Packed Thoughts

48 East

July 25, 2026

It is not about where it is done. It is about who does it.

I am not new to specialty coffee. I have been in it since 2011. Following brewer and barista championships. Searching for 90-plus scored beans. Ordering from every roastery that made the top ten in world competitions. Gardelli from Italy. Koppi from Sweden. Hasbean from the UK before it became Ozone. Paying more in Aramex and DHL shipping than the coffee itself cost. Two subscription boxes arriving every month, each with three 250-gram bags from roasters I had never heard of in countries I had never visited. My kitchen counter looked like a customs office.

And like every cliché specialty coffee person, I saved the bags. Every single one. I had a wall where I pinned the labels to a world map showing where each coffee bag was roasted. Finland. Sweden. Germany. Norway. Australia. Even Belarus. I am not proud of it. I am not ashamed of it either. It is who I was and still am, a cliché lover. And the map is still there.

I watched the specialty coffee boom arrive in Kuwait. Everyone opened a roastery. Everyone had a logo and a story and a single-origin Ethiopian on the shelf. I tried them. I was never impressed. And although I believe in supporting local, when it came to my coffee, Gardelli and Koppi and Hasbean were always there. Local was not earning the cup.

Until 48 East.

I followed Mohammed Dashti from the start. His early coffee was not good. I will say that plainly. But I saw something the others did not have. Ambition that was not for show. While other roasters in his era travelled to coffee farms for the photos, he travelled to learn and to work. He came back and roasted again. And again. And each time the cup was closer to something I recognised from the international bags sitting on my counter.

But I was still hesitant. The gap between a good local roaster and a world championship roaster is wide. And my palate had been trained on the wide side.

Then Camel Step arrived from Saudi. They were the ones who opened the door. A regional roaster, not European, not Scandinavian, producing coffee that stood next to my international subscriptions without embarrassment. If Camel Step could do it from Riyadh, then the distance between here and there was not geography. It was commitment.

Because of Camel Step, I gave 48 East another chance. And this time, it caught me.

Is 48 East as good as Gardelli? No. I will not pretend. Gardelli is a World Coffee Roasting Champion and his beans are on another level. But there is one thing Mohammed Dashti shares with Rubens Gardelli that most roasters in the world do not share with either of them.

Consistency.

When it comes to coffee, consistency is the word. I want today’s cup to taste like tomorrow’s. I want to revisit the same bag in two weeks and find the same flavour waiting for me. I do not want surprises in my morning brew. I want reliability. And 48 East delivers that. Every bag. Every time.

So because of 48 East, I started giving other local roasters a chance. I still order from abroad from time to time. But most of my coffee now, whether it is Kuwaiti, Saudi, or international, comes through local suppliers.

This month’s Brew has been updated with a new collection. They are omni-roast, which means they work for both espresso and filter. Try them. I am still working out how to add the Xbloom recipes as downloadable links. I have plenty in my journal. They are coming. For now, the beans are on the page.

It was never about where the coffee is roasted. It was always about who roasts it. And sometimes the person who roasts it is closer than you think. You just have to give them the second chance they earned.

Write in the logbook
The Power of No

July 24, 2026

The opposite of a weapon depends on how you use the word. Usually a weapon means a tool for attack. In that case the opposite is a shield. A tool for defence. But there is another meaning. The man is armed. He has a weapon. He is dangerous. The opposite: the man is unarmed. He is bare.

But a weapon does not have to point at someone else. Some weapons point inward. Tools exist to arm us against our own weaknesses. They help us walk when we cannot. See when we cannot. Hear when we cannot. They turn what we lack into something we carry.

In my case, I used a Snoopy agenda to keep track of my life when it had no structure. I used a dumb phone to stop distractions when the smart one was winning. I used this blog to stay in a constant state of production, though that has paused while I am down in the workshop.

These tools armed me. They worked.

But there is one weakness where I am still bare. Unarmed. No weapon. No shield. Nothing in my hands.

Saying no.

The power of no. I have mentioned it before. I still have not found it. But I have carried it before. During the keto years, and after, it was there. It was not a struggle. It was a force. Like the Force in Star Wars. Not the loud kind. The quiet kind. You do not swing. You do not fight. You just stand still. And the world moves around you.

