---------------------------------------------- Serious satire "Humor is a funny way of being serious" -Thomas Edison -------------------- To have your emails deleted please write to me at renatoobeid@hotmail.com -------------------- Copyright© 2001-2010, Renato Obeid


























 
Archives April 2001 May 2001 June 2001 July 2001 August 2001 September 2001 January 2002 February 2002 March 2002 June 2002 July 2002 August 2002 October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 January 2009 April 2009 October 2012
<< current
  • prequel
    •












     
    "Top blog/Renato Obeid's World/Today's pick: This rambling weblog is worth reading not so much for its satirical posts but more for its insight into the minutiae of life in Lebanon, including the etiquette of road accidents and how to hire a taxi.” -Jane Perrone, The Guardian

    renatoobeidsworld
     
    Tuesday, December 25, 2007  
    I just read an article in the New York Times about the usual whining Lebanese expatriates visiting back home, lording it over their compatriots and criticizing their country.
    These people view their Lebanon-based compatriots the same way Ashkenazi Jews view Sephardic Jews and have created and propagated the myth of the ‘’brain drain’’ – Lebanon’s best and brightest being forced abroad, blah, blah, blah - but the opposite could quite easily be argued namely that they are the scattered detritus of Darwinian survival of the fittest, i.e. they couldn’t make it here in Lebanon.
    I’m not against people pursuing their interests but when they lord it over and demean their countrymen who chose not to abandon their country one has to react.
    Either way, these people have freely chosen to leave the country to further their own interests and are not the martyrs they carry-on to be.

    Here’s the difference - Lebanese living in Lebanon are just as intelligent and talented as Lebanese living aboard but so many factors here often stifle that intelligence and talent and prevent them from realizing their full potential.
    Whereas Lebanese living abroad are unencumbered by these circumstances and are thus free to become the head of Nissan or the guy pumping petrol into those cars at a petrol station in New Jersey (just like any other residents of those countries).

    UPDATE
    5.30am Saturday 10th May 2007
    "Cochrane states that in addition to the exodus of large numbers of young Christians, ‘all civilized, educated Muslims, they're all leaving. We're going to be left with the bottom of the barrel. Yes, that's the trouble’’’
    - Lebanese aristocrat Lady Yvonne Cochrane to Monocle Magazine

    So people who chose to live in their own country are now ‘’the bottom of the barrel’’?
    9:00 pm

    Sunday, December 23, 2007  
    Just got back from my walk to Jounieh.
    The taxi driver on the way back was a young man from the north on his first foray into the big city.
    He told me that his family are poor and that his father was ill so he was driving his father’s taxi to help out.
    He’d worked for three days – sleeping in the car – and had made three hundred thousand lira (which isn’t too bad at all).
    He then went to the casino hoping to increase that money to help his family out, make it a good Christmas, etc, and promptly lost of all of that money (surprise, surprise!) and now barely had enough money to get back to the north and didn’t know what he was going to tell his father.
    Shades of Jack and the Beanstalk.
    He lamented the fact that Israel didn’t bomb the casino during the war last year.
    I didn’t want to sound like a wowser Victorian but I told him that if he wanted to try his luck he should try it in his taxi and wished him all the best of luck in that venture but wished him even worse luck at the casino if he was ever foolish enough to go there again so that he’d be put off it for good.
    Besides, even if he won some money he’d end up loosing it and more anyway.
    I also told him that, on the bright side, all was not lost if he learnt from this lesson and never set foot in a casino ever again he’d still emerge from this a big winner.
    The house always wins in the end and there’s a house somewhere in the north that’s lost big time this Christmas because of that and because of the foolishness and naivety of it’s scion.
    4:45 am

    Thursday, December 20, 2007  
    There is no such thing as happiness, just the absence of misery.
    Or rather the management, containment and control of misery because misery is never totally absent.


