2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

The 3rd GCC Games ended yesterday and Kuwait ended up winning the games with 36 gold medals and a final tally of 96 medals.

Really impressive considering it wasn’t even close between Kuwait and second place.

On Saturday I was at the Toyota dealer service center picking up my car. I get there early and head towards the glass office of the customer service person whom I’m supposed to pick up the car from. I knock on his door and see he’s on the phone, he tells me he’s finishing up with another customer on the phone and to give him just a few minutes. I’m like sure and I go back out and wait outside his office.

As I’m waiting, a fireman comes and stands outside the guy’s office. In my head, I’m thinking that maybe I should be nice and let him go in ahead of me since he’s a fireman and is busy saving lives, putting out fires, and helping cats down from trees. As I’m finishing that train of thought, the fireman starts banging on the glass window of the office and yelling at the service guy to hurry up and get off the phone. I realized that I probably don’t have to be nice and give the fireman my spot since it looks like he’s going to push ahead of me in line anyway. So to make it clear to him that I’m ahead of him, I tell the firefighter that I’m also waiting for the guy to finish.

A few seconds later, the fireman angrily barges into the office and yells at the customer service guy to get off the phone because there are customers waiting outside and tells him he’s going to give him five minutes to do so. The fireman leaves the office yelling loudly at how the service guy is on the phone while there are customers waiting. Another Toyota employee came out from another office to see what all the commotion was about and saw the fireman yelling so took his papers and told him he’d help him.

At that point, I had a realization, any job in Kuwait that involves having to deal with customers, is probably the most dangerous job in Kuwait. From Shop&Ship customer service people to delivery drivers, I can’t imagine how much abuse they have to deal with on a daily basis from entitled people who think the quickest way to get things done is with threats and yelling. That’s one job I don’t think I’d last a day in.

The last Beethoven event got rescheduled and is instead taking place this coming Friday. Ahmadi Music Group will be holding a lecture concert about Beethoven and the 5th symphony at JACC and tickets are on sale starting at KD10. Tickets are selling fast so if you want to attend the performance, get your ticket now.

A Business Insider article was published yesterday on the worst airports in the world and Kuwait came in 2nd. The problem is the list Business Insider used is from 2019 and so the list being shared locally is outdated.

In the current ranking, Kuwait STILL has the 2nd worst airport, but the rest of the list is slightly different:

1- Lisbon Portela Airport, Portugal
2- Kuwait International Airport, Kuwait
3- Eindhoven Airport, Netherlands
4- Henri Coandă International Airport, Romania
5- Paris Orly Airport, France
6- Malta International Airport, Malta
7- Frankfurt International Airport, Germany
8- Dubai International Airport, United Arab Emirates
9- London City Airport, United Kingdom
10- Manchester Airport, United Kingdom

The biggest difference between the 2022 list above and the 2019 list is that Kuwait is joined by UAE on the list. Dubai’s International Airport is currently ranked the 8th worst in the world for some reason. Qatar’s airport on the other hand is still ranked as the world’s best airport.

For the latest ranking of best and worst airports, check out the full list on AirHelp.

If you’re on the highway right now you might be noticing a large plume of black smoke in the distance. Turns out tent city which is located next to Friday Market in Al Rai caught fire.

@kuwaitnews has some more footage here and @alqabas are also posting updates.

The Ahmadi Music Group is performing a jazz soiree tomorrow night at the residence of the French ambassador. The dinner and music event is being held in aid of Ukrainian refugees and tickets are selling for 30KD. If you’re interested get your tickets before it sells out. Link

Update: It’s sold out

Over the weekend Oula and Alfa fuel stations started closing some of their fuel pumps and operating just one for each lane due to a lack of staff. This started causing long queues at the pump with some people waiting 45 minutes just to have their car filled with fuel. It’s odd that this started happening at both stations at the same time, but they both seem to want the same thing, either to start charging for the service of filling your car up, or turn the stations to self-service ones.

Oula posted a story yesterday stating that their Al-Omariah station now operates on a self-service system. Their plan it seems is to want to charge 200 fils for people who want fuel filled up by one of their employees which makes sense but, based on the comments on their Instagram, people don’t want to pay and would rather drive to an Alfa station instead. Alfa on the other hand hasn’t posted anything on their account while KNPC posted last night saying that basically nothing will change and nobody is gonna start charging for service.

Personally, I find this whole thing just odd. We all used to fill up fuel ourselves like 20 years ago and it’s a normal thing around the world so I don’t understand why there is so much hoopla around this.

The Avenues mall opened in Kuwait back in April 2007, 15 years ago! I was looking back through my old posts and I think IKEA actually opened there at the end of 2006, before the rest of the mall was open since I posted about my first visit to it.

