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Review written by Tarek J

Last Tuesday I was invited to the premiere of Doctor Sleep by my favorite movie theater, Vox Kuwait at the Avenues Phase 4, and as usual for their premieres, the event was a pleasure for film geeks (full of thematic decor and even two little twin girl actresses which were adorable in their attempts to scare guests). After walking on a red carpet designed after the famous carpet from The Shining, we took our seats and the lights went down.

Regarding the elephant that’s always in the room, censorship, this film has been cut in a few places, but not in a way that makes it unwatchable. It doesn’t affect the plot and you’re aware of what’s going on, but some cuts do come at some moments where you’re really drawn into the film. But all the cuts were momentary, nothing like whole scenes removed. Anyway, onto the review.

You’ve got to have quite a pair to think you can pull of a sequel to The Shining. Not only is it a horror masterpiece, but it is perhaps one of the most obsessed over films in history (watch the documentary Room 237 for proof). Up until now, director Mike Flanagan has been a solid horror filmmaker with a fresh voice and a couple of strong entries under his belt, but he hasn’t attempted anything quite so ambitious as Doctor Sleep. Does it pay off? Well yes… and no.

To be fair, it’s near impossible to create a satisfying sequel to The Shining especially since Kubrick veered way off the Stephen King novel it was based on, creating instead an intimate horror film with a singular vision which benefits most from its ambiguity and its lack of a need for a sequel. So when adapting Doctor Sleep (King’s sequel to his Shining), Flanagan decided to take a route where he bridges the gap between King and Kubrick. The result feels like two interesting films in their own right mashed up messily. The script suffers a lot from it and it’s the script itself which is the weakest link in this film.

The storytelling and filmmaking, however, is where the film shines (ahem). Flanagan does an excellent job of building tension, creating mood, and allowing scenes to be paced calmly and correctly. He doesn’t rush you into “scares”, but rather allows you to get invested into the characters. This is most evident in the first 40 minutes or so where very little plot is divulged, and we are just getting to know our three main characters. These were some of my favorite scenes in the film because Flanagan directs them maturely and really allows us to connect to Danny Torrance’s struggle with his demons. I very much appreciated that the film did not rely on The Shining nostalgia or fan service to create excitement. In fact, the only time we are really given that kind of nostalgia is in the last 30 minutes of a 2.5 hour film, so by then you’ve already emotionally invested into this new story entirely.

Aside from the filmmaking, the performances stand out as well. Ewan McGregor is perfect in the title role, and Kyliegh Curran gives an Excellent child performance that is exciting and convincing. But really it’s Rebecca Ferguson as the antagonist who steals the film. I was worried from the trailers as her storyline looked cheesy, but she is somehow convincing and gives a very interesting performance of a character that is at once cold blooded but somehow understandable. I like her work in the Mission Impossible films, but now I’m a full on fan.

In the end, I felt Doctor Sleep was an entertaining film with some really strong sequences (the Astral Projection moment was visionary, and the Baseball boy sequence was extremely disturbing and effective), but it’s nods to the Shining only reveal how much stronger that film is. To me, this is a pretty weak Kubrick tribute, but a very strong Stephen King film adaptation. It’s different than most films coming out in cinemas these days, and some of it’s inventive filmmaking makes up for its flaws. I still recommend a watch to horror and film fans as it has an original voice and style to it that is a breath of fresh air amongst the hundred of cynical cash grabs posing as cinema today.

I’ve been meaning to order tires for my Lotus online for some time now since the local Michelin dealer didn’t carry tire sizes that fit my car. But I had heard two things:

1) The Michelin dealer wouldn’t order tires for you if they didn’t carry them
2) If you order tires online they’ll get stuck in customs and it would be very difficult to clear them

I didn’t follow up on the rumors right away since my tires were still in fairly good condition back then. But the new season at Kuwait Motor Town started already and now after 8 track days and 17,000KM mileage on the same set of tires, I knew it would be time to change them soon so I needed to find a solution.

This post is to clear the two rumors above which turned out to be false.

The Michelin Dealer
First thing I did was pass by the Michelin dealer on Canada Dry street to see if they would be willing to order the following tires for me:

Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 – 215/45 R17 x2
Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 – 285/30 R18 x2

They told me they could and I had two options, either ship them by sea freight which could take anywhere between 4 to 8 weeks, or by air which would take up to 2 weeks. They took my email and sent me a proposal that came to the following:

Total for 4 tires if shipped by air: KD540
Total for 4 tires if shipped by sea: KD374

Ordering Tires Online
I decided to check and see how much my tires would cost if I ordered them online myself and shipped them straight to Kuwait. I found my tires on Camskill.co.uk for a great price and they would be willing to ship them directly to Kuwait using FedEx. The total with shipping came out to just KD336 so I placed an order and within 5 days I had the tires. They cleared customs with no issue except for the fact I had to pay FedEx KD28 for the customs fees and clearance cost. The total in the end came out to KD364. So KD10 cheaper than the dealers sea freight cost but arrived in just a few days instead of a few weeks.

