Search: “kuwait”

Snail Trail is a small home business based in Kuwait that breeds snails and finds them homes. I didn’t really think having a snail as a pet was a thing but after checking out their account I’m tempted to get one for myself. Snail Trail sells different kinds of snails as well as everything you need to set up your own snail terrarium.

They sell snails starting at 2KD but can be as cheap as 1KD depending on how many snails you get. They also sell a terrarium set with everything you need including soil, moss, twigs + pines, healing stones, shells, and cuttlebone all for KD10. Or you could buy the items individually all from them as well.

It’s a pretty cute idea and snails seem easy to care for so if you’re interested to find out more check out their account @snailtrailkw

My cousin used to go to Al-Jamil but I had no idea it was that old. I actually just googled it and found out it originally opened back in 1960! This is from Wikipedia:

Al-Jamil Private School, Salmya was created in 1960 by a partnership including its first principal, Khawla Rizk, a Lebanese woman who was residing in Kuwait at the time. Al-Jamil started out as a private school in a hangar belonging to the Caterpillar, Inc. dealership in Surra, now a suburb of Kuwait City. In the late 70’s the school had nearly 1200 students in 1st through 12th grade. It produced some of the top students at the national level. In 1980 three of the top 10 national secondary school certificate list came from Al Jamil. After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1991, the Surra school campus became deserted and was later relocated to Maydan Hawalli. The old campus still remains deserted a reminder and a standing testimony to the damage caused by the tyrant of Iraq.

Does anyone have any footage from Sunshine School between 1980-1990? If you do, let me know I’ll help you digitize it.

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A post shared by قطاع شئون المرور والعمليات (@traffic_kw) on Jul 12, 2020 at 2:33am PDT

Back in January, I posted about how the Traffic Department set up a Whatsapp account (99324092) where residents can report violations. I tried them once and got no response so really didn’t bother contacting them again. But, they’ve recently been reminding people about this service and they even posted the video above with some examples of violations that were reported.

I think I’m going to give them another shot, maybe starting with something easy like reporting people who park in handicapped parking spots. Oh and those guys who drive up and down the Gulf Road going 10km/h trying to chat up girls. Yup, I’m going to be a snitch. If it works then maybe I’ll have a reason to upgrade my now 6-year old dashcam with a 4K version.

Has anyone tried this Whatsapp service recently? Did they respond?

I’ve never been to Aqua Park and don’t think it’s a landmark so I have no feelings about this. Link

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A post shared by YOUSEF ALRASHED يوسف الراشد (@yalrashid) on Jul 4, 2020 at 3:42pm PDT

The other day I posted a link to photos showing Entertainment City taken over by mother nature, but I figured it wasn’t very recent since when I passed by the park a couple of weeks back there was some sort of demolition taking place. The video above though is more recent and shows what’s really happening to the park. According to one of the guys in the video, it’s getting completely demolished and the land turned into an empty sand plot as part of the handover process.

This is really sad like all the other landmarks in Kuwait that are getting demolished one by one except maybe this might even be sadder. I’ve been visiting the park from when it first opened in the 80s and kept going even towards the end of the parks life. I really believe the issue with the park was the lack of maintenance and not because the rides weren’t exciting. Towards the end most of the rides were just not working and so people had no reason to go there. I wish they kept the park and just renovated it and expanded it but not completely demolish it like this.

I was told there was a warehouse in Entertainment City where the old arcades from the Ice Skating Rink and Entertainment City were being stored. If anyone knows anything about this let me know. Also if you want to see a video of the park during its better days, watch the video above starting from the 8:34 minute mark.

The original McDonalds location on the Gulf Road is turning into a Burger King and Pizza Hut. The building is looking pretty nice so far and I saw it a few months back at night while they were testing the lighting and all the vertical lines around the structure were lit up by LEDs. I just hope it doesn’t end up looking tacky and ruining the Gulf Road landscape.

As I’ve posted previously, McDonalds has now moved to a new location further up the road next to the Kuwait Towers, where Ruby Tuesday used to be.

The CAP Bookshop which carries publishers like Taschen, Assouline, and Thames & Hudson is now online. Sadly though, the process of ordering a book isn’t as simple as adding it to your cart since the website just lists all the books they have and their prices, but to order a book you need to send them a DM on instagram.

Still, if you’re looking for an Architecture, Art, Design, or Fashion book you’d be hard-pressed to find a better collection anywhere else in Kuwait. Here is the link to their online store, and their Instagram is @capbookshop

You could of course just visit the store now that they’ve reopened, they’re located inside Life Center in Shuwaikh, upstairs next to CAP.

