Categories
Food & Drinks

Jar at the Sahara Restaurant Village

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Back in March I reported that the Sahara Restaurant Village was expected to open up sometime in April or May. It’s now the end of May and although the village hasn’t officially opened, it’s basically ready with many of the restaurants opening any day now. One of those restaurants that is set to open first is Jar. Full disclosure, Jar belongs to a close friend of mine who also happens to be the owner of Choowy Goowy. We met through the blog back in 2006 when I first discovered his cookies and we’ve been friends ever since. I can’t believe that was nearly 10 years ago, insane.

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The menu at Jar hasn’t been finalized yet but I did try a few things and I generally loved most of what I had. It’s definitely not going to be a place to go to if you’re weight watching, instead its a place to go to when you just want delicious food and desert (in my case a cheat day). The interior of the place is beautiful, very minimal with a hardwood floor, super high ceiling, some copper accents and some nicely designed chairs which I fell in love with (I have a thing for chairs).

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Jar is set to open up in a couple of weeks time and I’ll post another update once they do. For now you can check out their instagram account @jar.choowygoowy

The whole village seems to be properly put together with plenty of parking space and nice landscaping. I’m not sure, but I only saw one entry and exit point to this village which will most likely create a bottleneck, I’ll need to ask about that. Below is the most current list I have, of places opening up in the village:

Slider Station
Jar
Villa Fayrouz
Tatami Japanese Restaurant
52 Degrees
Caribou Coffee
Costa Coffee
Athletes Foot
Skinny Cloud
Emirgan Sutis
Le Relais de l’Entrecote
Khaneen
Ubon
Crumbs




Categories
Videos

Fight during a shareholders meeting

Frankom just shared the video above on his blog and I just wanted to highlight one thing. Just keep your eye on the two cops in the video who do a fantastic job at breaking up the fight. [YouTube]

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Categories
News

Kuwait’s Air Ambulance Service


[YouTube]

Up to 45 patients have been transported to hospitals and clinics by the new airborne transportation service since its launch in January, a Ministry of Health official said on Sunday.

The ministry has prepared specially equipped helicopters to transport patients or people hurt in accidents from the scenes to hospitals or health centers, thus shortening time needed the transfer time needed and evading road traffic. [Source]

The local air ambulance initiative was established by former servicemen, security veterans, and firefighters and went into service early this year. I spotted the air ambulance a couple of days ago flying over Kuwait City probably heading to the Amiri Hospital. Kuwait already had one of the best ambulance services in the region and having the chopper now as part of its arsenal is obviously beneficial to everyone. I’m not sure what kind of situation merits the use of the air ambulance so if anyone has details on that please leave it in the comments.


[YouTube]

There are a couple of videos on YouTube of the helicopter, I’ve shared two with this post.

airambulance




Categories
Automotive Design

New Police Car Graphics

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It looks like the cop cars are getting a graphical facelift. The images in this post have been circulating social media showing four new car graphics for the cop cars. I kinda like the current blue and fluorescent yellow combo we have right now, the new colors seem a bit dull.

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Categories
Funny

Yay! Kuwait made it on TMZ!

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This is just hilarious:

Oil isn’t the only worthwhile commodity in Kuwait … one woman claims it’s also the home to the idea for “Frozen” … and she claims Disney stole it from her. Muneefa Abdullah claims she came up with the idea that true love conquers evil, a central theme in “Frozen.”

Abdullah has filed a lawsuit against Disney, claiming she wrote a book called “New Fairy Tales” which contained the short story, “The Snow Princess.” Abdullah says her story involves a princess who possesses magical ice powers that give her the ability to turn people and objects into ice … which just so happens to be the plot to “Frozen.” Abdullah fires off a number of similarities, including:

– A kingdom made of ice and surrounded by mountains
– A sibling in search and rescue of the sibling possessing the magical ice powers
– A journey up the mountain, snowy guards guarding an icy castle on the mountaintop
– The idea that only love is capable of defeating evil

Abdullah wants a barrel of money.

Check out the article on TMZ [Here]

Thanks Mona




Categories
Automotive Complaints

This can’t be right

obstruction

Awhile ago as I was pulling up into my street and into my buildings underground parking, I noticed a cop car parked on the side of the road. I then noticed a bunch of cars that were parked legally on the side of the road had tickets on them. So I pulled up next to the cop and I asked him if this was a no parking street, he replied saying no he’s ticketing them for “عرقلة” which means obstruction.

ticket

What exactly are these cars obstructing (for example the 4 pictured on top)? I checked the tickets and noticed he left the space where he’s supposed to explain what the ticket is for blank. That can’t be right or fair can it?




