Search: “kuwait”

I was at the Saveco Supermarket yesterday and spotted seedless watermelons. I have no idea why no other supermarket has thought about getting seedless watermelons to Kuwait, it’s the most amazing thing ever.

The melons are mini sized and they weren’t cheap at around KD1.5 per kilo so my melon ended up costing around KD3.5 which is still a lot cheaper than the KD99 heart shaped melon at Sultan Center. I’m really loving Saveco.

A couple of days back I had just finished having lunch at Salhiya and as I was leaving the area by car I spotted the Finger Sushi sign on one of the buildings. I hadn’t noticed the sign before and since I was driving I made my friend note down Finger Sushi on my phone so I could check it out later once I got back home. That same evening around 1AM while watching the movie Non-Stop, I came across the note Finger Sushi on my phone and decided to see if they had a website or instagram account I could check out. I ended up finding both and right away what caught my attention was the fact that they’re open 24 hours a day. Me and my friends always have a hard time finding a place that isn’t McDonalds that is open after midnight and a 24 hour sushi place is exactly what we’d want late at night. So I paused the movie and gave them a call just to confirm that their dine-in is open 24 hours and not just the delivery and the guy on the other end of the line said I could come by any time of day and eat. So I decided once the movie was over I would head to Finger Sushi and try it out.

It was just after 2AM when I left my house and headed into the city. I put some Chet Baker on and took the scenic route arriving at the restaurant around 2:20AM and obviously, I was the only one there. There menu is very basic with just 7 makis, some salads and a handful of side dishes. By 7 makis I actually mean one kind of maki but you get to choose if you want it salmon, crab, shrimp, tuna, chicken, meat or vegetable. I decided to go with the salmon maki and asked them to make it spicy, the chef recommended I choose the red colored rice if I wanted it spicy but I decided to stick with white for the salmon and ordered another spicy crab maki with the red rice. I asked the chef what the sweet salmon salad was and he told me it was similar to the popular salmon avocado salad except with a different sauce. I ended up going with that as well and a side order of edamame. The cashier asked me if I wanted chopsticks which I replied yes to and he then asked me if I wanted soya sauce which I also said yes to. Turns out both are chargeable items costing 100fils each.

While waiting for my order to get ready I took some photos of the place trying my best to make it look cooler than it actually is and while I was admiring my handiwork, the waiter calls me up and hands me over a tray with my order. All the items I had ordered were nicely packaged so I took a group photo and then opened the packages for one more round of photos before I proceeded to munch away on the food.

I started off with the edamame which is impossible to go wrong with and once I was done with the edamame I started on the sweet salmon salad. This honestly was the worst thing I ordered and I have no idea why the chef would even compare it to a salmon avocado salad at other restaurants since its nothing like it. The salad was mostly lettuce with four or five small cooked and dry pieces of salmon covered with Lays chips. Not even the sauce could rescue the salad from disaster so save yourself the disappointment and skip the salads all together. Once I put the salad aside I started on the makis.

According to the chef all their makis plates come as six pieces with each two pieces having a different sauce on top. I’m sure you could stick to one sauce if you want to but for your first time you’d probably want to have the three different sauces so you could get an idea of what they all taste like. The makis also all come covered with crispy tempura. I personally wanted to order my maki without the sauces and the crispy tempura but since I was going to write about the place I decided to keep everything as it was. All three sauces tasted fairly similar and they were strong enough to overpower the flavor of the whole maki. It didn’t matter if there was crab or salmon inside I couldn’t tell the difference. On the other hand the red rice gave it an interesting flavor since its prepared using rose water.

Overall it was pretty much what I was expecting from a 24 hour fast food sushi place along with a bill that fit the experience:

6 Piece Salmon Maki – KD1.200
6 Piece Crab Maki – KD1.200
Sweet Salmon Salad – KD1.000
Edamame – KD0.750
Soya Sauce – KD0.100
Chopsticks – KD0.100

Total: KD4.350

It’s the perfect place for late night munchies and I would go back again with my friends when every other place is closed. But, I would save my money and avoid the salad next time as well as having the makis without the crispy tempura or the sauces. Finger Sushi is located in the same building as Opera Cakes and Sahara Hotel which is on your left hand side once you leave the Salhiya area [Map]. They’ve been open for just over a week now and you can find them on instagram @fingersushi or online at fingersushi.com.

