Search: “kuwait”

Four guys have taken it upon themselves to try and make sense of the local public transportation system by mapping the bus network in Kuwait. Wilfred Waters, Jake Massoth, David Uzoni and Wael El-Ahmady are aiming to get complete stop positions, schedules and 360 imagery of the entire bus network in Kuwait and they’re pretty much on track.

According to Wil, the schedule data is the most frustrating aspect of the project due to lack of driver discipline. Drivers stop between formal stops so a proper schedule can’t be kept but they’re trying their best to get at least a rough estimate. In regards to imagery they’re halfway done (similar to google street view but for the bus routes) but they’re trying to prioritize the schedule data for now since thats the information people are after the most.

The overall problem they’re trying to solve with this project is unnecessary car trips, privately or in taxis. By collecting all this data, they’re hoping to eventually create a Bus Routing App that would provide people with easy to access and understand bus routes and scheduling information. And I think they’re onto something here.

Looking through their map data (embedded above) I was able to spot a number of bus stops near my apartment building as well as see the whole route the bus would take. Turns out the bus stop next to my apartment could take me all the way to my office in the city, and even though I wouldn’t take the bus (I love driving), I did consider it for a second. I’m sure a lot more people would use the bus if they had route and schedule information on their phones.

Back in the early 90s when I was in Canada, I used to call the bus stop near my apartment building and an automated service would let me know how many minutes till the next bus arrived. That way I didn’t have to wait out in -30°C weather freezing my ass off. Kuwait needs to upgrade the whole bus network and make it more usable, if you could track busses in Canada back in the early 90s, I’m sure Kuwait can manage the same today. Kuwait is hoping the metro project will help solve traffic issues but it might be easier right now to get the bus system sorted out right. How difficult would it be to tell drivers to let people on and off only at formal stops? Or to make sure bus stops are shaded, and to create an app that would help people plot their trips and get accurate scheduling information. I don’t think it would be that hard, easier than building a metro system from the ground up thats for sure.

For more information on the busKW project, check out their website [Here]

That was pretty quick, the spelling mistakes on the Kuwait e-Visa website got fixed today, two days after I posted about them. Thank you to whomever fixed them, just one more minor thing cuz I’m a bit OCD, could you make the letter “b” capital for the word “Building”. Pretty please? Thank you!

If you like stationary then you’re going to love this concept. Qirtasiya is a uniquely crafted bimonthly stationery subscription box thats based in Kuwait. You pay the subscription price ahead of time and every two months you’ll get a surprise package delivered to you filled with different stationaries. Only 15 memberships are available every month, their last box was sent out in March and their next one is going to get sent out next month. The cost of the box is KD27 but drops down slightly if you subscribe to multiple boxes.

So if you’re interested in signing up to this subscription service, you can check out their website qirtasiya.net or visit them on instagram @qirtasiya for more information.

Al Shaheed Park Phase 2 officially opened yesterday and just in time before the weather got too hot for outdoor activities. The new extension includes a parkour area, a miniature new Kuwait, a miniature old Kuwait, a multipurpose youth complex, tree top climbing obstacles, board and interactive games area, an open air performance center and a skate park. Just like phase 1, phase 2 is open daily from 5AM to 10PM. For more details, check out the Al Shaheed Park on instagram @alshaheedpark

Photo via Green Studios

Here is another interesting activity I recently found out about. Q8 Pilot Gig is a rowing club that offer rowing lessons and outings led by certified coaches. They offer two categories of rowing, you can either do it hardcore and be part of a racing crew, or just row for fun and general fitness (social rowing). The club has 6 beautiful locally built boats and each can carry 6 rowers. The club isn’t based in any specific location but instead row out from different spots around the Kuwaiti coast to keep things interesting for the members. Once you become a member you will have access to the clubs app which will allow you to book from a number of different outing options. They launch from public beaches so one day you might row from Nino’s to Souq Sharq, another day you might row out from next to Corniche Club, it’s always changing so you don’t fall into a routine.

The cost to become a member is KD55 a month and that gives you unlimited access to the rowing sessions as well as training by the certified coaches. They row at least 4 times a week with sessions taking place mid week and on weekends, mornings and afternoons. So it’s very accessible no matter how busy your schedule is. On Saturdays for example they usually have 4 to 5 rowing sessions available for you to choose from. If you’re a Corniche Club member, Q8 Pilot Gig is setting up a base there for the Corniche members and the cost per month will be even less for you.

