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As I mentioned earlier in the week, there are 18 restaurants opening up at the new Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Centre and thanks to a reader, I got the names of the restaurants that are opening there. They are the following:

Haleeb Wa Heil
Villa Fayrouz
Gogosh
Cocoa Room
The Chocolate Gate
Baker & Spice
Kashwanat Al Bait
Dakakeen
Cafe Meem
Rococo
Burger Boutique
Over Jar
Days Cafe
Beit Shakry
My Fair Grill
Cafe Organic
The Bowl
She Shawerma

All the restaurants are local creations since that was one of the main requirements of the Amiri Diwan. Also note I might have misspelled some of the restaurants since the list I got was in Arabic.

I dropped by the Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Centre late last week to check out the progress. On this latest trip I passed by the fountain area which I wasn’t aware of previously. It wasn’t in the original renderings and the area has a large fountain in the middle surrounded by 18 restaurants and shops. On top of the restaurants is a walkway which reminded me of the High Line in New York since it was surrounded by greenery and pools of water. The high path overlooks the fountain area and leads all the way to the back of the four main structures. I shot a video of the fountain area which you can see in the video below.

I’m trying to get a list of all the places that will be opening up there but still haven’t received them yet. One source of mine has informed me the soft launch is now on October 15th. Even though there is still lots of work taking place near the fountain area, the main buildings are basically done. I walked into one of them and it was sparkling clean with workers busy still cleaning. Another contact of mine also involved in the project has denied they will be soft launching on October 15th and instead plans are still underway for an October 31st launch. We’ll have to see which one turns out to be right.

I don’t have any information on what performances will be taking part at the Cultural Center nor do I even know if there is a website for it. If I find out anything I’ll surely post it.

If you’re looking for a new show to start watching and you’re a fan of Kiefer Sutherland, then I highly recommend you start watching Designated Survivor. The pilot episode came out a few days and I was hooked 5 minutes into it. Designated survivor is a term I hadn’t heard of before and this is the description Wikipedia has on it:

In the United States, a designated survivor (or designated successor) is an individual in the presidential line of succession, usually a member of the United States Cabinet, who is arranged to be at a physically distant, secure, and undisclosed location when the President and the country’s other top leaders (e.g., Vice President and Cabinet members) are gathered at a single location, such as during State of the Union addresses and presidential inaugurations. This is intended to guarantee continuity of government in the event of a catastrophic occurrence that kills the President and many officials in the presidential line of succession. If such an event would occur, killing both the President and Vice President, the surviving official highest in the line, possibly the designated survivor, would become the Acting President of the United States under the Presidential Succession Act.

In the show, Kiefer Sutherland plays the role of a low-level Cabinet member who becomes President of the United States after a huge explosion kills everyone above him. It’s a pretty intense show (similar to ‘24‘ in a way) and so I’m going to have a difficult time watching this one episode at a time every week. If you have Hulu you’ll find Designated Survivor there and if you have Netflix outside the US you should also find it there. You won’t find it on the US Netflix, this is probably the only time you want to have an international Netflix account.

The new Four Seasons Hotel is expected to open up in Kuwait early next year and one of the most anticipated things about the hotel is their fine dining options. Below is a list of all the restaurants that I’ve been told will be part of the new Four Seasons in Kuwait:

Sintoho – A Pan-Asian restaurant
Dai Forni – An Italian restaurant
Elements – A buffet restaurant
Al Bandar – Poolside lounge/restaurant
Al Sour – Lobby Lounge

I tried to find renderings of the two main restaurants Sintoho and Dai Forni but wasn’t able to. If by any chance someone has copies or finds any, then please share them.

Back in August a new Italian restaurant opened up called Vigonovo and I wrote about it on the blog a couple of days after their opening. I didn’t mention anything about the food back then since they had just opened but now that I’ve been there a bunch of times I can say Vigonovo has become one of my favorite restaurants in Kuwait.

