Search: “sti”

If you’ve ever been to the Kuwait Towers you probably noticed the dirty windows and wondered why they weren’t being cleaned. Well turns out they were being cleaned but the glass itself had discolored and oxidized over the years making them look dirtier than they actually were.

The Kuwait Towers are located right by the sea so they’re exposed to the salty sea air that has corrosive effects on a variety of the materials used in the towers including concrete, metal and glass. Back in June I posted about how the blue discs covering the towers were getting restored, well last week I found out that the glass is now also getting restored.

A company called RITEC was contracted for the restoration which involves a 5 stage process. The first stages relate to the actual restoration of the glass where various chemicals and abrasives are used to remove the oxidation from the glass. Once the oxidation is removed, the glass is polished and revived to its original state making it look brand new. The final stages involve protecting the glass with a nonstick clear shield that not only will prevent the salt from adhering to the glass again, but also dust. In fact, the windows will require 70% less cleaning and will no longer need any soap or chemicals to get cleaned, just water.

This restoration process is currently ongoing as of this post and they’ve already nearly completed restoring the glass at the observation deck and are in process of restoring the glass around the restaurants.

The next time you visit the towers you should see a night and day difference. You’ll finally be able to see out of the windows clearly as well as take nicer shots of the city skyline.

I was planning to rent Wes Anderson’s most recent movie Asteroid City but then it got released on Peacock for free so didn’t have to pay for it. Thank god for that because it was such a boring film, it had to be the worst Wes Anderson film I’ve ever watched. Would not recommend. I also randomly ended up watching the chick flick Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret a few days ago and that was so much more entertaining than Asteroid City.

Other than those two movies I’m still binge watching Schitt’s Creek. I’m traveling tomorrow to Paris and since its a nearly 6 hour flight I’ve been downloading shows to watch on the plane. So far I’ve got the following shows I haven’t watched lined up:

Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning
Poker Face
Twisted Metal
Yellowstone

I still need to add more shows so if you have anything thats good and doesn’t start slow please let me know. I’ve run out of stuff to watch.

Movies at the Cinemas
The movies below are now showing at the local cinemas:

New This Weekend:
Shrapnel (6.7)
Sound of Freedom (7.8)
The Adventures of Jurassic Pet (3.7)
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (6.5)

Other Movies Showing:
Cats Museum (4.4)
Elemental (6.8)
Gran Turismo (7.0)
Haunted Mansion (6.3)
Hidden Strike (5.8)
Meg 2: The Trench (6.0)
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (8.2)
Oppenheimer (8.7)
Run Rabbit Run (5.0)
The Secret Kingdom (5.0)
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (7.4)
Til Death Do Us Part (5.8)

The classic films below are currently showing at the 1954 Film House:
Inside Man (6.6)
Flubber (5.3)
Training Day (7.7)

The numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at the time of publishing.

When I was given a tour of The Warehouse the other day, I also got a tour of the new IKEA located there. The new IKEA is nearly 25% larger than The Avenues location (26,000m² vs 21,000m²) and is considered to be one of the largest in the region. It’s really huge.

What stood out to me the most while walking around the store is how much space all the display areas had. It makes The Avenues location seem cramped even though thats not a small store by any means. One of the benefits of having a significantly larger store is the ability to showcase the complete range of products. So for example, instead of a couch being displayed in one size and two colors, they now have the space to display all the sizes and all the colors. I was walking around checking out products which I thought were new only to be told they’ve had them for years and I had just never noticed them before, or they never had the models on display. Same when we passed by the home appliances section, I had no idea IKEA had their own ovens or fridges for sale. Thats how much of a difference the new larger store makes on all their products, it allows them to really shine.

The store is split across two levels similar to The Avenues location and with the same general flow. The restaurant like everything else in the store is now much larger and features not only the standard food pickup area, but also includes a new permanent buffet section and a conveniently accessible coffee shop directly from the mall. The bakery and food market are located on the lower floor and like everything else, are also much larger.

If you want to check out the new IKEA they just opened today at The Warehouse. Their operating hours are from 9AM to 11PM daily and here is their location on Google Maps.

Yesterday I got a tour of The Warehouse mall and it was a pretty cool experience since it was very busy with the mall and businesses all getting ready for the opening tomorrow (August 16). The mall looks really great and very different to other malls which is what caught my attention the first time I visited back in May.

The Warehouse has an industrial look with lots of bricks and metal cladding everywhere. The roof is covered with a glass and steel structure that casts interesting shadows onto the floor during the day. It’s really well designed mall with a lot of creative touches, even the bathrooms are worth checking out.

