Categories
Events

P2BK: The world’s largest sand sculpting festival


[YouTube]

The Remal International Festival will be opening next month alongside the 7th Proud 2 Be Kuwaiti (P2BK) event. According to the organizers, the sand park will be the world’s largest and looking at the photos that looks very possible. 73 of the world’s best sand artists came to Kuwait and worked together to reimagine the stories of 1001 Nights.

The video above and some of the photos below were taken by one of the artists who came to Kuwait (Lucinda Wierenga) while most were taken by Sand Sculpture Company (a lot more photos at that link).

Will post the exact dates of the event once I get them.




Categories
Events

Updated Events Section

firedandunexploded

The event section on the blog has gotten a makeover. I’m trying to make it much easier to find out about events and the section is still a work in progress. I’m planning to add the ability to find events by category as well as adding a full month view.

There are a lot of events taking place all the time so I’m posting all of the ones I find in the events section and only posting the ones I think are interesting here on the main blog page. So let me know your feedback, check it out [Here]

Note: I took the photo above at the Fired but Unexploded exhibit




Categories
Information News

Life Expectancy in Kuwait

asiaranking

Fast Company released an infographic showing the life expectancy of nearly every country in the world including Kuwait. In Asia, Kuwait came in at 11th place with a life expectancy of 77 while Macau and Japan both topped Asia’s list with 84. Regionally, both Bahrain and Qatar performed better than Kuwait with a life expectancy of 78.

So where would you have to be born to live the longest? The answer is Monaco where the life expectancy is 90 years of age. Check out the full article [Here]

Thanks John




Categories
Food & Drinks

Don’t miss the Shakshooka Market tonight

shakshooka

Shakshooka, the nomadic farmers market is taking place tonight from 6PM to 8PM (Jan 9th) at AlOthman Fashion store in Salmiya. Here is the location on [Google Maps]

Don’t forget to bring cash and a carrying bag if you will be buying stuff.

Photo above by @faisalthef




Categories
Automotive Events

GulfRun 9 Car Show this Weekend

gulfrun

The GulfRun 9 car show is going to take place this weekend at 360 Mall featuring a ton of super cars including the new Corvette C7 Stingray which I have yet to see from up close. The cars will be on display for two days, Friday the 10th and Saturday 11th from 10AM to 10PM so make sure you pass by and check them out. Below is the full list of cars that will be on display at 360 Mall.




Categories
Food & Drinks Information News

Beer prices in Kuwait one of the highest in the world

cheapestbeer

One of my favorite news sources Quartz just published a list of the cheapest beer prices in the world as well as the most expensive. On the list of cheapest beer prices, Saudi Arabia came fourth which kinda makes sense since I know non alcoholic beer like Barbican are super popular there. Quartz also put up a list of the most expensive beers in the world and thats where Kuwait comes in.

beerinkuwait

According to their data, the price of 0.5L of draught beer is $6.48. Problem is I don’t know of any place in Kuwait that serves draught beer (that’s beer from a tap). Quartz assumes the reason the price of beer in Kuwait is expensive is because it’s illegal and link to a post of mine from last year in which I had published the prices of alcohol in Kuwait (taken from a newspaper). Problem is if the price was based on illegal alcoholic beer then Kuwait would top the chart. The price I had posted was around KD150-KD180 for a case. A case has 24 cans and KD150 is around $530. 24 cans x 330ml = 7.92L ÷ 0.5L = 15.84. $530 ÷ 15.84 = $33.4. So the price of 0.5L of beer in Kuwait is $33.4 which is a lot more than $6.48.

Anyway check out their article [Here]




Categories
Movies

Cinemagics Rooftop Schedule for January

Below is this months schedule for Cinemagics rooftop movie nights. If you’ve never been to them before, they’re held twice a week, every Thursday and Saturday on top of the building that has Xcite in old Salmiya. A couple of the movies from this month were supposed to show last month but got canceled so they’re showing again this month. Check out all the movies and their timings below:

Thursday, January 9th 2014 at 7:30PM
REPO MAN
Considered one of the more unique Science Fiction films, and a standout essential film of the 80’s, as well as being ranked #7 on the top 50 cult films of all time, Repo Man follows a Punk Rocker who after getting fired from his job as a clerk, becomes a repo man and is jolted into a new lifestyle that he quickly begins to enjoy. All that is flipped on its head when he meets a girl who tells him of a 64 Malibu that contains four dead aliens and that there’s $20,000 for the man that can repossess it.

