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The French sporting goods retailer Decathlon which currently has a large location in Marina Mall is opening another location in Avenues Phase I. I think they’re opening in the same place where Go Sport used to be but they’ve taken a few more stores around the old Go Sport location including a corner shop so it should be even bigger.

Last weekend I signed up and took part in the first open track event at the Kuwait Motor Town. It was probably the only sport left in Kuwait other than bowling that hadn’t restarted and I couldn’t understand why. It’s a sport where everyone is alone inside their cars driving around an outdoor circuit, so it’s pretty much perfect for social distancing. After taking part in the first event last weekend, I ended up leaving really impressed with the whole experience.

For this COVID era, KMT has introduced some new rules and changes to make things even safer than usual. Here are some of the important ones they’ve introduced:

Number of Participants
The number of participants at a race has been reduced to just 30. Previously it was anywhere from 60 to 90 participants per open track event. This means a lot less people everywhere and even spectators are no longer allowed at the events.

Registration
Previously on arriving to the track, you had to park your car, go into the reception area and wait in line till it’s your turn so you can sign in and collect your tags. You then have to go back to your car and drive up the scrutineering area where a group of guys run a number of safety checks on your car. The new process now is when you enter the parking lot you register at the gate while still in your car. While registering the scrutineering team will check your car and then when they’re done you enter the track. You don’t have to leave your car and really this process was so much more efficient than the previous way, they should permanantly have it this way.

Pitlane Garages
Pre-COVID, you’d enter the pitlane and park in any of the garages you wanted to. Now every garage is assigned to an individual and the separators between the garages are closed. So you basically park in a large garage by yourself and you don’t see anyone or interact with anyone. Every garage has it’s own bathroom and they’ve also provided gloves, masks and hand sanitizer for you.

Briefing
Before a race, every participant needs to attend a briefing session. Previously we’d all squeeze into a tightly packed overcrowded room. Now the number of participants has been reduced down to just 30 people and on top of that, the briefing session has been split into two groups. So there is plenty of social distancing during the briefing.

Other Points
Due to the number of participants only being 30, the track was pretty much empty the whole time with no traffic. KMT have installed new digital flags all around the track so we can now see the various warning flags when they’re shown. KMT now also has a fuel station and they accept Knet!

Really the only negative thing about KMT right now is the lack of proper night lights. They’re using regular street lights around the track which barely light up the track because they need to be positioned behind the safety barriers which are quite a distance from the track. There has been talk every year about getting proper flood lights but it hasn’t happened yet.

As I said at the start of the post I left the event impressed. If there was a local sport that is setting a good example of how to host an event safely during COVID, it’s KMT.

● Burgers take the lead as the most ordered cuisine in Kuwait
● The most expensive late night order wasn’t food
● Kuwait is officially the king of sauces, with extra sauce orders being the highest in the region

The home-grown region leading food and grocery delivery app, talabat, has compiled a list of some of their Kuwaiti customer’s best, weirdest, and wonderful ordering habits of the year. 2020 has been a year that we don’t want to repeat – however that doesn’t mean that we can’t find fun in some of how we’ve used talabat!

Lockdown: What was the most ordered cuisine?
We’ll give you a hint: two buns, salad and a meaty filling. That’s right – burgers! Of the top 20 most-ordered foods during lockdown, the first six, and twelve in total were from burger joints! Now the big question; Burger King, Elevation Burger or McDonalds?

This year, Burger King reigned supreme, featuring six times on the top 20, with the Chicken Royale Meal crowned as the most loved lockdown meal, with 2.5x more orders than the Elevation Burger’s cheeseburger – which came in second place product on our list. McDonald’s was also featured in 20th spot, with their McChicken Medium Meal.

The biggest late night order in Kuwait? 608 KDs
From the tales of the weird and wonderful, we’ve uncovered this little gem. This year’s biggest late night order came in the form of two air conditioners: 1x Hyundai Wall Mounted 24K and 1x Hyundai Wall Mounted 30k.

We’ve heard about the perils (or joys) of late night shopping, but this takes it to the next level!

Kuwait: The undisputed sauce loving champions of the region
It’s official. Kuwaiti’s are the undisputed sauce loving champions in the region. Our top three purchased extra sauces, headlined by the Santa Fe Sauce from Hardees, followed by Mayo and Ketchup Mix Sauce, also from Hardees and Sweet Chilli Sauce from McDonalds were ordered over 330,000 times this year. To put that into context, that’s 125,000 more sauces than the next closest market, Egypt.