They offer a free “tasting session” before you decide to become a member and sign up, so if you’re interested in trying them out then you could contact Steve Lock on 99031123 or email them on [email protected]. You could also check out their instagram account for pictures and videos @kwt_pilot_gig

Update: I’ve posted a new update with updates prices and information. Check out that post [Here]

Yanni will be performing at JACC in around 10 days time and tickets finally went on sale this weekend and sold out right away. That obviously upset a lot of people who had been hoping to buy a ticket. Tickets selling out at events is a common issue, majority of the popular shows I’ve attended like a Bob Dylan concert or a Connor McGregor fight for example, I’ve had to buy tickets on the second hand market and at ridiculous prices. In the States and the UK I tend to use websites like StubHub to buy sold out tickets, sometimes I buy them off strangers at forums as well. Where would one look for tickets in Kuwait? Not that I am interested in Yanni but this is kind of a new situation here and I’m curious to know where people are going to sell or buy tickets. 4Sale maybe?

Someone forwarded this video to me yesterday, I don’t have the backstory nor any idea what happened to the guy who is attacking the cop in the video. I found it odd how only one guy comes in to break up the fight and then he treats it like a regular fight between two random people. I mean if I saw a cop getting attacked and needs a bit of help, I would jump in and try to help the cop out not try and break up the fight like I just spotted two kids fighting. [YouTube]

Update: Turns out the cop himself was stopping a fight between the motorist and an Asian national when the man turned on the cop. He got arrested. [Source]

Video was shot by @Kuwait_a_minute

I haven’t been to this exhibit yet since I just found out about it a few days ago but going by the video it looks like it might be worth visiting especially if you have kids.

The Ahmad Al-Jaber Oil & Gas Exhibition plays an important role for KOC by telling the history of oil – both in the State of Kuwait and throughout the world. From the formation of oil to its discovery and the thousands of ways that oil products help make our lives better, the exhibition serves to answer any questions the public may have about oil and gas and the important functions they play in our modern lives.

The exhibit is located in Ahmadi and here is the location on [Google Maps]. The opening hours are Saturday to Thursday from 9AM to 9PM and Friday from 2PM to 9PM. The exhibit isn’t free, the cost for adults is KD3, KD1 for children under 12 and free for people with disabilities. For more information you could check out the exhibits website [Here]

Thanks jmdv

Just Bee is a local honey business that provides raw and local Kuwaiti honey. You might have come across them at Qout Market but what a lot of people don’t know is they are promoters of urban beekeeping and that they have a beehive installation service. Just Bee don’t have their own beehive location, all their honey that is sold is produced from beehive hosting. This past season for example, their honey was harvested from 8 different locations that includes people’s homes, chalets and farms (Salmiya, Khaitan, Sharq, Qurtuba, Messila, Abu Al Hasania, Nuwaiseeb and Wafra).

At Just Bee we promote Urban Beekeeping and our vision is to be able to provide our community with honey from every area in Kuwait, to do that we need to team up, and we do that by allowing locals to host beehives for us.

So how does it work?
The first thing they do is come over to your home and do a site consultation. The beekeeper needs to asses the space, check how suitable it is or not for the bees, and recommend needed shelter for the bees to protect them from the cold in the winter and the heat in the summer. They usually ask the host to let them set up a minimum of 6 hives so that it’s worth their time and effort.

All the work is on them, they handle the installation and all the costs involved with the hives. They also supervise the hives by visiting them as much as every two weeks. By the end of the season, they harvest the honey and give you 10% of the honey that has been produced as a barter for the space that you have given them to set up the hives.

The honey is then branded with the name of the Area, making their honey literally come from the homes of the people.

Kuwait produced these beautiful and varying colors of honey! In order from the left: Abdili, Nuwaiseeb, Sharq, Zahra, Egaila & Mishref

How many times do they harvest honey?
There are 2 seasons of harvest during the year:

– June/July where they harvest the Multifloral Honey, usually light in color and crystalizes within a month or so. Varies colorfully from one area to another.

– December where they harvest the better known Sidr Honey from the Ziziphus/Sidr tree that produces the Knarr, Jujube fruit. It is much darker and remains liquid if not, a lot of other floral sources are mixed in when the bees are gathering nectar to produce the honey.

Depending on the season, each beehive can produce between 3KG to 5KG of honey.

