Categories
Information

Blogging Revolution Comes to Kuwait

bloggingrevolution

While flipping through some old files I found this old article from Kuwait Times about blogging in Kuwait. It’s from 2004 and back then I had stopped posting on qhate.com and instead moved to moblogging photos (kinda like instagram). Back then the blogging community was really tiny, it’s crazy how things have changed since then. Check out the article [Here]

Note: The link to Qhate in the article is wrong, it should be https://qhate.com




Categories
Movies

The Wolf of Wall Street – 50 minutes censored

wolf

Turns out the new movie The Wolf of Wall Street was completely butchered for the Gulf the region. It seems the movie distributor censored the movie before sending it out to movie theaters across the GCC where local censorship also cut scenes from the movie. The original movie is 180 minutes long while in UAE its 135 minutes, in Qatar 134 minutes and in Kuwait 130 minutes long. Kinda reminds me of the story of how when Basic Instinct came out in Kuwait it was a short film.

Thanks aaa




Categories
In Focus Information

New Start-up: Facile

facile

Facile in a new local web service that just launched. The service allows you to upload a document so they can print, bind and then deliver them to you. Kinda like an online version of Kinkos. They’re still in beta so if you have any comments let them know. It’s a simple idea and it’s not food related, check them out [Here]




Categories
Events

Updated Events Section

firedandunexploded

The event section on the blog has gotten a makeover. I’m trying to make it much easier to find out about events and the section is still a work in progress. I’m planning to add the ability to find events by category as well as adding a full month view.

There are a lot of events taking place all the time so I’m posting all of the ones I find in the events section and only posting the ones I think are interesting here on the main blog page. So let me know your feedback, check it out [Here]

Note: I took the photo above at the Fired but Unexploded exhibit




Categories
Automotive Events

GulfRun 9 Car Show this Weekend

gulfrun

The GulfRun 9 car show is going to take place this weekend at 360 Mall featuring a ton of super cars including the new Corvette C7 Stingray which I have yet to see from up close. The cars will be on display for two days, Friday the 10th and Saturday 11th from 10AM to 10PM so make sure you pass by and check them out. Below is the full list of cars that will be on display at 360 Mall.




Categories
50s to 90s Kuwait Photography

Old Kuwait Postcards

I was searching for random stuff on eBay when I spotted a bunch of different sellers selling old postcards of Kuwait. I saved the most interesting ones to share below. Notice how much greener Kuwait was back in the old days? Also you might notice some of the postcards feature the Kuwait Towers while still under construction. The postcard I decided to highlight above is of “The Yachting Club”. [eBay Link]

There are two images of the back of the postcards with writings. I don’t know what language they’re in (my guess Bulgarian and Italian?) but if anyone can translate them to English that would be fantastic. Also what happened to all the seagulls??

Update: A friend noted the seagulls might have been super imposed on that shot. Looking at it closely I can’t seem to find any shadows of the seagulls so that’s probably the case.




Categories
Movies

Cinemagics Rooftop Schedule for January

Below is this months schedule for Cinemagics rooftop movie nights. If you’ve never been to them before, they’re held twice a week, every Thursday and Saturday on top of the building that has Xcite in old Salmiya. A couple of the movies from this month were supposed to show last month but got canceled so they’re showing again this month. Check out all the movies and their timings below:

Thursday, January 9th 2014 at 7:30PM
REPO MAN
Considered one of the more unique Science Fiction films, and a standout essential film of the 80’s, as well as being ranked #7 on the top 50 cult films of all time, Repo Man follows a Punk Rocker who after getting fired from his job as a clerk, becomes a repo man and is jolted into a new lifestyle that he quickly begins to enjoy. All that is flipped on its head when he meets a girl who tells him of a 64 Malibu that contains four dead aliens and that there’s $20,000 for the man that can repossess it.

