Search: “mis”

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

Post by Dr. H – A family medicine resident working in a polyclinic in Kuwait

Its been a while since I’ve posted due to the fact I’ve been on holiday. Now its back to reality and I was thinking about what my next blog post would be, when I saw this patient and realized that it should be on the least discussed ‘taboo’ topic in kuwait – depression.

I see so many patients who are truly suffering with this disease, however with the lack of supportive services in Kuwait, they continue to suffer in silence, told by their families to ‘become more spiritual’ or ‘just snap out of it’.

So first off.. what is depression? Depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness, and a loss of interest. There are many other associated symptoms, such as trouble sleeping and loss/gain of appetite. There are many theories on the etiology (cause) of depression, one is biological – So it basically says that there are certain ‘chemicals’ in the brain, and when you have depression, these chemicals are a bit off, so you get symptoms. Its multifactorial, theres a lot of other theories, it’s still poorly understood what causes it.. but the bottom line is that it’s a disease. Yes a disease. Just like asthma is a disease.. ever asked someone to ‘snap’ out of asthma?

So.. back to my patient.. I saw a 30 something year old lady, who has been suffering with lack of sleep, low mood, anhedonia (loss of interest), and has been this way for the past 3 months. She was miserable. It was taking a toll on her work, her marriage, and her kids. She did every medical test out there, most importantly her thyroid (gland that produces hormones, when dysfunctional can mimic depression), all her tests came back normal. So I started discussing depression with her, and the treatment options available. I was met with ‘shno depression? lesh tgolin 3ani maynona’ ‘what depression? why are you calling me crazy?’. She refused to discuss treatment or medication and stormed out. This just highlights a huge issue in Kuwaiti society, the taboo of mental illness.

Depression can be very successfully managed with medications and lifestyle modifications, but mention an antidepressant and 90% of patients will refuse.

You must be thinking.. what about psychiatrists? doesn’t Kuwait have a new mental health centre? A centre dedicated to mental illness? Why not refer patients there? What is their role in improving mental health and increasing awareness?

Here’s a fun little fact.. people who get treated at the Kuwait mental health center wouldn’t be considered for jobs in sensitive positions, such as parliament, certain ministry of interior jobs, army, etc. that does a lot to defeat the taboo right? What a good way to move forward Kuwait! Its one step forward two steps back. On the one hand the ministry of health is improving mental health care, on the other they’re saying if you have a file in the mental health center or problems with your mental health then you’re banned from certain jobs. What kind of image does that project?

I was thinking of ways that mental health can be improved, and ways to increase awareness, and I remembered when I was in med school abroad, we had a student hotline and a suicide hotline. These were 24 hour hotlines that you call, free of charge when you feel suicidal, sad, overwhelmed, or unwell. You would call and there would be someone to hear you on the other end of the line to offer supportive services. I think implementing something like this in Kuwait would be a huge step forward, and easier to set up than changing the politics behind being banned from jobs for following up with a psychiatrist.

We’re a long way away from defeating the taboo of mental health in Kuwait, but I think small changes and an increase in awareness would go a long way. So if you’re reading this, and you notice that you or a friend or relative has been suffering with low mood, loss of interest, change in appetite, trouble sleeping, or anything similar, please go to your polyclinic and discuss it with your family medicine doctor. There are a lot of resources out there, antidepressants can be prescribed by your family physician in the polyclinic, and you can be referred to a more specialized clinic if need be. Please do, thats what we’re here for!

(If anyone has any questions, or is suffering with anything similar please do not hesitate to contact me, I’m more than happy to help)

Post by Dr. H – A family medicine resident working in a polyclinic in Kuwait

Last September my Datsun was used in a commercial for the groceries delivery brand Baqal. They were doing an old school commercial and my car fit the theme so they paid me to do donuts in an empty sandlot (always fun). Since then I’ve been waiting for the commercial to come out so I could post about it, and it finally did… a week after I sold my car. So I guess it kinda works out as a final farewell to the Z. She will be missed.

