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As you’re probably aware by now, cops are resorting to remove the license plates of illegally parked cars in an effort to stop the habit. A reader last week left a comment under one of my old posts detailing the process involved in getting back the plates and I’ve went ahead and summarized it into bullets points below:

– Cops took his car plates after he illegally parked in old Salmiya

– They left a ticket and a sticker on the windshield with information on which traffic station to go to

– After waiting for a few days he went to the traffic station in Jabriya where he presented them with his traffic ticket and paid a fine of KD20. He then had to get a signature from the supervisor and after that was told to come back the next day

– Next day he headed back to Jabriya where they told him to go to the Salmiya traffic station instead

– After getting to the Salmiya traffic station he had to get another signature from the supervisor there

– After getting the signature he then had to go to another room where an officer gave him back his plates and asked him to sign a document stating he received his car plates

– You don’t get your screws back so you need to pass by a hardware store before you head back to your car with your plates to screw them back on

The process seems like such a hassle I hope I never get my plates taken. Not that I park illegally anyway, but in Salmiya there are some parking spot you might think are legal but are most likely illegal (Exhibit A).

Thanks RJP

The Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Center is the second cultural center that is being constructed next to Shaab Park on the Gulf Road. Last night when I drove by I noticed they had their multicolored roof lights on so figured I’d try to sneak in and take some shots. That failed since there was security stationed at every entrance.

I then tried to hop over the wall from the Women’s organization building right next door but as soon as I stepped onto their property, their building security stopped me as well. Need to go back in a full black ninja outfit and try again.

Anyway I still managed to take some shots from the outside which I’ve shared in this post.

After taking the video above I realized the rainbow roof lights look like a real life version of the Rainbow Road from the Mario Kart game. So someone needs to fly a drone over this “track” ASAP pretending they’re racing in Mario Kart and then add the Rainbow Road soundtrack to the video so we can share it on Reddit.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this project, it’s located on the Gulf Road right before Shaab Park. The project consist of six main buildings:

– A Natural History Museum
– A Science Museum
– A Museum of Islamic History
– A Space Museum
– A Fine Arts Center
– A 350 seat Theatre

The cultural center is expected to be completed by the end of this year. For previous posts on this cultural center with renderings and more information, click [Here]

S&S is a small bookstore in the basement of Laila Gallery. It’s not new, it’s been there for a few years but I was surprised to still see it open when I passed by Laila Gallery recently. I thought I had posted about the store before but turns out I hadn’t so I decided I’d post about them now. They mostly carry children’s books and school books as well as some educational toys.

They’re located in the corner of the basement of Laila Gallery in Salmiya and their opening hours are Sunday to Thursday 9AM to 1PM and then again 5PM to 10PM. On Fridays they’re open only from 12:30PM to 4:30PM and on Saturday 5PM to 10PM. Their instagram account is @SandSBookstore.

I heard the Kuwait Bookshop that was in the basement of Muthana Complex in the city moved to Hawalli. So need to also check that place out if I can find it.

Dr. H is a Kuwaiti family medicine resident working in a polyclinic in Kuwait. I’ve invited her to write on the blog about her experiences and I think these will end up being pretty interesting posts. She just published her first one below so check it out.

I’m a 20 something year old doctor working in family medicine in a polyclinic in Kuwait City. I’m Kuwaiti but I was born and raised abroad, and then finished med school abroad. When I graduated I decided to come back to Kuwait. There’s a lot of ups and downs of being back, it’s been a joy and struggle at the same time. So i’ll be writing about some of that, as well as healthcare, and life as a Doctor working in Kuwait. For my first post, I’ll be discussing an issue I face on an almost daily basis in practice, one that I almost always feel helpless in solving. The treatment of foreign workers in Kuwait.

Patient: Dr. Can you please give me an injection?

Me: Which injection?

Patient: Something that will make my flu go away, that will make me able to work again

Me: I explain that flu’s take time, and that she needs to rest, and that its vital she does so.

