Categories
Events Movies

Future Shorts Festival – Kuwait

The Future Shorts Festival is the biggest pop up film festival of its kind, showcasing the most exciting short films from around the world. As part of their world tour they’ll be making a stop in Kuwait next week at the Contemporary Art Platform.

Date: August 8th, 2012
Time: 9PM
Location: Contemporary Art Platform, Shuwaikh
Ticket: KD2

For more information on the Future Shorts Festival click [Here]




Categories
Sports

Kuwait at the London Olympics


[YouTube]

As a way of keeping up to date on the Kuwaiti athletes at the Olympics you can follow some of them on Twitter. As of now I’ve found the following athletes on twitter:

Faye Sultan @fayedolphin
Fehaid Aldeehani @aldeehani




Categories
Kuwait Sports

Kuwaiti Olympic Athletes Profiles

You can check out the profiles of all the Kuwaiti Olympic athletes as well as follow their event schedules and other bits of information on the official London 2012 Olympics website [Here]

For easy to remember access, just use teamkuwait.com

via FroyoNation




Categories
Kuwait Sports

Kuwait Gridiron Football – Episode 1

TJCfilms has been really busy lately releasing one video after another. His latest is the first episode of a series on the Kuwait Gridiron Football team. American Football that is.

This is the Kuwait Gridiron football team. Not Soccer…NFL style football. They are the official team of Kuwait. These guys are serious and want to take this team to an international level. This first episode of a hopefully ongoing series introduces the coaches, players and the drive and discipline these guys have. They are working hard to get tough so they can take it to teams all around the world and here in Kuwait. Next episode will be about their conditioning exercises.

I for one didn’t know Kuwait had a national Football team. Watch the video above or on [YouTube]




Categories
50s to 90s Kuwait Photography

Kuwait Oil Fires, 1991

40 years ago, NASA’s Landsat program launched it’s initial satellite into space (July 23, 1972). Since then the program has been tracking and recording changes on the Earth’s surface via satellite imagery.

Since it’s been 40 years, NASA commemorated the anniversary by selecting and compiling a list of its top ten stories or revealing images which it had stored up during its four decades of existence. One of the stories that made the top 10 was the 1991 Kuwait Oil Fires.

As Iraqi troops withdrew from Kuwait at the end of the first Gulf War, they set fire to over 650 oil wells and damaged many more, just south of the Iraq border (yellow line). These Landsat images show before, during and after the release of 1.5 billion barrels of oil into the environment, the largest oil spill in human history.

You can check out the top 10 stories and images on [WIRED]




Categories
50s to 90s Sports

Kuwait football team at the 1980 Olympics

Someone upload a video of highlights of the Kuwait and Nigeria match that took place at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, USSR. Kuwait won that match 3-1 (they scored an embarrassing self goal) and during the tournament managed to make their way to the quarterfinals before being eliminated by the Soviet Union 2-1. [YouTube]




Categories
Kuwait Music

DUFFY – Kuwaiti Beat Boxer

He’s actually pretty good. [YouTube]

Thanks TJCfilms




Categories
Information Kuwait

Kuwait’s First Nuclear Engineer

The Fixtures just posted a short interview with Nasser Al Sayegh who is Kuwait’s first nuclear engineer. He seems like a smart guy (obviously) and if people like him ran the plant Kuwait would be in safe hands so it’s too bad Kuwait scrapped all their nuclear ambitions. You can read the interview with Nasser on The Fixture’s blog [Here]

In case you missed it, here is a previous video interview with Nasser taken from AlRai TV. [YouTube]

Update: Some readers have pointed out in the comments that Nasser is not the first Kuwaiti to get a degree in Nuclear engineering. But, it’s possible he might be the only Kuwaiti nuclear engineer to actually work in the field. I’m trying to get some more clarification on this.

Update2: Nasser has posted the following comment in relation to the above:

To clarify things up I’m the first specialized person in the nuclear field In Kuwait. Although the others did get there certificates before me they didn’t actually work in a nuclear reactor so all what they have is theoretical backgrounds. I’m also the only person in the gulf that has a security clearance to work in nuclear reactors around Europe.




