Search: “kuwait”

When McDonald’s opened an outlet in Kuwait shortly after the end of the Gulf War, the line of cars waiting to eat there was seven miles long.

[Source]

Note: In case you’re wondering, thats a McGangBang in the picture.

Below is a kinda long but interesting write up by a friend of mine currently working in the medical field. It’s related to the “Kuwait to segregate medical care” post from last week:

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Its not a sprint, its a marathon

We need help. Everyone can agree that healthcare in Kuwait should be paramount. We need to have a healthcare system we can be proud of and confident in. I need to feel proud of where I work and the job I do. The recent lobby towards segregated healthcare for none emergent cases is just one more example of a quick fix for many failed and saddening endeavours that we as a profession are at least partly responsible for.

From the outset I doubt that anyone working currently in Kuwaiti healthcare is evil or bad or totally and completely corrupt. In fact, I think many of us started our careers inspired and full of promise but were met by challenges that we cannot possibly overcome. At a healthcare system level, we need to refine our goals and find our way towards something more efficient and dare I say it welcoming to people.

How many people reading this have a family doctor?

I doubt many of you do. This may be because you are perfectly healthy but it’s probably because you show up at the emergency room if you need anything because you have no confidence in your local poly clinic or mustawsif. The fact of the matter is that I wouldn’t either.

We need to re-create the family doctors as the go to guy or girl for all things non emergency and as the primary referring physician (small bruises, vaccines, high blood pressure, diabetes control, breast and colon cancer screening). This will mean two big changes. The first is that one doctor or centre will have all your medical history and that from now on you won’t show up to the emergency room unless it is an actual emergency, otherwise the emergency department will refuse to see you (this is the norm in the US, Canada and the UK NHS, it is becoming the norm in many south east asian countries gradually as well). More importantly we need to equip our poly clinics and family doctors with information and facilities such as x-ray facilities, ultrasound and turn a rundown office into an actual treatment facility. We also need to mandate a minimum amount of courses to be taken by these doctors so that they remain up to date in their fields (this should be true for all doctors in general come to think of it)

Provided you’ve got a referral or are trying to see a specialist, how many of you see them on time?

The way things are now, if you live in Mishref, you go to specialists in Mubarak, if you live near Adan then you are sent there. This means that the areas with the highest population end up with the longest waiting times. We need a structured dynamic referral system. I’m sure that there is some sort of solution I’m just not sure what it is. Perhaps if there was a regular update of which areas had the shortest waiting time were made available to family practitioners on a daily basis (via email). It may mean that patients will get their appointments earlier.

The problem is that I doubt that a person living in Jahra would be happy coming to Amiri for his echocardiogram even if it meant he or she would get it quicker. Having referrals to different hospital for different things would mean that you need to have all the patients data accessible across different hospitals in a sort of a cloud. Lets face it people, I’m more likely to see a giant flying saucer deliver free red velvet cupcakes at 360 than I am to see the ministry of health manage a cloud based patient filing system.

Having exhausted all efforts to get an early appointment you decided to go private, how many of you see a physician in his private practice after trying to get an early appointment in his government funded one?

Many of us have a conflict of interest when we are employed in private and public healthcare. I know colleagues who completely neglect their public healthcare patients and I know others who have no interest in private healthcare. Regardless, clear guidelines have to be set so that a physician working in the private healthcare field does not neglect his or her public healthcare practice. A bill requiring all doctors working in private healthcare to have 50% of their practice as public or pro bono might be the best solution but it’ll also mean that you would be the most hated minister of health in the history of Kuwait. (Maybe if we start with 30%, doctors are less likely to revolt)

Matbakhi Bghorbti is a YouTube channel run by Kuwaiti students currently studying in the States. Their videos are all cooking related and are not meant to be very serious. They have 8 videos so far and you can check them all out [Here]

Current Score:
Guy sitting on top of moving car 0 – Guy standing on top of moving car 1

[Source]

There are two really great films I want to see this month at Cinemagic, the first is Samsara and the second is Gomorrah. I’ve been wanting to watch these two movies for sometime now but never got the time. Grave of Fireflies was supposed to show last month but the BluRay got delayed in customs and the movie Once was shown instead which I watched and thought was pretty good considering it was a musical (I hate musicals). Grave of Fireflies is now going to be shown this month instead. Check out the full film schedule below…

Thursday April 4th, 2013 at 7:30PM
SAMSARA
From the award winning director of Baraka, Samsara takes you on an incredible journey, filmed over nearly five years in twenty-five countries on five continents, and shot on seventy-millimetre film, Samsara transports us to the varied worlds of sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial complexes, and natural wonders.

