Search: “cop”

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 was looking for something when I came across a journal by ARUP, the British engineering and architect firm. The journal was from 1979 and discusses in great technical detail their involvement in the construction of Salhiya Complex. If you’re into this kind of thing, here is a link to the PDF.

For everyone else, here is a video of Salhiya Complex taken in 1984. (starts at minute 4:40)

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.

I don’t recall coming across a photo of Kuwait’s shoreline that was older than this. I was doing some research for an upcoming post when I went down a rabbit hole and ended up coming across a report from 1903 that contained photos, maps and some interesting information on Kuwait. One of the photos was the image above of Kuwait’s shore which I hadn’t seen before, but there were also some other ones inside I also hadn’t seen which I’ve shared below.

The report is made up of 2 volumes and the original copy is part of the British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers . The report was compiled by Captain H. H. Dowding after his visit to Kuwait during the winter of 1901-02 while the photographs were supplied by Baron Curzon of Kedleston.

You can actually download the whole report as a PDF from the Qatar Digital Library. If you want to check it out, click here.

The popular car vlogger Shmee was in Kuwait last week to film the car collection of Dr. Adel Quttainah, the plastic surgeon. I had assumed it was his first visit to Kuwait but in the video he mentions it was his second time although I couldn’t find any details of his first visit. If you’re into cars, check out his video on YouTube

Last week Kuwait came second in the IIHF World Championship Division IV, but a couple of days ago the Kuwait under 18 team lost 57-0 to Thailand in the opening game of the U-18 Asian and Oceania Championship. source

57 to 0!

It’s now considered to be the 5th worst beatdown in international hockey history. Kuwait only managed 1 shot at Thailands goal while Thailand had 122 shots on Kuwait.

Keep in mind hockey is composed of 3 periods of 20mins each, so Thailand basically scored 1 goal a minute. Pretty crazy but the good news is, it’s not the worst beatdown ever. The worst beatdown ever goes to the South Korea vs Thailand match from 1998 where South Korea beat Thailand 92-0. 57-0 would put the Kuwait game 5th on the list.

Kuwait’s goalie actually managed to make 65 saves, so the blame can’t all go to him. This was also Kuwait’s debut at the tournament.

The tournament is taking place in Uzbekistan, with nine teams – Thailand, Kuwait, India, Indonesia, Iran, Macau, Malaysia, Mongolia and the United Arab Emirates. You can watch the full game above.

Update: In their second game, Kuwait were losing 17-0 against Uzbekistan in the first period when they decided to forfeit the game.

Sprinkles & Spice is a locally produced and recorded podcast by two girls, Zainab and Mia. They’ve been doing it now for around 6 months and it’s mostly either just the two of them talking about girly stuff, or they have a guest on to interview.

Their most recently episode with Ali Al Khudhair (above) was fun to watch, but then again Ali is pretty entertaining himself. I think the first time I saw him on TikTok he was selling banak at a roundabout at night, or at least I think it was him, I thought it was pretty funny. Anyway, if you’re looking for a fun and light hearted local podcast to listen to, check the girls out on Instagram @sprinklesandspicepodcast or on YouTube.

I’ve only been drinking coffee since 2016, and since then I’ve been mostly been making my coffee at home. I started off with a De’Longhi bean to cup coffee machine, and then later upgraded to the Breville Oracle, followed by the Rocket Appartamento and then finally to a La Marzocco Linea Mini a couple of years ago. Along the way I upgraded my grinders as well, the first two machines had grinders built in, but with the Appartamento I got a Rocket Faustino Grinder for it, and with the Linea Mini I got the Mahlkönig X54 grinder.

I didn’t end up liking the X54 at all even though I love the Mahlkönig brand (they make some of the best commercial grinders). The X54 wasn’t very consistent, it was slow, and the grind adjustment knob felt horrible, the whole tactile experience actually was poor. Compared to the experience of using the commercial quality Linea Mini machine, the X54 felt very plasticky. So I decided I’d upgrade my grinder to one that would match the quality of my coffee machine. I did a lot of research and had eventually settled on the Ceado E37s.

