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It’s starting to look like one of those abandoned Soviet parks. On the bright side, they’re building a new Entertainment City soon in its place although as a nostalgic person I just wish they keep the park as is and just refurbish it.

Thanks Alex

Post by Tarek J

While preparing my obligatory year-end list for the best films of 2019, I figured it only relevant to reflect on the past decade as we entered 2020. In doing so, I decided to do a little extra work this year and give you guys a few lists leading up to my “best of 2019” , starting with the 15 best films of the decade 2010-2019. Before jumping in, let’s just state the obvious and say that this is an impossible task as every year brings us tons of great films, so take ten years and select this handful was way more stressful than I imagined:

15) Under the Skin
14) Roma
13) Parasite
12) Arrival
11) The Grand Budapest Hotel

10) Inception
Every decade or so comes a film that catches the audience off guard and breaks what they think is possible with cinema. In the 90’s, it was watching Trinity escape the agents in the opening of The Matrix that made us all realize we were in for something we’ve never seen before (and the rest of the film just got more incredible). In the 00’s, it was watching Sméagol have a conversation with his alter ego Gollum in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. And now in the 10’s, it’s watching a zero-G fight happening in a rotating hallway in Christopher Nolan’s Inception that defined the shift in cinema. From the bombastic trailer (which launched a genre of horn blasting Bwaaam trailer soundtracks), to the incredibly complex plot, the vast visuals, and the notional core in the film, Inception became one of the most unforgettable movie-going experiences for all who watched it. Some can argue there are better films that deserve this slot, but none were as effective or influential as this.

9) Amour
Moving on from the gigantic Inception, my number 9 is the tiny and intimate masterpiece from Austrian auteur Michael Hanneke, Amour. A heartbreaking and harrowing tale of love under the worst circumstances, Amour was one of the few foreign films of the decade that crossed over to the mainstream due to nothing more than its cinematic perfection. Equally shocking and moving, it’s a landmark in foreign cinema and the best film in a filmmakers impressive career.

8) Moonlight
Another small film, made famous for being the actual Oscar winner in 2018 although La La Land had been mentioned by mistake first, Moonlight bring the introduction of an entirely new voice to cinema, Barry Jenkins, The film is beautiful, touching, cool, stylish and different than most other films out there, the cinematography is gorgeous, but it’s the raw and real emotions on display that elevate this film and makes it one of the very few Best Picture winners that actually deserved it.

I knew we had at least one automated parking facility in Kuwait (at The Palms) but I didn’t know we also had the largest one in the world. The parking lot of Al-Jahra Court Complex is fully automated and provides 2,314 parking spaces.

The automated parking facility provides 3 times as many car parking spaces as it would in a regular car park of the same volume – and only takes around 177 seconds for car retrieval (source). If you want to see how it works watch the short video on top. Pretty random tidbit for you guys today.

Thanks Mrs. Mohammad

I haven’t been this excited about a new place opening up in quite a bit but last night I passed by Smash Hub and I had a blast. So much fun that I’m actually headed back there tonight again.

Smash Hub houses two games:

Smash Therapy
This is why I basically dropped by. Their Smash Therapy section is composed of two rooms where you go into and destroy stuff. You have different packages you can choose from, I ended up choosing the Troublemaker in which they provided me with 12 glass cups and 1 electronic item to smash. I could choose between a receiver or printer and ended up going with the printer. You can also destroy other items like a TV but at an additional cost. Once you select your items they set it up in the room and provide you with disposable overalls and protective gear to wear. You also get to choose two weapons of choice, I ended up going with a sledgehammer and a baseball bat. I was tempted to go with an axe but figured with my clumsiness I might not leave the room in one piece. Finally, I also got to choose my on smash playlist which was a nice surprise. I didn’t have much time to think but I think I made the right choices:

Beastie Boys – Sabotage
Rage Against the Machine – Bulls on Parade
Nirvana – Rape Me

Once inside the room they take you through some basic rules and then leave you to it. I have to say, this was so insanely fun. It didn’t take long to smash 12 glass cups and a printer, in fact, I didn’t even get past my first song on the playlist, but damn it was fun. After I was done I told the guys they should create a monthly membership package since I’d love to drop by once a week just to vent out on a flatscreen TV. Below is a video I shot of the guy before me smashing some glass cups. Even smashing something so small and fragile like a glass cup was fun. I also have a short video of the guy smashing a TV with an axe, it’s a vertical video though and you can watch that here.

Axe Throwing
The other activity Smash Hub offers is axe throwing. I was just very recently having a conversation about this with a friend since it’s an activity thats gaining popularity in the States right now and I was telling them someone should bring it to Kuwait. Well it’s here now. It’s similar to throwing darts except you throw an axe.

