2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003We found 5,084 results for your search.
Starting today, the blogs forum is now called “Community”. With this name change comes a host of other changes all with the aim to make the community more user friendly as well as more pleasing to the eye.
You can access the community by clicking the link in the navigation strip up on top or by typing community.mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com in your browser.
There are still more changes and additions coming to the blog which I’ll be rolling out one by one in the coming weeks.
Qout Market is an outdoor market that takes place on the first Saturday of every month until April. The next market will be tomorrow (January 4th) and feature stands selling crafts, street food, fresh flowers, jarred items, artisanal products, baked goods, local produce and much more. It’s located on the rooftop of Arraya parking lot and open from 10AM to 7PM. [Map]
Keep your eye out for Pasticceria Di Pietro’s cannoli stand since they will be there as well. For more information on Qout Market here is a link to their [Facebook Page]
In less than 3 weeks time, the Kuwait national American football team will be playing a friendly game against Switzerland. Not many people are aware of the fact that Kuwait has an American football team but we do, two teams in fact, the under 19s and over 19s (seniors).
I passed by one of their practice sessions last week and was pretty impressed with what I saw. The teams hold their practices at the Kuwait University Stadium in Shuwaikh and when I got there I got to watch different groups take part in various exercises. The teams practice Sunday to Wednesday from 7PM to 10PM and Saturdays from 1PM to 3PM so they’re very dedicated and really want to make this work.
Although the game this month against Switzerland is a friendly, it’s still an important game because the next one after that is in April against South Korea which will be for the World Cup Qualifications. So if you’re an American Football fan or if you’re looking for something to do, this January 18th pass by and cheer for the Kuwaiti team. For more details on the timing and location, check out this [Link]
A woman in Kuwait has filed for divorce one week into her marriage after she discovered that husband did not like to eat peas with a fork and preferred to use bread. Accusing him of failing to abide by table manners and proper eating etiquette, she said that she was disgusted by the “shocking sight” and could not stay with her husband the rest of life and wanted a divorce, local daily Al Qabas reported on Monday.
…
In another case, a woman told her lawyer that she wanted to divorce her husband for insisting on squeezing the toothpaste tube in the middle and not the end. “We are always arguing,” she reportedly said. “I keep telling him that he should squeeze in the end of the tube, but he stubbornly refuses and keeps squeezing it in the middle. He is so obstinate.”
[Source]
2013 was a pretty good year for gaming consoles since there was a pretty large variety of AAA and indie games to enjoy. I’m generally not very picky when it comes to video games and I enjoy a wide range of genre’s but when one genre is over-saturated (like first person shooters), I tend to choose something that tries to offer something unique. My time was evenly spent between four consoles, the Wii U, the PS3, the 360 and the 3DS and picking my favorite game was not as challenging as I originally thought it would be. But, two games in particular stood out from the whole range of games that got released this year and both these games deserve more awards than any of the other games.
1 – The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
What’s not to love about this game? It’s Challenging, beautiful to look at and features a captivating world filled with secrets and dungeons.
2 – The Last of Us
A brutal, intense and emotional roller coaster. There really hasn’t been a game (in a long time, or really just ever) that has affected some of us like The Last of Us has. I used to just play it two or three times a week because I knew there was always something bad around the corner. You would find and pick up a journal entry or a note you to either read a great story of survival or a really sad story about death or loss. The amount of detail that went into the environments to support these stories were also impressive. This is one game I loved, but would probably never play it a second time.
When the E3 trailer was revealed, most of us had written this off as a quick-cash in before Nintendo released the true successor to the Galaxy franchise, but since its release its been getting rave reviews. 3D World includes some of the most unique and entertaining level designs while pushing the series forward making it one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences of the year.
The other day I posted about the homemade Cannolis from Pasticceria Di Pietro and I finally got to try them tonight. They’re crazy good, like really really good. I tried all the flavors and my favorites were the Cannoli Sicilian and the Caramel Divino and my least favorite was the Pumpkin Pie. The presentation from the box to the Cannolis themselves were picture perfect. No way on earth would I have been able to guess this was a home businesses if I hadn’t already known. Even the food shots on the website are beautiful taken and wouldn’t look out of place on the food network.