Theres a large variety of stores in the mall with the main anchors being IKEA, ABYAT, LC Waikiki and LuLu Hypermarket. You also have some new restaurants opening there that aren’t available anywhere else in Kuwait yet like Jamie’s Italian and Nando’s. Regulars like Milk Bun, Shake Shack and Raising Cane’s are also opening there as well as one of my favorite coffee shops, Earth Roastery. There is also a Cinescape, Xcite, Starbucks, Zain, and a bunch of other “mall-must-haves”. There’s even an area called Auto Zone which houses a bunch of car dealerships.

If you want to pass by and check the mall out, starting tomorrow The Warehouse is going to open daily from 10AM till 10PM except on weekends where it stays open till 11PM. The mall is located in Ahmadi, right off highway 30 or 40. @thewarehousekuwait

Last week while flipping through some old Kuwait Times newspapers from 1971 I spotted the article above titled “No. This Is Not In Soho, This is in Kuwait”. The article was about the introduction of the discotheque in Kuwait at a popular hotel back then called Phoenicia. Here is the article typed out if you can’t read it in the image above:

The discotheque, at Phoenicia Hotel, was the scene of a lovely and ac-tion-full night Saturday, when most of the young and several other not-so-young celebrities showed up to enjoy this new form of entertainment to emerge on the Kuwaiti scene, thanks to the efforts made by the organisers of the British Trade Week.

The star attraction of the evening was, of course, the “Miss British Trade Week” Brenda Wheeler. British Ambassador, Mr. Whilton, was also present to lend the evening an official importance.

The Discotheque, in short, is a success in Kuwait, and many people hope it will continue – and also not just in one place.

An interesting side note, the original plans for the Kuwait Towers included a discotheque.

This is one of these posts that will mean absolutely nothing to everyone except me. When I was a kid back in the 80s I remember there was a fish and chips place in Salmiya on Baghdad Street that had a wooden interior. That’s all I remember of the place and the fact the name had the word “Captain” in it. I’ve been searching for YEARS trying to figure out what the place was and never could. Until today.

Randomly, while flipping through some old Kuwait Times newspapers from 1984 I came across the ad above for Captain D’s. I was like WTF, right away I noticed the address of the Salmiya (spelled Salmiah) location was Baghdad Street. This was it, I finally found out what the place was called.

Back in the 80s there was a company called “Al-Kazemi Food Company” which had the franchise in Kuwait. I don’t think the company exists anymore today since I couldn’t find any trace of them online but back then they had three franchises: Captain D’s, Popeyes and Pizza Inn.

Interestingly if you notice in the ad above it says that they were opening Captain D’s in Carlton Hotel. Thats the hotel that now has the Korean restaurant KOREA GWAN (previously called Koryokwan).

Anyway, if anyone has any more info or photos please let me know.

Last time I posted an Instagram update was back in March and since I hit 248 Instagram posts today, I figured I’d post another update.

Since March things have changed a lot. I’m now a lot more comfortable posting on Instagram and I’ve more or less figured out how it works best for me. I also now have a better understanding of what kind of content I can post here and what kind of content I should post only there. For example, this post isn’t going to be on my Instagram account.

The blog is where I can be more personal, or complain about things if I need to, while my Instagram account is more positive feel good entertainment. Back when I started blogging there weren’t a lot of platforms for people to voice their opinions on so I used to criticize and complain a lot because I felt I had to (I was the only voice). Now with Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter etc.. everyone has a voice and everyone is complaining all day. There is so much criticizing and complaining online that I no longer have to do it hence why I’m more chill here (can’t remember last time I complained about something) and which is why I want @248am to be a feel good account.

One way of keep @248am a positive place is by censoring the comments. The comments on @248am are heavily moderated, anyone who shit posts gets their account restricted instantly. Basically by restricting an account that person won’t know they’re restricted and can continue shit posting as they want but their comments are hidden to everyone else including me. Anyone who leaves racists or hateful comments gets a straight up block. This allows me to keep the comments section a healthy place. People can still have different opinions and discuss them of course, but it’s all a lot more civil without the shit posters and haters.

Something about Instagram which is great is the ability to watch a post go viral live. Best example of that is my Chipotle coming to Kuwait post. Firstly how cool is it that I broke the news back in November? I know Alshaya probably hate me because I keep doing this but I really love them because they keep bringing all these cool brands for us. That Chipotle post blew up, I knew it would but did not expect this much. That post got over 6,000 likes, nearly 20,000 shares, 248 comments and reached nearly 77,000 people. Keep in mind I also have less than 30K followers there. I couldn’t put my phone on mute because I need to moderate the comments so the constant buzzing of my phone was super annoying, but watching it blow up from behind the scenes was actually thrilling as well.

