Search: “maki”

Yesterday I finally backed my first Kickstarter campaign, the Dual Bowls project by Kuwaiti artist Kawther Al Saffar. Dual Bowls are one of a kind, hand crafted pieces made in Kuwait by pouring two different metals together in a mold to form a rough bowl. I fell in love with the bowls when I first got a sneak peek at them early on in the month. Then yesterday, when the Kickstarter page finally went live, I grabbed the super early bird deal on one.

I’ve actually been a fan of Kawther’s work for some time now. I originally fell in love with her stools, then her chairs and now her bowls. I think she’s extremely talented and theres always a strong concept behind her work. When she first told me about her Dual Bowls project I had a lot of questions, so we ended up having a pretty thorough discussion about her idea. I wanted to share two paragraphs from one of her emails that resonated with me the most:

The intention with creating them in larger quantities, is to make them affordable art pieces. My aim is to build a high end, multinational brand that fosters collaboration and craft in Kuwait. One that can compete within the spectrum of businesses such as Tom Dixon, Ned Debs, and Tiipoi. I’d like to show that Kuwaiti craft and production can have international and commercial value, but I think the way to show value is by marketing it abroad. I’m aiming for high end because after studying the production scene in Kuwait for the past 3 years, I feel thats what our production is capable of catering too. This might seem counter intuitive, but I feel this is the case because a lot of the work is done by hand, and our low cost products such as merchandising can’t compete with quality abroad. My tag line is: Personal.Local.Universal. 

I think there exists a distorted view of product cultural value in the world, where countries somewhat fulfill a stereotype of their worth. For example Kuwaitis are willing to spend a large amount of money on furniture branded as Italian. While some Italian design is great, that doesn’t mean they are investing in design thats well made, or that the products they buy are truly Italian. They are investing in the stereotype. The way this generalization applies to Kuwait is through a false distinction of luxury and Orientalism. That means the way we apply Islamic geometries and patterns with no context or translation of their purpose. My aim is to create a dialogue around these issues and facilitate a better translation of our identity thats more honest and experience based. I want to create products that are Kuwaiti through their origin and story. 

I loved that.

If her Dual Bowls project wasn’t interesting enough, there is a second part to this project that I also found fascinating, her partnership with Kickstarter on this. When Kickstarter heard about the Dual Bowls project, they reached out to Kawther and asked her to launch her campaign on their platform. Most of the big and popular Kickstarter projects are electronics related, but Kickstarter is more than just electronics and gadgets, they actually care about creativity and supporting artists. So recently Kickstarter has been trying to promote a more diverse offering, and they saw a great opportunity to work with Kawther on the Dual Bowls. Her project has a very strong narrative and so requires a platform like Kickstarter to be able to tell her story. There is actually a great article on FastCompany that was published yesterday that discusses this further and even mentions and highlights Kawther and her project. You can check that article [Here]

Kawther (pictured above on the left) is aiming big, she’s hoping to sell a 1,000 bowls by the end of her campaign. I already pledged for mine yesterday, a medium sized bowl. If you’re interested in finding out more about her bowls, she has a great video on her Kickstarter page that explains the whole project as well as photos of the different kind of bowls she’ll be making and a much more thorough explanation on the project. So make sure you check her out on Kickstarter [Here]

There is also a Dual Bowls launch party taking place tomorrow, details on that [Here]

Yesterday I got my driving license renewed for the first time in like a decade. Previously they’d renew the license for 10 years but now its year by year which is super annoying but whatever, there isn’t anything I can do about it. What I wanted to write about was the required documents you need to renew your license, and the process you have to go through at the traffic department since the information on e.gov.kw is inaccurate. This way if anyone is googling information, they’ll hopefully end up on this page. So lets begin.

Required Documents:
– Civil ID Copy
– Passport Copy (photo page and visa page)
– Work Permit Copy
– Your Company’s Notarized Signatures (e3timad tawkee3)
– Two Personal Photos, Blue Background 6×4
– Your Expired License

Once you have all your documents head to the traffic department near you, I live in Salmiya so I headed to the traffic department in Jabriya. As an expat I can only renew my license in the afternoon starting from 4PM. Get there early. On arrival first thing you need to do is go to the typists who are usually located near the main entrance. Tell them you want to renew your license and hand them all your paperwork. They’ll type out the correct form with your details and then staple all the documents together. They’ll charge KD1 for this process not including making copies of any documents. You could ask them what you have to do next and they’ll point you in that direction.