This fire took place late last night so there isn’t much info out on it yet. I did find one article this morning saying it was extinguished but based on snapchat video below shot by a firefighter at around 7:45AM, it looks like the fire still hasn’t been put out.

Last year I posted about how PayPal started allowing users in Kuwait to withdraw money. Not sure what happened but that stopped working or at least it wasn’t working for everyone. Now it looks like they might be allowing withdrawals again.

A reader sent me a screenshot of how he was able to transfer money to his NBK Visa card. I just tried it myself and even though I was able to add my debit card to the account, when I tried to transfer money to it I got an error.

If you have cash in your PayPal account and want to withdraw it, try doing it now and let us know in the comments if it worked for you.

Thanks NM

Update: I tried to withdraw some money from PayPal yesterday and it finally worked! Link

This past week I’ve been seeing more and more people without masks on which is concerning since come Tuesday, malls and shops are going to open up. I’ve had three different instances over just these past two days involving masks.

1) I was shopping at a supermarket on Friday and there were people inside shopping without their masks on

2) I visited another supermarket yesterday and the volunteer at door wasn’t wearing a mask wanted to take my temperature, so I told her to put her mask on first and she responded by saying “don’t be afraid”

3) I visited a car dealership where no one at the dealership had a mask on

I’ve also had to tell my neighbors a few times to put on their masks before sharing the elevator with me. I think maybe because the government is easing up on restrictions people think the situation has gotten better? I mean I don’t get it. I’ve tried a variety of different masks on myself and haven’t been bothered by any of them. I don’t find them restrictive or annoying.

If you’re out in public then wear your mask, easy. That includes when you’re in your car and are ordering food from a carhop service or when you’re at a gas station. It’s risky enough that these employees have to interact with so many people throughout the day, at least help by making their environment as safe as possible.

This issue isn’t just in Kuwait obviously. Someone online did a video mashup recently where they took scenes from the comedy, Parks and Recreation, and combined it with footage from townhall meetings in the US on masks. Because some of the arguments are so absurd (5G conspiracies, government hoaxes), they actually blended in with the show seamlessly.

If you also weren’t aware it’s actually compulsory to wear a mask in Kuwait or you risk a KD5,000 fine. But, this obviously isn’t being enforced.

Pictured on top: Ai Weiwei MASK

The Ministry of Interior have updated their eServices platform and I think it looks great! The new site is smoother and faster than the previous version and also works really well on mobile devices. Check it out here.

Yesterday, Kuwait’s Communication and Information Technology Regulatory Authority (CITRA) launched an official internet speed testing portal as part of the Kuwait Internet Exchange. The reason for CITRA launching their own speed test website from what I’ve been told is for two reasons transparency and data collection.

By using the CITRA speed test website, users will have an accurate way of comparing the internet performance of the different networks in Kuwait when it comes to speed and international latency (which is good to know for gaming). CITRA also wants to use this website as a way to collect data to better help them understand the performance of the different providers in the market.

How is this useful for you? Once enough people have used the website it will provide a fairly accurate representation of internet speeds between the different providers in Kuwait. You will visually be able to see who is providing the fastest speeds and who is the slowest. In the next site update I’ve been told they’ll also be adding area comparisons so you’ll be able to compare internet speeds in your area.

I’m using Zain 5G as my internet provider so according to the website, I’m killing it compared to the average internet speeds in Kuwait. I still haven’t gotten over the fact how fast my internet is, 5G is really just the best thing ever.

If you want to run a speed test on your internet connection, click here.

Thanks Ali!

BBC published an article today bringing into spotlight Kuwait’s Shlonik Covid-19 contact-tracing app calling it once of the most invasive in the world along with Bahrain’s BeAware app. BBC goes even further by describing them both as “mass surveillance tools”.

Most contact-tracing apps rely solely on Bluetooth signals, but Bahrain and Kuwait’s capture location data through GPS and upload this to a central database, tracking the movements of users in real time.

The researchers say Bahraini and Kuwaiti authorities would be able to easily link this sensitive personal information to an individual, as users are required to register with a national ID number. Other countries’ contact tracing apps anonymise users. Source

I’m guessing citizens under forced home quarantine can’t do much about this but everyone else will probably delete the app once the article makes its rounds today. It will also be interesting to see how Zain will distance itself from all this since this can’t be a good look for them.

Back in March, on the very first day I was going to start working from home, my Breville Oracle espresso machine decided to break down. I thought about repairing it myself which I’ve previously done since there is no local dealer, but I hated working on it the last time since the machine was not easy to self-service. I didn’t know what I was going to do at first, do I buy a new machine? Do I wait until things reopen and find a guy to fix it? Do I take it with me to the Dubai dealer when airports eventually reopen? I was actually close to reordering the same machine from Amazon UK but then I asked myself, why do I want to get the exact same machine I had which will eventually breakdown again?