I’ve also realized, all these local influencers with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers are most likely all fake followers, or if not fake they have like 0.3% engagement rate or something. How do you have 3 million followers but only get 100 or 200 likes per photo? Someone was once telling me likes aren’t important anymore, everyone is just watching stories etc. I don’t think thats true and I think I’m proving it. People want good content and they will appreciate good content when they come across it. People also read, I was worried no one would read my Instagram posts but they actually do and I love that.

Instagram has actually made me confident again with my blogging skills. I think because I wasn’t on Instagram I felt a lot of people had forgotten about me or I felt like because I wasn’t on Instagram my content wasn’t as good. But now that I’m there I’ve realized I’m still the best at what I do which is finding great content to post every single day. There aren’t a lot of people in Kuwait who can do it (if any), and the crazy part is, I’ve been doing it for over 20 years now and haven’t run out of ideas yet.

A friend told me that Zain was launching RedBull Mobile next week to compete with Virgin Mobile. I didn’t know RedBull Mobile existed until she told me so I contacted a couple of sources to confirm this rumor but they were being tight lipped about it. But, it looks like it’s happening.

If you head to www.redbullmobile.com.kw/en right now you’ll end up at their website which seems to still be under construction. Their Instagram account will also be @redbullmobilekw. Like Virgin Mobile, I doubt this is going to have any effect on the market or anyone (unless there is some Formula 1 tie in and in that case this is going to be great! I love Red Bull Mobile, please get me RedBull Paddock access during a race).

Mo Amer, the Palestinian American comedian known for his hilarious performances in the Netflix show ‘Mo’ and the award-winning Hulu sitcom ‘Ramy,’ is coming to Kuwait to perform a stand-up comedy show at The Arena.

Mo was actually born in Kuwait and lived here till the age of 9. He only left Kuwait because of the 1990 Iraq invasion which is how he ended up in the US.

The show titled “Homecoming” is taking place on September 8th. Tickets start at 25KD and go up all the way to 75KD and are available for sale on The Arena’s website.

Found these vintage ANSI art relating to the 1990 Gulf War and thought they were super interesting. I use to love ANSI and ASCII art back in the day and if I remember correctly, my first digital porn image I had was a black and white ASCII drawing sometime back in the 80s which a friend had given to me on a 5.25 floppy. Source

33 years ago on August 2nd 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Abduljabbar Mansoor Marafi, an amateur radio operator decided to stay behind with his family and that decision eventually led him to become the last voice from Kuwait.

I hadn’t heard of his story until very recently and since its the anniversary of the invasion I wanted to share it since I found it really interesting from a technology point of view, but also the bravery involved. Marafi had been operating a sophisticated Radio Bulletin Board System (RBBS) using a personal computer and amateur radio set equipment long time before the invasion. He had even setup backup power supply in case of power failure which turned out to also be useful during the invasion.

When Iraq invaded, Marafi refused to flee hoping he could help his country by staying in Kuwait. During the early days of the invasion, Marafie used his radio to keep people outside of Kuwait in the loop with what was happening here. He was basically blogging before blogging was even a thing. When Iraq start cutting off communication in Kuwait from the outside world, Marafi’s radio system became even more important.

The easiest way I can think of to describe Marafi’s bulletin board system is to imagine a very basic version of email. You would send a message to a specific radio call sign (Marafi’s was 9K2DZ), and when that person later connects to their bulletin board system, they would see what messages they had waiting for them. I’ve embedded a video below from YouTube demoing this.

News of Marafi’s bulletin service started spreading by word of mouth in Kuwait. Families began giving Marafi messages to send to their relatives abroad, and families abroad started contacting radio amateurs in the countries they lived in asking them to send messages to their relatives in Kuwait through Marafi’s bulletin board. In addition to helping transmit messages between families, Marafie also used his radio system to expose to the outside world the horrors that were being committed by the Iraqis in Kuwait.

When Iraqis found out news was leaking out of Kuwait they suspected it was due to radio amateurs since all other sort of communication had already been cut. The Iraqis then started interrogating Kuwaiti radio amateurs and confiscating their equipment, including Marafi’s. But Marafi was expecting that and had set up a complete radio setup behind a false wall in his basement. The setup outside that was confiscated was mostly broken or old equipment.

The full story of Abduljabbar Marafi and his radio system is too big to tell in all its detail but if you want to find out more you can google his call sign 9K2DZ. Sadly, Marafi passed away last November.

I’ve uploaded a PDF of an article taken from the September 1991 issue of Alam Al-Computer. I borrowed some of the information in this post from that article and it’s really interesting to read. You can download it here.