The next step is to hand your paper over to the license renewal desk (it’s marked) and in my case was located inside the main hall of the traffic department. Make sure you don’t have any fines, if you do they’ll make you go settle them first. If you don’t have any fines they’ll print out a paper for you stating that. The next step is to get your documents signed by the officer in charge. The officer wasn’t at his desk when I went so they told me to go to another officer outside the main hall sitting at the front desk. When I went there I swear there was a queue with around 100 people in it. I couldn’t see the end of the line kind of queue and I’m not exaggerating. While standing there in shock and regretting not bringing my Nintendo Switch with me, I spotted an officer nearby so I went up to him just to make sure this was the line I had to stand in. So I went up to him and in English asked him where I should get this signed. He told me he doesn’t speak English, then I pointed at the document and he said go stand in that line. So I pointed to the line and was like this line?? He then asked me if I had my old license with me, and I showed him, then he asked to see a few other documents which I showed him. He then told me to get a KD1 stamp which I did. He stuck the stamp on my form, took all the documents, went behind the desk and had the officer there sign my document. That was super nice of him and I got to avoid standing in line for an hour. So good luck with this step.

Once you have the documents signed you head over to the driving license renewal desk again and hand them the papers. You’ll now have to sit and wait for your name to be called out. If your license is already expired then they’ll call your name out and tell you to go pay a KD5 fine. This fine will only pop-up at this stage, you can’t get it paid before the process. Once you pay the fine you come back and give your papers again. After a short while they’ll call your name again and send you to a room to get your photo taken. Once you get it taken you’ll have to wait for your license to get printed.

When I was there yesterday they were having technical issues with the license printing machine so I had to wait two hours to get my license printed. The employees actually stayed late after their working hours to make sure everybody got their license printed including the main officer. They were pretty apologetic about the delay. Thankfully there was a Formula 1 race taking place last night, and so I got to watch it live on my phone while I waited which wasn’t too bad.

So there you have it, this is what you need to do to renew your license.

Just Bee is a local honey business that provides raw and local Kuwaiti honey. You might have come across them at Qout Market but what a lot of people don’t know is they are promoters of urban beekeeping and that they have a beehive installation service. Just Bee don’t have their own beehive location, all their honey that is sold is produced from beehive hosting. This past season for example, their honey was harvested from 8 different locations that includes people’s homes, chalets and farms (Salmiya, Khaitan, Sharq, Qurtuba, Messila, Abu Al Hasania, Nuwaiseeb and Wafra).

At Just Bee we promote Urban Beekeeping and our vision is to be able to provide our community with honey from every area in Kuwait, to do that we need to team up, and we do that by allowing locals to host beehives for us.

So how does it work?
The first thing they do is come over to your home and do a site consultation. The beekeeper needs to asses the space, check how suitable it is or not for the bees, and recommend needed shelter for the bees to protect them from the cold in the winter and the heat in the summer. They usually ask the host to let them set up a minimum of 6 hives so that it’s worth their time and effort.

All the work is on them, they handle the installation and all the costs involved with the hives. They also supervise the hives by visiting them as much as every two weeks. By the end of the season, they harvest the honey and give you 10% of the honey that has been produced as a barter for the space that you have given them to set up the hives.

The honey is then branded with the name of the Area, making their honey literally come from the homes of the people.

Kuwait produced these beautiful and varying colors of honey! In order from the left: Abdili, Nuwaiseeb, Sharq, Zahra, Egaila & Mishref

How many times do they harvest honey?
There are 2 seasons of harvest during the year:

– June/July where they harvest the Multifloral Honey, usually light in color and crystalizes within a month or so. Varies colorfully from one area to another.

– December where they harvest the better known Sidr Honey from the Ziziphus/Sidr tree that produces the Knarr, Jujube fruit. It is much darker and remains liquid if not, a lot of other floral sources are mixed in when the bees are gathering nectar to produce the honey.

Depending on the season, each beehive can produce between 3KG to 5KG of honey.

I love this idea a lot and if I had a home with a garden I would have definitely hosted some hives. If you on the other hand live in a home or have a chalet or farm and love honey, then get in touch with Just Bee and host a hive. Their instagram account is @justbeekw and their website is justbeekw.co

Next week would have been my one year anniversary with the 240z but yesterday, I sold the car. I didn’t want to sell it, but I’m getting another car and it just wouldn’t have made sense to own three cars. The night before I sold the car, I took it out for one last drive and it was just so sad. I felt like I was giving away my dog. Not sure why I was being very sentimental since I had the car for only a year. I think was because I was driving it everyday and had spent so many late nights at my mechanic making her a daily drivable car.

