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Brett Jordan is still scanning and uploading pictures of Kuwait from the early 60s. So far he has uploaded over 100 pictures and he’s still uploading. What I like about his collection of photos other than the fact they’re being scanned in super high resolution revealing some amazing details but also the fact some of them show Kuwait in a way I hadn’t seen it before.

He’s got some really great stuff there, the three pictures here are just some of the new one’s he’s uploaded. Here is the link to his collection [Link]

This is the latest GulfRun 6 video and although it’s short it still kicks ass . I’m currently in Lebanon and get back to Kuwait on the 25th and then the following day will head out to Bahrain to catch up with the guys. If you’ve never been to a GulfRun event you should at least once. [YouTube]

The luxurious car show Concours d’Elegance is going to be held for the second time in Kuwait early next month. Like last year, it going to be an important and prestigious event that will attract people from both inside and outside Kuwait.

What is the Concours d’Elegance?
Concours is a French word meaning competition. The concept of Concours originates in 17th C. France when aristocrats used to choose their best horse carriages to parade around parks of Paris during the summer week ends and holidays. Later these traditions changed to automobiles from the 20th C. Concours today have strict regulations and cars are inspected by qualified judges. Trophy winners are carefully chosen. Each year there are numerous events which take place across the world, many of which are world famous, including Villa d’Este in Italy, Goodwood in UK, and Pebble Beach in USA. The Kuwait Concours d’Elegance is rapidly becoming a fixture in this international programme, able to attract some of the world’s rarest and exotic motorcars.

Date
February 2nd to the 6th 2011
10:00AM – 10:00PM

Location
Marina Mall interior, Marina Crescent and Marina Lawn.

Last week X-Cite sent me a Kinect to review for the blog. I had been reading a lot about it online (mostly all the cool hacks people were doing) and was interested to try it out. The Kinect is Microsoft’s answer to the Wii and the Sony Move except unlike either of those two, the Kinect doesn’t use a physical controller, you become a controller. When I first opened the box I was surprised by the size, I was expecting it to be smaller but the Kinect is pretty big. I struggled to find a place to put it (you’re supposed to have it either on top of your tv or below). The second issue I ran into was space, the Kinect requires you to be standing at least 1.8 meters away from it. My living room is pretty small so it was having trouble detecting me. Finally I moved the Kinect to my other TV where I had more space in front of it and managed to get it working there.

The Kinect is freaky, it recognizes you, your hands, your head, your legs… your whole body. With the Wii and PS3 you need to actually hold a controller in your hand and move that around but with the Kinect you don’t need any of that. It’s like a much more advanced version of the PlayStation Eye. In the games I was playing, if I put my hand on my head so would my character in the game, if I clapped my hands or started stomping my feet so would my character. It felt like I was inside the game.

The Kinect comes with a game called Kinect Adventures. Inside it there are five different games that show off the Kinect’s abilities. The games are:

20,000 Leaks – In this game you’re basically standing in a glass room under the sea and fish and sharks come and bang the glass to create leaks. You need to try and cover the leaks as they happen. In some cases you get 5 leaks at the same time so you have a hand on every leak, your head covering another leak and each foot on a leak as well. It’s fun for a few minutes but gets boring quickly. In two player mode it’s slightly more fun.

River Rush – You’re on a raft going down the river and you should avoid obstacles by either shifting your weight to one side of the raft or by jumping. I didn’t find this fun even when playing it two players.

Rally Ball – This was my favorite game, it’s a mixture between the classic breakout game and dodge ball. You have to throw a ball towards objects down a hallway and try to get rid of them. Sometimes you hit objects that doubles or triples the amount of balls so you have to start moving quickly trying to throw them all back at the objects. Me and my brother enjoyed playing this the most.

Reflex Ridge – The most physically exhausting game of the bunch since it’s kinda like a track and field game. You’re standing on a moving railway cart and you need to avoid objects by other jumping, ducking, moving left or moving right. Video games shouldn’t be this physically active and after one round I was all sweaty and out of breath.

Space Pop – The most boring game of the bunch, you’re in space and you need to float up and pop balloons all around. Not fun, didn’t even bother playing it two players.

Playing the games two players is more fun than alone. You only need one Kinect to play games two players but you need to stand at least 2.2meters away from the Kinect device. The games that come with the Kinect aren’t that great but since they’re free you can’t complain that much. There are more games you can buy that work with Kinect but I didn’t have a chance to try them. The PlayStation Move is more advanced than the Wii and sometimes like in a first person shooter it would be cool to physically hold an assault riffle, but the Microsoft Kinect is a more advanced system than the Move and because your whole body becomes a controller it really opens up a lot of doors. I’m giving it a 4.5 out of 5. I just wish the games that came with it were more fun.

The Kinect is available at X-Cite as either a standalone for KD54.9 or with the Xbox Slim 4GB for KD126 or with an Xbox Slim 250GB for KD148.

