2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

A presentation of the new Kuwait Airport by Foster+Partners. [YouTube]

Update: I’ve updated the video link to a working one.

For just £15 I was able to get a pre-paid phone line from the mobile operator 3 that lasts a month and comes with 300 minutes of talk time, 3000 SMS’s and unlimited 3G data. Works great with the iPhone and Personal Hotspot also works so you could get online in your hotel room with your laptop and avoid the hotels expensive internet rates.

I’m uploading and sharing a lot of photos on Instagram while I’m here on vacation and you can check them all out by clicking [Here]

The only thing I could think of that would suck even more is if N’SYNC and Take That teamed up together as well.

Looks like this year the government is really thinking digital with the upcoming elections in Kuwait. Last week I posted about their Flickr page where they were uploading pictures taken at different events related to the elections. Well Saud A. Almutairi contacted me and provided me with details regarding the election day website he helped the government setup.

On the day of the elections the Kuwaiti public will have access to preliminary results via the following channels:

Main Website
On the day of the elections after all polls are closed at 8pm that’s when counting will begin. An hour later if you visit the MOI news portal at https://news.gov.kw you will be automatically redirected to a live results website containing 5 tabs each representing a Kuwaiti circle and each containing 3 lists:

The Candidates
This first list will be a list of all the candidates (ordered alphabetically) and contain two fields that will be constantly updated: the vote count and current rank of the candidate. This list will NOT be auto sorted based on rank as to avoid confusion. This list will remain alphabetically ordered.

Follow
The second list will contain a list of candidates a user wants to follow. This list will be empty by default until the user adds his candidates. In the screen shots below you can see how it looks empty and how it looks with some candidates added.

The Leaderboard
This final list will contain the top 15 candidates based on rank. This list will be constantly changing as per the vote count so unlike the first list, the names of the candidates here will move up or down. This list will also contain the percentage of votes the candidate has based on all votes in the circle.

If there is an update the numbers will flash. Updates to the website should start around 10PM and occur every 5 to 10 minutes.

Mobile Website
When a user visits https://news.gov.kw from a mobile device (tested on the iPhone and Android) they will be presented with a mobile optimized version of the website. You can check out the screenshots below on how the information will be presented. The only thing to note here is that on the mobile website, the list of candidates are sorted by rank.

Twitter Integration
For twitter the MOI will have 5 handles, one for each Kuwaiti circle. The system will be set up to automatically post updates every 5 minutes on the Top 12 candidates.

Here are the twitter handles for all circles: @MediaKuwait1 @MediaKuwait2 @MediaKuwait3 @MediaKuwait4 @MediaKuwait5

Note: The results from the MOI are considered preliminary scores and NOT official scores.

I’ve seen electric cars before but this was the first time I spotted one being charged. In Mayfair they have few parking spots that have electric charging points. Very cool.

My favorite method of transportation from the airport to the hotel and vice versa is using the Heathrow Connect train. I tried the black cabs but at 60 British Pounds (around KD25) they’re too expensive and you spend a lot of time stuck in traffic (total trip time close to an hour). I also tried taking the subway which cost me 1.5 pounds but found it too much of a hassle and it wasn’t easy navigating with a bag. Plus the subway took nearly as long as the cab.

Once I discovered Heathrow Connect I haven’t looked back. Actually there are two very similar options the other being Heathrow Express which is the train the airport heavily advertises. Heathrow Express costs around 20 pounds and will have you in London within 20 minutes. The train has room for your baggage and even has wifi on board which I think is great. The other option is Heathrow Connect which is similar to the Express train with some minor differences. Unlike the Express train, the Connect train has around 5 stops before it arrives into London. These 5 stops add around 15 minutes of travel time when compared to the Express. In addition to that the train also doesn’t have wifi. But on the other hand the Heathrow Connect costs just 10 pounds for a ticket and as you can see the from the picture above is usually empty since it’s less popular since the airport advertises the Express train. So that’s around 6 times cheaper than the cab (if you’re 1 person) and gets you there nearly twice as fast.

So next time you’re going to London consider the Heathrow Express and Connect trains. You can get the tickets at the airport and the trains leave every 15 minutes.

I hope this actually gets built. Find out more about this project [Here]

After falling down behind Lebanon last year, Kuwait is once again back in the lead in the latest World Press Freedom Index for 2012. Below is the ranking for the Middle East and North Africa, the global ranking is in the brackets:

1- Kuwait (78)
2- Israel (92)
3- Lebanon (93)
4- UAE (112)
5- Qatar (114)
6- Oman (117)
7- Algeria (112)
8- Jordan (128)
9- Tunis (134)
10- Morocco (138)
11- Iraq (152)
12- Palestine (153)
13- Libya (154)
14- Saudi Arabia (158)
15- Egypt (166)
16- Sudan (170)
17- Yemen (171)
18- Bahrain (173)
19- Iran (175)
20- Syria (176)

You can check out the full list in PDF format [Here]

I’m leaving to London early Friday morning for a week. It’s going to be a chilled out vacation and so far I’ve got the following things planned, all of which I haven’t done before:

– Cadbury World
– Stonehenge
– The Newman Arms
– G Kelly Pie
– The Last Tuesday Society
– The Hideout aka Trisha’s
– Cabman’s Shelter
– Bicester Village

Still trying to find an interesting castle to visit. Oh and I need to walk through Hyde Park. For some reason I haven’t done that yet. I’ll be staying at Easy Hotel in Paddington again since I had a good experience the last time. I’m going for a slightly larger room this time around so looking forward to that. If anyone has any recommendations on where to go just leave a comment below. I’ll of course be going to the regular places like Harrods, Oxford Street, Portobello Road, Borough Market etc…

The first Alexander McQueen boutique in Kuwait will be opening this coming Sunday 29th of January at Althuraya Mall. [Link]

Wouldn’t it be funny if they decide to turn it into a Pinkberry? [Link]

Can anyone guess when this will be completed? [YouTube]

Thanks Talal

Happened right across from a network cafe so there were at least 50 kids laughing and poking fun of the sad situation. This was the first time I was actually glad the cops came. They quickly broke up the crowd of juveniles by threatening to haul their asses away if they didn’t disappear.[YouTube]

[YouTube]

Here are two videos taken from the Chasing Classic Cars Discovery show when they visited Kuwait during last year’s Concours.

[YouTube]

As you can see, the Concours d’Elegance attracts some of the biggest names in the automotive industry and really puts Kuwait in the limelight.