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Looks like all the events this weekend are taking place on Saturday. Check out this weekends to do list below:

Thursday
Nothing happening

Friday
Kuwait Knitters Meetup
Karaoke Battle
Good Game: Magic – The Gathering

Saturday
Yoga with the 3
K’S PATH Free Pet Adoption Drive
ChefKB’s Manaeesh 101 Cooking Class & Brunch
TEDxAlShuwaikh
Minion Lunchbox Workshop
Good Game: Pokémon Tournament
The Divan’s JamJam: The Afterthought Concert

If you’d like to share an event on the blog [Email Me]
For a full list of upcoming events click [Here]

Sometimes events get canceled or have details changed so always double check with the organizers.

A few days ago I posted about how Salem Al Mubarak Street is finally turning into a pedestrian only street. One of the negatives I highlighted was the fact they had chopped down some of the old trees that have been there for nearly 50 years. I was upset about it, but when I asked the engineer behind the project if they were removing the old trees, he responded saying “only some”. So I assumed they had chopped down the trees that they didn’t need and all the ones left were the ones they were keeping. Well last night I noticed they had removed nearly all the remaining trees. Using Google Maps I counted 28 trees that were originally planted on that street and there are now only 3 left. That means 25 trees in total were removed! One of the remaining trees currently has a chainsaw parked under it so it might not even be there anymore by the time this post gets published. I’ve marked all the removed trees with x’s in the above picture and the ones remaining with circles.

How is 3 trees out of 28 considered “only some”? Why are they removing the trees anyway? If they were building an airport runway I could understand but they’re not so why? Some of the trees were fairly large and it would have been pretty cute to have small cafes underneath with seating areas around them. The trees were large enough to provide shade, they didn’t need any watering because they were well rooted and the trees were also homes to a lot of birds.

But you know what? I don’t care anymore.

Last night I got so upset about the whole situation I emotionally booked two trips for the next two weekends. Why am I getting so worked up about all of this? It’s not my country, I don’t own the street nor were the trees mine. Why am I even surprised about all of this? Based on the renderings the engineer shared I should have known no good was going to come out of this. When you demolish historical buildings in your renderings and replace them with fancy shiny malls, it says a lot about the thinking process. Chopping historical trees isn’t only a Kuwait thing either, it happens everywhere. In Lebanon for example a politician cut down part of an ancient cedar forrest so he could setup an outdoor venue for his son’s wedding. I mean like wtf? If shit is gonna happen its gonna happen and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

So starting today I’m hopefully emotionally disconnecting myself from Salmiya. I no longer want to be mayor. If anyone wants to take over the responsibility of giving a fuck, they’ve only started construction work on half of old Salmiya. They haven’t started on the other half yet (pictured above) and based on Google Maps there are approximately 38 trees there. Good luck trying to save them.

There are a couple of new restaurants I’m looking forward to opening this fall, Madison & Heig is one of them. If you drive up and down the Gulf Road often you might have noticed the large under construction hoarding next to Steak & Shake and Assaha in Bneid Al-Qar (in the same building as Elite Fitness).

Madison & Heig is going to be a bistro and bakery, its a locally created concept characterized by an open kitchen. It will have indoor and outdoor seating and the food will focus on homemade ingredients.

The expected opening date for the place as of now is early November and you can follow them on instagram if you want to stay posted @madisonandheig

The Untitled Deli is a new deli that recently opened up in Kuwait. The place belongs to two close friends of mine and I also worked on the branding for it so I might be a tiny bit biased when I say… they make the best ridiculously delicious amazing sandwiches in Kuwait. Seriously the sandwiches are really good. Originally my friend started making them for us during Game of Thrones nights and then at shakshooka a couple of times before deciding to open up this place. So its been in the making for some time now.