The one thousand dinars grant is causing a lot of controversy. Yesterdays post already surpassed 200 comments and the conversation still hasn’t stopped. One impression you might get by reading all the comments in that post is that people will only be using the money for superficial things. That’s not the case for everyone. Below is a story of a Kuwaiti girl who wants to remain anonymous. She won’t be using the money to buy a new phone or go on a shopping spree, instead she will be using the one thousand dinars grant for something much more important to her. Please take the time to read her story below.

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Hi, I am a 27 years old Kuwaiti girl, I am not privileged and I need an operation to be able to speak and eat.

I was born with a defect called underbite which means my top jaw is very very small. It would be easy to fix at a young age but I am very unfortunate to have ignorant and illiterate parents. I didn’t know what I had was a defect, I only thought I was ugly as that’s what my mother kept telling me.

I have very severe underbite, it is so bad that I can’t breath with my nose and so I have to keep my mouth open all the time to be able to breath. I can’t chew solids because my teeth don’t meet so I only enjoy chocolate since it easily melts in my mouth.

I can’t pronounce many letters and all my life people have avoided me. People seem to think I am mentally retarded when I speak. I’m not, I am just like you. I am smart and a graduate of Kuwait University. I even used to have a job before I had to quit because of the none-stop teasing.

I reached to a point where I had enough of all this so I begged my family to help but they refuse to even talk to me. My mother thinks I’m ugly and not like my sisters and no one will marry me so why bother even speak to me? (I know this is stupid but what can i do? This is how my family thinks). So I took action all by myself. I figured I can do it, I am a Kuwaiti living in Kuwait so it should be easy. I went to a public clinic that transferred me to another one that also transferred me to a dentist who removed 2 of my healthy teeth and told me that was it and that I was fine. After that I saved up money and went to a private clinic, the doctor told me the teeth that got pulled out had nothing to do with my problem and that everything could be fixed with an underbite correction surgery. He told me the first thing I needed to do was get dental implants to replace the two pulled teeth, so I did that. Then I needed braces for a year and I did that too.

After one year of work, the surgery is all I have left, so I went again and tried the clinic, I thought after all these years maybe they have an idea about my condition. But once again the public clinic transferred me to a hospital which transferred me to a dentist but this time I got yelled at by the receptionist telling me I shouldn’t be here.

I gave up on them, I researched online about doing this operation in Kuwait and all I found was one doctor that could fix me at a cost of KD5,000 and another doctor but in Lebanon that can also fix me but for $12,000. So this is what I am doing now, I am saving up to do this operation and hopefully look, speak, and eat normally.

The KD1,000 Amir grant is bringing me closer to my dream, so thank you Amir of Kuwait.

I am only sharing my story with all of you so that maybe someone in charge can read it and fix the public health care system in my country, Kuwait. I have never used this iPhone or Blackberry everyone is having, we live a very simple life and no matter how many times we fight at home, I am grateful and thankful for my family and country. I would never change them, maybe I’d change the way they see me, but not them.

Four years ago I posted asking what you guys were going to do with the KD200 the government was giving everyone. Today I read the government is giving every Kuwaiti KD1000. That’s a bigger chunk of change so what are your plans for the thousand dinars?

Update: I just realized something. KD1000 x 1.12 million Kuwaitis = KD1,120,000,000 which = $3,964,601,780 which = the same price it cost to build Disneyland Paris. We could have had… Disneyland Kuwait!

Kuwait’s came 61st in the 2011 Index of Economic Freedom with a score of 64.9. Its scored 2.8 points lower than last year, with declines in five of the 10 economic freedoms, including a large drop in labor freedom. In the Middle East and North Africa, Kuwait ranked 8th out of 17 countries. It’s the only GCC country to drop in points but it’s overall score is still well above the world and regional averages.

Bahrain came in 10th place in the full world ranking.

Here is a link to the full ranking [Link]
Here is a link to the detailed breakdown of Kuwait’s score [Link]

Thanks FYI

At the end of December I went ahead and turned 2:48PM into a community blog which is a blog in which anyone can create an account and publish articles. I’ve simplified the process of signing up and posting as much as I can to help make it easy for people who’ve never blogged before. The blog isn’t without some rules though and every post that gets published passes through me first before appearing on the blog. The reason for that has to do more with quality control and not censorship.

So if you’re interested in posting on 2:48PM, just go ahead and sign up. [Link]

The video above is in Arabic but its about savings in the GCC. Kuwait and Saudi scored the lowest in terms of savings while 93% of the people questioned believed their savings were inadequate for their future needs. [YouTube]

The GulfRun race day is creeping up quickly just over a week left before everyone heads out to Bahrain for the two day event. Today everyone got together at the Al Falah car wash in Kuwait City to give the cars a nice rinse before applying the final sponsor stickers and heading out to 360 Mall where they will be parked the next two days for the car show.

