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Found this interesting article on Reddit about a female mechanic in Kuwait. A female mechanic is a rare sight anywhere in the world so you can imagine how difficult it must be being a female mechanic in Kuwait.

Being a Female Car enthusiast is tough, especially since it’s a male dominant field. But you know when it becomes even more tougher? Being a Female Car Enthusiast, in Kuwait.

In Kuwait, “mechanic” and “girl” are not mutually exclusive states of existence. In fact, the number of girls I personally know who are interested in cars and mechanics, is next to zero. It’s not to say that they don’t exist, because they do, and some of them are getting up there. Girl Street Racers, Drifters, Dragsters, Motorcyclists., and a couple of others who also work in this line of work/own autoshops. However, they are, we are, the minority. Being a female in Kuwait is hard enough. But being a Car Enthusiast and a female. Is even more harder.

Check out the full post on her blog Autoholics 965 [Here]

[YouTube]

Kuwaiti rapper Arabique has released a music video for his track ‘Warning’. The track is off his album Lucid Dream which you can download for free (legally) from [Here]

You can also follow Arabique on [Facebook] or [Twitter]

Out of curiosity, Big D or Arabique, who do you prefer?

[poll id=”4″]

Slider Station, the locally created sliders and American tapas bar is opening up in Dubai next year at a new development 5 minutes away from Dubai Mall. They’re already open in Oman so this will be their second international location albeit the most competitive. The rendering above is a first draft look on how the place might end up looking like.

I’m interested to see how a local favorite will perform in a market like Dubai. I think it should do really well but with food you never know. There’s a Lebanese burger chain for example that recently opened up in London and even though they’re not that great in Lebanon, they’re doing really well in London.

This is an interesting initiative, instead of illegally spray painting on private property, a bunch of graffiti artists are looking for people who are willing to donate a wall to spray on. The general idea is they want to make Kuwait a more colorful place and graffiti is one way of going about it. The group have only two requirements, one being that the wall has to be outdoor, and two is that they won’t graffiti any sort of advert. If you’re a property owner and are interested in donating a wall contact AbdulRazzaq on [email protected]

via @razzag_

The Lumineers were the last concert I had planned for the week and I got to see them perform live last night here in London. The doors were going to open at 6:30PM so I was hoping to arrive to the venue at around 4:30 but ended up arriving at around 5:30PM. There were two long lines when we got there and we decided to stand in one of them but then I noticed a third line that was fairly empty, at first I thought it was a priority line or for people without tickets but we asked one of the organizers and he told us it was a third line they had just opened. So we ended up moving over to the newly opened line and headed right up to the front. When the doors finally opened we headed straight to the stage area and it was still empty since we were the first group to get there so we ended up standing second row center stage.

[YouTube]

The venue the concert was being held at was a palace located on top of a hill surrounded by acres and acres of park land. From the main entrance into the main concert hall we had to pass through 2 large palace wings, the first had the security and ticket check while the second wing had an indoor market, they had picnic tables in the middle surrounded by different food stalls all around. The actual concert hall I guess was originally a huge ballroom and easily fit us all even though we were over 10,000 fans last night according to the organizers.

Before The Lumineers came on, a band called Thao & The Get Down Stay Down opened up for them. I hadn’t heard of the band before but the lead singer had a lot of charisma and was pretty cool to watch. They played for less than an hour before The Lumineers finally came on.

[YouTube]

I have no clue how we ended up second row to The Lumineers but it was incredible since it made the concert a much more personal experience. They’re super talented obviously with each band member playing on multiple instruments throughout the night. At one point even the drummer and pianist swapped places with each playing the other persons instruments. They pretty much played all their popular songs from their album in addition to ‘Gale Song’ which is off the new Hunger Games movie soundtrack as well as my personal favorite, ‘This must be the place’ which is a cover for the Talking Heads (watch it above).

It was a great night and I’d highly recommend watching them live if you ever get the chance to.

