Search: “mis”

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

Sultan Center have finally launched their online shop so you can order your groceries online and have them deliver it to your home. Their delivery charges aren’t that bad either:

The minimum order value is 10KD per order Charges: Delivery charges differs with respect to the type of delivery whether express or next day delivery. Express delivery: We charge 1.5 KD for the express delivery, if the order is 40KD or above the delivery will be free. Next day delivery: This delivery is Free of charge.

I live right next to like four Sultan Centers so I’ll always prefer to stop by my local branch but I’ll definitely start checking their website whenever there is an item I can’t find. Actually, maybe you guys can help, right now I’m having trouble finding Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa Light which seems to be out of stock everywhere. It’s delicious hot chocolate and just 25 calories!

Anyway, their website is still in beta so there might be a few issues here and there but you can check it out right now by visiting [sultan-center.com]

Just a random tidbit, 14 years ago today I posted my first post ever on a blog called Qhate. Before 248AM I had a blog called Miskan, before that I had another one called Moblogging from Kuwait (it was like instagram, but before instagram) and before that I had another blog called Qhate. Qhate was a war blog where me and a few friends were posting about life in Kuwait during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

My first post on February 6th, 2003.

Unlike my old posts here on 248AM, I don’t cringe when I read my old posts on Qhate. It kinda feels like I started off writing pretty well and then took a big dip in quality by the time I started 248AM, only to recover again years later. In around 10 days time its also going to be 248AM’s 12 year anniversary. Crazy.

All my posts from all my previous blogs are still online except for “Moblogging from Kuwait” since it was hosted on textamerica.com which shut down a decade ago. You can still find some stuff from it using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine but not much. I used to take all the photos and post to my blog using the Sony CLIÉ UX40. That was back when smart phones didn’t exist and Sony PDA’s were so ahead of their time.

When I was a kid I remember visiting the Buffalo Bill’s show that (I believe) was held at the Mishref Fairgrounds. I posted about it a few years back asking if anyone remembered it and not many people did. None of my friends remember it either but, the internet is amazing sometimes and a few days ago one of the Buffalo Bill’s performers who came to Kuwait in 86 sent me a few pictures of when they were in Kuwait. He was 24 at that time and he’s still got more pictures which he’s going to send but for now here are three.

Their setup was pretty legit so I imagine they were here for some time and not just for a few shows. Kinda like when a circus would come into town. You’ll also notice a number of brands in the background including Hungry Bunny, Commercial Bank of Kuwait, Alghanim Philips (now Xcite) and KNPC.

Thanks BgC!

Hey Guys. So, most of you have probably forgotten who I am, but at some point in time I used to write film reviews for this blog (I think i ended up writing 3 in total?). Where did I go? Well, to that vast wasteland we like to call laziness. But, here’s hoping this article will lead a more frequent visit from myself so here goes.

2016. A terrible year by all accounts, but strangely, an incredible year for cinema. After one of the worst summer movie seasons of all time, without a single film sticking out, it’s quite the surprise reaching the end of the year and finding so many hidden gems.

My taste in film might not appeal to most, but the point of this post is that hopefully you will learn about or discover a hidden gem that otherwise you wouldn’t have considered. I’ve also made it a point not to include any foreign films, as there were many beautiful ones, but this is a year that represents a renaissance in American Cinema with many films that are so unique and fresh that I had to celebrate them. So without further a do, here are the 15 best films of the year, according to my pretentious and unnecessary opinion.

Disclaimer: At the time of writing this article, I hadn’t seen the following highly acclaimed films that might have had a spot otherwise: Cameraperson, Hell or Highwater, Tower, Paterson, Fences, Krisha, The Fits, and The Handmaiden.

Check out my list below:

I found the video above last week by mistake while looking for something else and here is a summary of the incident according to Wikipedia:

On 7 February 1974, Palestinian militants occupied the Japanese embassy in Kuwait City, taking the ambassador and ten others hostage. The militants’ motive was to support the Japanese Red Army members and Palestinian militants who were holding hostages on a Singaporean ferry in what is known as the Laju incident. Ultimately, the hostages were released, and the guerillas allowed to fly to Aden.

What interested me the most was the Japanese embassy building shown in the film above, is it still around? Where is that? It kinda seems like its near the graveyard behind Salhiya but I don’t recall seeing this building before.