The food first of all is really great, its Italian but its light with simple ingredients so you never leave in a food coma no matter how much you eat. The menu is always changing and the portions are tapas sized which means you get to eat more than one dish (my average is 3 dishes). But, my favorite thing about Vigonovo has to be the chef, Marco. Its become a habit for me and my friends now to just go there and have him whip up whatever he wants for us. Since the cooking is homestyle it just feels natural to let Marco tell us what we are having that night, as if we’re visiting his home. And I don’t think we are the only people who do that, I think most of his regulars let him just decide what they’re having, it’s more fun. Speaking of his regulars, I didn’t realize we had such a large Italian community until I started going to Vigonovo. Every time I’m there at least two or three other tables are filled with Italians.

I don’t really have anything negative to say about the place, I think the lights could be dimmer in the evening and I find the blue walls weird (when you see it you’ll understand) and thats about it. Oh and their instagram account is private which I’ve told Marco I find annoying because it means I need to follow them to find out about new dishes.

If you’re looking for an authentic Italian restaurant in Kuwait then this is it. The place is located in Salmiya next to Gia. They’re right next door to Lorenzo in the shop called “Rose Gathering” (they’ll be changing the sign soon). Vigonovo is currently open daily from 5PM onwards except on Fridays when they close. Definitely worth checking out. Here is their location on [Google Maps] and their instagram account is @vigonovo_kw

According to a reliable source of mine, the opening date for the Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Centre has been officially set as October 31st. I didn’t receive any other details but I would assume a performance will be taking place there to correspond with the opening. More details when I get them. In case you missed the post on my visit to the Cultural Center you can check that out [Here]

A new study has revealed that Taiwan is the best country in the world for expats, while Kuwait is the worst. The results come from a report by the online expat community InterNations, which looks at everything from quality of life and personal finance, to job satisfaction and ease of settling indices. [Source]

Things should improve once Chick-fil-A opens up.

Update: This is the source of the DailyMail article [Link]

I wasn’t planning on posting this since I didn’t think anyone would notice but I’ve been getting emails about it all morning. The Community section of the blog is currently down due to the fact I’m upgrading the software. Earlier this morning I realized I had an old forum software running and Google was giving a “Deceptive site ahead” warning when trying to access the section. So decided I might as well just do a full on upgrade.

Technical Details
The Community runs on Invision Power and I had version 3.8 installed. I’m currently trying to update it to version 4.1 which has new features and an overall fresher look. The upgrade should have taken around 30-60 minutes but turns out my server is running PHP 5.4.45 and I need at least PHP 5.5 for the upgrade. I’m currently waiting for my host to upgrade the PHP version on the server and once that is done I will complete the upgrade process. This should have no effect on the main blog since mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com is running on a different server than community.mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com.

Update: I completed the upgrade but then managed to completely mess things up again. Now have to restore from backup and restart the process. On bright side the google warning should be gone now.

Update2: The upgrade is now complete. There is still lots of work to do like redo the whole Community theme but for now at least it’s back up.

Up until recently if you wanted to learn a new water sport it would have had to be either wakeboarding or kitesurfing since those two sports are fairly easy to get lessons for. But now a new center opened up called Kuwait Watersports that offers two new activities you can add to the list; windsurfing and sailing.

Their lessons vary in prices but 1 hour of private windsurfing or sailing lessons is KD30 which is similar in price to say an hour of private wakeboarding (KD35). They also offer lessons for kids and you can even rent or buy equipment from them. Personally I’d be interested in trying windsurfing but other than that and sailing they also have paddle boarding and kayaking.

So if you want to try a new watersport, check out their website [Here]

Note: Also, in case you weren’t aware, there is a sailing club for expats that has been around since the early 90s called Kuwait Sailing Club. You can check those guys out as well but they don’t offer sailing lessons. [Link]

My top two news sites used to be CNN and BBC but CNN basically turned into TMZ while BBC just wasn’t cutting it for me anymore. My two go-to news sites now are The Washington Post and The Guardian. What news sites do you check?

