Search: “ace”

Rajeev Suri who was appointed as the new Nokia CEO a couple of days ago was raised and spent a major part of his life here in Kuwait.

Thanks Chris

Extreme Sports have a bike rental station outside their skateboard park in Marina Waves (the area next to Marina Crescent). They’re renting bikes at KD3 an hour which depending on how fast you ride is enough time to go to Kuwait Towers and back. The bikes they’re renting are pretty decent Trek bikes and since they’re the Trek dealers the bikes are most likely being well taken care of. They’re open daily from 3PM to 11PM except on Fridays when they open from 6AM to 11AM and then again from 3PM to 11PM.

Update: Had a horrible experience with them. Rented a bicycle for a friend, put it on my bike rack and headed to Corniche. Once we got to Corniche turns out the bike gears were not working so headed back to the rental place and told them. They were like it’s fine. I was like no its not the gears won’t change. He was like you should have checked before you took the bike. Long story short they refused to give us a new bike and refused to refund us the money.

A friend of mine told me about this game last night and I can’t stop playing it. Side Wheel Hero is an indie game developed by an Emirati developer named Ammar Harfoush. The game is inspired by the popular pastime in the Gulf which consists of balancing an SUV on two wheels and in this game you also try to pick up coins while trying to avoid other cars.

The game is pretty fun and the location, cars and even the music are all very authentic to the real videos you’d find on YouTube. My only issue is with the ad banner. Because the game is free to download it’s ad supported which is fine except for the fact the ad is just randomly placed on the top left part of the screen as you can see in the screenshot above. It’s pretty distracting and I wish there was an option to pay to get rid of the banner.

It’s a simple fun game based on a regional phenomenon which is why I love it so much. If you’re interested in Side Wheel Hero it’s available on all mobile platforms and you can download it using the links below:

Apple iOS | Android | Blackberry 10 | Windows Phone 8

A few months back I started looking for a new digital camera to replace my aging Panasonic GX1. I had been using the GX1 constantly since 2012 and it was by far one of my favorite cameras I had ever owned. But, on one trip to London last year I carried my much larger and heavier full sensor D800 camera with me and I just loved the results. I realized the much larger sensor on the D800 allowed me to capture shots I wouldn’t be able to with my GX1, mostly very high ISO shots in very dim light. Because of the size though the D800 isn’t a very practical take everywhere camera and so I started doing my research trying to find a replacement for my GX1. Some of the cameras I considered were:

Fujifilm X-T1
Fujifilm X100s
Leica X2
Olympus OM-D E-M1
Olympus OM-D E-M10
Panasonic GX7
Ricoh GR
Sony Alpha 7R
Sony Alpha 7
Sony RX1
Sony RX1R

From the list above the only ones that ended up grabbing my attention were the Sonys since they were the only cameras on the list that had full framed sensors. Having a full frame sensor would mean I’d be able to capture a lot more detail, have shallower depth of field in my shots and most importantly have better dim light capabilities. In the end I opted for the Sony RX1 because of the size. One of the things I loved about my GX1 camera was the size and the RX1 was practically the exact same size except the lens on the RX1 made it slightly thicker (check the GX1/RX1 overlay visual below). The newer Sony A7 was tempting but since I already had a main camera (the D800), I needed a secondary camera, something small and inconspicuous to take with me on my restaurant reviews and when I traveled. The A7 was a lot more bulkier especially once you added the lenses.

I’ve had the RX1 now for around 2 months and I’ve already traveled with it a number of times and used it in various situations and I really really love it. It’s by far the best compact camera I’ve had. The camera has a full metal body and feels very solid, we’re talking Leica M series quality here without the Leica price tag. The lens is a really bright 35mm F2 Carl Zeiss, its fixed which means I can’t zoom in or out but that isn’t an issue since I was only using the 20mm lens (40mm equivalent) on my GX1 anyway.