Sharing kindness following a few taps
Food and groceries (and air conditioners) were not the only ways that Kuwaiti citizens and residents used talabat – they also used it to donate!

With over 35,000 KD donated during COVID, Kuwaitis have really shown their kindness. Customers also took part of donating to Beirut’s recovery in the #lunchforlebanon campaign. With over 115,000 orders placed during #lunchforlebanon, region-wide, talabat donated 100% off all profits as well as an extra 150,000 euros.

The Assima Mall is a new mall owned by Salhiya popping up in the city across the street from KIPCO Tower and last week I got to check it out. The mall is looking really great so far as you can see in the pictures with lots and lots of daylight coming in through the huge glass roof. The mall is made up of 8 levels and because of the large skylight, even the lower floors get access to natural light.

The most prominent places opening up in Assima are the upmarket French department store Galeries Lafayette, the French retail chain Monoprix, the National Geographic store, a UFC Gym and Cinescape.

Originally meant to be completed this year, the mall is now expected to be completed in April with an opening of Q3 or Q4 of 2021.

A cinema room under construction

Over the weekend I picked up the brand new Porsche Taycan to review. I’ve been curious to try the Taycan ever since it launched because I think it’s the best looking fully electric car on the market right now by far (sorry Tesla owners). I was hoping the color combo of the test drive car was white exterior with a black interior similar to the launch photos, but the car I picked up was a metallic blue with a beige interior. Not the most exciting color combination and I was actually worried it would be difficult to shoot but the shots eventually came out great.

The Taycan is Porsche’s fully electric car. It’s not a hybrid, meaning, it doesn’t run on a combination of electricity and fuel, this is a 100% electric car similar to how Teslas are. My worry with electric cars always obviously is running out of power and being stuck on the side of the road. The Taycan fully charged has a range of over 400km, but when I picked up the car from the dealer, it only had a 77% charge. Kinda sucked cuz it didn’t help with the anxiety of running out of range. When reviewing cars I tend to put on a lot of mileage on the cars very quickly so I can get a proper experience with it. I had a whole day of errands to run and I wasn’t going to let a partially charged vehicle change that. So I decided I’d not focus too much on the range and just enjoy the car.

The interior felt very familiar right away because it still resembled a normal Porsche although all the buttons had been replaced by a large touch screen and the gauges were fully digital. There was a feeling of familiarity because it felt like a regular car and wasn’t stripped out like a Tesla where all the car controls moved to a tablet-like screen. The interior looked hi-tech with three displays, one in front of me where the analog gauges would usually be, a large screen in the center of the dash, and finally a large screen built into the center console which has all the controls. There is an extra option to add a passenger screen which I think would make the interior even more futuristic but the car I drove didn’t have it. I’m generally not a fan of touch screens for controls, but I wasn’t too bothered by the controls on the Taycan. The screen was large enough to make all the buttons big and easy to touch, plus there was haptic feedback so I could tell if I had pressed a button properly or not.

I started off by heading to Shuwaikh to quickly take some photos of the car in case I didn’t have time later that day but also so I could post some photos on my Instagram story. I then headed to Avenues for some Christmas shopping before heading to Bayan and different parts of Salmiya for some more errands. Anytime someone would message me on Instagram to ask me how the car was I had one response and that it was fast. The model I drove was the Taycan Turbo which does 0 to 100 in 3.2 seconds, that’s faster than my Lotus which is a difficult idea to grasp. It’s also not only fast 0 to 100, the car keeps acceleration effortlessly as long as you have your foot down on the power. One cool Porsche feature is the fake electric sound that you can get on the car. Electric cars don’t make sounds but for an extra KD150, Porsche will fit the car with the Electric Sport Sound option which adds a futuristic humming-like sound that makes the car sound like you’d expect an electric car to sound like in an 80s movie. It sounded super cool and I obviously had the option turned on all the time. I tried capturing the sound but didn’t have any luck but you could check out this video on YouTube if you want to hear it.

I ended up driving quite a bit of distance on the car, even headed over the Kuwait bay bridge to the other side to take some more photos of the car and by the time I had finished with the car and brought it back to the dealer, it still had around 28% battery left (120km range). I loved the car and if I was in the market for an electric car the Taycan would be an easy choice for me over the Tesla because of the looks alone. But, I wouldn’t go for the Turbo model which starts from KD47,300. Nobody needs a 4 door sedan to be that fast. Instead, I’d recommend the 4S model which starts from KD33,900. When I built my own car on the Porsche website with all the options I wanted the car came out to KD42,000 which is still way cheaper than the base Turbo model. So that would be my recommendation, get the Taycan 4S pimped out with all the options you want.