Have this. No. Just a small piece. No. But I made it. No. But it is Thursday and it is zwara. No. But it is 10am and a second coffee would be lovely. No. There are even treats that go along with them. No.

The power of no during the keto years was not limited to food. It went beyond the plate. It entered everything.

2:30 in the morning. A university library. A weekend. One of the best nights of the year outside. Everyone out. Everyone living the life how it is supposed to live. A text lights up the phone. Come out. No. I have a few pages left.

A classmate sends a number of someone that will do your stats. Just call him. Save yourself days. No. I would rather spend these days reading and working.

A friend after seeing my work. You know nobody is asking for this much detail. No. But I am.

That is what the power of no does. It starts at the plate and spreads to the desk and the library and the phone and the conversation and the life. Because three times a day, every day, someone offered me something I had already decided to refuse. And three times a day I said no. And each no made the next one easier. Until after a month, the word stopped being a refusal and started being an identity.

That is what keto gave me that no scale ever measured. Not weight loss. The muscle of refusal. The ability to sit in a room full of yes and be the only no and not flinch.

I lost it. The way I lost the weight. Slowly. One yes at a time. One “just this once” at a time. One “it is rude to refuse” at a time. Until the nos were gone and the yeses had taken the whole room.

So as I re-enter this era, before I have my final dozen of happiness in the form of wobbling Japanese pancakes, I remind myself that keto is not a diet. It is a training ground for the word no. The weight loss is the side effect. The real benefit is what happens to every other decision in your life when you spend three months saying the same word, three times a day, without flinching.

The سحر is not in the diet. It is in the two letters.

لا.

Write in the logbook
The Farewell Tour

July 23, 2026

I have to confess something. I have dabbled in magic.

Yes. You heard it here. سحر. The forbidden kind. The kind people whisper about. The kind where the results are so obvious and so fast that everyone around you arrives at the same conclusion: this is definitely not natural. Something dark is happening. Someone did something.

They were right. Someone did do something.

I changed what I ate.

The magic is called keto. And I have performed it three times.

Keto, for those who have not heard of it, is a way of eating where you remove almost all carbohydrates. No bread. No rice. No pasta. No sugar. No potatoes. Your body, deprived of its usual fuel, switches to burning fat instead. The switch is called ketosis. It sounds scientific because it is. But the results look like سحر because they are fast, visible, and impossible to explain to anyone who watches you eat butter and cheese and lose weight.

The first time I did it, I lost more than twenty kilograms. Without exercise. Without a gym. I just stopped eating bread and switched to cheese. People stared. People asked. People accused. Some quietly checked if I was ill. Others quietly checked if someone had done something to me. The whispers were real. يمكن أحد سوّاله شي.

Nobody did anything to me. I just stopped eating bread and switched to cheese.

The second time, I lost ten kilograms. Then gained them back. The third time, the same. Lost ten. Gained ten. The magic worked every time. The problem was never the spell. It was what came after. Both times I went back. Not because the diet failed. Because the people around me pulled me back. The relatives. The colleagues. The social meals. The pressure of sitting at a table where everyone is eating rice and you are eating cheese. The looks. The comments. The quiet suggestion that you are being difficult. The diet did not break. The environment broke it.

Once is learning. Twice is forgetting. Three times is choosing. This is the fourth time. And this time I am choosing differently.

Today there is a newer magic. Mounjaro. A needle once a week and the weight falls. I have seen it work around me. I will not resort to it. Not because I judge anyone who does. Because I know my body responds to keto and I would rather earn the loss than inject it. That is a personal preference, not medical advice. Everyone fights their own battle with the tools that suit them.

So I am going back. This time with two spells instead of one. Keto and intermittent fasting. Keto changes what I eat. Fasting changes when I eat. Together they should accelerate what each one does alone.

This changes The Bite. Bye Bye carbs. Bye Bye sandwiches. The five sandwiches are leaving the page. In their place will be my keto dishes and my weekly plan. Same page. Different menu. Same keeper. Lighter keeper. Hopefully.

