them with 45% drop in sales and that watching movies in Ramadan is haram.

Blogger Moey started an online campaign to try and get them to release the movie on time but they wouldn’t change their minds and even started deleting users comments and negative posts from their Facebook page. Watch Moeys video above and then check out the following links to his blog posts:

Update on The Dark Knight Rises
The Crime That Warner Bros Lebanon Committed Online

So if there is anyone to blame for us not watching The Dark Knight Rises this Ramadan it’s not Cinescape but Warner Bros Middle East.

A few days back a reader contacted me and told me he was leaving the country for good and wanted my recommendation on a shipping company. Since I had just used a shipping company myself I figured I might as well write about my experience.

Back in May I shipped some furniture and electronics to my apartment in Lebanon. I didn’t really look for a shipping company, I just contacted Alghanim Freight since I previously heard they were the best and so didn’t even bother looking for any other options. My experience was a mixed bag but truth be told, not sure they can be blamed for all of it.

The problem with shipping stuff to Lebanon right now is the the fact there is internal conflict taking place in Syria right now. Before the internal conflict shipping stuff from Kuwait to Lebanon could take anywhere from 1 to 4 days but now it takes around two weeks. The shipping trucks are held at the Jordan/Syria border a few days and then formed into a convoy and led by security to the Syria/Lebanon border. Once they get there they get stuck in a long queue waiting to be cleared into Lebanon.

Based on a previous conversation with Alghanim Freight we were told our stuff would arrive to Lebanon on June 3rd. So me and Nat booked out tickets from May 31st to June 16th. Alghanim Freight sent over a packing crew and they did an amazing job. They worked around 10 to 12 hours with just a small break packing everything into carton boxes and wrapping up stuff with bubble wrap. In the end we had a total of 105 boxes which they loaded up onto their truck and took off.

Insurance
The day after they picked up the packages and while talking to Alghanim Freight we found out that although our shipment was insured, it was only insured up to $20,000. That amount was far less than the cost of the items we were shipping. To increase the insurance we were told that we would need to state the value of the items in each box. Although we had a list of all the boxes and what was inside, the descriptions were generic. Majority of the boxes were described just as “Furniture”, a few boxes were described as “Kitchen” and only a few boxes mostly the electronics were more specific. Since there was no way to know what was in each box there was nothing that could be done and so we didn’t get the extra insurance. We should have been asked ahead of time if we needed extra insurance kinda like how McDonalds asks if you want to upsize your meal while taking the order and not after you’re done.

Delivery Dates
This is where we had the biggest issue but now looking back at it I realized it mostly wasn’t in their hands. Originally we were told our shipment would arrived June 3rd. Two days after our packages were packed and taken we were told our shipment would arrive to Lebanon June 8th. That’s already a 5 day delay and the packages hadn’t even left Kuwait. When we got to Lebanon we found out that the shipment would get delayed again and in the end the shipment finally arrived on June 12th.

The Delivery
Our biggest concern was if all our items would end up arriving to Lebanon and how much we would get charged for customs. Luckily we didn’t end up having any problems. All 105 boxes were delivered with nothing damaged and nothing missing. In addition we also didn’t pay any customs at the border. Seems Alghanim Freight use trucks who have good relationships with the border people and so their cargo don’t get unloaded which is why we didn’t pay any taxes.

Conclusion
The fact that all our items arrived safely and the fact we didn’t pay any Lebanese taxes on our shipment is more than enough reason to use them again or recommend them to people. They were not accurate with the delivery dates but I truly believe it wasn’t in their control this time around. Total cost for shipping was around KD650.

This is another angle of the fire that took place near Marina Mall which I posted about two days back. This video of the fire was taken from a tenant living in the building right above the fire. [YouTube]

Thanks Abdulrahman

Some of you might already know that playing video games is a favorite hobby of mine and now I’ll be able to write about my thoughts on games as they get released here in Kuwait. Mark worked out a deal with the local online game rental service Digumz.com who will be providing the games for me as soon as they’re out. I’ll be reviewing a game every week or two depending on when they get released and if there aren’t any new releases I’ll probably write about an older game I find worth sharing.

This week I’ll be reviewing a fairly new release called Spec Ops: The Line, spoilers will be kept to a minimum.

[YouTube]

Spec Ops: The Line is not your ordinary war themed video game. It isn’t anything like Call of Duty, Battlefield or Medal of Honor. Spec Ops: The Line has a proper, mature script that will have you talking about the game long after you put the controller down. The gameplay is flawed and has trouble dealing with the issues that the script raises, but it’s still a lot of fun to play. Think of it this way: if Call of Duty is a Michael Bay movie, Spec Ops: The Line is Apocalypse Now (which it has been compared to). There was some controversy in our region due to the fact that the game takes place in a destructed Dubai. Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is. All major metropolises get destroyed in games and movies; how many times has New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo been demolished by either a giant monster, war or aliens? As far as I’m concerned, the fact that Dubai is destroyed in this game is a good thing. If the UAE government is concerned about the portrayal of their citizens, then they have nothing to worry about. In the game, Dubai may resemble real Dubai, but it’s not an exact replica. You’ll see skyscrapers that look like they should belong in Dubai, but you won’t see an exact copy of Burj Khalifa.

