Search: “kuwait”

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo… [YouTube]

Every weekend seems to be busier than the weekend before. Lots of cool things this week, my personal picks are the musical Nunsense (if tickets are still available), the Kuwait Bike Show, and the Street Fest market. Check out the full list of weekend events below:

Thursday
Exhibition: Al-Seef
Exhibition: A Wonderful World Under Construction
Kuwait Dino Park
Theatrical Performance “Min Hawa Al Andalus”
Musical: Nunsense
Kuwait Bike Show 2015
Rooftop Movie: Macbeth

Friday
Kuwait Dino Park
Theatrical Performance “Min Hawa Al Andalus”
Musical: Nunsense
Kuwait Bike Show 2015
The Second International Volleyball Tournament
Street Fest
Book Club Meeting

Saturday
Kuwait Dino Park
Theatrical Performance “Min Hawa Al Andalus”
Street Fest
Dhow Sunset Dinner Cruise
Acting Workshop With Colette Dalal Tchantcho
Rooftop Movie: A Prophet
Let’s Go Forward Mishref Run
Kuwait Motocross Championship

If you’d like to share an event on the blog [Email Me]

Some of you might have read about the world’s first penile transplant that took place a few days ago. What you might not know is that one of the doctors who assisted in the surgery was a Kuwaiti (Dr Tallal AlQaoud). At first I was going to post about this myself but then realized it would make a lot more sense to have one of my friends who is an extremely talented surgeon himself and who has worked with Dr Tallal write the post instead. This is what he had to say about the surgery:

Kuwaiti Doctor Assists in World’s First Penile Transplant
As you may have read on reddit and pretty much everywhere else, surgeons in South Africa’s Stellenbosch University and Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town have performed the first successful penile transplant recorded in history. It was performed by Professor André Van der Merwe and a team of urological surgeons.

This may not seem very significant unless you live in country where 500 men die every year from ritual circumcisions gone wrong but this is in fact a major breakthrough.

For urological surgeons restoring erectile function, urinary function and blood flow after a patient has had a penile amputation (due to trauma or cancer) is not difficult, it’s pretty much a pipe dream. To illustrate the point, the team based their methods on lessons learned from facial transplants and with the same level of complexity.

What you may not know is the story of the guy on the right bottom corner of the photo. That young surgeon is Dr Tallal AlQaoud; a Kuwaiti resident at McGill University.

While many people in our field first fall in love it for the competition, prestige or financial prospects, it’s a rare thing to see someone who is actually willing to train himself in surgery like an athlete would for the olympics.

Dr AlQaoud jumped into medicine after graduating from NES (Yes, the New English School). He went on to do his undergraduate degree in the UK and eventually returned to do his internship in Kuwait. After finishing his internship in Kuwait he felt the need to learn how to do research and build a solid knowledge of his field so he did a masters in the UK sacrificing a whole year of operating. He then went on to do a surgical residency at Mcgill and took time off to join Professor Van der Merwe’s team in South Africa.

It’s very rare that you get to meet a person like Tallal, when he could be learning the basics of his specialty he chose to concentrate on the academic aspect of his field and published industry leading journals, when he could have specialized in Kuwait or in England. Instead he chose to go further afield and train in North America where he was exposed everything from surgical robotics to transplantation. When he could have been enjoying ski season in Quebec, he chose to operate voluntarily in Cape Town. Then there was that time he had a Friday night off and decided to join me in an emergency surgery taking out a guys colon at midnight; but that’s a story for another day.

He is truly a person who has chosen a road less travelled and one of the rare occasions where Kuwait has made it’s mark on the history of medicine.

As much as I’d like to have interviewed him for this story or tried to promote him on it, he never had an instagram account, a blog and I’m pretty sure he’s forgotten his Facebook password. His response to me on whatsapp are in this post. I am indeed honoured to say I scrubbed in with a Kuwaiti who made it to the history books.