Due to the pandemic, all racing at the Kuwait Motor Town track had been put on hold but they’re finally back! There will be two open track events to end the year, one this coming Thursday the 24th, and the next on the 31st. The dates were announced yesterday but tickets only went on sale this morning and sold out in a few minutes. I was literally refreshing the website all morning and so managed to quickly buy tickets for both days, but a lot of people I know either managed to just get a ticket for one day, or weren’t even fast enough to get any tickets at all.

Because of the pandemic, they’ve got new rules for this season:

• Temperature checks will be done at the gate
• Face mask required
• Helmet hire is unavailable (BYOH)
• Only 1 assistant per participant will be allowed on site
• No spectators allowed
• Contactless payment only, no cash accepted

I can’t wait, this is gonna be a great way to end this bizarre year.

Top photo captured by @hamed__ashkanani

At the start of the pandemic, I shut down the events section since everything obviously stopped. But, a few things are starting to pop up and I’m going to start posting about them here and once things really take off, only then reopen the events section again. For now here are a few things taking place this weekend:

Friday
Trashtag Kuwait x Solarity
Sound Healing
Straw Blown Acrylic Pour
Yin Yan Yoga
Kuwait Cricket Desert Championship Finals

Saturday
Saracen Race 2020

If I missed an event let me know.

Pre-Covid we weren’t known for taking care of our environment and now during Covid with everyone staying here things have gotten worse. People here have a terrible habit of littering be it at the beach or in the middle of the desert and with the increase of kashtas, its become even more apparent. So the EPA launched an awareness campaign in the hopes of making people more aware of the garbage they’re leaving behind.

It’s a great short animation with humor which I think works since more people will end up sharing it. But, it’s in Arabic so not all my readers will get it. @EPA_kw

The Touristic Enterprises Company (TEC) is planning to renovate Messilah Beach from the ground up. The club first opened in the late 1980’s and I’ve been to it a few times back in the 90s when I was still in school but haven’t really been there since so don’t really have any attachment to the place.

The new renovated Messilah will contain:
6 Restaurant blocks
Swimming Pool and Wet Recreation areas
Jogging Track
Hard and Soft Landscaping
450 Car Parking spaces

No start or completion date was mentioned but you can check out more renderings of the beach here.

Also found the picture below of the club I’m guessing from the 80s or 90s which I thought looked cool.

Thanks lovelykuwait

Since my Arabic Cartoons from the 80s list did so well I wanted to put together a thorough 80s English Cartoons list. The whole weekend whenever I remembered any cartoon I wrote it down but it still feels like I’ve missed some. But the search did remind me of two very important TV channels growing up. Before satellite TV we only had access to Kuwait TV channels (KTV1 – Arabic, and KTV2 – English) but sometimes when the weather was humid we would pick up Saudi Channel 2 (English) and Dubai Channel 33 (also English).

Anyway here are some of the most memorable cartoons I used to watch in the 80s, if I’ve missed out anything let me know.

Alvin and the Chipmunks
Bionic Six
BraveStarr
Captain Planet
Care Bears
Centurions
Chip N Dale
Dangermouse
Dennis the Menace
Denver the Last Dinosaur
Dinosaucers
Duck Tales
Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids
G.I Joe
Gummi Bears
He-Man
Inspector Gadget
M.A.S.K
Mister T
Pole Position
Popeye And Son
Rainbow Brite
Scooby-Doo And Scrappy-Doo
She-Ra: Princess of Power
Silver Hawks
Speed Racer
Snorks
Tale Spin
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle
The Real Ghostbusters
Thunder Cats
Transformers
Voltron
Yogi Bear

I’ve been stalking the account of Super Robots, a local vintage toys collector on Instagram for about a year now, so when he decided to open a “museum”, I had to pass by and check it out. I put the word museum in quotation marks because it is and it isn’t really a museum. It’s the guy’s private toy collection displayed on shelves in a store, but none of it is for sale. So it’s a museum in the sense that there are things on display that you can’t buy, but that’s the only similarities.

I think my generation is a bit extra nostalgic compared to other generations because of the 1990 Iraqi invasion. This is just my theory but, because of the invasion, I had to leave a lot of my childhood behind when escaping Kuwait. A lot of other kids had to leave stuff behind or were maybe outside of Kuwait during the invasion and had their homes looted. Because so many of us lost the toys we had or grew up with, as we got older we started reacquiring some of our favorite ones we lost. That’s my explanation at least when friends ask me why I’m buying the most random stuff on eBay.

