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Someone is selling the first edition print of the very rare book “The Kuwait Urbanization” by Saba George Shiber. I’ve seen paperback versions of the book but never see this copy before. The guys asking $1,866 for the book and my birthday is coming up in around 10 days time so if anybody is looking for the perfect gift this would be it! [Link]

If you want to download a PDF version of the book here is the link [PDF 166MB]

The first part of the documentary on Kuwait that is airing on British Airways this month has been uploaded online in full HD. It’s nearly 12 minutes long and you can watch it above. [YouTube]

Late last week I posted about how British Airways will be airing a 4 part series on Kuwait this August onboard all their flights and earlier today I was sent the first two and a half minutes of part 1. The intro makes Kuwait look so good and exciting that it makes me want to move to Kuwait even though I already live here. Check it out below.

Update: The video is officially out so I’ve updated the link below with the full video of part one.

[YouTube]

Post by Amy Freeman

When I first moved to Kuwait from New Zealand, my workouts stayed pretty much the same as did the contents of my diet. So when I found it really hard to lose weight one of the things that I realized is that I hadn’t taken in to account how somewhat inactive my life had become outside my workouts. It’s a common thing in Kuwait especially in summer which starts in May and lasts all the way till October.

So I started doing something that I had never done before and to be honest I had never had to do before. I started counting my macronutrients (carbs, fat and protein) and calories.

After finding that this had positive results I suggested it to some of my clients to try out as well. They also ended up having positive results.

What this made me realize first and foremost is that ‘accidental exercise’; such as walking down 2 blocks to pay a phone bill or taking the dog to the park does actually make a difference overall to your body composition and it does make it easier to be a little more flexible with nutrition.

It also made me realize how much unnecessary snacking I was doing such as while preparing dinner or when I was bored. Probably the biggest thing I noticed is how much of a difference NOT eating out makes.

There are many ways to find out how many calories a day you should be having and what your macros should be but I suggest going to see either a nutritionist or a reputable coach that has experience. If you don’t have access to either of those things then you can get an idea of where to start at this website [Here]

Most of the time it is a trial and error thing, everybody is different and sometimes it takes a
couple of months to fine tune things.

Lastly remember that not all calories and macros are equal. For example, If you have a 1,500 calorie diet of chips and chocolate versus a 1500 calorie diet of beef, quinoa and broccoli, there is going to be a huge difference in how those two bodies look and perform.

Happy Training Kuwait

Post by Amy Freeman, a Strength and Conditioning Coach from New Zealand and currently a Personal Trainer at Inspire Pure Fitness in Kuwait.

I shot the video below while waiting at a traffic light a couple of nights ago. I noticed the car on my left was creeping forward and figured they were most likely going to run a red light so I started recording the car. A few seconds later as expected, the car ran a red light for absolutely no logical reason. But running a red light, driving on the emergency lane or parking illegally are just very common occurrences because people rarely get punished for their actions.

[YouTube]

So why don’t we crowdsource the police work? Awhile back when I posted about the Deera App in which you could report garbage around Kuwait, a reader emailed me and told me about how in Qatar you could report traffic violations using their app called Metrash2 (You can watch one of their ads for Metrash2 below). So why don’t we do the same in Kuwait? People are already taking photos of people people illegally parking in handicap spots or people driving on emergency lanes. So why not allow these incidents to be officially reported like the Metrash2 app?

[YouTube]

There is a petition currently circulating to shift the Ramadan working hours for street cleaners to the evening. The temperature outside is hitting 50 degrees and because its Ramadan they can’t drink any water so this petition makes complete sense. Over 10,000 signatures have been collected so far and according to the people who set up the petition, the signatures will be passed on to the municipality to help push for this change. So if you would like to support this petition, visit this [Link]

Update: Below is a video a friend shot. The working hours of the street cleaner she spoke to is 8:30AM to 10:30PM during Ramadan.

[YouTube]

Photo on top by Yahsheik

Last week I posted about the demolition of the Al-Maidan Cultural Center and the construction that is taking place there. Because of the fact the construction was moving very fast I assumed the project belonged to Al-Diwan Al-Amiri, turns out I was right. A reader sent me an email with full details on this project and it turns out its going to be a museums district.

The project that will occupy the site next to Shaab Park will house four world class museums, a fine art center, a theatre and two information centers. The project will compliment the Kuwait’s Cultural Center that’s located in Kuwait City which I previously posted about [Here]

The project will consist of six main buildings:
– A Natural History Museum
– A Science Museum
– A Museum of Islamic History
– A Space Museum
– A Fine Arts Center
– A 350 seat Theatre

The Natural History Museum will feature:
– Wildlife and Biodiversity
– Arabian Wildlife
– Pre-History
– Earth and Environment

The Science Museum will feature:
– Experimental Atrium
– Technology and Transport
– Health and Medicine
– Human Body and Mind

The Space Museum will feature:
– Planetary Science
– Space Exploration



The project is expected to be completed in 20 months which is why the construction has been taking place day and night.

