One Working Day in Kuwait

Kuwait Towers, Kuwait City

Hello! Wishing everyone a belated Eid Mubarak! Selamat Hari Raya!

Eid’s come and gone, but there’re still no signs of a softening of stand against our neighbour, Qatar. Actually, I think it’s become worse!

Anyway, it’s not for me to say anything. And besides, after coming to this friggin site in Abu Dhabi, I hardly have time to do anything personal, let alone write a decent post! So, here’s a picture post of another of our neighbours, Kuwait. These are from the one business trip I took to Kuwait in 2016. Business trip or not, there’s always time to do a li'l sightseeing. It’s just a matter of planning. When there’s a will, there’s a way!


There, I worked! Our site visit to Al Mutlaa, for a humongous public housing infrastructure project. Nope, we didn’t win it. Al Mutlaa happens to be the place of the infamous ‘turkey-shoot’ aka the Highway of Death, where the bulk of Iraqi tanks and vehicles were destroyed by the Americans on their retreat from Kuwait after the Kuwait War – From left, Samantha (our Senior Estimator, he’s Sri Lankan, yes Samantha is a guy’s name in Sri Lanka), Omar (our Utilities Technical Engineer, from Egypt), yours truly ahem, Balaji (Planning Assistant Manager), and a representative from our Company’s Kuwait Office. The colleague hidden behind Omar is Chen Haitao, Tender Assistant Manager




More views of the Kuwait Towers – We were staying at a hotel about 2 km away. I got up real early, had breakfast and got ready for work. But since the meeting which we were supposed to attend, was at 10am, what better way to while away the time than by going for a short sightseeing trip around, hehe


Kuwait City view, from the Kuwait Towers – that tall building in the middle is the Al Hamra Tower, tallest building in Kuwait, and the place where our Kuwait Branch Office is in


Al Hamra Tower, up close




Inside Al Hamra Tower


A view from up on Al Hamra Tower


Sharq Area, Kuwait – where we stayed for the night








And finally, some shopping – at The Avenues Mall, Kuwait – how could we not squeeze in a visit to Kuwait’s premier shopping mall huh?

The New Forbidden Kingdom - Qatar

Doha skyline from the Corniche, Doha, Qatar, with the Museum of Islamic Art on the right

Whoa! What happened to Qatar? Why the sudden isolation? Must be something pretty serious to get its Gulf Arab brothers to completely cut ties with it!

But I’m gonna keep my mouth shut on this one (UAE has warned that Qatar sympathisers will face fines of, get ready for this, …not less than half a friggin million dirhams and jail time!)

Sigh, no more Qatar stopovers I guess. One less ‘good’ airlines to fly. Qatar Airways somehow always comes up among the cheapest full-fledged airlines to fly out of Dubai, so that’s a let-down. Another thing I’m gonna miss is Al Jazeera, the international news network based in Qatar. It’s my favourite news channel, coz I find it less biased than its western counterpart, and there’re just less ads and junk around so that I can read only the news that matters. But what the heck, life goes on. Hope they patch up soon.

Meanwhile, here’re some photos of our recent stopover in Doha (late March this year). I’m glad I made the stopover. Even more so now that this mess has come about!


A meet-up with an old friend from our Mizoram days (and Emirates Road Project days), Andrew, in Doha's Souq Waqif. With him are his wife, son Garrett and sister-in-law


Souq Waqif, Doha, Qatar


Jayden & Papa, Souq Waqif






More views of Souq Waqif, Doha, Qatar


Al Fanar, the Qatar Islamic Cultural Centre, Doha’s mini Burj Khalifa, near the Corniche


The Corniche, Doha – I call this the Nepali Beach – On the Friday afternoon that we were there, there was a line of dhows docked along the corniche filled with loud music and Nepali revellers dancing! Groovy, but weird


The Pearl Monument, Doha, Qatar






Doha’s swanky new airport, the Hamad International Airport – pretty nice place to hang out, definitely a far cry from the congested old airport which we’ve transited before