The RX1 has allowed me to take a ton of great shots and I’ve been carrying it with me everywhere I go. It has a lot of physical controls as well as customizable buttons so I always have quick access to my most used options. I love the way the camera looks and feels in my hand, it has a slightly retro look but it’s really understated which is how I love my cameras. Another great feature about the camera is the fact that the shutter is silent. When I turn off all the sounds I can take a photo in a quiet room and no one would be able to hear me take photos. It’s how I was able to take the photo of the guy sleeping on the car below without having to worry about waking him up. Finally the ISO capability on this camera is nearly as good as my D800. I’m so confident about the capabilities of the camera I have it set on Auto ISO with the max limit at 12,800. That’s how good the noise at high ISO is, I can shoot up to 12,800 and not have to worry about noise. Combine that with the bright F2 lens and there really isn’t a condition anymore where I would have trouble shooting in.

I really can’t think of anything negative to say or highlight about the camera but I will bring up issues I had read about online and answer them here. Battery life, it’s not that great but that’s an easy fix, the batteries are very cheap, I bought two more and now carry three batteries with me. In the two months I’ve had the camera I don’t think I’ve ever needed more than one battery a day so even though battery life isn’t that great it’s good enough to last you a day out. Some people have complained about the focusing being slow. I don’t think its slow and only faced an issue focusing once and that was because there was hardly any light. I just ended up shooting in manual focus mode and that solved the problem. Finally a lot of people online complained about the fact the screen isn’t tiltable or the fact the camera doesn’t have a built in view finder. Both are good points but Sony built the most compact full sensor camera in the world so I’m sure they had to cut some options to keep the size compact. Personally I’m glad they kept the size small and instead released the A7 with all the extra features they couldn’t fit into the RX1.

I can’t recommend this camera enough, the sensor and lens combo is just unbeatable and I can’t believe how small this camera is. The price is the only reason why not everyone is walking around with this camera strapped to their necks. Amazon sell the camera for $2,800 which is pretty expensive when compared to all the other compact cameras in the market. But, I personally think the only real competition is the Sony A7 and the Leica M series. The Sony A7 costs $1800 without a lens and another $800 for the 35mm F2.8. That brings the total to $2,600 for a larger camera with a lens thats not as bright. The Leica M series on the other hand costs nearly $7,000 without a lens. So when you compare the RX1 to the two the price becomes pretty reasonable. If you can afford the RX1 then get it, you’ll have a hard time finding anything else as good with the same form factor.

[YouTube]

Tonight is the last night to attend the For Art and the Earth event that is taking place at the Kuwait National Museum. I passed by last night to watch it but got there late so missed a few of the opening acts. The event is a journey that starts off in one hall of the Kuwait National Museum were artists like Sons of Yusef and Zahed Sultan perform before the crowd is moved outdoors from location to location to watch various performances take place around the museum grounds. The video above is of one of the stages of the event. So try to pass by tonight, for more information click [Here]

Thursday
Remal Sand Sculpting Festival
TOMORROW’S PAST / Mohammed AlKouh
CREATE #REUSEQ8 ART.LIVE
Cinemagics: Surprise Movie of the Month

Friday
Remal Sand Sculpting Festival
TOMORROW’S PAST / Mohammed AlKouh
CREATE #REUSEQ8 ART.LIVE
Life Line: 10K and 3K Fun Race
6th Poetry Slam Contest

Saturday
Remal Sand Sculpting Festival
TOMORROW’S PAST / Mohammed AlKouh
CREATE #REUSEQ8 ART.LIVE
Tour: Aladdin House
Bungee Jumping
5th National Blood Donation Campaign
Cinemagics: Eastern Promises

After dropping my iPhone a million times I finally managed to shatter the screen a few days ago. Originally I was going to have FixAid repair the screen since they quoted me KD25 which I thought was reasonable but I was in Hawalli this morning and the first repair shop I found quoted me KD16. When did it become so cheap to replace an iPhone 5 screen? Yesterday I was considering getting an iPhone cover but now I’m like it’s just cheaper to swap the screen if it breaks again.