    Lebanon has been hosting a diplomatic Olympics of sorts over the past couple of months with countless foreign ministers, envoys, etc shuttling to and from Beirut to try and end the presidential impasse.
    It’s ironic that every one of these foreign envoys calls for an end to foreign interference in Lebanon.
    Foreigners shouldn’t interfere for their own sake as much as ours.
    Throughout the millennia, invaders have been seduced by the Lebanese siren song and all of them have ended up smashed against the rocks of the placid Mediterranean’s most turbulent shores.
    The commemorative inscriptions left by many of those armies on the rocky cliffs above Nahr el Kalb are literal testimony to this metaphor.
    To put it bluntly and less poetically, Lebanon’s a whore and that whore’s got AIDS so watch out.
    4:30 am

    Monday, December 17, 2007  
    I’m too lazy to lie.
    Lying is such hard work
    4:30 am

    Friday, December 14, 2007  
    I’m about to go to sleep to the sounds of a squalling motorcade winding its way up to the Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral.
    To the sounds of booming morning fireworks thundering a salute to a fallen hero.
    To the sounds of thunder, proof that even nature is paying its tribute.
    To the sounds of a howling storm and driving rain, proof that even nature is venting its fury.
    To the sounds of wailing wind, proof that even nature is bemoaning a life cut short.
    To the sounds of present-day Lebanon.
    A nation where one’s sleep is as troubled as one’s waking hours.
    The last thing I see before I close my bedroom balcony door is a funeral cortege speeding by – a hearse flanked by cars of family, friends and comrades, ambulances, military vehicles and helicopters hovering overhead.
    There’s a little boy bundled in warm winter clothing standing next to his mother on the balcony in the building next to mine waving a tiny Lebanese flag.
    The scene reminds me of John F. Kennedy Junior saluting his slain father’s coffin.
    We are all fatherless today.
    9:30 am

     
    Just got back from my walk to Jounieh.
    The mountain is crawling with soldiers ahead of this morning’s funeral here in Harisa for Brigadier General Françoise el Hajj, the chief of operations in the Lebanese army, who was martyred in a car bomb attack in a suburb of Beirut on Wednesday.
    This was my first ‘’unforced’’ walk (a ‘’forced’’ walk being a walk I have to talk after my second failed attempt at sleep) in my new waterproof rain suit.
    It was very rainy and stormy so it was a real baptism of…water.
    It works!
    Not only does it keep you dry but it keeps you warm too.
    Because this winter has been quite mild so far, it was 12.5 degrees outside, I couldn’t wear my tracksuit underneath because I’d get too hot so I wore pyjamas underneath, albeit a pair of trendy Gap pyjamas that the Hajji got me seven years ago but I never wore because they aren’t elasticized at the wrists, waist and ankles as is my preference in pyjamas.
    I didn’t wear my newish headlamp as I usually do when I walk in the dark and there’s no electricity because, although it was dark when I set out at 5.50am, dawn was fast approaching.
    The Achilles heal of my rain proofing is my glasses – someone joked that I need windscreen wipers for them (I’m working on it).
    Because I couldn’t see perfectly due to the bad light and rain, nor hear perfectly because I had the hood of my rain suit on, I ended up saying ‘’good morning’’ and ‘’God give you strength’’ to everything that moved and looked army green (and forests are quite green).
    And probably everything that didn’t too.
    There must be a lot of confused trees and lampposts out there (‘’hello lamppost, what ya knowin’?’’) and I apologize to them for the mistaken identity.
    The soldiers didn’t enough bother questioning me because it was clear that I was crazy (for being out in this weather when I, unlike them, didn’t have to) and not a terrorist.