So if you’ve been craving salt beef and pastrami sandwiches then you definitely need to check them out. They don’t have delivery yet but the deli itself is located inside the Pearl Marzouq complex in Salmiya. You can also check out all their sandwiches on their instagram account @theuntitleddeli as well their full menu on theuntitleddeli.com

I can’t believe this is actually happening, they’re finally turning Salem Al Mubarak Street into a pedestrian only street. When I posted about this proposal back in February, I was very adamant that it would never happen and looks like I was wrong, kinda (more on that in a bit). So far they’ve closed down and dug up half of the old Salmiya street. For those of you who aren’t very familiar with this area and the street, Salem Al Mubarak Street starts off at the end of the 4th Ring Road and goes all the way down past Al Fanar Complex and down past AUK and Symphony Mall. “Old Salmiya” which is turning into pedestrian only starts at the end of the 4th Ring Road and ends at Al Salam Mall where LuLu Supermarket is. I’m very passionate about this street because I’ve lived on it (literally) all my life. So I’ve experienced it during its heydays in the 80s, I experienced it during the invasion and after in the 90s, and I’m still experiencing it now on a daily basis since I live on top of one of the shopping complexes on that street. I care about this area a lot so lets start with the good things about all this, and then I’ll mention some negative stuff which are as important.

The Good
– Back in February when I mentioned this project I called it a joke. Mostly because if they were to follow the renderings that were shared with the public (like the one above), it would have meant demolishing the whole street with all the buildings and starting from scratch. So when I spoke to the engineer behind the project yesterday, I asked him about all these modern buildings in the renderings and turns out they were just placed there as inspiration to the current building owners. Phew! That means neither my building nor all the classic two-story buildings (pictured below) on the street will be demolished. For now at least…

– Work is going to be completed pretty soon, they’re aiming to have the street ready by Q1 of next year

– My building is going to be located on a pedestrian only commercial street, how cool is that? I mean its not Carnaby Street or Liverpool ONE, but it’s still cool. Might finally have a reason to buy a Boosted Board.

The Bad
– The street has currently been dug up but no consideration has been made for pedestrians and shop owners. Yesterday I walked down the street to LuLu and in a number of spots I was forced to walk in deep sand which is very difficult to walk in. There are a whole line of shops who just have sand right outside their door because the sidewalks were dug up and no temporary path were put in its place. From what I was told by my buildings landlord, foot traffic has decreased considerably and shop owners in my building have started to feel the effect. Temporary paths should be created to keep the area and shops alive. I’m meeting with the engineer behind the project next week and I’m going to bring this important point up.

– The parking situation in old Salmiya is a mess as it is and now by shutting down the main street which included a lot of parking spots, parking is even a bigger mess. The municipality has already placed signs pointing people to parking locations in the area, but as a resident of the area myself, I found these signs hard to understand, hard to see and they don’t seem to point anywhere. I’m curious to see what parking solutions they’ve come up with to go along with this project.

– Finally, they’ve killed a lot of trees. This is probably the saddest thing about the project. They’ve so far uprooted and killed I would say around 10 large trees, maybe more. These are trees that have been there from the very start of the street (pictured above) and have survived and endured so much. The first question I asked the engineer when he contacted me on Twitter yesterday was if they were removing the trees. He responded saying “Only some .. coz i try hard to keep it but it’s need a lot of work but I kept some coz in my idea that is the land mark of this street”. In my opinion ALL the trees should have stayed and it’s sad to see them being chopped up and bulldozed away. No idea if I can convince him to stop chopping down trees but will see when I pass by their offices next week.

Overall I’m excited my area is finally getting the attention it deserves. But now I’m just hoping the project is done right. Once I pass by the project’s office next and get more details, I’ll post and update.

No surprise here but Kuwait is still one of the worst countries for expats according to the latest Expat Insider survey by Internations. Kuwait came in 64th place out of a total of 65 countries surveyed. On the bright side, at least we’re not in last place like we were last year.

