Search: “sti”

Today is the first day of Stage 1 and this means partial curfew for most of Kuwait. If you’re in one of the areas still in lockdown, I’m sorry about that, it must really suck. Salmiya blocks 10, 11 and 12 seem not to be in lockdown this morning even though it was originally announced they would be.

I was up early around 7 this morning and headed straight to the nearest Arabica to pick up coffee. The streets were pretty busy, the falafel near my place was packed and Trolley in Salmiya which is always empty had a queue outside. When I got to Arabica there were 6 cars waiting which wasn’t too bad compared to the Jabriya Starbucks line you can see in the video above. The Gulf Road was pretty busy and a lot of parking lots had the entrance barriers moved aside by people and cars were going in to park in the lots.

Everyone is obviously relieved the lockdown is over, I just hope everyone takes wearing a mask seriously and respects social distance. I’m hoping Avenues opening up in Stage 2 is enough incentive for people to follow the rules over the next 3 weeks. Stay safe everyone.

Yesterday as part of the new partial curfew announcement they also announced the areas that will remain in total lockdown and that list included Maidan Hawally Block 10, 11, and 12. This one line caused such a massive amount of confusion and I have no idea why they announced it this way.

There technically isn’t an area called Maidan Hawally and so Maidan Hawally Block 10, 11, and 12 don’t exist.

Salmiya Block 11 where the American International School is located is the area generally referred to as Maidan Hawally. It’s adjacent to the main Hawally but it’s on the other side of the highway in Salmiya. On the Kuwait Finder app, on Google Maps and on Civil ID cards, it’s called Salmiya Block 11. Maidan Hawally is not the official name but there is a police station there called Maidan Hawally Police Station and this is what people know the area as so it can pass. But what is Maidan Hawally Block 10 and 12? Supposedly Salmiya Block 10 and 12.

I’ve tried to visually illustrate the above. The areas in yellow, blue and green are Salmiya. The area in yellow is what is usually referred to as Maidan Hawally. Everyone living in these three colored areas live in Salmiya according to their Civil ID and Kuwait Finder. The English School (TES) and the Millennium Hotel both have their addresses listed as Salmiya Block 12, not Maidan Hawally Block 12 (source 1 and 2). The Abdullah Salem Cultural Center have their address listed as Salmiya Block 11, but describe the area as Maidan Hawally (Source). The Coop in Block 10 is called the Salmiya Coop Society Supermarket (source).

So if the area is called Salmiya, if on people’s Civil ID cards you’re referring to it as Salmiya. If government supermarkets in the area are referring to it as Salmiya, why announce a total lockdown of Maidan Hawally Block 10, 11 and 12? Wouldn’t it be a lot clearer if you called it by what it is, Salmiya Block 10, 11, and 12?

If THAT wasn’t confusing enough, above is the graphic posted by @CGCKuwait that mentions the areas of lockdown. They don’t even mention which blocks of Maidan Hawally just that Maidan Hawally is in lockdown. So everyone would assume its block 11 of Salmiya.

But, Watan News have the actual video of the announcement up and they’ve transcribed the video which mentions Block 10, 11, and 12. So Watan is actually being accurate while the official source isn’t.

This is so frustrating and we haven’t even gotten to the specifics of what a total lockdown of those areas means since it also wasn’t clarified. Will people in Salmiya Block 10 still be able to book an appointment at Lulu in Block 9? No clue.

Update: Map has been updated to correctly show all of Block 11

Update2: There is supposedly another conference tonight to clear up all the confusions

One item I was lucky enough to purchase just before the lockdown was a CTEK battery charger to use on my cars. I was planning to get one anyway for my Alfa since I was planning to park it during the summer but it turned out to be useful for the lockdown as well. If you’ve ever traveled on a long trip and got back to find your car battery dead, it was most likely because your car managed to drain the battery while you were away or the battery just lost its charge. A battery charger is a great way of keeping your battery healthy when parked for long periods of time and the CTEK is one of the best money can buy.

What makes the CTEK so great is how it takes care of your battery with its 8 stage approach combined with the simplicity of it. All you need to do is connect one end of the CTEK to your car battery and then plug the other end of it into a regular wall power socket and the CTEK will automatically take care of the rest. It will run the battery through some tests, check the condition of it and then charge it. Once the battery is fully charged it then trickle charges your battery to keep it alive and healthy until you need to use the car.

