Search: “maki”

This is pretty random but according to the latest InterNations Expat City Ranking 2020, Salmiya was voted the worst out of 66 cities analyzed and described as “a city of unhappy, overworked, and homesick expats”. I mean we do have major issues in Salmiya but no way is it the worst city in the world for expats. I’ve been to Khaitan before, and I’m in Hawalli regularly, and as bad as both those places are I wouldn’t even consider them the worst in the world either.

Welcome to Salmiya, the Kuwait city so unloved by its expat population

Expats in Salmiya say they are unhappy with the local transportation (61st), with their health and the environment (66th), as well as with climate and leisure (66th).

Nearly three in five said they dislike the local leisure options (vs 15 percent worldwide). In the Getting Settled Index (66th), expats do not feel at home and they describe the local population as unfriendly (48 percent vs 17 percent globally), and they are also unhappy with their social life (56 percent vs 24 percent globally). Source

But Salmiya does have issues, a lot of them, which is why over the past 15 years I’ve been half-jokingly asking to be made the mayor of the city. I’d be to Salmiya what Leslie Knope is to Pawnee! It’s hard to imagine anyone is more passionate about the place than I am.

Make me the mayor and I’ll initiate a mass project making Salmiya more pedestrian and bicycle/scooters-friendly by taking back the sidewalk from all the illegal construction, I’d create bike paths that run across the city and turn sandlots into proper parking lots to reduce the cars on the streets. I’d replace all the bins with ones that have lids and I’ll personally lead on a massive beautification project. I’ll also protect old and landmark buildings from demolition and crackdown on all the buildings that have illegally converted their basement to warehouses depriving the building residents of parking. So go out and vote for me in the next election if you want a better Salmiya!

The story below was sent to me by John Beresford who has been contributing to the blog with old interesting stories about life in Kuwait during the 1940s to the 1960s when he and his family used to live in Kuwait. To check out some of his previous stories click here.

In 1968 Ramzi Kayello, an artist, put on an exhibition of his paintings in the Hubara Club in Ahmadi. My parents went and later asked him to paint them a picture of ‘Old Kuwait’.

The image is pretty standard; mud houses, wooden doors with nails in, dusty streets, and the frame is very 1960s.

The interesting thing is the man in the white dishdasha. He is carrying water buckets. With no piped system water had to be bought and transported back to the home and the traditional Arab buckets, made from an entire sheep or goatskin, were too small and with the way Kuwait was developing, fewer people in the town could keep flocks. This was where new technology came in. The increase in the number of vehicles was increasing the number of worn-out tires lying around – what to do with them? Some could be hung around boats and on quay-sides to minimize the bump when coming alongside. Others could be used as buckets. It was possible to get about 3 buckets from 1 truck tire, they were strong, pretty well indestructible, waterproof and the wire in the tires stopped them flopping about and spilling. And of course, if you found an old tire lying about you could make up your buckets for free! With rope handles they were fine. So the water carrier is using water buckets made from truck tires; this was pretty standard and my parents specifically asked for this to be included in the painting.

I also include a bit that my father wrote about water in Kuwait when he arrived there, in April 1949. Later on, there were ships built to go up the Shatt al Arab, vent their ballast tanks and pick up river water for the return journey, thus making the smaller dhows redundant.

The other explanation I should give concerns about the Kuwaiti water supply. I mentioned the brackish water wells. There is no fresh water at all anywhere in the state of Kuwait. Brackish was obtained from shallow wells, close to the coastline and provided water for livestock and limited garden growth. The poorer element of the town also had to drink it; it’s not very palatable, most times when I was offered it in poorer Arab houses they added sherbet to it to make it more palatable but, really, I used to think it made it worse! In addition to about a 14% salinity it also had a quantity of magnesium salts in it: Magnesium sulfate or Epsom Salts, being the most common.

For many years fresh water was brought to Kuwait from the Shatt al Arab River, a major world river formed by the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. As this river is tidal to well above Basrah, the collecting dhows were required to go well upstream and then, while waiting for the tide to run out, collect the water from the top, less dense, layers.

Some imported water was less good than others, it depended upon the tide, time available, weather and the temperament of the dhow skipper.

The water so imported was sold by the old gallon kerosene or gasoline tin full at 2 rupees a time. This didn’t suit the company and just before I arrived gave up on relying on the dhows.