So I completely get toy collectors or any sort of collectors really. Super Robots is a toy collector who decided to take his toys out of storage and display them in a shop. It’s a neat idea and allows people like me interested in old toys to pass by and check them out but, the only issue is, the store is pretty tiny and STACKED. You can barely see anything because there are boxes and boxes of toys stacked up on the shelves. They’re all closed boxes as well so you’re basically checking out the packaging and not the actual toys themselves. And then you have boxes in front of boxes so you’re not even getting to see the full packaging because it’s being covered by another box. The other issue is that it’s located in the basement of Rehab Complex in one of the tight alleyways so it’s not a very inviting location. But this is a start and maybe eventually with enough interest, he could decide to move to a larger space somewhere else.

If you’re interested in passing by the store he’s open from 3PM to 9PM. Shop #183 in the basement of Rehab Complex. Also, make sure you check out his toys on his Instagram account @superrobots.

When I started making my own coffee I watched hundreds of hours on coffee making and coffee machines so I could learn as much as I could about coffee. But, not everyone wants to watch hours of videos and a lot people are actually looking for an activity to do which is why a place like Brewever is interesting.

Brewever is a local coffee academy that gives courses related to coffee. They’re members of the Speciality Coffee Association which means they can hold SCA exams and hand out SCA certificates to those that complete a course. It’s also why I’m guessing their courses are pretty pricey and fairly long. They have different kinds of coffee-related courses depending on what you want to learn about like ‏Sensory Skills, Brewing courses, even Barista skills.

Some local coffee shops hold coffee-making classes every now and then and are usually a lot more affordable so that’s probably a better option for most people. But if you’re really into coffee or want to get a lot more serious about coffee, then you should check out Bewever on Instagram @Bewever

This took a super long time but SOLO Pizza in the city finally expanded their space. They took over the location next door and broken open the wall between the two spaces. Perfect timing with the whole pandemic and all since previously the seating area inside was super tight while now they can comfortably space out all the tables.

This is pretty random but according to the latest InterNations Expat City Ranking 2020, Salmiya was voted the worst out of 66 cities analyzed and described as “a city of unhappy, overworked, and homesick expats”. I mean we do have major issues in Salmiya but no way is it the worst city in the world for expats. I’ve been to Khaitan before, and I’m in Hawalli regularly, and as bad as both those places are I wouldn’t even consider them the worst in the world either.

Welcome to Salmiya, the Kuwait city so unloved by its expat population

Expats in Salmiya say they are unhappy with the local transportation (61st), with their health and the environment (66th), as well as with climate and leisure (66th).

Nearly three in five said they dislike the local leisure options (vs 15 percent worldwide). In the Getting Settled Index (66th), expats do not feel at home and they describe the local population as unfriendly (48 percent vs 17 percent globally), and they are also unhappy with their social life (56 percent vs 24 percent globally). Source

But Salmiya does have issues, a lot of them, which is why over the past 15 years I’ve been half-jokingly asking to be made the mayor of the city. I’d be to Salmiya what Leslie Knope is to Pawnee! It’s hard to imagine anyone is more passionate about the place than I am.

Make me the mayor and I’ll initiate a mass project making Salmiya more pedestrian and bicycle/scooters-friendly by taking back the sidewalk from all the illegal construction, I’d create bike paths that run across the city and turn sandlots into proper parking lots to reduce the cars on the streets. I’d replace all the bins with ones that have lids and I’ll personally lead on a massive beautification project. I’ll also protect old and landmark buildings from demolition and crackdown on all the buildings that have illegally converted their basement to warehouses depriving the building residents of parking. So go out and vote for me in the next election if you want a better Salmiya!

Since there are no live bazaars or markets this year, the annual Winter Craft Market has gone virtual. This weekend, the virtual Winter Craft Market will take place with all the vendors offering a 10% discount.

How does a virtual market work? Simple, all the vendors taking part in the Winter Craft Market are listed on the market’s Instagram account @the_craft_market_kuwait. Scroll through the account and when you find an offering you like, say maybe mugs or Christmas decorations, click through to that vendor’s account. Then you just find something you like and leave a comment or DM the vendor telling them you want it.

As a lot of the items are hand-crafted and one-off unique pieces, once they’re gone they’re gone. Please support your local artists, crafters, and small businesses and check out the market this weekend, it’s taking place on Friday and Saturday. @the_craft_market_kuwait