Search: “ace”

There are plenty of public beaches in Kuwait but not that many swimming pools you can access without being a member or staying at a hotel. But, some hotels do offer day passes to their pools so I called as many hotels as I could until I had enough to put a list together. This is the 2024 edition list so the prices are current.

All the pools on this list are singles friendly except for Seashell Julaia Resort which isn’t. None of the pools require you to be invited by a member except for SVN. SVN gets an exception for this list because it’s the nicest place with lots of very cool facilities. So for a very premium members only club, it’s actually great value compared to a lot of other places, so find a friend with a membership.

The list below is arranged from least expensive to most expensive:

Al Jahra Copthorne Hotel & Resort
Telephone: 24590000
Price: 10KD

Seashell Julaia Hotel & Resort
Telephone: 1844444
Price = 15KD

Crowne Plaza
Telephone: 1848111
Weekday/Weekend: 20KD

Symphony Style Hotel
Telephone: 25770000
Weekday: 20KD
Weekend: 25KD

Holiday Inn Salmiya
Telephone: 25760000
Weekday: 20KD
Weekend: 29KD

Hyatt Regency Al Kout Mall
Telephone: 23931234
Weekday/Weekend: 25KD
Ladies only on Monday and Wednesday

Millennium Hotel
Telephone: 22050505
Weekday/Weekend: 25KD

Mövenpick Hotel Resort AlBidaa
Telephone: 22253100
Weekday: 25KD
Weekend: 30KD

Hilton Resort
Telephone: 22256222
Weekday: 30KD
Weekend: 35KD

SVN Club (member invite required)
Telephone: 1876777
Weekday: 30KD
Weekend: 40KD

Marina Hotel
Telephone: 22230030
Weekday: 35KD
Weekend: 40KD

Four Seasons
Telephone: 22006000
Weekday/Weekend: 40KD (70KD Couple)

Waldorf Astoria
Telephone: 24774444
Price 1: 40KD (Inc. 1 Mocktail)
Price 2: 50KD (Inc. Food + Mocktail)

If I missed a place where you can access a pool with a day pass, let me know in the comments.

I hadn’t heard of “F1 in Schools” before so was confused when I found out they were opening in The Avenues. I thought it might be a racing school but it turned out to be engineering related. This is how it’s described on Wikipedia:

F1 in Schools is an international STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) competition for school children (aged 11–19), in which groups of 3–6 students have to design and manufacture a miniature car out of the official F1 Model Block using CAD/CAM design tools. The cars are powered by CO2 cartridges and are attached to a track by a nylon wire. They are timed from the moment they are launched to when they pass the finish line by a computer.

While researching I found out that in Kuwait, BSK were already involved with F1 in Schools (Check the post above). With The Avenues location opening the program will become accessible to more children. The Avenues location will be managed by the non-profit organization Sabah Al-Ahmad Center for Giftedness and Creativity and KFAS.

I’ve reached out to find out more about this and when they’re planning to open, but for now you can check f1inschools.com for more information or watch the video above to watch the 2023 world finals

Here is a feel-good story to start the week. Six lions rescued from Kuwait finally have a new home at a wildlife sanctuary in South Africa. Known as the ‘Kuwait 6’, the males Muheeb, Saham, Shujaa, Saif, and females Dhubiya and Aziza were victims of the illegal pet trade. All the lions were less than two years old when they were either surrendered, confiscated, or captured in Kuwait after being abandoned by their owners.

Staff and volunteers at the Kuwait Zoo nursed the lions back to health and looked after them until they were able to find them a home. After a long 15-hour journey, the lions arrived in South Africa last week.

Animal Defenders International (ADI), the non-profit organization that campaigns against animal cruelty and exploitation, offered the lions a new life at the 455-acre ADI Wildlife Sanctuary in South Africa. Qatar Airways Cargo assisted ADI in transporting the animals as part of their WeQare ‘Rewild the Planet’ initiative. Qatar Airways Cargo has an amazing and very caring program where they offer free transport to organizations involved in returning wild animals to their natural habitat.