I’m lucky that my building parking lot has power plugs in various spots so right before the lockdown I charged the batteries of my cars just so I know they’d have enough juice to last through the lockdown. The CTEK came with two different plugs to connect to my battery, alligator clamps which just easily clip on to the positive and negative terminals on the battery, and eyelets that screw onto the battery. I installed the eyelets on my Alfa since it would be using the charger the most while I used the alligator clamps for my FJ and Lotus. In the photo on top you’ll notice the CTEK placed outside the car but that was just for the photo. You can actually place it under the hood so that way it’s protected from the weather as well as from getting stolen. If you have your own private garage then you can just leave it outside or on the floor.

If you have a car or motorbike that you plan on parking for a long time it’s worth investing in a battery charger. The CTEK is one of the best you can buy and the MXS 5.0 model which is the one I got sells for KD39.5. If you’re interested in picking one up you can order one from the local dealer, their Instagram account is @ctek.kw and their website is audodepotkw.com

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Cobra Club (@cobraclubmusic) on May 20, 2020 at 12:19pm PDT

Cobra Club – Ghost @cobraclubmusic
Tareq Almulaifi is a Kuwaiti singer/songwriter who officially launched his new band Cobra Club earlier this month with the 80s inspired track “Razor“. They’re back again with a new single called “Ghost” which sadly doesn’t have a music video. The new track also has the same retro vibes to it and you can listen to it on Spotify.

Fabrice – Leave us alone @fabriceroots
Fabrice is a French musician with a unique Caribbean voice that’s living in Kuwait. Earlier this month he released a new single titled “Leave us alone” which is available to stream and download on his Bandcamp account. So check it out here or just click play below.

Back in 2003 I bought the very original Roomba. They had just come out a few months earlier and the idea of a robot vacuum cleaner fascinated me. It was around the same time I was fascinated with Sony’s robot dog, the AIBO, but unlike the AIBO, I could actually afford the Roomba back then.

I was still living with my parents when I got the Roomba so it really only had to clean one room, my room. It was fun using it at first, but I eventually got bored and sold it since I stopped using it. Looking in the comments of that for sale post I found a comment of mine where I explain to a reader why I sold it. I was basically too lazy to use the Roomba since it had to be started manually. This meant I had to be in my room to use it or I had to remember to do it before I left the house for work. It also meant that it would keep going until the battery died and then I had to plug it in and charge it again. It was a chore that defeated the whole purpose of getting a robot in the first place. In that same comment, I mention that if they ever came out with “a version that cleans every day at a certain time without me interfering” then I’d get it another one which brings me to the Eufy Robovac.

One of the first things I did once the pandemic started was to tell my housemaid to stop coming over. This meant I had to clean my place myself which gave me a reason to get a new robot vacuum cleaner. I looked at what was available locally and found the Eufy RoboVac 30C at Blink. I hadn’t heard of Eufy before, but on Amazon it had a 4.5-star rating and over 4,500 reviews. Blink was selling it for 92KD which was around 5KD more than Amazon not including tax or shipping so a pretty good price and so ordered it.

I’ve been using the RoboVac on a daily basis and even though the first few days were a bit rough, it’s now been a few weeks and I’m loving it. The RoboVac 30C has a few cool options, it has Wifi, a 100+ minutes battery life, it can find its way back to its home station and recharge the battery when it’s low, you can schedule it and it also works with Alexa and Google Home. Thee 30C is considered to be a dumb robot in the RoboVac world. There are some RoboVacs that are a lot smarter and can draw and map out the whole room digitally and even recognize different objects on the floor (like actually be able to tell if its a shoe or a basketball). But those RoboVacs are a lot more expensive with some of the more expensive ones costing an upwards of 300KD. The way dumb RoboVacs work is a lot simpler, they clean the room by moving around it randomly with no specific pattern. They’re less efficient in that sense but at the end of the day they still get the work done.

I have my RoboVac clean my lower level of my apartment every night at 8PM. I’m in my TV room upstairs at 8PM so having the RoboVac work at that time doesn’t bother me. I don’t even hear it except for the beep when it wakes up to start cleaning, and another beep 90 minutes later when it calls it a night and comes back to its charging station. I mentioned earlier the first few days were rough and that turned out to be for a variety of reasons. The biggest issue I had was that the RoboVac dust storage was filling up very quickly and the rolling brushes underneath were getting clogged up with carpet hair. If that wasn’t an issue by itself, the RoboVac when low on battery shuts of the suction and heads home. But because my RoboVac storage was full it would cause it to leave a trail of dirt and dust balls on the way back to the charging station. I was having to clean after the RoboVac which was super annoying and was making me regret buying it. BUT, it turned out this wasn’t the RoboVacs fault. The reason it was filling up so quickly is because of the amount of dust and virgin carpet hair it was sucking up from under my large couch. My normal vacuum cleaner can’t reach under the couch but the RoboVac is low enough to get under there and clean properly. After a few days the dust container stopped overfilling and the RoboVac is working perfectly now. Every morning as part of my routine I now just empty the dust container which is usually around half full. The other issue I had when I first got it was making my place RoboVac friendly. It didn’t need a lot of work, I just had a few cables I needed to tuck away nicely so the RoboVac wouldn’t get stuck on it and I had to move one side table slightly away from the couch so that the RoboVac would have easier access. The RoboVac comes with strips you can stick on the floor if for example you don’t want it to wander into the kitchen or you want to keep it away from a certain area.