The shop I went to is called I Pro Company and they’re located in the building right after Blink (keep Blink on your left). Their phone number is 22648118 if you need to get an estimate and here they are on [Google Maps]

Escape from Kuwait is an interesting short story about a guy who managed to escape Kuwait through the desert during the 1990 Iraq invasion. Below is an excerpt from the story:

As time wore on it was becoming obvious the Iraqis wouldn’t leave. And, one by one, the families I was providing with sustenance were “discovered” (informants were rampant) and arrested. I also ran out of Dinars. I did what everyone was doing to stay alive: I used to drive up to Basrah (the Iraqi city neighbouring Kuwait) to sell my electronics one by one; first the VCR, then another, then my Boom Box, my mini Hi-Fi, then the big stereo, the small TV etc… The only thing nobody wanted was my Amiga 1000. When these had gone I started disposing of the white goods: the dishwasher, the dryer, the fridge (we had practically doubles of everything). Iraqis were eager to buy since such goods were not widely available in their land, but the money they paid was peanuts. Still, no choice. The situation gradually became desperate, and I realised that I had to leave. I gave to our Philippina maid 3 months’ salaries and told her that she should go to her embassy (Asian and African officials were organising mass evacuations). The poor thing was crying so hard. I exchanged my wife’s car, a Chevrolet Caprice Classic, to a Daihatsu Rocky a Palestinian colleague had. This would normally be a dumb deal, as the Chevy was worth 4 times the Daihatsu. But I needed a 4X4 vehicle to escape through the desert. With most of my last Dinars I bought essential spare parts, two cans of motor oil and a tank of gasoline at the black market. I bid farewell and good luck to the families that remained hidden, and one early dawn in early October I headed a convoy of 6 trucks south to Saudi Arabia. I had gotten a makeshift “map” from a Swedish photographer who used to race in desert rallies a few years back and now pieced together escape convoys (an aside: why wouldn’t he himself leave?… He was in love with an Indian girl who had not left the country yet… ah, the power of love).

The story is not too long (around 3 pages) and interesting all the way through.
Check it out [Here]

Photo above from Kuwait Invasion: The Evidence.

Last week I was invited to pass by the new seafood restaurant at the Jumeirah Messilah Beach Hotel called Salt. I personally think the hotel is the nicest one we have in Kuwait right now so I was pretty interested to try this new place out. One thing I really hate about the hotel though is you’ve got two options for parking, either (a) you give your car to valet or (b) you park in the sand lot across the street. Since I don’t trust valets with my car I have to use the sand lot and it’s never a great start to dinner when you have to spend the first few minutes cleaning the dust off my new fancy sneakers.

If you’ve been to Messilah before then you probably know that most of their restaurants are located in the lower level of the main lobby. Salt is located there as well and they’ve taken up the whole left side area. Once we walked into the restaurant we could immediately tell that they wanted to be the most luxurious seafood restaurant in Kuwait and at the moment they probably are. The restaurant is long and not very wide with two kinds of seating areas, on one side they have curved couches going along the wall and it’s nicely lit. On the opposite side is a much brighter open floor layout with beautiful chandeliers. So far the experience was very fancy until the menu arrived and I opened it up to reveal bright yellow text on a dark blue background which looked really tacky layout (take a look). If I could change one thing in the place it would have to be the menu thats for sure.

Because this is a high end restaurant, everything has to be top notch especially the service which in this specific case I found difficult to judge for a number of reasons. First is the fact I was invited and so they knew who I was, and secondly they had barely been open for a week. Still, if I did compare it to other hotels and restaurants in Kuwait I would say the service was in the top 10 but not top 5. In other restaurants where the service is in the top 5, the staff have been working there long enough to see me grow old while Salt has just opened.