For their first two weeks, the lions will be in quarantine before being released into the main habitat. ADI have been posting photos and videos of the ‘Kuwait 6’ on their instagram account @animal_defenders_international and it looks like the lions are in a really good place.

If you’d like to donate for the care of the ‘Kuwait 6’, you can by clicking this link. But, you also have the option to adopt one of the lions starting from just 20KD. For more on adoption, click here.

Ten years ago, Kuwait held the largest sand sculpture festival in the world, the Remal International Festival (@remalfest). The festival took place at the Kuwait International Fairgrounds and covered an area equivalent to six football fields. Now a decade later, Damon Langlois, the creative director behind the project is releasing a book called “Stories in Sand” that documents his experience.

Damon was a five-time world champion and Guinness World Record holder for the tallest sand castle before getting hired to come to Kuwait and lead the project that would be based around the Arabian Nights. He spent over seven months researching and designing the scenes before bringing together 72 of the world’s best sand artists to reimagine the stories from 1001 Nights.

The sculpture park was constructed out of only sand and water, it was a major artistic feat, and extremely risky. The artists were all reminded of this when the park was destroyed by a devastating three-day storm halfway through the build. At the time, it was the worst storm to hit Kuwait in over 50 years.

I remember reading that “some” sculptures had been damaged, but now I realized how bad it really was. The destruction caused Damon and his team to feel defeated after all the hard work had been washed away. But, they were able to recover and complete the project, and the park eventually opened in January 2014 before closing 4 months later in April.

Damon’s book “Stories in Sand”, is part art and part storybook. The initial print run is set at only 260 books and contains 276 pages filled with behind the scenes and final creation photos and stories. There are limited copies of the book so if you want one you need to act fast. I’m assuming they will get sold out quickly after this post which is why I already ordered my copy. The book doesn’t ship to Kuwait directly so I had to put my Shop&Ship address instead.

If you want to pre-order a copy, here is the link to the Kickstarter.

For my old posts on the Remal Festival, click here.

I didn’t watch a lot of shows or movies this week since I’m saving them for my long flight next week. But, I did finally get to watch “The Iron Claw“, not the storyline I was expecting so caught me by surprise, but damn it was such a good movie.

I also started and stopped watching Dark Matter. I think I made it to episode 3 before realizing I didn’t like the storyline and wasn’t interested in continuing it.

I watched the last episode of Under the Bridge yesterday, I thought last week was the last episode but turned out there was one more. It was a forgettable episode and the series didn’t really need it. Wait, I just checked and turns out there is still one more episode next week. wtf?

Let me know in the comments what you recently watched or planning to watch.

Movies at the Cinemas
The movies below are now showing at the local cinemas:

New This Week:
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (8.1)
Prey (3.8)
Sting (5.7)
The Garfield Movie (6.0)

Other Movies Showing:
Abigail (6.8)
Civil War (7.6)
Dead Racer (5.7)
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (6.5)
IF (6.8)
Inception (Classic/2010) (8.8)
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (7.4)
Knox Goes Away (6.9)
Kung Fu Panda 4 (6.4)
The Fall Guy (7.3)
You Can’t Run Forever (N/A)

The numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at the time of publishing.

When I first started this blog I was posting maybe 5 times a day? It was constant content but mostly non-Kuwait related. Then overtime I realized people were more interested with the Kuwait content so my topics because Kuwait focused and I dropped down to around 2-3 posts a day. Then, it dropped down to 1-2 a day. 14,000+ posts later and now I’m barely managing 1 post a day.

A lot has changed obviously in the 20+ years since I started. Back then the only other source for content were physical newspapers and magazines. Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and TikTok didn’t exist and so my blog was the only source of interesting Kuwait related content that was fast/live. Magazines you had to wait till the end of the month to read about something and newspaper were just not interesting and still aren’t interesting.

But now with soooo many sources for content I’m still finding my way of how to still be relevant and interesting. I think 99% of the content out there is trash, and I still don’t get this yelling salesman style of tiktok videos that people seem to do.

