Search: “maki”

eSports is a form of competition that involves video games and it’s a scene thats blowing up pretty big worldwide with teams making millions of dollars off of sponsorships and prize money. If you do a quick google image search for esports stadiums you’ll find photos of large stadiums and arenas packed with people watching gamers compete against one another (similar to the one below). It’s pretty insane really and regionally it’s also starting to blow up. A number of eSports competitions are being held locally and around the region, and one Kuwaiti team has been making waves recently, Evolve Gaming.

Evolve Gaming was formed early this year and is composed of 6 members aged between 17 and 26. Recently they came first in the largest Overwatch tournament in the Middle East and Africa destroying the competition. Overwatch is a multiplayer first-person shooter and Evolve Gaming beat the popular and more established Dubai based team YaLLa eSports 3-0. Even though YaLLa has sponsors, a large fanbase, more support and a proper e-gaming atmosphere, the Kuwaiti team managed to beat them with ease and just a couple months after being formed.

Evolve Gaming is currently ranked as the #1 Overwatch team in the Middle East and Africa and so I got in touch with them recently to get an idea of what our local scene lacks and how I can help. According to a team member I spoke to, one of the biggest issues we have locally is the lack of awareness. Even though the eSports scene is growing rapidly abroad, locally not a lot of people know about it although its starting to pick up with a few gaming tournaments taking place locally like the Kuwait’s eSports Tournament and the Hydra Entertainment Tournaments. Evolve Gaming is hoping large companies will realize this is a growing market and help it grow even quicker by sponsoring local teams and tournaments. By having large companies sponsor local teams and events, it would bring a lot more attention to this sport which will also encourage more teams to formed and more events to take place.

Hopefully my post will help bring a bit of exposure to their community. If you’d like to follow Evolve Gaming they’re active on twitter @EvolveGamingKW. If you’re also a company that is interested in sponsoring Evolve Gaming or a tournament, get in touch and I’ll pass you their contacts.

Yesterday Apple updated their MacBook Pro lineup and so I decided to post a quick update on my experience with the Touch Bar. If you’re trying to decide if you should get the MacBook Pro with or without the Touch Bar, this is my quick feedback after using it for nearly 6 months, it’s worth getting.

Since I got the MacBook Pro I’ve been experimenting with it a lot, customizing it to my liking and trying to understand how to make best use of it. After 6 months, I’ve basically resorted to using it as a secondary display, and I like that. For the past few months I’ve been using my Touch Bar with the setup you can see in the image above. I have half of the Touch Bar working as a stock ticker keeping me posted constantly on how my stocks are doing, while the other half dedicated to my music controls and an emoji shortcut button. The area further to the right of that can’t be customized and includes Apple mandatory shortcuts like volume control, screen brightness, spotlight shortcut etc..

I’ve customized my Touch Bar to permanently display the above information in nearly every application since I realized I wasn’t using the default shortcuts that apps would display. Some programs like FaceTime I leave it at the applications default display since I like the information thats displayed, in FaceTime’s case the amount of time I’ve been on the call for. I actually like how customizable the Touch Bar is although I’m using the third part software BetterTouchTool to be able to do that.

So if you’re trying to decide if you should get the Touch Bar version of the MacBook Pro or not, I’d personally recommend you get the Touch Bar version. Other than making your laptop look a lot more futuristic and different from the MacBook you’re replacing (I’m assuming you already own a MacBook), the Touch Bar does have functionality and you’ll love the ability to customize it. Want it to display the name of the song you’re listening to? You can do that. Want it to have custom shortcuts? You can do that. It’s really flexible so if you like to tinker and personalize stuff you’ll love it.

Broad City is one of the funniest shows on TV right now and I completely forgot how funny it was until I started watching it again this past weekend with a friend who had never watched the show before. It easily fits in my top 10 funniest shows ever with the likes of Arrested Development, The Office and Parks and Recreation. Actually, Amy Poehler from Parks and Rec is one of the producers on the show.

Broad City follows two women throughout their daily lives in New York City, making the smallest and mundane events hysterical and disturbing to watch all at the same time. [IMDB]

Three seasons of the show are already out, they’re short quick 20 minute episodes so very easy to watch. Season 4 will be airing this coming August which is why I started binge watching the show all over again. I stream Broad City from Hulu but it’s also available on iTunes (Amazon Video has only season 3). So if you haven’t watched it, watch it.

A few years ago I posted about a Kuwaiti violin maker and since its a slow news week, I decided to repost that article. You can check the original post [Here] but I’ve also copy pasted it below. It’s a very interesting story if you haven’t read it before:

Article originally posted on July 24th, 2013

Last night I passed by and met Haitham Al-Ghareeb, a local violin maker. We met at his small cozy workshop in Rawda located right outside his home. When you walk into his dimly lit workshop you’ll see a small diwaniya on the left with around a dozen violins hanging on the wall, while on the right hand side is his workstation where he crafts all his violins. He filled a kettle with water and put it on a small electric stove next to him and we started talking.

Back in 2000, Haitham was a oud player but was interested in getting into violins. He started looking for a good violin to buy in Kuwait but he couldn’t find any. Most of the violins available in the market back then were of poor quality from low end brands. That’s why Haitham decided to make his own violin using documents and instructions he found online.

Haitham hadn’t crafted any musical instruments before, he had dabbled with some minor oud repair but nothing major. This got me even more curious, how can a 25 year old with no previous woodworking skills be able to craft such a delicate instrument as a violin? Well the answer I believe might be in his genes. Haitham’s father, grand father and great grand father were all dhow builders. Woodworking had existed in his family for generations and it was just natural for him to be good at it.

Haitham’s first violin wasn’t flawless, it had mistakes and was made using locally sourced wood but yet the sound it produced to his ears was beautiful. This encouraged him to build a second better violin with imported tonewood (wood cut specifically for musical instruments). He started frequenting forums and participating in online communities where other violin craftsmen from around the world would share their tips and techniques. His violins kept improving with every build and soon he had his own tips and tricks to share with the community. He loved crafting violins so much that he quickly forgot about wanting to play them. He became obsessed in building and perfecting his own creations.

When Haitham first started making violins he was spending 4 hours a day working on them and each violin would take around 2 months to complete. Nowadays he’s too busy with work and family so it takes him around 9 months to complete a single violin. But he’s fine with that. He never started making violins with the intention to turning it into a profitable business. Even his prices have remained the same over the years even though his violins kept getting better and demand for them kept increasing. He just loves making violins and isn’t interested in expanding. It’s a hobby he’s just really good at. He also does a lot of repair work on violins which to many musicians is a lifesaver. Musicians bond with their instruments and having a local violin maker means that a damaged violin no longer needs to be discarded but instead can be repaired. Only two of the violins hanging on the wall were his, the rest were either in for repair or were being sold by other musicians.

Once we were done with the interview, Haitham served us some tea. Throughout the whole interview which lasted around 40 minutes I had watched him make us the tea using two kettles, a can filled with what I assume is tea leaves and a box filled with I don’t know what. He then skillfully poured the tea from the large kettle into three glasses that were sitting amongst a dozen on the table in front of us. The tea was delicious and to me summarized the kind of person that Haitham is, a perfectionist.

If you’d like to contact Haitham for any reason you can do so by emailing him on [email protected]

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.