I decided to go down the classic car route direction, I wanted a new coffee machine that was mostly mechanical, very little to no technology, and easy to fix in case something went wrong. After doing a lot of research and watching hundreds and hundreds of coffee-related videos on YouTube, I decided to go for the Rocket Appartamento.

Rocket is an Italian company that are known for making great quality prosumer machines that are also beautiful looking. They have 7 different machines they make and the Appartamento was their entry-level machine that would fulfill my requirements. All I really needed was a machine that looked good, had very little that could go wrong with it, if something did go wrong I could easily fix, and finally, a machine that would allow me to steam my latte milk while pulling an espresso shot at the same time.

The Rocket Appartamento fit all my requirements and was fairly reasonably priced compared to its larger siblings. I looked for the machine locally first and even though I found a couple of small businesses that sold Rocket machines, they were all out of stock. In the end, I decided to order my machine online from Espresso Coffee Shop who are based in Italy and ship to Kuwait. Their prices were great since they remove the VAT when exporting and with the price of shipping to Kuwait the machine was turning out to be around 50KD cheaper than the price of the machine when it was available locally. It seemed too good to be true but I checked online reviews and they seemed legit. But, Espresso Coffee Shop were also out of stock on machines since the Rocket factory in Italy had shut down due to the pandemic. But I called them up and they told me that the factory had reopened and I’d be in line to get one in their next shipment which was in around 2 weeks time. That was fine with me so I ended up ordering a few things from them:

Rocket Appartamento (White)
Rocket Faustino Grinder (Black)
Acaia Lunar Scale
Rocket Tamping Mat
Rocket Bottomless Portafilter
Rocket Knock Box
Rocket Milk Jug
Motta Leveling Tool

The guys at Espresso Coffee Shop were pretty helpful and patient even though I’m sure they were swamped with orders. I actually amended my order four different times while waiting on my machine to be back in stock by adding and changing different items. The Acaia scale alone I had changed three times mostly because of my willingness to pay so much money for a scale. Through all my indecisiveness, Espresso Coffee Shop were very accomodating and patient with me. I did all my communication over the phone and never had to wait longer than a minute or two to talk to someone on their team. Once my machine was finally in stock they shipped everything to Kuwait for KD110 via UPS. It took only a few days to get to Kuwait from Italy but it arrived mid May during our lockdown and UPS wasn’t delivering so I had to wait until last week to finally get it delivered to me. I was worried they’d send me the wrong items because of how many times I amended my order but thankfully the most expensive and important items which were the coffee machine, grinder, and scale arrived correctly. The only item that didn’t arrive was my milk jug which they forgot to pack. So I called Espresso Coffee Shop and they were very apologetic and refunded me the amount on the spot.

I’ve now been using the machine a few times daily since I got it and it’s been great, I love it. So if you’re looking to buy an espresso machine I’d really recommend checking out Espresso Coffee Shop. Here is the link to their website.

Completed all the way back in 2003, the Villa Moda department store in the Free Trade Zone was way ahead of its time. The building still stands there today but isn’t currently being used although a few years ago I heard a TV station or newspaper was going to take it over.

The owner of Villa Moda was the fashion entrepreneur, Sheikh Majed Al-Sabah who had a vision for a state-of-the-art retail experience. The exterior was designed by Italian architect Pierfrancesco Cravel who came up with the idea of creating the giant glass shell that mimicked the shipping containers in the port nearby. The 12-meter high steel poles in front of the building represented ship masts while sails were used in the parking lot to protect vehicles from the sun.

When Tyler Brûlé, the founder of Wallpaper* magazine heard Sheikh Majed was developing a new department store for luxury brands in Kuwait, he recommended he work with the London based interior designers Eldridge Smerin.

Eldridge Smerin were responsible for the design of Villa Moda’s main entrance area and lounge, public spaces and staircases, two levels of multi-brand fashion space, restaurant and café managed by @capriceholdingsrestaurants, as well as the landscaping around the building.

Villa Moda opened its doors in 2003 housing brands like Gucci, Prada, Bottega Veneta, Salvatore Ferragamo, Fendi, Etro and more. The total duration of the project from conceptual design to construction completion was impressively, less than a year.

For more photos of Villa Moda click here.

The original Villa Moda is still standing and was also ahead of its time (pictured below). The original Villa Moda was located on the Gulf Road opposite where Chilis used to be. Not sure when it opened but I remember going there back in the 90s.

Update: This post has been updated with more precise information. Also the Villa Moda building has now been demolished.