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Just a quick update, I removed yesterday’s post on my own accord. I wasn’t forced to remove it. I stated what I had to state and my readers read it so it’s done with. But when a post like that blows up and goes viral outside my regular reader base, it can easily get misinterpreted by people who don’t know me or the blog, and that brings a different set of issues that I don’t want to deal with. For everyone that reached out with support yesterday, thank you, it meant a lot.

Now back to our usual programming.

Boom Diwan is an ensemble of traditional Kuwaiti musicians who combine Kuwaiti bahri (sea) music with global jazz. This Saturday they will be teaming up with South African jazz pianist Nduduzo Makhathini and I’ll be streaming their performance live on the blog.

Event by NYUAD Arts Center
Date: Saturday, February 6th 2021
Time: 7PM
Location: YouTube and Facebook

The event will take place at 7PM on Saturday so check back then for the YouTube link or, watch the stream on Facebook.

Here are more details of the event:

For this performance, Boom.Diwan will collaborate with and feature special guest pianist Nduduzo Makhathini, the first ever South African musician signed to the legendary Blue Note Records. The two will co-compose a suite that will be performed as an immersive ritual of music, the visual, and dance that takes into account ideas about the self, the community, and the spiritual in the face of modernity. The music touches on ideas of cosmopolitanism, community, dialogue, and healing.

Founded by applied ethnomusicologist Ghazi Al-Mulaifi, Boom.Diwan is a collaborative global jazz ensemble that revives the cosmopolitan tradition of the Kuwaiti pearl diving music of the Indian Ocean trade. With influences spanning Zanzibar to Calicut, improvisation, fluidity, and dialogue are at the center of Boom.Diwan.

At its core, Boom.Diwan is comprised of Al-Mulaifi on vocals, percussion, and electric guitar and members of the Mayouf Mejally Ensemble, who are the among the oldest and most widely respected pearl-diving music ensembles in Kuwait and the GCC. For this performance, they will be joined by Steven Bedford (NOON) on electric bass, and Claude Cozens on drum kit. Improvisation and cross-cultural collaborations are the foundation of Boom.Diwan’s mission.

Update: Here is the YouTube stream!

I’ve been wanting to experience dirt biking ever since I got my motorbike license back in 2006. I had ridden sports bikes, naked bikes, cruisers and scooters but always felt dirt bikes might be more fun. The only reason I never got one is because I couldn’t figure out how to make it financially viable. If I did buy a dirt bike I’d have to take it out a few times a month which sounds doable, but I’d also need a trailer to transport it and that seemed like too much of a hassle for me to end up wanting to do it more than once or twice a month.

Then a few weeks ago, I got a notification on Instagram that one of my Facebook friends is now on instagram as @xkuwaitofficial. A guy I met nearly a decade ago through my blog called Faris Al-Obaid had set up a business called X Kuwait offering extreme experiences one of which was dirt biking based off the photos he was posting on the account. He always was into extreme sports so I thought it was cool that he had set this up. I decided to check out his website see how much one of these dirt bike adventures cost so I could mentally restart the process of considering buying a dirt bike, I figured maybe I could store the bike with them and they could take it out for me whenever I join on one of these trips. While checking their website I noticed that under one of the dirt bike adventures they mention that they provide the bike and gear. Right away I got in touch with Faris to confirm that they provided the actual dirt bikes and he confirmed that was the case. I wanted to book instantly but my back was super messed up that weekend so I waited a couple of weeks before finally booking a 4-hour adventure which I went on yesterday.

It was one of the scariest yet most fun experiences I’ve had in ages.