I see hesitation.. followed by

Patient: Please, give me anything madame says I have to work

This is sadly a very common scenario. Typically it would be a housemaid, who’s come to seek treatment for a flu or common illness, and is worried that she’ll get in trouble, get deductions from her salary, or even worse, get hit if she doesn’t work through her illness. This is a trend I noticed very early on while working in family medicine.

I thought for a while about what the solution could be, so I started asking for the numbers of their employers, and started explaining to them; the need for rest, how ‘contagious’ a flu can be, and how vital rest is to ‘speed up recovery’ time. Coming from a ‘fellow Kuwaiti’ it wasn’t hard to convince… and trying to appeal to their own selfish nature by implying that they’ll get something out of letting them rest also helped. As if showing a little bit of empathy and basic humanity isn’t enough motivation to do so.

This just highlights a major issue in this country that largely goes un-noticed. Or perhaps its noticed, yet nothing is done. While I was working on a OB/GYN residency, a housemaid came into the emergency room in tears, claiming that she just found out she was pregnant and that she’d been raped earlier. I was horrified, and I contacted the police. Instead of them taking a statement from her, doing their best to protect her.. they dragged her down to station for ‘questioning’ and detained her! “illegal pregnancy” they said.

There are not enough laws to protect foreign workers. We have people from all over the world coming to work in Kuwait whether it be in homes, streets, hotels, restaurants. Immigrants make up a huge percentage of the population of Kuwait.. a percentage that Kuwait wouldn’t be able to run without.

What support systems are in place should they need help? Who can they approach? Is there a helpline they can call? Is there a ‘union’ that defends them? Are there organizations in place?

These issues need to be addressed, if not for the country’s sake, for the sake of maintaining a little bit of humanity, and not losing track of the reality that we live in.

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

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]

I get emails every so often asking if I know a places that teaches hip-hop or contemporary dance, so figured I’d post about it incase anyone ever googles the question. The only place I am aware of that offers contemporary or hip-hop dance classes is the Loyac Academy of Performing Arts (LAPA). They have the following dance classes:

Children:
Ballet
Popping

Adults:
Contemporary
Popping
Hip-hop
Breakdancing
Bollywood

If you’d like more information you could check out their instagram account @lapaloyac or call them on 97239408

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.

Last month I posted a complaint about how my past few shipments with PostaPlus had taken twice as long to arrive than usual. While previously packages would take around a week to get delivered to Kuwait after arriving to my US mailbox, my past three shipments had taken 11, 13 and 21 days. But things are back to normal now since I received two packages since that post, one had taken 6 days from my US mailbox to my door, the other 7.

During that time I was in contact with PostaPlus who investigated the delays and they sent me the explanation below:

1. Weather conditions: Europe (Our transit HUB) has experienced bad weather conditions that had caused flights to be cancelled.
2. Change in customs management structure, if you recall there was a big situation going on and has caused some key people to be removed, henceforth situation was unstable and extra security has been added on shipments.

So everything is back to normal, now if they can only hurry up an implement Knet payments everything would be perfect.

A few days back I posted a video on twitter of the new Jaber Al Ahmad Al Sabah Hospital light show. Looked pretty weird for a hospital building, clearly they were testing out the exterior lights but it still feels out of place that they have these lights in the first place for a hospital. Anyway a follower thought it looked like something out of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which I realized it did so I put together a quick mashup which you can watch above.

This question is for the guys, where do you go get your nails done? The two places I frequent the most are Spaloon and Ten Spa and I’m really not happy with either of them. Spaloon have the most uncomfortable seating I’ve ever experienced anywhere in my life so I hate getting my nails done there, and Ten Spa isn’t what it used to be, it feels like they’re about to close down any day now.

So where do you go? I can’t think of better places, maybe I should just open my own nail salon…

The first time I heard about this project was back in 2011 but it looks like it got approved and is going to be constructed since it’s currently in a tendering stage.

