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During the camel racing season (October to March) the races take place every Saturday at the Kuwait Camel Racing Club.

The races start at a different time every week but this Saturday they will start at 1:30PM and there will be a total of 9 races.

There is no entrance fee and you can either watch the races from the sidelines, drive up to the starting lines and watch the start of the race, or just drive around the track in your car following the race (it can get chaotic).

It’s really chill, not that busy and everyone is pretty friendly. I tend to drop by anytime I feel like having a photoshoot for one of my cars or if I just feel like driving out somehwere.

Here is the location on Google Maps.

13 years ago I posted about a person called Sa’ad, a pizza fanatic who had submitted his pizza ingredients to Serious Eats and ended up getting featured there. The Serious Eats article is no longer up on their website but you can still access it through Web Archive by clicking here.

Fast forward to today and Sa’ad has finally opened up his own pizza place called What?izza. I haven’t tried it yet but it’s on my to do list since based on the photos on his instagram account, the pizzas look really appetizing and they sound like they have a very nice crisp to them. It’s a pretty cool story and he’s obviously still a pizza fanatic so check him out @whatpizza.kw

Cove Workspaces is a new coworking space located inside Cove Complex in the heart of the Shuwaikh Industrial area. (Google Maps)

The Cove Complex houses 20+ different tenants including Doh!, AJAS Film Lab, Blend Cafe, Panther Fitness Gym and the soon to open Marco’s Burger by Vigonovo. The Cove Workspaces are spread out on the top floor of the complex and contains more than 40 offices for rent ranging from small to large sizes and are fully serviced.

Some of the services included are:

• 24/7 Secure access
• Smart cards
• Unlimited wifi
• Unlimited printing
• Spacious parking
• Multiple common areas/Hotdesks
• 8 hours of free meeting room access per month
• Outdoor workspace access in non event hours
• Cleaning services during office hours
• Kitchen services during working hours
• IT Support

In addition to the above, Cove has a team dedicated to helping tenants get establishment paperwork for new commercial licenses that do not require a PACI number. So one less headache to worry about.

Cove Workspaces also offer a number of facilities that can be booked by anyone even if you aren’t a Cove tenant like their photography studio, meeting rooms, and a large 170sqm outdoor event space. All their facilities can be booked through the website bookings.coverealestates.com

To top it off, Cove Workspaces are extremely competitively priced with a small office space starting at 200KD a month, a medium for 280KD and the largest office for 350KD.

If you want to find out more, check out their Instagram account @coveworkspaces

Kuwait is currently holding the 2023 IBF World Bowling Championship and I don’t think anybody knows. The international sporting event which started on October 4th and is ongoing until October 15th is taking place at the Kuwait Bowling Sporting Club in Salmiya. The bowling alley is one of the largest in the region with 48 bowling lanes and when I passed by yesterday, they were all being used for the event.

The men’s competition includes teams from Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, UAE, Oman, Iran, Jordan, Malaysia, Czechoslovak, Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, Colombia, Canada, Egypt in addition to Kuwait.

The women’s teams include Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, China, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Denmark, Germany, Colombia, Canada in addition to host Kuwait.

There is plenty of seating if you want to go and watch the event live. When I passed by there were multiple matches taking place simultaneously and I just moved from one area to another to watch the games. Entry to watch the event is free and the matches start at 9AM and continue throughout the day till around 5PM. You can check out the schedule below.

The event is also being streamed live online. They have 4 cameras streaming simultaneously and you can watch those on YouTube. Link

I’ve been driving by Seif Palace all my life and I never thought about the clock itself and I don’t think many other people have either. A couple of months ago a friend of mine shared a short article from a 1962 issue of a newspaper which spoke about the clock install and it caught my interest so much so that I spent the past two months trying to dig out as much information as possible. I wanted to find pictures of the clock under construction, maybe sketches of the design or photos of the installation. But after two months of trying, I think I’ve hit a wall and I’ve decided to give up. Although I managed to find interesting information, I didn’t have any new visuals to accompany the information which deflated me. Instead of throwing out all the information I’ve managed to gather, I figured I’d still share whatever I found, even though I didn’t have any photos to accompany the research.

The Seif Palace clock was installed in January 1962 after taking 5 months to build. It was engineered by the UK based clockmakers Smith of Derby who have been making clocks since 1856. I got in touch with Smith of Derby to try and see if they had any photos or schematics of the clock, but they couldn’t find anything in their archive, and whoever had worked on the clock had long retired. But they were able to share some interesting information with me which I’m sharing in this post.

