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Here are two videos of Entertainment City taken in the 80s which I hadn’t seen before. The first video on top was shot in 1984 during the visit of the late Sheikh Jaber Al-Sabah to the park, while the one below is from 1986 and looks like it was filmed during the National holiday.

Also since we are on the subject of Entertainment City, awhile back I read an interesting story on @abdulraoufq8’s Instagram. When Entertainment City was closed down and abandoned, people used to sneak into it and one time a group of kids snuck into the park and went to the Lightning roller coaster ride. One of the kids ended up sitting on the ride and then fastened the seatbelt and it got locked in and he couldn’t unlock it. Scared, the kids called 112 for help and the authorities ended up coming and freeing the kid from the seatbelt.

According to @abdulraoufq8, the ride was eventually sold to a neighboring country. For more interesting tidbits on Entertainment City, check out the highlights on @abdulraoufq8.

Back in 2019, I posted a review of the KEF LSX Wireless Speakers which I fell in love with. Since that review, I had been using them with my record player and a few weeks ago I bought an SVS SB-2000 Pro subwoofer to pair with them. For some reason, my record player and the sub didn’t get along really well, when I’d stream music onto the speakers from my phone they sounded incredible with the sub, but when I played any record, I’d get a really low deep humming bass note that was just awful.

I couldn’t return the subwoofer (and didn’t want to honestly) so I decided to get a second pair of LSX speakers to connect to my main computer and the sub. I had been using my old Onkyo home theater amp connected to a pair of Bose Acoustimass 5 Series III speakers with my Mac and although they sounded a bit boomy sometimes, they weren’t bad at all, I was just looking for an excuse to get new KEF LSX speakers after seeing them on sale. When I posted about the KEF LSX back in 2019 they were selling for 340KD but, Xcite have been heavily discounting their speakers (I got my KEF R7’s for 50% off) and the LSX were now on sale for KD250, so I picked up a pair of white ones.

These are probably the best speakers you can get for your computer. You can read my original review where I discuss why they are so good, but the experience of using them with my Mac is so unreal. Although the speakers are located on the corners of my desk, the sound feels like it comes straight out of my iMac in front of me. On more than one occasion I’d bring my ear up to my Mac to make sure the sound wasn’t really coming from there. I think it has to do with KEF’s phase correction or DSP but you really need to hear it to believe it, I love it. Also just to add, the LSX alone already sounded great but paired up with the SVS sub and I started to semi regret not getting this combo for my gym instead of the R7 and saving a ton of money (but not really cuz I also love my R7’s a lot).

If you were interested in the LSX speakers previously but thought they were too expensive, check them out now. They don’t have many in stock right now and I think I got the last boxed white pair but worst case you could pick up a display model. Also, the Xcite website says they’re all out of stock but they aren’t really, my white ones were out of stock online but they still had stock in-store in addition to the display models. Just make sure you go to the large Xcite on the 4th Ring Road in Al-Rai or the Avenues location next to IKEA since these are the only two locations that carry them.

Update: 6 months later I have to say, my LSX 50 paired up with the SVS SB-2000 is such a great combo and can easily hold its own versus my much more expensive KEF R7 speakers. When it comes to bass, there is no competition, the LSX SVS combo beats the R7 easily so if you’re into electronic music, this is the setup to have.

Someone on Reddit found the postcard above that was written and sent by Malcolm X from Kuwait back in 1964. Malcolm X was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure in the US during the civil rights movement. Following his exit from the Nation of Islam, he took a pilgrimage to Mecca and during that time, he also traveled to Kuwait, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Casablanca.

The postcard above was one of 16 postcards that were auctioned off in 2016 and were sent by Malcolm to Gloria Owens, who was the secretary at Muhammad’s Temples of Islam where he was a minister alongside Louis Farrakhan. The postcard reads:

Greetings from beautiful Kuwait. Since I’ve seen what a mess can be made of things by narrow-minded people, I’m still traveling, trying to broaden my scope.

Until just a few moments ago I had no idea Malcolm had visited Kuwait. I’ll try and see if I can dig up anything from his trip but for now, if you want to see a higher resolution version of the postcard above, click here.

Thanks Ayr909!

Not sure why film is all of a sudden taking off in Kuwait but Ajas is another local online store that sells film cameras. Their prices are slightly higher than CRATE whom I posted about recently, but they have a pretty cool ad (posted above) so all is forgiven. Check them out at shopajas.com

If you’re looking for a place to develop your film check out my previous post here.

Dine-In Records is a local online record store with a decent collection of albums. I’ve previously posted about two other local stores, Vinyl Destination and Misfits and although Dine-In has a smaller collection than both of those, the three combined give you a larger variety of albums to choose from. Prices start from KD10 and you can check out their collection on their website dineinrecordskw.com

Of course, if you want older or used records you still have the option of the Antique Basement.