I found a website online that would ship it to Kuwait and after their Black Friday discount and removing VAT, the price shipped to Kuwait was 525KD. Not cheap, but it was commercial quality, had large 83mm burrs and highly recommended by reviewers online. Just as I was about to make the plunge, I found out about the Mahlkönig E65S GbW. GbW stood for grind by weight, it was a new grinder by Mahlkönig where you could set the weight of coffee you wanted grinded, and then just place the portafilter into the machine and it would grind enough beans till it hit your weight. It was also fast, commercial grade, had a large adjustment ring as well as a large digital screen. It wasn’t cheap, online I found it for around 690KD after discount shipped to Kuwait, but since I knew the local dealer, I figured I could try and get a better deal locally.

The local dealer referred me to Coffee Tools who were selling the machine for a whopping 836KD (they since dropped it down to a more reasonable 731KD). I tried to work out a barter deal but that didn’t pan out but they did offer me a 25% discount which brought the price down from 836KD to 627KD. It was around 70KD cheaper than the price I found online so I decided to pull the trigger and get it (along with a much shorter 250g hopper). It was the best decision I made.

The E65S is such an incredible grinder. Firstly performance wise, it’s fast grinding out 18g of coffee in under 6 seconds (compared to 18-20 seconds of the X54). It’s also been really consistent and I’ve been using it daily since January. I don’t adjust the grind settings as much as I used to, and if I do it’s generally minor adjustments. It’s also really easy to adjust the grind size since the adjustment ring is large and the screen displays a digital read out of the distance between the two burrs. So I have my baseline set at 0.094mm and I generally adjust anywhere between 0.088 and 0.0096mm. It’s minor adjustments which I can do accurately because of the digital read out. But, the best feature is grind by weight. I use 18g of beans for my coffee, with regular grinders you use a timer to measure that out. So for example with my previous grinder, 18 seconds would grind around 18g of coffee, sometimes it would grind 16g in that time, sometimes 19g. It wasn’t a very efficient workflow either. You’d first put the portafilter on the scale and reset it to 0g, you’d then place portafilter in the grinder and have it grind for 18 seconds, you then put the portafilter on the scale again and see how much coffee it grinder, if its under 18g you have to put it back in grinder and manually grind a bit more coffee, if it’s more than 18g then you have to remove some coffee. It was a slow process and messy. The new workflow is so much better because of the grind by weight feature. All I have to do is place the portafilter into the grinder, and the grinder takes over and does all the calculations for me. As soon as I place the portafilter into the machine it starts grinding the coffee while measuring the weight. I think I read somewhere it does 6,000 calculations a second. Once the machine grinds 18g of coffee out, it stops and flashes green to let me know it hit the weight.

My coffee making process in the morning is a much more pleasant experience. I know a lot of people won’t understand or care about any of this, but as I’ve gotten older and I can afford nicer things, I’ve started caring about my experiences with objects a lot more. It could be a fork, it could be a car, I just like the experience of using nice things. My grinder and coffee machine are the first things I interact with in the morning. Then it’s my computer and then it’s my car. So having a good coffee making experience, then sitting in front of a fast computer with fast internet followed by driving to work in a 1970 Alfa Romeo, it’s really a great way to start the day. So would I recommend this grinder, yes. Do I recommend investing in expensive coffee equipment, for most people no. But if you enjoy using nice equipment and like the process of making coffee then yes. It’s actually cheaper to spend 3,000KD on coffee equipment than to have two coffees a day at a coffee shop. If you have 2 coffees a day, thats around KD1,460 you’re spending a year. So you’ll make your money back pretty quickly making coffee at home. If you’re married and your wife also drinks coffee then you’re going to make your money back twice as fast. And a commercial grade coffee machine is going to last a pretty long time at home.

