This is one of these posts that will mean absolutely nothing to everyone except me. When I was a kid back in the 80s I remember there was a fish and chips place in Salmiya on Baghdad Street that had a wooden interior. That’s all I remember of the place and the fact the name had the word “Captain” in it. I’ve been searching for YEARS trying to figure out what the place was and never could. Until today.
Randomly, while flipping through some old Kuwait Times newspapers from 1984 I came across the ad above for Captain D’s. I was like WTF, right away I noticed the address of the Salmiya (spelled Salmiah) location was Baghdad Street. This was it, I finally found out what the place was called.
Back in the 80s there was a company called “Al-Kazemi Food Company” which had the franchise in Kuwait. I don’t think the company exists anymore today since I couldn’t find any trace of them online but back then they had three franchises: Captain D’s, Popeyes and Pizza Inn.
Interestingly if you notice in the ad above it says that they were opening Captain D’s in Carlton Hotel. Thats the hotel that now has the Korean restaurant KOREA GWAN (previously called Koryokwan).
Anyway, if anyone has any more info or photos please let me know.
News on an Australian film being banned in Kuwait has been popping up on my news feed all morning. A horror film called “Talk to Me” is supposedly banned in Kuwait because one of the actors identifies as nonbinary and is a transmasculine (a female that identifies as a male). According to the news articles there isn’t any LGBTQ+ content in the film, and there is also no mention of the actor’s gender identity, it’s just banned because one of the supporting actors is trans. Source
I’m now curious if, moving forward, all movies that contain openly gay actors will also be banned in Kuwait. If X-Men or Lord of the Rings came out today would they both be banned because they star Sir Ian McKellen who is openly gay? There are a lot of gay Hollywood actors and directors so I’m really interested how this is going to play out.
33 years ago on August 2nd 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Abduljabbar Mansoor Marafi, an amateur radio operator decided to stay behind with his family and that decision eventually led him to become the last voice from Kuwait.
I hadn’t heard of his story until very recently and since its the anniversary of the invasion I wanted to share it since I found it really interesting from a technology point of view, but also the bravery involved. Marafi had been operating a sophisticated Radio Bulletin Board System (RBBS) using a personal computer and amateur radio set equipment long time before the invasion. He had even setup backup power supply in case of power failure which turned out to also be useful during the invasion.
When Iraq invaded, Marafi refused to flee hoping he could help his country by staying in Kuwait. During the early days of the invasion, Marafie used his radio to keep people outside of Kuwait in the loop with what was happening here. He was basically blogging before blogging was even a thing. When Iraq start cutting off communication in Kuwait from the outside world, Marafi’s radio system became even more important.
The easiest way I can think of to describe Marafi’s bulletin board system is to imagine a very basic version of email. You would send a message to a specific radio call sign (Marafi’s was 9K2DZ), and when that person later connects to their bulletin board system, they would see what messages they had waiting for them. I’ve embedded a video below from YouTube demoing this.
News of Marafi’s bulletin service started spreading by word of mouth in Kuwait. Families began giving Marafi messages to send to their relatives abroad, and families abroad started contacting radio amateurs in the countries they lived in asking them to send messages to their relatives in Kuwait through Marafi’s bulletin board. In addition to helping transmit messages between families, Marafie also used his radio system to expose to the outside world the horrors that were being committed by the Iraqis in Kuwait.
When Iraqis found out news was leaking out of Kuwait they suspected it was due to radio amateurs since all other sort of communication had already been cut. The Iraqis then started interrogating Kuwaiti radio amateurs and confiscating their equipment, including Marafi’s. But Marafi was expecting that and had set up a complete radio setup behind a false wall in his basement. The setup outside that was confiscated was mostly broken or old equipment.
The full story of Abduljabbar Marafi and his radio system is too big to tell in all its detail but if you want to find out more you can google his call sign 9K2DZ. Sadly, Marafi passed away last November.
I’ve uploaded a PDF of an article taken from the September 1991 issue of Alam Al-Computer. I borrowed some of the information in this post from that article and it’s really interesting to read. You can download it here.
Similar to what happened with Oppenheimer, there are currently rumors circulating that the Barbie movie is banned in Kuwait. As of now, that isn’t true and it’s just rumors.
According to a source of mine at the cinema, the Barbie movie is coming out in Kuwait at the end of the month, but it will be censored. My understanding is the scenes that will be censored are LGBTQ+ related and that the studio already approved the removal of those scenes last month. The only reason the movie was going to be banned in Kuwait is if Saudi Arabia decided to ban it, but yesterday according to @kuwaitnews, Saudi said the movie will be released so thats good news for us.
If everything goes according to plan, the movie will be released in Kuwait on August 31st. On a side note, with my pink colored blog I kinda feel like I need to be collaborating with Barbie somehow, maybe a Barbie launch day takeover or something, I need ideas!
Update: And it has now officially been banned. So if you’re looking to watch it you’re going to have to drive down to Saudi or head to Bahrain where the movie will be premiering today.
Late last week the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) issued a circular banning crypto payments, investment and mining.
Kuwait is currently one of the cheapest countries in the world to mine bitcoin. It is estimated that last year the cost of mining in Kuwait was just $1,400 per BTC when bitcoin was worth more than $40,000 at the time. But, the high power consumption of mining doesn’t seem to be the reason for the ban. According to an article on Yahoo Finance, the reason behind the ban is money laundering. Countries are required to put up guardrails to prevent money laundering but I guess it’s easier to just ban it completely.
