Search: “kuwait”

The Kuwait Motor Town racetrack is now open again to cyclists every Monday and Tuesday, and it’s free.

The track is 5.6KM long but has 3 different configurations, each a different length so you can pick and choose which part of the track you want to ride on. The track isn’t flat but has elevations which makes for a more fun ride.

There are a number of advantages to cycling at the racetrack over lets say the Gulf Road bike path. For one, you won’t have to dodge stray cats or pedestrians, it’s also a lot more chill of an experience because it’s empty and very quiet. There usually aren’t that many riders at the track and even if there are, there is plenty of room for everyone. You could have your headphones on playing music and not have to worry about another cyclist coming up behind you because the track is so wide making it very easy to overtake.

The track is beautiful at sunset, but even after the sun goes down, you can keep riding under the track lights.

If you want to try riding at the track, they open to the public from 4PM to 8PM on Mondays and Tuesdays. It’s free and doesn’t even require registration, just get to the track, park your car and then ride into the racetrack. There is a security guard there with a sign in sheet, just put your name and number and continue onto the track. The only requirement is a helmet. Also note, you can’t bring rollerblades, scooters or skateboards onto the track, but if you want to walk, jog, or run around the track you can. They also don’t rent bikes at the track, it’s BYOB.

If you don’t know where the track is, here is the location on Google Maps. To stay posted on KMT activities and events, head over to @kmtkw

Khalifouh Village\ is a Kuwaiti heritage village which is owned and built by the popular Kuwaiti actor, Khalifa Khalifouh.

Khalifa worked on various TV shows featuring old Kuwaiti villages and was unhappy with the quality of workmanship in the show-built sets, so he decided to build one himself. Khalifouh Village was designed and built to resemble a real village, complete with a mosque, a bakery, a tea shop, a theater, and a main square.

The village offers a lot of cool photography opportunities, and if you have kids then they’ll love running around exploring the space.

The village which is located in Wafra is reopening again on weekends starting from this Friday. Opening hours will be 1PM to 9PM and for more info you can check out their account @khalifouhvillage and here is the location on Google Maps.

via @salmaninho

In celebration of 125 years of Kuwaiti-British friendship, JACC is hosting British Film Week as part of their November program. Running from November 25 to 28, two British movies will be screened each day and includes classics like the iconic James Bond ‘Goldfinger’ and family favorite, ‘Paddington’.

If you’re into cars then you might be interested to know that the Aston Martin DB5 that actually appeared in the movie Goldfinger will also be displayed at JACC.

Tickets cost 3KD and can be booked through the JACC website, for the full schedule and more info, head over to jacc-kw.com

A couple of days ago, the Erab International Festival, the largest equestrian event in Kuwait, kicked off. This year, the festival is even bigger, running for 10 days from November 21 to November 30.

The festival features four main equestrian shows:

• Working Equitation
• Sword & Tent Pegging
• Dressage
• Arabian Horses Pageant

In addition to the equestrian shows, there’s a wide variety of entertainment for both adults and children. The organizers have brought in three street performers from Covent Garden in the UK to perform throughout the festival. These are the same talented performers you might have seen while wandering around Covent Garden, now here in Kuwait for this event.

In addition to the Covent Garden performers, the festival features food stalls, a mini zoo, various VR experiences, and even a comedy show.

The event is being held at the Bait Al-Arab Stables near Murouj and runs daily from 3 PM to 10 PM. For tickets and the full schedule, visit erabfestival.com

According to a video on the Arab Times website it looks like the Darwaza intersection in Kuwait City is finally reopening. It closed down 4 years ago for maintenance and since then it’s been riddled with controversy. Hopefully the underground passageway was saved. Link

A couple of weeks ago I posted how there were going to be no track days at Kuwait Motor Town this season because the contract with the company running the place had expired and wasn’t renewed. Well it’s been renewed now so track days are back again and the racetrack will be open this season. @kmtkw

JON is a new experience by the sea that launches today. The project is by Gastronomica, the same group behind a lot of our favorite food brands like OFK, Burger Boutique, Cocoa Room, Lazy Cat, and Slider Station, so you can expect an elevated experience.

The location is stunning. I first visited last week while it was still under construction, and returned yesterday at sunset to experience the play of light and shadows. JON was built right next to the water, so once you’re inside get an uninterrupted view of the sea.

The place is divided into two main areas:

Al-Qarya
Meaning the village, this first area at JON is both a retail and culinary spot. There are a number of retail shops located in this space as well as an art exhibition space. Al-Qarya also has two dining concepts, the first is BRW, a coffee and bakery concept, and the second is Fat Pie, a new pizza concept offering artisanal pizzas.

OFK
The second half of JON is taken up by their sophisticated dining experience, OFK. OFK at JON will feature a new innovative menu different from their existing menu at their Al Hamra location, but in addition to food, OFK will also have live musical entertainment.