It’s been over a year since I launched my Instagram account and I really don’t think there is anything like it in Kuwait, mostly because of the wide range of content I cover. I at least think it is all interesting. Well based on the engagement people are also finding it interesting. But I really haven’t changed my content style much, it’s always been random. Scrolling through my Instagram account now makes me more aware how my brain is all over the place.

But, content is also taking a lot longer to put together. I use the app Simplenote for my blog, basically anytime I have a topic idea I create a new note. Then as I collect information on that topic I fill in that note. As of right now I have 203 potential future topics to post about, with some of those topic ideas even broken down further. For example, I have a “Design Highlights” note but under that I have 9 future posts. And these are solid topics, not random restaurants I’m invited to try, which I have zero interest in going to.

Yet I can barely scrape together 1 post a day for some reason. I’m trying to understand why and I think that’s mostly because it’s taking me longer than before to collect the information for posts. I’m now turning 46, I was 25 when I started blogging. I have a lot less free time, I have more responsibilities now and I don’t think I can do slapstick posts, basically random posts without substance. I understand that because of my Instagram account where I’ve set a personal benchmark where every post needs to be a blockbuster hit, but I should be able to post random shit here. My Instagram posts take a lot longer to put together than my blog because I spend so much time on the photo, and so much time getting the headline interesting without having to clickbait, and then I need to manage my writing since I’m limited to just 2,100 characters on Instagram. But, I do a lot of random posts on twitter than I do here.

As I just wrote that last sentence, I think I answered my own question. It’s a lot easier to post on twitter than it is on my blog where I need to sit down in front of a computer and do it. I no longer get on my computer in the evenings, I don’t have a laptop open in front of me while watching TV. Maybe that’s what I need to change, either start getting on my laptop again in the evenings, or just get comfortable posting on the blog through my phone.

I tried posting from my phone maybe 10 years ago and it would mess up the look of the post. But the WordPress app has changed a lot since then and so has my blog theme so maybe it’s not an issue anymore. I’ll try to post from my phone again and if it works it should hopefully improve things moving forward.

This week I finished watching Under the Bridge which turned out to be pretty good. I also started watching The Veil which isn’t that great but I’m curious to see where it goes. I’m traveling in 10 days time so kinda watching b-rated shows for now and saving the rest for the plane. Currently have the following I’m saving for my trip:

Hacks (Latest season)
Clarksons Farm (Latest season)
Loot (Latest season)
Mr & Mrs Smith (Halfway through)
The Iron Claw (Movie)
Dream Scenario (Movie)
A Man in Full
Ripley
Unfrosted (Movie)
Obliterated
The New Look
The Sympathizer

Let me know in the comments what you’ve been watching or planning to watch this weekend.

Movies at the Cinemas
The movies below are now showing at the local cinemas:

New This Week:
Abigail (6.8)
Dead Racer (5.7)
IF (6.8)
Knox Goes Away (6.9)
Memory (6.6)
You Can’t Run Forever (N/A)

Other Movies Showing:
Bloodline Killer (7.5)
Civil War (7.6)
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (6.5)
Inception (Classic/2010) (8.8)
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (7.4)
Kung Fu Panda 4 (6.4)
The Fall Guy (7.3)
The Little Mermaid (4.6)

The numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at the time of publishing.

Last week a video popped up on my feed that I thought was fascinating. A guy called Hamad AlMuzaini (@hamad.muzaini) had spotted a little piece of architecture history at a scrap yard in Amghara, the Maison Bulle (Bubble House) by French modernist architect, Jean-Benjamin Maneval.

The Bubble House which was conceived in 1963 is considered to be one of the most successful designs for “futuristic plastic houses“. Only 300 of these prefab homes were ever built and so it’s pretty incredible that not only did one end up in Kuwait, but the fact that it survived and is in fairly decent condition is a miracle.

