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Over the weekend a video started making its round via social media of a bullfight that took place in Kuwait back in 1972. The video was fairly low quality and the audio was completely broken so I did a bit of research and turns out the original video is actually owned by Reuters and you can watch the longer and much better version on their website.

According to Reuters, the bulls were imported from Spain for this event which was the first ever bullfighting show in Kuwait. The video is from the show that took place on Thursday April 6, 1972 but there were two other shows that took place on Friday 7th and Saturday 8th of April. Below are some more details:

A Spanish bull faced Spanish matadors in Kuwait on Thursday. It was the first time the Arabian Gulf state has seen a bull-fight. The event was organized by the Salmiya Sports Club and sponsored by the Kuwaiti Minister of the Interior and Defence, Shaikh Sa’ad Al-Abdalla As-Sabah.

A large crowd of spectators packed into the arena to see the novel exhibition of bullfighting skills and physical courage. Among those watching were the Speaker of the Kuwaiti National Assembly and other Assembly members. The event was much enjoyed by the spectators.

Aficionados in Spain may know more about the technicalities, but in Kuwait the crowd understood well enough the perfect judgment needed to plant these darts in just the right place.

The show had opened with the playing of the Kuwaiti and Spanish national anthems and the grand entrance of all the bullfighters. There was no doubting the success of this first bullfighting spectacle in Kuwait. Other shows were scheduled for Friday and Saturday.

So if you want to watch the video, click here.

I was gonna start this post by poking fun out of Saudi Arabia because they’re advertising music concerts all over Kuwait as if they’re a weekend destination now like Bahrain or Dubai. But then I found out yesterday they announced the Jeddah World Festival and now I feel sad, sad that we don’t get events like this in Kuwait.

It’s currently the Jeddah festival season and they’re holding a bunch of music concerts with artists like Chris Brown, Martin Garrix, Marshmello and Afrojack performing.

Just a few days ago Backstreet Boys performed in Jeddah to a sold-out crowd and you can watch a clip of it above.

But now Jeddah upped their game yesterday even more by announcing the Jeddah World Festival which will be one of the largest music events to be held in the region and will be broadcasted live on MTV in over 100 countries. They also announced the first wave line-up which includes Nicki Minaj, DJ Steve Aoki and singer Liam Payne. The second wave line-up will also be announced soon.

So yeah, now I’m just sad and confused.

Vinyl Destination is a curated destination for vinyl lovers in Kuwait that was created by Farah Bishara (DJ Bonita) simply because we didn’t have any record stores in Kuwait. Even though CDs are dead, vinyl is still pretty much alive and no store sells them. When Virgin Megastore closed down we kinda lost our last music store since all our favorite music shops from the 80s and 90s had closed down including:

Bells (got my first CD from there, Paula Abdul Spellbound 1991)
IVC
Soul II Soul
Subway
Swan Lake (got my first tape from there, Ghostbusters soundtrack 1984)
The Video Club
White House

Vinyl Destination started off as a pop-up event back in October and since then it popped up a couple of times before going into hibernation for the summer. But recently, Vinyl Destination launched an online store. There is a pretty decent selection for sale, not too many and mostly one of each vinyl, but not a bad start and they’re also priced pretty reasonably from 10 to 15KD.

So if you’re looking for vinyl this is your best bet unless you want to go rummage through random piles in the antique basement. www.vinyldestinationkuwait.com

The Joystixx Barcade located in the basement of Symphony Mall in Salmiya is now finally open. They have a bunch of old school arcade machines as well as a pinball machine and a section with video game consoles.

They have arcade games like Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, Mortal Kombat 4 (so disappointed they didn’t get MK1 or MK2), Metal Slug, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, The King of Fighters ’97 and more. The arcade machines take regular 100fils coins while the consoles you rent out for 1.5KD an hour.

If you want to check the place out they’re open daily except for Sundays from 1PM to 11PM. They’re also on instagram @joystixxbar

Thanks Wahab!

This was published on the Gazelle Club Facebook group and I knew I had to share it here.

Jay Rizzo shown in the first picture with his sister outside one of the Chalets at Gazelle Club, returned later as part of the US Marines who liberated Kuwait in 1991.

Gazelle Club was a very popular beach resort in Kuwait back in the 60s and up until the 1990 Gulf War. During the Gulf War the resort was badly damaged and it was never rebuilt again. You can find more posts about the club by clicking here.

If you haven’t been following the news recently, I’ll quickly summarize what’s been going on in regards to the World Cup. Qatar is meant to host the World Cup in 2022 and FIFA is considering expanding the tournament from 32 teams to 48. For that to happen, FIFA calculated it could be done if at least one additional Gulf country was used to co-host the World Cup with Qatar. Since Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have severed ties with Qatar, the only two countries left are Oman and Kuwait. Oman already said they aren’t capable of hosting the World Cup so FIFA is urging Kuwait to become a co-host.

Countries spend millions on campaigns to try and win the right to host the World Cup, it’s HUGE. And yet because of a bunch of unusual circumstances, Kuwait is now in the position where they are basically being begged by FIFA to accept the role of co-hosting. That’s just crazy.

I don’t know why people aren’t more excited about this, Kuwait could potentially be hosting the World Cup here in 3 years! And the best part is, the whole thing just fell into our laps without us even getting off the couch!

I was asking a few friends why Kuwait is playing so hard to get, I mean you’d think we’d be all over this massive opportunity. One theory is we don’t want to embarrass ourselves because we aren’t capable to host the event. I don’t think that’s really an issue because I’m sure we can throw money at this problem by hiring the right people to help us out and by fixing whatever needs to be fixed so we look good on TV. Another theory to why we’re hesitant is that there would have to be some major changes that would have to happen very quickly with the two biggest changes being to the visa system and the legalization of alcohol. This I can understand but it’s also one of the reasons I want the World Cup to happen, I want to see how much positive change it will bring to Kuwait.