I also highly recommend La Marzocco in Kuwait, their customer service department is one of the best I’ve experienced in Kuwait. Because they’re commercial machines, anytime I have an issue I’m treated like a coffee shop where any downtime is bad for business. I usually get a service person over either the same day if I report a problem in the morning, or the next day if I report a problem in the evening. So 5 stars to them.

Yesterday someone on Reddit shared a video he took at a beach in Abu Halifa. The video shows a guy driving an SUV (Toyota FJ Cruiser) carelessly on a beach when he suddenly loses control and the car flips over throwing the driver out.

That original post disappeared but not before the video quickly going viral locally. It even started going viral online with one post getting 54,000 up votes and a reel on Instagram getting over 5 million views.

Supposedly the car was stolen and the driver was later apprehended although I can’t find a news site verifying that information. If you haven’t watched the video or if you want to watch the full unedited video, I’ve uploaded it to YouTube and shared it in this post.

This year’s World Happiness Report is out and Kuwait has moved up the list and is now the 13th happiest country in the world. This is the highest spot I’ve seen Kuwait since I started following the report back in 2012, and now outs Kuwait ahead of countries like the UK, US, and Canada.

Kuwait was out of the rankings last year for lack of surveys for a three-year period, so this year’s ranking is based only on the 2023 survey.

The happiest country in the world is Finland, while the unhappiest place is Afghanistan in 143 with Lebanon right behind in 142nd. Here is how Kuwait compares with some other countries:

1 – Finland
13 – Kuwait
15 – Canada
20 – UK
22 – UAE
23 – USA
28 – Saudi Arabia
32 – Oman
62 – Bahrain
126 – India
127 – Egypt
142 – Lebanon
N/A – Qatar

The results are based on surveys from people in more than 140 countries who are answering questions regarding their overall satisfaction with their lives. The study also takes into account six key variables including GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and corruption.

For the full list head to the website worldhappiness.report

Not sure why, but putting together this annual list of Ramadan buffets in Kuwait was exhausting this year. I think it’s definitely me since everyone answering the phone this year was actually prompt. Just a quick example, I realized I didn’t have Holiday Inn on my list so I sent them a DM at 7:30AM this morning and they replied back a minute later. Everyone seems to be on top of their game this year which made my life easier.

As usual, I’ve also highlighted the price variation from the previous year if applicable. You’ll find the variation in brackets after the price. More places increased their prices than decreased. The highest increase was Stambul at the Grand Hyatt, they increased their buffet price by KD5 this year. The biggest decrease was KD2 and four places did that.

Below is the full list divided into two parts, hotels and restaurants. If I missed a place let me know in the comments. I’m looking for really cheap buffets to add, I have a few listed but if you know of a place where the buffet is less than KD5, let me know in the comments.

HOTELS

Al Jahra Copthorne Hotel & Resort – Taima’a Restaurant
Buffet Price: KD9 (-0.900)
Telephone: 24590000

Courtyard by Marriott – Atrium
Buffet Price: KD16 (+1.000)
Telephone: 22997000

Crowne Plaza – Al Ahmadi Restaurant
Buffet Price: KD16 (-2.000)
Telephone: 1848111

Crowne Plaza – Al Noukhaza Restaurant
Buffet Price: KD17 (-2.000)
Telephone: 1848111

Crowne Plaza – Sakura Restaurant
Buffet Price: KD18 (Weekends Only)
Set Menu Price: KD14 (Weekdays Only)
Telephone: 1848111

Four Seasons – Jawaher Tent
Buffet Price: KD26 (+1.000)
Telephone: 22006000

Grand Hyatt – Stambul
Buffet Price: KD20 (+5.000)
Telephone: 22007698

Grand Majestic Hotel
Buffet Price: KD8
Telephone: 22254700

Hilton Garden Inn – The Avenues
Buffet Price: KD20
Telephone: 22262000

Hilton Resort – Teatro Restaurant
Buffet Price: KD19.9
Telephone: 22256222

Holiday Inn – Al Diwan Restaurant
Buffet Price: KD15.950
Telephone: 1847777

Inn & GO Hotel – Al Dallah Restaurant
Buffet Price: KD7.5 (+1.000)
Telephone: 22436686