Hamad is an architect and designer who lived and worked in the US for roughly 13 years. Most of his work experience revolved around modular and prefabricated construction, which is why when he spotted the Bubble House roughly two years ago, he immediately recognized that it was a novel system and had immense value. But, Hamad only realized recently what he had spotted when an account he follows posted a similar Bubble House. So Hamad went back to Amghara and called the number of the scrapyard asking if it was for sale. From there he purchased the house and started planning its relocation.

Most of the images online consistently depicted the Bubble House set against nature, making a really beautiful composition of something quite futuristic. So he decided to move the Bubble House out of the scrap yard and onto his family’s farm.

Currently Hamad is focusing his efforts on restoring the structure without permanent and damaging procedures. He wants to restore it as close to the original as possible but without an interior layout, leaving it as an open floor plan. He hopes to one day host events with some community engagement surrounding the Maison Bulle, but for now his focus is to restore it.

How the Bubble House ended up in Kuwait in the first place is still a mystery, but at least it’s in good hands right now.

There are a lot of great Thai restaurants in Kuwait but my favorite by far has to be Phet Phet. I think they have the best Pad Thai and Panang Curry in Kuwait, but I also really love their Spicy Potato Noodles. They have been delivery only since they launched a few years ago, but today they’re opening their first dine-in location.

Phet Phet was started by two female friends who used to go to Thailand a lot. When covid hit, they missed Thailand and the food they used to have there, and since delivery wasn’t available at one point, they decided to make their own recipes and cook their own food. Eventually, they decided to open up a restaurant and called it Phet Phet.

Their new location is located in Salmiya, on the same street as %Arabica and Joe and the Juice. It’s a very cute space and so close to where I live which is great for me. They’re open from 3PM to 11PM daily except for Sundays when they close. Here is the location on Google Maps, and their instagram account is @phetphetkw

Since a lot of record stores pop up and close down often, I tend to update this list every few years.

All the small online stores that sold new records have closed down, including @vinyldestinationkw, and so if you want a new release, your best bet is ordering from Amazon.

But, if you’re looking for old used records, you actually have multiple options in Kuwait.

The Antique Basement
This basement in Salmiya has various stores selling vintage and antique items, three of them also have a small collection of old records. They’re not organized but instead are either just pilled up on top of one another, or randomly stacked in boxes. Finding stuff is a bit of an adventure, but on the bright side, they’re mostly English records. Here are the instagram accounts of those stores:

@tathkron
@fahad___bokhaled
@alnasser_antiques_kuwait

Nawader
This guy has the most insane collection of old music since he acquired all the remaining stock of the old record label “Bou Zaid Phone“, one of the most important Kuwaiti record labels. Nawader has a huge collection of new-old-stock records, cassettes and even 8-track tapes. Nearly all of the records he has are in Arabic, and he also has many very hard to come by ones. I got my 4-volume vinyl set of the “Kuwaiti Television Artistic Group” from him, and although he wouldn’t sell me his copy of the Iftah Ya Simsim record, he did hook me up with someone else who sold me theirs. He has a location thats by appointment only, but you can also purchase or request items through any one of his three instagram accounts:

@nawaderq8
@q8nawader
@istuwanat

Moqtanayaty
If you’re looking for a vintage record player, boombox, 8-track or even reel-to-reel players to buy, the best store in Kuwait is Moqtanayaty, or “My Belongings” when translated to English. I bought my vintage record player from there and they can even repair vintage music players, VCRs, or really old TVs. You can check them out on instagram @vintage_radio_

If you know of another place that sells records, let me know in the comments.

Similar to the ‘A-Frame‘ Farm which I posted about a couple of years ago, the ‘Countryside Farmhouse’ is another picturesque farm in Wafra that is also available to rent.

The 3,000m2 farmhouse features 4 master bedrooms, a cozy living room, both an indoor and outdoor kitchen, and various outdoor seating areas including a rooftop with a beautiful view. The farm which can host up to 10 guests also has a swimming pool, gardens all around, and a dedicated kid’s play area, so plenty of room for you and your friends.

