2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

The Ministry of Interior announced yesterday that starting September 1st, traffic fines will be issued digitally. This applies to fines given by the cops, for example if you park illegally. Instead of writing the ticket on a piece of paper and then having someone manually enter it into the system, the cops will now be able to issue the ticket digitally and you should get the fine instantaneously.

Problem is, to pay the fines you have to use the Sahel app which as of now is only in Arabic. I can read Arabic (slowly) and it took me some time yesterday to find the section for checking and paying fines so no idea how non-Arabic speakers are going to manage. I guess through a friend.

I spent the last week in Paris and I know this sounds cliche, but it’s one of my favorite cities. There is a lot to see and do and its always changing so it never gets old. Here is a quick guide of some of my favorite spots:

Eat
For the best croissant without waiting an hour in line, head to the 2018 winner, La Maison d’Isabelle. If you want a quick and easy bite, Dumbo for smashed burgers or JANET by Homer for the best pastrami sandwich and hotdog ever. If you’re in République, MR. T has a great lunch menu while Candelaria is a taco place with a hidden speakeasy in the back. Mokonuts is my favorite restaurant in Paris run by a husband and wife. Kodawari Ramen is a great ramen spot that looks like a Japanese fish market with fake props and sounds. Cheval d’Or for Chinese food with a twist and finally, Glace Bachir for ice cream.

Drink
Araku, Noir and Partisan for proper coffee. Keep (Café Kitsuné as backup in case you aren’t close to the other three options.

See
For art, Fondation Cartier, Fondation Louis Vuitton and Palais de Tokyo. Sandqvist is my favorite backpack brand and they have a large store in Paris. Do Shinzo for sneakers, Yvon Lambert for art & design books and Deyrolle for the coolest taxidermies. Visit WHITEbIRD and Mad Lords for jewelry and Modes and Tom Greyhound for fashion. Finally, don’t leave Paris without using a vintage Fotoautomat booth.

Sleep
I love staying at The Hoxton in Paris. If you have a car there is a multistory parking lot across the street while the Metro station is just a 2 minute walk. The area isn’t busy with tourists and the hotel is also always poppin since the restaurants and bar are popular.

A while back I came across a very cool photo of the late Amir Sheikh Sabah taken on a boat sometime back in the 80s. What caught my attention was the camera he was holding in his hands. Sheikh Sabah was known to love simplicity and steered away from extravagance so I was very curious to know what kind of camera he was using at that time. I asked a friend of mine (@diam89) whose also camera obsessed to help me find the camera and after a bit of investigating she did!

Turns out the camera in his hand was a Canon AF35ML compact point-and-shoot. A pretty simple but very capable camera that was released in 1981 and cost around 100KD back then. It had a very bright fixed 40mm f/1.9 lens and the camera was completely automatic making it very easy to use.

I ended up finding a very clean one on eBay for around 35KD and bought it so I could use it. I’m now currently shooting some black and white film with the camera with plans to develop it at @vo.thedarkroom once I’m done.

If you’re looking to get into film photography and are looking for a camera to get, this is a good option with a nice little story behind it. You can find a bunch on eBay with starting prices of around 15KD.

Yesterday the Associated Press uploaded the short video above of a group of Kuwaiti divers who are on a mission to clean up Kuwait’s seabed and improve its marine environment. According to Walid Al-Fadhel who is the team’s leader, they were able to salvage 172 boats and yachts.

The video was only uploaded in 360p resolution for some reason so it’s not great quality, but it’s good enough to tell their story.

This beautiful chalet is located in Al Khiran and was designed by the architecture firm TAEP/AAP. It’s been completed for awhile now but this weekend it popped up on my news feed and I just loved the design and all the various cozy-looking interior nooks.

The design of the house was inspired by the importance of shade in our desert climate so an oversized roof was designed over two internal units to provide protection from the sun and wind. The roof is also perforated so it could bring daylight into the interior spaces as well as offer views of the sky.

Another cool feature I liked is how open the house is while still being very private. A lot of homes usually have windows facing the main road and neighbors but then stay closed the whole time. The tent house was designed from the get-go to maintain privacy from the main road and neighbors while maximizing openness and transparency to the private beach and garden terraces.

If you want to see more of this house and other cool looking ones designed by the same firm, check out their website.

So last week I asked for recommendations of shows to watch on my 6 hour flight to Paris. I ended up watching two things, Cocaine Bear and binge watching Poker Face. Cocaine Bear was one of the best movies I’ve watched in a long time, it was hilarious, really silly, had lots of famous actors and was a lot of fun to watch. It’s extremely underrated! Highly recommended.