Kuwait has improved by one place, coming 64th out of 65 countries in 2017. In fact, it’s improved by at least one place in all indices, with particular progress in the Working Abroad Index: job security has improved by 15 places, putting Kuwait in the middle of the ranking (32nd). Quality of life still remains a struggle, however, and Kuwait comes last for leisure options and personal happiness.

Surprisingly, Bahrain was voted as the best place in the world for expats. Check out the full result of the survey and rankings [Here]

Thanks Bashar

Vigonovo, the cute and cozy Italian restaurant in Al Khalid Complex is closing down today. Due to a number of factors including an increase in their rent, today will be their last day of operation. So if you’ve been meaning to check the place out then this is your last chance. @vigonovo_kw

Over the holidays Sultan Center sent me a Hiku device to play around with and try out. The Hiku is a small device that lives in your kitchen and can scan barcodes, recognize your voice and is basically used to create a shopping list. I’m a sucker for kitchen gadgets, even my egg tray connects to the internet so I wasn’t going to say no to adding another gadget in my kitchen. Plus, I enjoy scanning barcodes for some reason, I even owned a CueCat back in 2001 which strangely is considered one of the worst inventions ever. Anyway, enough throwbacks for now.

The Hiku is a pretty tiny device that connects to the internet and the Sultan Center phone app. The way you use it is pretty simple. Say you’re running out of popcorn, instead of opening your notes app or whatever app you use to remind you about what you need from the supermarket, you just take the Hiku device and scan the barcode on the popcorn box. The Hiku automatically recognizes what you just scanned, beeps once letting you know all is ok and then adds that item to your Sultan Center shopping list. If the Hiku doesn’t recognize the item, it will beep three times. Some items like bananas for example don’t have barcodes, so instead of scanning a barcode, you press the button on the Hiku and just say bananas. The Hiku device will recognize your voice and add bananas to your shopping list.

Once you’ve got everything on your list, you can then add the stuff to your shopping cart and purchase them using the Sultan Center app or, you can just open the list the next time you’re shopping and use it as a reminder.

So what do I think of the Hiku? Currently I use the Clear app on my iPhone for my grocery list reminders. It launches instantly and its very easy to add an item to a list and swipe it off once I get it. I don’t think I’ll be changing my habits and start using the Hiku especially since I don’t buy my groceries online. The Hiku makes more sense for people who do order grocerries to their home, by having all the items added to your Sultan Center account, it makes it super practical to just checkout and have the items delivered.

But, the biggest issue I faced is that not all the items I scanned got added to my list even though the Hiku recognized the items. For example the popcorn I used as an example in this post, when I scanned the box the Hiku didn’t add it to my shopping list even though it beeped once to let me know it recognized it. I scanned a different flavored popcorn box and it also didn’t get added to my list. I figured maybe the items were out of stock so I manually checked for the popcorn on their website and one of them wasn’t available, but the other was. Even if both items were out of stock I think they should still get added to my shopping list so that when they’re back in stock I could purchase them. Popcorn wasn’t the only thing it didn’t add to my list, I scanned a bunch of items in one of my kitchen drawers, and in the end it just added two of them to my list even though again the Hiku recognized all the other items. Super annoying.

Another issue I have is with the price of the Hiku. Although the device costs KD12 on Amazon, Sultan Center are selling it for KD25. I don’t know why they’d sell it for double the price, if anything they should be selling it at cost price so that they could get more people to buy it, which in return will lead to more people using their app and website.

With all that being said, the Hiku is a fun little gadget. If you want to find out more about the Hiku, visit the product page on the Sultan Center website [Here]

The Onam Festival is back and will be taking place tomorrow Monday the 4th of September. Onam is the biggest and most important festival of the state of Kerala in India and it’s also celebrated here in Kuwait. A few Southern Indian restaurants in Kuwait offer the traditional vegetarian dish the Onasadya during the festival and below are some of those restaurants.

