Search: “kuwait”

Dr. H is a Kuwaiti family medicine resident working in a polyclinic in Kuwait. I’ve invited her to write on the blog about her experiences and I think these will end up being pretty interesting posts. She just published her first one below so check it out.

A video posted by TQ (@kickstq) on Feb 7, 2017 at 11:30am PST

For the sneakerheads in Kuwait, there is an interactive exhibition showcasing some of the most iconic sneakers to be referenced in hip-hop music taking place tonight at the Visual Therapy Gallery. The exhibit is called “Walk This Way” and features local sneakerhead @KicksTQ and music by DJ Bonita.

The exhibition is from 6 to 9PM and it’s only taking place today, after that its gone. I’ll probably be there the whole three hours as well so drop by, check it out and say hi. For more info including a map of the location, click [Here]

Update: Turns out the event is till Saturday.

Last year I posted about how Edfa3ly were the cheapest way to ship lightweight items from the States. Well that no longer is the case, seems they’ve made some major changes one of which being that they now charge KD2.5 per 1/2kg. In comparison, PostaPlus charge KD2.5 for the first 1/2kg but then charge KD2 for the extra 1/2kg’s which makes Edfa3ly now more expensive than PostaPlus. Thats not even including the Edfa3ly service fee of 1%. So I’ve updated my original post to highlight these new changes. It was good while it lasted.

Photo by @kuwait1

Damn.

Update: Here is a video, looks like it could be just the roof.

For more videos, I’m retweeting a bunch on my twitter account @mark248am

Update2: Looks like fire is out and was only exterior superficial damage to one of the four main structures which hadn’t opened yet. The main theater building wasn’t affected.

Update3: Below is a video from inside the building that was on fire. As you can see there doesn’t look like there was any interior damage.

Update4: I drove by the cultural centre an hour ago and there were like 50 workers on the roof already working on it.

Just a random tidbit, 14 years ago today I posted my first post ever on a blog called Qhate. Before 248AM I had a blog called Miskan, before that I had another one called Moblogging from Kuwait (it was like instagram, but before instagram) and before that I had another blog called Qhate. Qhate was a war blog where me and a few friends were posting about life in Kuwait during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

My first post on February 6th, 2003.

Unlike my old posts here on 248AM, I don’t cringe when I read my old posts on Qhate. It kinda feels like I started off writing pretty well and then took a big dip in quality by the time I started 248AM, only to recover again years later. In around 10 days time its also going to be 248AM’s 12 year anniversary. Crazy.

All my posts from all my previous blogs are still online except for “Moblogging from Kuwait” since it was hosted on textamerica.com which shut down a decade ago. You can still find some stuff from it using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine but not much. I used to take all the photos and post to my blog using the Sony CLIÉ UX40. That was back when smart phones didn’t exist and Sony PDA’s were so ahead of their time.

Some of you might already know JOA since they’ve been on Carriage but they just opened up their first physical location and it’s located right next to Habra in Kuwait City. For those of you who don’t know, JOA is an ORA creation that serve sushi but also specialize in poke bowls. I had previously only ordered sushi rolls from them but over the weekend I passed by their location for lunch and finally got to try one of their poke bowls. I fell in love instantly.

I ordered the regular sized “Tuna on Fire” poke bowl with extra protein and it was so damn good that I ended up ordering it again for dinner that same night from Carriage. They’re soft launching their new location today and their timings for now will only be from 12PM to 7PM. The place is tiny with no indoor seating but they do have an outdoor seating area.

So if you’re interested, their instagram account is @joa.kw and here is their location on [Google Maps]

Last month I posted a complaint about how my past few shipments with PostaPlus had taken twice as long to arrive than usual. While previously packages would take around a week to get delivered to Kuwait after arriving to my US mailbox, my past three shipments had taken 11, 13 and 21 days. But things are back to normal now since I received two packages since that post, one had taken 6 days from my US mailbox to my door, the other 7.

During that time I was in contact with PostaPlus who investigated the delays and they sent me the explanation below:

1. Weather conditions: Europe (Our transit HUB) has experienced bad weather conditions that had caused flights to be cancelled.
2. Change in customs management structure, if you recall there was a big situation going on and has caused some key people to be removed, henceforth situation was unstable and extra security has been added on shipments.