    BY GEORGE!
    As usual, I was rewarded for my efforts with a good story from the taxi driver on the way up.
    Apropos the heavy security, I remarked that all the security in the world couldn’t help if they really wanted to get you ala the Hariri assassination that succeeded despite the millions of dollars that Hariri spent on security.
    ‘’No one other than Saint George killed Hariri’’ the taxi driver replied.
    He went on to say that it was Saint George’s revenge for Hariri building a huge mosque (the ‘’mother of all mosques’’ as Lebanese blogger Jamal Ghosn calls it) next to the nearby Saint George’s Maronite Cathedral.
    After all, ‘’the (Muslim) call to prayer can be heard from the church!’’.
    ‘’Even up until now they still don’t know who killed him – the explosion came from beneath the ground!’’ he continued.
    And he wasn’t joking, he really does believe that Saint George killed Hariri and, by George, I’m even beginning to believe it – it wouldn’t be the first time that Saint George slew a dragon.
    He’s done that kind of thing before.
    At that very location too - Hariri was assassinated at Saint Georges Bay where legend has it that Saint George slew another dragon.
    Tell the international commission.
    Case closed.
    Saint George is a force to be reckoned with and apparently quite good at extracting confessions.
    The taxi driver also told me about a Christian man who dared a Muslim man he suspected of robbing his house to accompany him to a church and swear by Saint George that he didn’t do it.
    Muslims also recognize Saint George but they know him by another name (Khodr).
    Just as the alleged perp was about to swear his innocence to Saint George he saw an apparition of a fierce Saint George brandishing a sword at him and screamed ‘’I beseech you Khodr! I did it!’’
    I don’t know whether such a confession would hold up in a court of law seeing it was extracted under apparent threat of violence.
    Going for a walk (and then catching a taxi back home) is fast becoming just as much a professional necessity for me as it is a health necessity.
    7:15 am

    Wednesday, December 05, 2007  
    TALKING TRIPE
    Just got back from my walk to Jounieh and harvesting taxi driver tales.
    The taxi driver on the way up was telling me about one of the other taxi drivers, a crazy old mountain peasant who cackles after passengers who go with other drivers, yelling at him and accusing him of stealing his passengers when he drove his own wife and daughter home.
    This crazy chicken once brought a stuffed tripe sandwich with him to work.
    First I’ve heard of a stuffed tripe sandwich but it was apparently the leftovers of a Lebanese dish of boiled stuffed sheep intestines called ghammee.
    He put the sandwich in the car boot (I don’t know why he put it in the boot but I’m assuming that it was for safekeeping – you can’t be too careful with your stuffed tripe sandwiches these days) where it stayed in the summer heat all day until he ate it for lunch and become violently ill.


    Walking in these parts is getting even more perilous now that they’ve planted trees on the little strip by the side of the road that used to serve as some sort of footpath.
    This is the only place in Lebanon I know of that’s overdone it with greenery as opposed to the other extreme - the concrete jungle that is most of urban Lebanon these days.
    Why on earth would anyone plant trees in the middle of a forest?
    It reminds me of one of the deleted scenes from the Borat movie where, pointing to cheese in the cheese section of a supermarket, he asks an attendant ‘’what is this?’’, the attendant replies ‘’cheese’’ and Borat moves on to the next item and asks him the same question, getting the same reply and repeating the process for the length of the entire cheese section.
    What is this?
    A tree.
    And what is this?
    A tree.
    And what…
    10:30 am

    Sunday, November 18, 2007  
    PIMP MY BRIDE
    Another day, another walk and another tart tale from the taxi driver.
    Just got back from my walk to Jounieh (mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun).
    On the way up the taxi driver (not last week’s raconteur) was telling me about a Syrian Kurd living in Lebanon he knows who went back to Syria and literally bought an eighteen-year-old wife (also a Syrian Kurd) for a hundred dollars, brought her back to Jounieh where he works her as a prostitute in a ‘’cabaret’’ (cabaret is another Lebanese euphemism for a whorehouse).
    It seems that life is indeed a cabaret in Lebanon these days.
    Punters at the cabaret pay a hundred dollars a pop (pun intended) for the bride of Kurdistan – fifty dollars of that goes to the house and the other fifty goes to the husband.
    Thus, according to my calculations, the husband recouped the cost of purchase in just two sessions.
    But it’s the poor punter who’s being exploited here – he’s paying the same amount it cost to buy the whore for just one measly session.
    Business was going so well for the husband that he went back to Syria and bought another Syrian Kurdish bride (a twenty-five-year old), also for a hundred dollars and pimps her too.
    I’m told he earns three or four hundred dollars a day from his two bitches (excuse the vulgarity but I’m using pimp lingo here in the interests of authenticity.