During this 24/7 lockdown my RoboVac has been my companion of a sort, kinda like how Tom Hanks had Wilson the Volleyball on Castaway. I now yell at my RoboVac and call it an idiot like I used to yell at my dog when it used to do something wrong. My RoboVac has a habit of knocking down my skateboard which I’ve got leaned up against the wall and then starts pushing it around like it’s playing with it. It’s kinda cute when it wants to play but noisy. I’ve only had my RoboVac get stuck once so far and when that happened my phone App notified me. It has no issues climbing carpets and even low objects. A lot of times it might get stuck on something and then it starts trying to push over it but after a while it gives up and goes backward freeing itself. I’m very impressed with it and I don’t regret getting it at all. I don’t even regret getting a smarter RoboVac since the 30C is doing a really great job. My black tiles tend to show dust easily but now they’re shiny all the time I love it.

If you’re interested in getting one, I got mine from Blink but it’s showing as sold out but A Store who are the Eufy dealers still has them in stock also for 92KD.

Abu Othman, like thousands of Kuwaiti men, has struggled to split his time between two wives living in separate homes amid the Gulf state’s strict lockdown to combat the coronavirus.

“My life has become so complicated,” the 45-year-old, who has 10 children between the two women, told AFP.

..

But in response to appeals by scores of polygamists like Abu Othman to ease their restrictions on movement, the Kuwaiti authorities on Sunday introduced electronic permits to men married to more than one woman for one-hour visits twice a week. Source

Seems like a good problem to have. Here is a link to the “Family Care” curfew pass page.

via Reddit

This post originally was going to be about how you should watch the show Little America on AppleTV+, but then it was going to be a post about how you should watch For All Mankind on AppleTV+. But, I’ve now discovered and gotten hooked on the AppleTV+ series The Morning Show“>The Morning Show so this post is about how you might as well get AppleTV+ and just binge-watch all three.

Little America
This is a really great feel-good series, something we all need right now. There are 8 episodes available and each episode is a different story based on a real-life one.

For All Mankind
I was hesitant to watch this at first, I knew it was space-related but that was about it so I thought it was going to be a space story based on real-life events. 5 minutes into the first episode I realized, I was wrong. Not going to spoil the idea for you but it’s a show based on the space race of the 60s, but none of the events on the show match what actually happened in real life. It’s much more interesting. The show stars the incredibly talented Joel Kinnaman from The Killing and Altered Carbon and I think it might be the best show I’ve watched this year.

The Morning Show
I started watching this last night after being disappointed by Defending Jacob and I couldn’t stop watching it. I initially started watching it hoping it was similar to one of my all-time favorite shows, The Newsroom and although it isn’t as good, it got me hooked. I’m now more than halfway through the series and looking forward to finishing it up tonight after I’m done with work. The show has an all-star cast with Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell.

Apple had a promo going on where if you purchased certain hardware from them they’d give you a year of AppleTV+ for free. I’m not sure because I wasn’t paying attention when I signed up but I was able to get a year for free I think because I recently purchased a new MacBook Pro. But if you haven’t purchased anything from Apple recently then they’ll give a one week free trial which should be more than enough time to binge-watch all three shows. Have fun, here is the link.

Update: Oh not sure how I forgot but if you’re a fan of It’s Always Sunny in Philidelphia, then you should also watch Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet on AppleTV+. It’s funny and stars Mac and Cricket.

I recently found out the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait has a COVID-19 information page that contains answers to a lot of common questions that aren’t answered anywhere else. For example, a friend of mine was asking me about curfew passes to the airport, how does that work? If you have a flight to catch can you just show them your ticket or do you need a special pass? What if you don’t have a car, can a friend drop you off? According to the U.S. Embassy website:

How can I drive to the airport during the curfew?
It is our understanding that passengers traveling directly to the airport to depart Kuwait will be permitted to travel with their passport and a copy of their booking and/or ticket showing departure. They should allow additional time for possible stops by relevant authorities and should be wearing face masks while outside their homes.