I love this idea a lot and if I had a home with a garden I would have definitely hosted some hives. If you on the other hand live in a home or have a chalet or farm and love honey, then get in touch with Just Bee and host a hive. Their instagram account is @justbeekw and their website is justbeekw.co

Those of you who follow me on instagram and twitter probably already figured out that I sold my beloved Datsun last week because I bought a Lotus Exige instead. It wasn’t a planned purchase, it just happened, I guess something like an impulse buy but on a grander scale. Last Saturday I went with a friend to check out a 1972 Chevy C10 pickup truck which I was planning to buy. On our way back I had to drop my friend off at a garage when I came across a used car lot that had a yellow Lotus Exige displayed for sale, the same one I had reviewed nearly a year ago. So I sent the Lotus brand manager a message about it and he told me if I had an itch to drive the Exige again, they had the roof off on their current vehicle and I could come in the next morning and take the car out for a couple of days. Who would say no to that?

The next morning I headed straight to the Lotus dealership and picked up the Exige. A few minutes after driving off in the car, I had a huge smile on my face I remembered why I loved it so much when I took it out last year to review. So when the brand manager messaged me back the next day to confirm I would be dropping the car off in the evening, I told him I had fallen in love with it and this time I wasn’t bringing it back. After a couple of days of negotiating on the price over whatsapp, I went back to the dealership and paid for the car. I’m still unsure if I got a good deal or not since I don’t consider myself a great negotiator (Tip: Do NOT tell the dealer you love the car), but I’ve got the car now with no regrets so thats all that matters.

When I originally wrote my review of the Exige last year, I described it as a car not meant for 99.9% of the people and I still stand by that. I actually spent most of that review complaining about the car. It’s extremely quirky to put it nicely with a lot of odd and unorthodox things about it. But, with all the issues I had with the car when I reviewed it, something about it really attracted me to it. I’ve reviewed a lot of amazing cars for the blog but nothing connected with me the way the Exige did. I love sitting inside the small cozy cockpit, I love the way it looks on the outside, I even love how awkward it is to get in and out of and I definitely love recording videos of my friends trying to get out of the car. If the Exige was a person, it would be an awkward introvert and I think thats why I love it.

There are only 3 Exige’s in Kuwait at the moment, my midnight blue one, a white one and a yellow one so it’s a pretty rare car and I feel special. But, I’m now curious to see what that means to the cost and availability of parts, supposedly service costs is similar to Lexus which is great, but I didn’t ask about the parts since I didn’t want to freak out and change my mind about buying the car. Speaking of parts, there is a pretty active online community of aftermarket parts and I’ve already got my eye on some carbon fiber body panels and other upgrades, but the first thing I want to modify on the car is the license plates. For some reason Alghanim (the dealer) installed square ones on the car but I think the wider rectangular ones would look so much nicer on it. So if anyone knows what the process is for swapping the square plates for the rectangular ones is, please let me know!

By now most of you have probably watched the video of the maid falling from the seventh floor apartment while her employer snapchatted the whole incident instead of trying to help her. If you haven’t watched the video then good, don’t watch it, you don’t need trauma in your life. The good news is that according to Kuwait Times, the woman who filmed the incident is now being held and will be prosecuted:

Police have detained a woman for filming her Ethiopian maid falling from the seventh floor in an apparent suicide attempt without trying to rescue her, media and a rights group said yesterday. The Kuwaiti woman filmed her maid land on a metal awning and survive, then posted the incident on social media. The criminal investigation police referred the employer to the prosecution over failing to help the victim. The Kuwait Society for Human Rights yesterday called on the authorities to investigate the case and refer it to court.

…

According to attorney Nouf Al-Ruwaih, videoing the incident itself is not a crime, but he said the employer could be charged with negligence and failure to offer help. Investigations are currently ongoing to determine whether the case is a suicide attempt, an accident that happened while the maid was working, or a case of attempted homicide and libel. “The law says that any person who fails to help someone else who poses a grave danger to himself or his possessions will be punished with a maximum three months in jail and/or fine,” Ruwaih said. [Source]

Sadly, the maximum sentence is just three months in jail and I doubt she’ll get that.

Someone suggested I put together a list of all the local apps I use so I’ve listed them below. Any local app I should be using which isn’t on the list? Let me know!

NBK: They’re my bank and so I don’t have an option except to use their app but it’s actually a pretty good one. Quick to login with just my fingerprint, the app looks good and I can perform all my banking from within it. The only thing I can’t do is add new beneficiaries for money transfers. I still need to login to their website and add it from there the old fashioned way.

Talabat: Not a big fan of talabat, not a big fan of their app either. I literally have it installed and use it just so I could order from CHKN. That’s it.