If you want to order some yourself, here is a link to their [Website]
‘Playtime’ is a short film by Kuwaiti writer and filmmaker Hamad Al-Tourah. The film is about Matthew, 10, who lives with his mother in Kuwait. One night, when his mother leaves him alone, Matthew finds company in Dalal, a Kuwaiti girl who lives down the street and eventually makes a plan to escape with her. If you’re interested the film is going to be screened tonight at Cinemagics at 6:45PM. Here are the details:
Date: Thursday, December 26th 2013
Time: 6:45PM
Location: Cinemagic Rooftop [Map]
Make sure you wear something warm since this will be a rooftop showing. Here is a link to the [Trailer]
A few years ago I posted about Abdullah Al-Moussawi (Sayed in Europe), an 11 year old Kuwaiti boy with incredible football skills. Someone had uploaded a video of him on YouTube playing football and the video ended up catching the eye of a football scout in Holland who later tried to get Sayed to move and train in Holland. Sayed became a sensation in Holland and was given the nickname “the Pearl of Arabia”. But, there was a bit of controversy and the move never happened. You could read my old post for the full story [Here]
I just wanted to post an update on Sayed. Even though he didn’t end up moving to Holland he was flying there every now and then to train with the top Dutch club SBV Excelsior. But last Wednesday, the director of TT (TrainingTrips.eu), an organization affiliated with professional players and football clubs (among them FC Feyenoord, Ajax, Manchester City, Liverpool, Club Brugge and FC Barcelona), welcomed Sayed into the organization and will now be taking care of his football career.
According to Jeroen Gösgens the director;
“Sayed has the potential to make it as a professional player. That’s why we’re convinced that it’s vital to make the next step right now. We work exclusive with top- talents and academies throughout Europe and it’s in our strong believe that any delay at this stage of the process won’t be in the best interest of Sayed’s development.
Since the first time that we saw him play 5 years ago, we’ve followed him carefully and now he’s ready to make the next step. Therefor his attendance at a pro-academy is an absolute requirement for his career.
We’re confident about Sayed’s motivation and capacity. Our expectations of Sayed are high. We only work with our own selected players and make no concessions whatsoever in this regard.
That Sayed comes from Kuwait is special in the way that we never had a player from the Gulf Region before. However, we want to convey him because of his exceptional- talent, determination and passion for the game. Considering that Sayed has reached his current level basically on his own strength with just help from his father, family and friends is already an amazing accomplishment by itself. We’re happy to welcome Sayed in our ‘family’ and will support him in every way to become what he really wants to achieve; being a valuable, creative player in a major league in Europe.”
It’s a pretty cool outcome and an incredible story considering all this started because of his low res YouTube video and with no support locally.
The Playstation 4 was released in North America on the 15th of November and sold a million units in 24 hours. We’ve had to wait until earlier this week to see the PS4 officially released in Kuwait and the Gulf and as of this post, it’s pretty much sold out with supposedly no new shipments arriving until early January. So what’s the noise all about? Do you need to own the PS4 now? Are the launch games worth it? These are some of the questions I’m going to be answering in this post.
The PS4 itself is designed nicely, it’s as small as the slim Playstation 3 (maybe even a bit smaller) and it’s pretty light. Complete opposite of the first iteration of the Playstation 3 which was huge, bulky and ugly.
The second thing I’m going to talk about is the new controller, the Dualshock 4. I wasn’t a big fan of the Dualshock 3 and preferred the 360 and Wii U controllers over it. The Dualshock 3 felt light, cheap and didn’t fit well in my hands. I also wasn’t a big fan of the design as it was difficult to clean due to the dirt getting caught on all the edges. The Dualshock 4 changes all of that – the design is nice, sleek and clean, it fits comfortably in my hands and it doesn’t feel cheap. The small touchpad on the face of the controller works well and isn’t overly sensitive to touch (unlike the Sony Vita’s rear touchpad). The controller also features a mono speaker that plays some sounds as you’re playing games. It takes a few minutes to get used to the fact that the controller doesn’t feature a “START” and “SELECT” button like the majority of controllers have had throughout the years, those buttons have been merged into one “Options” button. One of the new additions that’s been making some headlines is the “SHARE” button. When you press it, the PS4 will create a screenshot of the moment and a video clip of the last 15 minutes of gameplay. You then decide where you want to upload them to Facebook or Twitter. If you also feel like broadcasting what you’re playing to the rest of the world, you can also do that through the services of Twitch or USTREAM. All this is done seamlessly and I was surprised to see how Sony have simplified the process.