This weekend it’s the Independent Palestinian Film Festival at Cinemagics. If you’re passing by Shakshooka tonight you might as well pass by Cinemagic and watch a movie on the roof since it’s right next door (Take the elevator up to the roof between LG and Panasonic). Here are the movies for this weekend:

Thursday November 28th, 2013 from 6PM to 10PM
Independent Palestinian Film Festival Day 1
Ajami
Nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Film Category, Ajami is a poignant portrait of Palestinian Muslims and Christians living in an impoverished district of Jaffa

Budrus
A worldwide crowd-pleaser, this documentary is a testament to the potency of peaceful resistance & the human spirit. Budrus will dispose of any preconceptions one may have of the conflict.

Saturday November 30th, 2013 from 6PM to 10PM
Independent Palestinian Film Festival Day 2
Amreeka
A strong single mother and her son leave the West Bank to search for greener pastures in America. They are naively unaware however that they have left post-Intifada Palestine only to enter another hostile territory, post-9/11 America.

Promises
Of all the countless films revolving around the Israel-Palestine conflict, none are more compelling than this Academy Award nominated documentary. The resin being that Palestinian children, who of all others are affected the most by the war, are rarely provided the luxury of expressing their thoughts and emotions in front of a world audience.

For more information on Cinemagics rooftop movie nights click [Here]

Shakshooka, the nomadic farmers market is taking place tonight from 6PM to 7PM at Becarre Lifestyle rooftop garden in old Salmiya. It’s basically the same roof where the Cinemagic rooftop movies are played every week. Take the elevator that’s located behind the stairs between BHS and Mothercare. Here it is on [Google Maps]

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

Photo above by @faisalthef

Last night I got to see the legend Bob Dylan perform live at the Royal Albert Hall here in London. I think the last time he performed there was back in 1966 which is 47 years ago. The hall is beautiful with a ground level seating area surrounded by higher stalls and then balconies that are located on top of that (here’s a video). Getting tickets for this performance wasn’t easy, even though there were people selling tickets online there weren’t that many for sale and the prices were just insane. I managed to find pretty good tickets last week, first row of the stalls and center stage so I did pretty good. Just to give you an idea on expensive tickets were going for, tickets for the ground floor seating area were selling between 400 to 800 British Pounds on the online ticket marketplaces.

[YouTube]

We weren’t allowed to take photos or videos during the event but I managed to get a few shots and shoot the video above of Bob Dylan performing “All along the watchtower”. It was the last song and people were standing up and shooting video so they couldn’t stop all of us. Sadly he didn’t play some of his classics like “Mr Tambourine Man”, “Hurricane”, “Like A Rolling Stone” or “Blowing in the Wind”. He also didn’t talk to us! I think he just said good evening at one point during the performance and that was it. But he did perform for 2 hours which was great although time flew by so quickly that I could have easily sat through another 2 hours all over again. That was Bob Dylan live, unreal.

The Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team, The Red Arrows are going to be performing tomorrow in Kuwait as part of their Middle East tour. The RAF Red Arrows are considered to be one of the world’s premier aerobatic teams and they just finished performing yesterday in the UAE. If you’re interested in watching the show below are the details:

Date: Tuesday 26th November, 2013
Time: 1PM
Location: Marina Crescent and the vicinity

Update: I got the 1PM timing from the Red Arrows Facebook page but according to Arab Times it’s at 3PM.

Lorenzo is a locally created Italian restaurant that opened up before the cupcake and burger craze took over the market. They’re old school and although they have a bunch of locations around Kuwait my favorite is easily their Salmiya branch located in Al Khalid Complex where Gia recently opened up.

The interior is small but nicely designed and pretty cozy. The carpeted floors continue along the wall and then curve up onto the ceiling which is an old fashioned thing to do but somehow works out nicely here. Since the location is small they’ve managed to make it look bigger by splitting up the restaurant into two spaces with the back space being a more intimate area separated from the rest of the restaurant by vertical mirror pillars. There’s lots of marble everywhere which helps makes the place feel luxurious without looking tacky at all.