Categories
Fail

Quick Shawerma

quick

For this weeks fail of the week I spotted this new shawerma place opening up in Salmiya called Quick. They’ve basically copied the name and logo of the popular Belgian fast food franchise “Quick” (pictured below) which for those of you who’ve been to Paris will easily recognize.

quick

Hashtag #kuwaitfail on instagram or email me a fail and I’ll share the best one every week.




Categories
Food & Drinks Interviews

Interview: Simon and Adrian Nelbom of Mr Karak

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I’m not a big fan of interviews but I do like stories especially interesting ones. This is why I’m going to try and post one interview a week with someone I think has a story worth sharing. For my first interview I met up with two intriguing brothers, Simon and Adrian Nelbom who make and sell karak tea under their self created brand, Mr karak. I first met them at one of the Secret Garden brunches so when they proposed we meet up there for the interview I thought it was very appropriate.

Two Danish brothers in Kuwait making Indian karak tea? I needed to know how, what and why.

A year and a half ago Adrian had just finished his studies in Copenhagen and Simon was working in a very famous organic bakery. They were both in periods of their lives where they didn’t know what they wanted to do. After a bit of contemplation they both decided to come to Kuwait since they had relatives from here. One of their families’ closest friends of 50+ years was a Danish woman married to a Kuwaiti. During the interview they kept referring to them as relatives and understandably so because of the close family ties.

When I think of Danish drinks, I think of Carlsberg or Tuborg beer and definitely not karak which is why I wanted to know how all this came about.

When Adrian and Simon came to Kuwait their relatives introduced karak to them. Simon had traveled to India back in 2012 and he had chai all the time while there. He didn’t know what it was but he was having it wherever he went. So when his relatives introduced and explained karak to him he loved the idea of milk with tea since they didn’t have it in Denmark. Karak was also relatively new to Kuwait. It was popular in places like Bahrain and Qatar but it was still picking up here in Kuwait. When Simon was working at the bakery in Denmark they used to have the best milk and the best coffee, so he decided to take it upon himself as a challenge to try and make the best karak he possibly could.

They started researching the local market and realized majority of the people were using either long life milk or canned milk. The idea of using canned milk, which had a 1-year shelf life didn’t make any sense to Simon. He told me milk should come from a cow and you drink it, that’s how it’s supposed to be. Milk is not supposed to last a year sitting on a shelf. That’s gross. He then continued telling me that was the first thing they decided, no long life milk. Fresh milk is available in Kuwait so they started using it.

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With that as a starting point they continued the same principle across all the ingredients, they wanted to create an all fresh and natural karak. They kept experimenting with different fresh ingredients and even started importing ones they couldn’t find like Cinnamomum verum. The fact that they were both Danish made things difficult since they don’t drink and eat a lot of Cardamom so they started adding other ingredients. Finally after lots of tasting sessions with their Kuwaiti relatives, they finally ended up with karak that everybody liked. Once they were ready they signed up for Qout Market and launched their brand. That was back in March of last year.

Other than just using the right products, Adrian and Simon both spend a lot of time educating their customers on the benefits of their ingredients. For example the most popular cinnamon used is cassia (Chinese cinnamon) which when you look up you’ll realize has health risks. The real cinnamon comes from Sri Lanka and is called Cinnamomum verum. Not many people know this (I didn’t) which is why Qout Market was a special launch place and still is a great venue for them. The people who visit them at Qout are always interested to listen and learn about their products. Later on they got another seal of approval when they finally became part of the Secret Garden family. To become part of this family meant getting an approval from the culinary genius and shakshooka and Secret Garden mastermind Mimi. They’re now regulars there as well albeit without their Mr Karak brand due to strict Secret Garden rules.

The brothers now serve a variety of different karaks including “The Original” and “The Masala”. The first consists of ginger, saffron and cardamom while the second consists of cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger and mint leaves. They also have a nondairy version which was another story of experimentation as well since the first thing that comes to mind is using soya milk. But soya milk isn’t that great for you which is why they tried using the much healthier almond milk. But when they started boiling the almond milk, they were ending up with texture they didn’t like so they kept looking for another alternative. After a bit of a search they found organic coconut milk which ended up working really well especially with all the spices. So those are the three main kinds of karaks they have but they then came up with two more. They were getting ready for the April Qout Market last year and the weather was fairly warm so they wondered if people would want to drink hot tea out in the sun. They started brainstorming ideas and they came up with karak shake using vanilla ice cream (I personally tried it at the last Qout and loved it). But what about the people who were counting calories? They decided to make another cold karak using crushed ice. So their menu now is composed of five types of karak drinks.