If you’re looking for something to do this weekend, Yard is holding a food festival in Al Hamra Mall. The ‘Vibe Food Fest’ starts this Wednesday August 2nd and runs till Saturday August 5th from 10AM to 10PM. @yardkw

Last week I flew to Athens for a quick getaway and I fell in love with the city. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid in the 80s so it was basically my first time. The ticket was around 140KD on Kuwait Airways, and it was a short 3 1/2 hour flight so I definitely want to go back again. Below is a quick guide of all the favorite spots I found which I think you’d also like:

Eat
I had my best meal at Cherchez La Femme (@kafeneioncherchezlafemme), a small cafe serving greek food in tapa sizes so you can mix and match. Sushimou (no insta) was a great (and affordable) sushi bar serving an omakase menu. The owner and masterchef (@thalis) was named the world’s 100 top chefs. Do Birdman (@birdmanathens) for a Japanese grill with great music and drinks or their sister location Ekiben (@ekibenathens) for a quick bite. For breakfast go to the picturesque cafe Minu (@minu.athens). Head to Wild Souls (@wildsoulsgr) to pick up gifts for friends, and if you’re there in the summer, go to Oggi (@oggiathens) for the best gelato.

Drink
Dope Roasting Co (@doperoasting), Anana (@ananacoffeefood), Motiv (@motivathens) and Behold Theman (@behold_theman) were my favorite coffee shops. If you want a place to sit in a garden and enjoy a few drinks, six d.o.g.s (@sixdogsgr) was super chill.

See
KORI (@kori.gr) have lots of beautiful jewelry and ceramic pieces by Greek designers and artists. DangerousMinds (@dangerousminds.gr) if you’re looking for streetwear while Eating +he Goober (@eatingthegoober) is a very cool greek contemporary clothing brand. The Naxos Apothecary (@thenaxosapothecary) is a Greek fragrances and body creams store which is their equivalent to Aesop. Finally, visit the hidden but very scenic neighborhood of Anafiotika which surprisingly isn’t overrun by tourists.

Sleep
There were a lot of great hotel options but I ended up staying at The Foundry Suites (@thefoundrysuitesathens), a hip boutique hotel with just 12 rooms in a neighborhood full of cafes and antique stores and is not busy with tourists (@perianthhotel was my Plan B). I also spent a night at the Dexamenes Seaside Hotel (@dexamenes) which I would highly recommend. Technically not in Athens because it’s over 3 hours away, but definitely worth it. Rent a car and drive, the road is chill and very photogenic.

Like all my travel guides, this is a curated list with most places being off the beaten path and not packed with tourists. Use it to supplement your own things to do list. Also with some restaurant you need to book in advance so keep that in mind. Also in case you missed them, check out my previous travel guides for Barcelona and Istanbul.

There’s an old story from back in the 70s about a man who wasn’t dressed well walking into the Rolls Royce dealer in Kuwait to check out the cars. The man asked the salesman how much the car cost and the salesman replied that he wouldn’t be able to afford it. The man left the dealership upset but came up with an idea for payback. A few days later he went to the dealership again and purchased the Rolls Royce. He then registered it as a taxi cab and had it painted orange with a white stripe.

The man then put the taxi into service and was regularly picking up passengers and he even used to park it in front of the dealership just to mess with them even more. Eventually the dealership reached out to the man apologizing to him and offered to buy back the car from him and give him a more expensive one in return.

The man accepted and he handed the orange Rolls Royce to the dealership and got a new one in return. The orange Rolls was thought to have been repainted back to its original color and then resold, but, the car was recently found at a scrapyard in Khafji, Saudi Arabia, complete in its original orange paint and still had the original red license plates!

That’s pretty insane! You can check out the video by Bin Zuayd on YouTube embeded above or visit his Instagram account @khalid_eisaa to watch it there.

Late last week the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) issued a circular banning crypto payments, investment and mining.

Kuwait is currently one of the cheapest countries in the world to mine bitcoin. It is estimated that last year the cost of mining in Kuwait was just $1,400 per BTC when bitcoin was worth more than $40,000 at the time. But, the high power consumption of mining doesn’t seem to be the reason for the ban. According to an article on Yahoo Finance, the reason behind the ban is money laundering. Countries are required to put up guardrails to prevent money laundering but I guess it’s easier to just ban it completely.

What does this mean if you already own cryptocurrency? My best guess is that it would make transferring large sums of money from abroad into your account in Kuwait more difficult. If you transfer large amounts of money you need to explain where it’s coming from and I don’t think you can tell the banks anymore that they’re from your crypto investments. Maybe a banker can clear this up for us.

Update: according to a reader the circular doesn’t apply to individuals.