One thing I dislike about the controller is the light bar which is located on the back of the controller. The light bar displays different colors to alert you on things like low health (it’ll glow red), but it’s kind of a useless feature unless you’re looking at your controller as you’re playing. If you sit directly in front of your television as you’re playing, the controller creates an annoying reflection on your TV when the games you play feature dark levels or segments – it just breaks the immersion. Hopefully there’ll be an update in the future that’ll allow us to choose whether we want to keep the light on or not.
The next thing I want to bring up is the Playstation 4’s user interface. This is another feature that I think could be improved. I’ve never been a huge fan of Sony’s user interfaces, whether it’s the Playstation 3’s menu or the Vita’s terrible use of bubble icons. The Playstation 4’s user interface has three sections. The first is the main menu; icons for your games, the browser, music, video, etc are all accessed from there. The second section (when you press down on your D-pad) is specific to the application or game you’ve selected. So for example, if you press down when Killzone: Shadow Fall is selected, a menu will appear that shows your recent activity, a shortcut to the community, multiplayer modes, and the game manual. If you press up on the main menu, the third section of the menu system appears and this is where you can access the Playstation Store, Friends List, Trophies, Settings and a few other options. I just don’t find this system to be intuitive at all. Why is the Playstation Store icon not located in the main menu and instead hidden in the upper section? Why aren’t the menus customizable? Nintendo and Microsoft both offer menus that are somewhat customizable, so why can’t Sony?
Moving on to launch games. I was given two games to try out by Sony that were launched exclusively for the Playstation 4, Knack (a 3D platformer adventure game) and Killzone: Shadow Fall (a first person shooter). Knack was developed and designed by SCE Japan Studio and Mark Cerny, both have an impressive repertoire of games and so I was surprised to see the below average reviews for this game. An hour into the game and you could see why it’s been getting poor review scores. First off, all the characters (especially Knack) are bland. Think of all the great characters in 3D platformers that we’ve seen in the past; Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Crash Bandicoot, Banjo-Kazooie, Ratchet & Clank, Jak and Daxter, These games featured a whole cast of colorful, interesting characters and most importantly, the main characters were memorable. Knack’s design is forgetful and pretty ugly. He’s made up of all these tiny pieces and shapes and as you progress through the levels you start to grow as you gain more of these pieces until you’re huge and you’re able to do massive amounts of damage. The combat in this game is just “X, X, X” repeated, until you fill up your special power gauge and then you can perform a special move. The level designs are incredibly linear and lack any sort of inspiration. How linear are they? Well, there’s only one path through the level – no little deviations, no hidden paths, no shortcuts. There are “secrets” behind walls that have very large cracks to visually tell you that the wall can be smashed. Those are placed along the paths so they’re not even really hidden. There’s literally no sense of exploration and the platforming segments aren’t even challenging. Very young kids (younger than 10) might enjoy it, but I recommend most of you to skip this game if possible.
Onto Killzone: Shadow Fall. Before playing this game I had only ever played and beaten Killzone 2 which I thought was fun with very intense firefight, but also had a forgettable story with forgettable characters. The characters were beautiful and had fluid animation but the level layouts (which were well designed) were visually boring to look at. Everything seemed to be just a variation of grey with some brown tacked on. Shadow Fall seems to continue the trend of having forgettable characters and horrid writing but has much more beautiful and varied level layouts. The first level you play is vivid and colorful (there’s a bit too much lens flare for my taste though), the second level is the opposite, it’s dark, gloomy and kind of freaky. The shooting and firefights are really fun. Graphics? Not a massive leap from the PS3 but for a launch game it looks really good. You’ll enjoy this game if you go in expecting a straight up first-person shooter with a fun single player experience and multiplayer modes. But, you’ll be disappointed if you’re looking for a FPS that has an interesting plot with memorable characters.
Now the important question, is it worth buying the Playstation 4 now, or should you wait? The controller has been improved, the console is designed nicely, it isn’t heavy, it isn’t bulky and it has a promising line-up of upcoming new games. There’s no doubting the potential of the console, just one look at Killzone: Shadow Fall will tell you that. 2014 will be a good year for gaming with titles like Tom Clancy’s The Division, Witcher 3 and Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes coming out. My issues with the PS4 are minor. The light bar on the controller, the menu system and the lack of a media server wont affect my enjoyment that I’ll get from playing games on the machine. Still though, I’ll wait a few months before purchasing one. None of the exclusive launch games interest me and the ones that aren’t exclusive I’ve already played on my 360/PS3/Wii U. If you can’t wait and want to pick one up now, the games I recommend are Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Killzone: Shadow Fall, FIFA 14, Battlefield 4, and Lego Marvel Superheroes.