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Other than karak the guys also serve chapatti. Again they use all natural ingredients to try and make it as healthy a chapatti as possible and even try to use healthy spreads (no Nutella or Kraft Cheese).

One thing both Adrian and Simon wanted to make clear through out the interview is none of their success would have been possible without their amazing team who have mostly been with them since day 1. They also hinted that they’re currently looking for a place to set up a permanent shop but haven’t found a good location yet.

Sitting with the brothers it was very clear that they’re extremely passionate about their karak. In fact the interview was around an hour long but I tried to share as much as possible here without making this post so long that no one would want to read it. I highly recommend you try their karak (especially the shake) and I also recommend having a chat with the two since they’ve got so much more to share. If you’re interested, they’ll be taking part in the Street Fest market this coming weekend and hopefully if they get approved they’ll be at Qout Market next month. Here’s a link to their instagram account @mrkarak




Categories
Events Mags & Books

All Gone Arabia

allgonesmall

A few weeks back I briefly mentioned that I was launching a business soon. Well the business is called supersoulxxx and although I won’t go into details on it in this post, I did want to mention an event we’re hosting in Dubai in a few days.

allgoneall

We’re bringing the creator of the All Gone book to the Middle East for the first time along with limited quantities of his book. All Gone is created and published by Michael Dupouy and is a collection of the finest in street culture ranging from sneakers and apparel to skateboard decks, toys and so on. The book in itself is very limited in number, just like the featured items hence the title ‘All Gone’.

So if you are in Dubai on the 11th of March come by pick up a copy and get it signed by Michael Dupouy.




Categories
Kuwait

Kuwait Towers are Trippy

Have you guys passed by the Kuwait Towers at night? I kinda love how the towers now have some pretty trippy graphics animated on them. The video above kind of gives you a glimpse of how they look like but its actually even cooler in real life especially with the 70s style kaleidoscope effect. I’m kinda hoping this isn’t just a temporary thing for Hala February but something they’ll keep for a bit longer. [Vimeo]

towers-kuwait




Categories
Personal

Just Like You, I Hate Dealing with Government Paperwork

liberationtower

Anytime I need to get any paperwork from the government I cringe. In the past month I had two papers I needed to get sorted and in both cases things didn’t go so smoothly. I hate how I have to approach all the employees in a way where it’s like I am asking them for a favor.

The first paper is related to a business I’m launching. To setup a company I need a paper from my sponsor giving me permission to start a company. I got that paper from him and went to Government Mall (located under the Liberation Tower) to get it notarized. When I presented the document the government employee took a look at it and told me the format was all wrong, he wrote down the proper format, I went downstairs got it typed and came back to show him. He told me it was fine and I now needed to get it signed by my sponsor. So I left and came back two weeks later with the document signed. I went back to the same employee and handed him the signed document, he looked at it and was like what is this? I explained to him what it was and he once again told me it was in the wrong format. I was like what do you mean its the wrong format? You wrote it for me, I got it typed and approved by you and all you said I needed to do was get it signed which I did! He was like no this is the wrong format. I asked him if he could write down what I needed to change, he told me he won’t write anything and then shooed me away. I’m now getting someone to get this document sorted for me since I can’t deal with that crap again.

police

The second paper I needed to get was permission from the police to replace my damaged bumper. I headed to the Salmiya police station and walked up to the information desk and told them what paper I needed. They instructed me to go into the first office on the left. I went to the first office on the left and the police officer there told me to go upstairs. I went upstairs and there were three rooms but only one was occupied. So I walked in and waited until the two police there finished their conversation before I asked the cop seated at a desk about the paper. The cop told me to go to the office next door. I told him I did but there was nobody there. He then got agitated and told me obviously there isn’t anybody there since its his office and he can’t be in two places at once. As if I was somehow supposed to have know that was his office. So I go wait in his office for a few minutes and then he walks in. He’s like I need you to get me a photocopy of your license, car registration booklet and your civil ID. I thought to myself why couldn’t you have told me that earlier instead of making me wait here. So I leave the police station and drive to the nearest photocopy shop and then come back with the copies. I go upstairs again and this time the same cop is sitting at a desk in the third room. In my head I thought that was hilarious because it felt like the police station had only one employee who changes offices and pretends to be a different person every time. He ends up filling up the papers and then sends me down to the Salmiya area commander for one last signature.

