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Calling all photographers, if you’re interested in taking part in a group activity then this is a good one. Star trails photography involves long exposure shots of either the sky or landscapes where the movement of the stars in the sky form light trails in your shots (similar to the shot above). Not only will you end up with some interesting shots but its also a great way to meet new people.

Here is a list of gear you need to bring:
1. A DSLR
2. A tripod
3. Bring extra batteries or at least fully charge yours
4. A high capacity memory card
5. Shutter release
6. Food
7. Flashlights
8. Mat or chair to sit on

The meetup point will be the Mishref CO-OP parking lot on March 15th at 6PM. For more details check this [Link]

Photo above taken by Saleh AlRashaid

Thanks Kim

In February of this year, K’S PATH received a call about a Hamadryas baboon on the loose in the Friday market. Baboons of this kind tend to compete fiercely for resources, and can be particularly dangerous around food. They are also potential vectors for an astounding number of diseases that affect humans, including rabies, herpes, hepatitis b, HIV, and tuberculosis, to name but a few. A baboon on the loose in a public place, struggling to survive in stressful, unnatural conditions, therefore represents a serious risk to human health. Two of the K’S PATH animal control units therefore quickly responded to the call.

On arriving at the market, we were directed to the Shrimpy’s restaurant, where she had last been sighted. A thorough search of the building, including the roof, led nowhere. Several hours of searching the area around the market and talking to people revealed little except word of an occasional sighting. Eventually we were obliged to go back to our other duties and see what developed.

Later, we received a frantic call from one of the people we had spoken to earlier that day: the baboon was inside Lu & Lu Hypermarket, and people were panicking. This time K’S PATH mobilized all of our units and several volunteers, under the assumption we would have to use a dart gun to catch a baboon inside a crowded supermarket; a very dangerous prospect. By the time we arrive at the scene however, workers had chased the baboon back outside. Now we were faced with the prospect of finding and catching a primate in the dark, in a huge open area. Fortunately, we are experts in animal capture, so we went with our training. With such a recent sighting, we were able to more or less track the animals’ movements through eyewitness accounts. This led to a small cluster of buildings near the main entrance to the manufactured-goods area of the market. Here the trail went cold.

We split up with flashlights and headlamps to see what we could find. The first search revealed nothing. We were just about ready to give up. I was on top of the middle building creeping around looking for what I hoped wasn’t an angry primate, when the beam of my flashlight caught the slightest smudge in the dust inside of an air conditioning unit. A closer look revealed the slight impression of three little baboon prints.

Sleepz is bringing something new to the Hip Hop scene in Kuwait with his crew KD Makers. He and this group of talented artists are set to do big things. Their main goal is to show the world what living in Kuwait can be like. “Started off broke” is Sleepz love note to Kuwait. It is followed by a little taste of “What Their Missin” a song we will be filming the video for in Dubai. Sleepz and the whole KD Makers crew are out to have fun and help put Kuwait on the Hip Hop map and it shows.

[YouTube]

The P2BK event for 2013 will start tomorrow and last for the next two weeks. This year the set up is a lot more interesting with an outdoor old souk that was built specifically to host this event. There will be a ton of Kuwaiti businesses participating including already established ones as well as new ones and since the weather is fantastic right now it should be pretty enjoyable checking all the various stalls out.

The event is taking place at the Mishref Fair Ground and will be open from 10AM to 10PM. You can visit the P2BK website for some more information but most of their sections don’t seem to be working right now. [Website]

The Green Caravan Film Festival is back for the 4th time and will be taking place in Kuwait from March 9th to March 12th. The film lineup for this festival are the following:

CHASING ICE
Follow National Geographic photographer James Balog across the Arctic as he deploys time-lapse cameras designed for one purpose: to capture a multi-year record of the world’s changing glaciers.

IF A TREE FALLS: A STORY OF THE EARTH LIBERATION FRONT
A rare behind-the-curtain look at the Earth Liberation Front, the radical environmental group that the FBI calls America’s ‘number one domestic terrorist threat.’