I tried it out and it wasn’t as much fun as smashing a printer, but maybe if you’re with a group of friends it’s more enjoyable. Also maybe with lots of beer and loud music.

So lets talk prices. They currently have launch prices which are as follows:

Smash’n’nGo: 6KD for a dozen glassware or a dozen axe throws

Therapy Pack
Troublemaker: 12 glasses + 1 electronic (10KD)
Therapy box up to 2 people: 24 glasses + 2 electronics (20KD)

Axe Pack
Smaxe session: 20mins per person (10KD)

Specials:
Smash Special (for 2 people): 35kd = Therapy Box + Smaxe (50% off yard sale)

Smash Hero: Hit Bullseye 3x in a row = Free TV (valid when purchasing a Therapy pack)

Yard Sale:
Glass pack = 5KD
Small electronic = 10KD (receiver/printer)
Glass panel = 10kd
TV = 20KD

I went with the Troublemaker and Axe Pack so my total came out to KD20. In hindsight, I would have taken the Troublemaker pack and added a TV to it for an additional 20KD. And maybe a glass pack on top of that as well. In case you want to bring your own items to smash you can, but they would have to approve it first.

If you want to try out Smash Hub they’re located inside Sirbb Circuit in Shuwaikh (go all the way to the left once you walk in). They’re open daily from 6PM to 10PM and you can check them out on instagram @smashhubkw

The ice skating rink which has been around since 1980 will be closing down tomorrow to get demolished. In its place I’ve been told they’ll be building a concert hall which will be used to hold the Hala February concerts.

It doesn’t make sense I know, and whats worse is that I don’t understand why they can’t just keep the ice skating structure and just turn the interior into a concert hall. In any case, the decision has been made and this historical site will be demolished in the same way many other significant structures have been demolished in the past.

Today (Monday) from 4PM to 6PM there will be a last skate at the ice skating rink as a way of protesting this decision. So if you want to experience the ice skating rink for one last time this is your chance. See you there.

I got the email below from a reader who used to live in Kuwait back in the 50s. Not sure how I never came across the video above myself!

Ahmadi In the 50s
I moved out there in 49 and went to the Anglo American school as did my sister Vivienne, In 54 I was sent to school in England and returned every summer to Kuwait on the lollypop Special flights. Most of the Holiday was spent at the Hubara Club around the pool and I remember going to the outdoor cinema with just a chair on the sand.

My last visit was in 1966 with a friend from the uk and I took some movie pictures of my time out there, this has been on Utube for some time under the title “Holiday in Kuwait 1966” which some of you may find interesting enjoy

– Nigel Horner

Local band Galaxy Juice have a new single out called “Dancing Night” which I currently have on repeat. Its their first single from their upcoming album “Galaxy Juice and the Forty Thieves” which will have more Arabic and Khaliji influenced beats and rhythms compared to their previous releases. They’re calling this genre Khalijiwave, check out the new track above or on SoundCloud.

CAPSULE, the “Virtual Experience Center” have taken it upon themselves to recreate the Kuwait Motor Town race track virtually. The track is extremely accurate to the point they might have replicated the same tire skid marks that are actually on the track.

So if you’ve been wanting to experience the race track but haven’t been able to then this is a pretty good alternative since the simulation is fairly realistic.

If you’ve never heard of CAPSULE or been to it then you should check out my previous about it here. A virtual experience center is an arcade that allows you to experience virtual reality games. They’re located near Avenues and you can check them out on instagram @capsulevec

A bunch of new shows came out recently but below are currently my favorite three I’m watching right now. They’re still all new and ongoing with only a few episodes released so you can jump into them fairly easily.

Star Trek: Picard
I grew up in the 80s watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was one of my favorite shows ever and was really the only Star Trek series I ever got into. This new series continues off from the movie Star Trek: Nemesis which I’ve watched but don’t really remember which means if you haven’t watched it you’re fine. You also don’t need to be a Star Trek fan or to have watched a Star Trek series to enjoy it. Personally, while watching the show I kept wishing this was somewhat like the movie The Expendables where all the aging characters from the original The Next Generation show would back to form an aging crew that sail off into the galaxy to kick ass. It hasn’t happened so far but I’ll keep wishing! This show is available on Amazon Prime but you need a CBS All Access membership to watch it.