Poker Face is a Peacock original show and I started watching the first episode just to see if I liked it or not and surprisingly it was great. Not sure how many episodes I ended up watching back to back, maybe 4 before I finally arrived to Paris. I’m heading back to Kuwait today and I’m hoping to continue binge watching it on the way back.

Now Barbie. I watched it a few days ago here in Paris, obviously the uncensored version although now that I watched it I have no clue what was censored and why it was banned to begin with. I focused so hard throughout the film trying to figure out what was so controversial and I have no idea honestly, like zero clue. There wasn’t even a kiss in the whole movie, no gay characters or lesbians, there was nothing! Maybe one scene with a rainbow in the sky in the background but no flags, trans or even bad language. WHY WAS THIS BANNED? I am so confused!

Movies at the Cinemas
The movies below are now showing at the local cinemas:

New This Weekend:
Blue Beetle (6.8)
Haunting of the Queen Mary (4.9)
I’ll Be Watching (3.9)
Retribution (5.7)

Other Movies Showing:
Cats Museum (4.4)
Elemental (6.8)
Gran Turismo (7.0)
Haunted Mansion (6.3)
Meg 2: The Trench (6.0)
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (8.2)
Oppenheimer (8.7)
Sound of Freedom (7.8)
The Adventures of Jurassic Pet (3.7)
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (6.5)
The Secret Kingdom (5.0)
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (7.4)

The classic films below are currently showing at the 1954 Film House:
Inside Man (6.6)
Flubber (5.3)
Training Day (7.7)

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

If you’ve ever been to the Kuwait Towers you probably noticed the dirty windows and wondered why they weren’t being cleaned. Well turns out they were being cleaned but the glass itself had discolored and oxidized over the years making them look dirtier than they actually were.

The Kuwait Towers are located right by the sea so they’re exposed to the salty sea air that has corrosive effects on a variety of the materials used in the towers including concrete, metal and glass. Back in June I posted about how the blue discs covering the towers were getting restored, well last week I found out that the glass is now also getting restored.

A company called RITEC was contracted for the restoration which involves a 5 stage process. The first stages relate to the actual restoration of the glass where various chemicals and abrasives are used to remove the oxidation from the glass. Once the oxidation is removed, the glass is polished and revived to its original state making it look brand new. The final stages involve protecting the glass with a nonstick clear shield that not only will prevent the salt from adhering to the glass again, but also dust. In fact, the windows will require 70% less cleaning and will no longer need any soap or chemicals to get cleaned, just water.

This restoration process is currently ongoing as of this post and they’ve already nearly completed restoring the glass at the observation deck and are in process of restoring the glass around the restaurants.

The next time you visit the towers you should see a night and day difference. You’ll finally be able to see out of the windows clearly as well as take nicer shots of the city skyline.

Amorino, the popular French gelato chain is set to open in Kuwait this coming weekend at The Avenues. Thursday and Friday will be by invitation only, but on Saturday it will be open to everyone.

I’m actually excited about this since I like their ice cream a lot. They’re located in Phase III of The Avenues, in the back next to the escalators and where the English Tea Lounge used to be.

Their instagram account is also now live and they’ve started a countdown for their opening @amorinokuwait

I was planning to rent Wes Anderson’s most recent movie Asteroid City but then it got released on Peacock for free so didn’t have to pay for it. Thank god for that because it was such a boring film, it had to be the worst Wes Anderson film I’ve ever watched. Would not recommend. I also randomly ended up watching the chick flick Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret a few days ago and that was so much more entertaining than Asteroid City.

Other than those two movies I’m still binge watching Schitt’s Creek. I’m traveling tomorrow to Paris and since its a nearly 6 hour flight I’ve been downloading shows to watch on the plane. So far I’ve got the following shows I haven’t watched lined up:

Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning
Poker Face
Twisted Metal
Yellowstone

I still need to add more shows so if you have anything thats good and doesn’t start slow please let me know. I’ve run out of stuff to watch.

Movies at the Cinemas
The movies below are now showing at the local cinemas:

New This Weekend:
Shrapnel (6.7)
Sound of Freedom (7.8)
The Adventures of Jurassic Pet (3.7)
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (6.5)

Other Movies Showing:
Cats Museum (4.4)
Elemental (6.8)
Gran Turismo (7.0)
Haunted Mansion (6.3)
Hidden Strike (5.8)
Meg 2: The Trench (6.0)
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (8.2)
Oppenheimer (8.7)
Run Rabbit Run (5.0)
The Secret Kingdom (5.0)
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (7.4)
Til Death Do Us Part (5.8)

The classic films below are currently showing at the 1954 Film House:
Inside Man (6.6)
Flubber (5.3)
Training Day (7.7)

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

When I was given a tour of The Warehouse the other day, I also got a tour of the new IKEA located there. The new IKEA is nearly 25% larger than The Avenues location (26,000m² vs 21,000m²) and is considered to be one of the largest in the region. It’s really huge.