Saturday, January 11th 2014 at 7:30PM
CACHE
Winner of Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival, Cache comes from the mind of visionary filmmaker Michael Hanneke (whose Amour won him universal acclaim at the 2012 Academy Awards). This film, starring Juliet Binoche follows a married couple who are terrorized by a series of surveillance videotapes left on their front porch.

Thursday, January 16th 2014 at 7:30PM
SURPRISE FILM OF THE MONTH
Every month we’ll be playing a surprise film, where you won’t know what you’re watching until just a minute before the film begins. One thing is for sure, every month the surprise film will be either my favourite film of the list, or the most unique in one way or the other. This month’s film was won and was nominated for over 30 awards worldwide including the Oscars, Golden Globes, Independent Spirit Awards, and the Baftas. A unique, hilarious, bizarre, and poetic little film.

Saturday, January 18th 2014 at 7:30PM
PIETA
Winner of the Golden Lion (Best Film) at the Venice Film Festival, Kang-do is a heartless man who has no living family members and whose job is to threaten debtors to repay his clients, the loan sharks who demand a 10x return on a one month loan. To recover the interest, the debtors would sign an insurance for handicap, and Kang-do would injure the debtors brutally to file the claim. One day he receives a visit from a strange, middle-aged woman claiming she is his long-lost mother. Over the following weeks, the woman stubbornly follows him and he continues to do his job. But he is slowly moved and changed by the motherly love expressed from this woman.

Thursday, January 23rd 2014 at 7:30PM
TALK TO HER
Winner of over 27 awards worldwide, mostly for Best Film or Best Foreign Film, Talk to her is considered by many fans of the legendary Pedro Almodovar to be his best film. Two men meet by chance at a private clinic, each looking after a woman in a coma. Marco’s girlfriend Lydia was a bullfighter who was mauled, and Benigno looks after a young ballet student. The lives of the four characters flow in all directions, past, present, and future, taking them to an unsuspected destiny.

Saturday, January 25th 2014 at 7:30PM
OFFSIDE
Winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, and carrying a 97% score on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Offside follows a group of girls who try to sneak into a football stadium to watch a World Cup qualifying match. Female fans are not allowed to enter football stadiums in Iran on the grounds that there will be a high risk of violence or verbal abuse against them. The film was shot in Iran during a real live match, but its screening was banned there.

Thursday, January 30th 2014 at 7:30PM
TOUKI BOUKI (Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project)
Every month, we’ll be playing a film from the World Cinema Project. Established by Martin Scorsese in 2007, the World Cinema Project expands the horizons of moviegoers everywhere. The mission of the WCP is to preserve and present marginalized and infrequently screened films from regions generally ill equipped to preserve their own cinema history. This month’s film is Touki Bouki. With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. In this French New Wave–influenced fantasy-drama, two young lovers long to leave Dakar for the glamour and comforts of France, but their escape plan is beset by complications both concrete and mystical. Characterized by dazzling imagery and music, the alternately manic and meditative Touki bouki is widely considered one of the most important African films ever made.

Cinemagic is organizing these events as part of its efforts to contribute to the development of an internationally competitive Kuwaiti audio-visual production industry, partly by bringing the filmmakers and audiences together and by increasing the public’s interest in – and appreciation for – the art of film-making. Cinemagic movies are screened in the old Salmiya, on the rooftop of Xcite and LG [Map]. There is no entrance fee. Here is a link to their Facebook group [Link]




Categories
Automotive

GulfRun 9 Teaser


[YouTube]

GulfRun 9 is coming up later this month and the team behind it decided to release the teaser video above. GulfRun is an annual motorsport event that started back in 2005 as a weekend getaway for a group of friends passionate about automobile racing and since then has been taking place on a yearly basis. GulfRun is currently the longest running event at the Bahrain International Circuit. For more information on GulfRun visit their website [Here]




