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K’S PATH is holding their first fundraising event of the year in a fantastic setting inspired by Alice in Wonderland. You’ll spend the afternoon drinking tea accompanied by music and a host channeling the eccentric Mad Hatter. Seats are limited; email [email protected] to know how to purchase tickets. The event will be hosted at The Kuwait Riding Center.

Date: Friday, 29th March 2013
Time: 11AM to 1PM
Location: The Kuwait Riding Center
Ticket: KD15

Update: Event has sadly been canceled.

Under the change, Kuwaitis will be given priority for medical checkups at public hospitals and clinics during the morning, with foreigners only able to access doctors in the afternoon, unless it is an emergency.

Staff also will be segregated according to their nationality, with Kuwaitis working in the morning and expat doctors in the afternoon. [Source]

Even though this doesn’t apply to emergency treatment it still doesn’t make it less racist.

Wanna know how an alcohol permit used to look like in Kuwait? Check this one out by clicking [Here]

Update: On a related note and from the archives.. Oil, Oil Everywhere, But Not a Drop to Drink

It’s pretty common to hear about expats being discriminated in Kuwait so it was interesting to read a post by yousefq8 who writes about how as a Kuwaiti he was being discriminated the whole time while apartment searching. It seems most of the places he was checking didn’t want to rent out to Kuwaitis and so he resorted to lying and talking in English to make things easier for himself. I have no idea why they would discriminate against a Kuwaiti, maybe expats don’t feel they can live comfortably when there is a Kuwaiti living next door? Not sure but you can read his post [Here]

This weekend there’s going to be a kids challenge fair taking place at Marina Mall in an attempt to break official Guinness World Records “In-A-Minute”. My guess is there will be various stalls with different activities which anyone can take part in trying to break a record in under a minute. The more interesting aspect for me is the fact the shortest woman in the world (pictured above) and the man with the largest feet will be at Marina Mall to take photos with.

Guiness World Records “In-A-Minute”
Location: Marina Mall
Date: March 14, 15 and 16

Update: I passed by Marina Mall and turns out the shortest woman was only there for the first day and won’t be showing up anymore. Sucks.

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.

I’m currently in Lebanon for the weekend and earlier today I went paragliding. Now that I’ve tried it I think everyone should when they visit Lebanon the next time since it’s a pretty cool experience. It wasn’t something I had planned to do, I was snowboarding with a friend and during a break we started talking and I found out he paraglides. So I told him I wanted to try it and he called his friend up and we booked an appointment for 2PM. Once we were done snowboarding we headed to the take off location which was high up in the mountain above the area Jounieh. The view was obviously spectacular and the weather was fantastic.

It was me and another girl who were planning to paraglide. It’s a tandem flight meaning you fly while strapped to an expert. You start off high up in the mountain and end up down right next to the sea (where I am pointing in the picture above). There was only one expert so the girl went first and I waited for them to land and get back up. The spot we were taking off from is a popular location and right after they left, 3 military men (I think they were French) arrived and also took off in sequence.

To take off the wind speed and direction need to be right and when it was my turn we didn’t have to wait long to go. I was strapped to the paraglider and when he told me run I had to run. Then suddenly just like that we were up in the air. It was an incredible feeling and surprisingly not very scary. The only parts that were freaky for me was when I was Instagramming the picture above live while up in the sky since I was worried I would drop my phone while doing so. The second scary part was when he gave me the controls to fly for a bit. It’s pretty simple to work but still the idea that I was flying the thing was freaky. The whole flight took around 20 minutes.

So yeah if you’re in Lebanon the next time you should definitely give this a try. The whole experience cost me just $120. To book an appointment call Caroline on +9613559992 or visit their website for more details [Here]

The Kuwait International Film Retreat have just opened up their registration. If you have a short film that you produced in the past two years you have until April 10 to submit it.

The 2nd Edition of the Kuwait International Film Retreat will be a 3-day mini-film festival bringing together filmmakers and enthusiasts from around Kuwait and the Region to take part in short and feature film screenings, workshops, social gatherings, the red carpet, and an awards ceremony showcasing the best short films in competition.

Last year the Film Retreat earned a lot of respect and praise when they decided to play the movie Tokai at the event even though the Ministry of Information had banned them from doing so.

So if you’re a filmmaker this is a great event to be part of and a great way to get noticed. For more information visit the Kuwait International Film Retreat website [Here]

In early December of 2012, I was asked to participate in a program to sterilize dogs on the Bahamian island of New Providence. The program, organized by the non-profit Animal Balance, was a joint endeavor between Bahamian veterinary and animal welfare organizations, Animal Balance, and a wide array of veterinary professionals, animal catchers, and volunteers from seven countries whose combined goal it was to sterilize an incredible 2,000 or more dogs in a mere two weeks.

The issue of loose dogs on New Providence has been a concern for citizens, government, visitors, and animal welfare supporters for many years. Many communities around the world face the difficulty of managing large populations of free-roaming dogs, and the island of New Providence has a population of approximately 20,000.