It’s getting harder to find shows to watch since I’ve basically watched everything on Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and Amazon video but thankfully, there are still new shows coming out all the time. Here are some recent ones I’ve watched:

Cobra Kai
If you’re an 80s kid you’re going to love this. Cobra Kai is a TV series that is a sequel to the original movie starring both Ralph Macchio (karate kid) and William Zabka (the kid he fought). It’s a series that doesn’t take itself too seriously and is pretty funny at times especially how they keep making the karate kid look like a bully in the original film and Zabka the victim. This series recently became available on Netflix but has been out for two years (it was a YouTube Original) and so there are two seasons to watch.

Euphoria
I had been putting this series off for some time because I thought it was going to be very teenagery but wow, what an incredible series. I think this might be one of my favorite shows I’ve watched this year. The story, the art direction, the music, the cast, everything about it is just so amazing. Euphoria follows around a bunch of young high school girls who are all friends showing us their different stories. It’s dark, it’s shocking, it’s controversial and it’s really entertaining. If like me you’re a fan of Sex and the City and the series Girls, then you’re going to love this. Euphoria does to Girls what Girls did to Sex and the City. I highly recommend this show, I binge-watched it over a weekend and it’s definitely a must-watch. Euphoria is on HBO.

Raised by Wolves
I just finished watching this series last night and I have mixed feelings about it. The show started off great and interesting, but then past the halfway point, I started losing interest. I was then hoping things would turnaround towards the end of the season but it just didn’t do it for me. I know a lot of people loved it and it scored pretty high on IMDB so I don’t know, maybe its because one of the main characters played by Travis Fimmel (Ragnar from Vikings) started getting on my nerves the same way he started pissing me off in Vikings, or it could be because I wanted the show tp head one direction (more adventure) but it took another (more philosophical?). If you’ve run out of things to watch then I’d watch this, it’s also on HBO.

Recently I needed to get a hold of a macro lens for a project and a friend of mine told me about a place called DD Cameras. Turns out I had been to their store previously looking for used equipment but either didn’t know or had forgotten they also rented cameras, lenses and other photography equipment. So I sent them a Whatsapp message asking if they had a Sony mount macrolens available and turns out they did. The price? KD5 per day, KD14 for 3 days or KD20 for a week. Surprisingly, extremely reasonable. They didn’t have many requirements to rent it either, I basically had to be over 21, have a valid civil ID, and have a photography Instagram account. Basically, to keep random people from renting their gear and possibly damaging them or not returning them, they filter their customers by checking their Instagram account and making sure they qualify to rent them.

It’s an interesting approach and I managed to pass that test so no complaints from me. I ended up dropping by filling out a form and picking up the lens. Super easy process and payment is done when you return the lens which is convenient in case you wanted to keep the gear for longer than originally planned.

If you’re looking for a place to rent photography gear check them out, their Instagram is @ddrents and they’re located on the mezzanine floor of Daiya Coop.

Thanks Dalal

Back in June, I posted about how I was able to order a new espresso machine straight from Italy without having to pay crazy shipping prices. I briefly mention what I ended up buying but since I still hadn’t had the machine for that long, I decided I’d leave the proper review for another time and since it’s now been a few months here is what I think of my setup.

Firstly my coffee machine set up is composed of the following three main parts:
Rocket Appartamento
Rocket Faustino Grinder
Acaia Lunar Scale

These three items along with my leveling tool (instead of a coffee tamper) have proven to be a dream team for me. One of the hardest things to get right is consistent coffee on a daily basis. There are too many factors in play and if just one of the steps changes slightly you end up with a different tasting coffee. This is why people generally have a favorite barista at their favorite coffee place, people want their coffee done the same way every morning. My setup is allowing me to get the same result every time and so I’m loving it.