I will not tell you my weight. Not today. But in three weeks I will post what I lost. The number will be honest. Whether it is impressive or embarrassing, you will see it.

For now, I have a few final days before I start. The last days of bread. The farewell tour. And there is one stop I must make before the gate closes.

Japanese pancakes. Lots of them. The fluffy ones. The ones that wobble. The ones that have no business being as tall as they are. I need several. Maybe a dozen. They deserve a proper Bye Bye.

After that, the سحر begins.

Write in the logbook
تَوَكّــــــــــــل

July 22, 2026

I said three weeks. Maybe more. The keeper is going to the workshop. The light stays on. The beam keeps turning.

That was three weeks ago. And I was wrong about almost everything.

I thought the break would be empty. That I would tinker aimlessly, start things without finishing them, and eventually climb back upstairs when the guilt got heavy enough. That is how my breaks usually go. Good intentions. No structure. A slow slide into doing nothing and calling it rest.

This time was different. Something grew during the break that I did not plant.

A schedule. Not the kind you write on a whiteboard with colour-coded markers and deadlines. The kind that just appears. One morning I woke up and did things in a certain order. The next morning I did them in the same order. By the third morning it was a routine. By the second week it was a life.

I open my snoopy journal. A small notebook that now runs my day. Tasks. Dates. Objectives. Not because someone told me to. Because the notebook started filling itself and I followed. I have my brew. I have my bite. I work. I stop. I go back to the people who had rights over me before I was even born. My parents. Then to the ones who rented me for life. My wife. No exit clause. Then I play with my tiny toy. The one still small enough to fall asleep on my chest. And the big one. The one who was tiny years ago and now looks straight when he talks to me.

I am still struggling with two things. Closing my mouth. And training. But do not blame me for the second one. It is fifty degrees outside. The air is not air. It is a hairdryer pointed at a country. I will train when Kuwait decides to cool down. Or when I stop making excuses. Whichever comes first. Probably Kuwait.

But everything else is working. The workshop has projects. The blog has posts waiting. The journal has pages filled. The words came back. Not because I chased them. Because I stopped chasing and they sat on my lap like a cat that only comes when you ignore it.

The break was never a break. It was a construction site. I went downstairs and without noticing built the scaffolding for everything that comes next. The routine. The rhythm. The structure. None of it was planned. All of it is now holding weight.

Which is why I have a problem.

I want to go to Mecca. A week. Something I have been postponing the way I postpone everything that matters. Because in a way Mecca trips cleanses you and gives you a new start and makes you value what is present. And build or rebuild it.

And there it is. The dilemma I did not expect. I finally have structure. Real structure. Built over three weeks without trying. And now I want to leave it and I am afraid it will not be here when I come back. That the routine will forget itself. That the journal will feel foreign. That the mornings will lose their order and I will return to the same shapeless days I started with.

So this post is stuck between two titles and I do not know which one it is.

باخذ دوام من الإجازة

Because the structure is working and I showed up today and wrote this.

Or.

باخذ إجازة من الإجازة

Because Mecca is calling and the structure is asking me to stay.

One says keep building. The other says go and trust that what you built will hold.

And the thing I would be going to Mecca to find is the same thing that answers the question. Do you trust what you built? Do you trust that the rhythm is real and not just momentum? Do you trust that the vine you grew on the wall will stay even if you stop watching it for a week?

I do not know yet.

But I know the word for when you do not know and you go anyway.

استخير وتوكّل

Write in the logbook
The Light and the Lens

July 21, 2026

The regulation is good. The bidding is sealed. The free goods are recorded. The meetings are filmed. Whoever wrote it knows the old tricks.

But it was written for the ministry. Not for the member.

And by the member I mean the owner. The families of the area. The ones who bought the shares, who elect the board when elections return, whose money sits in every contract and whose name is on the door. The very people we want reading the numbers, asking the questions, and watching the jam3iya not because the ministry sent them but because it is theirs.

The regulation never enlists them. No article makes informing them anyone’s job. The owner has no login. No bulletin. No page. No seat.

So I went through the regulation and asked a different question. Not what does it control. But who holds what.

