Search: “kuwait”

This is an odd post I know but there seems to be an old myth that one of the dancers in Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ music video from 1982 was Kuwaiti. I first heard this from a friend a few months ago and shrugged it off, but this weekend I got an email from a reader telling me the same. So I decided to dig into this to see if it was true.

The story goes that the dancer in the white outfit who leads the rival gang in the music video is actually Kuwaiti (to the left of Michael in the picture above). Going by the way he looks I could see him passing as a Kuwaiti so I tried to dig up the full cast members list to see what his name was. Turns out that the dancer with the white top is Michael Peters, an American choreographer and director who has no connection to Kuwait.

I then decided to dig up the list of cast members in as many Michael Jackson videos as I could think of and I wasn’t able to find anyone that sounded Kuwaiti either. So I guess that myth is busted.

Between 1895 and 1909, Russel Hamilton an English petty officer made various voyages from Egypt to Japan stopping along the way. One stop was Kuwait where he took these two black and white photographs with captions on the back.

The caption on top reads:

Shiek of Koweit and followers. Note that some have covered faces, fearing evil eye of camera.

The caption below reads:

Taken during bombardment of Koweit. Somali outrage led by the “mad mullah” – Sheiks Pallace Koweit

If you’d like to see these photos in hi-res, click here.

Source: Smithsonian Institute

Back in 2017, I attended a talk by Prof. Alberico B. Belgiojoso titled “The 1970 Vision for Kuwait City” where he shared some various interesting plans that never got implemented. One plan to help reduce traffic congestion in the city center included building multistory parking lots on the outskirts of the city and then connecting them to the city center and various office towers via suspended monorails. Since that talk I’ve been trying to find a decent photo of the proposal and the best I’ve been able to find is the one above which I scanned from a booklet I borrowed off a friend. It’s a government booklet titled Urban Development in Kuwait “التطور والعمران قي الكويت”.

Thanks @_M87

Kuwait is experiencing a period of stagnation. The landscapes of Kuwait—its patchy downtown, its repetitive suburbs, its flat desert, its Gulf waters—have not been reimagined for decades. There is no societal expectation that these landscapes will or should change. Even simple and sensible improvements remain outside the realm of possibility. We cannot imagine a more green and pedestrian friendly downtown. We cannot imagine suburbs more diverse in building type and resident background. We cannot imagine a less trampled and littered desert, richer in biodiversity and always beautiful. We cannot imagine our water being less polluted and its depths more bountiful. And this deficient imagination of ours is also lacking in the other direction. Given the current economic, environmental, and humanitarian challenges the country is facing, it is baffling why most of us cannot visualize the rapid and disastrous transformations that our urban, rural, and natural landscapes can undergo in the near future. Regardless of the evidence, there seems to be a widespread expectation that things will essentially stay the same. Full Post Link

The excerpt and image above was taken from an interesting post by architect Ali AlYousefi. He’s got a lot more Kuwait imagined images on his blog so make sure you check it out. I also think his posts work really well in parallel with Asseel Al-Ragam’s Simple Fixes tweets like the ones below.

This is such a great video if you’re into racing and the video quality is surprisingly really great. The video is by CiTV Sport who produced a lot of rally videos back in the 80s and is narrated in English and features some rally legends including Saeed Al-Hajri who raced for the Rothmans Porsche team and also a young Mohammed bin Sulayem pictured below.

Even if you aren’t into cars you should at least watch the first minute or so of the video since it starts off with some footage of the old Kuwait Marriott Hotel. The Marriott Hotel was the base of the 1985 Kuwait Rally so all the drivers stayed at the hotel and that’s where the race started and ended.

The 1985 rally was sponsored by the furniture company Mahdi Habib whom I hadn’t heard of until today. According to their website, they’re one of the oldest companies in Kuwait and were established back in 1952.

Yesterday I found out about Charles Cecil, an American diplomat who served in Kuwait back in the 60s. While here he took some great photos of Kuwait including the images in this post of Kuwaiti homes that were newly constructed at that time.

I’m not sure how many are still standing today, I think I recognize 2 but they’ve had their colors changed. You can check out more photos taken by Cecil on his website cecilimages.com.

Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a Global Positioning System receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called “geocaches” or “caches”, at specific locations marked by coordinates all over the world.