– Post by Saud, a Kuwaiti doctor living and working/training in Montreal. Twitter: @saudnz

I passed by the Kuwait Airways Building in Kuwait City last night and noticed it was getting demolished. The new building that will replace it is pictured above (right) and looks like your typical lets build the ugliest and cheapest looking skyscraper we can. Kuwait City would look so much more prettier if all the buildings looked like KIPCO Tower or even the smaller Mazaya and KPT Towers.

The website Open Signal has posted interesting numbers regarding the state of LTE around the world. Kuwait for example turns out has the third highest time spent on LTE networks but also has the second slowest LTE internet connection compared to everybody else. Check out the full report [Here]

Thanks Haneyl

Here’s the list of events taking place this weekend. The two I’m looking forward to are The Secret Garden Brunch and the Bark in the Park Carnival. Check out the full list below:

Thursday
Exhibition: Al-Seef
Exhibition: A Wonderful World Under Construction
Kuwait Dino Park
The Poppies Of Palestine Film Festival
Mothers’ Day Exhibition

Friday
Kuwait Dino Park
Mothers’ Day Exhibition
Go Wacko Youth Camp 1
The New Spring Bazaar

Saturday
Kuwait Dino Park
The Poppies Of Palestine Film Festival
Mothers’ Day Exhibition
Global Art Forum in Kuwait
Opera at the Radisson Blu
Guided Tour: Ajmal Stud Farm
The Secret Garden Brunch
Bark in the Park Carnival
Migrant Writes

If you’d like to share an event on the blog [Email Me]

Some spectacular footage of Kuwait in this video with my favorites being the first wide shot of Hamra Tower (pictured below) as well as the marshes. Doesn’t look like Kuwait. [Vimeo]

From a legal stand point, cannabis and its legalities is very interesting to look at. The decisions towards cannabis seem to be changing rapidly in the west, now whether it should or shouldn’t be legal (I will leave that for the internet people to argue) I am just going to discuss the legalities of cannabis here in Kuwait.

Kuwait has very strict laws when it comes to drug abuse, but what does it say in regards to “smoking up?”

Kuwait’s Penal Law which speaks about crimes in general (and btw has been there since 1960!) states the following:

Article 208:
– Penalized for a period not exceeding 2 years in jail and/or a fine not exceeding KD2,000 for personal use (in a private place)

Article 207
– Penalized for a period not exceeding 7 years in jail and/or a fine not exceeding KD7,000 for drug dealing, or made it easier for another person to use drugs

This means that even if a person does not smoke up but facilitates for another person an environment to smoke up, they can get more years in jail. Let me re-explain this, if I let Mark smoke up in my living room but I don’t smoke up, I can get more years!

There are a lot of other things that come into account when the court looks at weed cases, there are also more detailed charts of each drug and its consequences, so please stay legal people.

Feel free to email me [email protected] with any legal questions. I do not have the capacity to answer everyone for free (but I try), and I am happy to annanounce that I am currently working with a great team and therefore we are able to reply back to all emails with a reasonable time frame.

Post by Fajer Ahmed – Legal Counsel
The legal opinions expressed in this post are those of the author Fajer. Opinions expressed by Mark or any other writer on mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com are those of the individual’s and in no way reflect Fajer’s opinion.

Photo by Prensa 420

[YouTube]

Why didn’t anyone tell me this was taking place over the weekend??? It looked pretty fun to watch. For more on the event click [Here]

Once a year Arabian Business releases a list of “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Arab Women” and every year I go through the list and find all the Kuwaiti women and list them on the blog. This year the list seems to the be the smallest since I started posting them with only 5 Kuwaiti women making the list and all at lower slots than the previous year. Shaikha Al Bahar whom back in 2012 was in #8 dropped to #21 last year and is currently at #31. This years leader in my most powerful Kuwaiti women list is Maali Alasousi, a newcomer. I hadn’t heard of her before but according to an article on Knowledge@Wharton, “Maali Alasousi gave up a comfortable life in Kuwait to live in Yemen, dedicating herself to developing social programs in a country that is among the most impoverished in the world”.