To get access to JON, you need to make a reservation through their website. Al-Qarya is free to access daily from 8AM to 4PM, but still requires registration due to the limited number of guests the area can take. If you want to access Al-Qarya between 4PM and 12AM, then the price of entry is 10KD. This includes a 5KD entry charge, with the remaining 5KD usable as credit within the venue.

Accessing OFK requires a different reservation. OFK opens from 6PM to 12AM and it’s 30KD per person. The 30 KD is credited toward your dining experience, which is à la carte rather than a set menu.

JON is located near the Kuwait Towers, right next to where Trader Vic’s used to be (Google Maps). If you’re interested in reserving your spot, head to jonkuwait.com

For more photos, check out my Instagram @248am

Today is the final day of the Tareq Rajab Museum’s Hungarian Zsolnay Ceramics Exhibition. The exhibition is in collaboration with the Hungarian Embassy in Kuwait and there are 560 pieces on display, highlighting 150 years of Hungarian ceramic development.

The ceramic pieces are from a private collection and haven’t been seen by the public for over 20 years. So this is a very rare opportunity to check them out.

The exhibition is free and takes place at Dar El Cid in Jabriya (Google Maps). Their timings are 9AM to 1PM and 4:30PM to 8:30PM. If you don’t have anything to do today pass by. @trmkuwait

I came across a diary from a woman named Thérèse, who was married to a French engineer working on the construction of the Boubyan Bridge. The bridge was built by the French engineering firm Bouygues—the same team behind major projects like the Channel Tunnel and Terminal 2 at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.

According to Thérèse, the French employees lived in a small camp near the bridge construction site, with the Chinese workers in a separate camp nearby. They arrived in Kuwait in 1981 and left in 1982. Each family had its own bungalow, and the camp also included some entertainment facilities like a clubhouse with a swimming pool, game hall, and restaurant.

It was interesting going through all her photos and random stories, since it gave a glimpse into the life of this isolated community in Kuwait.

Even though they lived on the camp, the children still attended the French School in Salmiya. The commute was an hour each way, and at first they used to be transported by bus but later the company got them a more comfortable Suburban. Once a week the mums would be allowed to accompany the children on the ride so they could go shopping or to the hairdresser. Once the kids are done with school, they used to go have lunch at the Le Meridien Hotel, but as customers complained about the commotion the kids would make, the hotel started refusing to serve them.

One Christmas they had Santa Claus come down on the roof of the clubhouse using a construction crane that was on site. The crane driver tried to be funny and dropped Santa Clause partially into the swimming pool which caused Santa to let off a string of expletives in front of the kids. The following year Santa refused to arrive by air and instead opted to arrive on a donkey.

I loved reading these random, mundane tidbits

According to Thérèse, social life was fairly calm, but they had a community and they held parties often, and also shared books and videotapes. They seemed to have made the best of their time in Kuwait, with the only complaint being about the violent sandstorms.

There are too many photos to share here so if you want to check them out, here is the link to the page on her time in Kuwait.

The page is in French, so use Google Translate if you want to read it in English.

Al-Farsi Kites Team are back this Friday for their first desert display of the season.

A lot of people might not know this, but the Al-Farsi team owns some of the largest kites in the world. Their Kuwait flag kite, for example, holds a Guinness World Record, but they also have two other kites ‘Blue Manta Ray’ and ‘The Hope’ which are even bigger. The Hope kite is gigantic at around 1,250m², roughly the size of five basketball courts.

During the winter months, the Al-Farsi Kite Team puts on a display every Friday in Bnaider near exit 258. The display starts after Friday prayers, and they’re generally there until around 5 PM.

For weekly updates and the Google Maps link to their location, check out their Instagram account @alfarsikite

This week I started watching the series Disclaimer. I’m three episodes in and it’s ok so far. One thing I liked without spoiling anything is the fact if you have surround speakers, the series takes advantage of them with one of the main characters inside voice. The first time the voice came on I thought Alexa came on by mistake.

Other than that I started watching the movie Trap last night. I’m more than half way in and it’s entertaining but some of the acting is soooo cringe. But I’m still looking forward to finishing the film later today. I also tried watching Love is Blind Habibi, but I couldn’t make it past the halfway point of the first episode.

Yesterday I also picked up the SVS PB-2000 Pro subwoofer from Xcite to use in my living room. Their website was showing it was out of stock but they actually had a brand new one at their Avenues branch. The past couple of weeks I’ve just been splurging on myself upgrading various tech around the house that I use a lot. Last week I got the 65″ TV, the Marantz Cinema 60 AV receiver, and now this week added the subwoofer to my home theater system. The PB-2000 Pro is definitely overkill for my small living room, and I had a bit of buyers remorse after getting it because I really didn’t want to spend that much on a subwoofer, but I tend to live with my sound systems for a very very long time. I still have my Jamo X870 speakers I bought after moving to Kuwait from uni back in like 2001-2002. So they’ve been with me for over 20 years, and although I’ve now replaced them as my home theater speakers with the KEF R7‘s, I still use the Jamo’s in my gym room. Xcite had other cheaper subwoofers, but I have the SVS SB-2000 Pro connected to my iMac and KEF LSX speakers, and I ] really really love it, so I wanted to get the PB version for my home theater. Both SVS subwoofers will probably stay with me for the rest of my life so not a bad deal when I look at it like that.

