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I passed by with some friends last night to the Pro Kart Racing track off the 6th ring road. The track is located next to the drift track and a motocross track but to get to that whole area is a bit tricky since you need to take an unofficial exit off the 6th ring road but I’ve got a link to the area on Google Maps at the end of this post to help you out.

The track opened up a few months ago but the weather now is perfect for it. You don’t need a driving license to race on their track, you just need to be 14 years old or older. The cost is KD5 for an 8 minute session which is a lot longer than it sounds and I would say is 4 or 5 laps around their large track. The last time I had done go karting was in Lebanon back in 1995 so don’t really have much experience with it. The karts seemed pretty fast once they picked up speed but acceleration was pretty weak. The karts mostly had incredible grip on the track which made my ride back home in the FJ seem like I was driving a boat.

We raced at night which I highly do not recommend. They had issues last night with their flood lights (some were not working) which resulted in patches of the track that were pitch dark. Even the patches that were lit up weren’t really that bright. I would imagine things would be a lot more fun during the day since other than the fact you would actually be able to see the track but you would also be able to see your friends. Since they open up at 5PM there really isn’t much daylight hours so you would have to get there early.

The track is fairly big with a lot of great turns and a good amount of straights. One of the guys in our group races on the Bahraini national karting team and he obviously kicked all our asses. I came before last on my first try since my first couple of laps I was still getting used to the karts and then managed to pick up pace on my last laps. My second race was a total disaster since I came in last. After my good last laps in my first race I came in to the second race too confident and ended up going into the turns too fast and spinning out. I spun out at least 6 times and by then I was just too far behind to catch up.

Karting was a lot of fun but next time I would definitely want to go back during the day. Here is the location on the [Map] and here is a link to their [Website]. They’re open daily starting from 5PM, each race session is KD5.

So we can now mark off Red Lobster and Olive Garden from our restaurants we need to have in Kuwait list. What’s still missing? Wendy’s, A&W, Five Guys, Jack in the Box, White Castle, Arby’s, Cheese Cake Factory, In-N-Out and Taco Bell. [Link]

via SomeContrast

Anyone know whatever happened to Latina Mina the 99.7 DJ who was drunk and started cussing on the air? Did she ever end up getting arrested? Did she leave Kuwait or is she still here?

Back in May I linked to a PDF taken from a 1969 issue of National Geographic and spoke about the Villa pictured above because I loved the design of it. Well a reader just landed across my post and commented the following:

Hi, this is our house, it used to belongs to my father and 2 brothers, Mohamed, Nasser (my late father) and Faisal Al-Duaijani. It was built and finished in 1968 and we moved into it when I was 5 years old after previously living in Do3′a (Farwaniya now).

The house is located at the intersection of the 4th ring road with Damascus street in Al-Rodah and it was sold to Mr. Al-Mokeazeam (cant recall his first name.. sorry) back in 1985. There was some modifications done to it, they completed the 3rd floor and closed the balconies which really made it lose its futuristic (at that time) looks. The villa was also shown in (Tarbiya Wataniya) elementary school book back in 1979 as one of the landmarks of Kuwait with my uncle Faisal shown standing in the first floor balcony. The villa just next to it was built and owned by my aunt and her husband the late Mr. Jasem Al-3otaiby. It had the same features and it still exists (also with some modifications) but it was sold directly to Al-Banwan family which i guess they’re still living in it.

I’m sorry I can’t recall the name of the architect and I’ll try to ask about it and give tell you if I find out. From what I recall we had big disputes with him about the mocked copies of the villa, the one in 3deliya and the one in Khaldiya about the exclusivity of design and rights to it which believe it or not was stronger back in the 60′s & 70′s than today!!

Aaahh, I’m 45 years old now, where did the good old days go??!!

Thanks,
Abdulla

My brother went to the abandoned Amiri Hospital in Kuwait City and took a bunch of pictures. The place looks extremely freaky. My favorite shot has to be the one above, the coffin plus the word HELP scribbled onto the wall is just chilling. You can check out some of the pictures he took on his flickr account [Here]

Update: Below is a screen shot of my brothers flickr statistics, it shot up from 200 views to 10,100 views a day.

So I’ve previously post about Kuwaiti rappers and a country musician and so here is a Kuwaiti metalhead called Yousef. He has 4 sounds online, below is the metal one but you can hear his other songs [Here]

Lost by yahguitar

Kuwait has the highest ratio of domestic workers to citizens in the Middle East. The country’s more than 660,000 migrant domestic workers constitute nearly a third of the work force in this small Gulf country of only 1.3 million citizens. But domestic workers are excluded from the labor laws that protect other workers. They have minimal protection against employers who withhold salaries, force employees to work long hours with no days off, deprive them of adequate food, or abuse them physically or sexually.