Below is this years list of most powerful Kuwaiti women with their 2014 ranking in between parentheses:

25- Maali Alasousi (new)
31- Shaikha Al Bahar (21)
46- Rasha Al Roumi (43)
51- Maha Al Ghunaim (27)
94- Sara Akbar (67)

For the full list of “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Arab Women” click [Here]

A redditor left the message below and it made me realize that asking my readers to answer his/her question could be beneficial not only to them, but to any other person who might be googling this in the future:

I need help. obviously Kuwait doesn’t have any suicide hot line or anything like that. But I was just wondering, what would be the ideal choice to resolve my depression here. It’s tearing my life apart. [Link]

I personally was lucky not to fall into depression after my divorce but I do understand the affect of mood fluctuations. If you can help or have any advice leave a comment below.

An airport bus accidentally drove into a brand new Kuwait Airways plane earlier today. The plane is one of the new leased planes and had just arrived to Kuwait a couple of days ago. The driver has already been deported (not really… I think).

via @jassimboodai

After a quiet weekend last week the events are back this weekend in full force. There are an insane amount of things to do but my personal picks are: Q8 Con, Alwan Art Festival, Q8 Food Festival, 7Market and of course Qout Market. Check out the full list of activities below:

Thursday
Exhibition: Al-Seef
1001 Inventions Exhibition
Q8 Food Festival
Rooftop Movie: Before Sunset
Kuwait Dino Park
Unique Market

Friday
1001 Inventions Exhibition
Q8 Food Festival
Make That Shot 3
Q8Con Comic Convention
Moto Bazaar
7Market
Alwan Art Festival
Book Club Meeting
Kuwait Dino Park
Native American Storytelling
Unique Market

Saturday
1001 Inventions Exhibition
Q8 Food Festival
Q8Con Comic Convention
Moto Bazaar
7Market
Guided Tour: Grand Mosque
Green Festival
Rooftop Movie: Lars and The Real Girl
Qout Market
Kuwait Dino Park
Unique Market

If you’d like to share an event on the blog [Email Me]

According to Numbeo, the crowdsourced global database of reported consumer prices, Kuwait has the 9th highest cost of living in the world. Qatar was next Arab country on the list coming in at 27 followed by Lebanon at 35 and UAE in 36. The ranking is based on a multiple factors including consumer prices, rents, restaurant prices and local purchasing power. I don’t think anyone living here will be surprised by this.

On the other hand if you’re looking for an affordable place to go on vacation, the list above is of the countries with the lowest cost of living. I have a friend who just came back from Nepal and according to him his room was just $7 a night. Check out the full index [Here] and the infographic [Here]

Thanks Ryan

The Creative Times Report held a Q&A with Sultan Al Qassemi, the co-director of Art Dubai’s Global Art Forum and asked him about the decision to have the Global Art Forum begin in Kuwait. This is a snippet from the conversation:

CTR: Can you talk about the decision to have the Global Art Forum begin in Kuwait this year before it comes to Dubai? Kuwait was at one time a leader of the regional art scene, but attention shifted away from the country in the years after the Gulf War, and now there appears to be a resurgence of interest in Kuwaiti art and culture. What attracted you to bringing the Global Art Forum to Kuwait City before Dubai this year?

SAQ: Kuwait was the launchpad for the globalization of Gulf culture over half a century ago. Kuwait is where some of the earliest radio, cinema, theater and even political and social movements of the Gulf originated several decades ago. Kuwait was also the launchpad for the first Gulf publication in color that was sold not only in the streets and markets of the Gulf but also in Cairo, Damascus and Beirut. So for the first time, the Gulf had moved from being a receiver of culture—from the West, India and other parts of the Arab world—to being a broadcaster, a publisher, a producer of popular content. This is our way of tipping our hat to Kuwait and recognizing its pioneering role in the globalization of culture. [Source]

For those interested, the Global Art Forum will be in Kuwait from March 14 to 15. For more information click [Here]