Search: “mis”

If you missed the car park drift competition this past weekend, someone made of a video of the whole thing and uploaded it online. It’s a pretty good video (minus the music) and Sirbb Circuit seems like the perfect venue for this event. [Vimeo]

If you missed ComFest Con this past weekend, UrbanQ8 has a video recap of it which you can watch above (warning, its SUPER long). According to a friend of mine who goes to all the comic festivals that take place here, this one was the best one yet and will probably end up being THE comfest for Kuwait.

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]

I think speed bumps serve a great purpose considering how people speed on inside streets, but I hate how in Kuwait majority of the speed bumps have no visible markings and just blend in with the streets at night.

With my FJ I don’t really care much because if I miss one it’s no big deal, I can just fly over the bump and its a bit of discomfort for a second. But with my Lotus its a completely different story. I can’t just fly over the speed bumps accidentally, I actually missed a speed bump last week and it was the scariest thing ever with my front spoiler lip digging into the tarmac and throwing up little pebbles in the air. I thought for sure I broke something but luckily nothing happened.

Can we get clear white stripes on the speed bumps? I know majority of speed bumps start life off with white stripes, but once they start fading they should be remarked again. It’s not that complicated a problem to solve…

That was pretty quick, the spelling mistakes on the Kuwait e-Visa website got fixed today, two days after I posted about them. Thank you to whomever fixed them, just one more minor thing cuz I’m a bit OCD, could you make the letter “b” capital for the word “Building”. Pretty please? Thank you!

Over the weekend I had to use the Kuwait e-Visa website to apply for a visit visa for my mum. While filling in her details I noticed some major spelling mistakes, ones I’m surprised haven’t been fixed already since the website has been active since last summer. Here are the mistakes just from the partial screenshot above of the e-Visa form:

– biulding should be building
– forth should be fourth
– governate should be governorate
– flour should be floor

Since this website is being used by visitors hoping to get entry into Kuwait, it’s not really a great first impression, and we haven’t even discussed the 90s look of the website either.

When I applied for my mums visa on Friday, it got denied the first time and even the denied page had a major grammatical error. “Your eVisa application was been denied” should be either “has been denied” or “was denied”.

If I’m correcting spelling and grammatical errors, then you can imagine how bad things are.

I applied for my mums visa again yesterday and it got approved the second time around. Completely random. On the plus side, even though it was the weekend, the approval/rejection process took a few hours and was pretty fast.

So whoever is in charge of the website, please fix these mistakes. I haven’t checked the other pages but I’d imagine there are probably mistakes on those as well.

Update: Spelling has been fixed!

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.