My previous espresso machine was the Breville Oracle which had basically a fully automated process to make my latte. My Rocket setup is fully manual so I have the following steps I need to take:

• I first fill up my milk jug with milk and place it next to my machine
• I remove the portafilter from the coffee machine
• I place portafilter on my scale and zero it
• I then grind 18g of coffee into the portafilter. My grinder has a timer and I’ve set it to grind for 12.7 seconds which generally grinds around 18g of coffee
• I then place portafilter back on my scale to see if I hit 18g. I’m fine with 18-18.3g of coffee, if its a bit more I remove some, if it’s less I add more
• Using my leveling tool I press it hard on my portafilter and rotate it 8 times
• I then purge the steamer to let out condensation while also purging the group head to stabilize the water temperature
• I mount the portafilter back in the machine, I place my scale under the portafilter and place my coffee cup on it and zero the scale
• I then take my milk jug and start steaming my milk, once the milk gets warm I start the coffee-making process
• My scale can sense when coffee drips into the cup, it then automatically starts a timer while weighing my coffee.
• In the middle of this process, my milk hits the correct temperature (I can now feel it with my hands but I started off using a thermometer) so I turn off the steamer, clean the wand and purge it to clear any milk that might have gotten inside
• I then get back to focusing on my coffee. Once I get 36 grams of coffee in my cup I stop the machine. I try to get 36g of coffee in around 20-24 seconds
• I then take my milk and pour it into my coffee cup attempting latte art which I’m consistently terrible in and then I’m done

It’s a lot of steps but it’s become second nature and I timed the process and from start to finish and it takes just 2 minutes. 2 minutes to make a great latte, that’s really not bad at all. Most importantly is how good my coffee is and it’s always the same. I’m making such good coffee now I’ve stopped having coffee completely outside my house. When I had the Oracle I had consistency issues all the time and used to still have coffee at %Arabica on weekends because their coffee just tasted better than mine at home. But now I’m basically making the same quality at home with my set up so I haven’t had a single coffee outside since I got the machine. Not exaggerating either, not one single coffee outside my home since I got the machine back in May or June (whenever I got my machine). No more inconsistent coffees because of different baristas, no more complaining about the temperature of the milk because they’ve either boiled it too hot or not heated it enough. I have the exact same coffee every single time.

My coffee experience has improved tremendously because of my setup and I’m using the Appartamento model which is the entry-level Rocket machine. There are a lot more sophisticated models with more capabilities, but for my needs, the Appartamento has been more than enough and great value. The only negatives I really have are the following:

• I wish the drip tray was bigger in the Appartamento
• I wish the Appartamento could hold more water
• The Faustino grinder touch screen is great unless your fingers are damp and then it doesn’t work

Honestly, these three issues are very minor and aren’t really issues. So yeah, obviously I would highly recommend my setup especially if you want to make great espresso at home but don’t want to invest crazy money. My setup including accessories which I didn’t list above cost me around KD700 shipped to Kuwait. Sounds a lot but keep in mind it costs me around 500fils to make a latte at home using my favorite beans from %Arabica (Arabica Blend) and with lacto free milk (which is more expensive than normal milk). A regular latte at a coffee shop costs around KD1.750 with regular milk. I have three lattes a day so that’s a saving of 3.750KD a day or 112.500KD a month. So in just seven months of use, I’ll recoup the cost of my setup and you could recoup it even faster by using cheaper beans and milk. So you’re paying this much money upfront, but saving so much more in the long run.

So if you want to now buy a coffee machine online, check out my previous post here.

A friend just told me about a company called Dustx where they come over and wash your house exterior. Kinda like those home car wash services except for your house. They come over with their truck and powerwash the outside of your building making it look all clean and new again.

Prices vary depending on the size of the building but range from 180-370KD. If you’re interested you could get in touch with them and they’ll over someone to check the house and quote you. Their Instagram account is @dustx.kw

For those who don’t know me, I go by the nickname FajerTheLawyer and I’ve been trying to make the law accessible for everyone which is why I am so excited to be sharing this news. I just launched the first online legal platform in Kuwait called Simple Law which is accessible by visiting makinglawsimple.com

Since I started my career I have been getting questions like How do I calculate my service indemnity? How do I start a business? or How do I register a trademark? This made me realize that people needed to have easy access to our laws.

The main services the Simple Law platform will offer are:

COVID-19 Resources: Laws and rights related to the current situation

Small Business Advice: Simple documents with infographics to help you understand the law. A lot has been uploaded already but we still have around 180 more to upload for you.

