Search: “kuwait”

Thanks Wahab

Just a bit of positivity to start off the day (yes my day starts at noon). Local startup FishFishMe have secured $200,000 from investors to expand their operations globally. FishFishMe is an online platform to book fishing charter boats and they’re already pretty global as it is but with the new investment they’re hoping to expand even more while also improving their current offerings. If you haven’t checked out FishFishMe before you should, here is a link to their [Website]

Goes to show, a good idea is a good idea no matter where you’re based.

The American chain Denny’s is coming to Kuwait and the Middle East. Their first location is opening next year in UAE followed by locations in the rest of the region. They’re known for serving breakfast, lunch and dinner 24 hours a day so hopefully they won’t be opening up in a mall. [Link]

One of my favorite news sources Quartz just published a list of the cheapest beer prices in the world as well as the most expensive. On the list of cheapest beer prices, Saudi Arabia came fourth which kinda makes sense since I know non alcoholic beer like Barbican are super popular there. Quartz also put up a list of the most expensive beers in the world and thats where Kuwait comes in.

According to their data, the price of 0.5L of draught beer is $6.48. Problem is I don’t know of any place in Kuwait that serves draught beer (that’s beer from a tap). Quartz assumes the reason the price of beer in Kuwait is expensive is because it’s illegal and link to a post of mine from last year in which I had published the prices of alcohol in Kuwait (taken from a newspaper). Problem is if the price was based on illegal alcoholic beer then Kuwait would top the chart. The price I had posted was around KD150-KD180 for a case. A case has 24 cans and KD150 is around $530. 24 cans x 330ml = 7.92L ÷ 0.5L = 15.84. $530 ÷ 15.84 = $33.4. So the price of 0.5L of beer in Kuwait is $33.4 which is a lot more than $6.48.

Anyway check out their article [Here]

Since we’re on the subject on how much cooler Kuwait was back in the day, the video above is of an Offshore Powerboat Race that was held in Kuwait back in 1990, a few months before the Iraqi invasion. [YouTube]

I was searching for random stuff on eBay when I spotted a bunch of different sellers selling old postcards of Kuwait. I saved the most interesting ones to share below. Notice how much greener Kuwait was back in the old days? Also you might notice some of the postcards feature the Kuwait Towers while still under construction. The postcard I decided to highlight above is of “The Yachting Club”. [eBay Link]

There are two images of the back of the postcards with writings. I don’t know what language they’re in (my guess Bulgarian and Italian?) but if anyone can translate them to English that would be fantastic. Also what happened to all the seagulls??

Update: A friend noted the seagulls might have been super imposed on that shot. Looking at it closely I can’t seem to find any shadows of the seagulls so that’s probably the case.

The Ministry of Interior has revised the speed limit on various roads and they’ve already started replacing some of the streets signs to reflect the new limits. Here are the current speed limits, keep in mind not all of them have been changed:

Speed limit on expressways and outer roads that link expressways and main roads with the country’s borders are as follows:
– Maximum speed for cars: 120 km/h
– Minimum speed for cars: 80 km/h

Speed limit on expressways between 6th Ring Road and 2nd Ring Road:
– Maximum speed for cars: 100 km/h
– Minimum speed for cars: 50 km/h

Speed limit on expressways between 2nd Ring Road and 1st Ring Road:
– Maximum speed for cars: 80 km/h
– Minimum speed for cars: 40 km/h

Speed limit on 5th Ring Road starting from King Abdulaziz Al-Saud road in the east to Andalus crossroad with Ardiya in the west:
– Maximum speed for cars: 100 km/h
– Minimum speed for cars: 50 km/h

Speed limit on 1st Ring Road:
– Maximum speed for cars: 100 km/h
– Minimum speed for cars: 50 km/h

Speed limit for 2nd, 3rd and 4th Ring Roads:
– Maximum speed for cars: 80 km/h
– Minimum speed for cars: 45 km/h

Speed limit on main roads in inside areas:
– Maximum speed for cars: 60 km/h

Speed limit inside residential areas:
– Maximum speed for cars: 45 km/h

For more information on this click [Here]

Update: This is no longer happening. Check [Here]

In less than 3 weeks time, the Kuwait national American football team will be playing a friendly game against Switzerland. Not many people are aware of the fact that Kuwait has an American football team but we do, two teams in fact, the under 19s and over 19s (seniors).