Based on my previous personal experience with Al-Diwan Al-Amiri, I have full confidence that this project will be completed on time and look spectacular. The best part about this (for me) is the fact these museums will be located down the street from my house. I’m super excited.

Post by Amy Freeman

I remember in the early 90’s watching my nana and pop switch from butter to margarine, whole to skim milk and where possible, full fat to low fat. The 80’s and 90’s was the start of what would become a processed food epidemic. As Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig were constantly being advertised on TV and in magazines, leading the ‘weight loss’ industry and the ‘microwave meal’ industry, woman were becoming more body conscious and diabetes was on the rise. It became a highly publicized and popular belief that calories in and calories out was all that mattered, low fat was the key and all carbohydrates were equal. Enter the diabetes and obesity epidemic!

The unfortunate thing is that the belief systems that were used for weight loss in the 80’s and 90’s are still held in high regard to this day. Trying to convince people that eating natural butter is BETTER than processed margarine is a daily battle. Trying to convince people that full fat milk or cream is BETTER for your insulin levels than low fat or skimmed milk is hard to land with a lot of people.

The reason ‘Paleo’/Whole Food nutrition (or clean eating as I call it) has been so successful, is that it is taking people back to eating a very similar diet to those that lived in our grandparents era. Home made food, unprocessed junk food, lots of fruit, veggies and meat, this style of eating is identical to how our wirery, fit and non diabetic ancestors lived. Even though I remember my nana’s baking yummy desserts, they didn’t eat it in copious amounts and binge till they burst on a Saturday night. They worked it into their active, busy lifestyles and treated food as fuel and NOT as bribery or reward on a daily basis.

When my nana passed away and we were going through her bookshelf I remember the copious amounts of nutrition books she had collected over the years. Amongst what must have been around 50 of them, there were soup diet books, detox books, vegetarian diet books, liver cleansing books and a number of diabetes books. I remember feeling really impressed and proud that my nana had been so conscientious about being informed of health and wellbeing.

The problem is that behind all these diet books is a person trying to make money. Telling people to eat natural foods with correct portions and live a balanced lifestyle isn’t going to make the authors of these nutrition books any money. Instead, what sells is ‘14 Day Detox’s’,‘Lose 10 Pounds in 5 Days’, ‘Do the Dukan Diet’ or ‘Do the Atkins Diet’. Around the time that these books started becoming popular, curvy models were out and skinny was in and magazines really started to promote size 0 as ideal.

The amount of clients, family members and friends that I have seen fall into the trap of going on one of these unrealistic diets and rebound back from it (me included), is ridiculous. Through this a lot of people have developed unhealthy relationships’ with food from being convinced that low fat/ low carb is the only way to lose weight and then go 4 months without so much as one lick of an ice cream only to then rebound and go the other way and live in a chocolate coma for a month. Both extremes are as bad as each other and each time your body goes through this cycle is going to make it harder the next time you try to lose weight.

Being perfect, eating only grilled chicken and veggies, not socializing in case you slip up, feeling guilt when you have 2 eggs instead of 4 egg whites and doing 2 hours of cardio a day is not maintainable. Unless you are going to compete as a figure athlete and you are close to competition, quiet frankly, its stupid and absolutely unnecessary. I give it around 3-4 months before burnout and 4-6 months before you put all that weight you lost back on and then some.

Making healthy choices, eating whole foods like our grandparents and having a balanced workout routine and doing it consistently for 6-12-18 plus months is going to get you results that you can maintain forever. Yes you will need to be patient, it wont happen overnight and there will be times where you get frustrated but weight loss and well being should be treated as a marathon, not a sprint. It will be worth it when you have reached your goal and can still enjoy your life without feeling deprived of food or guilty every time you have a treat.

Happy Training Kuwait

Post by Amy Freeman, a Strength and Conditioning Coach from New Zealand and currently a Personal Trainer at Inspire Pure Fitness in Kuwait.

Image by akeelsworld

I took the photo above a couple of hours ago while heading back to the city from the Hilton Resort. A public transportation bus had run off the side of the highway flipping over in the process. Not sure how many people were hurt but I counted at least three ambulances on the scene.

The Kuwaiti Air Force picking up their freshly printed money this morning at Newcastle

Posted by @lucyncollins, an airline pilot yesterday.