If you’ve been meaning to try out the hand crafted artisanal donuts from DOH! but been missing them at events, well they’re now available on Carriage.

They’re ridiculously good donuts and their packaging is super cool as well. A dozen donuts will set you back around KD13 with delivery, but you can buy them individually as well. If you don’t have the Carriage app, here is the online [Link]

Last week I posted that the Habitat Museum at Al Shaheed Park was now open but I only managed to pass by it this past weekend. I left so impressed, that here I am posting about the museum again a week later.

The museum showcases the unique beauty of Kuwait’s plants and animal life by taking visitors on a journey through the local ecosystem. When you first enter the premises you need to pick up your audio guide as well as a round disc that contains a plant seed. This disc can then be used in various parts of the museum to activate screens and interact with the exhibits.

The museum isn’t that big but I loved everything about it. My favorite part though had to be watching different families and people just walk around interacting with the displays. Its pretty obvious that people in Kuwait are hungry for museums which is why I can’t wait until the Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Center opens up end of this year.

Another thing I liked was the fact the museum brings up two important issues, illegal hunting near the wildlife reserves as well as how camping can be very disruptive to the environment. Two very important issues which I’m glad they talk about in their exhibits because it will definitely educate the visitors especially the young ones.

The Habitat Museum is located in the same building as the escalators that take you to the parking lot (the far end one) and right across from the restaurant Table Otto.

The opening hours are:
Monday to Friday: 4PM to 9PM
Saturdays: 12PM to 7PM
Sundays: Closed

Entry is free just make sure you have an ID card so you could pick up the audio guide and plant disc. The museum is really worth checking out so pass by.

For more photos of the interior taken by the photographer Niccolò Guasti, click [Here]

Back in 2015 I decided to ditch OSN and live TV and instead use Netflix, Hulu and HBO for all my TV needs. I’ve had no regrets with that decision and I haven’t missed live TV at all since. But, the only thing I wish I did have was access to UFC events. Recently I found out UFC is back with OSN so I decided to check the OSN website and see how much the monthly membership was. To my surprise they had their sports pack for KD6 a month and that included all the UFC events. KD6 is basically how much I’m paying right now for both Netflix and Hulu combined but since I’m a huge UFC fan, I decided it was worth plunking down KD6 just to watch the one or two UFC event every month.

So a few moments ago I tried to sign up for the package and I got reminded to why I ditched OSN in the first place.

Turns out even though they’re selling the sports package that includes UFC events for KD6 a month, you CAN’T sign up to it, not unless you sign up to their starter package which costs another KD6 and includes channels I don’t care for and don’t want. So I’ll have to pay KD12 a month just to watch UFC fights. Why can’t services like OSN just sell you what you want to watch? It’s the same issue people have with cable providers in the US, where they try to sell you 100 channels when you just want 2.

BeIN on the other hand are pretty cool. The only other sport I watch is Formula 1 and BeIN sell day passes for $8. So anytime there is a F1 race I just pay $8 and get to watch it online. I don’t need to sign up to any of their packages, I just watch what I want whenever I want to. Even their monthly pass to all their channels is just $18 which is still pretty reasonable. So OSN if you’re reading this, you guys need to become much more flexible. Netflix is already in the region and more and more people are gonna start dropping cable in favor of digital. At least have separate satellite and digital subscriptions and let people subscribe to whatever they want. I want to give you my money, just not all of it..

