Search: “kuwait”

Yesterday there was a very depressing article in Kuwait Times about how dogs are being poisoned to death in Kuwait deliberately. The poison isn’t killing only stray dogs but it’s also killing peoples pets since the poison is being placed all around the parks without any warning to pet owners. Here are some excerpts from the article:

“After a walk in the local park, my dog began foaming at the mouth and shaking. I remembered that he had run towards something that had taken his interest in the park, and realized he had ingested poison,” recalls a French expatriate. “His legs were dragging on the way home and for once he was not pulling on the leash, but I did not realize what was wrong. By the time we realized it was too late, but there is no emergency animal hospital here so there was nothing I could do but watch him die,” she added.

“I cannot let my dog run freely around the park anymore because of this. I caught him eating a pellet of poisoned food, and luckily it was not enough to harm him,” said Khaldi. “Since they are unwilling to stop placing poison in the parks, I asked that they at least put up signs to warn pet owners. They even refused that, insisting that it would be too much effort to place a sign every time they planted poison.” Unknowing pet owners have suffered the consequences as a result. “My friend’s dog ate the poisoned food and died because of it. It’s not even humane euthanasia: the dog died over the period of an hour, foaming at the mouth. It is a slow, painful death.”

You can read the full article [Here]

I find this news extremely disturbing. I have a dog myself which I take to the park every so often but there is no way on earth I would take him again. The fact they’re placing poison in parks without any warning is very dangerous. How safe is it to come in contact with these poisons considering people have picnics there? I’m gonna end this rant with a video of a puppy being saved after being trapped in a pipe overnight. Hopefully someone from the Public Authority for Agriculture Affairs and Fish Resources watches it.

[YouTube]

Blogger Qabaq was at last night’s Zagato worldwide launch event which was held at the Salwa Al Sabah Hall. Only 150 Zagato’s will be made and each will be priced at KD175,000 which is around $650,000. He took some pictures two of which I’ve posted but you can check out the rest on his twitter page [Here]

The Zagato will be on display at the Concours d’Elegance that’s taking place in Marina Crescent starting today.

Concours d’Elegance will start tomorrow and last for the next four days. I passed by tonight for a peek and it just looks amazing. Aston Martin have a HUGE display which will house the Zagato which was launched earlier tonight at the Salwa Al Sabah Hall. They have a ton of race cars this year including the Ayrton Senna Williams car.

I’m going back tomorrow since everything should be up and ready by then. Below is some information on the event:

Date: February 15th to the 18th
Time: 10:00AM – 10:00PM
Location: Marina Mall interior, Marina Crescent and Marina Lawn

Daily Events
15th – Muscle & Classic
16th – Supercars
17th – Kuwait Bike Show
18th – Enzo Ferrari Birthday (see below)

Muscle Cars Section
69 Dodge Daytona
70 Plymouth Superbird
71 Plymouth ‘Cuda 340 Convertible
67 Mustang Shelby GT500
74 Trans-Am SD
69 Shelby GT500 owned by Carroll Shelby him self!
and many many more.

Hollywood Cars
This year they’re bringing real life sized Pixar/Disney cars including Lighting McQueen, Finn and Mater. They will be on display inside Marina Mall.

Enzo Ferrari Birthday
On the last day of the event, Leonardo Fioravanti the designer behind some legendary Ferrari’s including the 365 GTB 4 “Daytona”, 365 GT4 Berlinetta Boxer, the 308 GTB and GTS as well as the 288 GTO and the F40 will be giving a lecture at the Concours. His lecture will be on the Ferrari F40 since it’s the F40′s 25th anniversary. The F40 is the last Ferrari he designed and a car many believe to be one of the greatest super cars ever made. Obviously there will also be a Ferrari F40 on display.

– The F40′s nemesis, the Porsche 959 will also be on display at the Concours.

– The first day of the event they’ll be displaying old government vehicles like the old police cars and ambulances etc..

– The last day of the Concours on the occasion of Enzo Ferrari’s birthday, over 150 Ferrari’s will get together at Marina Crescent and then drive towards the Kuwait Towers.

– The Alfa Romeo Bat 11 will be on display.

According to the website Box News, the Ministry of Health is withdrawing the smoking ban a day after the law got passed because it would be impossible implement. This has to be a joke. Why don’t they give it a shot and try it out for more than half a day before giving up? [Link]

I’m upset. Can we also cancel the ban on running red lights and the ban on speeding since those two seem impossible to implement as well…

Update: I just found two things: 1) I shouldn’t rely on Google Translate and 2) it’s not actually a complete withdrawal of the ban as I had understood from the article. The ban is still in place for public places like airports, malls, restaurants etc.. but now does not apply to shisha cafe’s, hotels and other designated areas. This actually makes more sense since I was actually against the idea of banning smoking at shisha cafes. I’ve gone ahead and amended the post title. I am no longer upset.

Brake Banzeen visited the McLaren showroom in Shuwaikh and took some great photos of the Senna Formula 1 car. Check out his shots [Here]

Two Kuwaiti guys have created an iPhone game called Negooshi which revolves around a kid who takes revenge on some school bullies by using a slingshot. I found the controls a bit difficult to use and the menu system hard to navigate and understand but I liked the Kuwaiti voice overs and the fact that the game is localized. If you’re interested, Negooshi costs $1.99 and is available in the iPhone store right now. [Link]

Wonderland from Zero Film Festival on Vimeo.