Carriage: Although they charge a KD1 delivery charge, it’s the only way to order from some of my favorite places like JOA and DOH! Plus you can track the status of your order and watch the delivery guy get lost on your way to your house via GPS tracking.

MyFatoorah: I use this app to invoice clients and sometimes friends. Easier than having people add me as a beneficiary to their bank account, they can just transfer money to me by paying me with Knet.

Xcite: I don’t use the app to shop from, but more as tool whenever I am trying to find out the price of an item locally.

4Sale: Worst app design but also the only way to access the best classifieds website in Kuwait. I tend to just use it to flip through the cars category always looking for something interesting on sale.

Klean: It’s a laundry service app but they also clean sneakers so I only tend to use this app when I need my sneakers cleaned.

Alive Yoga: Since I’m a member at Alive, I use the app to check the schedule of classes and to sign up. It’s pretty good plus once you sign up, the app can add your class to your phone calendar so you don’t forget.

Other Notable Mentions:

SnappCard: Used to be one of my favorite apps but after their last update, they now force you to review your previous order before you can use the app again. Imagine if Talabat did this, forced you to review a restaurant every time after placing an order and not allowing you to use the app until you do. I deleted the app obviously.

Burgan Bank: Also my bank, terrible app, looks like something from the 90s. Very limited with what I can do in the app but thankfully they recently added fingerprint login and so one positive thing about it.

Go Tap: I used to use this app to buy iTunes cards from before I connected my iTunes account directly to my US credit card.

iBadala: A phone directory app, rarely use it anymore since I just google things but it’s still on my phone just in case.

Herafy is a small clays and crafts store thats located in Al-Rai. Recently they moved to a new location and I found it by accident while looking for something else and decided to check it out. It’s a small store, nothing close in size say to Mogahwi, but they are very specialized and most importantly, they offer a ton of classes from sculpting and painting to sewing and soap making. Just a bunch of random interesting classes you wouldn’t find anywhere else.

So if you’re interested in learning something new or picking up a new hobby, here is the store location on [Google Maps] and you can check out all their classes and workshops on their website [Here]

As you know by now, Beauty and the Beast was pulled from movie theaters on Monday by request of the Ministry of Information due to further censorship. Supposedly MOI knew that a “gay moment” existed, but when they originally watched the film, they didn’t find the scene and assumed the theaters were showing a different version of the movie. Once the film was released and social media caught on to the fact that the controversial scene wasn’t cut, MOI contacted the theaters and had them pull the movie so they could remove the scene in question and re-release it. If that alone wasn’t enough drama, Cinescape last night announced that it will now no longer be playing the movie “in line with the company’s responsibilities and principles towards young customers”. Below is Cinescape’s full message:

Dear Valued Customers,
We would like to inform you that Kuwait National Cinema Company decided to

Stop showing Beauty and the Beast in line with our values as responsibility toward our young viewers

I’ve contacted Grand Cinemas to see if they will be pulling the movie as well, but as of this post I haven’t heard back from them yet. Who would have ever have thought a Disney film could ever cause this much controversy.

Update: Grand Cinemas got back to me telling me the movie is now banned in Kuwait.

Last week I posted that the Habitat Museum at Al Shaheed Park was now open but I only managed to pass by it this past weekend. I left so impressed, that here I am posting about the museum again a week later.

The museum showcases the unique beauty of Kuwait’s plants and animal life by taking visitors on a journey through the local ecosystem. When you first enter the premises you need to pick up your audio guide as well as a round disc that contains a plant seed. This disc can then be used in various parts of the museum to activate screens and interact with the exhibits.

The museum isn’t that big but I loved everything about it. My favorite part though had to be watching different families and people just walk around interacting with the displays. Its pretty obvious that people in Kuwait are hungry for museums which is why I can’t wait until the Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Center opens up end of this year.

Another thing I liked was the fact the museum brings up two important issues, illegal hunting near the wildlife reserves as well as how camping can be very disruptive to the environment. Two very important issues which I’m glad they talk about in their exhibits because it will definitely educate the visitors especially the young ones.

The Habitat Museum is located in the same building as the escalators that take you to the parking lot (the far end one) and right across from the restaurant Table Otto.

The opening hours are:
Monday to Friday: 4PM to 9PM
Saturdays: 12PM to 7PM
Sundays: Closed

Entry is free just make sure you have an ID card so you could pick up the audio guide and plant disc. The museum is really worth checking out so pass by.

For more photos of the interior taken by the photographer Niccolò Guasti, click [Here]