What does this mean if you already own cryptocurrency? My best guess is that it would make transferring large sums of money from abroad into your account in Kuwait more difficult. If you transfer large amounts of money you need to explain where it’s coming from and I don’t think you can tell the banks anymore that they’re from your crypto investments. Maybe a banker can clear this up for us.
Update: according to a reader the circular doesn’t apply to individuals.
Back in November, I broke the news that Chipotle had signed with Alshaya and were coming to Kuwait. Now, 7 months later, its finally official.
Chipotle just announced that it had signed an agreement with Alshaya Group, its first-ever franchise partner, to open locations in the Middle East next year. The initial plan calls for two locations each in Dubai and Kuwait.
This is pretty huge news especially since this is the first time Chipotle has enlisted a local franchise retail operator as it moves into a new market. Alshaya really know how to get things done, exciting!
Yesterday I booked my tickets for Oppenheimer so I could watch it when it’s released this Thursday. The film was shot in the IMAX format and so thats the recommended way of viewing it. The only cinema I found that will be showing Oppenheimer in the IMAX format in Kuwait is Cinescape at Al-Kout Mall. If you’re thinking but VOX are showing it in their MAX theater, well that’s not IMAX. MAX is just what VOX calls their large screens, but they’re not IMAX screens. I also asked Scientific Center if they’ll be showing Oppenheimer since they have the largest IMAX screen in Kuwait, but according to them they don’t have any plans to do so at the moment.
So if you want to watch Oppenheimer, the best theater is the IMAX one at Cinescape at Al Kout. Obviously make sure you book the IMAX theater and not the Standard or Eleven theater.
Contrary to rumors, Oppenheimer is not banned in Kuwait. Even though it’s not listed on the local cinema websites (as of this post), I just got confirmation that Oppenheimer is in-fact still launching this weekend.
If you want to book tickets for the first showings, according to Cinescape they will start selling tickets today before 3:30PM. So keep checking their website.
When I was a kid growing up in the 80s I got into the hobby of stamp collecting before eventually losing interest and moving on to videos games, music and the internet. Jasem on the other hand started collecting stamps when he was 10 and hasn’t stopped since.
I’ve know Jasem for nearly 20 years and although I knew he was into stamps, I didn’t realize how deep he was into this hobby until just a couple of weeks ago. Turns out he’s the largest stamp collector in Kuwait and one of the largest in the Middle East having over 400,000 stamps, and thats not counting duplicates!
When I first walked into his archive, a room with back to back shelves filled with stamp folders, my jaw dropped. The shelves were organized by country and in alphabetical order but there were also more focused folders revolving around themes like JFK, Oil & Gas, Chess, Flowers and more.
I had him pull out his Kuwait folders so I could go through some of Kuwait’s first stamps. One thing I discovered was that before Kuwait had their own stamps they used to overprint British and Indian stamps. Basically they were standard British and Indian stamps that they would overprint the word KUWAIT on them. Kuwait launched their own stamps in 1959 but used rupees until the Kuwaiti dinar was established as a currency in 1961. Jasem has all four kinds of those stamps, Indian and British overprints as well as the first Kuwait stamps in rupees and the first Kuwait stamps in dinars after. They’re incredibly interesting to see since they’re part of Kuwait’s history.
Thats one thing I love about stamps, a properly organized stamp collection is like a picture history book since every important part of a countries history would have been released as a stamp.
I asked Jasem what he was planning to do with his continuously growing collection but as of now he doesn’t have any plans. At the moment he’s just collecting while also trading and selling stamps he doesn’t need. Eventually I imagine he’s going to display them somehow for the public. When I was in Bahrain last year I passed by the Bahrain Post Museum and they had a small curated collection of rare stamps which were really interesting to go through. Hopefully he ends up setting something up like that, at least for the Kuwait stamps since I’m sure a lot of people who love to see them.
If you want to find out more about Jasem you can check out his website jasemali.com
Devil’s Advocate, Netflix’s third Kuwaiti Project (the other two being The Exchange and The Cage) was released this past weekend and is now available to stream on the platform. The 7 episode drama revolves around a football player accused of murdering his wife, and a determined defense lawyer who defies popular sentiment and takes on the case.
I haven’t watched the show yet but as of this post it’s rated pretty high on IMDB with a 7.7 rating and is currently ranked #1 in TV Shows Today on Netflix. The series in Arabic but has English subtitles.
Not sure if anyone noticed but the LED mesh around the Kuwait Towers has been replaced with solid green and red colored lights now. Back in 2015 when they first installed the LED mesh I suggested they should be kept permanently since it gave a Blade Runner look. But I take that back now, I think I prefer it without the wraparound screens but I wish they go back to the way things were originally with just a simple neutral light instead of the red and green.
MrBeast Burger is a burger concept by the super popular internet personality MrBeast. If you haven’t heard of him, he has over 165 million subscribers on YouTube and is mostly known for his extravagant stunts and challenges videos.
MrBeast Burger is popping up in Kuwait tomorrow (July 7) and for one day only. Talabat will be hosting MrBeast Burger and they’ll be going live around 11AM. Delivery will be to most of Kuwait except for Mangaf, Sabahiya and Jahra.
The burger reviews online are pretty mixed, but based on MrBeasts popularity, I’d assume Talabat are going to be pretty busy tomorrow.