Third wave coffee shops are the meeting place of a diverse group of people. The early morning office goers, moms after the school drop off and lets not forget – hipsters! They all have one thing in common (apart from their love of coffee), that is they are unaware of many intricacies of the mysterious third wave coffee shop. Sometimes it can be difficult navigating these establishments – It’s early morning and as you walk in your attention is taken to the sound of coffee beans popping in the cooling pan, they have just reached first crack. The humidity increases as you near the POS, condensation is collecting on a snapchatters iPhone – the steam wands are certainly working. More than that, the aroma is unmistakable. It’s the smell of early mornings and late nights. It’s the smell of a pending deadlines and relaxed Saturday mornings. You mutter “one latte please” only because you heard the person before you say it.

3rd Wave Coffee
3rd wave (or specialty) coffee is treating coffee as an artisan foodstuff. It is when meticulous attention to detail is applied in the farming, processing, roasting and brewing aspects. Each single origin batch is treated uniquely and prepared differently to enhance its inherent characteristics. It is always fresh, always prepared according to the highest standards. In 3rd wave coffee shops, your barista is trained to vary pressure, water flow and temperature for each drink to make it truly unique and exceptional.

Roast Levels
Third wave coffee shops pioneered the art of lightly roasted coffee. This does a couple of things, it burns off less caffeine so you have a stronger cup. It also maintains many of the inherent, delicate flavors of the coffee to give you a much more rounded experience. Next thing is to talk about the names of these roast levels, because gone are the days when everything was “dark, medium or light” roast – we have become a lot more specific now.

Cinnamon: The lightest roast is called cinnamon roast. No, there is no cinnamon in it and it won’t necessarily taste of cinnamon, the name comes from the color of the ground coffee when roasted at this level.

City: City is the next roast level. Here the bean has achieved something called “first crack”. This first crack happens as a result of moisture vapors expanding with heat and eventually forcing their way out of the bean – This crack happens at around 205C and this is likely the most common roast level you consume at third wave coffee stores. Shortly after this level we achieve City+ which is a slightly darker version of City. (The name “City” comes from the fact that this roast was most commonly used in the eastern cities of the USA)

Full City: This is the stage where the beans start undergoing the cracking process for a second time, and again there is a slightly darker version called Full City+. These roasts will have lower acidity than the aforementioned (because the darker you roast, the lower the acidity) and also higher solubility, meaning you will have more coffee in the water after extraction. As a result, one tends to achieve more robust flavor and creamier body from these roasts.

Continental: Here we have old school coffee. This is coffee that has been roasted to such a point that the essential oils begin to reach the surface of the coffee bean. This can also lead to excessive smoke creation inside the roasting drum with negative effect on the flavour. The names of continental roasts include: Vienna, Italian, French and Spanish.

Single Origins vs Blends
By now you have been offered a single origin as opposed to the standard blend, so what exactly is this? Single origins are coffee beans from a single farm or lot in a specific region/province in a certain country that has been processed in a uniform method and consists of one variety of coffee plant. To try put this simply, the beans are all the same as one another. Blends on the other hand can be a mixture of two or more single origins.

Jargon
Ever heard of someone ask for an extra dry cappuccino? How about a ristretto or lungo? Some coffee aficionados will even ask for a high yield espresso. What exactly are these:

Dry: This is when extra air is purposefully added to the milk when steaming. It creates a large layer of foam atop the coffee.

Ristretto: This is a shorter stronger version of an espresso. This “espresso” will be sweeter and more acidic than its regular counterpart.

Lungo: A longer, often nuttier tasting version of an espresso – overdo the extraction and it will start to taste of wood.

Portafilter: The “portable filter” that locks into the espresso machine

Dose: The amount of coffee that one puts into the portafilter

Yield: The net weight of the espresso once extracted

Pour Over: Fresh filter coffee made by hand. Filter coffee has received a bad rep because of the poor quality coffee used to make it, as well as the fact that it would often be left to stand for hours before being served. Truth is, freshly filtered coffee is one of the best experiences you can have.

Keep sipping!

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

A friend just shared these photos she took earlier this morning from her office. Can’t believe I’m home missing this!

Thanks Dima!

I don’t think any notebook has ever gotten as much hate as the new MacBook Pro’s have and I can’t understand why. Last week I replaced my 13″ MacBook Air with the new 13″ MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar and I just love it.