[YouTube]

Interesting fact, 9.7% of all loans in Kuwait defaulted in 2009, that’s the worst rate among the GCC countries. On the other hand Qatar had the lowest level with just 1.7% of loans defaulting. With the financial crisis UAE went through I would have figured the rate there would be higher but in UAE only 4.6% of the loans defaulted. Weird. [Link]

Thanks FYI

Great old footage of the tank graveyard. I tried to get to the graveyard once and couldn’t pass the army check point before it. Does anyone know if its still there? [YouTube]

Some of you already noticed that I changed the blog banner last night from the “THEBSIDES” to “The A-SIDES”. Continuing to use the term B-Sides didn’t make sense since 2:48AM wasn’t the B-Side anymore. Originally during my Miskan project I needed a place to dump photos and talk about things that didn’t have room on Miskan (remember I was limited to 1 post a day) and so 2:48AM was created and the B-Side tag slapped on.

My Miskan project ended 5 years ago and 2:48AM no longer was the B-Side, instead it became the A-Side and I don’t know why it took me so long to change that.

So 2:48AM is now the A-Side but that made me realize something. When the blog first started I used to post 5+ posts per day. As the site grew and my readership base grew I started becoming a lot more picky to what to post and what not to. This is why I decided to create a B-Side to 2:48AM, a place where I could post stuff that wouldn’t usually make it on my main site here but was still content that many people would find interesting.

2:48PM [The B-Sides] is now live and you can access it by going to www.248pm.com or clicking the link on the far right of the navigation bar on top of this site. Starting today you will have a lot more posts and content to shift through so I hope everyone enjoys it. Any comments, feedback and ideas are always welcomed of course.

Last week I was leaving Shuwaikh when I spotted the Historical Vintage & Classic Cars Museum. I hadn’t seen it before but since I was late to work I figured I would pass by again another time. Turns out the museum still wasn’t open and the actual opening is happening tomorrow (10/10/10). The event will start off with a gathering at Kuwait Towers. The Kuwait Riders Bikers Team, Porsche Club Cars & Muscles & Old Cars group will be meeting up in the Kuwait Towers parking lot at 6PM 4:30PM and then drive off towards the museum at around 6:30PM 5PM. The museum is located in the area across from Tilal Complex and will contain over 150 cars. As a huge car fan I can’t wait to visit the place.

Thanks Ramez

Update: I just got a phone call telling me that the event has been officially postponed. No date is yet set but it would most probably be next week.

re:kuwait have a good idea which I hope someone reads and decides to implement. A lot of people have phones with built in cameras which can also geo-tag photos. That means you can take a picture and the exact location of where that picture was taken would be stored in the picture. What re:kuwait are suggesting is this:

What if some government entity creates a website where people can upload photos they take of things they feel are broken or wrong, such as graffiti, broken lamps, potholes, whatever. These photos are uploaded to the website by a few people wanting to do good for their community.

The government can then prioritize what needs to be fixed for example and find the location of the problem with the geo-tag. I think that would be an amazing idea. Here is a link to their [Post]

It was very strange walking into this store since it was mostly made up of cassette tapes with few CDs laid out in the middle. It reminded me of the early 90s when the market was just starting to get introduced to CDs and so I suddenly felt the urge to pick up a Vanilla Ice cassette.

What helped with this early 90s flashback was the fact that the majority of the tapes were from that era, Color Me Bad, Culture Beat, Dr Alban, you name it and they were all “Thomsun Original” branded tapes similar to the one’s Bells and Swan Lake used to sell for those who still remember. At KD1 for 3 tapes that’s a lot cheaper than the KD1.750 we used to pay for a single tape. Ah, the good old days of The Video Club…

The store is located on the first floor of the parking lot building behind Johnny Rockets Salhiya.

The Ministry of Interior have redesigned their website (for the worse in my opinion) and with it have removed an English version. You can’t view an English version of the site which means expats will have a much more difficult time trying to check and see if they have any speeding fines and other online services. Luckily they still haven’t deleted the old English site yet and it can still be accessed by manually replacing the word arabic in the url with the word english.

Arabic site: https://moi.gov.kw/portal/varabic/
English site: https://moi.gov.kw/portal/venglish/

Thanks Avay

Awhile ago I found out the Lexus IS F is now officially available at the dealer here in Kuwait. Previously the only way to get an ISF was to import one usually from the US where it launched back in 2008. Sadly the local dealer is selling it for KD25,000 which is nearly KD10,000 more expensive than in the US so it’s still cheaper to import one.