Yesterday, Kuwaiti athlete Fehaid Al Deehani won gold at the Olympics coming first in the men’s double trap shooting event. Sadly since Kuwait is banned from the Olympics, Fehaid won the medal as an independent athlete competing under International Olympic Committee flag, an achievement by itself since no other independent athlete has ever won gold before. No Kuwaiti flag was raised and the Kuwaiti anthem wasn’t played during the medal ceremony.

Kuwait has competed in 12 Olympics since Mexico City in 1968, winning 3 medals in total, 2 bronze and 1 gold with all 3 won by Fehaid.

Yesterday I finally got to pass by and check out the Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Center. Those of you who’ve been following the blog for awhile will remember I was the first to break the story on the cultural centre back in May 2014 after my visit to Al Salam Palace. Yesterday was the first time back since then and damn what a difference two years makes.

Firstly the project is basically done. I mean it was done a couple of months ago but they pushed the launch till Q4 of this year so they’re now using the extra time to make sure everything is close to perfect once it’s finally open. I visited all four of the buildings and I’m now even more excited about the cultural centre than I ever was. The whole project is so beautifully designed with each building having a different style interior than the other. I am not sharing a lot of photos in this post because most of the rooms were getting a final coat of paint so everything was covered in plastic and there was lots of scaffolding everywhere. That includes all the theaters but I already shared some great shots last week so you’re not missing out on anything.

Behind the 4 buildings is a super super long and large corridor that stretches from one corner of the project to the other. One side of the corridor is connected to the indoor parking while the other side connects to the buildings. This means in the summer you can go from your car to the theaters or library without having to walk much under the sun or in the heat. The whole exterior structure is extremely photogenic and I’m very interested to see what photographers will manage to do with the place. Inside the ceilings are very high with lots of large spaces and hallways. I can already visualize large crowds of people gathered waiting to enter a theater or after a show is done, just socializing in these large spaces.

The fact that this project was completed in just two years is insane. I have no idea how they did it, probably by throwing lots of money at it but whatever their formula was, they need to apply it to the new airport. Below are the photos I’m sharing for now, once most of the work is done I’ll pass by again and reshoot. If you have any questions you could ask me and I’ll try to answer it with the best of my knowledge.

Last week I posted a video of a classic Nissan Skyline doing a burnout in front of Big Ben. Since that video I’ve been trying to track down the guys and I think I finally found them. Well kinda, I think I found three different groups of guys doing this Europe trip. I combined some of their videos below which includes two more of the Big Ben burnout but from different angles. The picture above was taken from one of the touring groups and I thought it was strange since it looks like they did a river crossing? How did they even end up in there…

Anyway you can check out a lot more photos in the accounts below:
@kuw_sd
@fawzi_77
@kuw_ta
@ashtrackya
@__92_q8
@a__k4
@v_190
@910_q
@__51172__
@ajmy_q8
@q8.j1

You can check the hashtag #اشتراكيه_2016 as well since they all seem to be using it.

Also, you’ll notice some cars have Saudi plates. I believe thats because you can’t import and register the cars with Kuwaiti plates since they’re not old enough to be considered a classic car. I think a car must be 30+ years to be considered a classic and be allowed to be imported and registered. So as a loop hole, they keep them with Saudi plates.

Even though the MOI website looks like it was designed by a high school student back in 1998, it still gets updated every so often with new features. The latest feature added to the website is the ability for tourists visiting Kuwait to apply for a visa online (eVisa). There is a very short list on the website of nationalities that can use this service, but those nationalities should find this service useful since it will speed up the entry process. Here is the direct link to the eVisa page [Link]

Looks pretty incredible, can’t wait to check it out myself.

Thanks Love_my_kuwait