So if you need specific tires that aren’t available locally I would head to the local dealer first and see if they would order them for you or alternatively, you could order them online if you were in a hurry like me or just didn’t want to bother with Shuwaikh.

While we’re on the subject of Ahmadi today, here are some photos of KOC buildings from the early 60s. These were old postcards that were scanned and the descriptions were written on the back.

One of the married payroll employees houses at Ahmadi

Kuwait Oil Company’s guest house, Ahmadi

The training centre at Ahmadi

Housing for bachelor payroll employees at Ahmadi

For more old postcards (all for sale) click here.

I came across these photos years ago but when I searched the blog I realized I had only shared a couple of them. Below are some photos of a home taken by a family who used to live in Ahmadi back in the early 60s.

Ok this is going to be a long shot but does anyone have an Ahmadi Desert Motoring Club car badge for sale? Back in the old days (like 50s/60s etc.) people use to put badges on their car grills similar to the photo below and so I’m looking for the ADMC car badge to put on the front grill of my Alfa.

There are different variations of this badge either with the word Kuwait or Persian Gulf written on it, I’m not picky and fine with either one. I can’t find the exact date these badges were used by the club in Kuwait but I’m assuming it was in the 50s to late 60s, maybe early 70s.

If you have one or know anyone who would want to sell theirs, let me know!

A couple of weeks back I finally got my license plates for my Alfa and since then been trying to drive it as much as possible. Transcrate my shipping company handled all the paperwork and process for me so if you want to know what the process was to get plates I have no idea. The first drive I think was the scariest since I didn’t know if everything was working properly, or if something was broken or would break. Thankfully, everything is running great so far.

I’ve actually been driving the car pretty hard, with old cars things will breakdown its something you just have to accept. Since I want this car to be my winter daily, then I need whatever it is that is about to break to actually break so I can swap the part out for a newer one. One thing that is super weird is the widespread availability of all the parts. Websites like Classic Alfa stock all the parts I need for my car and ship directly to Kuwait with DHL. I love that because I can drive the car and not have to worry about something going wrong because if something does go wrong I can just easily have the part delivered in a few days.

So far the things that have gone wrong with the car have been minor. The fan belt needed replacing and I found a new compatible belt locally, my dashboard lights toggle switch broke so I ordered a new one, and finally, my left turn signal stopped working but I haven’t had time to figure out why. But that’s it so far.

The car is a lot more fun to drive than I was expecting. It’s pretty zippy, sounds great and I love the very minimal interior. I don’t even have a radio in this car and I like that although it means I no longer can listen to podcasts on my way to work in the morning.

On the other hand, my blue Datsun 240z is now getting a full restoration job. Currently, it’s being stripped down to its bare shell so that all the rust can be removed and holes patched before getting a proper paint job. There is a garage called Blue Collar that just opened a new location to handle classic cars and they’re the ones who are doing all the bodywork. Another garage is rebuilding a new engine for me in the meantime while I’ve also been ordering parts online for the past few weeks. The bodywork alone needs around 3 months so I’m hoping to have the car ready before summer since the Datsun will be my summer daily.

If you have a classic car let me know in the comments below and please share a picture!

OMA, the legendary architectural firm based in Rotterdam has won the design for a tower that will be located in the new Hessa Al Mubarak District. I actually passed by their offices in Rotterdam years ago because I was hoping to get one of my books signed by one of the founders, Rem Koolhaas. When completed the Wafra Tower will be the first project by OMA in Kuwait.

The tower looks great and all but the seafront design in their renderings grabbed my attention more than the tower honestly. Their interpretation of our Gulf Road is way nicer in their renderings than what we have in reality.

For more details on this project click here.

A couple of weeks back I posted snippets from an old book on my instagram account and a lot of people wanted to know what book it was and where they could get it from. So I decided not only to post about the book but also scan it all and make it available to download.

The book is a children’s book called Hamad the Diver and was published back in 1967. The story is about an Arab pearl diver living in Kuwait called Hamad. The story doesn’t mention specifically if Hamad was Kuwaiti or not but we do find out he is poor as many Kuwaitis were back then and that he was married with children. The second story taking place in the meantime is about a rich Iraqi girl called Fatima living in Basra whose father is trying to get her married. I don’t want to spoil the story too much but eventually, Hamad and Fatima end up getting married.

If you want to check out the book then you can download it from this link.

Update: The missing pages have been uploaded

A few years ago I posted about a vintage radio shop called “Moqtanayaty”. When I first wrote about them they were located in Kuwait City but since then they’ve moved their shop three times, first to blockat, then to Hawalli, and now they’re back in the city again but this time across the street from Mubarakiya in a building called Burj Al Hamam Tower.