Luckily a good friend of mine who is a car nut bought the Datsun from me so I’ll still get to see it. I’m actually looking forward to seeing what he’ll do with it since he’s restored other old cars before and my Datsun could use a bit more TLC from someone like him. Watching him drive off with the car though was still a pretty sad moment.

So no more Datsun, it was fun while it lasted.

Herafy is a small clays and crafts store thats located in Al-Rai. Recently they moved to a new location and I found it by accident while looking for something else and decided to check it out. It’s a small store, nothing close in size say to Mogahwi, but they are very specialized and most importantly, they offer a ton of classes from sculpting and painting to sewing and soap making. Just a bunch of random interesting classes you wouldn’t find anywhere else.

So if you’re interested in learning something new or picking up a new hobby, here is the store location on [Google Maps] and you can check out all their classes and workshops on their website [Here]

Virtual Reality has been something people have been dreaming of for as long as I remember and it feels like in the past few years, VR has been pushed hard with the likes of Oculus, the HTC Vive, and to some extent Microsoft’s Hololens. What makes the PlayStation VR (PSVR) special though is that it doesn’t require a powerful computer, it’s priced reasonably well and it’s relatively simple to set up without needing you to tinker too much with the settings. So it was easy to take up X-Cite’s offer to send my brother and I a PSVR to test out and write about.

The PSVR headset looks good, the build quality doesn’t feel cheap and its comfortable once you wear it. On the other hand the amount of cables it takes to set it up is unfortunate. This isn’t something you’ll leave lying around once you’re done using it for the night (unless you don’t mind clutter). As someone who is married and has three cats I have to pack it away every time I’m done using it. The reason for this clutter is that the PSVR doesn’t plug straight into the PS4. A processor box is included with the PSVR that includes an HDMI splitter, so you have thick cable running from the headset to this processor box, an HDMI cable from the PS4 into the processor box, another HDMI cable from the processor box to your TV, a USB cable from the processor box to the PS4 and a separate power cable into the processor. Oh and that doesn’t include the Playstation Camera cable which you also need for the PSVR.

Clutter aside, I was excited to try out the PSVR. I had a little bit of experience with the Oculus so I know how cool VR can be. I played a couple of games using the PSVR, Batman: Arkham VR, Driveclub VR, Rez Infinite, the Call of Duty: Jackal Assault VR, Super Hypercube and some games on the demo disc that came bundled with the headset. One thing you have to get used to when using the PSVR is that the visuals aren’t as crisp as what you’d get on your TV, there’s an annoying fuzziness that you’ll notice in most games and in some cases, games blur things in your peripherals (Batman suffers from this).

A concern I had was motion sickness and nausea. I have a sensitive stomach and I tend to get motion sickness quite easily and so was expecting to get sick playing Driveclub VR, Eve Valkyrie or Call of Duty Jackal Assault. Surprisingly though I didn’t suffer from motion sickness in any of the games I tried. Mark on the other hand got motion sickness ten minutes into Resident Evil 7 and then got motion sickness again a minute into his first race in Driveclub VR. This is something you should take into consideration before spending money on VR so find a place to try it out before you buy it.

Nintendo’s new console, the Switch is coming out on March 3rd. There’s a lot of positive hype surrounding the release of Nintendo’s new console which is a hybrid of a home console and a portable console. I pre-ordered one back in January from Amazon US for $299 while Mark pre-ordered his from the Walmart website. If you’re interested in getting one yourself, there are two ways to do so:

The first option is to get it locally. Xcite have a sign-up page to get a notification once they have more information on the Switch, but theres no mention on when they’re expecting to get it. Then there’s Rihab. I paid a visit to Rihab on Friday to ask if they were getting the Switch and how much they were expecting to sell it for. I wasn’t given a concrete answer, but I was told that there would be a shortage of consoles locally, which isn’t surprising since Nintendo is only making two million units available at launch worldwide. I was also told the approximate price of the Switch would be KD150 (approximately $490) which I found hard to believe since I’m expecting it to go as high as KD250 on the first few days of launch. The shops I asked were adamant that it wouldn’t go that high up, but I’m still skeptical.