We met up at an empty lot on the other side of the Sheikh Jaber causeway bridge at around 10am. I got there and the two bikes were already set up and Faris was there getting some stuff ready. They provide the gear so the first thing I had to do was change and put on a bunch of safety gear then the outfit and then the boots, helmet, and gloves. I got a brief of the route we were going to take and then got a tour of the bike. Since I already knew how to ride a motorbike I was familiar with how bike works but just to quickly give you readers an overview, the gear clutch is controlled with a left-hand leaver, the front brakes with a right-hand leaver, then your left foot controls the gearbox (you tap a leaver with your foot up and down) and your right foot controls the rear brakes. But, because dirt bike boots were made of hard plastic and so weren’t flexible (similar to ski boots), I had no idea how I was going to change gears or even feel my feet changing gears. He made me ride around the empty lot for a bit to get myself familiar and I realized changing gears was going to be something I’d just have to get used to.

We then left the parking lot on the bikes and headed off-road. Faris knows the area really well, calls it his backyard so the route he had planned for us would start off easy and get more and more difficult the further we went into the 4-hour adventure. The first part of the trail was mostly flat hard sand with some soft sand spots so I could get a feel for the bike and when he saw I was doing ok he’d take me on a path that was slightly more challenging. We took our first break 15 minutes into the ride so he could check up on me and see if I had any questions. After that, we headed out again and did multiple stops throughout the whole trip at different interesting sights.

I think my favorite part of the trip was a long strip of a closed off highway that was covered in sand. It felt like we were in a post-apocalyptic world where nature had taken over. At that point it was also the most difficult part of the trip since riding on soft sand is super dodgy. You can’t stop, you can’t slow down and you constantly have to be on guard because the rear wheel has a habit of slipping and going sideways.

The hardest bit of the journey was actually right at the end of the trip, a rough rocky terrain that required slow speed and lots of standing up on the bike which I thankfully had gotten used to by that point of the trip. I was exhausted both mentally and physically but the idea that I hadn’t fallen off the bike yet that day kept me going and gave me more confidence. We finally got back to our cars and it felt great getting back into my soft sneakers and comfy car seat.

The cost of this 4-hour experience was KD169 which for me at least was a great deal. It’s much cheaper than buying a bike and I had so much fun. You definitely need to know how to ride a bike to experience this and he does offer lessons although I’m not sure how much they cost. It was much harder than I was expecting it to be and really tough mentally and physically but I’m glad I did the 4-hour adventure and not the 2-hour one since it gave me twice as much time to get familiar with dirt bikes. Currently, Faris can take up to two people per adventure but he might be selling one of the bikes and then he’d only be able to take one person out. If you want to get more info on X Official, their Instagram is @xkuwaitofficial and their website is xkuwaitshop.com

Today is going to be a day of complaining on the blog. I don’t think I’ve ever been so pessimistic about the future of Kuwait as I have been recently. From roads that are a total mess to laws that don’t make any sense. And then when you have serious issues, nothing gets done about it.

Last week the popular local instagrammer Ascia got harassed while leaving her office on the way to her car. She was clearly shaken up and posted an emotional story on her Instagram about what had happened. Women getting harrassed by men is such a common occurrence in Kuwait it’s become the norm. There isn’t a single girl I know who hasn’t been harassed and it happens all the time.

Women get harassed at malls, universities, in parking lots, at work, everywhere basically, and nothing ever gets done about it. But now a bunch of popular instagrammers are going vocal about the issue and hopefully, people will finally listen to them.

Other than Ascia, the popular luxury footwear designer Najeeba Hayat (@liudmilahq) has been very vocal about harassment sharing stories by other women on her account. Local illustrators like @wadaniart and @coffeeandcastoffs have also posted about the problem and the movement seems to be gaining traction. An instagram account was set up called Lan Asket (@lan.asket) which translates into “I won’t stay quiet” which has been posting stories of harrasment in both English and Arabic.

Men can help too. Anytime you see a form of harassment taking place get involved. I witness a lot of cases of harassment on the Gulf Road and anytime I see it happening, I usually pull up behind the guy and start flashing my high beams and honking the horn until he drives off.

Knowing how things are in Kuwait I’m not very optimistic something will be done about this. Like I mentioned in my previous post, they usually implement new rules or laws, enforce them heavily for two weeks and then forget about them. It’s sad really, but hopefully, I’m wrong.