Their menu hasn’t really changed since they first opened up with my favorite items being the fresh bread they serve as well as their mushroom soup and chocolate cheesecake. When I do want a main course I usually go for their fish dishes, either the sole or the hammour.

It’s a very nice location that’s empty most of time. I usually have business meetings there and I’ve never seen the place filled with more than two or three tables. To top it all off the service is really good and the staff are very friendly as well. If you’re looking for a nice quiet restaurant to go to that’s not in a mall than this Lorenzo location would be a great option. It’s in Al Khalid Complex in Salmiya and here it is on [Google Maps]

[YouTube]

Last night I got to see ‘Baths‘ perform live at Oval Space in London and he was just phenomenal. I’m a huge fan of ‘Baths’ but wasn’t so sure on how the music would translate into a live performance since it’s so digital. I was worried it might just end up super boring with Will Wiesenfeld in front of a laptop but that was definitely not the case. Will came on stage wearing running shorts with a tshirt and sneakers as if he was about to take part in a marathon but once he started performing I realized why. He was literally all over the place since the music is extremely fast paced and at some points he was just jumping around from vocals to keyboard to laptop to his tech and back like he was jacked up on Molly.

I was standing right in the front row so the music was extremely loud hence why the sound in the video above is not that great. At one point during the performance they had to lower the bass since it was so powerful that it was unplugging all the cables on his setup. Will is very laid back and personal when performing. He’s very down to earth and he makes you feel like you’re in his room and he’s just jamming with you. There’s another video I uploaded which you can watch [Here] (starts past the 2 minute mark) in which you can get an idea of how he was communicating with us at the event. According to Will this was the largest audience he had gotten so far since they started headlining shows and I found that difficult to believe since we weren’t that big of a crowd. I don’t understand how Bieber can fill up a stadium and ‘Baths’ barely a small warehouse.

If you haven’t heard ‘Baths’ before but are into electronic music then I would highly recommend you buy the CD’s, download the tracks from iTunes or check them out on Spotify. Here is a link to the ‘Baths’ [Website]

Shakshooka, the nomadic farmers market is taking place tonight from 6PM to 7PM outside Q8 Book Store in Salmiya. If you don’t know where the place is, it’s located in Bayt Lothan and here it is on [Google Maps]

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

Photo above by @faisalthef

Preparations are already on their way for the upcoming Proud 2 Be Kuwaiti event that will take place early next year. The above video is a timelapse of one of the sand sculptures that was built for the event which looks like its going to be even bigger than last year. Sadly some of the sand sculptures got damaged during the storm and the P2BK instagram account has two videos showing the damages. [YouTube]

From all the cars I’ve ever driven and reviewed I don’t think I’ve ever had so much mixed emotions about a car over a three day period as I did with the G63. When I first picked up the car I remember sitting in it and trying to adjust the seating position and getting really pissed off since I couldn’t find my perfect position. I could barely see out of the rear window, the steering was really heavy and overall I was so disappointed because I had hyped up the car in my head for such a long time that when I finally sat in it I was like really? This is it? Oh but how quickly my feelings changed over the following days.

The first day after I drove the car out of the dealership lot I really didn’t like it. Yes I thought it looked gorgeous and the interior was crammed with S-Class features like electronically folding out tables for the back seats but the G63 felt heavy and cramped. By the second day the car started growing on me and by the third day I didn’t want to give it back. When I finally did return it to the dealership and I got back into my SUV did I really start to appreciate the G63 for what it is. A beast.

The G-Class has pretty much looked the same since the 70s, it is to Mercedes what the Defender is to Land Rover except in the case of Mercedes, the engineers worked overtime to cram as much technological features into it as they could. You could really tell the designers struggled to keep up with the engineers since the front screen looked like it was mounted on the dashboard after the car was completed and the same with the two screens behind the front seats. But really other than the screens they somehow managed to cram all the other features into the car without them looking out of place. It’s really an impressive feat because the G-Class isn’t as big a car as you think it is. The car isn’t that wide and it’s also not that long with just two rows of seats and a nice but not over sized booth. The dashboard is one of the slimmest I’ve encountered which again makes me appreciate the work the engineers and the designers put into the car and how they were able maximize the small space they had to work with.