Whatever happens, we host or not, I feel we really need to appreciate this position we’re in right now where we actually have a pretty large chance of getting the World Cup. This is a moment that will most likely never come again.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Lt-Gen Sheikh Khalid Al-Jarrah has issued a decision to cancel residency stickers that are placed in the passports of expatriates. Such a decision is part of the ongoing upgrade process at various departments of the ministry, reports Al-Anba daily. [Source]

I wish they came out with this decision a few months ago before I got my new passport. Whoever stuck my residency sticker must have been blind because its tilted like 45 degrees, is partially occupying the adjacent page, and part of the sticker is also sticking out of the passport. Drives me nuts every time I see it.

Now that Kuwait Airways has new planes and a new terminal, they’re finally catching up to other airlines and adding more destinations. They’re starting off with two right now, Guangzhou (China) and Sabiha (Turkey). Bizarre destinations but I guess there must be high demand for them. They’ll also soon be adding flights to:

Casablanca, Morocco
Nice, France (via Paris)
Larnaca, Cyprus (via Beirut)
Sarajevo, Bosnia
Baku, Azerbajan
Tbilisi, Georgia

I’d personally want to see European destinations like Amsterdam, Berlin, Moscow and Zagreb, but direct flights to Morocco is actually pretty cool.

Has anyone flown Kuwait Airways recently? The main old terminal never has any traffic anymore, but I’ve heard the Kuwait Airways Terminal now gets super busy with long queues at passport control. Also did anything new open up there, or is it still just Costa?

The Bait Al-Othman Museum originally opened back in 2013 and I passed by it a few months after opening to check it out and post about it on the blog. But last week I went back to the museum again and to my surprise, it turned out they had expanded the museum considerably since my last visit 5 years ago.

I’m having a difficult time trying to decide how much information I should share about the place. When I visited the museum last week I went expecting to see the stuff I had seen the last time I was there, basically various rooms covering important aspects of Kuwait and its history. But once I started exploring some of the new sections which I hadn’t seen before, I realized Bait Al-Othman is by far one of the most bizarre and entertaining museums in Kuwait. I had such a good time that I want to go back again with more friends.

Some of the new areas of Bait Al-Othman felt like they had been taken from the now closed old Science Museum in Kuwait City. The museum has such a random combination of content including a small haunted house, loads and loads of stuffed animals and even a hostel. I really want to share more details but I think it would be a lot more fun to just go there without knowing too much about the place.

So if you haven’t been to Bait Al-Othman before or at least not recently, you should definitely pass by the place. The museum is located in Hawalli [Google Maps] with loads of parking space available. Their opening hours are from 9AM to 1PM and 4PM to 9:30PM everyday except on Fridays they don’t open in the mornings.

Pro Tip: You need around 3 hours or more to see everything, and make sure you visit all the rooms. There are some areas which look closed off but they lead to other areas. So explore it all.

Detectives in Kuwait have been called to investigate several social media influencers for money laundering, according to reports.

Arabic publication Al-Jarida cited sources as confirming the notices regarding more than 10 bank accounts belonging to social media stars.

The sources said the balances in some of the accounts exceeded millions of Kuwaiti dinars and the ‘fashionista’ owners would need to prove their source of income. [Source]

I clearly must be doing blogging wrong…

Does anyone have any insider information as to why none of the rain-damaged roads have been fixed yet? A lot of the roads look like the picture above which is usually how the roads look like just before being resurfaced, but I’ve never seen so many roads looking like that and for this long.

The road in the picture above at least is flat, there are some roads that are covered in potholes and bumps. Yesterday I noticed two very large potholes opened up on the Gulf Road, potholes large enough to cause flat tires or damage wheels.

Something is definitely up, my guess is the government is looking for a new contractor since the last one did such a terrible job.

When I posted about Japanese Cheesecakes last month, a friend made me aware of another kind of popular cheesecake called the San Sebastian. From what I gathered online, the San Sebastian cheesecake is actually a burnt basque cheesecake that was made popular by a bakery restaurant in San Sebastian called La Viña (I could be wrong so don’t quote me).

I ended up trying the cake from two places, and although they were both really good, I don’t think I’ll be having it again since it’s just too sweet for my taste.

Bread Talk
I heard their Japanese cheesecake was good but I ended up picking up a San Sebastian cake instead. They’ve got a lot of branches around so it’s super convinient to pick one up before heading to a dinner for example. Their cheesecake had an extremely creamy center and was super sweet but delicious.

Price: KD11.250

Burn
Burn is an online bakery that makes only one thing, San Sebastian cheesecakes. They’re not available on Carriage or anywhere else though so the only way to get a cake would be to WhatsApp them. This is not the most practical option. Their cheesecake also had a creamy center albeit not as creamy as the Bread Talk one.

Price: KD13

If you have a favorite San Sebastian cheesecake place let us know in the comments!

A reader sent me a link to an article on FRANCE 24 Observers website on a domestic worker’s experience in Kuwait. The worker was held against her will by her employer and was sexually abused for several months. In the end, she got rescued and you can now read about her ordeal [Here]

Since we are on the subject of domestic workers, can I say how much the housekeepers category on the Q8 4Sale website bothers me? I really like the website but this category basically allows domestic workers to be sold off like household goods.. [Link]

Note: I hid the faces not 4Sale.

Local police have shut down a fish store that was sticking googly eyes on fish to make them look fresh. The story has obviously gone viral online with one tweet generating over 50,000 likes and 30,000 retweets! Too funny… [Link]

I keep seeing more and more of these stickers on cars, if you hadn’t noticed them before you will now. Do you still have this sticker on your car?