Find-a-Lawyer: Book a consultation and we will make sure you get the right lawyer for you (you will be able to view lawyers and law firms directly on the website soon)

Simplified Laws: An easy to understand copy of the local law

Employment Laws: Find out your rights and the laws related to employment

Download Contracts: You can download ready to use contracts

Courses: Take legal courses – we currently have one with KFAS

Questions and Answers: View answers to commonly asked questions

Next week we will also be launching memberships, so you can pay a monthly fee and have lawyers available when you need them.

I have made everything COVID-19 related completely FREE as I know it is a tough time for everyone. Also you now have the option of booking a consultation pro bono (your documents will be reviewed first) and we will connect you with a pro bono lawyer. We have an app coming soon as well but because of the situation right now, we decided it was important for us to launch the website right away instead of waiting for the app to finish.

Most of the employment documents are in English, Arabic, Hindi, and Tagalog with more languages on the way. Business-related documents are in English or Arabic.

Although the platform is for any legal questions, we focused more on employees, small businesses, and tech startups. We really hope that this website will help make the law accessible to everyone so that more people know their rights. This is a soft launch and all feedback is welcomed [email protected]

Website: www.makinglawsimple.com
Instagram: @simplelaw.kw

Post by Fajer Ahmed – Legal Counsel

Me and a friend have been talking about the Concorde over the past few weeks so I was pretty surprised yesterday to find out that the plane actually came to Kuwait back in 1979.

On Monday 19 February 1979 the Queen flew on Concorde from Heathrow to the sunshine of Kuwait in just under four hours, at the start of a three-week Middle East tour that would include Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The Queen’s Private Secretary later wrote to Ross Stainton, BA’s Chief Executive to say the Queen was especially glad to make her visit to Saudi Arabia by Concorde. Apart from making the first day of the tour very much easier for Her Majesty, this wonderful aircraft created a great impression, and there could have been no better way of commencing a most important tour covering seven countries. source

Sadly, I only found a handful of photos of this event and none show the plane fully. The Queen ended up leaving Kuwait aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia as part of the tour of the Gulf while the Concorde flew to Bahrain.

Thanks Nick

This past week I’ve been seeing more and more people without masks on which is concerning since come Tuesday, malls and shops are going to open up. I’ve had three different instances over just these past two days involving masks.

1) I was shopping at a supermarket on Friday and there were people inside shopping without their masks on

2) I visited another supermarket yesterday and the volunteer at door wasn’t wearing a mask wanted to take my temperature, so I told her to put her mask on first and she responded by saying “don’t be afraid”

3) I visited a car dealership where no one at the dealership had a mask on

I’ve also had to tell my neighbors a few times to put on their masks before sharing the elevator with me. I think maybe because the government is easing up on restrictions people think the situation has gotten better? I mean I don’t get it. I’ve tried a variety of different masks on myself and haven’t been bothered by any of them. I don’t find them restrictive or annoying.

If you’re out in public then wear your mask, easy. That includes when you’re in your car and are ordering food from a carhop service or when you’re at a gas station. It’s risky enough that these employees have to interact with so many people throughout the day, at least help by making their environment as safe as possible.

This issue isn’t just in Kuwait obviously. Someone online did a video mashup recently where they took scenes from the comedy, Parks and Recreation, and combined it with footage from townhall meetings in the US on masks. Because some of the arguments are so absurd (5G conspiracies, government hoaxes), they actually blended in with the show seamlessly.

If you also weren’t aware it’s actually compulsory to wear a mask in Kuwait or you risk a KD5,000 fine. But, this obviously isn’t being enforced.

Pictured on top: Ai Weiwei MASK

Although gyms aren’t meant to reopen until the final stage of the government plan, I’ve been told that some gyms have presented a case to the government for permission to reopen sooner. A couple of days ago Alqabas newspaper visited Circuit+ to get an idea of how this could work safely and I think it could work.

Basically, Circuit+ will split up their gym into different large areas and give every member one of those areas to work out in. The area will contain all the equipment their member would need for that class so they don’t have to leave their section or share equipment with other members. Once the class is over the members are expected to wipe down the gym equipment they used and once they leave, the gyms cleaning staff come in and resterilize everything again for the next class.

Obviously this idea won’t work with every gym. Circuit+ isn’t a regular gym where you can just walk in and work out and leave, they function with classes that hold a limited number of people which works for them in this case. Also, their Shuwaikh location is HUGE as you can see in the video so they can manage to split it up and give each member a large section to workout in.