What initially caught my attention was the beautiful Mediterranean look of the farmhouse which is what I think makes this place feel like a secret getaway. The price to rent the farm is 165 KD per night during the weekdays, and 485 KD if you want to book it for the whole weekend. Not too bad if you split the cost with friends. If you want to check out more photos or to book, head over to their instagram account @countrysidekw

The Northern Salmiya Building is located in the old Salmiya souk on Salem Mubarak Street. It’s over 50 years old, and since I grew up down the street from it, I’ve seen so many shops come and go there.

It’s the same complex that used to house Kids’r’us (Alghanim Automotive before that) and it’s the same building that had the old National/Panasonic store that used to have the NeoGeo in the window display. The corner shop was Boushahri where everyone used to go to get their passport photos taken. Mogahwi was also located there, the first Alshaya stores also all opened there including The Bodyshop, BHS, Mothercare and Next.

The building was also designed by SSH over 50 years ago, the same firm that’s behind JACC, ASCC and the waterfront project.

Recently, the corner of the building was demolished, and a tower was built in its place. It sucks that they demolished part of the building, but now that the tower is up it’s actually not that bad and I’m glad at least that they didn’t demolish the whole thing. What’s great is that they’ve also gone ahead and refurbished the rest of the building with a fresh coat of paint, new lights and even had some oversized signages for some of the stores removed.

The building is looking pretty good now, and I wish more old buildings got refurbished as well. And I don’t mean Dasman Complex style refurbishing where they’re just horribly covering the whole building facade with Alucobond.

If you haven’t been to old salmiya recently you should, it’s really popping. Google Maps

Update: Just found a photo in my archive of the Northern Salmiya Building under construction

YISWA is an interesting local auction app where it works the other way around, prices go down instead of going up. It’s a new way to shop where the longer you wait, the better the price gets. But, wait too long and someone else might snatch the item up.

The way YISWA works is items go on sale one at a time in the app. They first get listed with the retail price, and then quickly start dropping down in price. The price keeps dropping until people buy the item and it gets sold out. Because there is no way to tell how many pieces are left in stock or how many people are interested in it, you want to set a price that is both reasonable for you and ensures you don’t miss out on the item.

So for example, starting tomorrow (Tuesday), YISWA will be selling pairs of VIP tickets for the Bassem Yousef and Maz Jobrani comedy show that’s taking place later this month. The retail price for the tickets is 140KD which is how much they will go on sale for. But, once the auction starts, the price will start dropping until the tickets get purchased by someone. The longer you wait, the cheaper the price will get but the higher the chance of someone else buying it.

YISWA have also included some features in the app to make the shopping experience easier. For example, you can preview upcoming auctions and ask the app to notify you when they start. You can also set a buy it now price for the items, so for example, you could set your buy it now price for the 2 VIP tickets at 100KD. If the price drops to your set price, the app will automatically purchase the tickets for you.

If you want to check the app out and just browse, you can do that without needing to sign up. Just download the app and check it out. For the download link, head over to their website yiswaapp.com

This past weekend I picked up the Apple Vision Pro and since then I’ve been using it daily, mostly exploring it and trying to figure out what to do with it.

First things first, if you’re planning to pick up an Apple Vision Pro in Kuwait, you need to know that you won’t be able to pick the proper sized light seal. Before purchasing the AVP from the Apple Store, they ask you to scan your face so they could recommend the proper light seal. You can do that through the Apple Store app and according to the scan, I needed a size 21W. If you’re buying an AVP from the grey market, there is no way to know what size light seal you’re getting since Apple doesn’t mention the size on the outside of the box. So it depends on your luck, I ended up with the light seal size 33W which was what Apple recommended for my wife. It doesn’t fit well on my face but I’m dealing with it till my light seal arrives. I got a brand new one off eBay for $150 but Apple sells them for $199. So just something to keep in mind.

Secondly, the AVP prices in Kuwait are quite a bit cheaper than Apple prices in the US. The cheapest price I found locally was 999KD at Best Electronics. In comparison, it costs around 1,160KD in the States with tax, but without shipping to Kuwait. Expect to pay around 20-30KD on top of that to ship to Kuwait since the box is pretty heavy. But then again, if you don’t end up with the correct light seal size you’ll have to pay for that, but it would still be cheaper to buy it locally and you’ll end up having an extra light seal.