Posted by Patrick
Around a month ago I was at the airport early morning, I had just finished checking in and headed towards the money exchange to get some currency. I gave the exchange employee my Knet card but got an error saying my card was declined. I tried it again but got the same error. I knew I had money on the card since I had double checked the night before. In any case I decided to log in with my banks app and double check but I got an error logging in as well. I then told the money exchange clerk I would be back and headed to one of the ATM machines at the airport to withdraw money but also got an error. So I called the banks call center number and spoke to an employee who proceeded to tell me their system was going under maintenance and I wouldn’t be able withdraw any money or use any of my cards for the next two hours.
I was furious.
Here I was at the airport about to travel and I didn’t have any cash on me and I wouldn’t be able to get any cash either and not because I didn’t have any money but because my bank wouldn’t give me access to it. When I asked the employee why they didn’t inform me and their other customers about this so that we would be prepared (I could have converted currency the night before and withdrawn money), his response was we did… on Instagram and Twitter. And this is where the problem lies. I hung up with the call center employee and headed to the lounge where I proceeded to tweet my frustration as well as send their customer care an email. I didn’t get any response from them until 30 days later when I had to tweet and remind them that it had been 30 days without a response.
Now this is where I would be interested to hear from you guys since maybe I’m over reacting here or maybe it’s me being an asshole but wouldn’t you agree it would be best if the bank SMS’ed their clients important information like when you won’t be able to access your money or any of your cards for two hours instead of posting that kind of important information on twitter or instagram?
First of all why the hell would I want to follow my bank on twitter or instagram? I follow only 15 friends on twitter and I follow around 100 friends on Instagram. The image above is a result of me following my banks twitter account (I had to so I could send them a direct message). They tweet so much and so often they ended up taking over my twitter feed. Why would I want to flood my twitter feed with their tweets on a daily basis?
Secondly, my bank have my phone number and I receive a ton of useless advertisements from them all the time. Why is it ok to SMS me useless adverts but not ok to SMS me important information like when I will not be able to use my ATM or credit cards because their system will be down?
So this is my suggestion to my bank (you know who you are):
1- SMS or Email your customers when there will be a major disruption in the service
2- Be clear about what the disruption will be. “System will be undergoing maintenance” could mean anything from I won’t be able to log in to your website to your call center employees won’t be able to order their daily fix of Caesars pizza. It’s too generic, instead tell your customers clearly that on a certain date at a certain time they will not be able to use their ATM cards.
3- Respond to emails. 30 days with no response means you’re ignoring me. I sent an email to Zain the other day and got a response in 15 minutes so if they can do it so can you.
That’s my 2 cents. And yes this post was censored by Fajer.
I found out about this today and have managed to confirm it with multiple sources. Saturday early morning around 2:30AM an unidentified person walked into Hamra Mall and headed up the service elevator towards the food court. He then walked towards Elevation Burger which was closed at that time and jumped over the counter and pretended he was an employee cleaning the place. Four hours later the unidentified person took the safe and wrapped it in a garbage bag before putting it on a trolley before casually rolling out with it from the mall.
All of this was caught on CCTV and the police are currently investigating the robbery with the help of Al Hamra Mall security. Al Hamra Mall believe the unidentified person was an ex-Elevation employee while Elevation are denying that fact and instead believe he could have been an employee from any of the other places.
I’m trying to get my hands on the CCTV footage but no luck so far.
Lanvin started a 60% sale yesterday on menswear and only on menswear. Turns out they’re closing down the mens section permanently so they’re getting rid of their stock. I picked up a wallet but they also had some good tshirts and you can’t go wrong with their sneakers (although 60% off on KD300+ shoes is still KD100+). Lanvin is located in Prestige section of Avenues between Ralph Lauren and Tod’s.
Too much pressure on men, and unrealistic expectations from women.
I’m pro censorship of abs.
A roundup of this weeks posts from 248PM
Million Short
Syrian Refugee Camps Under the Shadow of Advertisements
MIT researchers say they have created the trickiest tongue twister
The Division – Snowdrop Engine
BASE jumping gone wrong
The Most Talented Model in the World
Miley Cyrus “Wrecking Ball” Christmas ornament
Jon Hopkins – “Collider” (my favorite music video of the year)
Ferrari and Minivan share same radio UI
