Search: “kuwait”

The number of Americans choosing to give up their passports hit a record 3,415 last year, up 14% from 2013, and 15 times more than in 2008, when only 231 people renounced their citizenship.

Experts say the recent surge is coming from expats who no longer want to deal with complicated tax paperwork, a burden that has only gotten worse in recent years. [Source]

I wonder how many of the 3,415 were Kuwaitis since Kuwaiti banks last year decided to start complying with FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) which means any American citizen will have their bank information automatically passed on to the IRS for tax purposes. For Kuwaitis with dual citizenship this meant they would have to start paying taxes on their undisclosed finances.

Thanks Motez

The Turkish Steakhouse Sultanchef is opening a new location at the Symphony Style Mall in Salmiya. It’s the same location where Bubba Gump Shrimp was previously supposed to open so not sure whats going on there. Koryokwan, the Korean restaurant was also supposed to open in the basement below that spot but don’t think thats happening as well since they’ve removed the Koryokwan logo from the hoardings.

Sultanchef is very popular and their current location in Kuwait City is always packed so my guess is they’ll be brining a lot of footfall to the very dead Symphony Style Mall. If you haven’t already, check out my review of Sultanchef [Here]

Alghanim Industries acquired the rights to develop Wendy’s restaurants across the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region from Alamar Foods, a Saudi-based company owned jointly by Al Jammaz Group and the Carlyle Group. The value of the deal remains undisclosed. Alghanim Industries has acquired all operational outlets in the UAE with plans to open additional stores across MENA over the next 10 years. Part of the expansion in the region includes opening stores in Alghanim Industries home market, Kuwait, which has among the highest consumption of fast food per capita in the MENA region. [Link]

It’s interesting that Alghanim are getting into the food industry, makes me wonder what they will be bringing next?

Rocket Internet AG (“Rocket”, ISIN DE000A12UKK6, RKET) today announces the signing of the acquisition of 100% of the shares in Talabat, one of the leading players in the attractive online food takeaway market in the Middle East, headquartered in Kuwait, for approximately EUR 150 million. The closing of the transaction is expected in the next few weeks.

Daaaaaaammmnnnn… [Source]

Thanks Ziad

Back in May of last year I shared renderings of the Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmad Cultural Centre that’s currently under construction in Kuwait City where the flag square used to be. The cultural centre will include theatres, concert halls, cinemas, conference and exhibition halls, a library archive and a public park.

Previously I had only seen external photos of the building but a reader made me aware that SSH, the architecture and engineering firm working on the project have now published internal shots of the centre.

Another bit of information I also just found out is that the cultural centre will have at least 9 theaters of which 8 are indoor and 1 outdoor. Of the 9 theaters, the larges one will be able to hold 2,000 people while the smallest up to 200.

I haven’t shared all the photos here just a few but if you want to see photos of all the theaters click [Here]

Brings a new meaning to Indian Biryani

Thanks Najib and K.thekuwaiti

A committee in Kuwait’s public works ministry has recommended that all bids to build a new terminal at the country’s international airport be rejected, state news agency KUNA reported on Sunday.

In November, the tender committee for the project said a consortium of Kuwait’s Kharafi National and Turkey’s Limak Holding had submitted the lowest bid for the contract, worth 1.386 billion dinars ($4.78 billion).

But KUNA quoted Kuwait’s minister for electricity, water and public works, Abdulaziz al-Ibrahim, as saying on Sunday that a technical committee in the ministry had recommended all bids be rejected. Ibrahim did not give a reason for the recommendation, but said the committee had studied all aspects of the bidding. [Source]

Sigh…

Around a couple of weeks back I was listening to the Joe Rogan podcast where he had my favorite car journalist Chris Harris on. They were both talking about cars and Chris Harris started talking about how comfortable the new S-Class was and how much he loved it. The past few cars I’ve reviewed have all been pretty much sport cars like the Jaguar F-Type Coupe and the Ferrari 458 Spider. So I figured you know what? I wanted to try something different. So I whatsapped my contact at Mercedes and asked him if the S-Class was available to take over the weekend and it was.