There are currently a bunch of new hospitals being constructed and designed at the moment in Kuwait and thanks to a reader, I was able to get a bit of information on them. Below is a list of some of the hospitals currently in the pipeline along with their current status and links with more details on the projects:

Al-Adan Women and Children’s Hospital
Already under construction

Al-Razi Hospital
Under tender but paused right now due to budget constraints

Al-Sabah Hospital
Already under construction

Amiri Hospital
Already under construction

Kuwait Cancer Control Centre
Already under construction

Kuwait Children’s Hospital
Currently in design phase

NBK Cancer Hospital (Oncology and Hematology)
Already complete and awaiting commissioning

New Farwaniya Hospital
Already under construction

New Ibn Sina Hospital
On hold, awaiting budget and likely to kick off 2017-2018

New Jahra Hospital
Already under construction

New Maternity Hospital
Construction to begin any day now

Police Hospital
Was tendered and awarded and now awaiting contract signature to kick off

Sheikh Jaber Hospital
Construction nearly complete

Sheikha Salwa Al-Sabah Center for Stem Cell and Umbilical Cord
Already under construction

Thanks Jassim

Nabil Al-Jeraisy, Vice Chairman and CEO, stated that City Bus is committed to providing world class public transportation services to its customers in Kuwait in cooperation with the Traffic Department Authority to contribute in the reduction of traffic congestion and support the environmental protection agenda.

…

He also affirmed to providing a better service to citizens and residents alike, and to encourage drivers to abandon their cars and use these public transport services. Here Al-Jeraisy invited both citizens and residents to try the new “double decker buses”, which will begin its maiden trip today on Route 999 starting from Sheraton hotel bus stop in Kuwait City going along the coastal road of the Arabian Gulf passing through “Al-Ta’awen” street to Fahaheel costal road ending in Fahaheel area and then return. [Source]

I doubt people are going to abandon their cars for busses anytime soon, but I like his optimism. Now the metro on the other hand, I’d use that for sure.

Not much happening this weekend since everyone is most likely out of town. Stay off the Gulf Road this weekend if you don’t want to be involved in the National and Liberation Day celebrations, and stay safe. Happy weekend everyone.

Thursday
Exhibition: Harmony in the City
Voices & Verses
Celebrate Kuwait at Boulevard Mall
Spaces in Narrative by Mishari AlNajjar

Friday
Exhibition: Harmony in the City
Hatha Yoga with Rosie
Expats Morning Coffee Meetup

Saturday
Exhibition: Harmony in the City
Yoga with the 3

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.

There is a low detail 3D walkthrough video of the new Terminal 2 airport available online. It’s divided into two parts, first part is arrival to the airport, checking-in and then heading towards your gate. The second part is getting off the plane and heading to the baggage pickup area. There is no audio in the video and you can skim through it without missing anything important.

Thanks Kutsuit

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]

Around 10 days back there was a rumor going around that Talabat went under a cyberattack. I got a few messages saying that Talabat accounts were hacked and that users credit card and Knet information was compromised. I figured that was bullshit because Talabat doesn’t save our bank details, I wish it did so I wouldn’t have to enter my Knet information every single damn time I order something. A couple of days later, the Talabat CEO issued the following statement:

“We are aware of the rumors circulating today around Talabat, and would like to reassure our customers that these are absolutely false. We have experienced no disruption within our system and no customer issues have been reported around this. Our online payment is processed via trusted third party platforms and we do not store any banking information on our system. As a business that was established in Kuwait in 2004, data security is paramount to our business model and we have made security and privacy a core part of our structure.” Abdulhamid Alomar, CEO, Talabat

After that things kinda went quiet until yesterday people started leaving comments on the blog and emailing me asking me if Knet was down. Then, this morning a reader emailed me telling me the twitter user DedSec (@DedSecIsHere) had been taking credit for the recent attacks. Based on what I could put together from his tweets, he had previously contacted people at the various institutes warning them of security holes only to be ignored. So I decided to get in touch with him via Twitter and find out what was going on.

First thing I needed to do was verify he was who he says he was and not just someone pretending to be the hacker involved in the recent attacks. So I asked him if he could prove it to me and he replied asking if he should bring down my banks website. Literally 45 seconds later, my banks website was down. Freaky.

According to DedSec, he had been contacting and warning different government and private institutes of their cybersecurity flaws for months now, only to be ignored or told they would fix them soon. But none of them fixed any of the issues he highlighted which left their security vulnerabilities wide open for other hackers who didn’t have the institutes best intention in mind to exploit. Since everyone was ignoring him, DedSec decided to bring down their servers himself so he could grab their attention and hopefully listen to him. He shared with me a list of different businesses that included banks, food ordering websites and telecoms that had security holes, and according to him, the institute with the weakest security system was a payment gateway (lawyer told me I can’t mention which), even though they had received a lot of warnings.

