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Last year I visited Riyadh to check out the Noor Festival, the largest light art festival in the world. Noor means light in Arabic and last year they had 44 different light installations spread across Riyadh and some were really epic. This year the festival is going to be even bigger with over 80 artists invited to participate.

Monira Al Qadiri (@moniraism), the Kuwaiti visual artist whom I’ve previously featured on the blog before is one of the artists invited to take part in the festival this year which starts on November 30th and continue till December 16th.

Visiting the different light installations is free and finding them is easy using the festival app.

If you’ve never been to Riyadh it’s a fun road trip if you want to drive down. Any resident of Kuwait can also apply for a Saudi tourism eVisa no matter of your nationality. There is a lot to do in Riyadh in terms of things to see and restaurants to experience. Last year I went for one night only because there were a handful of light installations I wanted to see but it was really hectic and I wished I stayed a night longer. You can do it in just a night if you really want but two nights would be much better experience.

For more information on the festival, visit @noorriyadhfestival or riyadhart.sa/en/noor-riyadh

The Palestinian Culture Center has been operating in Kuwait since the early 1970s. Every year they hold an exhibition with the aim to keep the vibrant Palestinian culture alive, and support underprivileged women and children in the camps.

This will be the 58th exhibition held by the Palestinian Culture Center and all net proceeds from it will be dedicated to humanitarian aid for Gaza.

The exhibition starts tomorrow and will have hand-stitched dresses, shawls, and cushions for sale, as well as handmade ceramics, books, and food aimed to preserve the Palestinian national identity and showcase how it adapts to modern times.

Place: Women’s Cultural & Social Society in Khaldiya
Date: Tuesday Nov 7th – Friday Nov 10th
Time: 10AM – 8PM

For more information or photos, visit @palestiniancc

Photo on top by @prettygreenbullet

Starting tomorrow Sunday, November 5th, the American International University Film Festival 2023 will take place for the second consecutive year.

There are various activities you can participate in during the film festival, including film screenings, lectures, workshops, and discussion panels. Best of all, they’re all free to attend and participate in! Whether you simply want to watch movies or you’re an aspiring filmmaker looking to attend a workshop or watch a lecture, this is an event you definitely shouldn’t miss.

The film festival will be held at the AIU campus from November 5 to 11, 2023. Cinescape is their strategic partner, and as a result, film screenings will take place both on the AIU campus and at selected Cinescape theaters. There is also no registration requirement for any of the Cinescape venues.

There are 12 speakers, 7 lectures, 4 workshops, and over 40 film screenings all scheduled for next week. The director of the Kuwaiti film “How I Got There”, Dr. Zeyad Alhusaini is also going to be one of the lecturers at the festival. His movie got significant international attention making this a great opportunity to pick his brain.

So one more time just to be clear, ALL events during the film festival are open to the public, are free, and do not require prior registration.

For more information visit aiu.edu.kw/film-festival or head over to @aiu_kw

Strategic partner:
@cinescapekuwait

Sponsors:
@debenhamsmiddleeast
@weyaybank
@alialghanimandsons

Give is a local non-profit organization that aims to improve the process of donating to charities. Their online platform connects people with registered Kuwaiti charities in order to make it easier to discover what projects are available and to donate to them all from one place.

In light of the atrocities taking place in Palestine right now, Give has over a dozen Palestine missions listed aimed squarely at urgent relief efforts.

The process of donating is really simple and fast, the easiest I’ve personally ever encountered. You don’t have to create an account or input any personal information, all you have to do is select the relief mission you want to donate to, select the amount and then pay using one of the many different options available. If you have Apple Pay set up, the whole process from selecting a relief project to donating will take you less than a minute.

To donate right now to the relief efforts, just click here.

The Palestinian Culture Center has been operating in Kuwait since the early 1970s. Every year they hold an exhibition with the aim to keep this vibrant culture alive and support underprivileged women and children in the camps.

This year the heritage exhibition will mark the launch of Palestinian Cultural Week. Starting today till Thursday, the Palestinian Culture Center will be holding its exhibition at the Women’s Cultural & Social Society in Khaldiya from 10AM to 8PM.