Can a family member or friend drive me to the airport?
It is our understanding that one person can take passenger(s) directly to the airport as long as they have a copy of the ticket of the traveler. The driver should allow additional time for possible stops by relevant authorities and should be wearing a face mask while outside the home.

The page looks like it’s being updated whenever there is anything new so worth bookmarking since there is very little information out there in English and some of the info isn’t even listed anywhere else to my knowledge. So check it out here.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by الحساب الرسمي لتطبيق شلونك (@shlonik2020) on May 17, 2020 at 5:10am PDT

A humorous ad by Shlonik that promotes their app. Shlonik published it last night in their new Instagram account @shlonik2020.

There is one question that is being asked over and over on the blog and I don’t seem to have a good answer for. How can you get food from the supermarket if you don’t have a Civil ID card? To book an appointment on the moci.shop website you need to have a Civil ID number but that means anyone in Kuwait on a tourist visa, or anyone that moved to Kuwait just before the government shut down and didn’t get their Civil ID yet won’t be able to book an appointment.

There was a blog post that got published yesterday about an American couple in Kuwait on tourist visas complaining about this. Although the article has some inaccurate information in it (there is no 30 item limit when shopping at the supermarket for example), it does highlight this issue further.

So how do you get food if you don’t have a Civil ID? The best options I’ve been able to come up with are the following:

– Order food from the bakala on your street since they are allowed to open during the lockdown.

– Order from the Coop with Whatsapp. Every area coop has a delivery service by Whatsapp and some even have websites. Visit your Coop Instagram account for more information.

Previously I’ve suggested ordering from Oncost since they were delivering during the lockdown but they’ve stopped that now. If you have another option other than the two I’ve listed, let us know in the comments.

Update: A few moments ago @mociq8 posted the graphic below. If you’re in Kuwait on a tourist or family visa you can now book an appointment!

Here is a bit of good news for expats stuck outside of Kuwait, according to the Arab Times, Kuwait will start allowing some expats to come into Kuwait but only under humanitarian basis such as children who have been separated from their families due to the crisis or parents who are stuck abroad. Source

The past few weeks they’ve allowed some expats to fly back in but they were either expats married to Kuwaitis, or domestic workers who flew back in with their Kuwaiti sponsors.

To register to come back you need to visit the Ministry of Foreign affairs website. I’m assuming its the same registration form as the one Kuwaitis used but the Arab Times article doesn’t say. Here is a link to the registration page which was previously used, it’s currently only in Arabic so they’d have to add an English version soon. Link

Update: According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Arab Times article is NOT true and they aren’t planning to set up a website for expats to register on. Only Kuwaitis and first degree relatives of Kuwaitis are currently allowed to come back. Source

I haven’t posted a rant in years I think, but I’m really pissed off about two things, one that’s too late to be fixed, but the other one can still be.

The first thing I want to complain about is the way the lockdown was announced where it basically gave the whole population just a day to try and buy enough food for 3 weeks. That didn’t make any sense. The scenes I saw on Saturday were heartbreaking. It was survival, people tossed aside social distancing not because they wanted to, but because they were forced to. Supermarkets across the country were PACKED with large crowds, super long lines, and no social distancing. I shot the video below on Friday, BEFORE the lockdown announcement. It was a line for a mini-market down the street from my place so just imagine how long the lines were at major supermarkets across Kuwait on Saturday after the lockdown was announced. We don’t have a shortage of food in Kuwait nor a shortage of supermarkets, but the way this lockdown was announced late at night without having the proper infrastructure in place (like private supermarkets on moci.shop) or enough time for people to go out and stock up caused this chaos.

The second thing I’m really pissed off but is something that can easily be fixed is about how the information is being shared. 90% of the information is being shared only in Arabic. Why? I know Kuwait is an Arabic country so what? I’m Lebanese and I can barely read Arabic and I’ve lived all my life in Kuwait. What about the expats who aren’t Arab? What about the low-income workers who barely can communicate in their native tongue let alone read multiple languages? Kuwait is the home of many nationalities and in a crisis like this where it is important that every message gets across to everyone, you can’t have information being shared only in Arabic. You want everyone to use the moci.shop website to book appointments? Have it in multiple languages then. Right now if you visit the site its all in Arabic, even the option to change the language to English is in Arabic. At least have a tiny UK or American flag icon that people can click to translate.

You can’t disagree with me on this either, so don’t bother leaving a comment saying if you’re in an Arabic country you need to learn the language or gtfo. This pandemic isn’t the time for this. Right now the question should simply be HOW CAN WE GET THIS IMPORTANT INFORMATION OUT TO THE MOST NUMBER OF PEOPLE? And the answer is everything, needs to be published in multiple languages.