How I hate this. I know a lot of people (mostly Kuwaitis) would disagree with me on this but I would rather they replaced all the ministry employees with expats. When was the last time you walked into McDonalds and was greeted by a grumpy employee who made you feel like he was doing you a favor?




Categories
50s to 90s Mags & Books

The story behind Wizr, Kuwait’s Greatest Driver

wizr

Back in October I wrote about Keith Wells, a British journalist who was living in Kuwait back in the 70s. Keith used to work for Arab Times and in his spare time he also used to write books about Kuwait, including a witty series on a character named Wizr who was Kuwait’s greatest driver. Between 1979 and 1984, Keith released three Wizr books which I’m lucky enough to own all three. A few days ago Keith got in touch with me and I asked him if he could tell me how it all started. This is what he shared with me:

I originally wrote the stories for the Arab Times which became very popular. Then I met Peter McMahon at a party, and he hadn’t read any of the stories and asked, “Who is this Wizr character?” “I said, he’s the young, trendy Kuwaiti guy with the scarlet Transam with the eagle decal on the bonnet.’ So Peter picked up a sheet of paper,scribbled away for a minute or two, then held it out and asked “Him?” It was perfect. Thereafter we became close friends. I’d write a story, take it to his flat every Friday, and he’d give me the cartoon from the week before’s story. He somehow drew exactly what I’d imagined. The combination became very popular indeed and after a month or two we were approached by Tony Jashanmal, who owned a department store on Fahed Salem St, and Bashir Khatib, who owned the Kuwait Bookshop to publish a book full of the stories. We had a 3 way partnership to print the book at The Arab Times and Launched it at the British Embassy Garden Fete in November 1979, a week or so before I married Suzi. We sold 428 copies in about two hours… amazing.

We carried on for just over a year, then Peter was murdered by Saddam Hussein’s goons, long sad, sad story… but the upshot was that I sort of lost the fun, we put out the second Wizr book with cartoons we hadn’t used in the first one. And the third book with odd scraps and recycled pics. By then it was getting a bit heavy with the Iran Iraq War getting very dangerous and I left the Arab Times and took a very low profile job teaching at the university of Kuwait. After 4 years there I went back to the paper and wrote more stories with an Indian cartoonist called Edgar, but they were never collected in book form. I left Kuwait in June ’87. We emigrated to Oz in Oct 1989, and the following March I had a massive heart attack in a small town in southern Queensland. After recovering, we spent the rest of our working lives doing PhDs in Communication Studies, and setting up Comm Depts in various universities and colleges in Macau, Singapore, Morocco, The Bahamas and Puerto Rico.

I’ve been a bit of a hermit since retiring in ’07, but am beginning to re-emerge and was very surprised and grateful for the interest in Wizr and Dozi and his pals. Someone told me a few years ago that the fabulous cartoon of Dozi with the two rubber stamps “PERHAPS” and “PERHAPS NOT” is to be found in many offices to this day. Peter would have loved that.

– Keith Wells




Categories
Automotive

Emergency Lanes to be Converted to Normal Lanes

In a move to reduce congestion, the Ministry of Interior started allowing cars to drive on the emergency lane during certain hours and on certain roads. Now according to the video above (it’s in Arabic), it seems majority of those emergency lanes will now be paved and converted into permanent driving lanes. I’d love to crack a joke about how that’s easier than ticketing people who were using the emergency lanes all day long but thing is this actually makes sense. Our highways will now be a lane wider which will reduce traffic. [YouTube]

via AboFlan




Categories
Personal Travel

Cape Town – World’s best kept secret

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I’m at the Cape Town airport right now waiting for my flight back to Kuwait and I figured this would be the best time to write about one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited.

I booked my flight to Cape Town on impulse and not by doing a lot of research. I was at the Foo Fighters website checking out their tshirts when I decided to check and see where they were touring. I noticed they were going to be in Cape Town in December so I figured why not go watch them there. I booked the concert tickets and then messaged my friend in Cape Town telling her I would be visiting. I then booked my airline ticket and that was pretty much it. Around two weeks before leaving to Cape Town I started doing some research trying to see what else there is to do there. First thing popped up was the Sonar electronic music festival, it was taking place on the last two days I would be in Cape Town so I purchased tickets to that as well. I then kept researching and came up with a pretty long list of things I wanted to do in Cape Town and that included:

Bungee Jumping
Paragliding
Hang Gliding
Skydiving
Surfing
Kite Surfing
Hot Air Balloon Ride
Wine Tasting

Once I got to Cape Town I started planning my schedule.