Operation Potcake?
Traditionally, potcake refers to the inch or two of compacted, charred remains of rice and peas at the bottom of Bahamian pot-baked dishes. Instead of being discarded, this rice cake was put out for the street dogs as their primary source of nutrition. In time, the islanders began to refer to the dogs themselves as potcakes, and the name has stuck. Generations of tourists coming to enjoy the pristine scenes of the Bahamas have fallen in love with potcakes and given them a reputation throughout the world as loveable street dogs.

Putting it Together
Community based sterilization programs set out to achieve three basic goals: Improved quality of life for street animals, improved quality of life for residents, and decrease the number of animals on the streets. The recent clinics on New Providence did all that and more. In all, five clinics were set up across the 20-mile long island. Residents were encouraged to bring their dogs to the clinics for sterilization and basic treatment. Teams of veterinarians, veterinary technicians, and volunteers at each site documented the animals, processed them for surgery, nursed them through recovery, and made them comfortable until they were reunited with their owners or returned to their territory. Meanwhile, the team I was a part of was tasked to go out and catch dogs that otherwise would not make it to the clinics either because of distance, lack of transport, or because the dogs were not owned.

My Perspective
In Kuwait, I manage a program that has been catching dogs at a rate of 1,500 per year for nearly two years now. Many of our dogs are exceedingly difficult to catch because they have faced so much intentional cruelty like being shot at, having things thrown at them, and being chased by vehicles. They are, as a result, very difficult to catch, and it requires a unique skillset to do so. I was therefore very interested to see how my experience, which has been limited to Kuwait and a few Asian countries, would hold up on an island in the south Atlantic.

Once on the island, I was assigned to a team of four including an animal control technician, a veterinary technician, a local volunteer, and myself. We were given a number of humane live traps (photo above) and a quota for the number of animals we needed to bring back to the clinic every day. Our destinations were low-income neighborhoods where loose dogs were prevalent. We could guess what kind of dogs we would encounter, but we had no idea what kind of people we might meet. It turned out that most of the people we met were absolutely wonderful. On arrival in each area, residents would expostulate: “What are you doing with that dog!” With an explanation that we were taking the dogs to be sterilized and treated then returned within two days, their wall of concern would immediately break down and they would engage all of their friends, neighbors, and family members to bring us their dogs. It was incredible to see. When we found a dog that didn’t seem like it lived in front of a particular house, we would just ask. Someone always knew if the dog was “owned” (some dogs were kept in yards or chained while others were ‘owned’ but loose) or not. People knew every dog on their street. If the owner was inside or away from home, someone would go and get them or make a phone call and set up a time for us to collect the animal. News of our presence would spread like wildfire on every street, and it seemed like every man, woman, and child was ready to help in some way. I was especially amazed and pleased when I caught a dog named Pablo whose brindle coat and friendly personality made him an instant favorite. After placing him on a truck and driving to a different neighborhood to collect more dogs, two kids came up to us on bikes and said “Hey! I know that dog! That’s Pablo!” It was very uplifting to see the communities so engaged in improving the lives of their dogs.

After the first day in the field, we realized that much of our work was not going to be the complex system of trapping difficult dogs I had become so used to in Kuwait. Rather, we found we could simply enter these little micro-communities of a few houses on a side road and tell them what we were doing and how it would help them. We therefore didn’t have to do very much difficult capture. Most of our work became opening cage doors, doing paper work, and carrying the ‘trapped’ dogs around the trucks and clinics. Still, there were plenty of dangerous dogs that required more skill to catch and handle. There were also some truly feral dogs to catch, and I was happy to see that the methods we use in Kuwait are pretty much the same as those people are using around the world.

Bringing it Home
In the end, Operation Potcake sterilized 2,315 dogs in 10 days—a truly phenomenal number. But the true success of this project was not in numbers, no matter how impressive. Operation Potcake proved that when a few passionate people put their hearts, and just as importantly their heads, together toward a common goal, they can bring together communities, change the thinking of a government, inspire a people, and give new value to even so humble a creature as a Bahamian Potcake. Operation Potcake is now a five-year program that will build upon itself and work toward the goal of sterilizing most of the 20,000 dogs on New Providence, and because of the success of the initial operation, the government has now bought into the program. They are now adopting sterilization as a primary method of population control throughout all of the Bahamian islands.

Kuwait has an even bigger problem. We have close to 10,000 feral dogs roaming areas outside of the city, and no one can even estimate the number of cats on the streets. There are certainly hundreds of thousands of the latter. K’S PATH, with our limited funding and staff, is only currently able to handle a few thousand animals each year. However, we have worked tirelessly over the past five years to gain an expert understanding of the root cause of the problem, and we have the knowledge to implement solutions. Industry, namely Kuwait Oil Company and Saudi Arabian Chevron have already taken notice and made us their exclusive contractor for animal population management. For us, our “Operation Potcake” has been completed many times over. We retain the proof of our accomplishments, and we’ve submitted them to the government of Kuwait. We stand ready to act, but we simply cannot do this alone.