    - the bride comes to yellow sky : Jounieh emblem
    12:15 pm

    Saturday, November 17, 2007  
    Life is a death sentence.
    2:15 am

    Tuesday, November 13, 2007  
    Just got back from my walk to Jounieh.
    Got into Jounieh at around 5.00am so I was there in time for the daily prostitute parade – the girls from the ‘’super nightclub’’ sashaying out of the club and onto the mini bus that takes them home.
    This prompted me to tell the taxi driver that prostitutes where the only ones making a decent living in this country these days.
    Make that prostitutes and taxi drivers because he then told me this story that illustrates the symbiotic relationship between taxi drivers and tarts.
    A young local man in his early twenties who works in Saudi Arabia and was back home for a visit approached the taxi driver (who looks at least seventy years of age to me) and asked him if he objected to taking him to an assignation.
    Surprise, surprise, the taxi driver said that he had no problem with that (no taxi driver would ever object to anything).
    So they gallivanted off to the highway near the nearby Casino du Liban where, according to the taxi driver, some ten to fifteen girls ply their trade right there on the road.
    At least somebody gets ‘’lucky’’ at the bloody casino.
    The sex tourist had already pre-chosen two sisters in their late twenties who stand on alternate sides of the highway across from each other plying their wares so they found and accosted them.
    The girls wanted a hundred dollars for the ‘’sister act’’ that the young man had in mind but he got them down to seventy five dollars.
    They then drove to a hotel in a resort area on the coast some fifteen kilometres to the north and procured a room for thirty five dollars.
    The young man told the taxi driver that he was afraid to be alone with the two girls so he insisted that the taxi driver accompany him inside.
    It was literally a single room so the taxi driver sat down and watched them for an hour.
    Why couldn’t I have been a taxi driver!
    I told him that it sure beats watching television.
    When the festivities were over, the sex tourist got the taxi driver to drive the girls to Beirut where they would catch a bus home to the South and paid him a hundred and twenty dollars for one and a half hours ‘’work’’.
    He paid more for the taxi ride than he did for the ‘’ride’’.

    I don’t know whether the sex tourist got his money’s worth from the slut sisters but I certainly got my money’s worth from the taxi driver/prostitution facilitator – two stories on two days in a row!
    But, still, I wouldn’t credit this to his skills as a raconteur – it’s more luck than anything else.
    I find that you can’t actually go out looking for stories or ask people for stories because, when asked, they’ll end up telling you the silliest and most irrelevant things.
    You really just have to wait and leave it to serendipity and coincidence.
    So I never actually ask anybody for a story because if you do, you’ll never get one that’s suitable.
    Anything creative is surprisingly random – a random encounter, a stray thought, etc.
    Initial inspiration aside, even if you set out to write the same story from the same notes on two separate days, you’ll more than likely get two different stories.

    Sometimes I think that I must spend more time on the streets than prostitutes.
    Sometimes I feel like the wandering Jew.
    5:15 am

    Monday, November 12, 2007  
    Just got my back from my walk to Jounieh.
    The taxi driver on the way back was telling me about another taxi driver who was preventing him from working in what the later considered his exclusive domain.
    So this victim went to the bully’s feudal patron to complain.
    ‘’If somebody owed me money and I asked you to split his head in two for me would you do it for even five thousand dollars?’’ the sheik asked him rhetorically.
    ‘’Well, this guy would do it for a thousand dollars, he’d even beat up his own brother if I asked him to – that’s why he’s indispensable to me’’.
    Case dismissed.
    5:45 am