What do you think needs to be done? What would help this issue? What can men do to support this cause? I’m interested in what people think about this subject. Have you been harassed before? Share your story.

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I actually liked this museum because it was old and had random things inside. Sadly doesn’t look like it’s going to reopen anytime soon and I wouldn’t be surprised if they demolished it so they can build something new and shiny. I’m trying to remember the last time I visited and it might have been 2004, back when I had Moblogging from Kuwait (before my Miskan blog, and I think before Qhate).

For more photos of the current condition of the museum, click here.

Found a video of the Kuwait Towers under construction in the 70s. Not sure what the original source is or if the video originally had any audio, so if anyone recognizes this footage from somewhere, let me know in the comments.

Update: OK this is kinda funny. My friend made me realize that I’ve actually posted the video above on the blog 6 years ago. Not only that but I’m the original source of the video. I got the video from my friends parents who shot it on Super 8 film back in 1975 when they first moved to Kuwait. The clip above was taken from the original longer video which you can watch under my previous post here.

With over 12,000 posts, 15 years of blogging and my terrible memory, I’m not gonna remember everything I post.

Over the weekend the MOH launched a vaccine pre-registration website which you can access by clicking here. I’ve read both that this website will help prioritize those who register early to get the vaccine first, and I’ve also read that this website is just for the government to get an idea of how many people are interested in the vaccine. In any case, the plan is to start by vaccinating 10,000 people a day beginning with essential workers and other priority groups first. I’m guessing that number will eventually increase once private clinics start offering the vaccine as well.

Oddly I keep hearing about people not wanting to vaccinate and are worried it would become mandatory. I’m personally going to vaccinated as soon as possible just so I can go back to living life without worrying about contracting the virus. It’s pretty difficult to run a blog about Kuwait without being able to freely go around the country discovering and trying new things. I just want all this to be over with already.

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The story below was sent to me by John Beresford who has been contributing to the blog with old interesting stories about life in Kuwait during the 1940s to the 1960s when he and his family used to live in Kuwait. To check out some of his previous stories click here.

In 1968 Ramzi Kayello, an artist, put on an exhibition of his paintings in the Hubara Club in Ahmadi. My parents went and later asked him to paint them a picture of ‘Old Kuwait’.

The image is pretty standard; mud houses, wooden doors with nails in, dusty streets, and the frame is very 1960s.

The interesting thing is the man in the white dishdasha. He is carrying water buckets. With no piped system water had to be bought and transported back to the home and the traditional Arab buckets, made from an entire sheep or goatskin, were too small and with the way Kuwait was developing, fewer people in the town could keep flocks. This was where new technology came in. The increase in the number of vehicles was increasing the number of worn-out tires lying around – what to do with them? Some could be hung around boats and on quay-sides to minimize the bump when coming alongside. Others could be used as buckets. It was possible to get about 3 buckets from 1 truck tire, they were strong, pretty well indestructible, waterproof and the wire in the tires stopped them flopping about and spilling. And of course, if you found an old tire lying about you could make up your buckets for free! With rope handles they were fine. So the water carrier is using water buckets made from truck tires; this was pretty standard and my parents specifically asked for this to be included in the painting.

I also include a bit that my father wrote about water in Kuwait when he arrived there, in April 1949. Later on, there were ships built to go up the Shatt al Arab, vent their ballast tanks and pick up river water for the return journey, thus making the smaller dhows redundant.

The other explanation I should give concerns about the Kuwaiti water supply. I mentioned the brackish water wells. There is no fresh water at all anywhere in the state of Kuwait. Brackish was obtained from shallow wells, close to the coastline and provided water for livestock and limited garden growth. The poorer element of the town also had to drink it; it’s not very palatable, most times when I was offered it in poorer Arab houses they added sherbet to it to make it more palatable but, really, I used to think it made it worse! In addition to about a 14% salinity it also had a quantity of magnesium salts in it: Magnesium sulfate or Epsom Salts, being the most common.

