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For those of you who’ve been following the story of the old photographer you will be happy to know he just left to hajj today. As I mentioned in my previous post on the old photographer, a very kind reader offered to help send him to hajj at her expense. Not only did she finance the whole trip but she also helped find a hemla that would take him and she even helped him pack and take him to the airport. I really can’t thank her enough for her kindness, what she did was beyond nice. She sent me a picture of the old man at the airport today dressed in the traditional white cloths with an expression on his face that looks like he can’t believe this is all really happening and not just a dream.

There is another reader I would also like to thank for helping with the Saudi visa. If it wasn’t for his help the old man wouldn’t have been able to get a visa and he wouldn’t have been able to travel. But the old man was lucky since the visa was issued last night which was just in the nick of time because the last group from the old man’s hemla was leaving today.

So thank you to the both of you for making this old man’s wish come true.

For those of you who missed the story of the old man I’m talking about above, here are the previous posts:
In Kuwait since 1959
Update on the old photographer
What would help the old photographer
Quick update on the old photographer

KUWAIT: The national holiday celebrations next year will be completely foamless, reported Al-Qabas. The Environmental Public Authority (EPA) recently announced that an agreement was reached to ban the use or import of foam sprays in the country. The move is an attempt to control the chaotic use of the substance that has experienced an increase in popularity these past few years. “The EPA has reached an agreement with the Interior Ministry, the Kuwait Municipality and the Ministry of Health to ban the substance for being a serious health risk,” said the Director of the Industrial Environment Department at the EPA, Mohammad Al-Enizy. The substance has been accused of causing allergic reactions to the eyes and skin in addition to containing carcinogen material. “A detailed report was sent to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to stop importing or selling foam sprays in the country,” Al-Enizy added. [Source]

This was in the papers a few days ago, not sure how I missed it. I guess I am now looking forward to national holiday celebrations.

Thanks Mike

This song has been out for a year, not sure how I missed it! [YouTube]

via 360Dewan

Lots of spelling mistakes around but they’re always funnier when it’s government related, in this case the post office.

Thanks Nasser

So we can now mark off Red Lobster and Olive Garden from our restaurants we need to have in Kuwait list. What’s still missing? Wendy’s, A&W, Five Guys, Jack in the Box, White Castle, Arby’s, Cheese Cake Factory, In-N-Out and Taco Bell. [Link]

via SomeContrast

A friend of mine, Laila Al-Gharabally, wrote and illustrated a children’s book called “Al-Hadiya” (“The Gift” in English). She will be selling and holding a book signing at her publisher’s booth (Arab Scientific Publishers) on October 14 in the evening at the Kuwait International Fair’s 35th Book Fair in Mishref.

The annual book fair held at Kuwait’s International Fair (www.kif.net) is the biggest book fair in Kuwait and will last for ten days starting from October 13th to October 23rd. For more information on the book fair click [Here]

Some of you already noticed that I changed the blog banner last night from the “THEBSIDES” to “The A-SIDES”. Continuing to use the term B-Sides didn’t make sense since 2:48AM wasn’t the B-Side anymore. Originally during my Miskan project I needed a place to dump photos and talk about things that didn’t have room on Miskan (remember I was limited to 1 post a day) and so 2:48AM was created and the B-Side tag slapped on.

My Miskan project ended 5 years ago and 2:48AM no longer was the B-Side, instead it became the A-Side and I don’t know why it took me so long to change that.

So 2:48AM is now the A-Side but that made me realize something. When the blog first started I used to post 5+ posts per day. As the site grew and my readership base grew I started becoming a lot more picky to what to post and what not to. This is why I decided to create a B-Side to 2:48AM, a place where I could post stuff that wouldn’t usually make it on my main site here but was still content that many people would find interesting.

2:48PM [The B-Sides] is now live and you can access it by going to www.248pm.com or clicking the link on the far right of the navigation bar on top of this site. Starting today you will have a lot more posts and content to shift through so I hope everyone enjoys it. Any comments, feedback and ideas are always welcomed of course.

