Frequent Flyer!!!

As a frequent flyer, a minimum of 4 flights/month (2 trips!) I am amazed by the "new" specific Lebanese habits in Travel.
We can say that the old days of "clapping" at touch down is over! (while the music of "tic tic tic yamme sleimen" is always there at boarding on MEA)
A new era has begun ...
Our "friend" in the picture above is the "Champ" of frequent traveling! We were all surprised (not to say afraid!) by the scratching sound that came at take off while insisting of keeping her high heels boots up on the board in front of her!
(I couldn't resist not to take out my phone and take her pic!)
Other habits are like as soon as the plane lands, we can hear the bip-bip of the sms or people standing already and moving forward to the exit door, or lighting up a cigarette directly after exiting the plane, or running and pushing to be the first to stamp their passport while everybody meets up again at the luggage belt, or the ladies wearing tops with the name of the country that they were visiting (especially coming from Europe) etc...
It's a very interesting phenomenon that I enjoy "looking" at every time, and realize that me ,with my birkenstock and my ipod have still a long way home!

Voir Venise et Mourir!

Venice!

It's such an enchanting place!

But let me tell you some real facts about this place since I was there last week!
Time has stopped in Venice, you can imagine yourself living in the 16th century and nothing can prove you wrong (except the Japanese with their cameras!)
It's not a place just reserved for lovers, on the contrary, families,kids, old, young, artists etc... from all over the world came to share the spirit of this "floating" city.

To enjoy Venice, you have to walk, walk and walk ... get lost in the narrow streets and cross its endless bridges, taste as many food as you can and drink all the wine on your path.

Forget the Lebanese comments: "don't go there, it's full of mosquitoes" or "the smell there is horrible!" ... it's like saying don't eat Pizza in Italy cause they don't serve Ketchup with it!

I definetly advise everyone to go to Venice at least once in his life, save lots of money though and let yourself drift on the city endless canals.

Twittering?

Am I the only one who thinks that Twitter is the most useless creation of all time or does other people share that opinion with me as well?
The hype associated with Twitter and all the marketing that is accompanying it is ridiculous for something as stupid as Twitter.

Who would want to post 'what he is doing' every second of the day and WHO CARES?

I just don't see any appeal in all this Twitter creation. I am sure that MSN and Facebook are more than enough to expose yourselves to others (if that was the purpose).

What do you think?

Smooth Shaving

I hate to shave. I have tried every cream, gel, lotion, and aftershave imaginable. I have tried every conceivable manual razor and I have even overpaid for an electric. For me, the torture of shaving doesn't stem from the amount of time it takes in the morning or the feeling like it's a hassle. It's just that every time I try to shave, no matter the product being used, I walk away needing 20 to 30 minutes before I can touch my face again.

When I started shaving back in the late 80s I realized that I am hairy by nature. Not just hairy, but the ultra thick eyebrows accompanied by a an extremely dense and dark beard made me accept the fact that in the best of cases I would be able to shave once every 48 hours. That was back in the days of the single blade shavers and YES my beard is so tough and rough that I need to change blades after a single use.

20 years into the future, it is the era of the 5-blade razors and an artillery of shaving creams, gels and balms. Still the irritation after each shave forced me to reduce my shaving habits to once every 4 days. Thank god I can come to work casually and not need to shave that often, nevertheless I am sure that there exist people like me who work in banks or other client facing jobs and this requires a daily shave. How do they do it?

So if any of you got any suggestions for providing a smoother shave and easing the cuts and irritation I would highly appreciate it. I don't care whether it is a technique, a product or a prayer. it might help.

Inglourious Basterds

You probably heard about this new Quentin Tarantino movie that has been in the works for few years now. Well the wait is almost over and the movie will hit the screens for the Cannes festival under the name of Inglourious Basterds.

I am not much of a Tarantino fan as I only admired Pulp Fiction out of all his movies. Nevertheless I am a huge fan of Brad Pitt (No, I am not gay) and this movie should give us another extravagant performance from him.

In brief, this movie tells the story of a dozen men handpicked and trained by Pitt to implant mayhem and kill as many Nazis as possible over the back then occupied France.

Check it out once it is out. I hope it lives to my expectations as an extraordinary movie unlike the previous Tarantino exercises that truly sucked lately. The below are some nice marketing posters.

Chantal Goya. WTF?