I have a bit of history with the S-Class since over the years my dad has owned the previous four generations and I’m old enough to have driven three of them. My favorite of the three and the one I have the most amount of passion towards was the shaba7 (“ghost” model year 91-98). I remember when the car first came out me and my best friend spotted one in Salmiya while we were walking towards Kids ‘R’ Us (this was probably around 1992). We started discussing how the car came standard with bullet proof windows and how it was so quiet once you sat inside that Mercedes installed a little red light that would notify you if a car around you beeped because you wouldn’t hear it otherwise. Of course all this wasn’t true but the shaba7 was so different from anything else at that time it created all these rumors. Then when I finally became old enough to drive the car I just felt so on top of the world when I was in it. I used to beg my dad to let me take the car out when I had a date because it was so much more impressive than pulling up in the other family car, a 1993 hunter green Dodge Minivan. The S-Class has changed considerably over the years but the one thing that hasn’t changed is the respect you get when you’re in one.

When I first sat in the new S-Class I was taken aback by how beautiful the interior was. I’ve been in quite a few cars now that have replaced the analogue dashboard dials with digital screens but none have managed to make it look as good as they do in the S-Class. The center console screen is also the largest screen I’ve ever seen in a car, its around six iPhone 6’s wide just to give you an idea about how huge it is. All these screen with cheap looking graphics would have been a disaster but Mercedes have put together a very tasteful and premium looking user interface with fancy graphics and lots of animations. At night you can also choose if you want interior mood lighting and the color of the light. I chose pink just because it made the interior look like a fancy strip club but the car interior looked great in all the colors and surprisingly not that tacky. The S-Class was very comfortable to sit in and the seats had the softest head rest in any car I’ve ever sat in. It’s literally pillow like and in fact it might have originally started off as a pillow and then shaped into a head rest. No matter who sat in the car the first thing they would notice were the fluffy soft headrests. As a whole the car was extremely comfortable, so comfortable in fact I drove it all the way to the Boubyan Island bridge and back without feeling any sort of fatigue or exhaustion. It’s fast, smooth and super comfy. I also think the new S-Class is the best looking S-Class since the shaba7. I love the exterior lines and especially the rear of the car which I’ve disliked in the last two generations of S-Class.

For some reason this car just made me want to blast hiphop the whole time and I don’t even listen to hiphop. It’s such a pimp ass car I loved it. I drove up to a gate outside these water towers that were being painted and when I parked the car I noticed the caretaker of the place started unlocking the gate to let me in. The car screams I am important especially now with not so many of them around. I honestly really can’t think of anything negative to say about the car. If I wanted to nitpick I could say I found the screen animations a bit slow and I hated how I actually had to go into the menu to turn the AC off instead of using a physical button. I could also complain about the sound system which I didn’t think was that great but really this would be me just nitpicking because there wasn’t anything I really disliked about the car. The new S-Class starts at KD33,000 but the model I drove was a bit spec’d out and sells for around KD35,000.

For more information on the S-Class, check out this [Link]

There is an instgrammer going by the username @myasstethics that travels around the world and takes pictures of his buttocks in different places and recently he was in Kuwait. He actually took two photos in Kuwait but I thought the one above was the more appropriate of the two to share here. I know a lot of people will be upset at the fact he did this but come on, it’s funny. Check out his account [Here] (its SFW)

The Scientific Center have brought the award-winning and international blockbuster exhibition “1001 Inventions” to Kuwait and today was their first opening day. I just got back from it and I loved it or at least loved the fact that for the next month kids have an exciting and interactive educational exhibition they can check out. The experience starts off with a short 10 minute film and once it’s done, everyone is led into the main hall where various stations are manned by different performers who act out the role of an inventor and tell their story. If you follow me on snapchat (mark248am) you most probably saw some of the performers since I snapchatted a few OF THEM. I actually snapchatted more but my snapchat has a habit of crashing with the videos disappearing on restart.