A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing items for trading, such as toys or trinkets, usually of more sentimental worth than financial.

Someone was asking about geocaching in Kuwait and I hadn’t heard that term in years. The first time I heard about geocaching was back in 2002 and back then GPS devices weren’t as common, Google Maps didn’t exist and phones didn’t have GPS built-in so the only way to find a geocache was using a dedicated GPS device like a Garmin. I faintly remember a geocache located near Radisson Blu and after a bit of researching it turns out it was actually the first geocache in Kuwait.

The cache was called “Ya Darina Ya Kuwait” and the coordinates were N 29° 17.860 E 048° 05.205. The cache was placed there back in June 2002 by a user called walzuhair.

What’s cool about caches was that you never knew what you’d find and you were always meant to take whatever was inside and then replace it with other items for the next person to find. There still seems to be a bunch of active geocaches in Kuwait so it might be a fun activity to do this Ramadan.

For those of you who didn’t know this, the first school I went to was called Sunshine School back in the 80s. It only went up to primary and my class was the last one to graduate from it back in 1990, just a couple of months before the Iraqi invasion in August. I still have a lot of photos from back when I was in Sunshine School and over the years I’ve been scanning them then sharing them on the blog.

In 1993, Sunshine School reopened as the British School of Kuwait and a couple of years ago (early 2019) I got approached by them asking me if I had more photos I could scan and share. They were working on an anniversary book and the school themselves didn’t have any pictures from the 80s and so were getting in touch with old students to see if they had any. That gave me a good reason to have all my school photos mailed to me by my sister in Lebanon which is why I ended up scanning so many and uploading them online back in 2019.

It took a while but the anniversary book finally got published and I got my copy a few weeks ago. The book was designed and printed in the UK and is really beautifully done. I’ve got a large spread in the book (pictured above) and although the section on BSK pre-invasion isn’t that large, it was great seeing the other photos they had of the school including the staff photo pictured below. I recognize so many of my teachers in it, I kinda wish I knew where they all are now or what they did after they left Kuwait.

Even though I got my copy of the book a while back I didn’t want to post about it until the book went on sale and it just did a few days ago. If you were a Sunshine School student or BSK student, they have a limited number of copies for sale. They’re priced at KD30 each and contain nearly 200 pages of photos, writeups and information on the school. They deliver internationally as well. The book is really well designed and it’s a hardcover so will look great on your bookshelf. If you’re interested in purchasing a copy then click here.

The other day I posted a video tour of the new Terminal 2 airport. Well in case you wanted to know how our airport looked like back in the 60s, the video above shows a passenger arriving and leaving the airport back in 1965.

I believe the airport in the video above was the original one located in Nuzha. You can check out photos of that airport in my previous post here.

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine sent me a link to a book on eBay saying “This is something you might want. American expat cartoonist who drew some funny sketches of life in Kuwait. Also a shawarma guide for the ‘90s.” Literally, 2 minutes later I sent him a screenshot of my order. It was selling for 9KD and it came out while I was at university in Lebanon so I was curious to know what was “in” while I wasn’t here. The book ended up being delivered yesterday and it turned out to be way more interesting than I expected it to be.

It’s 132 pages filled with illustrations, maps, reviews and recommendations of where to go and what to do in Kuwait all written in a humorous tone. It reminded me a bit of the Wizr series but with a lot more illustrations and content. I posted some pages up on my Instagram and pretty much I right away started getting bombarded by people asking where they can get a copy and I honestly have no idea.

There is one for sale on Amazon right now but the guy is asking for like $700 which is obviously ridiculous. At one point it looked like there was a copy available online but that was back in 2006 and the page no longer works. It’s 132 pages so I can’t sit down and scan the book one page at a time.

Until I figure out the best way to share the whole book online you can for now at least check out the few pages I’ve uploaded here.

Thanks Shaheen!!!

I picked up this book online not knowing what it was or the year it was published, but it was selling for around 500fils so figured it was worth checking out. Turns out the book was published in 1964 by the Ministry of Guidance & Information, Department of Culture & Publicity, Division of Tourism. If that wasn’t cool enough it also came with three fold-out maps. I shared some pages yesterday on my Instagram but I also uploaded the photos online in case anyone else is interested in seeing what a 1964 tourist guide of Kuwait contained. These aren’t all the pages, just the ones I thought were interesting. Check it out here.