THE TSUNAMI AND THE CHERRY BLOSSOM
Survivors in the areas hardest hit by Japan’s recent tsunami find the courage to revive and rebuild as cherry blossom season begins.

THE CITY DARK
THE CITY DARK is a feature documentary about the loss of night. After moving to NYC from rural Maine, filmmaker Ian Cheney asks a simple question – do we need the stars? – taking him from Brooklyn to Mauna Kea, Paris, and beyond. Exploring the threat of killer asteroids in Hawaii, tracking hatching turtles along the Florida coast, and rescuing injured birds on Chicago streets, Cheney unravels the myriad implications of a globe glittering with lights – including increased breast cancer rates from exposure to light at night, and a generation of kids without a glimpse of the universe above. Featuring stunning astrophotography and a cast of eclectic scientists, THE CITY DARK is the definitive story of light pollution and the disappearing stars.

THE ISLAND PRESIDENT
After bringing democracy to his country, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, the lowest-lying country in the world, takes up the fight to keep his homeland from disappearing under the sea.

The film festival is taking place at Bayt Lothan and admission is free. For more information including the schedule visit the festival website [Here]

[YouTube]

For those of you like me who were out of Kuwait during the holidays, we ended up missing the air show that was held on the Gulf Road. They painted the sky with the Kuwaiti flag colors and going by the pictures and videos it looked like an event that shouldn’t have been missed.

[YouTube]

Photos by Rampurple

Over the weekend I decided to pass by three museums with a friend of mine. All three museums are located right next to each other so you could cover them all in under two hours. There’s actually a fourth museum right next to the Maritime Museum which you could visit as well, the Modern Art Museum, but they were closed when I passed by.

Maritime Museum
Our first stop was the Maritime Museum which is located opposite Souk Sharq. It’s easy to spot since they have to large wooden ships parked outside with a miniature light house [Google Maps]. The museum is pretty nicely designed on the inside, it’s two floors and pretty modern looking with a ship like structure being the main inspiration to the design. They have a lot of sea related items on display from old tools used to build the ships to fishermen gear. Really worth checking out.

Here is their visiting hours:

Monday to Saturday
8:30AM to 12:30PM and 4:30PM to 8:30PM

Friday
4:30PM to 8:30PM

Dickson House Cultural Centre
Further up the road was the Dickson House Cultural Centre. The Dickson House served as offices and residences for the British Political Agents in the early 1900’s. I didn’t like this place much since there wasn’t much to see inside and the whole interior was refurbished but not to the original state. The outdoor yard in the back on the other hand was nice and the Dickson House caretaker Fayez, whom one of my readers nicknamed the Tour Guide Nazi (in reference to Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi) was a really interesting character. I actually enjoyed sitting on the bench in the yard chatting with him more than the actual tour. [Google Maps]

Here is their visiting hours:

Monday to Saturday
8:30AM to 11:30AM and 4:30PM to 8:30PM

Friday
4:30PM to 8:30PM

Amricani Cultural Centre
The final destination was the Amricani Cultural Centre which is located across the street from the House of Parliament. The Amricani was originally the American Mission Hospital and just recently got renovated and opened to the public. Lectures and exhibitions take place there occasionally but when I passed by there wasn’t anything going on. They do have a 20 minute movie you can watch about the history of the hospital but personally I’d go there just to see their freaky looking display. It’s a small corner showing how the hospital used to look like when it first opened but it really looks like a scene from the movie SAW. Definitely worth checking out. They didn’t have opening hours displayed and I couldn’t find anything on their website but my guess it’s similar to the other two museums above. [Google Maps]

Monday to Saturday
8:30AM to 11:30AM and 4:30PM to 8:30PM

Friday
4:30PM to 8:30PM

All the museums above are free of charge to enter.