Saturday, January 11th 2014 at 7:30PM
CACHE
Winner of Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival, Cache comes from the mind of visionary filmmaker Michael Hanneke (whose Amour won him universal acclaim at the 2012 Academy Awards). This film, starring Juliet Binoche follows a married couple who are terrorized by a series of surveillance videotapes left on their front porch.

Thursday, January 16th 2014 at 7:30PM
SURPRISE FILM OF THE MONTH
Every month we’ll be playing a surprise film, where you won’t know what you’re watching until just a minute before the film begins. One thing is for sure, every month the surprise film will be either my favourite film of the list, or the most unique in one way or the other. This month’s film was won and was nominated for over 30 awards worldwide including the Oscars, Golden Globes, Independent Spirit Awards, and the Baftas. A unique, hilarious, bizarre, and poetic little film.

Saturday, January 18th 2014 at 7:30PM
PIETA
Winner of the Golden Lion (Best Film) at the Venice Film Festival, Kang-do is a heartless man who has no living family members and whose job is to threaten debtors to repay his clients, the loan sharks who demand a 10x return on a one month loan. To recover the interest, the debtors would sign an insurance for handicap, and Kang-do would injure the debtors brutally to file the claim. One day he receives a visit from a strange, middle-aged woman claiming she is his long-lost mother. Over the following weeks, the woman stubbornly follows him and he continues to do his job. But he is slowly moved and changed by the motherly love expressed from this woman.

Thursday, January 23rd 2014 at 7:30PM
TALK TO HER
Winner of over 27 awards worldwide, mostly for Best Film or Best Foreign Film, Talk to her is considered by many fans of the legendary Pedro Almodovar to be his best film. Two men meet by chance at a private clinic, each looking after a woman in a coma. Marco’s girlfriend Lydia was a bullfighter who was mauled, and Benigno looks after a young ballet student. The lives of the four characters flow in all directions, past, present, and future, taking them to an unsuspected destiny.

Saturday, January 25th 2014 at 7:30PM
OFFSIDE
Winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, and carrying a 97% score on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Offside follows a group of girls who try to sneak into a football stadium to watch a World Cup qualifying match. Female fans are not allowed to enter football stadiums in Iran on the grounds that there will be a high risk of violence or verbal abuse against them. The film was shot in Iran during a real live match, but its screening was banned there.

Thursday, January 30th 2014 at 7:30PM
TOUKI BOUKI (Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project)
Every month, we’ll be playing a film from the World Cinema Project. Established by Martin Scorsese in 2007, the World Cinema Project expands the horizons of moviegoers everywhere. The mission of the WCP is to preserve and present marginalized and infrequently screened films from regions generally ill equipped to preserve their own cinema history. This month’s film is Touki Bouki. With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. In this French New Wave–influenced fantasy-drama, two young lovers long to leave Dakar for the glamour and comforts of France, but their escape plan is beset by complications both concrete and mystical. Characterized by dazzling imagery and music, the alternately manic and meditative Touki bouki is widely considered one of the most important African films ever made.

Cinemagic is organizing these events as part of its efforts to contribute to the development of an internationally competitive Kuwaiti audio-visual production industry, partly by bringing the filmmakers and audiences together and by increasing the public’s interest in – and appreciation for – the art of film-making. Cinemagic movies are screened in the old Salmiya, on the rooftop of Xcite and LG [Map]. There is no entrance fee. Here is a link to their Facebook group [Link]




Categories
Blog Info

Welcome to the new Community

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.




Categories
Automotive

Book your driving test online

Just found out from Frankom that you can now book your driving test online via the MOI website. It’s great how the government is moving more stuff online but not sure why they’re still sticking with the 90s style geocities website look. [Link]




Categories
Food & Drinks

Qout Market is back again tomorrow

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]




Categories
Sports

The Kuwait National American Football Team

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]




Categories
News

#firstworldproblems

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]




Categories
Information Video Games

Best Video Games 2013

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.


3 – Super Mario 3D World

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.




Categories
Food & Drinks

So I tried the Cannolis

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]




Categories
Movies

Playtime short film showing tonight

playtime

‘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]