Search: “sti”

Taco Bell is opening up their first branch in Kuwait next Thursday at The Avenues. It’s about time! The list of places still left to open keeps shrinking… Wendy’s, A&W, Five Guys, Jack in the Box, White Castle, Arby’s, Cheese Cake Factory and In-N-Out.

KUWAIT CITY, Nov 2: The Ministry of Commerce and Industry has activated decision No. 614/1967 which allows foreigners, who enter Kuwait on tourist visas and stay in five-star hotels, to consume alcohol, reports Al-Shahed daily. Sources said alcohol will be served in specially allocated places and the guests will not be allowed to drink in public places. MP Waleed Al-Tabtabaei reacted to the report, saying “it is either a joke or certain parties are testing waters to see if the idea will work.” Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Al-Tabtabaei said “the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has denied all such reports and added that it did not issue any such circular in 1977.” [Source]

Kuwait Times predicted this 3 years ago [Link]

The weather is great and so the Cinemagic movie nights are back on. Cinemagic would like to extend its early EID wishes to all the fans and supporters. They wish you all the best happy life. Also note that during this occasion, the whole week of ADHA, they will not be screening any films. Happy Eid.

Thursday, November 4th at 7:30PM
THE WIZARD OF OZ
Director: Victor Fleming
Country: USA
Release: 1939
Genre: Adventure | Fantasy | Musical | Family
Running time: 101 minutes
Language: English | English Subtitle
Awards: 2 Oscars, 5 other wins and 8 nominations
Rated: PG

Saturday, November 6th at 7:30PM
A PROPHET
Director: Jacques Audiard
Country: France
Release: 2009
Genre: Drama | Crime
Running time: 155 minutes
Language: French | English Subtitle
Awards: 25 awards and 15 nominations
Rated: R

Thursday, November 11th at 7:30PM
SURPRISE FILM
Director:
Country:
Release: 2009
Genre: War | Drama
Running time: 93 minutes
Language: Arabic | French | English | English Subtitle
Awards: 9 awards and 6 nomination
Rated: 15+

Saturday, November 13th at 7:30PM
I AM LOVE
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Country: Italy
Release: 2010
Genre: Drama
Running time: 120 minutes
Language: Italian | English Subtitle
Awards: 2 awards
Rated: R

Thursday, November 25th at 7:30PM
EXILED
Director: Johnnie To
Country: Hong Kong
Release: 2006
Genre: Thriller | Crime
Running time: 110 minutes
Language: Cantonese | English
Subtitle Awards: 6 awards, and 10 nominations
Rated: 15+

Saturday, November 27th at 7:30PM
CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’
Director: Cristian Nemescu
Country: Romania
Release: 2007
Genre: Comedy | Drama
Running time: 155 minutes
Language: English | Romanian | English Subtitle
Awards: 9 awards and 1 nomination
Rated: 15+

Cinemagic Kuwait, 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 roof on top of Alghanim Electronics and LG. There is a KD1 charge for the venue fees which includes refreshments, popcorn and much more. Here is a link to their Facebook group [Link]

Fahad just started his own health and fitness blog! For those of you who don’t know who he is, Fahad is the owner of the Core Fitness gym and is a guest writer on this blog. You can check some of his previous health related posts [Here]. According to his new blogs “about” page this is what he will be posting:

Essentially, anything associated with health and fitness is trying to be Fahad. As such, this blog will hopefully offer the latest and updated news on the world of health and fitness, including bodybuilding, sports performance, nutrition and achieving overall well-being. You’ll also witness all my trials and tribulations (some might fail, and some might succeed) in achieving maximum potential both physically and mentally.

I’ll be documenting my meals, workouts and dietary supplements. As an avid health-seeker, I’ll also be roaming around the streets of Kuwait reviewing what products, foods, restaurants, drinks, etc are worth your hard-earned (or not so hard-earned) cash.

So check out his new blog and don’t forget to bookmark it. [Link]

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.