So everything is back to normal, now if they can only hurry up an implement Knet payments everything would be perfect.

Sons of Yusuf released the music video above a few days ago but what caught my attention was the background where the video was shot. I knew the video was shot in Kuwait but the location looked like one of those old gas stations you might find outside an old U.S. town. After a bit of digging around it looks like a guy in Kuwait built this backdrop on his property to park his vintage American muscle car outside it. Check it out in the picture below and again in the music video above.

Picture from @kingdome.co and video by @miniaturemalekpour_

So Habra is officially my new favorite restaurant in Kuwait alongside Table Otto. I’ve been going to both on a weekly basis now but realized Habra needed a dedicated post with some tips so here it goes.

Getting a Table
Get there early! If you’ve been holding out on Habra until it starts dying down, well good luck with that. So far the least amount of time I’ve waited was 1h 15min, while the longest I’ve waited was last night which was 2h 45min. I haven’t even tried going there on a weekend. They only have 5 tables, 2 of them fit 4 people, 2 fit 2 people (or 3 really squeezed), and the last one is a communal table that holds around 12. The place is tiny and the host currently has the most dangerous job in the world, seriously the amount of people who get into fights with him on a daily basis, I’d hate to have his job. So get there early, put your name on the list and then head over to Coffee Boulevard and go coffeeshop hopping.

Ordering
Order what you want when you want it. The food doesn’t take long to be prepared and served so they have a habit of bringing you a large number of your dishes all at once. Last week I got into an argument with the waiter because they served me and my friend all 5 of our starters and 3 of our mains at the same time. We literally had no room on the table to put all the items and it’s just physically impossible to eat everything at once. So this is the best tip I can give you, order the first few dishes you want to have first, like all your starters. Once you’re done with your starters, order your mains. Nothing takes long to be served, I think 6 minutes is the longest you have to wait for a dish to get served. Trust me, you’ll have a better experience this way.

What to Order
I always order different things but the items below are staples that will always be included:
– Bone marrow (I can’t say this enough, don’t share! Everyone order your own)
– Four and a half hour braised rib
– Three-way Kalbi
– Foil-baked mushrooms

What Not to Order
Resist the urge to order their charred cantaloupe dessert. It sounds good but there is no way on earth you can eat it. I’ve ordered it twice and twice I was just going to take the cantaloupe and hit someone with it. It’s nearly impossible to eat which is a shame because it has potential. My tip for them is to remove the cantaloupe from the shell by chopping it up, then put it back in the shell, top if off with the rest of the ingredients and serve it like that. Or just remove it from the menu completely.

Vegetarians/Vegans
lol

Bathroom
They don’t have one, you’re meant to use the one in the parking lot a few stories above them. Takes forever to get up there and the bathrooms are super gross. So if you need to use the bathroom, get it done somewhere else before your dinner or after. The bathroom in the basement of Crystal Tower is the closest nicest bathroom, while the bathroom at Arabica is the coolest because of their high-tech toilet. Be nice and order coffee if you’re gonna use that one (they have decaf).

Parking
I hate the parking lot in the Habra building since leaving it takes forever and the elevators are the slowest. Personally, I like to park behind Arabica and head to Habra walking. The walk back after a big meal is always appreciated and there is no long queue when leaving the parking.

So these are my tips, if you’d like to read my previous post on Habra then click [Here]

This question is for the guys, where do you go get your nails done? The two places I frequent the most are Spaloon and Ten Spa and I’m really not happy with either of them. Spaloon have the most uncomfortable seating I’ve ever experienced anywhere in my life so I hate getting my nails done there, and Ten Spa isn’t what it used to be, it feels like they’re about to close down any day now.

So where do you go? I can’t think of better places, maybe I should just open my own nail salon…

The popular CATS Broadway show is coming to Kuwait next month to hold shows from February 9th to February 12th at the Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmad Cultural Centre. Tickets just went on sale and start at a reasonable KD40 KD20 and go up to KD120. So if you’re interested in going, get your tickets now before they sell out from [Here]

Update: Tickets actually start from KD20 (matinee show)

re:food is a local humanitarian non-profit initiative, with the basic concept to salvage near-expiry and excess food from the local food and beverage industry, and then redistribute it around Kuwait to people who need it for free. Usually, these food items are either categorized as waste so they go directly to incinerators and landfills, or to secondary markets where they sell near-expiry goods.