Other than that, if you already have a US Apple Store account which I assume everyone already has, then you’re pretty much set. If you have a Kuwait Apple Store account it won’t work in the AVP since the AVP is only available in the US at the moment. If you want to use streaming services like Disney and Max, you also need a smart DNS proxy. Disney Kuwait won’t work (uses app from Kuwait store) and I don’t think there is a VPN option on the AVP, but smart DNS is easier to set up anyway.

My first impression of the AVP? It’s difficult to explain. I love it, it’s definitely the future, but if you’re asking me if you should get one, then the answer is no. If you already got one or are planning to get one, then you made the right decision. It’s confusing I know but if you already decided on the AVP it’s most likely for the same reason as me, to be there at the start of what I think is the future, and not because it’s worth getting one now.

It’s such an incredible device, using it and doing things with it is like nothing else I’ve experienced, so much so that I keep wanting to share my experience with someone else. That’s what’s also so weird about the AVP, it’s such a solo device but yet the experiences are ones you want to share with others. I’ve been constantly annoying my wife asking her to put on the AVP so I could let her experience various things I got to experience.

I will have to do a proper review of the device, but right now I’ve mostly been using it for two things, watching TV and playing ToXun. ToXun is a game that randomly puts you somewhere on Earth in Google Street View, and you need to guess where you are in the world. It’s pretty difficult but I’ve been quite good at guessing at least which country I’m in.

Watching TV on the other hand is just a really really incredible experience. For one thing, you can now have a TV anywhere. I have just one TV by choice in my apartment, but with the AVP I can now set up a large Cinescape movie theater anywhere I want in my place. I’ve watched a variety of content so far from simple TV shows to what Apple calls Immersive Videos. I’m not sure how to describe immersive video because until I experienced it I hadn’t experienced anything like it anywhere. Imagine a super large Imax screen that towers above and below you but is also in 3D. Actually, I don’t think that describes it properly. Imagine, you’re standing inside the film watching, that’s what these videos feel like. There aren’t many of them but my favorite is called Adventure and takes place up high in the mountains where a female climber sets up a high line to cross over a cliff. It’s really well shot, the 3D scenes make me feel like I’m right there, and anywhere I look I see beautiful views. They’re not 360 videos, but they do wrap around your peripheral vision.

But your regular 3D movies look great as well. I was never a fan of 3D movies because of the glasses you had to wear and how they darkened the screen. With the AVP they’re much much better. I watched the movie Gravity last night in 3D inside my theater and it was incredible, I felt like I was up there with them in space.

So far the AVP has been a great experience. I just ordered a compact carrying case for it from Waterfield in case I want to travel with it and use it on the plane. Not sure I’d be comfortable doing that just yet, but will see how it goes.

If there is anything specific you want to know or want me to try out, let me know in the comments.

Over the weekend there was a bit of drama in Kuwait. Word got out that a PlayBoy model called Lina Bourghol was in Kuwait last week, and although it didn’t look like she did anything wrong while here, she still managed to ruffle some feathers.

Lina posted a photo of her in front of the Kuwait Towers which exacerbated the controversy. That photo now has over 3,000 likes but no comments since she closed it due to the abuse she was getting. In a video that popped up on my Tiktok feed she mentions that she doesn’t understand why authorities had a problem with her being in Kuwait, but were fine with Kim Kardashian being here. She denied that she was here because a guy paid her to come, and she brought up a good point that why would he bring her to Kuwait when they could fly out to a more interesting play like Miami. She said she came in here on a visit visa and that she wore the abaya everywhere she went out of respect for the local culture.

In any case she ended up leaving Kuwait, some people were saying she got deported but she mentions in her video she had left on her free will. The whole coming in on a visit visa thing I can believe since every now and then Tiktok pops up videos on my feed of what I assume are escorts temporarily in Kuwait. Don’t think there is a way to stop them from coming in unless you stop issuing visit visas completely.