Since we were two we ended up ordering the following items from the menu:

Acqua Morelli Sparking Water (x2) KD7.000
Baked Chermoula Prawns KD7.500
Pan Fried Scallops KD7.250
Lobster Bisque (x2) KD9.500
Whole Lobster (Medium) KD28.000
Whole Sea Bass KD15.000
Pearl of the Ocean drink KD3.350
Messilah Journey (mixed dessert) KD5.750

From the two starters we ordered I was expecting the Baked Chermoula Prawns to be my favorite since it was prawns stuffed with scallops. But to my surprise I ended up preferring the Pan Fried Scallops instead. That’s because the scallops dish had so many different flavors from the scallops itself to the stuffed calamari, squid ink risotto and even the puree which were all delicious. Once we were done with the starters they brought over a soup plate which large chunks of lobster inside but no soup. I started thinking to myself maybe this was their interpretation of the lobster bisque? Just as I was thinking that the waiter came over and started pouring the soup over my large lobster chunks. Presentation was an easy 10/10 and from everything we ordered I would also have to say the Lobster Bisque was by far my favorite dish.

A friend of mine gave me a video his parents shot back when they first arrived to Kuwait in the mid 70s. The video was shot with Super 8 film which was converted years later to VHS format and then recently digitized. The video contains a lot of different footage of Kuwait but edited down to 13 minutes so it’s not very long. Here is a breakdown of what you’ll see in the video, please note there is no sound:

0:00 Kuwait Towers still under construction. There were rumors circulating that the tower spheres were going to be in gold and when they first started adding the blue tiles people were generally disappointed it wasn’t in gold.
2:25 A drive down Fahad al Salem street
3:16 Naif palace, you can see the execution gallows through the open gate at 3:24
3:28 The old National Assembly
3:30 The Arab Planning Institute, currently where the Liberation Tower stands
3:39 Heading towards the Gulf Road
4:15 American Mission Hospital
5:05 The ice cream guy, probably the only thing that hasn’t changed in Kuwait
5:09 Seef Palace
5:14 The Gulf Road near the Dixons House. Nearly all of those old Kuwaiti houses have now been demolished.
5:48 A gas station on the Gulf Road on the beach side. This was demolished after the failed assassination attempt of Sheikh Jaber Al-Sabah, who was the emir of Kuwait at the time. The car explosion had taken place near the station.
5:53 The British Embassy, the main entrance was on the Gulf Road.
6:45 The Behbahani Compound where Casper & Gambini, Starbucks and Dar al Funoon are currently located.
6:56 Almagsab Gate
7:05 Old secondary school now part of the Kuwait University campus.
7:14 Shanty towns. This is where non-Kuwaitis were staying while their paperwork to become Kuwaitis were being processed. This specific town was located in the north near where Entertainment City is currently.
8:13 Dhow building yard near the Port of Doha
10:00 A drive through Shamiya
10:34 Back to Fahad al Salem Srteet
10:50 The old KNPC building
11:23 Souk Al-Mubarakiya
12:54 The gold souk

The video above was shot by Jo and Jeff de Lange. They were also nice enough to take me through the video frame by frame and explain what I was seeing so I could share it with you. [YouTube]

According to an article published on Interactive Travel, the new Kuwait Airways planes that will start arriving at the end of the year will allow you to use your mobile phone during flight as well as connect online via WiFi.

The airline has ordered five A330s and seven A320s, all of which will be line fitted with Mobile OnAir and Internet OnAir. The first A320 and first A330 will be delivered in December 2014 and May 2015.

If this actually happens I might start flying Kuwait Airways again. [Link]

The Kuwait National American Football team is currently in Korea to play against the Korean American Football team in a Asian qualifier game for the IFAF Seniors World Championship Sweden 2015.

The Kuwait Gridiron Football Federation was founded in 2010, has no official league and has minimal international experience. On the other hand, the Korean American Football Association was founded in 1946, has a 21 college team league, and was ranked 5th in the IFAF World Championships Japan 2007.