When they first started, beneficiaries were originally found by scouting different areas, talking to people and giving them goods to build off trust. Then once word of mouth got around to what they were doing, individuals started heading to the re:food website to register to get food. The re:food beneficiaries are a diverse group of people that include Arabs, Bedouns, and Asians.

If you’d like to find out more about re:food or you’d like to volunteer, then visit their [Website]

None of the shipping companies are consistent so every few months I like to check and see which one of them is currently performing better.

I’ve been using MyBox exclusively for the past few months and they’ve been so slow that I might end up moving back to Shop & Ship if they’re doing better. Some examples of my recent shipments:

MacBook Pro (21 Days)
– Arrived to MyBox on December 14th
– Delivered to me in Kuwait on January 4th

Sneakers (11 Days)
– Arrived to MyBox on December 28th
– Delivered to me in Kuwait on January 8th

Laptop Case (13 Days)
– Arrived to MyBox on January 13th
– Delivered to me in Kuwait on January 26th

So what US mail forwarding company are you guys currently using and whats the average time it taking to get your items delivered to Kuwait from the US?

Unique Hype is a lifestyle instagram account that sells and trades in deadstock sneakers and streetwear. The account belongs to Mohsen, a Kuwaiti student currently residing in LA who wants to remain anonymous which is why I’m only sharing his first name. I found out about him around a year ago when he first started, back then he had less than 2,000 followers and today its over 20,000. Mohsen is a sneakerhead who is in the business of deadstock sneakers and streetwear, which basically means sold out items that you can no longer find in retail (like Yeezys). I personally source my own sneakers but sometimes I get stuck and thats when I contact Mohsen who usually can source them for me, like I’m currently looking for size US11 SoleBox UltraBOOST and he’s trying to find me a pair.

I asked Mohsen how he started and turns out it was out of necessity. Growing up he was always into sneakers and when he moved to the States to study, he started lining up outside shops whenever there were any big releases. But with big releases and limited quantity, once its your turn and they don’t have your size, you end up picking up any size available. And thats what Mohsen ended up doing, he’d line up for hours and then end up with a pair that weren’t his size, so he set up @uniquehypekw to start selling those pairs. Overtime the more he lined up the more connections he made and the more he bought, sold or traded. He started meeting people in line, like other resellers or kids who just stood in line to make a quick $30 or $40 selling the pairs. So Mohsen started making deals with these kids, instead of standing in line himself, he’d get in touch with these kids, offer to give them their cut if they’d buy the sneakers for him. He also started dealing with the other resellers and every now and then one would call him up whenever they needed to unload on a large batch of items. So one guy would call him up and be like hey, I’ve got 10 pairs of Yeezy 350’s if you want them, and Mohsen would have to agree to buy all 10 at an agreed price. The more he did it, the more popular he became as a seller and the more connections he made.

I personally find all this really fascinating obviously since I’m into sneakers but Mohsen has also saved me a lot of headache. Friends and strangers contact me all the time asking me how they could get a pair Yeezys and instead of me trying to find a pair for them or show them how to go about finding stuff, I just send them over to him. I’m actually waiting on my pair of OG NMD’s which he’ll be delivering to me later tonight. So if you’re ever looking to grab a pair of difficult to find sneakers or even sold out clothing like Supreme, Anti Social Social Club or whatever, try him out. He’s also willing to buy or trade with you in case you’ve got something he wants. [@uniquehypekw]

Clearly we have too many coffeeshops at the moment but I actually like that, I think we’ve found a sort of a loophole in the system. Since we can’t open bars in Kuwait people are opening coffeeshops with the same vibe as a bar, just coffee instead of alcohol, and it’s working.

My only issue is why is everyone opening a coffeeshop in Kuwait City right next to 20 other already good coffeeshops?

Earlier today I wanted to have coffee with a friend of mine in Jabriya and we realized there wasn’t any good coffee place in the area, so I recommended we drive down all the way to the city to Arabica. Then a couple of hours ago I was supposed to meet another friend over coffee in Salmiya, and the only place I could think of was Magnet, which I actually like don’t get me wrong. It’s just once you’re outside of the city you wouldn’t think there was a speciality coffee trend in Kuwait, it’s non existent.

So dear coffeeshops, please open up outside of Kuwait City closer to where people live. Thank you.