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Where I stayed
Because December is peak season in Cape Town and I was booking everything last minute I couldn’t find a good hotel to stay in so I ended up staying in a beautiful bed and breakfast called Radium Hall. The website and photos really don’t do it any justice and 6 nights stay cost me just KD160. Insanely great value and I’m so glad I ended up staying there instead of a hotel. The view from the balcony wow… I loved coming back home just for the view.

How I got around
While in Cape Town I was using the Uber cab service the whole time and I found it incredibly cheap and practical. 80% of my trips were costing me on average KD1 and my most expensive trips were to the airport and those cost me KD4. All the cab drivers were super friendly and they even have Uber Chopper in Cape Town where you can order a chopper and an Uber black car picks you up and takes you to a helicopter which will then give you a tour of Cape Town.

What I did
So I had a pretty long list of things to do but I decided to prioritize and ended up doing the following:

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Foo Fighters
The first day I got there I did the Foo Fighters concert. It was being held in the Cape Town Stadium and I arrived five hours early hoping to be first in line only to find a fairly large queue already waiting. I still managed to end up center stage though and forth row standing which is super close. It was a great show and three hours long, they played all their greatest hits since back in 1995. I loved it.

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Skydiving
I’ve been wanting to skydive for such a long time and even though I could have done it in Dubai I really wasn’t interested in jumping over a dessert/city. I wanted to jump out of a plane over a beautiful landscape and I’m glad I ended up doing it in Cape Town. I did the jump with Skydive Cape Town, it cost around KD80 including pick up and drop off. We were three jumpers at the same time (tandem of course) and we squeezed into the back of a super tiny plane that looked like it was 50 years old. Super freaky but that was part of the experience. It took us around 20 minutes to get to the right jumping height and then one by one we jumped out of the plane. I wasn’t the slightest bit scared I was just really curious to see how I would react when we first jumped out and my reaction turned out to be just pure excitement. They recorded a video of the jump and basically for the first 30 seconds while we were free falling all you could hear me scream was “fuuuuccccck yesssss!!”. I loved it. The company I jumped with seemed a bit old fashioned though when it came to documenting the jump. They took photos and videos from a camera that my skydive instructor wore on his wrist while in Dubai for example, based on the photos I’ve seen, they actually have another jumper jump with you to take photos of you. Also they gave me the video on DVD.. in DVD format so even though they shot the video with a GoPro in HD, the video I got was low res. Plus who still has a DVD player?

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Bungee Jumping
The second activity I did was bungee jumping. This turned out to be a complicated activity to perform just because of the planning it involved. The highest bungee jumping bridge in the world is at Bloukrans Bridge which is a whopping 8 hours drive from Cape Town. I was planning of renting a car and driving there but then I found a quicker way to get there. I ended up flying out from Cape Town to an area called George and then renting a car from the airport and driving around two and a half hours to Nature’s Valley which is just 10 minutes away from the Bloukrans Bridge. I booked a room at the Tranquility Lodge for the night and they helped me book my bungee jump for the same day.

This whole two day trip was a beautiful experience. First of all the jump was insane. Like the skydive I wasn’t scared at all before the jump, in fact I was pretty numb. I had a bunch of things on my mind and so was too preoccupied to be scared. I was actually worried I might get scared while standing at the edge but even that didn’t bother me. But, as soon as I jumped the first second or two I was fine but because the jump is soo high (216 meters) it just felt like I wouldn’t stop and I was thinking what the fuck when will the bungee cord snap back up. It was exhilarating. The company running the bungee jumping was also extremely extremely professional. I mean every step of the way from booking till the end they were very organized. They also took some great photos and shot an amazing video of the jump which I later purchased from them on a memory card. Definitely worth the experience and the jump cost just KD20 (not including around KD60 for the flight, KD30 for the car rental and KD15 for the room).

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The rest of the day I ended up spending it on the Nature’s Valley beach. I didn’t even know my lodge was located next to the beach but I heard a sound of a waterfall behind a large green bushy area so I went to explore and ended up finding myself on a large fairly secluded beach with waves splashing constantly. It was beautiful and that alone would have been worth the trip.

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Surfing
Ever since I was a kid I’ve wanted to surf, probably because all the cool people used to be surfers on tv shows and I just wanted to be cool like them as a kid growing up. Cape Town is a surf town so it wasn’t very difficult finding a surfing school. I ended up booking a private session with one of the best and most expensive surfing schools in Cape Town called Stoked School of Surf. The private two hour lesson cost me around KD40 which isn’t really expensive just expensive compared to other options available.