The match is taking place on April 12th and to keep up to date with the Kuwait team news follow them on Facebook [Here]

I love exploring abandoned buildings and from all the abandoned places in Kuwait the one I’ve always wanted to explore was Qasr Al Salam. Its the holy grail of abandoned buildings and the only one I could never get the guts to jump over the fence and explore (luckily I didn’t cuz it turns out there are two guards). After trying to get legal access to the site for what seems like forever, I finally got the approval thanks to Al-Diwan Al-Amiri.

Qasr Al Salam was a guest house that was built back in the 60s and hosted high-ranking visitors. Supposedly the first guest to stay at the palace was the Shah of Iran but I couldn’t find any source online to back that up. Actually, I could find very little information at all on the palace online. I know that Princess Diana and Prince Charles stayed at the palace back in 1989, but I can’t find the date it was built, who the architect was or even pictures. I’ve literally only found a handful of photos of the palace pre-1990 and nothing else. During the 1990 Gulf War the palace was destroyed and it never got restored and has remained abandoned for 24 years. That is until now.

Now some good news, unlike the rumors that have been circulating, the palace will NOT be getting demolished. Instead, the palace is going to be restored to its former glory and be turned into a museum. I saw 3D renderings of how the palace will look like when completed and it’s going to look very similar to the original with some minor facelifting here and there and addition of a new wing or two. The bad news is I can’t share the 3D renderings just yet since I’m still working on trying to convince them to allow me to post them here but right now I can’t.

Whats even more interesting is whats going on right next door at the old flag square. The site is currently under major construction and I also got to see renderings of the project and I was just awestruck. There are four very angular buildings being built, an opera house, a music center, a theatre and a library. The buildings will be made out of titanium shells and will have no pillars at all on the inside. The landscaping around the project is also going to be nothing like anything in Kuwait as well and the best part is they’re expecting to have it all done and completed in just 18 months. Thats a timeframe fit for Dubai. I’m trying to get permission to share the drawings and renderings of this project as well and hopefully I will be able to by next week.

After getting briefed on the projects above I was taken to the Salam Palace to explore and take photos. The palace even though completely destroyed still had so much beauty left in it. The famous large chandelier that used to hang from the ceiling in the main hall had been dismantled and removed so I didn’t get to see it sadly. But a lot of the original mosaic, wallpaper, carpets and marble floor were still in place. One thing that struck me was the amount of colors used inside the palace and all very tastefully. There was a lot of colored glass everywhere and the mosaic in the main hall was a beautiful metallic purple color. There was a lot of carpeting everywhere but in places where the carpet was removed you could see the beautifully preserved marble floor underneath. It seems at one point in time the palace must have gotten a makeover and a lot of the marble floors were covered up in carpet. I took a lot of photos and I’ve shared them below. I honestly could easily have spent a day in there trying to document every single corner of the place but sadly I didn’t have the luxury of time on my side. I hope you enjoy the photos below and I’ll try my best to get permission to post the renderings next week.

KREATE is an exhibition currently taking place at Bayt Lothan where local artists are showcasing their work in ways that are both interactive and engaging. I passed by last night and thought there was some interesting work.

The event is going to be on today and tomorrow as well so if you’re looking for something to do pass by and check it out. Here are the details [Link]

AbiDoc is a website that allows you to search, find and book an appointment with a doctor all via their website. They originally launched last year but I wasn’t a fan of the website back then, it felt outdated and really sluggish but now they’ve given it a major facelift and relaunched it. The way it works is very simple, you select what kind of doctor you’re looking for and then select your area and the website will list all the doctors and their available timings.

Not all the clinics and hospitals in Kuwait are available though, only the ones that have signed up with AbiDoc in the same way not all restaurants are available on Talabat. For example I searched for “Physical Therapist” in “Salmiya” and got “Sorry, No Exact Matches Were Found” even though the Fawzia Sultan Rehabilitation Institute is located down the block from my place. Still, the site contains a lot of doctors and the more popular AbiDoc gets the more will want to sign up with them. Check out their new website [Here]