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This week I basically spent it binge watching the TV series 1923. It’s the prequel to Yellowstone and the sequel to the series 1883. It’s starring Harrison Ford and it’s really really good, like I think it’s my favorite of the three Yellowstone shows.

Other than that I rewatched the movie Se7en for the first time since the 90s. I originally watched it on VHS so rewatching it like 30 years later in HD was fun, and the movie has held up really well. A lot of now really famous people starred in the movie back then including Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Kevin Spacey, and Gwyneth Paltrow. It was also started the career of David Fincher who’s behind movies such as Fight Club, The Social Network, The Girl and the Dragon Tattoo and the series Mindhunter. I highly recommend watching it if you haven’t, it was pretty shocking when it came out in 1995 and still pretty dark today.

Let me know if you’ve watching anything new and interesting.

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

New This Weekend:
Butcher’s Crossing (6.1)
Five Nights at Freddy’s (6.2)
Freelance (5.3)
Headspace (5.4)
How to Save the Immortal (5.2)

Other Movies Showing:
57 Seconds (5.3)
Elevator Game (4.2)
Killers of the Flower Moon (8.6)
PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie (6.1)
Saw X (7.2)
The Canterville Ghost (7.6)
The Creator (7.3)
The Equalizer 3 (6.9)
The Exorcist: Believer (5.1)
The Island (4.3)
The Nun II (6.3)

The classic films below are currently showing at the 1954 Film House:
Coraline (7.7)
The Addams Family (6.9)

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

The weather is finally starting to cool down especially in the evenings which is why the Marina Hotel Kashta is starting their new season.

Their kashta gained in popularity over the past few years due to their location, setup and the different amenities they provide.

Two sessions are available daily, the first from 4PM to 7PM while the second is from 7:30PM till 11PM. Both sessions have different offerings and prices:

Sunset Kashta
Time: 4PM to 7PM
Includes: A set menu that has sliders, pizza, butterfly shrimps, french fries, and dessert.
Price: 15KD per person

Evening Kashta
Time: 7:30PM to 11PM
Includes: Live cooking stations featuring pasta, shawarma, pizza, BBQ and burgers. Desserts are also included as well as a selection of cold and hot drinks.
Price: KD19 per person

If you’re interested, you can book by calling them on 60074802 or by clicking here.

This is the most random thing ever, I can’t tell if they’re trolling or not. YouTube

Don’t miss the Draconid meteor shower tonight.

The shower will be visible just after sunset and throughout the evening hours. Expect to see around 10 meteors streak across the sky per hour which is less than other showers, but the advantage is, they’re going to be moving slowly. The Draconid meteors are know to move slower than other showers so they should be visible for one or two seconds instead of disappearing in a blink of an eye.

You don’t need a telescope or any special equipment to view the shower, but if you want the best viewing conditions then it helps to be as far from artificial light as possible.

This week I started watching Gen V, the new show on Prime Video that takes place in the same world as The Boys. The best way I can describe it I guess without spoiling it much is if Euphoria and The Boys had a baby you’d end up with Gen V. Like The Boys, it’s also a very violent and bloody superhero series but this one takes place at a super hero college and deals with younger heroes who are still discovering their powers and abilities. It’s really fun and as of this post there are only 3 episodes out which I binge watched on the same night. I definitely recommend it.

What did you watch this week?

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

New This Weekend:
Accused (6.5)
Desperation Road (N/A)
Saw X (7.2)
The Canterville Ghost (7.6)
The Inseparables (7.5)

Other Movies Showing:
13 Exorcisms (4.3)
A Haunting in Venice (6.7)
Blue Beetle (6.8)
Cats Museum (4.4)
Elemental (6.8)
Expend4bles (5.1)
Gran Turismo (7.0)
PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie (6.1)
R.A.D.A.R.: The Adventures of the Bionic Dog (5.4)
Retribution (5.3)
Sound of Freedom (7.8)
Supercell (4.3)
The Creator (7.3)
The Equalizer 3 (6.9)
The Kill Room (6.9)
The Nun II (6.3)

The classic films below are currently showing at the 1954 Film House:
Coraline (7.7)
The Addams Family (6.9)
The Thing (8.2)

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

Ok not sure how I just found out about Gilly and Keeves but I spent all night yesterday watching clips on YouTube laughing out loud. Really silly and incredibly funny so I’m probably going to spend this weekend binge watching them or I might finally download Zelda Tears of the Kingdom and play it since I still haven’t done that.