The last thing I’m upgrading is my iMac. I’m replacing my M1 iMac with 1TB drive and 16GB ram with the just released Mac Mini. I got the regular M4, not M4 Pro but with 24GB of ram and a 2TB drive. I ordered it from the US Apple Store, but I ended up buying the Apple Studio Display from Xcite since they had (might still have) a sale on them. The Xcite price was pretty much the same price as if I bought it online and shipped it to Kuwait, might be a bit cheaper even. If you’re looking to get a used iMac, I’ll be listing mine on the classifieds page end of this month.

Let me know in the comments what you recently watched or planning to watch.

Movies at the Cinemas
The movies below are now showing at the local cinemas:

New This Week:
A Streetcar Named Desire (classic) (7.9)
Canary Black (5.3)
Cricket & Antoinette (6.2)
Monster Summer (6.1)
Piece by Piece (7.0)
Rebellious (6.8)
Red One (6.7)

Other Movies Showing:
Aftermath (6.1)
Cellar Door (N/A)
Elli and her Monster Team (4.9)
Panda Plan (6.1)
Smile 2 (7.1)
Take Cover (5.0)
Terrifier 3 (6.7)
The Silent Hour (6.0)
The Wild Robot (8.2)
Venom: The Last Dance (6.3)

The numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at the time of publishing.

When I was studying design in college, one of the yearly annual competitions we’d look forward to was the “50 Books | 50 Covers” competition by AIGA (The American Institute of Graphic Arts). This competition started in 1923 and became an annual staple in the design community so we were always pretty excited to see what covers and books they selected. A couple of days ago, AIGA announced the latest winners for their 50/50 awards, and this year a Kuwaiti designer was one of the winners.

Fahad Al Hunaif won Best Book Design of the Year for his exhibition catalog, “Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility” designed for the Guggenheim Museum. Fahad describes the 256-page book as capturing the concept of duality to align with the exhibition. The stark, black exterior contrasts an interior filled with generous white space and subtle material changes, highlighting the tension between invisibility and hypervisibility.

I’ve been a huge fan of Fahad’s work since back in 2013 when he was still in New York studying at Parsons School of Design. He got his first 15 seconds of fame after @caradelevingne was photographed wearing his profane Cartier parody cap, “Cuntier”. Cara was backstage at a Jeremy Scott Runway Show when the ultra-famous fashion photographer @terryrichardson snapped some pictures of her wearing the cap. The photo went viral and eventually landed Fahad in a bit of trouble after Cartier slapped him with a cease and desist letter. I posted about him back then and you can check that old post out here.

Today, Fahad is a partner at TB.D, a multidisciplinary design studio that has worked on branding projects like Boost, ODE, and RA. You can check them out at tbd.studio or visit AIGA Design to see more winners.

This is pretty disappointing news but it doesn’t look like there will be track days this year at Kuwait Motor Town. Supposedly the contract with the company that was running KMT expired and it wasn’t renewed and neither does anyone else seem to want to run it. So all events that were scheduled to take place at the race track were canceled and there won’t be any open track days until a new company takes over. Sucks.

One of my favorite things about my blog is putting random information out onto the web, only to have someone months or years later leave a comment saying they were involved in the project or have more information about it. It constantly happens and it’s always pretty rewarding.

Back in March 2023 I posted about the Mothercare tree, the huge animatronic tree that used to be located at the Mothercare store in Salmiya. I didn’t think a lot of people remembered it, so I was pretty surprised with the amount of engagement that post got.

19 months after my post, a person by the name of Roger left a comment saying he had worked on the project and had more photos. Roger came to Kuwait in 1998 to install the tree along with his team. His company supplied and programmed the tree and all the animated animals and their soundtracks. He had photos of the tree being built as well as ones from inside the tree. Roger had gotten the job because he had previously been involved animatronics when he worked for Madame Tussauds and Rock Circus.

The pictures were taken with his first digital camera and so aren’t that high resolution, but it’s definitely better than nothing. I’ve uploaded all the photos to Flickr and you can check them out here.

Thanks Roger for sharing!

Camel Racing is back for the 2024/2025 season, running from October to March, with races every Saturday at the Kuwait Camel Racing Club. The races start at different times each week but this Saturday they’ll kick off at 1:00 PM with a total of eight races.

There is no entrance fee and you can either watch the races from the sidelines, drive up to the starting lines and watch the start of the race, or just drive around the track in your car following the race (it can get chaotic).

It’s really fun, especially if you’ve never been before and it’s never that busy and everyone is pretty friendly. I tend to drop by anytime I feel like having a photoshoot for one of my cars, or if I just feel like driving somewhere far.

Here is the link to the location and entrance on Google Maps.