    Saturday, November 03, 2007  
    IDIOT WIND
    Just got back from my walk to Jounieh.
    On the way up the taxi driver kept closing my window and I kept opening it until I finally asked him if it was a problem if we kept it open.
    He replied that of course it wasn’t but that he was closing it for my sake because I’d been walking and (he incorrectly presumed) that I was sweaty and thus liable to get ‘’struck by the wind’’.
    Not wanting to offend his animist sensibilities, I agreed with him but said that I was also hot and needed some air.
    So I proposed and negotiated a compromise whereby I opened the window halfway.
    These earnest entreaties are getting most tiresome.
    I’ve been ripped-off, robbed, abused, assaulted and God knows what else by Lebanese taxi drivers but if there’s anything that I really hold against them it’s this boring me to death with this so-called advice.
    Anything else I can handle but not this!
    2:15 am

    Thursday, November 01, 2007  
    Eli got his driving license last week.
    He’s quite a good driver considering that he took lessons with an outfit that calls itself an ‘’autodriving school’’.
    1:30 pm

    Tuesday, October 30, 2007  
    The smarter one gets, the stupider others get (appear).
    7:15 pm

    Thursday, October 25, 2007  
    Juz kickin' back in da crib wid ma homie E. Diddy.
    Eli is insisting that there’s an actual technical term for a guy who works at a shoe shop.
    I disagree and am trying to get him to bet on it like I do with his other wild suggestions.
    I maintain that there’s a term for someone who makes or fixes shoes – a cobbler – but that there isn’t a specific term for someone who works in a shoe shop.
    Maybe there is in Kazakhstan.
    I even searched it on Google Kazakhstan to humour Eli but without any luck.
    I thought that there may have been a medieval or Victorian Era English term (like haberdasher or costermonger) for such a thing (they had a title for every conceivable job back then) so we went to ye olde websites and checked ye olde terms but alas to no avail.
    So we’ve made a bet for five thousand lira but I’ll end up forgiving this like I’ve forgiven most of Eli’s other gambling debts.
    Eli learnt the hard way that, amongst other things, room temperature is so not twenty eight degrees as he insisted it was (maybe in Jamaica it is).
    UPDATE
    8.00pm Monday 21st April 2008
    I asked Eli (in an instant message exchange) if he’d been asking people at shoe shops what they’re called and he replied that he hadn’t been to a shoe shop since he was in Lebanon last summer.
    And to think that he regards himself as an expert on shoe shop employees!

    Five thousand lira is the minimum bet I will make.
    Don’t waste my time with anything beneath five thousand lira.
    Sometimes I make ten thousand lira a day (which is Eli’s cut-off point) off Eli.
    I could make a living out of betting with Eli but, as I said, I more often than not forgive Eli his debts so he can keep on betting like a fisherman who catches fish and then throws them back in again.
    I forgive Eli his debts but I don’t forget them – I find that I get more mileage out of always reminding him of his debts than I would have had he have actually payed them.
    Eli also found out the hard way that there are no such words as ‘’subconcial’’ and ‘’insulitive’’ and would have found out the hard way that the late Diana Princess of Wales was not actually Welsh (despite the title) had his father not have explained it to him before he could bet on it.
    It hasn’t been all loses for Eli.
    He won one bet with me regarding how many American soldiers died in the Vietnam War.
    He bet correctly that it was fifty eight thousand.
    I bet that it was seventy thousand.
    I don’t know where I got that figure from – maybe I was ‘’subconcially’’ factoring in all the allied losses.
    The secret to my gambling success is that I’m not smarter than Eli nor anyone else but that I’m very canny – I only bet when I’m absolutely certain of something (i.e. very rarely).
    Not much different than Eli actually – Eli only bets when he’s absolutely certain of something but, like most twenty year olds, he’s absolutely certain of everything.
    My cousin Omar used to be another good source of gambling income for me until he grew out of shooting off his mouth when he wasn’t sure.
    And that’s exactly the reason why I do it – to teach them the value of their own credibility.
    Whenever they’re bullshitting, I’ll demand that that put their money where there mouths are.
    Omar has learnt this lesson, Eli hasn’t yet.
    Omar has also learnt, amongst other things, that a tomato is a fruit not a vegetable.
    I got him on the oldest trick question in the book!
    Are there still people in the twenty first century who don’t know that a tomato is actually a fruit?
    When I told Omar’s father about my gambling exploits he quoted an Egyptian proverb that ''the madman chases the idiots''.
    He wasn’t being ‘’insultive’’ and neither am I, it’s all jokes.