DedSec explained to me that by having a weak security system, it would make it easy to launch attacks on, including “man-in-the-middle attacks” where a hacker can spy on the connection and get the data that is not encrypted properly. So even though your information isn’t saved on their system, there is a potential for it to be read as the information is relayed from your end to their servers end.

@AzizAlW My main goal is to show how bad is the protection, Kuwait has a strong youth with cyber intelligence who are ignored

— DedSec (@DedSecIsHere) February 16, 2017

The more I spoke to DedSec, the more I realized how frustrated he was with the lack of qualified people involved in securing some of our important websites. His pinned tweet states that Kuwait has talented young people with cyber intelligence that are being ignored. He told me there were hacker groups from Iraq, Iran and the USA who have been penetrating our systems and quietly stealing our data. I asked him how he knew that and he replied telling me that he did what IT departments haven’t been doing, and that is checking the server logs for unusual activity.

me and @master_roomi are fixing those problems that i found in the websites instead of attacking them, have a chill day everyone

— DedSec (@DedSecIsHere) February 17, 2017

As I finish up this post, DedSec’s last tweet states that he has now teamed up with Raed Alroomi (@master_roomi), a retired Colonel and information security and cyber crime consultant to fix the exploits he’s found instead of attacking the websites. Hopefully now with Raed’s help, local institutes will finally patch up their vulnerabilities.

Update: Here is an interview with Raed Alroomi that was just posted onto YouTube that discusses the recent attacks. It’s in Arabic but in short, the attacks this week were DDoS attacks, he recommends you don’t use your Knet card online for the next few days until things settle down, and finally he wants to bring all the Kuwaiti hackers and Kuwaiti IT specialist together to volunteer and run penetration tests on the important government websites. He thinks the government should support the local talent and that they should be more involved in securing important local websites.

A couple of years back I put together a list of local online shopping stores and ever since I’ve been quietly updating it. But now it got to the point where I also felt I needed to organize the list properly which is why I decided to create a new updated list.

Below are all the local online shopping websites I am aware of. If there are any missing let me know in the comments, the websites have to be based in Kuwait and allow you to purchase items directly from it.

I’ve wanted an instant film camera ever since I was a kid since I always found them a bit magical because you’re kinda creating something out of nothing. It’s the same reason I’ve always had a thing for fax machines, you put the paper in the machine on one end then, a few seconds later, it starts coming out on another machine all the way on the other side of the country. But for some reason I never ended up getting an instant film camera, probably because I didn’t really have a reason to get one. I’ve always had cameras growing up and later digital cameras and phone cameras so the need for an instant camera wasn’t there, until I saw the Leica Sofort. I’m not a Leica fan. I think Leica M series are over hyped, extremely over priced, and I can’t understand why anyone would want to shoot with a manual focus camera. But, when I saw the Sofort I just fell in love with the way it looked. It had a great minimal and very retro design while also not costing an arm and a leg.

The Leica Sofort comes in three colors, white, orange and mint. I knew right away I wanted the Mint color but when I tried finding one it was completely sold out everywhere online. After searching for a couple of days I finally ended up finding one shop in London that still had the mint colored Leica and quickly placed my order. When my package finally arrived to Kuwait and I opened it I right away knew I made the right choice in color. It just works really well with the retro look, the orange I think would have looked a bit like a toy while the white would have just been boring (for me at least). I’ve had the camera now for two weeks and I’ve used it in a variety of different environments. What I’ve concluded is that the camera is a hit and miss when it comes to the pictures, but thats not a surprise, thats actually exactly what I was expecting from an instant film camera.