Caesar’s Dakshin Restaurant – Jeleeb Al-Shuyoukh, Al Jawhara Building
Price: KD3.500
Telephone: 24319191, 24310303 [Map]

Udupi Restaurant – Fahaheel, Green Tower
Price: KD2.250
Telephone: 25456565 [Map]

Saravanaa Bhavan – Fahaheel, Humoud Towers
Price: KD2.500
Telephone: 23929099 [Map]

If you know of any more places serving Onam, let us know in the comments.

If you’ve been to Murouj then you’ve probably noticed the construction taking place next to their large parking lot. That’s part of the Murouj expansion project and yesterday I was able to get a list of some of the places that are opening there:

Beit Shoukri
Blaze Pizza
Dean & Deluca
Häagen-Dazs
Illy Coffee
Katsuya
Mana by Ubon
Shake Shack
Shishawarma
Solia Mediterranean Food

There will also be a space available for pop-ups. I’m still trying to find out when phase 3 is expected to finish, and once I have that information I’ll update this post.

A few interesting events are taking place this weekend. There is a comic con event called SuperCon starting from today, there is also the Aeropress Championship which is taking place at Barba on Friday and finally a new indoor market called Market Space thats being held on Saturday. Check out the full list of events below:

Thursday
CAP Collection: Contemporary Sculpture
SuperCon 2017
XE Pro Gaming Tournament
Western Music at Al Hamra Tower

Friday
SuperCon 2017
XE Pro Gaming Tournament
Kuwait Aeropress Championship

Saturday
SuperCon 2017
XE Pro Gaming Tournament
Yoga with the 3
MARKETSPACE by ARTSPACE
Q8 Readers Book Club

If you’d like to share an event on the blog [Email Me]
For a full list of upcoming events click [Here]

Sometimes events get canceled or have details changed so always double check with the organizers.

One of the biggest boxing fights of our time is taking place this Saturday, August 26th. Its sort of a crossover fight since Conor McGregor, one of the biggest MMA stars who fights in the UFC is crossing over into boxing to fight the eleven-time five-division professional boxing world champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. If you’re in Kuwait, here are three ways to watch the fight:

OSN: If you’re an OSN subscriber you can watch the fight on OSN Sports Box Office HD. The cost is $20 and here is a link with more information [Link]

Cinescape: Cinescape has partnered up with OSN to broadcast the fight at one of their theaters. Not much information on this yet other than this one post on the Cinescape instagram account [Here]. So you’ll have to check their instagram account before the event for more info.

Online: You can purchase the pay per view on the UFC website. Cost is 30 euros but includes one month access to UFC Fight Pass. For more details click [Here]

The main card will take place around 5 or 6AM Kuwait time so be prepared to either stay up late or wake up super early to watch the fight.

Update: Just to be clear, the fights take place Saturday in the US so its 5 or 6AM Sunday morning here in Kuwait.
Update2: Looks like Cinescape will no longer be broadcasting the fight

I’m currently in the south of France for my best friends wedding. I wasn’t planning on not posting while here but we’re currently staying out in the middle of nowhere and the internet connection here is the slowest thing ever. It took two tries and 5 minutes just to upload the single picture for this post for example. The closest place to where we are is a small town called Murs with another slightly larger one further away called Gordes. The biggest city is Avignon and thats a full hour drive away.

In hindsight, I should have prepared posts ahead of time for the blog, but I didn’t so sorry about that.

Sole Lab is a new sneaker store that opened up a couple of months ago. It’s a small shop that is aiming to make unique and limited sneakers more accessible in the local market. I dropped by yesterday to check the place out and although I didn’t pick up anything, they did have a few good looking sneakers especially the women ones.

The shop is located in Tilal Complex in Shuwaikh and they’re currently in a soft opening phase so open from 2PM to 10PM. Whenever they get new sneakers they post them on their instagram account so follow them @solelabkw to stay updated on their collection.