    Sometimes I go into chat rooms for a bit of a laugh.
    I was talking to a woman from China today and when I asked her what she did in life she replied ‘’I sell batteries’’.
    That’s got to be the most random job I’ve ever heard of – straight out of Borat.
    UPDATE
    6.00pm Thursday 24th July 2008
    How’s this for another random job?
    “…Mohamed Ibrahim a university student who works part-time selling watermelons in the southern part of the city (Aman)’’ (some online newspaper).
    The watermelon selling industry must be so hard to break into that there are only part-time positions available.
    9:45 pm

     
    BLOODY HELL!
    There’s too much swearing on television.
    I just heard the newsreader on CNN talking about the ‘’bloody military crackdown in Myanmar’’.
    Don’t get me wrong, I condemn what the junta are doing but I just don’t think that language like that is going to achieve anything.
    I also think that the word damn is used too much in the media too.
    E.g. ‘’rescuers continue to look for survivors at the scene of yesterdays damn collapse in northeast China’’.
    I think that ‘’collapse’’ will do sufficiently without the use of profanities thank you very much.
    4:30 pm

    Monday, October 15, 2007  
    Eli's in da house.
    Three years ago when he was in Sweden (where he lives for most of the year) Eli asked me for my residential address in an instant message exchange so that he could mail me some stuff.
    I was reluctant to give it to him because I didn’t want to bother him.
    He misunderstood and said that he understood if I didn’t want to disclose it for ‘’security reasons’’.
    ‘’Dude!’’ I exclaimed ‘’It’s the same address as yours – minus two floors!’’
    He saw the humour in this and said that it would be funny if he wrote on the package ‘’4th Floor minus two floors’’.
    I must stress that I’m not laughing at Eli but laughing with him.
    Eli is a very intelligent young man with great potential (this sounds like a school report card) but, at twenty years of age, he is a member of the first generation of internet kids who are now coming to maturity – impatient, helter-skelter and with a very short attention span.
    This gentle giant (Eli is six foot two and weighs one hundred and forty kilos but that's all heart) reminds me a bit of Lenny from ‘’Of Mice and Men’’ only because of his size, innocence and good heartedness.
    If he’s Lenny, then I must be George the a***hole*.
    Our night walks are getting a bit dangerous – with crazy taxi drivers and citizen militias** etc – so, in the best tradition of Lenny Small, Eli said ‘’I’m the brawn and you’re the brains, so if we get into a fight, I’ll do the fighting but if the police get called, you do the talking’’.
    All right Eli – you do the sockin’ and I’ll do the explainin’.

    *I’m going to end up talking like Eli.About two weeks ago the usually demur Francophone senior secretary at Eli’s dad’s office sent another secretary at the office a SMS in English saying ‘’this f***ing manouchie made me sick!’’.The other secretary replied jokingly ‘’what – you’re talking like Eli now?’’
    **Last Tuesday I was approached by an ad hoc militia comprised of a chef (minus the rolling pin a la the cliché) and two other characters who were God knows what from a nearby restaurant because I happened to be standing at an intersection on a main street in the nightlife centre of town at three o’clock in the morning waiting to catch a taxi back home after my walk – obviously highly suspicious behaviour!
    Maameltien at night is essentially a red-light zone so I think that these gentlemen can find lots of shady characters to interrogate without harassing innocent walkers.
    Heck, why don’t they start with their own bloody patrons – that’s the seediest bunch of people I’ve ever seen outside of a strip club.
    They politely asked me for my ‘’my good name’’ but I declined to divulge any information to them – telling them that this was public property and they were behaving like a militia.
    They said that they just wanted to make my acquaintance to which I replied that they could make my acquaintance if I went to their restaurant but that, in the meantime, I was not obliged to tell them my name.
    They threatened to call the police or the army and I said that I wished they would so that I could report a militia.
    This happy gathering broke up when the taxi I was waiting for arrived and I hopped in and left them.
    If this is a portent of things to come in Lebanon, then we’re in serious trouble.
    I don’t know what I prefer – terrorism or militias.
    They’re both the same thing anyway.
    If plebes can go around harassing people in the name of ''counter-terrorism'' then I’m not sure what I prefer.
    United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 (which calls for, amongst other things, the disbanding of all militias in Lebanon) shouldn’t just apply to dudes with beards (Hezbollah).
    5:30 pm