Over the years Avenues kept expanding and growing to become one of the coolest malls in the region and even the world. It’s one of my favorite places in Kuwait.

Tim Hortons, the popular Canadian coffee chain is making a comeback in Kuwait after closing down all its locations a few years ago. They’re now coming back to the market with at least two new locations, one in Bida’a next to Melenzane and a second in Kuwait City next to Muthana Complex.

The UAE company Apparel Group is the master franchisee of the Tim Hortons brand in the Middle East. They also have a number of other brands including Tommy Hilfiger, Aldo, Jamie’s Italian, Cold Stone Creamery, and Rituals.

Thanks Basel

Below is the list of events for this weekend. As usual if I missed anything please let me know in the comments:

Thursday
Exhibition: I Am Here – Manuella Guiragossian
Exhibition: My Name Is Woman – Maha AlAsaker
Exhibition: Deconstructed Phyche – Sheikha Al Habishi
Exhibition: “The Mystic Letters” By Antonella Leoni
Perfumes, Cosmetics & Watches Expo
3rd GCC Games
Musical: MAMMA MIA!
Kuwaiti Women’s Week
Hoop Dreams
Movies at the Park: A Night at the Museum
FILA Opening Event

Friday
Perfumes, Cosmetics & Watches Expo
3rd GCC Games
Musical: MAMMA MIA!
Kuwaiti Women’s Week
Hoop Dreams

Saturday
Exhibition: I Am Here – Manuella Guiragossian
Exhibition: My Name Is Woman – Maha AlAsaker
Exhibition: Deconstructed Phyche – Sheikha Al Habishi
Grand Mosque Tour
Perfumes, Cosmetics & Watches Expo
3rd GCC Games
Musical: MAMMA MIA!
Kuwaiti Women’s Week
Trash Hero: Messilah Beach Clean Up
Sea Trip: Sunrise Breakfast Cruise

The movies below are now showing at Cinescape, Grand Cinemas and VOX:

New This Weekend:
Room 203 (4.5)
The Last Victim (5.3)
The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee (4.9)
Top Gun: Maverick (8.7)
Yakari (6.4)

Other Movies Showing:
Fireheart (6.1)
Firestarter (4.6)Memory (5.6)
Samsam (5.0)
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (6.9)
The Bad Guys (7.0)
The Batman (8.1)
The Cellar (5.3)
The Northman (7.5)
The Twin (5.0)

Classic Movies Showing:
Gladiator (8.5)

The films below are also showing at the Scientific Center IMAX theater:

IMAX Movies Showing:
Antarctica
Asteroid Hunters 3D
Ocean Odyssey
Turtle Odyssey

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

As of this post, Kuwait is currently leading the 3rd GCC Games with 69 points and 25 gold medals. The games end on the 31st and there are still a lot of medals to grab so Kuwait isn’t in the clear yet. To stay posted on the games visit kuwait2022.org

Back in February, a Kuwaiti lawyer filed a lawsuit against the MOC demanding the blocking of Netflix due to the Arabic movie Perfect Strangers. The lawyer believes the movie goes against local religious and moral values and so wants Netflix banned in Kuwait. Well, the first day of the hearing is today.

I highly doubt Netflix will get banned but you never know here. Good luck Kuwait!

The Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Centre is hosting four evening events dedicated to Kuwaiti women who have made a difference in various fields. Starting at 7 PM every night for the next four nights there will be guest speakers covering a variety of subject matter:

Wednesday: Community
Thursday: Health Wellness & Lifestyle
Friday: Creative Entrepreneurship
Saturday: Parenting & Education

This event is free of charge but requires prior registration.
Check out the full program and guest speakers here.
To register for the event, click here.

Threadless is an online community of artists and an e-commerce website

teeplus is a local website that plays two roles, it allows you to buy apparel using local designs, and it allows you to sell apparel using your own original designs. It’s similar to the popular website Threadless except it’s local.

Buy Tshirts by Local Artists
The website contains hundreds and hundreds of designs submitted by various artists and designers with many of them being localized designs or ideas which makes them unique. Prices are pretty good with t-shirts starting at 9KD and sweatshirts for 15KD.

Sell & Create
As an artist, you can also make money by selling products that use your design ranging from t-shirts and sweatshirts to tote bags and phone covers. The way it works is you create an account, upload your design and then decide what you want to apply the design too. For every product, you sell through the website you make a profit ranging from 15% to 20%.

Even though teeplus is not a new idea, it’s still a great initiative since it creates an outlet for local artists to be able to generate money using their work. I’ve already added a whole bunch of t-shirts to my cart and still browsing for more as of this post. If you want to check out the designs or buy a t-shirt, the website is teeplus.co