The exhibition will have hand-stitched dresses, shawls, and cushions for sale, as well as handmade ceramics, books, and food aimed to preserve the Palestinian national identity and showcase how it adapts to modern times.

Below is the schedule of the rest of the events this week:

For more info check out @palestiniancc

This isn’t something a lot of people would need but is very useful for those who do. EQPAD is a small business that specializes in high-quality acoustic treatment solutions. It all started when the owner struggled to find high-quality sound absorbers and bass traps in Kuwait and decided to get things done himself. He then decided to turn it into a business and now offers a service that includes the design of the product customized to your room, delivery, and installation.

If you’re interested check them out on Instagram @eqpad.sound

Thoubha is a local domestic abuse app created by the team behind @abolish153. The app is disguised to look like a fashion news streaming app that has a hidden menu button that takes you to resources covering domestic violence in Kuwait.

The domestic violence section in the Thoubha app contains documents covering the ABC’s of domestic violence in Kuwait, information on creating a safety plan, and other self-assessment documents. The application also has a live chat which is handled by volunteers that have been trained by heads of shelters and helpline centers to handle and deal with abuse survivors. Finally, the application also connects survivors with needed services such as life coaches, lawyers and medical professionals.

If you’re a victim of domestic abuse or know of someone who is, please download or have them download Thoubha. The download link is in the @abolish153 bio or click here.

Over the weekend I visited Riyadh to check out the Noor Festival. Noor means light in Arabic and I think they have around 44 different installations located all around Riyadh for this festival. Some of the installations are really epic and I mainly went to check out two, the one above by SpY Studio, and the one below by Arne Quinze.

All the installations are free to check out although for some it seemed like they required to get free tickets so I did, but then nobody was checking for tickets.

I only wanted to spend one night in Riyadh so I was rushing from one place to another to check out the installations. It was Friday which meant there wasn’t much traffic which was great. The Arne Quinze installation was located around an hour outside Riyadh in the middle of nowhere so that took the longest to get to. It was actually located on the same road into Riyadh coming from Kuwait (I only realized the second day on my way back to Kuwait) so if you leave Kuwait around 11AM you could get there just in time for sunset, check it out, and then continue into the city.

I got to Riyad around 1PM had lunch, checked into my hotel, had coffee, and then drove back out of Riyadh for an hour to get to the installation and another hour coming back. I also spent an hour at the location because there was a second installation (photo above) right next to it, So the Arne Quinze installation took the most amount of time to check out but it was definitely worth it.

Finding the different installations was easy since Noor Riyadh has an app showing all the different installations on a map. All the locations open up on Google Maps so find them was simple. I say you’d need 2 nights in Riyadh to visit most of the ones you’re interested in, especially if you want to do other things in Riyadh. I wanted to also visit Riyadh Boulevard City (tickets from here) and have dinner there at Public (it was great), but that meant by around 10 PM I decided to stop checking out the installations and head there, without Boulevard City I would probably have been able to check out maybe 2 to 4 more installations I was interested in.

Traveling to Riyadh is easy as I’ve posted before and if you live in Kuwait then it’s really easy to get an evisa. There wasn’t any traffic at the borders leaving Friday morning but there was traffic coming in on Saturday afternoon and I ended up spending 30 minutes at the Saudi side of the border.

For more information on Noor Riyadh and to download the app, visit their Instagram @noorriyadhfestival and their website riyadhart.sa/en/noor-riyadh

The last day of the festival is Saturday, November 19th.

The Palestinian Culture Center has been operating in Kuwait since the early 1970s. Every year they hold an exhibition with the aim to keep this vibrant culture alive and support underprivileged women and children in the camps. Starting today till Thursday, the center will be holding its 55th heritage exhibition at the Kuwait Graduates Society.

The exhibit will have hand-stitched dresses, shawls, and cushions for sale, as well as handmade ceramics, books, and food aimed to preserve the Palestinian national identity and showcase how it adapts to modern times.

If you’re interested in passing by, here is the info:

Place: Kuwait Graduates Society (Google Maps)
Date: Monday 7th to Thursday November 10th
Time: 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM

For more information visit them on Instagram @palestiniancc

Local banks have started testing Apple Pay after the Ministry of Finance dropped the idea of trying to levy a tax on Apple. Apple Pay allows you to pay by tapping your phone or watch to a payment terminal without needing to have your physical card on you. Apple Pay already works on our existing Knet machines but until now it hasn’t been possible to add your Kuwaiti debit or credit card to your phone.