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This experience turned out to be wayyyyy more fun than I ever imagined. Not only that but by half way through my lesson I was already standing on the board and surfing to the beach. The whole team behind Stoked were very professional and they had two dedicated photographers covering the private and group lessons, one guy in the water with a GoPro while the other on the shore with a DSLR.


[YouTube]

Sonar Cape Town
I was pretty surprised to find out the Sonar music festival was coming to Cape Town. Even though the event was being held over two days I ended up just buying a ticket for the second day since there were two musicians I REALLY wanted to see, Jon Hopkins and Ten Walls. Both turned out to be the last acts of the night so I kept popping in and out of the festival all day long until I was back there at 1AM to watch Jon Hopkins and then Ten Walls at 3AM.

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I have mixed feelings about Sonar, Cape Town definitely isn’t a partying city in the same way Barcelona is where I was back in May for the Sonar festival there. When I first popped in at 4PM there were literally like 5-10 people there only watching one of the performances (pic above). It looked like a really bad high school prom. Then later on during the day it started getting more packed but for example when Jon Hopkins was going to come on I don’t think anybody knew who he was except me, a friend and another couple who were there standing in front of the stage with us waiting for Jon to come on. Turns out the other couple were from the same town at Jon hence why they knew who he was. Both Jon Hopkins and Ten Wall were ridiculous and I’m so glad I watched them live.

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Why Cape Town is amazing

Cape Town is a bit like Lebanon, LA and Miami all combined into one. I travel a lot and I’ve been to a lot of great cities but Cape Town is the first one I actually want to move to. I feel there are a ton of business opportunities here and I really really can’t describe how beautiful the city is. I loved the fact that if you want to go camping in the middle of nowhere or go to a beautiful private secluded beach, you can and they’re just 30 minutes drive away. The beaches! I went beach hopping one day and every beach we ended up at was nicer than the beach before it. The sand is snow white and the water a clean and sparkling blue. You have the huge table mountain right behind you as well so it’s such a pretty sight wherever you go. And the food… I literally just had sea food while I was here and everywhere I ate was just delicious. My favorite places were probably Beluga, Haiku and Willoughby & Co. I didn’t drink any wine while I was here but I didn’t have to since Cape Town beer is some of the best I’ve ever had as well. I was introduced to Castle Lite by the owner of the bed and breakfast I was staying in on the very first day I arrived and I was constantly drinking that for the rest of the trip. Oh and for those of you who don’t think Cape Town is safe, I found it as safe as New York. I was out past midnight in some dodgy neighborhoods without feat but I was also “mugging ready” meaning like in New York or any other city for that matter which I travel to, I always am prepared in case I get mugged. I always have a backup credit card and debit card in my hotel and I make sure I don’t wear my expensive watches or carry expensive electronics other than my phone.

I’m on the plane now about to take off so have to quickly end this post. In conclusion, Cape Town is a must visit city and it’s easy to get to, just one stop away with Qatar Airways or Emirates. Cape Town is where I am going to retire in.




Categories
Mags & Books

Wizr, Kuwait’s Greatest Driver

lastwizr

Back in the 70s there was a British journalist living in Kuwait by the name of Keith Wells. He used to work for the Arab Times and in his spare time he also used to write books about Kuwait, including a witty series on a character named Wizr who was Kuwait’s greatest driver. Between 1979 and 1984, Keith released three Wizr books but sadly there really isn’t a lot of information on them nor Keith online. In fact, there is a blog dedicated to keeping Keith and his Wizr series alive but even the blog doesn’t have much info nor content. The books document life in Kuwait during that period with humor and nicely drawn illustrations.

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Since The Kuwait Bookshops is closing this might be your only chance to own one of his Wizr books. In 1984 he released “The Last Wizr Book” and The Kuwait Bookshops in Muthana still has copies of it remaining and they’re selling them cheap for KD1.5 (the bookshop is selling everything for 50% off). The book was his last one on the Wizr since the illustrator he had teamed up with for the previous two books had passed away. I tried to find the other two books online and I managed to snag his second book (pictured above) on eBay for KD7.5 and his first book on the series (pictured below) for KD16. It was more than what I wanted to pay, but I somehow felt compelled to save this part of Kuwait’s history. So try to grab his last book from Muthana if you can.

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If anyone has any interesting information related to Keith or his books let me know.