Search: “sti”

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.

After posting the videos of the Kuwaiti rappers earlier in the month one of my readers contacted me to tell me about his cousin. He told me his cousin was an extremely talented piano player… and was blind. I thought that would be great to share on the blog so he recorded a short video of his cousin playing the piano which you can watch above. Naser was born blind and has been playing the piano since he was 4. [YouTube]

I spotted new speed cameras on the First Ring Road. I think they measure your average speed because there are two cameras located at the start of the First Ring Road and two more located at the end. The first pair is located right after the highway 50 bridge if you’re heading from the Sheraton roundabout towards the Gulf Road. The road is only two lanes at that point and there is a camera pointing at each lane. The second pair is located right after the Istiqlal Highway bridge (road 30) when the multi-lane road becomes two lanes again.

The way these speed cameras work is they take a picture of your license plate at the first camera and then take a picture of your license plate after the second camera. It calculates the time it took from Camera A to Camera B and then calculates your average speed, if it’s higher than the maximum speed limit then you’re fined.

I know being 40 isn’t like being #1 or in the top 10 or top 20 but it’s still an accomplishment since Kuwait according to Newsweek is the best Arab country in the world. The results were based on Education, Health, Quality of Life, Economic Dynamism and Political Environment. Kuwait came in 24th place for Quality of Life while it loss mostly in the Education category coming in 76th place. That’s not good news. Lebanon on the other hand didn’t even make the list! Now that’s embarrassing. [Link]

Thanks Ahmed

Some of my long time readers might remember I had a huge issue with the BMW dealership a few years ago. Well even though I had the big fight with them I still ended up getting another Beemer after selling my old one (yup typical Lebanese). Anyway today while getting an oil change at the dealership I spotted a sign that said “Video Games”. I thought that was weird but figured they setup a kids area or something. As I got closer I spotted another sign that said “Internet” and noticed a bunch of laptops set up for people to use. I then noticed two large LCD screens connected to two PS3’s with a bunch of games laid out on the table. There was also a cozy waiting area with a huge LCD screen and a coffee machine for complimentary drinks. I should have checked if there was wifi but totally forgot to do that.

I haven’t dealt with a lot of dealerships just Jeep and Toyota but I think the BMW service area is definitely better than those two.