Post by John Peaveler
Managing Director
Kuwait Society for the Protection of Animals and Their Habitat (K’S PATH)

This Friday Chris ‘Douggs’ McDougall will be BASE jumping off the top of Al Hamra Tower. The event is free to watch but I’ve got two VIP passes to give away (to 1 person) courtesy of Kromozone. These tickets can’t be purchased and they give you access to the enclosed VIP area outside near the fountain and will have seating, bean bags, food and drinks. It will also have it’s own private entrance from the mall so you won’t have to deal with the crowds.

If you’re interested leave a comment below.

Rules: Only one entry per person and please make sure you use a working email since the winner will be contacted by email. If winner doesn’t respond another winner will be randomly chosen.

Update: I closed the post for commenting at 11PM and using random.org the first number I drew was 42. But, that person got disqualified for posting two comments. The second number I drew was 39 and the winner of this giveaway is Noura. I also drew a third number as backup in case Noura doesn’t respond and that number is 69 Karan. Thanks everybody.

Over 1,500 students from 75 schools will be cleaning up 25 beaches tomorrow in an hour. The campaign titled “Rescuing Our Coasts in an Hour” is not meant only to clean the coasts but also to encourage and teach students the value of voluntary work. [Source]

I really like the idea but it could also be very demotivating for the students if they visit the beach again after the weekend and see all the litter back again and their hard work gone to waste. Even though the baladiya has added a ton of new garbage bins all along the coastal pathway (like every 10 meters), a lot of people are still ignoring them.

While we’re on the subject, whatever happened to the KD1,000 fine for barbecuing in a public place? They should bring it back and create another fine for littering as well.

Picture above from the Doha beach clean up [Link]

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]

Over the holidays I stayed in two different hotels in two different cities and I had really good experiences with both of them. If you’re planning to go to Amsterdam or Paris I would recommend you check these two out:

Le Citizen Hotel – Paris
I took the train from Amsterdam to Paris and the hotel was around a 15 minute walk from the Gare du Nord station. At first I thought the hotel was going to be far away from everything but it turned out to be close to the Metro and walking distance to many popular places (by walking distance I mean 30 to 60 minute walks). The hotel overlooks a canal and so doesn’t have any buildings blocking the views from the window. I stayed in the Zen room which was really spacious and super trendy with a colorful lounge like area, a large bathroom and a beautiful bed. I didn’t wanted to leave the room. The wifi at the hotel is fast and free and the staff were very friendly. The next time I go back to Paris I’m definitely staying at this hotel again. [Link]

Albus Hotel – Amsterdam
Although my room at the Albus wasn’t as great looking as Le Citizen it was still modern and trendy. What I really loved about the hotel though was the location. The hotel is a 30 minute walk from Amsterdam Centraal or a 10 minute tram ride. You’re also close to a lot of popular hotspots in Amsterdam and no matter where I went, all the roads somehow led back to the hotel. In case of late night munchies there is a McDonalds and a Chipsy King 2 minutes away from the hotel. The hotel staff were friendly and the internet is free but… only at the slow 256K speed. If you want faster internet you need to pay for it. I’d most likely stay at this hotel again on my next trip, great location and not very pricey. [Link]

Over the weekend I visited Jahra for the first time with a friend and I have to say it turned out to be a lot more interesting than I was expecting it to be. Below are some things I would recommend doing if you do decide to visit (listed in the order I visited):

Al Sabeenat
Al Sabeenat is a traditional Kuwaiti restaurant located in Jahra. The place is pretty spacious and on a Friday for lunch we had no trouble at all finding a place to sit. I had the morabyen and it was pretty good and price wise they seemed similar to Freej Swaileh. The restaurant is also located near a resort, a mall and The 99 Village which makes it a convenient starting point. Here is their location on [Google Maps]

Random Art
I found this by chance hidden behind a building and I thought it was pretty cool and very random. There were two walls, one had bicycles mounted all over it while the other had designs created with hubcaps. To find the place you need to enter the mall near Al Sabeenat and come out the other side where you will find a Red Tag store. The two walls are located behind Red Tag so you need to make your way to the back of that building (there are some hidden stairs behind the mosque). Here is the location on [Google Maps]

The 99 Village
Take an amusement park and slap some stickers with The 99 superhero characters and you end up with The 99 Village. Wasn’t that disappointing a visit since they had a sack slide which I was able to slide down a few times. But sadly they didn’t let me jump on the trampolines. Here is the location on [Google Maps]

Hungry Bunny
Hungry Bunny was one of the first fast food burger joints in Kuwait and so it holds a big nostalgia factor. I had the Super Bunny and I thought it was pretty decent and tasted very similar to what I recall a Super Bunny tasting like in the 80s. But, unless you have childhood memories of the place, Hungry Bunny might not be for you. Here is the location on [Google Maps]

Red Fort
We ended our visit to Jahra with a tour of the Red Fort (or Red Palace). The Red Fort was the site of the Battle of Jahra in 1920 between Kuwaiti and Saudi forces and so has historical importance. The fort was smaller than I expected it to be and not that exciting as well but entrance was free and it was nice to walk around inside. Here is the location on [Google Maps]

Even though nothing we visited had a wow factor, when combined all these places provided for a pretty entertaining afternoon.