Thanks Ali

Instead of separate posts I figured I would combine all these into one. First up is Alfredo’s Gallery Restaurant which is opening soon in Avenues Phase III. According to their Facebook page they were originally supposed to open back in April but I guess they ran into some issues. According to a sticker on their store front as well as their homepage, Alfredo’s Gallery is the birthplace of the Fettuccine Alfredo.

The second restaurant thats opening is Wok Hay located outside the main entrance to Green Island right next to the new Egyptian restaurant that opened Abou El Sid. Wok Hay is an Asian dining restaurant and according to an employee I saw there it should be opening up any day now. Wok Hay is owned by Ruby Tuesday Inc. and last year they shut down all their US locations after running into financial difficulties.

A couple of days back I had just finished having lunch at Salhiya and as I was leaving the area by car I spotted the Finger Sushi sign on one of the buildings. I hadn’t noticed the sign before and since I was driving I made my friend note down Finger Sushi on my phone so I could check it out later once I got back home. That same evening around 1AM while watching the movie Non-Stop, I came across the note Finger Sushi on my phone and decided to see if they had a website or instagram account I could check out. I ended up finding both and right away what caught my attention was the fact that they’re open 24 hours a day. Me and my friends always have a hard time finding a place that isn’t McDonalds that is open after midnight and a 24 hour sushi place is exactly what we’d want late at night. So I paused the movie and gave them a call just to confirm that their dine-in is open 24 hours and not just the delivery and the guy on the other end of the line said I could come by any time of day and eat. So I decided once the movie was over I would head to Finger Sushi and try it out.

It was just after 2AM when I left my house and headed into the city. I put some Chet Baker on and took the scenic route arriving at the restaurant around 2:20AM and obviously, I was the only one there. There menu is very basic with just 7 makis, some salads and a handful of side dishes. By 7 makis I actually mean one kind of maki but you get to choose if you want it salmon, crab, shrimp, tuna, chicken, meat or vegetable. I decided to go with the salmon maki and asked them to make it spicy, the chef recommended I choose the red colored rice if I wanted it spicy but I decided to stick with white for the salmon and ordered another spicy crab maki with the red rice. I asked the chef what the sweet salmon salad was and he told me it was similar to the popular salmon avocado salad except with a different sauce. I ended up going with that as well and a side order of edamame. The cashier asked me if I wanted chopsticks which I replied yes to and he then asked me if I wanted soya sauce which I also said yes to. Turns out both are chargeable items costing 100fils each.

While waiting for my order to get ready I took some photos of the place trying my best to make it look cooler than it actually is and while I was admiring my handiwork, the waiter calls me up and hands me over a tray with my order. All the items I had ordered were nicely packaged so I took a group photo and then opened the packages for one more round of photos before I proceeded to munch away on the food.

I started off with the edamame which is impossible to go wrong with and once I was done with the edamame I started on the sweet salmon salad. This honestly was the worst thing I ordered and I have no idea why the chef would even compare it to a salmon avocado salad at other restaurants since its nothing like it. The salad was mostly lettuce with four or five small cooked and dry pieces of salmon covered with Lays chips. Not even the sauce could rescue the salad from disaster so save yourself the disappointment and skip the salads all together. Once I put the salad aside I started on the makis.

According to the chef all their makis plates come as six pieces with each two pieces having a different sauce on top. I’m sure you could stick to one sauce if you want to but for your first time you’d probably want to have the three different sauces so you could get an idea of what they all taste like. The makis also all come covered with crispy tempura. I personally wanted to order my maki without the sauces and the crispy tempura but since I was going to write about the place I decided to keep everything as it was. All three sauces tasted fairly similar and they were strong enough to overpower the flavor of the whole maki. It didn’t matter if there was crab or salmon inside I couldn’t tell the difference. On the other hand the red rice gave it an interesting flavor since its prepared using rose water.

Overall it was pretty much what I was expecting from a 24 hour fast food sushi place along with a bill that fit the experience:

6 Piece Salmon Maki – KD1.200
6 Piece Crab Maki – KD1.200
Sweet Salmon Salad – KD1.000
Edamame – KD0.750
Soya Sauce – KD0.100
Chopsticks – KD0.100

Total: KD4.350

It’s the perfect place for late night munchies and I would go back again with my friends when every other place is closed. But, I would save my money and avoid the salad next time as well as having the makis without the crispy tempura or the sauces. Finger Sushi is located in the same building as Opera Cakes and Sahara Hotel which is on your left hand side once you leave the Salhiya area [Map]. They’ve been open for just over a week now and you can find them on instagram @fingersushi or online at fingersushi.com.