WELCOME TO THE ARENA KUWAIT

Our Arena is a 5,000+ capacity purpose-built indoor live entertainment and events venue which is set to transform the delivery of live events within the State of Kuwait. It has been designed to world-class standards and is capable of hosting various event types.

We aim to host a comprehensive range of events and differentiated activities targeting the multinational population of Kuwait as well as the world. We are excited about the prospect of bringing family entertainment, music concerts, sports events, comedy shows, theatre shows, cultural gatherings, consumer exhibitions and a variety of other events and activities to Kuwait and the region.

The Arena Kuwait is an integral part of a major destination development by the Tamdeen Group which includes our key destination partners; Rafa Nadal Academy Kuwait, Grand Hyatt Kuwait and 360 Mall.

The Arena is part of the new 360 Mall extension and supposedly the project is on track to open by the end of the year.

Live Nation if you aren’t aware are one of the largest live entertainment companies in the world.

thearenakuwait.com
@thearenakuwait

The luxury hotel Waldorf Astoria is expected to open towards the end of the year at The Avenues and over the weekend they announced that one of the restaurants that will be opening in the hotel is Roka. Roka is a Japanese restaurant centered around a robata grill and was created by the same restaurant group behind Zuma (a very popular Japanese restaurant).

There is no mention in the press release of where in the hotel it is opening but me and a friend were discussing it and we think it would probably the location overlooking the pool which I’ve highlighted in the photo above.

If Roka does well (which I’m assuming it will do), then I wouldn’t be surprised if Zuma eventually opens in Kuwait as well.

Below are some old National Day songs you can download as MP3s as well as a few music videos that are available on YouTube:

Downloadable MP3’s (Right click and save as)
Beladona Il Kuwait
Shadi Al Khaleej – Kaseeroh Dalah
Sana Al Kharaz – I7na IlKha6awi AlAkeeda
Sana Al Kharaz – 6ig Ya Mu6ar 6ig
Sana Al Kharaz – Al Azrag
Sana Al Kharaz – Salam Ya Wa6ani
7naina Il Ayadi
Il Wa7id Allah (Om A7med – Wainich Yal Ibra)
Imbarak 3alaik il3id
Abdul Kareem Abdul Qader – Wa6an Al Nahar
Abdullah Al-Ruwaishid – 3ashat Lina Il Kuwait (Original)
Hussien Al Jasmi – La Telomoni (Hala February)
Nabeel Sh3ail – Ya Dar (Hala February)
Rashid Al-Majid – 6ayir Men El Far7a
BBS Kids – Wa6ani 7abeebi
Kuwaiti TV Band – Ya Wardity Ya Nidiya
Kuwaiti TV Band – Al Ziman Dawar

Music Videos
حفل المعاهد الخاصة سنة 86 – كلما زادت المحن – شادي الخليج
شادي الخليج وسناء الخراز _اروحنا سورها(كل مازادت المحن)
شادي الخليج 1986- كاسروه دله اربع انات مله
شادي الخليج – كويت و العرب من اوبريت شراع الوفاء
لقيناه ” جابر أبونا من عمر” – سناء الخراز
نبيل شعيل – الكويت حرة
Free Kuwait Song
Free Kuwait Song by Americans

If there are more music videos I should add let me know!

Someone on Reddit found the postcard above that was written and sent by Malcolm X from Kuwait back in 1964. Malcolm X was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure in the US during the civil rights movement. Following his exit from the Nation of Islam, he took a pilgrimage to Mecca and during that time, he also traveled to Kuwait, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Casablanca.

The postcard above was one of 16 postcards that were auctioned off in 2016 and were sent by Malcolm to Gloria Owens, who was the secretary at Muhammad’s Temples of Islam where he was a minister alongside Louis Farrakhan. The postcard reads:

Greetings from beautiful Kuwait. Since I’ve seen what a mess can be made of things by narrow-minded people, I’m still traveling, trying to broaden my scope.

Until just a few moments ago I had no idea Malcolm had visited Kuwait. I’ll try and see if I can dig up anything from his trip but for now, if you want to see a higher resolution version of the postcard above, click here.

Thanks Ayr909!