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

New This Weekend:
13 Exorcisms (4.3)
All Fun and Games (4.6)
PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie (6.1)
Supercell (4.3)
The Creator (7.3)
The Kill Room (6.9)

Other Movies Showing:
A Haunting in Venice (6.7)
Blue Beetle (6.8)
Cats Museum (4.4)
Elemental (6.8)
Expend4bles (5.1)
Gran Turismo (7.0)
It Lives Inside (5.5)
Oppenheimer (8.7)
R.A.D.A.R.: The Adventures of the Bionic Dog (5.4)
Rabbit Academy: Mission Eggpossible (5.4)
Retribution (5.3)
Sound of Freedom (7.8)
The Equalizer 3 (6.9)
The Nun II (6.3)

The classic films below are currently showing at the 1954 Film House:
Casablanca (8.5)
Coraline (7.7)
Space Jam (6.5)
The Addams Family (6.9)
The Thing (8.2)

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

I’m finally caught up with all the episodes of Yellowstone so started catching up to Billions. Billions used to be one of my favorite shows but this season I’m not really feeling it much so just powering through it for now. There are a couple of TV shows I added to my need to watch list this past week:

Extrapolations
This show seems interesting but haven’t started it yet. Lots of big name actors and it’s based in the future so has the potential to be great if it wasn’t for the fact the show deals with climate change and if its one of those shows with “a message” I’m really not gonna like it.

Lessons in Chemistry
This show caught my attention because of the aesthetics and the fact it stars Brie Larson. It’s not out yet, comes out next month.

Frasier
I’m also really looking forward to the new Frasier which comes out next month as well. Hopefully won’t suck because I have really fond memories of the show.

What’s on your “need to watch” list?

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

New This Weekend:
Expend4bles (5.1)
It Lives Inside (5.5)
R.A.D.A.R.: The Adventures of the Bionic Dog (5.4)

Other Movies Showing:
A Haunting in Venice (6.7)
Blue Beetle (6.8)
Cats Museum (4.4)
Elemental (6.8)
Gran Turismo (7.0)
Oppenheimer (8.7)
Rabbit Academy: Mission Eggpossible (5.4)
Retribution (5.3)
Sound of Freedom (7.8)
The Equalizer 3 (6.9)
The Nun II (6.3)

The classic films below are currently showing at the 1954 Film House:
Casablanca (8.5)
Space Jam (6.5)

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

The Ministry of Interior announced yesterday that starting September 1st, traffic fines will be issued digitally. This applies to fines given by the cops, for example if you park illegally. Instead of writing the ticket on a piece of paper and then having someone manually enter it into the system, the cops will now be able to issue the ticket digitally and you should get the fine instantaneously.

Problem is, to pay the fines you have to use the Sahel app which as of now is only in Arabic. I can read Arabic (slowly) and it took me some time yesterday to find the section for checking and paying fines so no idea how non-Arabic speakers are going to manage. I guess through a friend.

Yesterday the Associated Press uploaded the short video above of a group of Kuwaiti divers who are on a mission to clean up Kuwait’s seabed and improve its marine environment. According to Walid Al-Fadhel who is the team’s leader, they were able to salvage 172 boats and yachts.

The video was only uploaded in 360p resolution for some reason so it’s not great quality, but it’s good enough to tell their story.

So last week I asked for recommendations of shows to watch on my 6 hour flight to Paris. I ended up watching two things, Cocaine Bear and binge watching Poker Face. Cocaine Bear was one of the best movies I’ve watched in a long time, it was hilarious, really silly, had lots of famous actors and was a lot of fun to watch. It’s extremely underrated! Highly recommended.

Poker Face is a Peacock original show and I started watching the first episode just to see if I liked it or not and surprisingly it was great. Not sure how many episodes I ended up watching back to back, maybe 4 before I finally arrived to Paris. I’m heading back to Kuwait today and I’m hoping to continue binge watching it on the way back.

Now Barbie. I watched it a few days ago here in Paris, obviously the uncensored version although now that I watched it I have no clue what was censored and why it was banned to begin with. I focused so hard throughout the film trying to figure out what was so controversial and I have no idea honestly, like zero clue. There wasn’t even a kiss in the whole movie, no gay characters or lesbians, there was nothing! Maybe one scene with a rainbow in the sky in the background but no flags, trans or even bad language. WHY WAS THIS BANNED? I am so confused!

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

New This Weekend:
Blue Beetle (6.8)
Haunting of the Queen Mary (4.9)
I’ll Be Watching (3.9)
Retribution (5.7)

Other Movies Showing:
Cats Museum (4.4)
Elemental (6.8)
Gran Turismo (7.0)
Haunted Mansion (6.3)
Meg 2: The Trench (6.0)
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (8.2)
Oppenheimer (8.7)
Sound of Freedom (7.8)
The Adventures of Jurassic Pet (3.7)
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (6.5)
The Secret Kingdom (5.0)
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (7.4)

The classic films below are currently showing at the 1954 Film House:
Inside Man (6.6)
Flubber (5.3)
Training Day (7.7)

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

News on an Australian film being banned in Kuwait has been popping up on my news feed all morning. A horror film called “Talk to Me” is supposedly banned in Kuwait because one of the actors identifies as nonbinary and is a transmasculine (a female that identifies as a male). According to the news articles there isn’t any LGBTQ+ content in the film, and there is also no mention of the actor’s gender identity, it’s just banned because one of the supporting actors is trans. Source

I’m now curious if, moving forward, all movies that contain openly gay actors will also be banned in Kuwait. If X-Men or Lord of the Rings came out today would they both be banned because they star Sir Ian McKellen who is openly gay? There are a lot of gay Hollywood actors and directors so I’m really interested how this is going to play out.