A new only organic specialist supermarket opened up yesterday called Danke. The supermarket carries a variety of organic foodstuff as well as biodegradable and recycled household items. Yesterday actually happened to be the first day they opened and so they were still busy setting up the place. The bakery for example was not functional last night but should be up and running by the time you read this post.

They’re in a soft launch phase but other than the freezers and the bakery the shelves were all stacked with products from various brands including Alinor, Allos, Bauckhof, Biovegan, Byodo, Lubs, and many more. They also had a small fresh produce section.

The owner happened to be there while I was checking out the place and he told me that although Danke is a local brand the concept was brought in from Germany. That would explain why all the brands I saw were European and mostly German. While trying to dig up info on the brand I noticed they also have an app. I just installed the app and it seems to contain all their products but not sure if it’s working yet. You can download it and check it out yourself here.

The place looks great so it’s worth passing by and checking out. They’re currently open from 8AM to 12AM and are located in the basement of Burj Jassem in Kuwait City. If you don’t know where that is, here is the link to Google Maps. They’re also on Instagram @danke_kw

Since the gyms are closed I figured I’d post about Apple Fitness+ and how much I like it. Last month I decided I’d get back into yoga, I used to do it frequently a few years ago and then just stopped and never got back into it. Last year I tried doing yoga while watching a YouTube video and didn’t like the experience, but in September Apple released Fitness+ so I decided to try it out and see if it was any better. To use it you need to have an Apple Watch set up on your phone, I didn’t have an Apple Watch but I had borrowed one from a friend last year to try it out and I guess my phone still thought I had it. I couldn’t get Fitness+ working on Apple TV or my iPad but it was fine on my phone which was ok for now since I could stream from it to my TV. I decided to try a yoga exercise and to my surprise, my experience was great!

I started doing yoga with an instructor called Dustin and I just clicked with his style right away. I liked his pace, I liked his soothing voice and very chill demeanor and I’ve now started doing yoga with him practically on a daily basis. Apple Fitness+ is basically the same thing as watching an exercise video on YouTube except for the fact that it’s organized really well in the app and if you have an Apple Watch, the app connects your heart rate monitor to Fitness+ and you get a data exchange between the two (you can see your data on the TV as well). I really didn’t care for the Apple Watch, not really a fan of it nor do I like collecting data while working out since I tend to become data-obsessed and it ruins things for me (it why I stopped rowing for cardio and why I had stopped riding my bike for a long time). But I really am enjoying Fitness+ a lot. It’s become my go-to now after finishing up my weight lifting at home.

I mentioned at the start how Fitness+ was somehow working for me on my phone because at one point I had an Apple Watch set up on it? Well, that didn’t last long and it started giving me errors and not letting me stream onto my TV. I didn’t want to stop using Fitness+ so I decided to buy an Apple Watch so I could set up Fitness+ properly. Fitness+ requires an Apple Watch Series 3 or above to work so I looked around for a cheap second hand Apple Watch or a cheap brand new one since all I needed it for was Fitness+. In the end, I found out that Xcite in Jleeb had a Series 3 Apple Watch in stock, size 38mm, and selling for KD64.5 with a free additional strap. This was the cheapest new Apple Watch I could find so I ended up picking that up and setting it up with my phone. Now Fitness+ works on all my devices including Apple TV and my iPad. I also picked up a couple of Manduka yoga blocks from Ananda since I’m currently as flexible as a concrete brick.

Fitness+ has a bunch of workouts you can pick from other than yoga including Hiit, core, strength, treadmill, cycling, rowing, dance, and mindful cooldown. You need an Apple Watch to be able to set up Fitness+ the first time but after that, you don’t really need to wear the watch unless you want to know how many calories or monitor other data. In addition to an Apple Watch, Fitness+ costs $9.99 a month but it came included for me with my Apple One premier plan. Yes, you can use YouTube but I tend to like services focused on one thing and Fitness+ makes finding a workout, bookmarking and following a specific trainer all very easy. Plus if you want to track your heart rate and calorie count then the combination of the Apple Watch and Fitness+ works great and you can also get various notifications on your watch like when you’re past the halfway point of the workout or when you’ve achieved a new record.

Since gyms are closed, Fitness+ could be a great alternative especially if you already have an iOS device and an Apple Watch. They have a free trial period so you don’t need to commit to a membership unless you think you’d use the service.

This has to be the coolest gym-related idea ever and the timing of it is perfect with gyms having been forced to close down now. Mobile Crossfit Box is a portable gym that you can rent out for you and your friends! It’s a fully decked out gym with everything you need from different kinds of cardio machines to barbells, kettlebells, dumbells, boxes, squat racks, and pull up bars.