Avenue 5
Another sci-fi show but unlike Star Trek this one doesn’t take itself to seriously. Avenue 5 is a comedy by the creator of the show Veep that takes place in the future aboard a luxury space cruise ship. The show stars a bunch of comedians including Hugh Laurie from House and the always super annoying Zach Woods from The Office. Only three episodes are out so far and you don’t need to be a sci-fi fan or a geek to get into it. The show is available to watch on HBO.

The Outsider
I started watching this show thinking it was based off the 1967 novel The Outsiders which I read as a kid and the 1983 movie which I also watched as a kid and was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and featured an all-star cast which included Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze and Diane Lane. Turns out this show was actually based off the 2018 Stephen King novel and thats when I realized it was called The Outsider not Outsiders. But even after I found out about the mistake I couldn’t stop watching the show. The Outsider stars Jason Bateman and revolves around the murder of a young boy. A really well put together show with a filming style that reminded me a bit of Mindhunter and The Killing. Five episodes are out so far and the show is available to watch on HBO.

There are some other new shows that have come out recently but I haven’t started watching them yet. If you have one I should start watching right away let me know!

There is a new and large ice skating rink that opened up in Bayan a few days ago called Kuwait Winter Games Club Ice Rink. It popped out of nowhere with very little to no information and what’s even more impressive is the fact that the Kuwait 2020 Open Championship for Professional Arab Ice Hockey Clubs is taking place there right now.

All the information I’ve been able to find is in Arabic and there really isn’t that much information anyway but I was able to find out that the rink is an IIHF (International Ice Hockey Federation) approved size and that all future IIHF tournaments will be held there instead of the Ice Skating Rink in the city. My guess this new rink was created because they had announced that they were going to demolish the old rink (they’re not going to anymore).

Why are these things basically kept a secret in Kuwait I don’t know. I couldn’t even find a half-decent shot of the rink and had to get the one on top from the Jeddah Ice Sports Club while the video above from the Kuwait Ice Hockey Girls Team.

Oh yeah it turns out we have a Kuwait Ice Hockey Girls Team and a Kuwait Curling Team, a Kuwait Ski Team and also a Kuwait Speed Skating Team. Who knew? Nobody!

If you want to check out some more pictures of the rink or see the schedule for the hockey championship that’s taking place right now then check out the Kuwait Winter Games instagram account @kuwait_wgc. I’m going to try and pass by tonight to check it out as well. Here is the location of the rink on Google Maps.

Update: I dropped by today to watch the UAE team match against Bahrain. The ice skating rink looks like it still needs work, kinda felt like a pop-up ice skating rink. I guess the rink still needs work but they had to open as is right now because of the championship and then complete the work once the tournament is done. The rink isn’t centered under the roof properly which was super annoying when trying to capture a nice centered photo plus the scoreboard didn’t seem to be working either so I didn’t even know what the final score was.

Even with those issues it was actually really fun watching the game and I’ll probably be going back to watch some more. There isn’t an entrance fee or anything of the sort, you just walk in and sit wherever you want to watch the game. I think there was more closed off VIP seating than there was regular seating but really the best seat in the house is standing ringside anyway.

The 2020 Asian Men’s Handball Championship is taking place in Kuwait right now at the newly opened Sheikh Saad Al-Abdullah Sport Hall Complex. If it wasn’t for an email from one of my readers I wouldn’t have known this stadium existed or that the handball championship was taking place in Kuwait.

You’d think with an event this big there would at least be outdoor ads, sponsored Instagram posts or anything really. In the video above the stadium is basically empty.

I haven’t had the chance to pass by and check it out but I’ve been told tickets are free and it’s first come first serve.

Here is the location of the stadium.
Here is the full match schedule with timings.
Here is a link to the Kuwait Handball Association Instagram.

Thanks Milan

I’m always looking for ways to speed things up and one way I used to speed my payment process with Carriage and other local online businesses was by saving my ATM card number in my password manager app. Whenever I’d get to the payment page I’d open the app and then copy paste my debit card digits into the knet form. It was much faster than having to pull out my card from my wallet and manually entering the numbers.

But, a couple of months back, Knet disabled the option of pasting numbers into the form for some reason which was annoying because it meant I’d have to go back to the old way of entering my number manually. Since I order from Carriage daily this became annoying and so I started using my credit card instead since Carriage had the option of saving that.

Then late last month, Knet introduced a new feature called KFAST which allows us, the customers, to save our card details with merchants like Carriage so that all we need to do is enter our pin code to complete the purchase instead of all our numbers. There isn’t much info about this on their website or instagram account other than the description but the way it works is pretty simple. When you now check out from Carriage with Knet you’ll now be presented with two options on the Knet payment page, Kfast and Knet. If it’s your first time using the new form you’ll only be able to select Knet. After completing your check out process your card number gets saved and the next time you check out it will remember the card number and you’ll get to either use KFAST and just type your pincode, or you can click on Knet and type a new card in manually.