The car show in being held at 360 Mall on Friday and Saturday (Jan 14 & 15). You will be able to check out all the cars up close, buy some Gulf Run merchandise and also raffle tickets to win some great prizes. Here is the link to the Gulf Run website [Link]

A few days back I posted two pictures that were taken by this guys parents back in the 1960’s when they were in Kuwait. Well the guy (Brett Jordan) has uploaded more pictures including the one I’ve posted above which is of the Sheraton roundabout. I can’t believe it was that beautiful. I can see Fahad Al Salem street in the background and it looks so green with all the trees! The whole street looks very spacious and clean, I wish it still looked like that today. Check out the rest of the pictures by visiting his flickr page [Here]

A friend of mine was at Marina Mall today and noticed that Massimo Dutti was shutdown. Now what I am curious about is the yellow sticker which you can see above. Whenever I see a shop closed down it’s usually with a red sticker. Does the yellow sticker mean something else?

Thanks Q

Update: A reader responded with the following bit of information..
The red sticker is referring to a violation of MOI rules
The yellow sticker is referring to a legal case

I found this local online store that sells TapouT clothing and gear here in Kuwait. Whenever I wear my Kenny Florian walkout shirt to the gym I always get asked where I got it from and my answer would be the US. Now though I can buy the t-shirts locally and their prices are pretty good. I haven’t ordered from them yet and I emailed them last week asking them if they had a physical store I could go and try the sizes but I still haven’t gotten a response. Not a good sign but it’s cash on delivery so nothing really to worry about. [Link]

Update: I placed an order on the website and received a phone call the following day asking for my address. The items were then delivered to me the same evening. Turns out they have a 15% discount at the moment so the price of a tshirt came out to KD11.900 which is great. Only comment I would have is now that I bought my first tshirt I wish they had an online payment option.

After I posted about the Fiat 500 being available in Kuwait their brand manager contacted me and offered the Fiat 500 to test drive over the weekend. So I picked it up on Thursday and spent the weekend just driving the 500 around.

The car is cute, to me it’s like a Vespa except it has 4 wheels. Everywhere I went people would check it out, kinda like the effect the Mini and VW Beetle had when they were modernized and first launched. The dealer has currently imported one version of the Fiat 500 which is the Lounge model with the 1.4L engine. It’s fully loaded with leather seats, electric sunroof, dual logic semi automatic transmission, automatic climate control, steering wheel controls, fog lights, chrome trimmings and more. It generates only 100hp which I thought would be pretty lifeless but was actually surprised by the performance… for a small 1.4L car.

Friday morning I woke up and headed out to the junkyard to take pictures of the car. I know junkyard? But truthfully it’s one of my favorite places to take pictures since the place has a lot of color. Driving the Fiat 500 on the 6th ring road the car easily managed to keep pace at 120KM/h without a sweat. What I found though is that the car is a lot more fun to drive in more densely populated roads and areas where the Fiat is easy to maneuver and navigate. Finding parking isn’t a problem for the 500, I got to Ruby’s Friday night and found a tiny parking spot where some motorbikes had parked, with a little skilled maneuvering I was able to squeeze the Fiat in and parked alongside the motorbikes. The trunk is pretty small as well with enough room to fit just one large travel bag. But when you fold down the rear sits you end up with a lot more space. I picked up my dad from the airport Friday night and I managed to fit two large bags and one carry-on with still plenty of room to spare. The interior console is also pretty cool, very retro and definitely an eye grabber. Headroom was a slight issue for me, I’m 6’1 and had maybe an inch or two of clearance on top of my head so someone taller than me might have a problem.

For me the car would make a lot of sense back in Lebanon, the low gas consumption and the small size would make a perfect day to day car. I could easily imagine myself driving the Fiat 500 to work daily and then using the Toyota FJ on the weekends. In Kuwait on the other hand gas is cheap and unless you’re driving around in Shuwaikh at 1PM you could really drive around in a Hummer H1 and not run into problems. But I guess sometimes when you just need to go on a quick short trip, maybe you need to go down to Hawalli and pick up a new hard drive or pass by Sultan Center in Salmiya on a weekend, I can see the Fiat being very practical in those cases. University students looking for a first car might also be attracted to it. There aren’t that many cars in the Fiat’s price range which have a personality of it’s own.

The Fiat dealership is launching sometime at the end of the month. At first they will just be selling the Fiat 500 but they will also be bringing in other Fiat models as well. The Fiat 500 is selling for KD6,500 which is similar to the UK prices. They’re also going to be bringing in a model without a sunroof which should cost around KD6,000. Now the #1 question I was asked by my friends about the car is if the dealer will be bringing the turbo charged Abarth models. Well according to the brand manager they are currently in talks with Abarth and they’re hoping to open the first Abarth dealership in the region here in Kuwait. So that’s good news for people waiting for the Abarth model. If you have any questions about the car you can ask me in the comments below and I’ll try to answer it.

A few days ago I posted a review of the Logitech GT Wheel and I mentioned that I would give it away to the person who had the saddest PS3 setup. A ton of people participated but there could only be one winner and the person who won is MR who submitted the picture above. Anyone that still uses his PS3 with a 14inch Gold Star television deserves to win the GT Wheel. Thank you to everyone who submitted pictures of their PS3 setup.