A reader emailed me to tell me that Kaifan Co-op recently installed Cash Guard machines. I’ve seen them before I think at the Shamiya Co-op and thought they were pretty cool. Basically it’s connected to the cash register and once your total is tallied up you pay the cashier and they place the money into the machine which then spits out the change if any.

Now I’m curious to know how much money was actually going missing from the regular cash registers that the Co-ops had to resort to installing these what I am guessing expensive machines? I found a video on YouTube on how they work which you can watch below.

[YouTube]

Thanks Laila

I just got an email from someone telling me he’s been getting lots of phone calls regarding my post about Sidekick Academy. It seems by mistake I typed the wrong number in and people have been calling him all day. The correct number for Sidekick Academy is 99975562.

Sorry about that!

Since when does Kuwait have a cricket team? It’s kinda like when I first found out we had a baseball stadium. [Link]

Update: Here a more pictures of the baseball stadiums. [Link]

It’s been awhile since I posted about Mishaal Al Roomi. For those of you who are new to the blog and haven’t heard about him, Mishaal is a young and extremely talented weather forecaster whom I’ve posted about a number of times before. He had a website which he used to update daily with the weather forecast even though he was only 17 years old. His site ended up having technical problems and then the updates suddenly stopped. Well he emailed me today telling me that his website www.q8weather.com is now fixed and getting updated daily.

So if you want to get an accurate weather forecast you can now head over to his website and check out his predictions. I’m also going to check with him and see if there is somehow I can implement his forecast into the Kuwait Blogs app. Here is a link to his 5-day forecast which is what I used to check [Link]

If you’ve missed the previous 3gal self defense videos click here and here. [YouTube]

I know being 40 isn’t like being #1 or in the top 10 or top 20 but it’s still an accomplishment since Kuwait according to Newsweek is the best Arab country in the world. The results were based on Education, Health, Quality of Life, Economic Dynamism and Political Environment. Kuwait came in 24th place for Quality of Life while it loss mostly in the Education category coming in 76th place. That’s not good news. Lebanon on the other hand didn’t even make the list! Now that’s embarrassing. [Link]

Thanks Ahmed

After reading an article in Arab Times about the Zoo management accepting criticism I figured with that the Kuwait Zoo had turned a new leaf and has changed for the better. Well I was there today and nothing has changed.

To be fair, the 3 new bear enclosures are a huge improvement over everything else at the zoo. They’ve also fixed the Bony sign by covering up the bottom right part of the B so that it now looks like a P. And that’s it. Thats the only two things that have improved.

The worst part about the whole zoo has to be the security guards. People were feeding the animals, throwing bottles of water at the animals, throwing garbage and jumping over the protective barriers while the security guards did nothing. I went up to one security guard and asked him if it was allowed to feed the animals, he told me no it wasn’t. I then asked him why he was letting people feed the animals or kids throw bottles at the bears. He pretended to be dumb and asked me who was doing that, I just pointed to the crowd standing next to him and told him they all are. He just looked at me confused and wondered off. A few minutes later we were near the monkey cages and I noticed two little kids over the fence feeding the animals with their parents proudly standing and watching. What was even more terrible was the fact there was a security guard sitting on a chair also just watching. I went up to him as well and asked him why he wasn’t doing anything about the kids over the barrier. I asked him what if one of the monkeys bit one of the kids? He just smiled back at me, he didn’t care.

As you can see in the picture above the two kids are over the barrier. In the second picture below you can see the security guard in the chair watching the kids in the background over the barrier.

Everywhere I looked there were people just throwing stuff at the animals and no one was doing anything about it. But the thing is, it’s not their fault. People aren’t expected to know they can’t feed the animals and I only saw one “Don’t feed the animals” sign in the whole zoo. It’s the job of the zoo to educate people, they should put up signs in multiple languages telling people not to feed or throw stuff at the animals and they should be located outside all the cages and enclosures. It’s then the job of the security guards to enforce the rules when they are broken. In both cases the zoo has failed miserably.

Two years back I posted about the possibility of Kuwait building nuclear plants, well it looks like they’re going to be building four! I just hope they don’t put the guy in charge of the sewage treatment plants to handle the nuclear power plants. [Link]