So I woke up this morning at around 4AM and for some odd reason started thinking about my previous Tesco posts. Originally last year I posted that Alshaya were bringing Tesco to the region. A month later I posted that Sultan Center had signed with Tesco and they were also bringing them to the region. Something didn’t click and it was around 5AM when I started sending out emails and doing a bit of investigating.

What I have managed to piece together is the following but please note this is just my theory based on bits and pieces of information I managed to gather. Last year Tesco representatives came to Kuwait and met with two parties with the aim of finding someone who would give them around 50 stores over a five year period across the MENA region. The two parties they met with were Sultan Center and Alshaya. My guess is that Alshaya signed a confidentiality agreement with Tesco which explains why they got really upset when they read my post. My source took the confidentiality agreement as a done deal which it wasn’t because a month later I posted Sultan Center had also signed with Tesco (Again most likely it was a confidentiality agreement). What I understand now is that Sultan Center is no longer in the picture and that Alshaya have most likely signed with Tesco… but to bring the brand Florence & Fred (F&F) to the region and not the supermarket. F&F is the clothing division of Tesco.

Disappointing news I know but theres light at the end of the tunnel. My opinion is that Alshaya will be bringing F&F to the region so they can build a relationship with Tesco. According to a previous interview with Mohammed Alshaya, he picked Tesco as the one brand he doesn’t have and one which he wants the most. So although it doesn’t look like Carrefour is going to be replaced with a Tesco supermarket anytime soon, I do believe that is the long term goal. By getting the F&F brand they’re putting their foot in the door and if everything goes well which I’m assuming it will, then we can expect Tesco supermarkets in the near future.

40 years ago, NASA’s Landsat program launched it’s initial satellite into space (July 23, 1972). Since then the program has been tracking and recording changes on the Earth’s surface via satellite imagery.

Since it’s been 40 years, NASA commemorated the anniversary by selecting and compiling a list of its top ten stories or revealing images which it had stored up during its four decades of existence. One of the stories that made the top 10 was the 1991 Kuwait Oil Fires.

As Iraqi troops withdrew from Kuwait at the end of the first Gulf War, they set fire to over 650 oil wells and damaged many more, just south of the Iraq border (yellow line). These Landsat images show before, during and after the release of 1.5 billion barrels of oil into the environment, the largest oil spill in human history.

You can check out the top 10 stories and images on [WIRED]

Someone upload a video of highlights of the Kuwait and Nigeria match that took place at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, USSR. Kuwait won that match 3-1 (they scored an embarrassing self goal) and during the tournament managed to make their way to the quarterfinals before being eliminated by the Soviet Union 2-1. [YouTube]

Palm trees next to a building near Marina Mall caught fire in the morning, Some of the cars were burnt as a result. Kuwait fire department was quick to douse the fire, small video from the incident (I guess no one was injured in the incident)

Happened earlier today. [YouTube]

مسلسل عمر

Check out both intros.

Game of Thrones

Thanks Mbahrani

Heard about this service ages ago but never bothered to find out how to subscribe to it. The MOI SMS service when signed up to it will notify you when you commit traffic violations. The sign up fee is KD1 and then it’s 40fils per SMS notification. Here are the sign up instructions:

To subscribe, send the following SMS:
E(space)Civil ID

Example:
E 1111111111

Send the SMS to one of the following numbers:
Zain Subscribers 992
Viva Subscribers 55250
Wataniya Subscribers 1750

via PeachBox

The popular Kuwait guide iPhone app Urban Moon just got a major update yesterday. The biggest difference I’ve noticed is the speed of the app. My biggest complaint with their previous version is that once you launched the app you had to wait a few seconds for it to download the latest phone numbers. Now the downloads take place in the background so you can start using the app as soon as you launch it.

Another new feature is that the app will now contain reviews. Currently restaurants in the app have a generic description but they’ve already started writing reviews and soon they’ll be swapping out the generic descriptions with honest reviews of the restaurants. That I think could be interesting and maybe even more so if they allow people to submit their own reviews similar to the Yelp app.

You can check out the full list of improvements and features in the Apple Store [Here]

He’s actually pretty good. [YouTube]

Thanks TJCfilms

The Al-Hasawi family promised if they took over Nottingham Forest they would offer Kuwaitis a chance to play for the team. Looks like they’re sticking to their promise because Kuwaiti footballer Bader Al-Mutawa is set to begin a month-long trial with Nottingham Forest.

Arabian Business have more details [Here]

The Fixtures just posted a short interview with Nasser Al Sayegh who is Kuwait’s first nuclear engineer. He seems like a smart guy (obviously) and if people like him ran the plant Kuwait would be in safe hands so it’s too bad Kuwait scrapped all their nuclear ambitions. You can read the interview with Nasser on The Fixture’s blog [Here]

In case you missed it, here is a previous video interview with Nasser taken from AlRai TV. [YouTube]

Update: Some readers have pointed out in the comments that Nasser is not the first Kuwaiti to get a degree in Nuclear engineering. But, it’s possible he might be the only Kuwaiti nuclear engineer to actually work in the field. I’m trying to get some more clarification on this.

Update2: Nasser has posted the following comment in relation to the above:

To clarify things up I’m the first specialized person in the nuclear field In Kuwait. Although the others did get there certificates before me they didn’t actually work in a nuclear reactor so all what they have is theoretical backgrounds. I’m also the only person in the gulf that has a security clearance to work in nuclear reactors around Europe.