Your second option is to pre-order a Switch online and ship it to your forwarding mailbox like Shop&Ship or PostaPlus. It’s sold out in most of the US stores but they’re still available to pre-order at a bunch of UK ones including:

Amazon UK
Argos
GAME
Nintendo Store
Tesco

The UK stores are selling the Switch for slightly more than the US stores at KD106 verses KD98 (with tax). But, it should still be cheaper than buying it locally… at least in the beginning.

Post by Patrick

The Associated Press published an article yesterday on how the new Jaber Hospital will only be for Kuwaitis and also how in general, Kuwait is becoming a lot more aggressive towards expats living here while also making their lives more difficult. The article got picked up by The Washington Post as well as a number of other international publications. This is obviously not something new, but the fact it’s being brought to light by foreign press makes me wonder if more of this negative publicity might actually result in the government backing down and easing things on expats.

Expats in Kuwait have been feeling unwanted for years but with the government recently being pretty trigger happy with deportations, expats probably feel unwanted now more than ever. It’s why expats are always looking for an exit plan. To top it off, the antiquated sponsorship system, the lack of permanent residency and the lack of ability to purchase a home or fully own a business just add to this unwanted feeling.

Check out the article in The Washington Post [Here]

Some of you might have already heard about this but for those of you who haven’t, a proposal was put forward to transform Salem Al Mubarak street in old Salmiya (where I live basically) to a pedestrian only street with brand new futuristic looking buildings.

As someone who’s lived on this very street for 30+ years, and as someone who truly loves and experiences this street every single day, I can with full confidence say… none of this is ever gonna materialize.

There is a higher chance that Kuwait will beat UAE to building the first city on Mars, than there is for old Salmiya to transform into this wonderland.

I’m not being pessimistic, I’m just being realistic.

The street is in shambles and the municipality doesn’t care, nobody cares and these renderings to me are a joke, they’re making a mockery of the current situation. It’s like some rich kid passing through some poor village in Africa and decides to stop to take a selfie with some street kids pretending to be helping them out for his instagram account before driving off in his convoy to a luxury resort.

It’s insulting.

There is no way on earth the transformation project will ever happen without demolishing the whole area, kicking out all the low income expats and then rebuilding the street from the ground up, the main street AND all the back streets as well. The metro project? That’s gonna happen. The railway project? That’s gonna happen. Kuwait building a city on Mars? That’s gonna happen. But this Salmiya project, it’s never gonna happen.

If you want to see more renderings on this concept as well as get more information, check out this thread I started on [SkyScraperCity]

Photo by Junichi Yamaguchi

My favorite coffee place Arabica just opened up their second location in Kuwait and it’s HUGE. The new location which they’ve called the Arabica Roastery consists of two main areas, the main coffeeshop with interior and outdoor seating, and the roastery where they’ll be selling beans to businesses (B2B) as well as offer training on how to make coffee.

Photo by Junichi Yamaguchi

Arabica will also be selling coffee making gear at this location. So for example you’ll be able to buy an AeroPress or a coffee dripper from them, and they’ll show you how to use them properly and get the best tasting coffee out of them. With the new location they’ve also introduced new items on their menu, most notably Matcha Latte and baguette sandwiches.

The new Arabica Roastery is located in Shuwaikh on the same street as Lilly Center and right next to the newly opened Healthy Feast. Their opening hours as of this post is from 4PM to 10PM. Here is their location on [Google Maps] and their instagram is @arabica.kuwait

Lots of events taking place this weekend, so make sure you check out the list below:

Thursday
Exhibition: Until – Ghadah Alkandari
Exhibition: KRM – Four Hands
Mexican Guitarist – Paco Renteria
Five: Open Mic Night
The Divan’s Movie Night: I Origins
Bloody Funny – Standup Comedy Show
Movie Night at the Park: A Seperation

Friday
Tai Chi in the Park
Hatha Yoga with Rosie
Takaya Market
The Meeting Point *canceled due to bad weather*
Good Game: Magic – The Gathering
Book-Club Meeting: Kuwait Bibliophiles
Music Nights & Burgers
Salwa- Walk and Socialize Meetup

Saturday
Yoga with the 3
Royal Britannia Kindergarten Open Day
Bootcamp by One2One
Takaya Market
Remedy Carnival
Guided Tour: Landmarks of Old Kuwait City
Pavilion at the Park Opening Ceremony
Workshop: Making Comics
Blend of Balance
DAI Family Day Music Fest
Madeenah Tour: Salem Al Mubarak St.
Weaving & Yarn Crafts at The Secret Garden
Music Night with Waleed & Balqees

If you’d like to share an event on the blog [Email Me]
For a full list of upcoming events click [Here]

Sometimes events get canceled or have details changed so always double check with the organizers.