What stood out to me the most while walking around the store is how much space all the display areas had. It makes The Avenues location seem cramped even though thats not a small store by any means. One of the benefits of having a significantly larger store is the ability to showcase the complete range of products. So for example, instead of a couch being displayed in one size and two colors, they now have the space to display all the sizes and all the colors. I was walking around checking out products which I thought were new only to be told they’ve had them for years and I had just never noticed them before, or they never had the models on display. Same when we passed by the home appliances section, I had no idea IKEA had their own ovens or fridges for sale. Thats how much of a difference the new larger store makes on all their products, it allows them to really shine.

The store is split across two levels similar to The Avenues location and with the same general flow. The restaurant like everything else in the store is now much larger and features not only the standard food pickup area, but also includes a new permanent buffet section and a conveniently accessible coffee shop directly from the mall. The bakery and food market are located on the lower floor and like everything else, are also much larger.

If you want to check out the new IKEA they just opened today at The Warehouse. Their operating hours are from 9AM to 11PM daily and here is their location on Google Maps.

Yesterday I got a tour of The Warehouse mall and it was a pretty cool experience since it was very busy with the mall and businesses all getting ready for the opening tomorrow (August 16). The mall looks really great and very different to other malls which is what caught my attention the first time I visited back in May.

The Warehouse has an industrial look with lots of bricks and metal cladding everywhere. The roof is covered with a glass and steel structure that casts interesting shadows onto the floor during the day. It’s really well designed mall with a lot of creative touches, even the bathrooms are worth checking out.

Theres a large variety of stores in the mall with the main anchors being IKEA, ABYAT, LC Waikiki and LuLu Hypermarket. You also have some new restaurants opening there that aren’t available anywhere else in Kuwait yet like Jamie’s Italian and Nando’s. Regulars like Milk Bun, Shake Shack and Raising Cane’s are also opening there as well as one of my favorite coffee shops, Earth Roastery. There is also a Cinescape, Xcite, Starbucks, Zain, and a bunch of other “mall-must-haves”. There’s even an area called Auto Zone which houses a bunch of car dealerships.

If you want to pass by and check the mall out, starting tomorrow The Warehouse is going to open daily from 10AM till 10PM except on weekends where it stays open till 11PM. The mall is located in Ahmadi, right off highway 30 or 40. @thewarehousekuwait

Last week while flipping through some old Kuwait Times newspapers from 1971 I spotted the article above titled “No. This Is Not In Soho, This is in Kuwait”. The article was about the introduction of the discotheque in Kuwait at a popular hotel back then called Phoenicia. Here is the article typed out if you can’t read it in the image above:

The discotheque, at Phoenicia Hotel, was the scene of a lovely and ac-tion-full night Saturday, when most of the young and several other not-so-young celebrities showed up to enjoy this new form of entertainment to emerge on the Kuwaiti scene, thanks to the efforts made by the organisers of the British Trade Week.

The star attraction of the evening was, of course, the “Miss British Trade Week” Brenda Wheeler. British Ambassador, Mr. Whilton, was also present to lend the evening an official importance.

The Discotheque, in short, is a success in Kuwait, and many people hope it will continue – and also not just in one place.

An interesting side note, the original plans for the Kuwait Towers included a discotheque.

A couple of weeks ago GQ Middle East published a feature on Kuwait’s emerging music scene by spotlighting two Kuwait-based artists, Cascou and Rydeen.

The article is a Q&A with the artists which is a format I’m generally not a fan of, but if you want to check it out, here is the link.

The photos in the article are great and were shot by @mewnyra & @taiibbbaaa

The other day when I posted about Villa Moda being demolished, a reader and a couple of teachers made me aware that Villa Moda is taught in 10th-grade since its part of a school book called “Over to you”. The book was first printed in 2009 so its obviously outdated but I thought that was such a random thing to teach kids about. Here is the PDF of the book in case you’re interested Link

Thanks @GreattHeron

Since Barbie is now officially banned in Kuwait, here are three cinemas that you can drive to that are currently showing Barbie.

Muvi Cinemas
Location: Al-Jubail, Saudi Arabia Google Maps
Distance: 2 Hours and 20 Minutes from borders

Vox Cinemas
Location: Dammam, Saudi Arabia Google Maps
Distance: 2 Hours and 50 Minutes from borders

AMC Cinemas
Location: Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia Google Maps
Distance: 3 Hours and 15 Minutes from borders

If you’ve never driven to Saudi before, check this link for information.
Any Kuwait resident can get a visa to Saudi, check this link for info.

Update: So beside the fact that this post blew up on Instagram, it also made it into The Hollywood Reporter