2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Yesterday I passed by the new Banta location in Dajeej, and I was pretty impressed with the space. The new location opened up late last year, and one thing I really liked was the amount of natural daylight coming in through the mostly glass roof. It was really bright and inviting but I guess the main advantage is that it makes it easier to properly see the fabrics and colors.

The showroom is spacious and laid out in a way that lets you comfortably walk through different setups without feeling overwhelmed. It feels more like you’re walking through actual living spaces, and the natural light helps give the space a calm feel.

Banta are currently offering a 20% discount for those on the frontlines as a small gesture of appreciation. On top of that, they now have a home service where their team can come to you and design your space based on your needs, whether it’s a living room, walk-in closet, kitchen, or even a full diwaniya setup.

If you want to check them out, their new location is in Dajeej facing the 6th Ring Road (Google Maps), and you can find them on Instagram @banta_kw

Squatwolf, the Dubai based performance wear brand, has just opened its first store in Kuwait.

The brand started in 2016 from a small apartment when its founders saw a gap in the market for affordable, high quality gym wear designed specifically for the Middle East. Back then, most fitness apparel options available in the region were either expensive international brands or lower quality alternatives. Since then, the brand has grown into a popular regional and global name.

The new store is located in an alleyway in the Electra district at The Avenues Phase 4, behind The Body Shop and in front of Intersport.

A few days ago I decided since I now have a proper gaming PC, I might as well take advantage of it and not just use it for my racing rig. I figured I’d get a small desk, monitor, keyboard and mouse and set it up right next to my rig. Trying to find these simple things turned out to be a lot more difficult than I expected.

Finding a monitor was probably the hardest mostly due to the costs involved. Keyboard and mouse if you make a mistake you’re not out much, but with a monitor you’re stuck with it. I flip flopped a lot from budget to premium, from IPS to OLED and in the end, after a lot of research I narrowed it down to two options not he opposite end of the spectrum:

Asus ROG Strix OLED XG27UCDMG 27″ 4K QD-OLED, 240 Hz
Price: KD 311

LG 27G810A-B 27″ UltraGear™ 4K UHD IPS 180Hz
Price: KD 135

At one point I was looking at 32″ screens but based on the size of table I was looking to get it would have been too big. Plus they’re more expensive.

In the end I decided to go with the Asus. I figured I spent all this money getting a high end gaming PC it didn’t make sense to cheapen out on the screen now. The fact I only found one piece in the market helped create a sense of urgency to get it as well. The only place that still had one left from all the online stores was Blink, so I ordered it from them and it got delivered a few hours later.

Next step was picking a mouse and keyboard. 25 years ago picking a keyboard and mouse was pretty easy, you just went Microsoft or Logitech. My favorite used to be the ergonomic keyboard pictured above my Microsoft, it was ground breaking when it was released. Now the number of options is crazy. especially if you search for gaming gear. Suddenly new terms started popping up like hall effect, rapid trigger, DPI, polling rate etc.. when back then all I had to pick from was either a trackball or optical mouse and either use a random keyboard I had or get a Microsoft one. The fact that people also care if the mouse weighs 60g or 84g or whatever is also such a new concept to me. But it goes to show how seriously gaming is being taken, it’s fascinating, I love it, but it’s also so overwhelming.

I’m still trying to figure out what keyboard and mouse to go with. I think with the keyboard I’m going to go with looks. I found the Redragon K681 Cyrus PRO locally which looks good, is mechanical and should be good for casual gaming. It’s wireless and costs KD22, plus I might swap out the AWSD keys with some pink ones to give it a 90s vibe. Game Store also have some cute stuff, but most are out of stock.

The last time I passed by Blink they had keyboards on display so might pass by and check them out as well. It needs to be a keyboard with no Arabic, so Keychron or Ducky our out of the question since the ones in Kuwait are bilingual.

For the mouse I’m also thinking of going with the HyperX PulseFire Haste 2 Core because of the color combination that gives it a 90s vibe. It’s KD15 so not expensive and should be ok for casual gaming. Second option is possibly the white colored Razer DeathAdder V3 Pro since it’s a bit larger and so I think better for my wrists. But looks a bit too boring.