For many years fresh water was brought to Kuwait from the Shatt al Arab River, a major world river formed by the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. As this river is tidal to well above Basrah, the collecting dhows were required to go well upstream and then, while waiting for the tide to run out, collect the water from the top, less dense, layers.

Some imported water was less good than others, it depended upon the tide, time available, weather and the temperament of the dhow skipper.

The water so imported was sold by the old gallon kerosene or gasoline tin full at 2 rupees a time. This didn’t suit the company and just before I arrived gave up on relying on the dhows.

It’s been 5 years since I last posted about Big D, probably the most controversial musician I’ve posted about on the blog. For some reason, he used to get a lot of negative comments to the point he had to release a music video in which he responded to some of the hate. Love him or hate him though I like the fact he’s still going and “Open Your Eyes” is his latest track so check it out.

Mark Lowey, or AbuJack as he is known on Twitter has been fairly active recently scanning old photos of his from life back in Kuwait and Saudi during the 70s and 80s when he used to live here. Recently he published one of his journal entries from a spur of the moment trip he made to Kuwait with his friend Stephen back in 1979. Along with his journal entry, he has old pictures of Kuwait attached so it’s a really interesting piece to read (basically a blog post from 1979).

Check out his journal entry on his weekend excursion to Kuwait here and then make sure you follow him on twitter @molowey

I don’t remember how I first found out about the Ahmadi Desert Motoring Club (ADMC), or how I came about a picture of their car badge, but when I first saw it I knew I needed to have one. It’s such a great looking badge with the cute desert mouse and beautiful colors, I ended up spending over a year looking for one to purchase and wasn’t able to find a single one for sale, anywhere and for any price! I got in touch with random people whose parents might have been part of the club, I checked small private sllers, large auction sites, I checked with car badge collectors, and nobody either had one or wanted to sell one. Finally, back in September, one went on sale on eBay, and not just any, but one that was in pristine, 10/10 condition. It looked like it had never been installed on a car before and all the enamel was still intact and vibrant. I put a ridiculous maximum bid number since I knew I’d most likely not come across another one ever that was so clean, eventually, I ended up winning the bid for a lot less than I expected, around KD75.

Now that I had the badge I found it very frustrating that I couldn’t dig up any info on the club, there wasn’t anything online except for a single photo from an ADMC Alitalia Darts event dating back to 1964 and that was it. So I got in touch with a friend at KOC and asked him if he could check their archives for any photos or articles on the club and he struck gold.

Turns out KOC had some photos related to the motoring club but they were still negatives which hadn’t been scanned. So they dug them out of their archive and scanned them so I could share them on the blog. These images haven’t been seen by anyone for over 65 years! They also shared some articles relating to the club from the old KOC newsletter called “The Kuwaiti”. The Kuwaiti was a weekly newsletter and he flipped through the 1954 and 1955 archive of the newsletter and sent me some photos of ones relating to the club and motoring in general. Some really interesting stuff.

I’ve decided to share everything in two ways. Firstly I uploaded all the photos and articles to a Flickr album. If you prefer viewing things that way click here.

I’ve also created a PDF file of all the articles and if you prefer viewing the articles that way then click here to download the PDF

For the scanned images I have all of them embedded in high resolution below. The blog will resize them automatically to fit the width of my page, but if you save the images, you can view them in higher resolution on your phone or computer. Check those out by clicking more below.

Finally, I’d like to thank Kuwait Oil Company for digging these photos out and scanning them for me. Now people looking for info on the club will be able to find some kind of information online.

The video above has been circulating WhatsApp showing the observation tower at Entertainment City crashing down as part of the Entertainment City demolition process. I was thinking about the park yesterday on how they could have refurbished it instead of rebuilding a new one from scratch. It wasn’t the best amusement park in the world but at least it had a history and character. Not everything needs to be completely demolished for a new version. Disney Land has been around since 1955 and is still very current, Coney Island amusement park has been around even longer since the late 1800s and has gone through various stages of refurbishment and revival.