The clock that was originally installed in 1962 was a weight driven mechanical clock, with 4 cast iron dials each 8-feet in diameter and weighing a total of 4 tons. The clock was decorated with 23 & 1/2 carat gold leafs and had internal lights for nighttime dial illumination. Originally the clock also had three bells. Two of the bells would be used to chime the quarter hours while the third bell would strike every hour. The bells were also fitted with an automatic night-silencer so not to annoy people during the night. According to Smith of Derby, the bells were most likely supplied by John Taylor Bell Foundry. The person I was in communication with told me he even had a vague memory of a colleague of his telling him that the bells were hung but never rung. I’ve never heard them rung nor did I know the clock was meant to ring so I imagine that story is true. I tried to verify the story and gather more information on the bells but Taylor Bells have yet to respond to my emails.

During the 1990 invasion, the mechanical clock was damaged beyond repair when a missile was put through the dial. Smith of Derby were contracted to rebuild the clock, and in 1995 it was replaced, this time with an electric movement instead of a mechanical one (T400 synchronous movement, accurate to +/- 1 second a month and controlled by an inverter charger to keep the voltage at 230v 50hz). I’m not sure if the bells are still in the clock tower, my assumption is they aren’t. I tried to get access to the Seif Palace clock tower to find out but I wasn’t able to.

The Seif Palace clock isn’t the only clock in Kuwait made by Smith of Derby. I found three other clocks in Kuwait made by them, the clock in Riggae Park, the Al Mulla Group clock outside the airport, and the beautiful clock located inside the Waldorf Astoria.

And thats everything I could dig up on the Seif Palace clock. If you can by any chance get me inside the clock tower, let me know!

Formula One picked up in popularity over the past few years because of the Netflix documentary “Drive to Survive” so a lot of new (and some old) F1 fans in Kuwait will find this tidbit interesting.

Back in 2014, Red Bull brought their junior driver Carlos Sainz along with their F1 car to Kuwait and then had him race up and down the Gulf Road. I managed to get some photos as well as a video from that day which you can check out here.

If you’re an F1 fan then you know that Carlos Sainz is now Ferraris main driver and so you might be kicking yourself for not meeting him back when he came to Kuwait as just a young Red Bull junior racing team driver.

Photo of Kuwait at night taken by an astronaut from onboard the International Space Station with a NIKON D5 and a 400mm lens on May 6, 2023.

via Reddit

There used to be a pool hall in Salmiya behind Hungry Bunny called Shark or Sharx, not really sure. I can’t seem to find any information about it online or that it even existed. But a reader sent me the snippet above from a Russian news channel that had filmed a short report in the place and you can watch it above.

If you remember anything about it let me know.

Thanks Janna

Update: Turns out it wasn’t behind Hungry Bunny but instead next to Zahra Complex. Here is a photo of the building that was in taken from msmooretravels.com

Update2: Here is a photo of the entrance but taken after it had shut down

The last camel races of the season are going to be held this coming Friday and Saturday. The races usually only take place on Saturday but this weekend there will also be races on Friday which should be good news to anyone that couldn’t watch them on Saturdays.

Friday, March 17
There will be 16 races taking place and they will start at 7:30AM

Saturday, March 18
There will only be 5 races taking place and they will start at 2:00PM

There is no entrance fee and you can either watch the races from the sidelines, drive up to the starting lines and watch the start of the race or just drive around the track in your car following the races.

If you want to visit the Kuwait Camel Racing Club, here is the link to Google Maps.

A Space X rocket, carrying the first Kuwaiti Satellite (Kuwait Sat-1) will launch into space from Florida later today.

The satellite is a CubeSat which is a class of research spacecraft called nanosatellites. CubeSats are generic, modular satellites that come in different sizes and can be customized with various payloads. Kuwait’s satellite will have a camera payload which was put together by students at Kuwait University and will be operated by them after disengaging from the rocket.

With this satellite, Kuwait will be able to take its own photos of its own country from space which could then be used for many purposes ranging from environmental studies to mapping cities.

If you’re interested in watching the launch, 360 Mall will be broadcasting it live on their Oval Screen in the Main Atrium at 5:45 PM. For more information check @kw.university and @kfasinfo

The 12H HANKOOK KUWAIT race started at 12 PM today and will last till midnight. This is the first-ever international circuit racing event to be held in Kuwait so you probably don’t want to miss this important moment.

It’s a 12-hour endurance race which is why it’s going on till midnight, but the benefit of that is you can come by anytime during the day to chill in the grandstands and watch the race. It’s open to the public and tickets are 3KD. There are also food and coffee trucks as well as a kid’s area.