Fatherhood can be excruciating sometimes especially when you have to watch Chantal Goya on a Sunday morning in order to entertain your 2 year old. Thank god I have a boy otherwise I would be playing with Barbies on Sunday mornings as well.
Anyway, not that Goya brings nice old 30 year old memories, but what strikes me the most is that the re-imagining of the show she is doing lately is quite shocking to say the least. It was a horrifying experience this morning!!!

She is in her 70s, a bit scary looking in a white short dress and pink shoes (straight out of Horrorfest) and jumping on stage like a wounded cat. It was like watching 'Chicago' (the musical) performed by the Hunchback of Notre Dame as the lead.

Furthermore, one of the best songs that still resonate in my subconscious since I was a child is ' Becassine'. It is a kind of a magical beat that brings joy to anyone that hears it (in a way). Well, she changed the rhythm into a techno/tektronic type of melody, she changed the choreography into a LIDO type of dancing performed by semi-nude dancers, and most atrociously she changed the lyrics into English and they litterally go like that (I am not exagerating):
"Bekkassayne, is my Kozzayne. Bekkaassayne, is my Voizzayne!!"

Kids get traumatized watching stuff like that. What kind of memories do you give a child to remember 30 years down the road. My kid would hate me if he remembers that I made him watch such a freak show from a bewilderned nightmare.

Anyway, I say to this Wicked Witch of the West to simply STOP performing for our kids. Retirement is the best gift she can give now to any Francophone kid out there.

Outside the Box

People who know me know very well that I despise politics and politicians in Lebanon. In fact I do believe that the degree of corruption reached in this country is by far above any corruption achieved anywhere else on this planet throughout the history of the humankind.

Aside from that I do have a political view of course, but this view is in no way a conviction or support for this political side or another. In fact, no matter who you support or vote for, I doubt this party is going to rescue or revive the country. Working on a rescue plan is not even on their political Agenda.
As a matter of fact I do have a very pessimistic view for the region as a whole (and specifically Lebanon) and am a strong believer that the region is doomed altogether (long term that is) be it a result of war or global warming drought/deforestation or financial debt or other nasty stuff you can think of.

Meanwhile however I try to keep a positive attitude and spend a lot of time reading the international press in order to try and understand how 'foreigners' view this country of ours. What are their opinions like. How they analyze things. And of course how far from reality they might get. What strikes out however are the 'foreigners' that nail it though like the 2 guys I will be mentioning below.

This is not a political blog nor is it intended to push opinions of any kind on the readers (if anyone is reading). This is a 'Zero-Intellect' blog and we thrive to keep it this way (How cool is that!!)

By 'foreigners' view on the region I do not mean the kinds of Robert Fisk or Michael Young
who have become more "Lebanonized" than any Lebanese. By 'foreigners' I mean the occasional visiting journalist or the analyst that lives outside but with an eye on the region. It just happened that TODAY I fell simultaneously on 2 such articles that are an extremely interesting read from 2 prestigious magazines:

1. "The Swastika and the Cedar" by Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair Magazine.
2. "Hezbollah Doesn't Have Wings" by Michael J. Totten in Commentary Magazine.

Now the above would be a very entertaining reading about the opinions and analysis of these foreign journalists. Furthermore I highly recommend that you keep checking Totten's blog from time to time as it can get quite interesting and educational.

PS: Those 2 journalists are the ones who got assaulted in Hamra street 2 months back by the SSNP (Syrian Socialist National Party) if you ever heard about it on the news.

Enjoy!

Desperate Lebanese ... Wives?

Bliss Street! walking there after having a marvelous and tasty "crispy cream" doughnut, at the door of one of the shops I found this posting on A4 paper!!!

"To whom it may concern, "Beiruti" girl looking for a man to marry..." !!!

At first I thought it's a joke, but my friend she took her mobile phone and called; a very sweet voice answered and the girl is 22 and she looked serious about the whole issue and even agreed to meet my friend (who is supposed talking on behalf of her brother!) in one of Hamra's cafe!

The meeting never took place because my friend had to travel unexpectedly and for me it was impossible to show up ...

But are we that desperate now to get married? after the popularity of all the "meeting" websites and the personal marketing and re-looking found everywhere around us, it seems a new method is taking place in Beirut streets "personal flyers" distribution.

Personally I hope this flyer is a joke and nothing serious, but I'm sure somewhere out there, boys or girls are open to any possibilities available that will get them to tie the knot ;)