I think this could also apply to smaller and more private personal training gyms like mine (X.Athletic). Before the pandemic my gym would only allow a maximum of 4 gym-goers at any given time so it was never crowded. There was also a cleaner who was constantly wiping down the equipment and benches after they were being used, and this was on a normal day before COVID. By taking a few more extra precautions, I can easily see my gym also providing a safe space for me to work out in. Damn it, now all this gym talk is making me miss my gym and trainers.

But again, this setup wouldn’t work for every gym, just the very large class-based ones and the more premium exclusive gyms.

Back in March, on the very first day I was going to start working from home, my Breville Oracle espresso machine decided to break down. I thought about repairing it myself which I’ve previously done since there is no local dealer, but I hated working on it the last time since the machine was not easy to self-service. I didn’t know what I was going to do at first, do I buy a new machine? Do I wait until things reopen and find a guy to fix it? Do I take it with me to the Dubai dealer when airports eventually reopen? I was actually close to reordering the same machine from Amazon UK but then I asked myself, why do I want to get the exact same machine I had which will eventually breakdown again?

I decided to go down the classic car route direction, I wanted a new coffee machine that was mostly mechanical, very little to no technology, and easy to fix in case something went wrong. After doing a lot of research and watching hundreds and hundreds of coffee-related videos on YouTube, I decided to go for the Rocket Appartamento.

Rocket is an Italian company that are known for making great quality prosumer machines that are also beautiful looking. They have 7 different machines they make and the Appartamento was their entry-level machine that would fulfill my requirements. All I really needed was a machine that looked good, had very little that could go wrong with it, if something did go wrong I could easily fix, and finally, a machine that would allow me to steam my latte milk while pulling an espresso shot at the same time.

The Rocket Appartamento fit all my requirements and was fairly reasonably priced compared to its larger siblings. I looked for the machine locally first and even though I found a couple of small businesses that sold Rocket machines, they were all out of stock. In the end, I decided to order my machine online from Espresso Coffee Shop who are based in Italy and ship to Kuwait. Their prices were great since they remove the VAT when exporting and with the price of shipping to Kuwait the machine was turning out to be around 50KD cheaper than the price of the machine when it was available locally. It seemed too good to be true but I checked online reviews and they seemed legit. But, Espresso Coffee Shop were also out of stock on machines since the Rocket factory in Italy had shut down due to the pandemic. But I called them up and they told me that the factory had reopened and I’d be in line to get one in their next shipment which was in around 2 weeks time. That was fine with me so I ended up ordering a few things from them:

Rocket Appartamento (White)
Rocket Faustino Grinder (Black)
Acaia Lunar Scale
Rocket Tamping Mat
Rocket Bottomless Portafilter
Rocket Knock Box
Rocket Milk Jug
Motta Leveling Tool

The guys at Espresso Coffee Shop were pretty helpful and patient even though I’m sure they were swamped with orders. I actually amended my order four different times while waiting on my machine to be back in stock by adding and changing different items. The Acaia scale alone I had changed three times mostly because of my willingness to pay so much money for a scale. Through all my indecisiveness, Espresso Coffee Shop were very accomodating and patient with me. I did all my communication over the phone and never had to wait longer than a minute or two to talk to someone on their team. Once my machine was finally in stock they shipped everything to Kuwait for KD110 via UPS. It took only a few days to get to Kuwait from Italy but it arrived mid May during our lockdown and UPS wasn’t delivering so I had to wait until last week to finally get it delivered to me. I was worried they’d send me the wrong items because of how many times I amended my order but thankfully the most expensive and important items which were the coffee machine, grinder, and scale arrived correctly. The only item that didn’t arrive was my milk jug which they forgot to pack. So I called Espresso Coffee Shop and they were very apologetic and refunded me the amount on the spot.

I’ve now been using the machine a few times daily since I got it and it’s been great, I love it. So if you’re looking to buy an espresso machine I’d really recommend checking out Espresso Coffee Shop. Here is the link to their website.

Back in 2003 I bought the very original Roomba. They had just come out a few months earlier and the idea of a robot vacuum cleaner fascinated me. It was around the same time I was fascinated with Sony’s robot dog, the AIBO, but unlike the AIBO, I could actually afford the Roomba back then.