Everyone who’s been to the Kuwait Zoo knows how sad and depressing the place is. I’ve written about it a number of times and it’s just something that has bewildered me for a very long time. Why is the zoo the way it is? I always figured the people who worked at the zoo didn’t care about the animals but after meeting a few of the staff members recently I now know that’s not true. Turns out there are two main reasons why the zoo is a disaster, the first is the zoo visitors and the second is they just don’t have enough money to make it better.

The Visitors
Majority of the people who visit the zoo do not respect the animals nor do they respect any of the rules. On one trip to the zoo during the daytime when it was fairly empty I witnessed three different incidents in a space of 15 minutes that summarizes the problem with the people at the zoo. The first incident took place at the elephant enclosure. We noticed a woman with her young kid had climbed over the fence, through the cactuses all the way to the wall of the elephant enclosure and were taking pictures next to the trunk of the elephant that was sticking out. One of the zoo employees who was with me yelled at the women to get away from the elephant because it was dangerous and the woman just coldly took her time making her way back out over the fence as if she had done nothing wrong. A few meters away on the other corner of the enclosure there was a kid next to his mother with a bag of oranges throwing them at the second elephant. Again the zoo employee had to stop the kid from throwing oranges at the elephant while the mother was pretending she wasn’t noticing any of this.

The third incident occurred just a short distance away at the baboon enclosure. As we arrived we noticed a kid was on top of the fence sticking french fries into the baboon cage trying to feed them. His mother and his sister were standing next to him watching and then the baboon stuck his hand out of the cage and the little boy tried to kick it hard but ended up missing and hitting the cage. The zoo employee I was with yelled at the boy to get down and then pulled the kid down but the kid kept climbing back up wanting to feed the baboons. The employee was telling the kid how dangerous it was since the baboons can bite and scratch people when his mother started shouting at her. She told the employee that no one cares about her kids more than her and if this was dangerous she wouldn’t be letting her kids feed the baboons. I was just standing there going WTF?

Visitors are one of the biggest issues of the zoo. I’ve already posted about how some kids try to kill the animals with slingshots and how the trash people throw into the cages end up killing the animals as well. A lot of kids are uneducated and abusive throwing whatever they can at the animals or in the case above trying to kick them. This is why the zoo tries to protect the animals using chicken wire (a fence with very small openings) around the cages, cactus plants, higher fences and security guards. But even those defenses fail all the time, people still manage to shove food into the cages, they pull down the chicken wire fence and put it on top of the cactuses so they can walk on them towards the cages. Even security guards get ignored and the guards are too afraid to confront the visitors anyway.

No Budget
Now this second issue is the bigger of the two. The zoo has limited financial resources. Although Kuwait is a rich country, the zoo and animals aren’t really a priority. Right now there are two major enclosures for example that need to be changed or fixed but the zoo staff haven’t been able to secure the budget for them.

The first problem is the elephant enclosure. Right now there are two elephants and the enclosure is pretty tiny. The larger of the two elephants has started destroying the walls of the enclosure because of frustration. The zoo submitted a proposal to double the size of the enclosure since there is an empty plot right next to the elephant enclosure but the proposal was rejected. Instead a construction company was brought in to install large metal beams around the elephant enclosure as a solution (pictured above).

The second problem that is in dire need of attention is the chimpanzee cage (pictured above). There are four chimps in one of the most depressing cages I’ve ever seen. They have no entertainment whatsoever inside, it’s just a rectangular dark cage with concrete floors and thats it. But, there’s a great spot in the zoo which the staff want to convert to a chimp enclosure. It’s a large space (see below) that can be planted with trees and greenery and chimps can roam free in it. The plan was proposed but rejected due to budgetary reasons. So now the space is gonna be turned into a reptile enclosure filled with a few crocs and turtles which is going to be a complete waste of space.

So although the staff do want to improve the zoo they just don’t have any money do so. It’s very depressing. Even when it comes to fixing enclosures or purchasing new medical equipment it’s all handled in the same low priority “put a bandaid on it” way.