Jumeirah Messilah Beach – Badria Tent
Buffet Price: KD22 (+1.000)
Telephone: 22269600

Jumeirah Messilah Beach – Garden Cafe
Buffet Price: KD22 (indoors) KD24 (outdoors)
Telephone: 22269600

Kuwait Continental Hotel – Darbar Restaurant
Buffet Price: KD5.5
Telephone: 22527300

Marina Hotel
Buffet Price: KD16
Telephone: 22230030

Millennium Hotel – Lamar International Restaurant
Buffet Price: KD15
Telephone: 22050505

Movenpick – Free Zone – Bays Restaurant
Buffet Price: KD13.9 (+1.900)
Telephone: 66100710

Movenpick – Al Bida’a – Breeze Restaurant
Buffet Price: KD15 (indoors) KD17 (outdoors)
Telephone: 22253100

Radisson Blu – Al Bustan Restaurant
Buffet Price: KD18.5
Telephone: 25673000

Safir Hotel – Fintas
Buffet Price: KD13.9 (+1.000)
Telephone: 25455555

St Regis – Diamond Ballroom Tent
Buffet Price: KD28
Telephone: 22422055

Symphony Style Hotel
Buffet Price: KD12 (-2.000)
Telephone: 25770000

The Regency Kuwait – Silk Road Restaurant
Buffet Price: KD24 (+1.000)
Telephone: 25766666

Waldorf Astoria – Al Kubbar
Buffet Price: KD27 (+1.000)
Telephone: 24774414

RESTAURANTS

Almayass
Set Menu Price: KD11.5 (-0.500)
Telephone: 25761001

Assaha Lebanese Restaurant
Buffet Price: KD12.5 (-0.500)
Telephone: 22533377

Avanti Palace
Set Menu Price: KD4.750
Telephone: 25751081

Babel
Set Menu Price: KD14.950 (-0.050)
Telephone: 22081111

Baker & Spice
Set Menu Price: KD12.5
Telephone: 96962816

Big C Restaurant & Cafe
Buffet Price: KD1.900
Telephone: 65683111

Dar Hamad
Buffet Price: KD12 (360 Mall) KD16 (Gulf Road)
Telephone: 22275555

Dean & Deluca
Set Menu Price: KD9.750 (Min 4 People)
Telephone: 22242224

Em Sherif
Set Menu Buffet Price: KD25
Telephone: 90977997

Francescas At The Top
Set Menu Price: KD18
Telephone: 90003858

Gulf Royal Chinese
Buffet Price: KD8.5
Telephone: 22622770

IKEA
Buffet Price: KD2.95 (+1.000)
Telephone: 1840408

Jihan Khanah
Buffet Price: KD10
Telephone: 1819991

Joori Min Beirut
Buffet Price: KD12 (-2.000)
Telephone: 22062068

Kuwait Towers
Buffet Price: KD15 (+1.000)
Telephone: 24965500

Leila Min Lebnen
Set Menu Price: KD15
Telephone: 22996414

Mughal Mahal – Hawally
Buffet Price: KD7.45
Telephone: 22626782

Palm Palace
Buffet Price: KD11.5 (+0.500)
Telephone: 67009575

Paul
Set Menu Price: KD10.5 (+2.000)
Telephone: 22208204

Saraya Palace
Buffet Price: KD9.5
Telephone: 25712998

Vapiano
Set Menu Price: KD7.950 (+1.000)
Telephone: 22597171

Villa Fayrouz
Buffet Price: KD12
Telephone: 22650052

Wok and Grill
Buffet Price: KD2.995 (-0.505)
Telephone: 64440089

This post was supposed to be a silly one, but after I started writing it I went down a rabbit hole and found some interesting information, so bear with me.