I was still living with my parents when I got the Roomba so it really only had to clean one room, my room. It was fun using it at first, but I eventually got bored and sold it since I stopped using it. Looking in the comments of that for sale post I found a comment of mine where I explain to a reader why I sold it. I was basically too lazy to use the Roomba since it had to be started manually. This meant I had to be in my room to use it or I had to remember to do it before I left the house for work. It also meant that it would keep going until the battery died and then I had to plug it in and charge it again. It was a chore that defeated the whole purpose of getting a robot in the first place. In that same comment, I mention that if they ever came out with “a version that cleans every day at a certain time without me interfering” then I’d get it another one which brings me to the Eufy Robovac.

One of the first things I did once the pandemic started was to tell my housemaid to stop coming over. This meant I had to clean my place myself which gave me a reason to get a new robot vacuum cleaner. I looked at what was available locally and found the Eufy RoboVac 30C at Blink. I hadn’t heard of Eufy before, but on Amazon it had a 4.5-star rating and over 4,500 reviews. Blink was selling it for 92KD which was around 5KD more than Amazon not including tax or shipping so a pretty good price and so ordered it.

I’ve been using the RoboVac on a daily basis and even though the first few days were a bit rough, it’s now been a few weeks and I’m loving it. The RoboVac 30C has a few cool options, it has Wifi, a 100+ minutes battery life, it can find its way back to its home station and recharge the battery when it’s low, you can schedule it and it also works with Alexa and Google Home. Thee 30C is considered to be a dumb robot in the RoboVac world. There are some RoboVacs that are a lot smarter and can draw and map out the whole room digitally and even recognize different objects on the floor (like actually be able to tell if its a shoe or a basketball). But those RoboVacs are a lot more expensive with some of the more expensive ones costing an upwards of 300KD. The way dumb RoboVacs work is a lot simpler, they clean the room by moving around it randomly with no specific pattern. They’re less efficient in that sense but at the end of the day they still get the work done.

I have my RoboVac clean my lower level of my apartment every night at 8PM. I’m in my TV room upstairs at 8PM so having the RoboVac work at that time doesn’t bother me. I don’t even hear it except for the beep when it wakes up to start cleaning, and another beep 90 minutes later when it calls it a night and comes back to its charging station. I mentioned earlier the first few days were rough and that turned out to be for a variety of reasons. The biggest issue I had was that the RoboVac dust storage was filling up very quickly and the rolling brushes underneath were getting clogged up with carpet hair. If that wasn’t an issue by itself, the RoboVac when low on battery shuts of the suction and heads home. But because my RoboVac storage was full it would cause it to leave a trail of dirt and dust balls on the way back to the charging station. I was having to clean after the RoboVac which was super annoying and was making me regret buying it. BUT, it turned out this wasn’t the RoboVacs fault. The reason it was filling up so quickly is because of the amount of dust and virgin carpet hair it was sucking up from under my large couch. My normal vacuum cleaner can’t reach under the couch but the RoboVac is low enough to get under there and clean properly. After a few days the dust container stopped overfilling and the RoboVac is working perfectly now. Every morning as part of my routine I now just empty the dust container which is usually around half full. The other issue I had when I first got it was making my place RoboVac friendly. It didn’t need a lot of work, I just had a few cables I needed to tuck away nicely so the RoboVac wouldn’t get stuck on it and I had to move one side table slightly away from the couch so that the RoboVac would have easier access. The RoboVac comes with strips you can stick on the floor if for example you don’t want it to wander into the kitchen or you want to keep it away from a certain area.

During this 24/7 lockdown my RoboVac has been my companion of a sort, kinda like how Tom Hanks had Wilson the Volleyball on Castaway. I now yell at my RoboVac and call it an idiot like I used to yell at my dog when it used to do something wrong. My RoboVac has a habit of knocking down my skateboard which I’ve got leaned up against the wall and then starts pushing it around like it’s playing with it. It’s kinda cute when it wants to play but noisy. I’ve only had my RoboVac get stuck once so far and when that happened my phone App notified me. It has no issues climbing carpets and even low objects. A lot of times it might get stuck on something and then it starts trying to push over it but after a while it gives up and goes backward freeing itself. I’m very impressed with it and I don’t regret getting it at all. I don’t even regret getting a smarter RoboVac since the 30C is doing a really great job. My black tiles tend to show dust easily but now they’re shiny all the time I love it.