I’ll start with the good stuff, the battery lasts a pretty long time. It comes with a small rechargeable battery which I charged on the first day for like an hour. Since then I’ve used the camera to take around 80 photos and the battery is still showing as full. Another great thing about the camera is that it uses Fuji Instax Mini films which you can find all over Kuwait. I’ve been getting mine from Xcite and a double pack which contains 2×10 packs sells for KD5. That means each photo I take costs 250fils which isn’t that bad. I think the camera performed best when I took it to the “Walk This Way” sneaker event this past weekend since the photos came out looking like they were taken in the 80s or 90s which fit perfectly with the theme of the event. The portrait shots all came out great and best part is, after I took the photos, I just handed the pictures over. Like souvenirs they could keep. Even when the results didn’t come out as expected (like the ones above), the photos still had a pretty cool look.

But like I said the camera is a hit and miss. The exposure is all over the place, some portrait shots using the flash resulted in the subjects being super overexposed with washed out colors while other times the shots came out perfectly exposed with all the colors still intact. During bright sunlight a lot of shots would also be overexposed and even when I chose to underexpose (there is an option for that) it didn’t really do much. But, my biggest gripe with the camera is the fact that all the settings reset back to the default settings once you turn the camera off. One of the things I like about this camera is you have options you can choose from like selecting between four scene settings for different lighting situations, having the flash on or off, if you’d like to over expose or under expose a shot and finally most importantly, the camera has two focus modes, close (under 3m) and far. Since I mostly shoot landscape or architectural shots I would want my settings to be no flash and the focus set to further than 3m. But I need to set that up every time I turn on the camera because by default, the camera sets the flash to auto and the focus distance to close. On more than one occasion I’ve taken photos only to have them come out blurry because I forgot to set the focus or I’ve had the flash go off because I forgot to turn it off. Super annoying and I don’t understand why Leica decided to do this.

Overall though I’m happy with the camera. Yes the output isn’t consistent and sometimes random, but I like that because every time I take a picture I now eagerly wait for the photo to develop to see what I got. It’s a surprise every time. The Leica Sofort cost me around KD95 including shipping via PostaPlus to Kuwait. It’s not cheap, but it is one of the cheapest Leica’s you can buy. The camera that is the closest to it in terms of capabilities is the Fuji Mini 90 which I’ve read is what the Sofort is possibly based off. The Mini 90 costs around KD40 on Amazon without shipping or tax so basically half the price of the Leica. If you’re interested in getting the Sofort, I got it from Dale Photographic whom as of this post have all three colors in stock. [Link]

The Eco Experts recently revealed the “most toxic countries in the world” and Kuwait came in second place. The data was compiled by taking five environmental factors into account:

– Energy consumption per capita
– CO2 emissions from fuel combustion
– Air pollution levels
– Deaths attributable to air pollution
– Renewable energy production.

Even though last year I posted a study which ranked Kuwait’s air quality as the 9th worst in the world, I still found this new study as surprising as I found that one. I guess because when I imagine bad air quality I imagine those articles in the news about China, where the smog is so bad planes can’t land and visibility is down to nothing. But here, I mean other than the occasional dust storms, the weather is usually pretty clear and doesn’t seem polluted at all.

But it is.

A friend found out the local US Embassy has a Real-time Air Quality Index (AQI) which you can check out from your phone or browser. According to the index, the air quality at this very moment as I write this post is “Very Unhealthy”. That’s pretty scary. You can check the AQI yourself by clicking [Here]

Now if we go back to the list of most toxic countries, you’ll notice something in common with the top 10:

1- Saudi Arabia
2- Kuwait
3- Qatar
4- Bahrain
5- United Arab Emirates
6- Oman
7- Turkmenistan
8- Libya
9- Kazakhstan
10- Trinidad and Tobago

All 10 nations are all heavily involved in the oil and gas industry. If you want to read more about this study, here is a [Link]

Maybe a doctor can chime in in the comments below about the potential health issues that can be caused by this.

Update: Since I published the post the current air quality index has gone up to the status of “Hazardous”! WTF?!

Thanks Omair and Nibaq