Over the weekend a video went viral showing an endangered sea turtle being killed on a beach in Kuwait. In the very graphic video (which I won’t share on this blog), one man is seen sitting on top of the large turtle with a small kitchen knife in his hand while his family and friends can be heard in the background encouraging him to cut off the turtles head. You can even hear a voice of a woman and a child in the video, both in support of the killing. Once the perpetrator starts cutting off the turtles head, a second man comes into the video frame to help hold the turtle down. Once the head is cut off the child in the background yells out that he wants the head while everyone else watches the now dead and decapitated turtle bleed on the beach.

The Environment Public Authority (EPA) is now offering a KD3,000 reward to anyone who can identify the people in the video. It’s a very horrific crime but animal abuse sadly isn’t very rare in Kuwait. Last year some guys were driving around with shotguns shooting and decapitating stray dogs and then posting pictures all over Instagram and they were never punished so I am hoping this time around the perpetrators will be punished and made an example of.

Most of the articles on the sea turtle killing are in Arabic but KUNA have a poorly written piece on it which you could read [Here]

I was able to get a hold of two tickets for ‘The Wanted’ music event that is being held by Ooredoo this coming Saturday night and I’m going to give them away to one of my readers. Although some of you might not recognize the band’s name you’ve most likely heard one of their songs before. They are an English-Irish boy band and their two most popular songs are “Chasing The Sun” and “Glad You Came” which you can hear below.

[YouTube]

So if you want to win these two tickets, all you need to do is leave a comment below with the name of your favorite song by them. You’ll only have until midnight tonight to leave a comment since after that I will be using random.org to choose one winner who will get the two tickets. Good luck!

Rules: Only one entry per person and please make sure you use a working email since the winner will be contacted by email. If winner doesn’t respond within 12 hours of receiving the email, another winner will be randomly chosen.

Update: I closed the post for comments last night and using random.org this morning the winner was chosen which is comment #177 (Tareq). If Tareq doesn’t respond to my email in the next 12 hours a second draw will take place. Thanks for participating everyone and sorry you couldn’t all win.

Update2: The original winner didn’t respond to my email after 12 hours so using random.org I drew another number and the second time the winner was #209 (Ozair).

Thursday
Cinemagics Rooftop Movie: Thief
SHREK The Musical
Exhibition: 50 Years of Printmaking
Exhibition: Once Removed – Kevork Mourad
Exhibition: The Tour – Barry Iverson

Friday
Kuwait Scapes
SHREK The Musical
Wayans Brothers Comedy Show

Saturday
Shakshooka Nomadic Farmers Market
SHREK The Musical
Cinemagics Rooftop Movie: The Great Beauty

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

Wataniya Ooredoo are bringing the music group ‘The Wanted’ to perform live this coming Saturday at an invite only event that’s going to be held at their Red Dome near 360 Mall.

I’m not a fan of ‘The Wanted’ but I’m curious to why they can bring big bands to Kuwait and no one else can? A couple of years back they brought the musician ‘Ne-Yo’ and now this.

A few months back I posted a collection of old Kuwaiti postcards which I had found by mistake on eBay while searching for something else. This time around I found a larger collection of old Kuwaiti postcards but I was deliberately looking for them.

What I find fascinating about these old postcards is the fact they highlight important locations and buildings of that era, ones that are forgotten about or don’t even exist today. That’s why for this post I’ve highlighted these two specific postcards, one of the Carlton Hotel and the other of the Phoenicia Hotel. According to this old scan from a 1966 magazine, Phoenicia was the a beautiful place where you could experience the most beautiful days of your life. Good times, check out all the postcards below.