The price is 40KD per hour and it can handle up to 4 people at once so it’s 10KD per friend. They also have a drop-in fee of 10KD which I’m guessing means if the truck isn’t fully rented out you could drop in where it’s parked and use it. For more info or too book the gym check out their instagram account @mobilebox_kw

via @notnorrah

I’ve got a friend who signed up both his parents for the vaccine at the same time, his mum is Kuwaiti while his dad is older and an expat. His mum got vaccinated while his dad still hasn’t gotten an appointment. So now I’m wondering if they’ve started vaccinating expats or if they’re prioritizing Kuwaitis first.

Does anyone know if they’ve started vaccinating expats who aren’t health care workers?

Update: The comments have been locked

February marks two blogging anniversaries for me. February 6th, 2003 is the date I published my first blog post on my first blog Qhate.com, and February 19th, 2005 is the day I published my first blog post on this blog.

Last year should have been the most challenging year of the blog since being stuck at home and not going out as much should have hampered my ability to post about stuff. But, looking at the data, last year I published 415 posts compared to 442 the previous year so it wasn’t that bad and that’s probably due to the fact there were a lot of Covid related posts. I got nearly 4,000,000 page views last year with the busiest month being May. May is when we had the full 24-hour lockdown with the 2 hours to go out and mingle, that’s also when private supermarkets became available on moci.shop.

I still wake up every morning at 7AM to publish my posts before heading to work. It’s a good routine that has been working really for me. I also just realized I’ve been blogging for nearly half my life, such a bizarre feeling.

Anyway, thank you to all my readers, hopefully, this year is going to be a lot better for everyone.

There are a few beautiful strips of beach I ride my bike next to on the Gulf Road that are filled with trees that provide nice visual greenery as well as shade in the summer for beachgoers. Whenever I ride my bike past those areas I think about how pretty it is and how it doesn’t look like Kuwait which is one of the best compliments you can give something here FYI.

Yesterday I found out that they’ve started removing the trees on the beaches! Sorry, I shouldn’t say removed since you might think they were relocated somewhere else, instead the proper word I should be using is bulldozed. They bulldozed the strips of the beach with the trees and killed everything.

The video above shows how those beaches looked like before they were demolished just to give you an idea of how pretty they were. Why does Kuwait hate trees so much? It’s really upsetting, I’m trying to care less and less about Kuwait but it’s not easy to do especially when I’ve spent the past 40 years caring about this place.

Found this video and some photos on the @t2.engineers Instagram account showing the current status of the new T2 terminal that’s under construction. I had heard that work on the airport never stopped throughout the pandemic which is how I guess they’ve managed to get so much done.

There is another video I found below taken from @arabaviation that shows how the interior is coming along as well.

This is related to my dirt bike adventure yesterday but decided it deserved a separate post.

Subiya is one big garbage dump right now.

The causeway bridge is the worst thing to happen to Subiya because as soon as you cross over to the other side it’s now littered with garbage. Like EVERYWHERE! There wasn’t a single off-road area yesterday where we didn’t come across garbage. It’s so sad and upsetting and especially since I used to visit the area before the bridge was opened up and I remember how clean it used to be. There were barely ever any people there, no campsites at all, and just camels with herders. Now it’s just a big ass garbage dump.

People camp and litter and it’s disgusting. Instead of banning electric scooters on roads or importing car exhausts, how about banning camping in the desert instead? How about turning the whole desert area into a natural reserve and have people request permission to camp in designated camping grounds like they do in national parks in the States?

It’s so sad.

I’ve been wanting to experience dirt biking ever since I got my motorbike license back in 2006. I had ridden sports bikes, naked bikes, cruisers and scooters but always felt dirt bikes might be more fun. The only reason I never got one is because I couldn’t figure out how to make it financially viable. If I did buy a dirt bike I’d have to take it out a few times a month which sounds doable, but I’d also need a trailer to transport it and that seemed like too much of a hassle for me to end up wanting to do it more than once or twice a month.

Then a few weeks ago, I got a notification on Instagram that one of my Facebook friends is now on instagram as @xkuwaitofficial. A guy I met nearly a decade ago through my blog called Faris Al-Obaid had set up a business called X Kuwait offering extreme experiences one of which was dirt biking based off the photos he was posting on the account. He always was into extreme sports so I thought it was cool that he had set this up. I decided to check out his website see how much one of these dirt bike adventures cost so I could mentally restart the process of considering buying a dirt bike, I figured maybe I could store the bike with them and they could take it out for me whenever I join on one of these trips. While checking their website I noticed that under one of the dirt bike adventures they mention that they provide the bike and gear. Right away I got in touch with Faris to confirm that they provided the actual dirt bikes and he confirmed that was the case. I wanted to book instantly but my back was super messed up that weekend so I waited a couple of weeks before finally booking a 4-hour adventure which I went on yesterday.