Looks like a Kuwaiti version of Alice in Wonderland. I’m intrigued.

The video above is from Redbull’s event yesterday. The Subaru is being driven by Lebanese champion rally driver, Abdo Feghali. [YouTube]

The winner of the event was Mubarak Al-Rumaidhi, the co-founder of Slide N’ Glide. He’ll now be going to Lebanon this summer representing Kuwait against other competitors from the region. You can watch one of his runs from yesterday in the video below.

[YouTube]

Update: Here are some photos taken by Hassan Raza [Link]

Ubon that new Thai food restaurant I’ve previously posted about is finally opening it’s doors this coming Saturday. They’re going to be open from 6 to 11pm for now since they’re starting but later on they’ll be opening up for lunch as well. They’ve also launched their website which also contains their full menu which you can check out [Here]

I finally got my GX1 camera. I originally ordered it at the beginning of December but the camera with the specific lens I wanted started shipping end of January and Aramex just dropped it off to my office earlier today. The GX1 is a replacement for my Panasonic GF1 which was (and still is) one of the most enjoyable cameras I’ve ever used. So far the GX1 seems exactly like the GF1 except better although it’s still too early to get a first impression. I’ll be posting my view on it after using it for awhile.

I ordered the Panasonic GX1 with the 14-42mm x power lens from [Amazon]

A classical piano concert will take place next week featuring Kuwaiti pianist Faisal Al-Bahairi who is a winner of numerous piano competitions as well as two up and coming pianist Lulwa Al-Shamlan and Abdul-Aziz Al-Abwa. The concert will include works by Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin and will be taking place at the Abdul-Aziz Hussien Theater “Library” in Mishref’s Co-op on Tuesday, February 14th at 7:00pm. Entrance is free but seats are limited. For more information visit their Facebook page [Here]

The Deal just got a collection of Tumi bags if anyone is interested. Once items move up to The Deal they’re usually given a further discount so you might be able to find a good deal. They’re located on M1 in Salhiya.

After trying out WiMD with unlimited speed I finally had to decide on what connection I was going to subscribe to and I decided to go with the 10Mbps. I originally wanted to go with 15Mbps but decided KD72 a month is more than what I was willing to pay. 10Mbps is KD523 a year which works out to KD43.5 a month and to me is a much more reasonable amount.

I’ve had this connection for 2 days now which is enough time to get a first impression. Browsing is still super fast and I managed to download torrents at speeds of around 1.3MB/s to 1.5MB/s which is pretty fast. I imagine with a 15Mbps connection you would get around 2MB/s to 2.3MB/s speeds. The best part is that even if I’m downloading torrents at full speed it doesn’t hinder my browsing experience. Not sure how that is possible but with all my previous connections I always had to limit my torrents download speed so I could still have some bandwidth left to browse with. With WiMD on the other hand I’ve got my torrents set to download at full speed and I browse with no slowdown.

Below are speedtest results. This isn’t very accurate because for example you have various speedtest servers in London and when testing one would give me a very low ping rate of under a 100 but the download rate would be around 4Mbps while another would give me a higher ping rate in the 300’s but with a higher download speed. Thats why I decided I would perform the test on all the servers and post the ones with the highest download speeds.

I really hope the connection doesn’t suffer in the long run once more and more users sign up. That’s actually my only concern but I’ll post an update 6 months down the line and let you guys now how things turned out. If you want to get a second opinion Marzouq over at zDistrict just signed up to a 20Mbps connection and posted about it [Here]

I’ve managed to get more information regarding the 2012 Concours d’Elegance that is going to be held in Kuwait next week.

– Leonardo Fioravanti the designer behind some legendary Ferrari’s including the 365 GTB 4 “Daytona”, 365 GT4 Berlinetta Boxer, the 308 GTB and GTS as well as the 288 GTO and the F40 will be giving a lecture at the Concours. His lecture will be on the Ferrari F40 since it’s the F40’s 25th anniversary. The F40 is the last Ferrari he designed and a car many believe to be one of the greatest super cars ever made. Obviously there will also be a Ferrari F40 on display.

– The F40’s nemesis, the Porsche 959 will also be on display at the Concours.

– The first day of the event they’ll be displaying old government vehicles like the old police cars and ambulances etc..

– The last day of the Concours on the occasion of Enzo Ferrari’s birthday, over 150 Ferrari’s will get together at Marina Crescent and then drive towards the Kuwait Towers.

– The Alfa Romeo Bat 11 will be on display.

– The first production model of the new Aston Martin Zagato will be launched worldwide at the Concours. In addition there will be an original 1960’s Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato on display right next to it.

This is basically all I have for now. For more information on this years Concours check out my previous post [Here]

Registration is now open for entry into the 2012 PAWS annual dog show. The show will take place in the beautiful gardens of the British Embassy on Friday March 9th from 11AM to 4PM. There will be stalls at the dog show selling a variety of merchandise, activities for the children, refreshment stalls and of course the main attraction will be the dog competition categories.

Full details can be found on the PAWS website and all competition categories are listed on the application form which can be downloaded from the website as well. Here is the [Link]