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]

The new album of Fabrice is called Back to Roots, and it’s centering and sober, bold and passionate. I met Fabrice a few years back and knew him from his various projects, but his recent work hit a note as if he had made a new home for himself. This home was not necessarily an actual location, but like it could be found in his art creation. He went full circle, and his work shows it. In Back to Roots Fabrice features cool guests and plays with his take on a form of modern Reggae. His work has hints of Jazz with RnB, plus production stylistics of Hip Hop. In some of his songs he brings in the Middle East influence through the oud and nay, tributing to being in Kuwait. If you like Stephen Marley’s music, you will love his. It is a great body of work which you should download and buy.

Now for those that have read my past blog posts and criticized it being too long: this sentence right here is the point where you can stop reading. If you want to know what makes strong art, keep on reading, as I am about to tell you the story people go through that in return makes powerful work.

Listen to the album here:

This is a story about an expat rebuilding his life all over again. Some expats come to Kuwait for money, others come for the adventure. In Fabrice’s case, he journeyed here to heal.

A little before Fabrice moved to Kuwait he was a full-time musician in France performing as much as he could as an artist and as a bass man for other artists. Fabrice was making what any driven artist could financially make at that time to sustain himself. It was then that his life took a turn with a series of painful events that he could never foresee. His girlfriend was diagnosed with a brain disease and passed away in almost no time. His job was to perform, so he had to keep on playing music in this time of grief. It was hard, but he was committed and he also had to pay his rent. Shortly after that, a close friend was assaulted in a bizarre crime, making Fabrice question his own security and surroundings. Lastly, he was a victim of hate crime, and that was the final drop that put him over the edge. I knew a bit about that situation because he wrote a song about it called ‘Sorry’ which has had heavy radio play on 99.7fm this year. It was part of his previous album. If anyone knows Fabrice they know that he is quite a tall man at over 1.85 and is not someone you would want to attack without thinking twice. But in his song ‘Sorry’ he apologizes to the guys that stabbed him from breaking their noses. I know, crazy! Back to the story, after the hate crime Fabrice had had enough. He went online, looked for work options outside of France, and found a position in Kuwait. In a matter of 2 weeks he sold, gave away and donated all his possessions. He moved to Kuwait with a laptop, his clothes, and a guitar.

Four years later today, Fabrice teaches French to lawyers, doctors, diplomats and many other people in Kuwait. He met his wife here, had a baby boy and created a beautiful family. As I get to listen to his album while in his studio, I look around at all the things that he also built here. He has come a long way from the events in France; I can hear it on this new album.

Sitting in his studio, I listen to his bold lyrics and as he writes about how he supports love and life. Becoming a father made him prioritize concepts of value, and being grateful for the good and straightforward things like in the song Fruits Bread and Tea. His concept of fame and music changed too. His idea of what is popular and what is important was thrown out the window making a song of 6 minutes long just because he felt like it. I find it very smart, very fresh, and yet very mature. Take your time to enjoy it like I did. [iTunes Link]

After all the painful things that happened to him in France, Fabrice felt that he could not be happy or could not grief in Paris. That he was living in a place that had become foreign. When he moved to Kuwait, he explained this to me and until today I will never forget what he said, “I landed in Kuwait, and I looked around at the people and the desert, and felt how music and art are pained here. I knew inside of me that Kuwait and I had been grieving our past. I felt like here, in Kuwait, I could try to heal and be myself in grief, and so I know that right now, in this time and place, Amin, this is my home.”

Home is where your heart can heal.

Peace, Love and Music.

Post by Amin FARI
Are you a musician looking to perform? On the flipside, are you a host looking for musicians to book? Or maybe you’ve just got an awesome idea you’d like to share? Get in touch [email protected] / Instagram: @xxmrfarixx

In my previous articles (“My coffee is cold” and “This coffee is too expensive”), I touched base on how temperature affects your perception of flavour as well as pointing out that coffee is in fact under–priced. Today I’ll be taking all of you avid coffee drinkers a little bit deeper by answering a simple question: “What constitutes a good cup of coffee?”