Over the weekend a video went viral showing an endangered sea turtle being killed on a beach in Kuwait. In the very graphic video (which I won’t share on this blog), one man is seen sitting on top of the large turtle with a small kitchen knife in his hand while his family and friends can be heard in the background encouraging him to cut off the turtles head. You can even hear a voice of a woman and a child in the video, both in support of the killing. Once the perpetrator starts cutting off the turtles head, a second man comes into the video frame to help hold the turtle down. Once the head is cut off the child in the background yells out that he wants the head while everyone else watches the now dead and decapitated turtle bleed on the beach.

The Environment Public Authority (EPA) is now offering a KD3,000 reward to anyone who can identify the people in the video. It’s a very horrific crime but animal abuse sadly isn’t very rare in Kuwait. Last year some guys were driving around with shotguns shooting and decapitating stray dogs and then posting pictures all over Instagram and they were never punished so I am hoping this time around the perpetrators will be punished and made an example of.

Most of the articles on the sea turtle killing are in Arabic but KUNA have a poorly written piece on it which you could read [Here]

A couple of weeks ago I went to Cairo for a friends wedding and since the wedding was taking place at the Four Seasons, me and my friends all ended up staying at the same hotel as well. I hadn’t been to Cairo since back in 2008 when I went down to film the Wataniya Airways launch commercial and back then I stayed at the Grand Hyatt Hotel which I really didn’t like. The Four Seasons is literally across the street from where I stayed last time but the experience this time around was worlds apart.

The last time I was in Cairo the city was full of tourists but this time there were barely any. Even when we went to touristic places like Khan Al-Khalili and the Pyramids we barely saw any tourists and the hotels are obviously affected by this. When we were at Four Seasons the hotel was mostly occupied by people attending our wedding and people attending another wedding that was also taking place there and from what a friend told me, the prices the hotel was charging for the rooms was around 40% less than they used to charge when the city was bustling with tourists. I ended up staying in the Diplomatic Suite which turned out to be a lot larger than I was expecting it to be. When you first walk into the room you have a small hallway with a guest bathroom and a small closet. Right after the hallway is the main living space with a large LCD screen, a couch which unfolds into a sofa bed, a work area and a large terrace overlooking the Nile. At the far end of the room is a doorway that leads you into the bedroom where theres a second large LCD screen, a huge walk-in closet and a large marble clad bathroom with two sinks. I think this was pretty much the largest room I had ever stayed in at a hotel.

The hotel as a whole felt a lot like a cruise ship and some of my friends treated it that way by not leaving the hotel the whole weekend we were there. Other than the restaurants and the pool, the hotel also had a bar, a club and a department store all located on premises. The pool area is where we spent all our mornings tanning and recovering from the night before by relaxing on their really comfortable lounges. The only downside to the pool area and actually one of the only issues I had with the hotel is the fact by 12:30PM the sun ends up behind the hotel casting a shadow over the pool area and basically putting a stop to any tanning that was taking place.

On the plus side I didn’t get any food poisoning while I was there. Before leaving to Cairo everyone was warning me about how easy it was to get food poisoned and not to have any salads or drinks with ice so by the time I got to Cairo I was planning on not eating for the whole trip. In the end hunger won and I spent most of the weekend having the hotel burger for brunch and then mixing it up with dinner either by eating at the hotel or somewhere around Cairo. The location of the hotel was pretty great since it was right on the Nile which meant the view from my room was spectacular. The staff were all really friendly and professional and you really don’t feel like you’re in Egypt when you’re inside the hotel. A good example on how good the staff is, on the last day after checking out we were waiting outside the hotel for our rides when the doorman noticed one of the girls with us was holding a pair of shoes in her hand. Without her asking he went and got her a paper bag and placed the shoes inside for her. That earned the hotel a lot of points in my book.

Overall I had a great weekend in Cairo and the hotel was part of the reason why. This is the third or fourth Four Seasons Hotel I’ve stayed in and so far they’ve all turned out to be pretty great. There are two Four Seasons in Cairo, the one I stayed in was the Nile Plaza one (not the one with the casino) and you can check out their website [Here]

A few hours ago the Central Bank of Kuwait revealed the new design of the Kuwaiti currency and a few moments ago I obtained the official images of the currency. The new Kuwaiti Dinars were designed by the famous De La Rue company in the UK. They’ve been around since 1821 and they sell high-security paper and printing technology for over 150 national currencies around the world. The new notes have plastic polymer in them making them difficult to tear as well as making them a lot more durable for day to day use.

I love the new designs and can’t wait till they go into circulation in the next couple of months. My only criticism is the lack of a KD50 note, KD20 just isn’t large enough today. Check out all the notes below.

Thanks Patrick