    Sunday, October 07, 2007  
    Eli’s over.
    ‘’You look pretty calm and chilled’’ he observes.
    ‘’That’s because you’ve only been here for ten minutes’’ I reply.

    I told Eli two ghost stories within a week of each other and he believed both of them.
    On one occasion I convinced Eli that a ghost haunts the abandoned road near our building and, another time, that I later found out that a friendly old man we encounter on our walks had in fact been dead for ten years.
    Eli wanted to call a priest, which is quite logical, but he also wanted to call the police (try both the spiritual and the temporal).
    Sure, sic the police onto a ghost.
    What are the police going to do to a ghost?
    Maybe our police have a ghost buster unit.
    Our cops have enough trouble catching real criminals let alone ghosts.
    And sometimes they even confuse the two.
    In September 2005 the then-Interior Minister Hassan Sabaa famously said "unfortunately we are facing some kind of a ghost'' after television personality May Chidiac was maimed in a car bomb explosion (one of tens of politically motivated hits that have plagued Lebanon since October 2004 – all of them unsolved).
    The first hoax he fell for wasn’t even believed by my twelve year old cousin Nour.
    When I later revealed to Eli that it was a hoax, he kindly offered me the use of his mobile phone to call Nour and tell her that it was indeed a hoax (she’d left us about half way during the story).
    I told Eli that I’d already told her that it was a hoax when I saw her off at the elavator so he wouldn’t feel like a complete retard but the truth is that she didn’t believe a word of it.

    I used to walk along the abandoned road but I don’t anymore partly because of the ghost (who knows, there may be a ghost there for all we know) but also because, now that it’s reverted back to nature, there must be all sorts of creatures there.
    I wouldn’t be surprised if there were even dinosaurs and highwaymen down that road that time forgot.
    Besides, a judge on a walk got bashed there a couple of years ago but that was a targeted attack (they appear to have followed him from his home in Jounieh and took advantage of the secluded location) because of a case he was presiding over and he’s been bashed elsewhere before so it doesn’t appear that judge-bashing is endemic to that particular road but more to that particular judge.
    11:30 pm

    Saturday, October 06, 2007  
    Just got back from my walk to Jounieh.
    The slippery roads (‘’black ice’’ as the taxi driver so aptly called them) after the first rains of the season and a high security presence made it a particularly long walk.
    The army were out in force ahead of this afternoon’s parade at Jounieh stadium commemorating the army martyrs from the Nahr el Bared conflict and I must have been stopped by every solider in Lebanon.
    It was more like inspecting the troops than taking a walk.
    My beard makes me look like a Syrian worker or an Islamist terrorist (none of them too popular in Lebanon at the moment).
    Once they established my bona fides they were pretty friendly and professional - as the Lebanese army are – with one of them even asking me to stop for a cup of tea.
    Eli did not accompany me on this walk – fear of slippery roads was today’s excuse.
    His excuses vary from fear of puppy dogs to fear of the security situation to fear of slippery roads* (even when it’s not raining!).
    He’s doing well for a twenty year old – most people don’t establish such a comprehensive list of phobias until they’re at least twice that age.

    I was coughing earlier on in the evening, so Eli said the usual Lebanese pleasantries for such a situation (Lebanese have pleasantries for every situation under the sun).
    I interrupted my choking to rattle off the pleasantries that one usually replies with to that.
    When I recovered, I told him that the last thing that somebody choking wants to do or can do is to exchange pleasantries.
    But I suppose it distracts you from it.
    The Lebanese bereavement ritual, whether by design or coincidence, does exactly that – the afflicted are distracted by days of process (mainly receiving condolences) that they can be forgiven for forgetting the actual bereavement.