Every article that involves a system, the electronic platform, the cameras, the barcodes, the recordings, the digital archive, the payment software, all of it is assigned to one person: رئيس قسم الحاسب الآلي, the head of IT.

And every article that involves reaching people, the announcements, the newsletters, the festivals, the complaints, the community activities, all of it is assigned to a different person: رئيس قسم العلاقات العامة والإعلام, the head of PR and media.

One holds all the information. The other holds all the reach. And they sit in two different rooms.

A lighthouse has a lamp and a lens. The lamp produces the light. The lens directs it. Without the lamp, the lens is glass. Without the lens, the lamp is a bulb in a room. Neither is a lighthouse alone.

These two roles are the lamp and the lens of every jam3iya. Right now the regulation put them in separate rooms. The light is trapped and the voice carries nothing worth hearing. Put them together and the beam reaches the people it was always meant to reach.

I will not go over every article where each plays a role. Instead, let me show you what I mean with three examples.

For example.

مادة 94: تنص على أن الجمعية ملزمة بإعداد تقارير دورية توضح العمليات غير الطبيعية ووضع نظام أرشيف آلي يشمل كافة أعمال الجمعية

Now if رئيس قسم الحاسب الآلي built the reports and sent them only to the ministry’s monitor and locked the archive in a room, and then رئيس قسم العلاقات العامة والإعلام printed a monthly bulletin full of congratulations and photos with no numbers in it, the project will fail. Records nobody reads, and news nobody believes.

But if رئيس قسم الحاسب الآلي and رئيس قسم العلاقات العامة والإعلام became one, and pulled each month’s real numbers from the archive and turned them into one clear page that reaches every member, the project will shine bright. The same duty, done once, feeding the ministry and the owners together.

For example.

مادة 60: تنص على يجب على الجمعية تسجيل البضاعة المجانية المستلمة من الموردين في السجل الخاص المعد لهذا الغرض

Now if رئيس قسم الحاسب الآلي recorded every free box in a system only auditors open, and then رئيس قسم العلاقات العامة والإعلام hung posters about offers with nothing behind them, the project will fail. The register stays a secret, and the posters stay decoration.

But if the two became one, and the free goods that entered the jam3iya this month appeared on the same noticeboard at the door of the market, the project will stand spotless. A gift written where a thousand neighbours read it cannot quietly become a bribe.

For example.

مادة 113: تنص على يتعين على الجمعية تركيب وتشغيل كاميرات المراقبة لجميع المواقع والاحتفاظ بتسجيلات الكاميرات لمدة لا تقل عن ستة أشهر

Now if, on the day of a viral accusation, رئيس قسم الحاسب الآلي guarded the footage and said nothing, and then رئيس قسم العلاقات العامة والإعلام rushed out a statement with no facts in it, the project will fail. The rumour will speak for weeks, and the truth will sit in a hard drive.

But if the two became one, and the jam3iya spoke within the hour, with the footage’s facts inside the statement, the project will stand unshakeable. The first voice with evidence is the voice people keep.

Three articles. Three failures when the lamp and the lens are apart. Three successes when they are together. Same regulation. Same duties. The only variable is the room.

The regulation built the pipes and built the mouth. And put them in two different rooms.

Because I do not like leaving a dream as a dream, I did the paperwork. On this page you will find three documents: the full duties of each role article by article from the regulation, and a ready charter that binds them into one team with deadlines, five joint missions. Any jam3iya can take it and use it tomorrow.

I hope whoever fills these two chairs knows what they are sitting in. They are not support jobs. They are the two halves of whether the jam3iya becomes worth owning.

And maybe they do not need to become one body. Maybe the truer picture is simpler.

One of them remembers everything and cannot say it. The other says everything and cannot remember it.

They do not need to fuse. They just need to swim together. The way Nemo and Dory did.

And the whole ocean opened.

Or maybe this is just another adventure. One of a million I have had in my head that the world never saw. But at least this one made it to the page. And sometimes that is where adventures do their best work. Not in the ocean. On the page.

Write in the logbook

48 East

The Power of No

The Farewell Tour

تَوَكّــــــــــــل

The Light and the Lens