The various displays around the exhibitions have videos and a certain degree of interactivity making the experience very entertaining but it’s the performers that stood out for me. The exhibition is bilingual and that includes the performers who are able to act out in both Arabic and English. Surprisingly they only had two weeks to rehearse. The “1001 Inventions” exhibition is taking place outside the Scientific Center in a large tent and the entrance fee is just KD2 or KD1.5 if when you buy a Scientific Center ticket. They are running starting from today and up until March 7th. Their opening hours are:

Sunday to Thursday
9AM to 1PM and 4:30PM to 9:30PM

Friday
2PM to 10PM

Saturday
9AM to 9:30PM

It’s definitely worth passing by to check out and expect to spend an hour there to experience the whole exhibit. For more information click [Here]

Hungry Bunny is a popular burger franchise that used to be open back in Kuwait during the 80s pre Burger King and McDonalds days. When Al Homaizi got the Burger King franchise, they shutdown all the Hungry Bunny locations and killed the brand. But the original creator of Hungry Bunny ended up launching the brand in Saudi Arabia and then a few years ago brought the brand back to Kuwait. Al Homaizi Group sued them and it now seems Hungry Bunny has been told to stop using the bunny logo until a verdict is reached in the court case.

I passed by Hungry Bunny for a quick bite yesterday and the majority of the items had the Hungry Bunny logo without the bunny (like in the placemats pictured above). But, some items like the burger wrapper still had the bunny on them. According to the shop manager this is just a temporary issue and the bunny will be coming back soon. They’ve even removed the bunny from the shop signage as well so it’s a pretty awkward mess right now.

Update: Al Homaizi have commented with the following:

Dear Mark and Loyal Hungry Bunny Customers,

It is great to see Hungry Bunny still having that nostalgic feeling within Kuwait and we thank you for your post which we appreciate and are proud of as the founders of the Hungry Bunny brand.

With regards to your post, we would like to mention that Hungry Bunny was developed in 1982 by Al Homaizi Foodstuff Co. in Kuwait and is 100% Kuwaiti.

As the first local franchise in Kuwait, Hungry Bunny led the way and opened the doors to decades of innovative local concepts within Kuwait which we are very proud to see are still growing today.

The Hungry Bunny restaurants that launched in and outside of Kuwait following 1997 were not the original Hungry Bunny developed by Al Homaizi Foodstuff Co.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of our loyal Hungry Bunny customers! We would love to hear more about your experiences and memories that you, your family and your friends had in the 80’s and 90’s at the much-loved Hungry Bunny.

Please share your memories with us by sending us an email to [email protected]

Best Wishes,

Al Homaizi Foodstuff Co.
Member of Kout Food Group, Kuwait

The last time I heard of PAWS was when John of K’S PATH posted about the cruelty investigation that took place there but now it seems an employee of PAWS has taken over the Facebook page and is calling out for help. The message above (plus a few others) were posted a couple of days back on the PAWS page and since then I’ve been getting a lot of emails asking me to post about it. The chairperson herself has been denying all the claims and has been asking people to visit the shelter to see for themselves. Whatever happens I just hope the sheltered animals come out of this ok. Check out all the messages on the PAWS Facebook page [Here]

Last weekend I went to Bahrain to attend the GulfRun X event that was taking place there at the Bahrain International Circuit. GulfRun is a yearly event where guys in Kuwait take their cars to Bahrain to race on a race circuit over a two day period. The last GulfRun I attended was GulfRun 6 but since this was their 10th year anniversary there was no way I was going to miss it. I spent most of the day socializing at the tracking and the evenings enjoying the dining experience Bahrain has to offer. My good friend at 8IGHTYONE Productions just released a video of the event and I just love it. Check it out above. [YouTube]

Five Guys are opening in Dubai Mall soon which means they’ll most likely be opening up in Kuwait as well. Also according to The Avenues instagram account another burger joint opened up there yesterday called BGR so that’s two franchise burger places that have opened up this week. I think the only place left to open that I’d be excited for is Arby’s. Where you at Arby’s??

Thanks David

Five people were killed and more than 50 others injured in a horrific crash in Kuwait yesterday, involving a bus carrying Bahraini pilgrims.

…

Thick fog blanketing most of the region was blamed for the incident which happened when the bus, carrying pilgrims from Bahrain to Karbala in Iraq, was apparently overtaken by a water tanker, leading it to crash into a truck carrying bricks. [Source]

A horrific accident that took place the other day here in Kuwait during the thick fog. [YouTube]

Update: Video has been removed by the uploader