Coffee seems to be a simple thing – but I can assure you that there is a whole lot happening behind the scenes that many are unaware of. To try and keep you, the readers, enthralled; I will divide this segment into the following:

• What makes a one coffee bean better than the rest
• What sets baristas apart
• How can I tell if my coffee was good?

What makes one coffee bean better than the rest:
Plants are funny things, temperamental at the best times. Now, I am no botanist, but I have had my fair share of veggie patches as well as a once glorious Bonsai collection in the past.

Let us begin with the anatomy of the coffee tree. The coffee “bean” as we all call it is in fact a seed. This seed is no different to other plants’ seeds in that it is responsible for the plants reproduction. Plants do a wonderful thing when they are stressed due to lack of rainfall or thin air as a result of high altitudes or other stressful situations. Plants, when under certain stressors put extra energy into producing more, stronger seeds. The reason for this is that is the mother plant wants their offspring to be stronger and healthier with a better chance of survival, perhaps for them to even flourish. This touching act that is written into the DNA of the plant ends up benefitting the ever consuming human -it results in a mother plant putting extra energy into its fruits and seeds which results in a better coffee experience for us. This phenomenon is not exclusive to coffee – it has long been observed in grapes. Another thing that helps is biodiversity. As with all plants, the higher the biodiversity, the more effective pollination occurs which also results in better fruits.

So we now know that weather conditions can affect the coffee and that some of the best coffee is grown at high altitudes. There is also a trend in bean flavours that shows the higher the coffee is grown, the fruitier and more floral the taste will be. Of course, this is not a hard and fast rule. Many other factors can contribute to the flavour of coffee, i.e. What sub-varietal is the plant? What was the processing method?

I want to highlight the importance of processing. This is the method whereby the seeds are removed from the cherry and dried. It is crucial to the quality of the bean that utmost care is taken at this step to avoid rot, leaching of flavours and the removal of defects.

So you are looking for a tree grown on the correct slope (sunlight) in a biodiverse area that is high enough above sea level and also processed correctly. Not asking for much, right? If a bean doesn’t tick all the boxes, it won’t taste good.

What sets baristas apart?
A good barista has attention to detail that is borderline OCD. The reason for this is that when you are working with the temperatures and pressures they do, it is easy to ruin a cup of coffee by extracting for 1 second too long or too short. Making sure the coffee grind size is not too coarse or too fine, they need to be consistent with tamping (packing the coffee into the portafilter) and rinsing the machine’s groupheads etc..

There is so much going on that the barista needs to pay careful attention using all of their senses during each step of making the coffee, or you’ll be left quite literally with a bitter taste in your mouth.

They are on the frontline of the early morning assault on tiredness. Getting up before you do to ready the shop – calibrating machines before you’ve even had your first stretch! These champions of coffee use all their senses for each cup to ensure a great end product for you. I am forever grateful for them.

How can I tell if my coffee is good?
This is probably the simplest topic I will discuss. Your coffee is good if you enjoyed it. Sometimes it’s just a matter of taste – and tastes differ. Sometimes you want more, you what to strike a conversation or bask in the ambience of the store. It all boils down to your enjoyment. If you enjoyed it, then it was good!

Keep sipping!

Post by Grant Mouton
Self–proclaimed coffee guru, coffee education addict, SCAA/SCAE accredited.
Brand manager at % Arabica.

Back before the iPod came out and Apple became popular, there was an Apple store located across the street from Salhiya. As a teenager I used to walk by the store and dream about owning a Power Mac which I thought back then was one of the hottest looking computers on the market. Fast forward around a decade later and that Apple store was abandoned. I ended up taking some photos of it in that abandoned state and published them online as part of my Miskan project. The photos got picked up by the likes of Engadget and Gizmodo since the store was like a time capsule. After my 15 seconds of fame that was it.. until this week.

Somehow the photos have started making their rounds around the internet again, they first got posted on reddit and then the popular YouTuber EverythingApplePro who has like 3 million subscribers shared the photos in his latest video. Gotta love the internet. My pictures make it in his video above at the 2:10 mark but you can check out all the photos I had taken back then [Here]

I eventually ended up getting the vinyl ‘Think Different’ campaign banners that are in the photos. I still have them tucked away in my closet and from what I’ve been able to gather, they’re now worth a nice penny or two.

Thanks Salah!