According to the Knet documentation on their website, you’re actually meant to get and enter a one time code to use KFAST but I didn’t get that. In any case, this is a great new feature and will make the check out process on a bunch of websites a lot quicker.

Faisal Al-Kharafi goes by the instagram handle @porsche_collector and has one of the rarest Porsche collections in the world. His instagram account has over 200,000 followers and his home garage is inspired by Iron Man. Dennis Collins (from the TV series Fast N’ Loud) was in Kuwait back in 2015 for the Kuwait Concours d’Elegance and while here he got a tour of Faisal’s garage which you can watch above. Since 2015 Faisal has added more porsches to his collection which you can check out on his instagram account.

While in Kuwait Dennis also shot some other episodes including the one below which is a tour of another garage, not sure who’s garage but it has two mint condition Rambo-Lambo’s and a red hot Countach! If anyone know’s who’s garage that is let me know and hook me up with a tour!

For more episodes check out Dennis’s youtube page here.

Nick Ingman is an English arranger, composer and conductor who’s worked with a lot of musicians including Blur, Oasis, Madonna, Elton John and even worked with Radiohead on ‘OK Computer‘ which is one of my favorite albums ever. I hadn’t heard of Nick until a few days ago when a reader made me aware that his 1976 album ‘Terminator’ used the Kuwait Water Towers on the cover. Since it was released around the same time the water towers were completed, this might have been the first time the water towers were ever used in an artwork.

I found three copies of this record on eBay, I just bought one and so there are two more left if you’re interested in picking one up.

Thanks Adam

Lebanese composer and songwriter Rene Bendali has died at the age of 70 in the city of Tripoli, in northern Lebanon.

Bendali shot to fame in the late 1970s and 1980s for performing with his family as a band called The Bendali Family, who were behind songs such as the hit Do You Love Me. Source

I had posted the video “Do You Love Me?” on my blog back in 2007 because it had been shot in Kuwait in 1978. The song and video quickly went viral but I never really researched it more or anything until now. I just found more information about the song and video in the comments here and I copy-pasted it below:

First of all, this was shot using 16mm in front of the kourniche of the Kuwait-Sheraton in exactly August, 1978, but was only made to be featured as a ‘publicity’ shot on film for a Kuwaiti T.V. programme interview with the band (eleven sisters and brothers showcased in a double concert there at the Public Kuwaiti Theatre and a local cinema).

There are snippets and clippettes of this rare, one-hour long interview on YouTube with actress-turned-singer-turned-actress-again S’oaud Al-Abdallah doing the staccato interview with the cheery family who wore velvet uniforms. Kuwaitis were wealthy enough at that time to invite anyone they could ever think of (including at one time, the American disco band Boney-M who allegedly turned into Islam there), and so the Bendalis were in hot demand in that wealthy-beyond-words oil-tick nation.

So, basically the song ‘Do You Love Me?’ wasn’t made in that same year only because that video was shot in the same year: it was a very popular — and energetic — concert-opener ‘medley’, non-song of Roger Bendali’s composition using a 70’s pop hit (Can’t help think of the original artist for the Englizi intro, but it should be The Tremeloes? Someone with time and interest enough better check into that). Contrary to what many believe, René Bendali did not compose nor write the words for the song — He just sang it.

The first recorded version of this song was featured as a medley in their Sgt. Pepper-like T.V. musical show (I was lucky to have watched it when I was still a kid), called ‘Kamera 77’: the show had all the band’s members (rumoured to include even cousins at one point in the show, plus their mother and father). Kamera 77 was really a hit with almost all Arabic nascent ‘colour’ televisions at that time and it sold very well, to the extent that the Bandalis (or Bendalis/Bendaly Family, or in Lebanese-Arabic A’ailit Bandalee), became trully a house-hold name, and oddly enough… still are.

As for the song itself, this medley was put to record in 1976 and it featured only Roger, but then again it’s found its way into many albums and records released by the band (and, later by the Kuwaiti label Al-Naza’aer), and some three different concert versions like the one used here by DJ Dub Snakker still exist. René Bendali is cited here as the originator of the song in 1963, which is very offtrack and wrong. Well, back in 1963 most of the band’s members weren’t even born, for crying out loud.

I couldn’t find the full interview on YouTube but I did find this short clip. If anyone has the link to the full interview please share it below!

Below is also a video I found of their performance in Kuwait. The video says 1979 but I think it’s actually 1978.