To purchase any of these postcards visit this [Link]

Yarmouk became the first healthy city in Kuwait this month by fulfilling the requirements of the World Health Organization (WHO). Some of the requirements they fulfilled included:

– Fighting against obesity
– Having a walk marathon
– Beautification and cleaning of the city
– Setting up a well-equipped walking track
– Planted trees
– Saved power and water
– Washed streets with water and soap
– Organized exhibitions for young entrepreneurs a
– Established an environment-friendly park
– Organized cultural, social, educational and health symposiums and lectures
– Urged people to donate blood
– Combatted smoking
– Fighting swine flu

I think thats really great now if only the same formula could be applied to my area or other areas around Kuwait. Checkout the article on KUNA [Here]

Photo by Samira

A few weeks back the Red Bull Cypher battle took place in Kuwait where 16 of the best b-boys battled for the prestigious title as well as the chance to compete against the worlds best in Paris. This was the first year Kuwait had a b-girl compete but in the end it was b-boy Seasick who took home the title.

Check out the video of the event below put together by TJCfilms.

[YouTube]

Hello everyone, although I haven’t posted here in a while, I have been reading your questions and emails. Over and over there is one question that is constantly being asked so I have decided to post the answer here, so you can all benefit.

“How can I get a release from my company?”

This question is not as simple as it seems, the answer depends on a few things (I am assuming you work in the private sector and Kuwait Labor Law 6/2010 applies to you):
1) If you have passed the 100 day probation period or not
2) The type of contract you have (specified or not specified)
3) Whether your employer was providing you with your rights as per Kuwait Labor Law

So therefore I tried to simplify the answer in a flow chart below:

I really don’t like how some employers are keeping foreigners here against their will by using a specified contract, putting travel bans against them and doing other manipulative things. This isn’t a perception I have but stories I keep hearing EVERY SINGLE DAY! So my advice to you is, if you want to leave and they won’t let you go, email your boss with all the things they are doing that are against the law or your contract, for example withholding your passport, not paying you on time, not paying you over time, working more than 8 hours a day and so on (Read your rights here)

Also I would like to take some cases pro-bono with a help of lawyer friends, so please email you if you feel your employer is not being rightful!

As for company’s please read this link that has employee rights, you have no excuse to treat foreigners this way.

If you have any further questions please write them below, I will try to answer you here.

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.

Kuwait is tied in 11th place in the latest report from Gallup on the happiest countries in the world. I guess the Happy Kuwait video did Kuwait a lot of good.

Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone and face-to-face interviews with approximately 1,000 adults in each country, aged 15 and older, conducted in 2013 in 138 countries and areas. For results based on the total global sample, the margin of sampling error is less than ±1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level. For results based on country-level samples, the margin of error ranges from a low of ±2.1 to a high of ±5.3. The margin of error reflects the influence of data weighting. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Check out the full report [Here]

Thanks BeeJay

Kuwait Signs is an iPhone app targeted towards local residents who are planning to take the driving license test. The app has information on street signs, highway speeds, local driving laws as well as other helpful information like how to apply for the driving license. The design of the app is pretty clean and simple, there is a quiz mode which I didn’t so well in and finally, the app is in Arabic and English. If you’re interested the app costs $1.99 and can be found in the app store by searching for “Kuwait Signs”.

Thursday
Qibliya Yard Sale
Kuwait Scapes
Cinemagics Rooftop Movie: Surprise Movie of the Month
Exhibition: 50 Years of Printmaking
Exhibition: Once Removed – Kevork Mourad
Exhibition: The Tour – Barry Iverson

Friday
Kuwait Scapes

Saturday
Cinemagics Rooftop Movie: Rock the Casbah

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

Photo above by Allan Santiago

Someone in Kuwait purchased the new BMW i8 based on the video below which was shot at the Kuwait Airport. By far one of the most exciting looking BMWs in a very long time.

[YouTube]

Husain Ismail whom I’ve previously posted about when I shared his video of his drone flying higher than the Liberation Tower (pictured above) was recently interviewed on KTV about his hobby. In the interview Husain goes into details about how he started and how he’s modified his drone to fly over a kilometer in height. It’s an interesting interview to watch if you’ve been curious about this hobby. The interview is in Arabic and you can check it out below.

my interview with KTV.. 15.5.2014 —– مقابله في تلفزيون الكويت والحديث عن التصوير الج from husain_ on Vimeo.