Categories
Kuwait Music Videos

BBoy Psycho and the Kuwait BBoy scene

A new video by tjcfilms, this one is with BBoy Psycho who talks about the BBoy scene in Kuwait while also displaying some of his moves. I really like the videos tjcfilms keep producing since in a way he keeps us connected with scenes that aren’t really mainstream or very exposed. The music is by Gemini and called “Nothingness”. [YouTube]




Categories
Fashion Gossip & Rumors

Rumor: Abercrombie & Fitch coming to Kuwait and the Middle East

Earlier today I was told that Habchi and Chalhoub are currently in negotiations with Abercrombie & Fitch to bring them to the region. The Chalhoub Group already have a bunch of popular brands in their roster including Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Saks Fifth Avenue, Lacoste, Celine and Marc Jacobs so it would be realistic for them to get the brand although I always imagined Alshaya bringing them. I’m actually interested to see how the brand will adapt to the region but my guess is there won’t be much of an issue. For now I’ll leave you with the video above of the A&F guys lipdubbing “Call Me Maybe” while I go do a thousand sit-ups and starve myself. [YouTube]




Categories
Kuwait Sports

Kuwaiti athletes will compete under the Kuwaiti flag at the Olympics

I mentioned the other day that I had heard Kuwait was sending a delegation to Switzerland in hopes of getting things sorted before the Olympics start at the end of the month. Looks like they were successful because the International Olympic Committee just approved Kuwait’s request to hoist the National Flag and the playing of the Kuwaiti National Anthem at the London Olympics.

Minister of Communications and Acting Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Salem Al-Utheina on Saturday congratulated all Kuwaitis on the approval of the International Olympic Committee of Kuwait’s request to hoist the National Flag at the upcoming Olympic games in London and playing of the Kuwaiti National Anthem.

The Minister told KUNA that he was informed of the approval following his second meeting earlier today with the Committee’s President Jacques Rogge.

Al-Utheina had delivered a letter from His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah to Rogge at the Committee’s headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland on hoisting the flag of Kuwait in the Olympic Games, which kick off in London on July 27. [Source]

Congrats and good luck to all the athletes, Team Kuwait is a go!




Categories
Design Interesting Kuwait News

Kuwait Children’s Hospital Design Wins International Award

Agi Architects was awarded with a “A’ Design Award” for their proposed hospital design which is pictured above.

You can find out more about the Kuwait Children’s Hospital design [Here] and you can read about the award [Here]




Categories
Kuwait Sports

Who’s on Team Kuwait at the Olympics?

The other day I found out that Kuwait is going to have its first female Olympian swimmer and it got me thinking… who else is on Team Kuwait? Who are the other athletes that are going to be participating next month in the summer Olympics? Does anyone know?

Team USA have an amazing website listing all the sports they’ll be participating in as well as who will be representing them. We don’t have to have anything fancy like that, just a simple list would be enough since right now we don’t even have that. I just got the domain teamkuwait.com and as soon as I have a good amount of names I’m going to start uploading them there but I need your help.

If you have any idea who is going to be participating at the Olympics next month please email me or leave a comment below.

So far this is the list:
Swimming: Faye Sultan
Shooting: Mariam Erzouqi

Update: Thanks to Buz Fairy, this is the full list of Kuwaiti athletes participating in the Olympics next month:

Shooting:
– Fuhaid Al-Daihani in Double Trap (men)
– Abdulla Al-Rashidi in Skeet (men)
– Talal Al-Rashidi in Trap (men)
– Maryam Erzouqi in 10 meter Air Rifle (women)

Track and Field:
– Ali Al-Zankawi in Hammer Throw (men)
– Mohammad Al-Azmi in 800 Meters (men)
– AbdulAziz Al-Mandeel in 110 Meter Hurdles (men)
– Salsabeel Al-Sayyar in 100 meters (women)

Table Tennis:
– Ibrahim Al-Hassan (men)

Swimming:
– Yousef Al-Askari 100 meter freestyle/backstroke (men)
– Fay Al-Hussain in 100 meter freestyle (women)

Final tally is 11 Kuwaiti athletes, 8 men and 3 women.

Update2: Here is an article about Yousef (pictured below) who is currently a high school student in Florida. [Link]




Categories
Kuwait News

Kuwait named least innovative GCC economy

Qatar has retained its position as the Middle East’s most innovative economy in the annual Global Innovation Index 2012 (GII).

The study, commissioned by leading business school INSEAD in partnership with other firms, scored 141 countries based on the degree to which their economic environment enables innovation, as well as actual innovative outputs.

Saudi Arabia was ranked 48th (up six places on 2011) while Kuwait was the lowest ranked GCC nation at 55th, down from 52nd last year.

Ouch! [Link]




Categories
Information Kuwait Shopping

Kuwait’s very own Costco?

Ama Traveller just posted pictures and information on a new place that opened up in Kuwait called “On Cost”. Judging by the pictures and her comments it looks very similar in style to the very popular large US retailer, Costco. Need to pass by and check it out myself but you can check out her post and pictures [Here]