All local banks are expected to launch Apple Pay at the same time, so no matter what bank you use, you’ll have Apple Pay.

I’m curious to see if adding a local Kuwaiti card to my US Apple account will cause some sort of conflict. I don’t think it will. Do you have a non-US card connected to your US Apple account? Does it change anything?

Was going through old versions of the TEC website using web.archive.org and I came across an old map with all the various TEC projects. Sadly most of the places have been closed down:

1. Kuwait Towers
2. Waterfront
3. Bend Algar Club
4. Green Island
5. Swimming Pool Complex
6. Ice Skating Rink
7. Musical Fountain
8. Shaab Club
9. Yacht Club
10. Al Shaab Slipway
11. Shaab Garden
12. Ras Alard Sea Club & Harbor
13. Showbiz
14. Plajat
15. Al Bida Sea Club
16. Missila Beach
17. Touristic Garden
18. Entertainment City
19. Abdali Shelter
20. Sabahia Garden
21. Ugaila Beach
22. Mangaf Beach
23. Nuwaiseeb Shelter
24. Kheiran Resort

You can view the larger version of the map by clicking here.

The Palestinian Culture Center has been operating in Kuwait since the early 1970s with the goal of preserving, developing, and disseminating Palestinian material heritage. They hold exhibitions yearly where they sell hand-stitched dresses, shawls, and cushions, as well as handmade ceramics, books, and food aimed to preserve the Palestinian national identity. But recently, the PCC launched an online shop where they sell the same items but minus the food. Their pricing policy is based on a formula where one-third of the price goes towards the cost of materials, one-third is the fee they pay the ladies doing the work, and one-third helps students and families in need.

Check out their website, your support helps sustain the livelihoods of more than 350 Palestinian refugee women and their families. Here is the link.

Every now and then I get comments under old recycling posts or emails asking me who they can contact to pick up stuff for recycling. It’s usually paper waste or old electronics that they want to recycle because they care about the environment. Well, I finally have an answer to that question now.

Enviroserve is a recycling facility in Kuwait that originally started off focusing on e-waste. I posted about them a few years ago but since that post they’ve grown to offer full recycling services and last year they introduced it to individuals and companies.

Enviroserve now recycles the following:
– Electronics
– Paper and Cardboard
– Plastics

Their pick-up rates are pretty decent. If you want a one-time pick up its 5KD, if you want a weekly pick up it’s 10KD a month, and if you want a monthly pickup it’s 48KD a year.

To find out more or to book a pick up, click here.

The Palace of Justice building was designed in the late 70s by the Scottish architect Sir Basil Spence, the same architect behind the Coventry Cathedral. The building was scheduled to be demolished once the new building under construction next door was completed but thankfully that isn’t happening anymore. The National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters has added the Palace of Justice on the list of modern heritage sites (source) which means it should no longer be demolished.

Happy for the Palace of Justice, but sucks that places like the Ice Skating Rink didn’t get added to the list.

A Business Insider article was published yesterday on the worst airports in the world and Kuwait came in 2nd. The problem is the list Business Insider used is from 2019 and so the list being shared locally is outdated.

In the current ranking, Kuwait STILL has the 2nd worst airport, but the rest of the list is slightly different:

1- Lisbon Portela Airport, Portugal
2- Kuwait International Airport, Kuwait
3- Eindhoven Airport, Netherlands
4- Henri Coandă International Airport, Romania
5- Paris Orly Airport, France
6- Malta International Airport, Malta
7- Frankfurt International Airport, Germany
8- Dubai International Airport, United Arab Emirates
9- London City Airport, United Kingdom
10- Manchester Airport, United Kingdom

The biggest difference between the 2022 list above and the 2019 list is that Kuwait is joined by UAE on the list. Dubai’s International Airport is currently ranked the 8th worst in the world for some reason. Qatar’s airport on the other hand is still ranked as the world’s best airport.

For the latest ranking of best and worst airports, check out the full list on AirHelp.