I passed by one of their practice sessions last week and was pretty impressed with what I saw. The teams hold their practices at the Kuwait University Stadium in Shuwaikh and when I got there I got to watch different groups take part in various exercises. The teams practice Sunday to Wednesday from 7PM to 10PM and Saturdays from 1PM to 3PM so they’re very dedicated and really want to make this work.

Although the game this month against Switzerland is a friendly, it’s still an important game because the next one after that is in April against South Korea which will be for the World Cup Qualifications. So if you’re an American Football fan or if you’re looking for something to do, this January 18th pass by and cheer for the Kuwaiti team. For more details on the timing and location, check out this [Link]

For those of you who attended the showing of the short film “Playtime” this past Thursday (a great film btw) will probably recall the director during the Q&A session mentioning Brett Jordan’s photos as being one of his sources of inspiration.

Brett Jordan’s parents lived in Kuwait back in the 60s and he managed to scan a ton of his parents photos and then uploaded them onto Flickr. I’ve already posted about Brett’s photos a number of times over the years but I know many of you haven’t seen them before. Also, Brett keeps adding photos as he finds them so there might be a bunch that weren’t there the last time you saw them.

Check out all the photos on Brett’s Flickr page [Here]

[YouTube]

According to the video above, two Rally Righters are headed to Kuwait. The Rally Fighter (pictured below) is a kit car that was chosen as the winning design to build out of 21,000 submissions by internet users around the world. They’re only building 3,000 of these kit cars so it’s pretty cool that two are headed to Kuwait.

If one (or two) of these cars are for you, please let me know once they arrive to Kuwait.

Beautiful commercial for the upcoming International Forum for Islamic Art which is going to be held from December 29th to January 9th 2014.

This is going to be the 6th time the forum is being held in Kuwait. The forum will feature various exhibitions and workshops but sadly all the information I could find was in Arabic so I don’t have the exact specifics of whats taking place. If you do read Arabic though you can check out the official website for this event which has the full schedule of all the activities [Here]

I’m not a big fan of local home businesses, but that probably has to do more with the fact that most just sell different implementations of cupcakes and don’t really bring anything new to the local food scene. Pasticceria Di Pietro on the other hand is something new and going by the photos alone looks very appetizing.

According to the website, Pasticceria Di Pietro is the first family business Sicilian pastry shop in Kuwait owned by married couple, Mays and Luciano Di Pietro. They sell Sicilian Cannoli’s which are hand-rolled, crispy golden pastry shells filled with different cream stuffings.

I haven’t tried them out yet since they just started taking orders yesterday but their prices start from KD1 for the small sized cannoli up to KD1.750 for the larger ones with chocolate shells. If you’re interested, you can order directly from their website [Here]

Thanks Mohi

This actually makes me want to fly with Kuwait Airways. Check out @dali_duran’s instagram account for more of his videos. [Link]

Local newspapers today are reporting that the Ministry of Commerce and Industries is working on providing a service for locals to apply/obtain commercial permits online. The Municipality, Fire Departments and Civil Services will all be connected online. It should be up and running early next year and it will take a lot less time and a lot less paper work to get things done. It’s a system that’s already in place in neighboring countries like UAE and Qatar. [Source]

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.

According to Kuwait Times, the zoo is going to start selling some of their animals because they have too many of them and not enough space. My recommendation is to go for a Pygmy Goat, they’re just too damn cute (they’d make great funny YouTube videos). [Link]