Back in the 90s Case Logic used to make these really great mouse pads that had a gel wrist rest and similar one for keyboards. They were life savers. I noticed some brands have similar ones now and mouse/desktops pads are a big thing as well. So might pick up a SteelSeries desk pad with RGB while I’m at it.

If you guys have any recommendations on keyboards and mice you’ve used let me know. Oh and if there is a store you know of that has a large selection also let me know. At the moment I’ve just been searching online but I’m sure there are a few shops that don’t have a website but have a good selection of stuff.

Yesterday, in a now deleted video posted on @jazeeraairways, their CEO Barathan Pasupathi shared that his team had been working hard to get their terminal ready (T5), and as of 3PM yesterday, the terminal would be ready to operate as soon as Kuwait’s airspace reopens.

I posted that on instagram since it was a nice feel good story. But, either people didn’t watch the video till the end, or maybe due to a language issue, it turned out a lot understood the video as Jazeera was opening the airport and flights would be resuming. That was obviously not true so the Civil Aviation had to issue a statement stating that the rumors of the airspace reopening was not true.

Again, either people didn’t read the statement right, or maybe due to a language issue, but they started accusing Jazeera of fake news and obviously me as well because I posted Jazeera’s story as well. Jazeera Airways must have gotten a lot of heat for their video because they ended up removing it, even though they didn’t state anything untrue or wrong or even misleading. There was meant to be a Jazeera Airways online media briefing yesterday to discuss their readiness to operate flights from Kuwait, but even that got postponed till next week. So much drama.

It seems there’s a local graffiti artist inspired by Banksy since there are at least two pieces in South Surra that resemble his work. I found out about them from a friend who lives in the area and shared the locations with me. I’m not sure if there are more, I drove around looking for others but South Surra is big so it’s not easy to cover it all while also keeping an eye out for graffiti.

The piece with the tap is on a wall outside a transformer station in front of Ahmed Mohammed Al-Mansour Mosque (Google Maps), while the second is on an electric box outside Al Zahra Coop (Google Maps). Both pieces seem to share the same theme, children in distress. If you know of any others, let me know.

I’d heard about this beautiful rooftop pool from a few friends who had been to it, and I knew which building had it, but until now I hadn’t actually seen any photos of it.

The pool is located on the rooftop of an unassuming building in Jabriya. The building and rooftop were designed by the architecture and interior design firm ARCHJS and is part of a private residence. The view looks incredible and even though it’s in Jabriya, it wouldn’t look out of place in Palm Jumeirah.

For more photos of the building, check their instagram @arch_js

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the fact that I was thinking of building a gaming PC for my sim racing needs. After a lot of flip flopping on the idea because of the high cost involved, I finally pulled the trigger.

I was put off by the idea of spending so much on a PC since it was just going to be used for gaming, and my Mac mini which I use to earn a living cost me way less. But after going back and forth in my head and reading about how prices were just going to go up, I decided if I could build a PC for 1,250 I’d get it. So I headed to Hawally to see what the prices were like since up till that point I was just checking local stores that had websites.

99% of the shops were selling everything for the exact same price as the ones online, so that wasn’t helpful. But then on my way to PCkuwait which up to that point had the best prices, I decided to pass by Limra Computers.

I posted about Limra all the way back in 2012, they’ve always been my go to place mostly for hard drives and other computer accessories. But for some reason I forgot that they carry everything in that tiny shop. So I passed by and gave him the full list of items I wanted and he quoted me a 1,300 KD. I still needed a way to drop it down to 1,250 so I decided to swap the motherboard from the Asus TUF B870E to the TUF B850Plus since it wasn’t going to make a difference for my use. That reduced the price considerably and I left to sleep on it and then came back the next day to buy it.