The Solution
The visitors problem is very difficult to fix. One way would be to increase the prices of the tickets (currently it’s 500fils) in hopes that would stop or lessen the amount of visitors that come to the zoo. Educating the parents and the children is too large a task for the zoo to handle and signs and leaflets really have no effect. The most realistic solution to the people problem is to continue and try to protect the animals (I suggested replacing cactus plants with barbed wire) and hiring Kuwaiti security to replace the current expats.

The solution with the budget should be simpler… just increase the budget, but that’s not happening. A more realistic option we discussed is sponsorship by private companies. Companies could sponsor an animal enclosure and the money would be used to build it or improve it. It’s something that’s done in other zoos around the world and in this situation it would be a great way to solve a lot of the problems.

By the way you’re a company and are interested in doing this, email me for more details [Here]

It’s really sad that the zoo doesn’t have any money to improve the situation for the animals. It’s not only the elephants and the chimps that are in trouble but those two are the priorities right now. The baboon cage for example has around 70 baboons inside and is over crowded. The tiger needs more space, the hippos need a new water filter for their pool and one of the giraffes is limping but they don’t have a portable xray machine to check and see why. They even have one animal enclosure nicknamed Guantanamo because it’s that bad.

The problems with the zoo are major and hopefully I was able to bring it some exposure.

If you missed the Gulf Run car show at 360 Mall this weekend, a reader has uploaded pictures he took at the event and you can check them out [Here]

Thanks Abdul Samih

The GulfRun 8 car show is going to take place this weekend at 360 Mall and a lot of super cars will be on display including a McLaren MP4-12C, Ferrari 458, Lamborghini Aventador and two KTM X-Bow’s. The cars will be on display for two days, Friday the 11th and Saturday 12th so make sure you pass by and check them out. Below is the full list of cars (and their quantities) that will be on display at 360 Mall:

2010 Porsche GT3RS (x5)
2013 BMW M6
2007 BMW M6
2013 BMW M5
2011 Audi R8 V10 (x2)
2010 Audi R8 V8
2008 Mitsubishi Evo 10
2009 Mitsubishi Evo 10
2006 Mitsubishi Evo 9
2005 Mitsubishi Evo 8
2007 Subaru STi
2009 Nissan GTR (x2)
2010 Nissan GTR (x2)
2009 Nissan GTR
2012 McLaren MP4-12C
2011 Mercedes SLS
2012 Ferrari 458
2012 Lamborghini Aventador
2011 Ferrari 599
2009 Chevrolet ZR1
2012 Lamborghini LP1500-4
2012 KTM X-Bow R
2011 KTM X-Bow ClubSport

Finally here is a video of the recent Karting event that was held at Mishref by the GulfRun team. [Video]

Not sure how I missed this yesterday but it was open day at the Ali Al Salem Air Force base and anyone could get in and check the planes and helicopters they had on display. They even had drones on display!

Marzouq visited the base and took a ton of photos which he’s uploaded onto his blog and you can check out [Here]

Desert Tycoon is an iPhone game created by two guys one of whom is Kuwaiti Abdullah Al Zabin. The game is similar to SimCity but in this case you are based in the Gulf and you start off as a humble Bedouin. Step by step you build your business empire of real estate, business, energy, and tourism assets with the aim of basically turning your city into an Arabian metropolis like how Dubai is today.

The cartoon graphics are great and the music fits the game perfectly. More importantly the game is free and available to download from the iTunes store right now. [English Version] [Arabic Version]

Update: I got an email from Abdullah with some details regarding who they are. This is what he had to say:

A brief background about us. Myself and my business partner Ali Diab started Lumba in January of this year with a simple premise: build the next generation Arab mobile entertainment company. We are based in San Francisco, actually in the same shared office where many of the [now] large mobile game developers (Pocket Gems, SuperCell, Kabam, etc.) started over the past 3 years.