The place sells old vintage radios, boomboxes, record players and even some cameras. Everything they sell works and if you have an old radio that needs repairing they even have a repair guy. If you’re interested in checking the place out, here is their location on [Google Maps] and you can find them on instagram @vintage_radio_

Also, here is the link to my previous post.

The other day while picking up food from MEAT in Al-Seif I noticed the colorful graffiti-filled stairs next door was closed off. Turns out the stairs is being renovated and this is the text they had on the hoarding describing the project (yes I typed it out):

Al-Seif Staircase #s25k is a project sponsored by the Kuwait Amiri Diwan and donated by Tamdeen Group. It emerges as an initiative by Parallel Design Studio to restore the area that has witnessed significant contribution to cumulative Kuwait history given its heritage and ingenuity so that it contributes once and again to the consolidation and renewal of dialogue between generations.

Al-Seif Staircase #s25k design intent evolves beyond a morphological statement, to which serving the passing by dwellers from level to another. It seeks to highlight the main concept of urban design, which is to draw attention to this particular area as a semantic symbol of the rehabilitation and renovation efforts of the private sector in collaboration with the Kuwaiti Government and to strengthen the advanced social and urban status thus far accomplished by the State of Kuwait while retaining the legacy of the all original past. The main design approach in a geopolitical understanding is to call out for a renovating dialogue, to enhance a social situation where the evidence of the public realm is very highly assertive, this creates a means of instruments enclosing yet democratize a privilege of social proximity and content of vitality.

In a morphological manner of the stair design, it weave a series of faceted geometrical characters that cascades between levels as an evidence of order and balance for an intrinsic aesthetical appearance, on the other hand a nostalgia and a recall to the sense of place where a remaining of materials is set as a viable option by the architect to be re-used and recycled in the content of the staircase design. Moving from linear progression to a faceted discipline is evidence of a transitional transformation of a too platonic geometry to a threshold of clarity of various immersive elements cascades through levels. The seating on the sides of the stair act as a discipline of appreciation and serenity to the old demographic ages and those who want to spend quality time. Above and beyond the definition of a stair, storytelling to encroach appreciation and a triumphal perception to the new design.

I honestly didn’t understand anything from their description above, but going by the rendering, it looks like the stairs are getting a redesign and there will be seating integrated into the steps. I hope they’ll still allow graffiti on the walls once the project is done since it’s what made that stairs fun and special to begin with.

Back in 2001 when I moved back to Kuwait from university, I started looking for a clean second-hand 4th generation Toyota Supra. It was one of those dream cars to own back then and I really wanted the twin-turbo version with an automatic gearbox. In hindsight, I wish I wasn’t so picky. I only ended up coming across manual cars and so never ended up buying one, but if I had and kept it, today it would be worth more than what I would have paid for it. The 4th generation Supra ended production in 2002 and since then prices of the old cars have kept rising as they became harder to find in good condition and just a few months ago an excellent condition one sold for a staggering $176,000.

Finally, earlier this year the new 2020 Supra was unveiled and it launched in Kuwait a couple of weeks back. I was lucky enough to borrow one off the dealer this past weekend and if I was looking for a new sports car to buy, this would be an option I’d seriously consider.

The new Toyota Supra and the new BMW Z4 share a lot of the same parts including the engine and interior. That’s because Toyota and BMW collaborated on the project which caused a lot of controversy with Supra diehards for obvious reasons. I’m not that big of a diehard and even I cringed when I heard that the new Supra would be built with a BMW engine. But, after spending a weekend with the car I’ve realized this collab might actually be a benefit for us. BMW is a more premium brand than Toyota so things like the interior end up looking better and feeling a lot more expensive than what a Toyota would usually look or feel like while still paying Toyota prices.

But, before getting inside the car, the first thing you’ll notice about the Supra is how cool the outside looks. When I first saw pictures of the car online I fell in love with the rear end and it looks even better in real life. The car is super hot looking and an eye-catcher on the road, especially right now because there aren’t that many on the streets. One thing I was surprised with was the size of the car, it’s not big at all and so not intimidating which I really like. And even though the car is small, the interior didn’t feel cramped and was actually a really nice space to be in.

At 335HP the Supra doesn’t have an absurd amount of power but it does have more than enough to make it feel pretty fast on the streets. I’ve also already seen videos on YouTube of Supra’s being modified to produce 1000HP so if you want more power that’s going to be an easy fix. The performance parts market for the Supra is going to be HUGE that’s for sure.