The Kuwait Olympic Village development comprises a Stadium, Team Games Hall, Individual Games Hall, Racquet Games Hall, Swimming Complex, Training Field & Track, International Zone, Athletes Residential Block, Mosque, Olympic Flame Tower, Concourse and Existing Substation.

So many cool projects are coming to life, the metro project is also supposed to start construction this year, I hope thats still happening. For more renderings of the Kuwait Olympic Village, click [Here]

Thanks Mohamed

When I posted my MacBook Pro review a couple of weeks back I mentioned that the Touch Bar was still new and people were still trying to figure out what it could be useful for. Well I think people are starting to figure it out. One thing I found out since I published that post was that the app BetterTouchTool supported the Touch Bar. I already had BetterTouchTool installed and had been using it for years because it allowed me to customize my trackpad gestures. Now it also allows you to customize the Touch Bar which is useful because some apps like Chrome don’t support the Touch Bar yet.

So using BetterTouchTool I started creating useful buttons for the Touch Bar I could use when in Chrome. Then the developer added the ability to display the date and battery life time remaining information in the Touch Bar. When he did that I realized it would be super useful if I could display my Spotify track names in the Touch Bar while I was browsing in Chrome. So I contacted the developer and requested that feature and sure enough, a few days later, BetterTouchTool got the ability to display what track was playing in the Touch Bar. The picture on top is of my current Chrome Touch Bar setup, I have a button to take me in and out of full screen mode, a button to view my download list, a button for incognito mode, a track play/forward button, track/artist name display area plus my battery remaining time which Apple doesn’t allow you to view anymore by default.

People are still creating interesting stuff for the Touch Bar, one guy for example created a translator, whenever you highlight a word or phrase in the browser, it would automatically translate that text and display it to you in your Touch Bar using a predefined language of your choice. There are also a ton of fun/silly/useless things you could do to the Touch Bar like displaying an infinite loop of Nyan Cat or turn your Touch Bar into Kitt from Knight Rider. You could even install an app that would turn the Touch Bar into a piano or play a game of Pong using the Touch Bar to control the rudder. You can check them all out in the video above.

So yeah, looks like the Touch Bar is getting more and more interesting. If you have the new MacBook Pro Touch Bar, make sure you install BetterTouchTool so you could customize things the way you want.

A couple of weekends back I went camping in the desert and nearly got completely lost on the way there. I usually go camping with a friend of mine in this secluded area around an hour plus drive into the desert from Al Salmi. This time around my friend headed into the desert first since I had some errands I needed to get done during the day and then headed into the desert in the afternoon. The whole journey takes around two hours from Salmiya so by the time I got close to camp it was dark and I couldn’t see anything except the road in front of me. I had Google Maps coordinates of our camp site on my phone and was following it without issues until I hit what I think must have been Kuwait’s Bermuda Triangle.

As I got close to our camping spot my phone just started messing up. I’d be driving towards my blue dot on Google Maps and then 15 minutes later the map suddenly rotates and so now the blue dot is behind me. So I’d turn the car around and head the other way, 20 minutes later the map rotates again and now the blue dot is on my right instead of straight ahead. It did this a couple of more times before I realized I was driving around in circles wasting precious fuel in the empty desert and completely lost. I was about to give up and just camp in this random spot in the middle of nowhere until the sun comes up when I remembered I had a little Garmin eTrex 20 in the trunk with my camping gear.

I had bought the Garmin for exactly this situation, to use if I ever get lost when hiking or camping. So I dug it out of my gear, turned it on, entered the coordinates of my campsite and right away the Garmin pointed me to the right direction. I was so off course I had to drive another 30 minutes to get to camp. Moral of the story? If you’re ever heading into the desert don’t rely on your phone for navigation. Instead, invest in a dedicated GPS device since it could save your ass one day.

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!