It was one of the scariest yet most fun experiences I’ve had in ages.

We met up at an empty lot on the other side of the Sheikh Jaber causeway bridge at around 10am. I got there and the two bikes were already set up and Faris was there getting some stuff ready. They provide the gear so the first thing I had to do was change and put on a bunch of safety gear then the outfit and then the boots, helmet, and gloves. I got a brief of the route we were going to take and then got a tour of the bike. Since I already knew how to ride a motorbike I was familiar with how bike works but just to quickly give you readers an overview, the gear clutch is controlled with a left-hand leaver, the front brakes with a right-hand leaver, then your left foot controls the gearbox (you tap a leaver with your foot up and down) and your right foot controls the rear brakes. But, because dirt bike boots were made of hard plastic and so weren’t flexible (similar to ski boots), I had no idea how I was going to change gears or even feel my feet changing gears. He made me ride around the empty lot for a bit to get myself familiar and I realized changing gears was going to be something I’d just have to get used to.

We then left the parking lot on the bikes and headed off-road. Faris knows the area really well, calls it his backyard so the route he had planned for us would start off easy and get more and more difficult the further we went into the 4-hour adventure. The first part of the trail was mostly flat hard sand with some soft sand spots so I could get a feel for the bike and when he saw I was doing ok he’d take me on a path that was slightly more challenging. We took our first break 15 minutes into the ride so he could check up on me and see if I had any questions. After that, we headed out again and did multiple stops throughout the whole trip at different interesting sights.

I think my favorite part of the trip was a long strip of a closed off highway that was covered in sand. It felt like we were in a post-apocalyptic world where nature had taken over. At that point it was also the most difficult part of the trip since riding on soft sand is super dodgy. You can’t stop, you can’t slow down and you constantly have to be on guard because the rear wheel has a habit of slipping and going sideways.

The hardest bit of the journey was actually right at the end of the trip, a rough rocky terrain that required slow speed and lots of standing up on the bike which I thankfully had gotten used to by that point of the trip. I was exhausted both mentally and physically but the idea that I hadn’t fallen off the bike yet that day kept me going and gave me more confidence. We finally got back to our cars and it felt great getting back into my soft sneakers and comfy car seat.

The cost of this 4-hour experience was KD169 which for me at least was a great deal. It’s much cheaper than buying a bike and I had so much fun. You definitely need to know how to ride a bike to experience this and he does offer lessons although I’m not sure how much they cost. It was much harder than I was expecting it to be and really tough mentally and physically but I’m glad I did the 4-hour adventure and not the 2-hour one since it gave me twice as much time to get familiar with dirt bikes. Currently, Faris can take up to two people per adventure but he might be selling one of the bikes and then he’d only be able to take one person out. If you want to get more info on X Official, their Instagram is @xkuwaitofficial and their website is xkuwaitshop.com

Today is going to be a day of complaining on the blog. I don’t think I’ve ever been so pessimistic about the future of Kuwait as I have been recently. From roads that are a total mess to laws that don’t make any sense. And then when you have serious issues, nothing gets done about it.

Last week the popular local instagrammer Ascia got harassed while leaving her office on the way to her car. She was clearly shaken up and posted an emotional story on her Instagram about what had happened. Women getting harrassed by men is such a common occurrence in Kuwait it’s become the norm. There isn’t a single girl I know who hasn’t been harassed and it happens all the time.

Women get harassed at malls, universities, in parking lots, at work, everywhere basically, and nothing ever gets done about it. But now a bunch of popular instagrammers are going vocal about the issue and hopefully, people will finally listen to them.

Other than Ascia, the popular luxury footwear designer Najeeba Hayat (@liudmilahq) has been very vocal about harassment sharing stories by other women on her account. Local illustrators like @wadaniart and @coffeeandcastoffs have also posted about the problem and the movement seems to be gaining traction. An instagram account was set up called Lan Asket (@lan.asket) which translates into “I won’t stay quiet” which has been posting stories of harrasment in both English and Arabic.

Men can help too. Anytime you see a form of harassment taking place get involved. I witness a lot of cases of harassment on the Gulf Road and anytime I see it happening, I usually pull up behind the guy and start flashing my high beams and honking the horn until he drives off.

Knowing how things are in Kuwait I’m not very optimistic something will be done about this. Like I mentioned in my previous post, they usually implement new rules or laws, enforce them heavily for two weeks and then forget about them. It’s sad really, but hopefully, I’m wrong.

What do you think needs to be done? What would help this issue? What can men do to support this cause? I’m interested in what people think about this subject. Have you been harassed before? Share your story.

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