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Urban Outfitters the lifestyle brand is opening its first store in Kuwait at The Avenues after opening in the UAE and Qatar. I actually passed by the one in Dubai yesterday and I’ve definitely outgrown the brand but, they do carry a good assortment of vinyl records so if we’re lucky those make it to Kuwait.

via @InspiredEdibles

Arablit, the magazine of Arabic literature in translation published an article yesterday on how the Kuwaiti English literature landscape has changed in the past 10 years. Accompanying the article, Arablit also shared a list of 10 important Kuwaiti novels (in English) from the last 10 years which included:

Mai al-Nakib’s short-story collection The Hidden Light of Objects (2014)

Saud Alsanousi’s The Bamboo Stalk, translated by Jonathan Wright (2015)

Ismail Fahd Ismail’s short novel The Old Woman and the River, translated by Sophia Vasalou (2019)

Bothayna Al-Essa’s All That I Want to Forget, translated by Michele Henjum (2019)

Layla AlAmmar’s debut novel, The Pact We Made (2019)

Saud Alsanousi’s novel Mama Hissa’s Mice, translated by Sawad Hussain (2020)

Taleb Alrefai’s The Mariner, translated by Russell Harris (2020)

Mai al-Nakib’s debut novel, An Unlasting Home (2022)

Zahra Marwan’s Where Butterflies Fill the Sky: A Story of Immigration, Family, and Finding Home (2022)

Shahd Alshammari’s Head Above Water (2022)

If you want check out the article and the full list of books in detail, here is the link.

If you want to buy any of the books, the links above lead straight to Amazon although most of the books are also available locally.

Thanks Zaydoun

Was going through old versions of the TEC website using web.archive.org and I came across an old map with all the various TEC projects. Sadly most of the places have been closed down:

1. Kuwait Towers
2. Waterfront
3. Bend Algar Club
4. Green Island
5. Swimming Pool Complex
6. Ice Skating Rink
7. Musical Fountain
8. Shaab Club
9. Yacht Club
10. Al Shaab Slipway
11. Shaab Garden
12. Ras Alard Sea Club & Harbor
13. Showbiz
14. Plajat
15. Al Bida Sea Club
16. Missila Beach
17. Touristic Garden
18. Entertainment City
19. Abdali Shelter
20. Sabahia Garden
21. Ugaila Beach
22. Mangaf Beach
23. Nuwaiseeb Shelter
24. Kheiran Resort

You can view the larger version of the map by clicking here.

ROKA, the award-winning modern Japanese restaurant is opening at the Waldorf Astoria this coming Tuesday. If you want to know what kind of food they serve or their prices, their menu is available online and you can check it out here.

They also opened up reservations and it’s filling up pretty fast. As of this post, the next available booking is on October 12. If you want to book, here is the link.

A friend just sent me the video above he took of 360 Mall on fire. Looks like it’s in the new extension near IKEA but hard to tell from the video if its the mall parking that’s on fire or the actual mall. Will post an update once I get more details.

Thanks @nibaq

Update: Looks like fire was put out and doesn’t seem to have been any serious damage.

I assumed everyone already knew about this place since they’ve been open for a while now but recently I realized that wasn’t the case. There is a little bagel shop in Kuwait City next to Solo Pizza called While I’m Baked. If you head there in the morning before they sell out, you can get some of the best bagel sandwiches in Kuwait. I always order either their Turkey Avo Boi or the Kramer, and now while I’m typing this out I’m craving a sandwich so I’ll probably pick one up on my way into work this morning.

If you want to check them out, here is their location on Google Maps and they’re on Instagram @whileimbaked

A friend of mine recently took part in the launch of the new Leica M11 camera. Seven photographers were chosen by Leica from around the world to get their hands on the camera ahead of its release so they can capture photos with it. Abdullah was one of the photographers selected and he’s now featured on their main page.

All of the photos taken by the seven photographers are available to view on online including Abdullah’s which you can check by clicking here.

If you want to follow him on Instagram, it’s @byalsayer

After a bit of a lull, JACC are back to hosting musical events again. They currently have six different events coming up and I have four tickets to Guy Manoukian’s concert to giveaway!

After his recent sold-out concert at L’Olympia in Paris, and packed houses from The London Palladium all the way to the Sydney Opera House, Lebanese composer and pianist Guy Manoukian will be in Kuwait and performing for the first time at the Jaber Al Ali Concert Hall on Thursday 18th of August 2022.

One person will have a chance to win four platinum tickets worth KD240 to this concert.

[gleam url=”https://gleam.io/TTwHH/win-platinum-tickets-to-guy-manoukian”]Your Competition Name[/gleam]

To win the tickets for you and your friends, all you need to do is enter the draw above. As usual, please make sure you use a working email since that’s how I will be contacting the winner. If the winner doesn’t respond by tomorrow noon, another winner will be selected. Draw closes tonight at 8PM. Good luck!

For more information on the concert, click here.

Update: Winner was randomly selected and contacted!

GQ recently published a list of what they think are the 6 best restaurants in Kuwait. The 6 that made the cut are White Robata, Tatami, Dar Hamad, OVO, Roka and Cure.