Categories
Food & Drinks

Qout Market is back again tomorrow

Qout Market is an outdoor market that takes place on the first Saturday of every month until April. The next market will be tomorrow (January 4th) and feature stands selling crafts, street food, fresh flowers, jarred items, artisanal products, baked goods, local produce and much more. It’s located on the rooftop of Arraya parking lot and open from 10AM to 7PM. [Map]

Keep your eye out for Pasticceria Di Pietro’s cannoli stand since they will be there as well. For more information on Qout Market here is a link to their [Facebook Page]




Categories
Food & Drinks

Shakshooka in Bnaider today

Shakshooka market is taking place today (Thursday) in Baider, exit 267 from 3PM to 5PM. If you’re at the chalet area or farms then pass by but don’t forget to bring cash and a carrying bag if you will be buying stuff.

Photo above by @faisalthef




Categories
Automotive

First accident at the SIRBB Circuit

Over the weekend the SIRBB race track in Shuwaikh claimed its first victim, a Ferrari California. Looks like traction control was turned off and the driver lost control of the vehicle. I love how the driver stayed calm after the crash, if it was me I would have dropped a few dozen F-bombs. [YouTube]




Categories
Information Video Games

Best Video Games 2013

2013 was a pretty good year for gaming consoles since there was a pretty large variety of AAA and indie games to enjoy. I’m generally not very picky when it comes to video games and I enjoy a wide range of genre’s but when one genre is over-saturated (like first person shooters), I tend to choose something that tries to offer something unique. My time was evenly spent between four consoles, the Wii U, the PS3, the 360 and the 3DS and picking my favorite game was not as challenging as I originally thought it would be. But, two games in particular stood out from the whole range of games that got released this year and both these games deserve more awards than any of the other games.


1 – The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

What’s not to love about this game? It’s Challenging, beautiful to look at and features a captivating world filled with secrets and dungeons.


2 – The Last of Us

A brutal, intense and emotional roller coaster. There really hasn’t been a game (in a long time, or really just ever) that has affected some of us like The Last of Us has. I used to just play it two or three times a week because I knew there was always something bad around the corner. You would find and pick up a journal entry or a note you to either read a great story of survival or a really sad story about death or loss. The amount of detail that went into the environments to support these stories were also impressive. This is one game I loved, but would probably never play it a second time.


3 – Super Mario 3D World

When the E3 trailer was revealed, most of us had written this off as a quick-cash in before Nintendo released the true successor to the Galaxy franchise, but since its release its been getting rave reviews. 3D World includes some of the most unique and entertaining level designs while pushing the series forward making it one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences of the year.




Categories
Food & Drinks

So I tried the Cannolis

The other day I posted about the homemade Cannolis from Pasticceria Di Pietro and I finally got to try them tonight. They’re crazy good, like really really good. I tried all the flavors and my favorites were the Cannoli Sicilian and the Caramel Divino and my least favorite was the Pumpkin Pie. The presentation from the box to the Cannolis themselves were picture perfect. No way on earth would I have been able to guess this was a home businesses if I hadn’t already known. Even the food shots on the website are beautiful taken and wouldn’t look out of place on the food network.

If you want to order some yourself, here is a link to their [Website]




Categories
Events Food & Drinks

Shakshooka Cookout this Saturday

The Shakshooka market is not taking place tonight but instead will be taking place this coming Saturday from 1PM to 4PM at Bayt Lothan. Alongside their regular farmers market they’re going to be holding their first ever cookout as well.

Don’t forget to bring cash and a carrying bag if you will be buying stuff. Also bring picnic blankets this time as well.

Date: Saturday, December 28th 2013
Time: 1PM to 4PM
Location: Bayt Lothan [Map]

Photo above by @faisalthef




Categories
Events

Kuwait’s 6th International Forum for Islamic Art

Beautiful commercial for the upcoming International Forum for Islamic Art which is going to be held from December 29th to January 9th 2014.

This is going to be the 6th time the forum is being held in Kuwait. The forum will feature various exhibitions and workshops but sadly all the information I could find was in Arabic so I don’t have the exact specifics of whats taking place. If you do read Arabic though you can check out the official website for this event which has the full schedule of all the activities [Here]