If you’ve never been to the Kuwait Motor Town race track, here is the location on Google Maps.

Since the weather has gotten cooler it’s a good time to visit the camel races if you’ve never visited before. Last year I posted a pretty thorough article on the experience and I’ll probably do an updated one this year but, I’m not planning to visit until my FJ40 comes back from Abu Dhabi since I wanted to visit the races in that car.

Last year I went in my Alfa and it was pretty fun and I got some great shots, so I wanted to do it again but in another car this year. If you do want to go before my updated post, the biggest change this season is the timing of the races.

Starting this past Saturday the races now begin at 2:15 PM instead of 1:00 PM. Other than that I think everything else should pretty much be the same. So until my 2022 post is up you can use my previous post as a reference.

Last week I posted about Khazal Palace possibly losing its heritage site status due to major alternations in the restoration, but on the other hand, there is good news for Naif Palace in Kuwait City. Last week it was designated an Islamic Heritage Site by the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO).

Naif Palace, which covers an area of 28,802 square meters, was built in 1919, during the reign of Emir Sheikh Salem Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah. It has 219 rooms and also houses a mosque, a garrison dormitory, and an ammunition depot.

For more on this, here is the link to the original news story.

On a side note, does anyone know if the palace is open to visitors on regular days? I know they open it during Ramadan for the canon firing but what about the rest of the year?

The Khazal Palace (also called Alghanim Palace and Sheikh Abdullah Al-Jabir Palace) located in Dasman near the British Embassy is finally being restored after being left to crumble for decades. But, yesterday a photo surfaced showing that concrete columns were planted inside the palace as part of the reconstruction.

What does this mean?

The palace dates to 1916 and was constructed with clay, it was one of the last Persian-style archaeological building in Kuwait. Since the palace was listed as a heritage site in Kuwait, it was protected and had the highest priority for conservation. With conservation projects it is paramount to restore the building back to it’s original state using as much of the original construction material as possible. The Kuwait antiquities law states that it is prohibited to modify, alter or distort immovable monuments. By pouring concrete into the palace it means it no longer is being restored correctly and thus loses its heritage status.

To try and simplify what this all means, imagine demolishing the palace completely and then rebuilding it again using modern day materials, is it still a heritage site? No because it’s now a new building and not an old building that was saved and restored. This is basically what has happened in this case to some degree. The building was added to the UNESCO World Heritage tentative list back in 2015, but because the restoration process is being done incorrectly, it will now no longer qualify to be on the list and so will not have any of the protection that comes with that status. Similar story to what happened with the Kuwait National Assembly Building, because they constructed the curved/wavy office building on the side of the main structure, the Kuwait National Assembly Building was disqualified from ever becoming a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The Kuwait Towers on the other hand which is currently going through a restoration process (the blue discs are being restored or replaced) is abiding by the strict restoration rules. The process is also being overlooked by the Getty Foundation “Keeping it Modern” grant which the towers received in 2020 (1 of just 77 grants given worldwide):

All of the orbs possess a remarkable shimmering quality thanks to 41,000 enameled metal discs in shades of blue, green, and gray that stud their surfaces in a carefully variegated spiral pattern.

Due to more than five decades of marine climate exposure, however, some of the decorative metal discs have detached and fallen to the ground. Guided by a recent conservation management plan, the project team will conduct a technical study to identify the underlying problem behind the disc detachments and develop conservation protocols for carrying out repairs and maintenance. Because the conservation of modern architecture in Kuwait is an emerging field, the project team will collaborate with international experts and leverage the opportunity to share their research with local Kuwaiti architects, conservators, and engineers.

School trip to the Kuwait Museum – 1970

A couple of years ago I heard rumblings about the fact they were proposing to restore the building with concrete (easier/cheaper) and that many local architects were against it and wanted the restoration to be done properly. Not sure if anything can be done about it now, but at the moment it looks like Kuwait lost another important part of its landscape.

For more information, check out this post on Instagram.

Update: Just got a bit more information. The basement of the palace is the oldest basement in Kuwait, more than 100 years old. Unfortunately, it was removed completely to make way for the concrete intervention. Source

The Palace of Justice building was designed in the late 70s by the Scottish architect Sir Basil Spence, the same architect behind the Coventry Cathedral. The building was scheduled to be demolished once the new building under construction next door was completed but thankfully that isn’t happening anymore. The National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters has added the Palace of Justice on the list of modern heritage sites (source) which means it should no longer be demolished.

Happy for the Palace of Justice, but sucks that places like the Ice Skating Rink didn’t get added to the list.