Instagram allows you to share multiple slides per post. Have the first slide in Arabic and then the next few slides in other languages. Hire people to do the translations, don’t have the money then ask for volunteers! And don’t just post on official channels. The MOH, MOI and other government agencies should coordinate with popular expat accounts like @kuwaitup2date and have important information published there. Go to where the people are and not just expect people to come to you.

Also, have all the information across all your media channels. I’m finding stuff for example on twitter.com/cgckuwait that isn’t on instagram.com/cgckuwait. Why? Why do I need to check all your social media channels to get all the info? Publish everything everywhere, it’s not hard to do.

Then you have other strange decisions. The visual I shared a while ago highlighting the different facilities that are available during the lockdown. The Arabic version was published as a permanent post in the @cgckuwait Instagram account while the English one was posted as a temporary story. Why? Why can’t both be stories and permanent posts? What if I missed your story today? So much stuff doesn’t make sense.

Just to be clear my issue isn’t just with the @cgckuwait account. All the issues I’ve mentioned above apply to all the official sources.

Anyway, I’m done complaining. Happy lockdown everyone.

Corona Care is a national counseling program that provides free counseling sessions to those affected the most by the COVID 19 pandemic:

– Medical health professionals on the frontline
– COVID 19 patients
– Individuals in institutionalized quarantine

Once you visit the website you’ll find a bunch of short FAQ videos and an interactive questionnaire you can take. Depending on how you answer the questionnaire you’ll be given different recommendations and if by the end of the screening you’re eligible for the free counseling, then you will be contacted to set up a counseling session with a mental health expert within the same week.

The sessions are held privately through an online platform and are completely confidential. If you think you need counseling and belong to one of the segments mentioned above, then check out the Corona Care website here.

CoronaMaps Kuwait is a community-driven platform that is built by collaborating with multiple government and non-government organizations.

The platform is operated by volunteers with the goal of creating an information center for sharing community-related information during the Corona crisis in Kuwait. The site visualizes data collected from publicly available resources and will be mapping primary services like health care, home delivery of groceries, community responses and more.

The site launched yesterday night and is still in Beta phase but you can check it out by visiting coronamapskw.com

Although the saying goes “tough times call for tough measures”, I think tough times should call for more compassionate measures! We are dealing with so much right now and I know a lot of you are getting terminated (make sure you get your rights because no one has the right to terminate you because of Covid-19 in Kuwait), or are stuck in other countries, or can’t see your families, and this is why it is important for all of us to be compassionate to everyone we meet.

As a lawyer, I am getting so many emails because of Covid-19 with serious concerns, one of the biggest concerns is not being able to pay rent and eviction. Let me make something clear, a lot of people can not pay rent right now, not just you. And yes, the law allows the landlord to evict you (we wrote about this way back), but we are also going through unprecedented times so here is my advice:

– Write a formal letter in Arabic letting the landlord know that because of the unprecedented circumstances you are not able to pay the rent currently. I will make a letter template available to you in a few days for free, just email me on [email protected]. Also, feel free to communicate with them verbally and openly, I have had clients that have done that and then gotten a discount or a few months free, don’t be afraid to ask, but no matter what the verbal conversation is, I highly suggest that you still send them a document in Arabic (a notice) stating that you can not pay.

– Do not leave the apartment, if you can not pay the rent, stay there anyways. No one has the right to kick you out by force and this is something I doubt is a priority for authorities at this current time. Still, send a letter though.

– Do not feel shy about reaching out to charities, so many people in Kuwait, Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis alike have donated to various funds to help out those in need, so reach out to charities, please.

– Be patient and stay positive. I have hope that the Kuwaiti government will draft new legislation to deal with issues such as eviction from properties very soon and in favor of the weaker party, the tenants. I applaud the Kuwaiti government for all they have done so far and I have so much faith in them.

Best of luck everyone and I hope you and your families are safe and sound at this time. Feel free to follow me on instagram @flattland where I will be posting about my experience and the law (among other things) or to ask me and my team for any advice during this time. We have provided a few spots for legal consultations for free every week so check ftl-legal.com for a quick call with one of our lawyers.

Take care and sending everyone lots of love.

Post by Fajer Ahmed – Legal Counsel
Have a Kuwait law related question? Email me at [email protected]

The legal opinions expressed in this post are those of the author Fajer. Opinions expressed by Mark or any other writer on mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com are those of the individual’s and in no way reflect Fajer’s opinion.