This was my final build:

CPU
AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D – 180 KD

Motherboard
ASUS TUF Gaming B850-Plus WiFi7 – 82 KD

RAM
Kingston Fury Beast RGB 32GB DDR5 6000MHz CL30 – 145 KD

SSD
Samsung 9100 Pro 2TB PCIe 5.0 – 135 KD

GPU
ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 5080 OC 16GB – 570 KD

Cooler
ASUS TUF Gaming LC III 360 ARGB LCD – 58 KD

PSU
ASUS TUF Gaming 1000W Gold ATX 3.1 – 58 KD

Case
ASUS TUF Gaming GT302 ARGB – 40 KD

Total
1,268 KD including a Windows 11 Pro license

I compared my total price to NewEgg.com and surprisingly it was exactly the same. The different items varied in cost, like some things are cheaper in Kuwait, some cheaper on NewEgg, but the total still came out to be the same thing. That made me feel a bit better. So far though my experience has been a bit of a mess… on the software side.

I built the PC myself which was easy and the fun part. It’s been 25 years since I put a PC together and surprisingly nothing has changed, it’s still the exact same process. I’m glad I stuck to the Asus TUF ecosystem for everything since visually everything just looks good together.

But when it came to software, thats where things got mess.

I ran into issues installing Windows 11 since the installer couldn’t see my hard drive. Online I read that because its a new Gen 5 drive that some motherboards had trouble reading it, and after hours of trying different workarounds in the BIOS to get Windows to read my drive, it turned out the issue was with the Windows 11 boot drive I had made.

The first Windows 11 boot drive I made was using the Mac software called balenaEtcher.
The second one I did I used another software called Win Disk Writer. This worked. Hours wasted for nothing.

After installing Windows I then had to spend a couple of hours downloading and installing all the drivers. I didn’t know you guys still had to do this in 2026. Windows 11 couldn’t even read my built in wifi without installing a driver, wtf?

Currently, my computer looks like a Christmas tree with all these colorful LED’s. I have 8 fans, 7 of which have brights LEDs that are cycling through the rainbow. I have an LCD screen on my cooler for some reason that is playing an animation but can actually play videos as well. Even when the computer is in sleep I have some part of the motherboard glowing rainbow colors from the back. And why RAM sticks need brights LEDs?

This whole obsession with lights and screens INSIDE the PC is really bizarre, but whats weirder is I’m kinda liking it. I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few months I didn’t end up getting more screens and LEDs to put inside the case.

I also have a bunch of technical issues I’m trying to solve at the moment. My TV is 120hz but when I set the PC to 120hz the screen starts to flicker every few seconds, so I’m forced to keep it at 60hz for now. The ASUS software that controls the LED’s also doesn’t recognize the case or the cooler so I can’t control those LEDs yet. My first experience running Assetto Corsa Rally and Dirt Rally 2.0 didn’t result in graphics that much better than my Xbox. But I guess I knew that would be the case already, Dirt Rally 2.0 isn’t a new game and runs in ultra settings on a lot weaker GPUs perfectly fine. But it’s all about the mods, and I think once I get all the technical stuff out of the way I can focus on gaming and downloading ultra realistic graphics mods to really get the GPU working.

So far I’m obviously regretting this purchase. It was 100% stupid and knowing me I’ll end up installing Duke 3D, Red Alert Aftermath or the original Theme Park and end up just playing those. But in the long run, at least I’ll have a good PC to run GTA6 if it comes out this year. Also maybe down the line I can get a second screen and set it up for flight simulation. I don’t know, I’m just trying to convince myself I didn’t make an expensive mistake.

Warah is a Kuwait-based HR platform designed for small and medium sized businesses. There are still a surprisingly large number of companies here that rely on spreadsheets or WhatsApp messages to track employee attendance and manage HR tasks. A lot of that comes down to not wanting to deal with hardware, maintenance, or complicated setups, which is exactly why Warah was created.

The Warah platform handles all the usual HR functions like employee records, attendance, leave requests, overtime tracking, and payroll. Managers can access attendance reports, employee hierarchies, and analytics all from a single dashboard. And since Warah was built locally, it also takes Kuwait’s labor laws into account, from public holidays and vacation days to an accurate indemnity calculator.