Before I go ahead and explain why I love the new MacBook Pro so much and why I think its so much better than my already amazing MacBook Air, I’m going to first quickly explain why the biggest issues people have with the MacBook Pro don’t really affect me. This review is also fairly long compared to my regular posts so I’ve titled all the main paragraphs that way you can skip down to the area you care more about if you don’t feel like reading.

No USB Ports
This is probably the biggest issue people have with the new MacBook Pros, they don’t have the regular USB Type-A ports and instead Apple replaced them with the newer, slimmer, faster, better but also less popular USB-C ports. In my case I rarely used the USB ports on my MacBook Air, the only time I ever used them was when I traveled I’d charge my iPhone from my Air’s USB port and when I wanted to copy stuff onto or off memory sticks. I barely used USB so for me if the ports are USB-C or Type-A… I don’t really care. I bought the USB-C to Type-A Apple adapter so IF I ever need a regular Type-A port, I’ll just use the adapter. I’d rather have a slimmer notebook without any USB ports than a thicker one with. But again thats because I rarely used the ports to begin with and I can always move things around wirelessly.

No SD Card Slot
This I was more upset with than the lack of USB ports. I take a lot of photos with my camera for the blog and when I travel so it was very practical having an SD card slot in my MacBook Air. But it’s not that big a deal really having no SD card slot. My current camera’s SD card has WiFi anyway so I’ll just wirelessly transfer the photos onto my Mac. Actually, most of the time I copy the photos over to my phone first, edit them in VSCO and then AirDrop them onto my Mac. That’s what I did with these pictures in this post for example.

Battery Life
This wasn’t an issue until Consumer Reports tested the new MacBook Pro’s late last month and got battery life that ranged anywhere from 4 to 18 hours. They cited major inconsistencies which I have yet to encounter with my short time with the notebook. So far my MacBook Pro is lasting me as much as my MacBook Air would which is to say all day of on and off use.

Max 16GB of RAM
A lot of people have made a fuss that the maximum amount of RAM the new MacBook Pro’s support is 16GB. I had 8GB of RAM on my MacBook Air and I was doing design work and editing large files on it without any issues. I have 8GB of RAM on my new MacBook Pro and I expect it to perform even better than my MacBook Air so I’m fine with the 16GB limit since I don’t need more than 8.

The Review
Now with the controversial items out of the way let me start my review. I’ve never owned a MacBook Pro (or PowerBook). My first notebook ever was a white 12″ iBook G3 Dual USB back in 2001 (considered the most unreliable Apple notebook ever). Since then I’ve had a bunch of other low end Apple notebooks until I moved up to the MacBook Air. I got my first one in 2011 and then replaced it in 2015 with the updated model. Anyone who owns a MacBook Air will tell you they’re incredible notebooks and I really didn’t need to replace mine, it was more than enough for my needs, but something about the new MacBook Pro’s attracted me, I think it was the Touch Bar but once I saw them I knew I needed one. In the week I’ve owned the MacBook Pro, a few things have really impressed me compared to the MacBook Air:

The Size
Somehow Apple has managed to make the MacBook Pro smaller than the MacBook Air and also weigh the same. Side by side when compared to the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro is clearly smaller and more compact.

The Screen
My biggest issue with the MacBook Air was the screen, not because it didn’t have a retina display which I could care less about, but because the viewing angle was terrible. I used to constantly adjust the screen tilt to make sure I was getting the best viewing angle. With the new MacBook Pro I don’t have that issue, no matter how much I move the screen looks great. The color difference and brightness is another thing I instantly noticed, side by side the MacBook Air looks dimmer and the colors duller when compared to the Pro. I’d find it really difficult to move back to the MacBook Air now.

The Sound
The speakers on the new MacBook Pro are much better than the MacBook Air. Like the difference in sound quality is pretty dramatic, other than the fact the sound is much more louder on the MacBook Pro, it also has more bass and much more clarity to it. And because the speakers are pointing towards you (with the Air the sound is indirect), the left and right channels are also a lot more clearly defined. I’ve started listening to music on my notebook which I never used to do before.

The Keyboard
Based on the reviews I read online about the keyboard, I was worried I was going to hate it. I don’t, it’s now one of my favorite things in the new MacBook Pro. I type better with it, I type faster and it just feels so much more solid when compared to the MacBook Air keyboard which now feels too squishy to me.