Saturday April 6th, 2013 at 7:30PM
GRAVE OF FIREFLIES
Called “one of the greatest and most powerful war films ever made” by acclaimed film critic Roger Ebert, and universally considered one of the best animated films ever made, Grave of Fireflies is a tragic film covering a young boy and his little sister’s struggle to survive in Japan during World War II.

Thursday April 11th, 2013 at 7:30PM
GOMORRAH
Winner of the Grand Prix Jury Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, Gomorrah intertwines 5 separate stories of people whose lives are touched by organised crime. A harrowing look into Italy’s modern-day crime families.

Saturday April 13th, 2013 at 7:30PM
HAROLD AND MAUDE
Chosen by the AFI as one of the top ten classic American comedies of all time, and considered a huge influence on the work of Wes Anderson and Jared Hess. Young, rich, and obsessed with death, Harold finds himself changed forever when he meets lively septuagenarian Maude at a funeral.

Thursday April 18th, 2013 at 7:30PM
EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP
Holding 96% on rottentomatoes.com, the multi-award winning story of how an eccentric French shop keeper and amateur film maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner. The film contains footage of Banksy, Shephard Fairey, Invader and many of the world’s most infamous graffiti artists at work.

Saturday April 20th, 2013 at 7:30PM
FOLLOWING
Before dominating the world with The Dark Knight and Inception, and before his groundbreaking independent mind-bender Memento, Christopher Nolan made a small film about a young writer who follows strangers for material until he meets a thief who takes him under his wing. A rare debut from a fascinating filmmaker.

Thursday April 25th to Saturday April 28th, 2013
THE KUWAIT INTERNATIONAL FILM RETREAT
Join us for a film festival of Kuwaiti, Regional, and International short and feature length films that we will be screening on these dates, alongside workshops, red carpet photo ops, and other film related activities. Don’t miss this one of a kind film event, and keep checking back on the official website for more details: www.kuwaitfilmretreat.com

Cinemagic Kuwait, is organizing these events as part of its efforts to contribute to the development of an internationally competitive Kuwaiti audio-visual production industry, partly by bringing the filmmakers and audiences together and by Increasing the public’s interest in – and appreciation for – the art of film-making. Cinemagic movies are screened in the old Salmiya, on the roof on top of Alghanim Electronics and LG and there is no entrance fee. Here is a link to their Facebook group [Link]

Arabian Business released their list of “The 500 Most Powerful Arabs in the World” and quite a few from Kuwait made the list including a number of women. The highest ranked Kuwaiti on the list was Mohammed Alshaya in 26th place (pictured above) while the highest Arab overall was Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed. Below are the rankings of the Arabs from Kuwait (not all are Kuwaiti):

26 – Mohammed Alshaya – MH Alshaya
51 – Ibrahim Dabdoub – National Bank of Kuwait
66 – Bader Al Kharafi – Kharafi Group
156 – Marwan Boodai – Boodai Corp
175 – Sheikha Al Bahar – National Bank of Kuwait
191 – Maha Al Ghunaim – Global Investment House
197 – Suad Al Humaidi – Landmark SAL
207 – Mohammed Husain – Equate Petrochemical Co
225 – Tarek Sultan – Agility
229 – Michel Accad – Gulf Bank
245 – Donna Sultan – KEO Consultants
261 – Faisal Al Ayyar – KIPCO
267 – Salem Al Hindi – Rotana Audio & Visual Group
275 – Omar Alghanim – Gulf Bank
282 – Mohammed Al-Khodairi – Kuwait Finance House
295 – Farouk Al Zanki – Kuwait Petroleum Corporation
302 – Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf – Cordoba Initiative
324 – Rashid Yaqoub Al Nafisi – Al Mazaya Holding
327 – Sheikha Hessa Saad Al Sabah – Council for Arab Businesswomen
328 – Saad Al Barrak – Zain
329 – Sara Akbar – Kuwait Energy
377 – Maha Hussein – Petrochemical Industries
390 – Ghosson Al Khaled – ACICO
399 – Hamad Al Falah – Kuwait Airways
411 – Ibrahim Al Qadhi – Boubyan Bank
414 – Adnan Al Musallam – The Investment Dar
444 – Naif Al Mutawa – The 99
478 – Ghaida Al Khaled – ACICO Construction
492 – Fawaz Al Hasawi – Nottingham Forest FC

For the full list click [Here]

Not a lot of people might know this but back in 2003 I ran a warblog with a few a friends of mine called qHate. The blog started just as the Iraq invasion was going to take place and so we started covering life in Kuwait during that period. Since it was the anniversary of the Iraq invasion a couple of days back, here are some of my favorite posts from that blog:

Life of a Soldier in Kuwait
Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Pictures of Soldiers on streets of Kuwait
The First Siren
The Gas Masks
Just a bit of fun
People shouldn’t live like this
Strange Days
My Latest Adventure
Pictures of Souq Sharq after missile attack
Wolf Blitzer

For more posts you can visit qHate [Here]

Last night while at the Kuwait Airport waiting for my Lufthansa flight I got the message above on my phone. They changed the departure gate after I checked in so Lufthansa sent me an SMS informing me of the gate change. I thought that was pretty cool.