The feature that stood out to me the most was the attendance tracking. Instead of installing fingerprint or facial recognition machines, employees can check in and out directly through the system using geolocation, either through the web or mobile app. This removes the need for additional hardware, which helps reduce costs and is a big plus, especially for smaller businesses.

With the current economic situation, more and more businesses are trying to reduce their overheads. Warah was built with that in mind, offering different packages depending on the number of employees, with pricing starting from KD 25 a month.

I got access to a demo account to try it out, and I liked how visually clean and straightforward the experience was. Even though I know very little about HR, I was still able to navigate the app and understand everything because of the simple language they use. That’s intentional since they wanted to make the platform easy to use for anyone.

Demos and free trials are available, so if you want to check it out, head to warah.com

Last week I posted about a very cool initiative called Al-Arfaj where they created a badge of gratitude and recognition for those on the frontlines. The initiative quickly took off beyond their expectations, and demand for the badge exceeded production by a huge margin.

Since that post, I’ve been getting messages and comments asking where to get a badge, so I decided to compile the places into a list. There are now a lot of people producing these badges to help meet demand, but the list below is of the companies who first adopted the initiative, so these come from the initial batches produced by @alarfajflower. All available for free and include the information card.

% Arabica
Available at almost all branches to customers who make a purchase, though they go fast, so if they’re out just check back another day.

Crown Dental
Available to their patients for now until they get more stock.

Dabdoub
Included with every purchase.

Elevation Burger
They are available at different branches which change daily. They announce the locations on their Instagram and no purchase is necessary.

Jibla Dental Center
Available to anyone who wants one, not only patients.

Pret A Manger
Available at their branches in Hamra, Sabah Al salem, Assima, and Messilah. No purchase necessary.

Rainforest Park Spa
Available to their customers for now until they get more stock.

Stock Room Coffee
Due to limited quantities they’re only giving them to their loyalty program customers at the moment.

Vol.1
Limited quantity available to customers at their branches in Downtown, Mishref, Salmiya, and Shuwaikh.

There are a couple more spots as well, I’m just waiting to hear back from them before adding them to the list.

Update: If you want to print it out yourself with a 3D printer, you can download the file from MakerWorld.

Last October I bought a Ford Ranger Raptor and posted about how great the car was, but how terrible the purchasing experience was. This is my first Ford, and I was worried that the negative sales experience would carry over to the service center, but thankfully, that turned out not to be the case.

I took my car in last week for the first 10K service and my experience was incredibly good, like I was surprised at how good an experience it was.

First thing I did was call Ford and book an appointment. I went the next day and as soon as I drove into the service center, their license plate reader recognized the car and a screen came on welcoming me by name (well, my wife’s name, since the Raptor is registered in her name because I’m an expat). I drove up to the second level where another screen displayed my appointment time and directed me to a bay number. No waiting in line, and the whole floor is just car drop-off with no loud sounds or the usual garage chaos I’ve gotten used to with every other brand I’ve owned.

The whole area was super clean and looked brand new. I parked in front of a desk, got out, handed over my registration, they told me what the first service included and what it would cost, then told me to go wait in the lounge. The whole experience felt very premium.

The lounge was also really nice and big. It overlooked the car drop off and pick up area on one side, and the new cars showroom on the other. There is an elevator that connects you to the showroom if you want to car browse, or you can just chill in the lounge.

When the car was done, I paid and left.

I’m actually really relieved that the service center experience went extremely well since I really love the Raptor and didn’t want the service center to ruin the joy of owning it.My wife also has a Bronco which I’ll have to take in to service eventually, so I’ll be dealing with them often

If you’re thinking of getting a Ford and want to know if their after service is any good, it is.

Jaber AlSabah is a 16 year old racing driver currently competing internationally in the British Formula 4 Championship. F4 is widely considered the starting point for drivers on their journey to Formula 1, and that’s the goal every driver is working towards, including Jaber.