What About the Touch Bar?
This is one area I have yet to make up my mind on. There are two parts to the Touch Bar, the main touch display area and the TouchID (fingerprint sensor) which is located on the far right. I love the TouchID since it allows me to sign into my MacBook instantly. I’m also hoping that soon I could use TouchID to unlock 1Password like I do on my iPhone, that option alone would make this MacBook Pro worth it over the Air.

Now the touch display area of the Touch Bar is what I’m still trying to get a hang of. Right now it really isn’t that useful. It looks cool for sure but it’s currently not that much more practical than keyboard short cuts. Also not all apps support it yet and the ones that do don’t allow that much customization to it. Because of the way I rest my hands on the keyboard while using the trackpad I also keep accidentally touching the Esc button which is annoying (I’ve done it 3 times while writing this article) but I’m getting used to it. While I’m typing this post up I have Spotify showing on my Touch Bar but for I wish instead of the audio scrubber showing (pictured above), I could choose to show the name of the song and artist in that space instead. The Touch Bar is still new though so I’m hoping we’ll get more customization options over the next year as companies start understanding what people want from the Touch Bar.

MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro
This is a really easy recommendation to make, the MacBook Pro is a much better machine over the Air in every way. The MacBook Pro weighs the same as the Air but is also smaller in size so the biggest advantage the Air had over the Pro series doesn’t exist anymore. The MacBook Pro screen is better, the keyboard is better and if you’re used to listening to music on the Air’s speakers, then you’re gonna love the MacBook Pro. The only thing I have difficulty recommending is the MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar over the version without the Touch Bar. Is the Touch Bar worth an extra $300? I think I’m leaning towards a yes, but only if you’ve got the money to spend. If you don’t thats fine, you aren’t really missing much.

I ordered my MacBook Pro from eBay and it cost me KD548 ($1,789) and another KD10.5 to ship to Kuwait using PostPlus. It was considerably cheaper to buy it on eBay since Apple charges tax and I would have ended up paying KD600 ($1,963) if I had purchased it from the Apple Store. It was also quicker since when I was ordering the MacBook Pro, the wait time on the Apple Store was 3-4 weeks before shipping. But, the advantage of ordering directly from the Apple Store is you could customize your Mac with more RAM or a faster CPU. I also purchased the “Space Gray” color which is what you see in the pictures in this post. Let me know if you have any questions.

Update: Turns out 1Password already works with TouchID, I just needed to enable it in the settings!

I’ve been meaning to post this updated list of coffee shops for a few weeks now but I kept on finding out about more coffee shops so I kept postponing the post. We’ve got so many coffee shops now that we even have two different ones with the same name. I don’t think I’ve missed any places but in case I have, let me know in the comments.

Abu Al Hasania
Dose Cafe
Tripple A Cafe
V60 Coffee Bar

Al Zahra’a
BRW

Jabriya
RumorZ Cafe
Wing Cafe

Kuwait City
7 Grams
20 Grams
33 Cafe
Alpha Café
Arabica
Ark Coffee Co.
ASPRO + PRO Coffee Bar
Awake Coffee
BLAKK Coffee
Bon Coffee
But First Coffee
CAF
Caffeine
Caveman Coffee
Coffea
Commons
Cova Specialty Coffee
CRL Bar
Dose Cafe
Drip Cafe
East
Grace
His Majesty
Jumo
Kaffa Kuwait
Kôfē – Espresso Bar
Let’s Coffee
Mood Coffee Bar
Muse Coffeesphere
Muse Espresso Bar
Not Just Coffee
OIA Coffee
OZ Coffee
Pause Coffee
Perhaps Some Coffee
Pirate Cafe
P R E S S
Richard’s Coffee
Savage Coffees
Sisters & Co
Street Cafe
The Breeze Cafe
Three and Barista
Toby’s Estate
ÜSHK
Vol 1
Volta
Wish Cafe

Mahboula
Ace Coffee
Made Caffe
OROMO Coffee Bar
Swing Coffee House

Mangaf
Mug
Vibes Coffee

Messila
Majnoon Qahwa

Rai
Amo Cafe

Salmiya
Magnet
Muse Lounge
Mr Koobs
New Brew Coffee

Shuwaikh
Arabica
Boost Cafe
Caffeine
Car Wash Cafe
Days*Cafe
Force Bar
Keys Coffee Shop
Shuwaikh Coffee
Ves Vas
Vol 1

Most of the places above opened up in the past 6 months or so. Insane.

Update (13/8/2017): I’ve updated the list above and split them based on their location