33 years ago on August 2nd 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Abduljabbar Mansoor Marafi, an amateur radio operator decided to stay behind with his family and that decision eventually led him to become the last voice from Kuwait.

I hadn’t heard of his story until very recently and since its the anniversary of the invasion I wanted to share it since I found it really interesting from a technology point of view, but also the bravery involved. Marafi had been operating a sophisticated Radio Bulletin Board System (RBBS) using a personal computer and amateur radio set equipment long time before the invasion. He had even setup backup power supply in case of power failure which turned out to also be useful during the invasion.

When Iraq invaded, Marafi refused to flee hoping he could help his country by staying in Kuwait. During the early days of the invasion, Marafie used his radio to keep people outside of Kuwait in the loop with what was happening here. He was basically blogging before blogging was even a thing. When Iraq start cutting off communication in Kuwait from the outside world, Marafi’s radio system became even more important.

The easiest way I can think of to describe Marafi’s bulletin board system is to imagine a very basic version of email. You would send a message to a specific radio call sign (Marafi’s was 9K2DZ), and when that person later connects to their bulletin board system, they would see what messages they had waiting for them. I’ve embedded a video below from YouTube demoing this.

News of Marafi’s bulletin service started spreading by word of mouth in Kuwait. Families began giving Marafi messages to send to their relatives abroad, and families abroad started contacting radio amateurs in the countries they lived in asking them to send messages to their relatives in Kuwait through Marafi’s bulletin board. In addition to helping transmit messages between families, Marafie also used his radio system to expose to the outside world the horrors that were being committed by the Iraqis in Kuwait.

When Iraqis found out news was leaking out of Kuwait they suspected it was due to radio amateurs since all other sort of communication had already been cut. The Iraqis then started interrogating Kuwaiti radio amateurs and confiscating their equipment, including Marafi’s. But Marafi was expecting that and had set up a complete radio setup behind a false wall in his basement. The setup outside that was confiscated was mostly broken or old equipment.

The full story of Abduljabbar Marafi and his radio system is too big to tell in all its detail but if you want to find out more you can google his call sign 9K2DZ. Sadly, Marafi passed away last November.

I’ve uploaded a PDF of an article taken from the September 1991 issue of Alam Al-Computer. I borrowed some of the information in this post from that article and it’s really interesting to read. You can download it here.

Has anyone watched the documentary ‘After Work‘? I just found out about it now and only because Kuwait is part of the documentary. You can watch the trailer below, Kuwait makes an appearance 47 seconds in.

Thanks Dina

There’s an old story from back in the 70s about a man who wasn’t dressed well walking into the Rolls Royce dealer in Kuwait to check out the cars. The man asked the salesman how much the car cost and the salesman replied that he wouldn’t be able to afford it. The man left the dealership upset but came up with an idea for payback. A few days later he went to the dealership again and purchased the Rolls Royce. He then registered it as a taxi cab and had it painted orange with a white stripe.

The man then put the taxi into service and was regularly picking up passengers and he even used to park it in front of the dealership just to mess with them even more. Eventually the dealership reached out to the man apologizing to him and offered to buy back the car from him and give him a more expensive one in return.

The man accepted and he handed the orange Rolls Royce to the dealership and got a new one in return. The orange Rolls was thought to have been repainted back to its original color and then resold, but, the car was recently found at a scrapyard in Khafji, Saudi Arabia, complete in its original orange paint and still had the original red license plates!

That’s pretty insane! You can check out the video by Bin Zuayd on YouTube embeded above or visit his Instagram account @khalid_eisaa to watch it there.

Last night I finished watching the last episode of The Idol on HBO and I loved it. It stars Johnny Depp’s daughter Lily-Rose Depp as Jocelyn and The Weeknd as Tedros, both of which are the main characters on the show. The Idol is also created and directed by Sam Levinson who was behind the other great (and controversial) HBO series Euphoria. He’s the reason why I watched this show since I was a huge fan of Euphoria and wanted to see more of his work.

The Idol is a drama series about Jocelyn, a pop star aiming to reclaim her fame after a breakdown. Her life takes a turn when she meets Tedros, a nightclub owner with a dark past. The show explores her journey in the music industry and personal life.

The Idol is disturbing. It isn’t a show you binge watch since you want time between the episodes to just recharge. The Weeknd’s character “Tedros” is also the worst, a lot of people have said he’s a bad actor but I don’t think thats true, I think they just really really hate his character and it’s The Weeknd’s acting that brings it to life. And I’m not saying that because I’m a fan of his or anything, I actually didn’t care much for him before this show and I even only realized now while writing this post that it’s actually written The Weeknd and not The Weekend.

If you check the shows rating on IMDB it actually has a 5 out of 10 rating which is pretty terrible. But that’s understandable, so ignore it. The show isn’t for everyone and going through the reviews you can easily spot that. If you have the stomach for it and are willing to plow through the shows 5 episodes, I think you’re in for something really different and great.