Roka isn’t open yet and won’t be until the end of the year but the rest you most likely all know about. To check out the GQ article, click here.

The Palestinian Culture Center has been operating in Kuwait since the early 1970s with the goal of preserving, developing, and disseminating Palestinian material heritage. They hold exhibitions yearly where they sell hand-stitched dresses, shawls, and cushions, as well as handmade ceramics, books, and food aimed to preserve the Palestinian national identity. But recently, the PCC launched an online shop where they sell the same items but minus the food. Their pricing policy is based on a formula where one-third of the price goes towards the cost of materials, one-third is the fee they pay the ladies doing the work, and one-third helps students and families in need.

Check out their website, your support helps sustain the livelihoods of more than 350 Palestinian refugee women and their families. Here is the link.

The Ministry of Commerce has shared some more bad rainbows you need to look out for. I honestly have no idea what the three bottom ones are for, but I’ll make sure to report them if I see any.

Yesterday the Ministry of Commerce issued guidelines to differentiate between a regular rainbow and LGBTQ+ flags with the hashtag ‘participate in censorship.’ At first, I was like is this the most pressing issue they have right now? But then a friend pointed out they might have done this because people were probably flooding them with complaints about LGBTQ+ flags being sold in Kuwait when in reality, they’re just products with regular rainbows.

How to Tell a Good Rainbow from a Bad Rainbow:
🌈 = Rainbow and has 7 colors = Good Rainbow
🏳️‍🌈 = LGBTQ+ flag and has 6 colors = Bad Rainbow

Bakers’ Point is a new supermarket that focuses on everything baking-related. They describe themselves as “the first all-inclusive baking destination” and they might be just that. I passed by over the weekend and the place is pretty nice and fairly big for what is essentially just a baking supplies store.

The supermarket is divided into three essential parts. The first area is filled with all the different ingredients you might need (they have a huge variety of flour btw), the second section is frozen and refrigerated items, and the last section is baking tools and accessories.

It’s a pretty nice idea and a lot of the items come in wholesale packaging which is great if you’re a pro-hobbyist. They oddly don’t have a website but they are open daily from 7AM to 10PM. If you want to check them out they’re on Instagram @bakerspoint.kw and here is their location on Google Maps.

This is a random post in case someone ever googles looking for help. Last week the brakes on my 12-year-old Toyota FJ Cruiser started acting up. It was an electronic issue but basically when I turned on the car a bunch of dash lights lit up and a super annoying warning buzzer came on and wouldn’t go off. My brakes were also no longer working. So I called the Toyota roadside assist and took the car to the dealership.

I love the dealership but sometimes things don’t make much sense. In this case, I was quoted just shy over 1,000KD to fix the issue which was a failed “Brake Booster Assembly, W/Master Cylinder”. The part alone was 838KD and then the labor cost was 200 something. For a 12-year-old car that probably costs like 4,000KD in the second-hand market, probably less, it just didn’t make financial sense to pay that much.

I started trying to figure out how to get this problem sorted at a more reasonable price. Randomly, the day I got the quote from Toyota I had to go to Aleppo, the nuts and bolts store in Shuwaikh. As I pull up outside the Aleppo store I notice the shop next door had a large sign outside with the Toyota and Lexus logo and a large ABS brakes logo in the middle. So before heading into Aleppo I go up to one of the guys in that garage and show him a video of the errors I was getting on my dash, he quoted me 220KD to fix my problem and told me it was a 30 min job.

So I got a tow truck and had the car picked up from the dealership and dropped off at this garage. Turns out this garage does just one thing, which is to repair this one specific part on Toyotas and Lexuses. They have used ones in stock and swap out your non-working assembly with a new one and then give you a three-month warranty which they actually honor. I got mine swapped out but then felt the pedal feel was a bit off so came back to them a week later and they swapped it out again with another model and now it’s perfect. And the best part is it cost me just 1/5th the dealership price and they fixed it while I was waiting.

If you ever run into a similar brakes issue with your Toyota or Lexus and want to get it repaired outside the dealership, here is the location of this garage on Google Maps.

Over the weekend Oula and Alfa fuel stations started closing some of their fuel pumps and operating just one for each lane due to a lack of staff. This started causing long queues at the pump with some people waiting 45 minutes just to have their car filled with fuel. It’s odd that this started happening at both stations at the same time, but they both seem to want the same thing, either to start charging for the service of filling your car up, or turn the stations to self-service ones.

Oula posted a story yesterday stating that their Al-Omariah station now operates on a self-service system. Their plan it seems is to want to charge 200 fils for people who want fuel filled up by one of their employees which makes sense but, based on the comments on their Instagram, people don’t want to pay and would rather drive to an Alfa station instead. Alfa on the other hand hasn’t posted anything on their account while KNPC posted last night saying that basically nothing will change and nobody is gonna start charging for service.

Personally, I find this whole thing just odd. We all used to fill up fuel ourselves like 20 years ago and it’s a normal thing around the world so I don’t understand why there is so much hoopla around this.