Our team consists of:
– Product Managers that worked for AdMob, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Bain
– Artists and Illustrators that worked with Pixar, Dreamworks, Fox, and Disney
– Software Engineers that worked for Google
– Music composer and producer who scored music for console game titles on PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. He also produced music for Kelly Rowland, Rick Ross, Black Eyed Peas, and Nicole Scherzinger

We are taking it upon ourselves to tastefully fuse Silicon Valley tech with our Arab cultural roots for all our mobile games. We hope our first, Desert Tycoon, is representative of that.

Last weekend GulfRun held their second Karting Endurance race as the Mishref Fairgrounds which was organized by Pro-Vision. It was a 24hour race that started on Friday and finished on Saturday. The event was pretty exciting with great racing by the teams and lots of spectators supporting them. I passed by on both days and took a bunch of photos which you can see below. The next GulfRun event is GulfRun 8 which will be held in Bahrain this coming January.

It’s pretty impressive that a company founded back in 1889 still exists today and is considered one of the most innovative and creative companies in their field. Nintendo has survived throughout these years not by sheer luck, but by being able to adapt to markets and get ahead of the game. Nintendo didn’t always make video games – it started out making playing cards and when that business was waning the CEO of the time Hiroshi Yamauchis decided to move into other businesses like instant noodles, a taxi company, and even a TV network. Eventually, Nintendo made its way in the video game business and released the NES; 27 years later, Nintendo has finally released its sixth console, the Wii U.

Nintendo’s philosophy has never been about creating the most powerful console with the best graphics, but to create a console that anyone could enjoy, developers could create fun games for, and is affordable. They constantly try to innovate without going overboard. The Nintendo 64 was the first console to introduce analogue sticks and 4 player controller ports right out of the box that competitors adapted in the future. We’re seeing similar advancements with motion controls that Nintendo introduced with the Wii and now Nintendo has taken another step forward by introducing the Wii U and the Game Pad.

Mark was able to hook me up with a Wii U from X-cite to review and I got the chance to test it out by playing Super Mario Bros U, ZombiU, Nintendo Land and Batman Arkham City.

The first thing I was curious about was Nintendo’s new social network called the Miiverse and so far it’s been informative, entertaining, and pretty promising. For those who don’t know, the Miiverse is where you interact with other Wii U users through a community for every app or game out for the Wii U. So if you want to discuss some Youtube videos, you can go to the Youtube community and post about it there and other users can reply or give you a “Yeah!” (equivalent to a Facebook “Like”). If you want to discuss a specific game and you’re unsure about buying it, you can go to that game’s community and ask them about it. Other times, people will draw some really elaborate drawings using the Wii U’s gamepad and the community walls turn into a temporary art exhibit. And it works well – comments are posted instantly without delay. People will comment and try to solve things. For example, I was going through the ZombiU community and found a thread with over 25 comments of gamers trying to decipher some code someone found spray-painted on a wall in the game. I wouldn’t be surprised if communities like this sprang up in the next iteration of consoles Microsoft and Sony release.

A super talented friend of mine just released a new single called Tara Aadi. It’s very cool since the music is made up of 8-bit sounds generated from a GameBoy. Here’s some interesting trivia regarding Tara Aadi:

1. All the sounds in the music played was generated by a real Gameboy console

2. The melody was conceived in Kuwait, but arranged in Bad Soden, Germany

3. The vocals were recorded at the Arabic Theater HQ, one of the main founders of Kuwait’s performance art scene

4. Besides collaborating with Hussa Alhumaidhi on the melody, Mishari was responsible for every aspect of its production

5. Mishari mixed the song in Aziz’s car on the way to get treated in Hadi Hospital. Mishari resumed to mix the song in Hadi’s parking lot in his PJ’s and a robe.

6. The song was made with the intention of getting people to smile, preferably while dancing.

You can check out the song by hitting play above or you can check out his other songs on [SoundCloud]