A couple of weeks ago I got access to Tareq Rajab Museums’ private photography archive, and part of their collection were the family photos of the Dicksons. While going through those photos, I came across a number of photos of their dogs. They were beautiful shots and I joked that they were probably the oldest photos of pet dogs taken in Kuwait. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that was probably true. How many people in Kuwait had cameras back in the 1920s let alone one they’d use to take random photos of their dog? Not many.

I found five beautiful photos, some taken outside the Kuwait wall which you can clearly see in the backdrop of the photos. H.R.P Dickson lived in Kuwait with his wife Violet Dickson, and daughter Zahra Freeth from the 1920s until the 1940s.

I started off by trying to find the names of their two dogs, so I took out my copy of H.R.P Dickson’s “The Arab of the Desert” to see if he mentions them anywhere, and ended up finding a whole chapter where he talks about Salukis. Turns out they were popular dogs in Kuwait at that time and mostly used for hunting. Also, unlike other dogs, Salukis were not considered “najis” (unclean) so were allowed to enter the tent and lie on the rugs and mats. But, Dickson never mentioned his dogs, so I started to think maybe they weren’t his.

I kept digging and it led me to buying the book “Saluki: The Desert Hound and the English Travelers Who Brought It to the West“. In it there are a few pages that talk about Dickson’s dogs and turns out they actually did get two Saluki dogs in 1929 while in Kuwait. The dogs accompanied H.R.P Dickson everywhere he went because he found them to be a good conversation starter with tribesmen, and his wife Violet was mostly responsible for walking them daily. I couldn’t find the names of the dogs, but at least I got verification they were in fact their pets.

I believe the young girl pictured above is their daughter Zahra.

Update: I managed to find out the names of the dogs! Brian Duggan, the author of Saluki: The Desert Hound and the English Travelers Who Brought It to the West dug up photos Zahra had sent him and on the photos she had written the names and the dates of two male salukis, Dhabaan and Khataaf.

Brian also discovered that in the book The Arab of the Desert, HRP Dickson mentions the name of his female saluki as well, Turfa.

The largest and most prestigious cat show in the Middle East is taking place this weekend in Kuwait. The 2024 K-Cats Show is taking place at the Boulevard Ballroom tomorrow Friday, February 16th, and on Saturday February 17th.

The show is held in association with the prestigious Cat Fanciers’ Association (CFA) with judges coming in from the US and Europe for this event.

The show starts at 1PM tomorrow and 10AM on Saturday. If you’re looking for something random and unique to do this weekend, this is it.

For more info, click here.

I went to the show back in 2016 and thought it was fun, so definitely not going to miss it this year.

Two episodes of Masters of the Air is out on AppleTV+ and I watched both this week. The first episode was pretty slow and not that great, but things picked up in the second episode. As I’ve previously mentioned, I watched both Band of Brothers and The Pacific in preparation for Masters of the Air which is considered the third companion to the series. I feel it’s still too soon to judge the show with just two episodes out, so not sure how it already has an 8.0 on IMDB, but in any case, I’m looking forward to the third episode.

Let us know in the comments if you’ve watched anything interesting this week.

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

New This Weekend:
Argylle (6.2)
Cult Killer (5.3)
Riki Rhino (5.8)
The 100 Candles Game: The Last Possession (7.2)
Zodi & Tehu – Princes of the Desert (6.1)

Other Movies Showing:
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (6.0)
Bad Connection (5.8)
Confidential Informant (4.1)
Migration (7.5)
Mother, May I? (5.2)
No Way Up (5.3)
Thabo and the Rhino Case (8.1)
The Beekeeper (6.8)
Wish (5.8)
Wonka (7.4)

The classic films below are currently showing at the 1954 Film House:
Titanic (7.9)
The numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at the time of publishing.