Every one of my friends whom I let test drive the car (both guys and girls) loved it. There is very little not to like about the Supra but there were some things I had issues with. The steering wheel makes the car feel cheap, it’s fairly hard and just felt plasticky even though it was leather-wrapped. I also didn’t find the exhaust loud but I think that has to do with the new European regulations since a lot of cars don’t sound loud anymore either. On downshifts, you get some amazing crackles and pops but while driving (even aggressively) I kept wishing the exhaust was slightly louder. If I want to be really picky I also had issues with the suspension which felt soft when I wanted it to be hard, and felt hard when I wanted it to be soft. But one of the best things about the Supra is that you’ll most likely want to customize all these things anyway yourself, the first thing I’d do if I bought the car would be to install a sportier aftermarket exhaust. Customization is part of the reason of getting a Supra to begin with. What isn’t a minor thing though is the lack of Apple CarPlay. I guess I should be incredibly grateful the infotainment system comes from BMW and not Lexus (who have the worst infotainment system in the world), but I still wish it had CarPlay.

At KD16,500 the new Supra is priced extremely competitively and it going to sell like hotcakes. I wouldn’t be surprised if the dealer hasn’t sold out already. In Kuwait, the local dealer only have one model available which is basically the fully loaded version with the only options being the exterior and interior colors. They have a test drive vehicle available so if you’re interested in trying out the car as I did then visit the dealer @toyotakw.

Has anyone tried the South American restaurant El Público located inside the Millennium Hotel and Convention Centre? I thought it just opened since press releases started popping up last week but looks like it’s been there since May. The restaurant blends Peruvian, Chilean and Brazilian cuisines all in one menu so it sounds interesting in theory but I haven’t heard anything at all about the place.

The Family Bookshop, one of the oldest and most popular English bookshops in Kuwait closed down for good eight years ago. Just before they closed down I passed by and took photos of the place. I shared some of the photos back then but since it was National Bookshop Day a few days ago, I wanted to re-upload all the photos I took that day. The photos below are in higher resolution than the previous ones I had published and I’m also sharing all the photos I took that day, not just some of them. So check them out below.

The goto hardware store for most people is either Ace or Bin Nisf in Shuwaikh but Jawad AlSaffar (JAS) recently opened a new location and I think it will give them both a run for their money.

The new JAS store has been open for a few months now but I only found out about this new and huge location last week. The new store is located across from the original True Value in Shuwaikh and is composed of two floors. The ground floor has garden stuff, shelves, paint and a large section containing generators, large air compressors and some heavy equipment like mixers, water pumps, ground compactors, and a bunch of other stuff I have no idea what they’re used for.

Once you move down to the basement things get more impressive. Firstly the basement is gigantic but it’s also really well organized. You have the usual areas like the power tools section, hardware tools, paint tools, protective gear, etc.. but in between all these main sections you have very specific areas like the caster wheels section, a section for nails and bolts, a welding area, a ropes section, a car garage equipment section, etc.. just very specific stuff.

The place is much larger than Bin Nisf and also larger than Ace, but I did notice that they didn’t carry any premium brand of hardware tools and some sections like their work lights area seemed lacking compared to Bin Nisf and even Ace Hardware.

If you like hardware stores then you really need to pass by and check out the new Jawad AlSaffar store. They’re open daily from 6:30AM to 10PM except for Fridays when they’re open from 6:30AM till 11:30AM. Here is their location on Google Maps.

Last night I visited Expo 965 after a friend told me about it. I had a difficult time trying to understand what it was about at first or even where it was being held since all the information was in Arabic. But, I eventually found the place on Google Maps (after going to the wrong location first) and it turned out to be a really interesting experience. The Expo features Kuwaiti heritage and craftsman but there were a lot of private collectors there displaying family-related or old Kuwait related items.

When you first walk in the place doesn’t look very impressive but I ended up spending nearly two hours there. It’s two medium-sized halls filled with tables and stands and just random Kuwait related stuff on display. In my head, I was like let me check things out quickly and then walk over to BBT for a burger which was right next door. But the expo turned out to be way more fun than I was expecting.

The first display that ended up grabbing my attention had old radios and TV’s and it turned out to belong to the vintage radio shop guy. I hadn’t seen him since he moved his shop to Hawalli (and now it’s back in the city) so after catching up with him I decided to check out the rest of the expo. Basically it turns out it’s all about the people behind the displays. Everyone there was a volunteer and wanted to talk to you or share with you interesting information. Whenever I spotted anything interesting I’d ask the person who owned the stuff about it, and not only would they show me the item but they’d also take the time and explain the whole story behind it. Like literally every person I spoke to had an interesting story to share from the guy who’s dad was the first Kuwaiti dentist to the guy who collected vintage food wrappers and cans. I was not expecting to have so much fun.

So if you’re looking for something to do over the next few days the expo is being held until Thursday. Pass by and check it out and make sure you talk to the people.

For location and timings click [Here]

Thanks Aisha AlSaif!