If you’re interested in getting one, I got mine from Blink but it’s showing as sold out but A Store who are the Eufy dealers still has them in stock also for 92KD.

Late last night private supermarkets became available as an option on the moci.shop website. Previously you could only book an appointment at the Coop, which was fine for low-density areas like Bayan and Mishref where the population is around 40,000. But Salmiya, for example, has a population of over 300,000 so sharing one Coop was not going to work.

I was actually super pissed about this because they had announced the lockdown BEFORE making private supermarkets available on the moci.shop website. This meant nobody could get a shopping appointment at the already fully booked Coops, so you ended up with the mass panic of the past two days where everyone was out scrambling to get enough food to store up for 3 weeks.

Anyway if you’ve never booked through the moci.shop website and want to know how it works, check out my previous post here.

Drive-In movie theaters have started making a comeback around the world amid the COVID-19 crisis. It makes sense since you’re isolated in your car away from everyone else. Sadly for us, the last standing drive-in movie theater in Kuwait was the Ahmadi drive-in pictured above and it got demolished last year. Maybe Cinescape can put together a makeshift one in some large parking lot because I really doubt normal cinemas are going to open up anytime in the near future.

Along with hand sanitizers and anti-bacterial wipes, one of the hardest things to find right now is gym equipment. Everyone is stuck at home and looking for ways to stay fit so most sports shops are sold out on items like dumbells and yoga mats. But, even larger more expensive gym equipment is impossible to come by nowadays. When the lockdown happened I started considering different options to staying fit, I even considered the possibility of shipping a Peloton bike all the way from the States but in the end, I decided to get a rower since they burn the most amount of calories compared to other gym equipment.

Before the whole Corona thing hit my gym had gotten new equipment and so wanted to sell a few of their beautiful looking WaterRowers (similar to the one on House of Cards) to make more room. Nobody was interested in them and they were just sitting there gathering dust. When the lockdown happened I got in touch with my gym thinking I was clever to have remembered the rowers, to my surprise I was too late. Other gym members had got in touch first and they ended up selling all of them. I then decided I wanted to get a Concept2 rower since they’re considered to be the best rowers you can get (you’ve probably used one at your gym). They’re pretty expensive costing anywhere between KD400-470 in the local market but I figured it would be a good long term investment since they last a lifetime. But, I couldn’t find any for sale. All the local suppliers had not only completely sold out their Concept2 inventory, but some had even sold all the rowers they had coming on their way still to Kuwait. To add to the issue, Concept2 shut down their factory in the States because of the pandemic so they’re not producing any more rowers for the time being making it even hard to find anywhere in the world. They even had to post the notice below on top of their website because of the number of inquiries they were getting:

4/3/20: We are currently out of stock of all Model Ds, all Model Es, the Dynamic RowErg, BikeErgs, SkiErgs and the SkiErg Floor Stand due to high demand and temporary production stoppage to fight the spread of the Covid-19 virus. US and Canadian customers can fill out the wait list form so we can keep you informed as we get more information in this rapidly changing situation. If you need to speak to us, please contact us during regular business hours (M–F, 7:30 a.m.–5 p.m. EDT) or email [email protected]. We are doing our best to respond to after-hours inquiries within 1–2 business days. Thank you for your patience.

Luckily through a friend, I ended up finding a gym that had one lying around not being used that they wanted to get rid of. I ended up getting it and it’s now sitting right next to my TV so I can Netflix and row.

One cool thing I’ve noticed recently is some gyms now are renting out their equipment since they’re not being used. One of those gyms is Gym37, they posted on their story yesterday they had equipment for rent which is pretty smart. This is a good alternative to buying and in some cases could be your only option. You can contact them on 90911733 to enquire. Another gym that’s also renting equipment is The Burrow. They are renting out spinning bikes and rowers and their prices are as follows:

2 weeks – 100 KWD
3 weeks – 125 KWD
4 weeks – 150 KWD

You can get in touch with them on instagram @theburrowlife if you’re interested.

Finally, if you want to buy any sports equipment (or at least see what’s still available), here are some links you can check out as well:

AlNasser Sports
Explorers Base
Extreme Sports
Gym Doctor
Kuwait Watersports
ProSports
Rent a Gym
Sportsman
Sports World (Instagram)
Wawan