Before picking up cars to review I usually start brainstorming in my head where and how I would shoot the car. The reason I don’t review that many cars is that it’s not easy to think of new locations and new styles for the shots so I tend to review only the cars I really want to drive. With the G63 I started brainstorming ideas but only once I started driving it and I stepped on the gas did I realize what I wanted to do with the shots. The G63 to me is like Walter White, a normal and boring school teacher on the outside but a dark and sinister meth lord on the inside which is why I went with this dark black and white style for the photos. The G63 looks like a brick but comes with a 544hp V8 engine that grunts like an American muscle car that just ate the white Corolla that was in front of you a minute ago.

The power the car has is over the top, you don’t really need a 544hp engine in the G-Class. Usually I’m pro more power but in this case I was thinking I have all this power but I don’t think I could ever use it since I didn’t feel confident enough to do so. But as I started getting used to the car and gaining more confidence in its handling and braking abilities I didn’t want less power I actually wanted more (and that comes in the form of the G65 V12). The G63 is just incredible at overtaking and the sound it makes just catches all the drivers around me off guard. The G63’s brakes are some of the best I’ve ever experienced in an SUV and the steering which felt heavy at first started feeling a lot better at high speeds. I still think the steering is too heavy for day to day city use but once you’re out on the highway the feel is completely different.

I dropped off the car and got back into mine and right away I realized how much I was going to miss the G63. With all the issues I had with the car they were ones I was easily able to get used to or cast aside. The only issue I probably wouldn’t be able to get over is the price point. The G63 starts at KD46,000 with the model I drove costing KD51,000. At that price point your options are pretty much wide open and that leaves the G63 in a pretty difficult position. On the other hand what this price point allows the G63 to be is exclusive and in Kuwait, where every other person seems to have a Porsche thats not an easy thing to achieve.

For more information on the G63 check out this [Link]

Samsara Rehearsals

Originally set to take place on the 13th, Samsara is now taking place this coming Monday the 18th instead. Tickets are still available and can be reserved at this [Link]

This is what you need to know about the event:

In an introspective attempt to bring the world together with music, we at Camco Global Events are producing the biggest music event in Kuwait with musical composer Nawaf Gheraibah, a local Kuwaiti musician whose music is an expression of his rich multicultural influences. He preformed his composition thesis ‘Bija’ meaning ‘seed’ in Sanskrit; at the prestigious Bayt Lothan in May 2012, where the show was enthusiastically received with standing ovations by the audience and rave reviews by the press and media. After the success of ‘Bija’; Gheraibah has focused his energy on creating the sequel to his initial project.

In his new album named “Samsara”, Sanskrit for ‘rebirth’, reflecting the rebirth of the music of the past in the present. Gheraibah attempts to fuse a variety of tribal and ancestral instruments, poetries, and theories, with more modern day musical concepts. The music is a reflection of modern fusion music, which is conceived through the combination of cultures, customs, and languages; creating a resonance of new age sound.

In this case, a rebirth of Kuwait’s musical past, which is reflected in the album, as Gheraibah experiments with fusing traditional work songs from Kuwait’s golden era of pearl diving and trade with a more modern day tunes. The music carries a variety of ethnic influences such as Indian, Thai, Moroccan, African, Middle Eastern and European, blending them into an artistic interpretation of sound and song. The songs are in a variety of languages: Arabic, French, Swahili, Portuguese, Hindi, and English, and will be sung by a variety of singers.

Approximately thirty instrumentalists and singers will be performing on stage during the concert; a majority of which are Kuwaiti students from the Higher Institute of Musical Arts, Kuwait. In addition, a variety of musical students and professionals from other countries, such as Egypt, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Lebanon, India, Jordan, Korea, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Sudan will be preforming as well.

Date: Monday, November 18th 2013
Time: 7:00PM
Location: GUST University Amphitheatre, Mishref [Map]

For more information visit their Facebook Page

Update: Due to the storm the event has been postponed till November 23rd.