The Shams Power Company opened their Shams 1 concentrated solar power station this week in Abu Dhabi. The station generates 100 MW and can power 20,000 homes while reducing CO2 emissions by 175,000 tons per year. [Source]

Kuwait is currently in the process of building a solar power station as well and is expected to be completed by the end of this year (2013).

The project took about two years and $600 million to build. [Source]

Now this is what I find interesting. Their solar power station is costing $600 million to build while ours is costing just $16 million. So our power station is either going to be super tiny or they got ripped off pretty badly.

On a similar subject, here is a link to vintage photos of the Shuwaikh Power Station taken back in the 1950s. [Link]

K’S PATH is holding their first fundraising event of the year in a fantastic setting inspired by Alice in Wonderland. You’ll spend the afternoon drinking tea accompanied by music and a host channeling the eccentric Mad Hatter. Seats are limited; email [email protected] to know how to purchase tickets. The event will be hosted at The Kuwait Riding Center.

Date: Friday, 29th March 2013
Time: 11AM to 1PM
Location: The Kuwait Riding Center
Ticket: KD15

Update: Event has sadly been canceled.

First a bit of background, a few weeks back Daft Punk released a 15 second commercial during an episode of Saturday Night Live which featured a 15 second sound sample. That 15 second sound sample from the commercial was taken a remixed to a bunch of things (I love the internet) including a drunk Ron Swanson jigging to the song.

This brings us to the video above, it was done by Patrick Semaan and its a video loop of Kuwaitis dancing to a loop of the 15 second sound sample. [YouTube]

The American International School has an exhibition taking place today at the AIS Art Gallery where they will be exhibiting over 150 works including drawings, paintings, sculptures and installations. If you’re interested here are the details:

Date: Monday March 18th, 2013
Time: 6PM to 8PM
Location: American International School, Medan Hawalli

When DJ Africa came to me he said he just wanted to make a simple fun video. Fun to watch and fun to make that is. And it defo was. DJ Africa is hilarious. His unique flow and style a hybrid of Reggae,English and Arabic sets him apart from all the other rappers in Kuwait. He is also a producer. We shot this whenever and wherever we felt like shooting. The Gulf Run Car Wash, during a break in the Big D Matrix shoot, our Kuwait Underground Show Practice and some random party. The BBoys of Electrik Crew and the staff of the car washmhad a good time too as you will see. -TJCFILMS

[YouTube]

FIVE TWELVE is the largest videogame tournament thats been hosted in Kuwait and it will be taking place next week. The participants will be competing in EA’s FIFA 13 football game and the winner of the competition will be getting KD5,000.

FIVE TWELVE are giving away 3 copies of the FIFA 13 game along with free registration to the event (usually a KD20 fee) and all you need to do to win them is leave a comment in the post below mentioning what gaming system you have. I will then randomly choose 3 winners who each will win a copy of the game and the free registration to the tournament.

For more information on the FIVE TWELVE tournament including the rules and regulations click [Here]

Rules: Only one entry per person and please make sure you use a working email since the winner will only be contacted by email. If winner doesn’t respond another winner will be randomly chosen. Winner gets to choose the console version of FIFA 13.

Update: I closed the post for commenting and using Random.org I chose three winners and one backup. The winners are: #107 vampire, #87 hansel and #14 pickles. The backup in case one of them doesn’t reply is #94 neoark25.

Yesterday I was invited to the Peruvian Food Festival that is currently taking place this week at JW Marriott. I wasn’t planning to go at first but then I told myself I didn’t want to be one of those people who complain about nothing to do in Kuwait when in fact there are things to do and I just wasn’t doing them. The food festival is organized by the Peruvian embassy and they brought in three chefs from Peru as well as some Peruvian dancers. During various stages of the dinner the dancers would perform the traditional Peruvian dances and I thought was pretty entertaining. The food was also really interesting with lots of new flavors I hadn’t experienced before.

If you’re looking for something to do this week then this festival is on until the 15th of March. Having dinner while watching dancers perform is something you generally don’t see taking place in Kuwait so take advantage of this opportunity. The cost is KD15 per person (it’s an open buffet) and is from 7pm to 11pm at La Brasserie in JW Marriott Hotel.