A lot of people dislike TikTok and I think it’s because they associate it with just videos of people dancing to cheesy music. I actually love TikTok to the point I avoid it because once I start watching videos I don’t stop until I start running out of battery. It’s pretty addictive, fun, and can also be informative. During the Mahboula lockdown for example I started following a few low-income workers who were living there and they basically were providing me with their point of view on how life was there during the lockdown. During the US riots recently TikTok was providing me with on the ground footage of what was happening there. But I also follow some completely stupid shit but that’s what makes TikTok so great, it’s whatever you want it to be.

My account is just filled with so much random (not even curated) stuff from various people living around Kuwait it’s become super entertaining especially now that TikTok knows what I like and so shows me more of the same. I tried to put together a list of some interesting accounts I follow and below are a few of them:

@sadiqleader – An employee at Jawad AlSaffar. It’s exactly what I’d expect their TikTok to be except it’s his personal account and it’s in Indian.

@fahad9881 – A firefighter, posts videos of various fires he’s fighting as well as cute animal rescue videos.

@in_ga_me – A Ukrainian female motorbiker living in Kuwait. The account is of her and her Honda CBR cruising up and down the Gulf Road.

@kuwaitrescueteam1 – Account of a local rescue team and it’s mostly videos of them getting cars unstuck from sand.

@_7xvo – The account of a Al Qabas newspaper journalist, was pretty useful during the lockdown.

@gooshbaker – Guy posts videos of interesting places around Kuwait. Kinda like a blog but tiktok.

@x_dexter_x1 – This is an account of a Syria guy living in Kuwait who re-engineers everyday appliances or electronics but using random bits and pieces of scrap. Kinda like science projects.

@alsarheed82 – Account of a shawarma place owner, he posts videos of his shawarma.

@shahibwtayb – A odd old guy with a super long white beard who drives a bright green Camero and never wears the same sunglasses or hats twice.

@ismayeelrana – This guy is an employee at Alsarraf Motors and posts videos of the cars they have as well as of him driving them around like they’re his.

@amorsisilin – Probably the most popular account I follow and also the most tiktokish. Belongs to a 24-year-old Kuwaiti hybrid and the videos originally were mostly of her dancing to music around my neighborhood, but now it’s mostly just dancing with her friends in different places.

@venudancer..kuwait – Lots of super cheesy skits, so cheesy and lame to the point they become good. Stuff that’s so bad you save the video to show your friends. It’s in Indian (I think) with lots of terrible acting. It’s great.

If you have interesting/weird/fun local TikTok accounts I should follow, let me know in the comments.

For some odd reason, it’s actually pretty difficult to find a picture of the original Arby’s that opened up in Kuwait back in the 80s. But a follower on twitter managed to find one taken by a US soldier back in 1991 called Keith O’Brien. According to Keith, this photo was taken right after the war. He was assigned as a driver/bodyguard of a Brigade Commander and he wanted to see Kuwait City. Up till then, they had only been in Saudi, Iraq, and Bahrain so they drove around and he took some photos of various places which you can see here.

Two of the most memorable things about this Arby’s for me was the touch screen ordering system which was super way ahead of its time, and the arcade machines in the basement.

Thanks @Alblogy

I’ve been blogging for what now 15+ years? and I can count the number of posts I’ve removed. Even the Benihana posts which I went to court over and lost are all still up on the blog. I’m very against removing posts which is why I’m upset I had to remove one now.

Earlier today I posted about a new online business that launched and then someone from that business started leaving fake reviews in the comments. They were so obvious, not only because of the tone of voice or the fact they shared similar IPs, but also because some of the comments were responding to comments that were still under moderation waiting for me to approve them. Meaning only I and the original commenter could see those comments and nobody else.

As much as I hate removing posts from my blog, any business that has to resort to this kind of bullshit and waste my time is not going to get any sort of promotion on the blog.