Jaber first got into racing at the age of 12 when his dad bought him a racing sim. He was instantly hooked and would spend hours daily practicing and improving. Seeing how committed he was, his dad eventually took him karting at Kuwait Motor Town. From that point on, he knew this was what he wanted to pursue.

Jaber began his racing career in the Rotax Karting Championship, followed by the IAME series. After climbing through the karting ranks, he moved up to Formula 4 last year with a seat at Xcel Motorsport.

Kuwait has a pretty big car culture, and in some motorsports like drag racing, we’re actually very competitive. But when it comes to single seater racing, especially at an international level, it’s still pretty rare to see Kuwaiti drivers making their way up the ranks. That could be partly because until 2019, we didn’t have a proper race track in Kuwait.

Racing isn’t just a hobby for Jaber, it’s his career and something he takes very seriously. It demands a huge amount of time, focus, and dedication, and there’s very little room for error. His ultimate goal, like every driver, is Formula 1, but with only 22 drivers on the grid, he knows how competitive that path is. He thinks a more realistic route could be endurance racing like WEC or GT racing, both of which are still at a very high level.

KMT played a big role in Jaber’s journey, without it, it would have been much harder to get started, and he might never have discovered his passion for racing. Support from local companies like Gulf Cables, Warba Insurance, Motorgy, and Kuwait Airways has also helped a lot since racing is an expensive sport.

I’m a big fan of KMT, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing even younger drivers competing internationally. If you want to follow Jaber’s journey, he’s on Instagram @jab3ralsabah

Photos by Stanley Deslandes

Joe & The Juice is opening their new Hessah District location today. The branch is in the Hessah Hub area and features a large dine in space along with a drive thru. (Google Maps)

Hessah District is one of the hottest spots in Kuwait right now, and their location is right at the start of the district, making it easy to get to. I also like that this branch has a drive thru since I pass by the area after the gym, so I’ll definitely be using it to grab lunch on my way home.

This new location will also help speed up delivery to nearby neighborhoods. And if you want to pick up breakfast on your way to work, they open early at 6AM and close late at midnight.

To stay up to date on any new menu items or locations, head over to @joeandthejuicekuwait

This is a great initiative by a group who created a badge of gratitude and recognition for those on the frontlines, symbolized by Kuwait’s national flower, the Al Arfaj.

The Al Arfaj blooms in harsh conditions, which makes it a symbol of resilience and the ability to rise under pressure. It reflects the people on the frontlines who protect Kuwait and continue to give it strength, so that like the flower, the country comes back stronger.

The badge is meant as a simple expression of appreciation for those who sacrifice for Kuwait’s security, safety and stability.

It will be available for free to anyone who wants to wear one as a sign of support. Right now it’s being shared organically, but in a few days it will be available to pick up from different locations around Kuwait. If you want one, they’ll be announcing the locations soon on @alarfajflower

The Ministry of Interior has announced an update to the notification mechanism in the National Alert System on smart devices, in coordination with the activation of warning sirens across the country.

Under the new system, alerts issued between 10:00 PM and 8:00 AM will be delivered with a standard message tone, while notifications from 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM will use a high-alert tone.

The ministry said the update aims to enhance the efficiency of the alert system, take into account public rest periods, and ensure timely and effective delivery of emergency warnings when required. Arab Times

I kinda had a feeling something would change after the first night. Glad they made this decision, I guess we don’t need to put our phone on airplane mode anymore.

If like me you woke up from deep sleep at 2AM to a sound of an air horn, this is how you can turn off the National Warning Alert:

Step 1: Put your phone in airplane mode
Step 2: Turn on WiFi

This is the only way I found to turn off these alerts, switching off cellular. Every other way didn’t work including turning off “Critical Alerts” or the “KWT-Alerts” under notifications, at least on iPhones.

Turning your WiFi on is optional but the reason I’m suggesting you do that is so you can continue to receive WhatsApp messages or calls in case of emergency (from family and friends).

I’m not sure what percentage of the population switched off their phones last night but I imagine it was very high. These phone alerts should really be used only in extreme cases like when a tornado is about to hit Salmiya, or when Godzilla emerges from the sea.