    *UPDATE At least they’re better excuses than the one he gave me the other day about not being able to go for a walk with me because he didn’t have ''a can of deodorant spray for dogs''.
    It’s not that he wanted this to deodorise any dogs we encountered so they would smell nice and fresh and not be sweaty when they attacked us (I have this mental image of Eli lifting up each of the snarling dog's legs and spraying underneath them) but he wanted to use it as a flame thrower to fend off said dogs.
    I didn’t think he was entirely serious until now, 8.45pm on Saturday 13th October 2007, when he appears with a can of deodorant called ‘’Hector for Man’’ (sic) made in Turkey which he bought for all of 2000 lira.
    3:30 am

    Wednesday, October 03, 2007  
    Just got back from a walk to Jounieh with Eli.
    The driver of the taxi we caught back home was a retard – surprise, surprise.
    I didn’t have anything smaller than a fifty thousand lira note and he claimed not to have any change so I told him that we should get some change in Jounieh but he insisted that there must be a petrol station en route up here where we could get some change.
    Spent half the drive trying to convince him that there wasn’t and the other half was self explanatory – a petrol station wasn’t going to appear out of thin air.
    I asked him where he was from and he replied that he was from Akkar (extreme north).
    I told him that we were from here so we knew where the petrol stations were here and that when we went to Akkar he could tell us where the petrol stations in Akkar were but, in the meantime, he should kindly permit us to tell him where the petrol stations were here.
    After he was finally convinced that there were no petrol stations up here, he observed that it was a ‘’miracle’’ that there wasn’t.
    ‘’Miracle’’ in this colloquial context means something very rare and very strange.
    I agreed and, playing on words, told him that he should go light a candle (which is what Lebanese Christians usually do when a religious miracle occurs) even though he was clearly Muslim.
    When we got up here he tried to pull the oldest trick in the book – the old dollars-not-liras switcheroo.
    When we first engaged him in Jounieh, he said that he wanted 15,000 lira (10 USD) but I insisted that I never pay more than 10,000 lira, but when we got up here he said that I had agreed on ten dollars rather than 10, 000 lira which was patent nonsense because I clearly said 10,000 lira, besides, why would I refuse to pay 15,000 lira yet agree to pay it’s equivalent in dollars?
    I stood my ground and insisted that he give me 40,000 lira change instead of the 35,000 lira he tried to stiff me with (I don’t know where the change ‘’miraculously’’ appeared from but it certainly wasn’t from a petrol station because, as I may have mentioned before, there are no petrol stations up here although apparently they’re all over the place in Akkar).
    He grudgingly conceded after a short stand-off.
    That done, Eli and I got out and I told the taxi driver that he should consider himself lucky that I didn’t sic the cops guarding the building onto him.
    He swore at me as he drove off, I returned the favour and we exchanged further pleasantries.
    The secret to a long stress-free life is to avoid Lebanese taxi drivers and internet chat rooms.
    During our walk down I was telling Eli about how some Crimean bitch* in a chat room called me an ‘’idiot guy’’ because I thought that Crimea was in Russia whereas apparently it used to be a part of Russia but became an autonomous republic of Ukraine after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
    This parochial bitch obviously thinks that her little rump republic is the centre of the world and that people who can’t place it correctly are stupid.
    Eli agreed and said ‘’it’s not it’s like Florida, the headquarters of the United Nations’’.
    I told him that the United Nations was based in New York.
    ‘’So what’s in Florida? Oh, that’s right – Disneyland’s in Florida!’’
    Although he does have Ali G moments like that Eli is usually quite switched on.
    In Jounieh he pointed out the oddest road sign you’ll ever see – in a circle with a vertical line through it was written ‘’no parking’’ (in Arabic).
    Eli observed that ''no parking'' was crossed out so you can park there and said it was like writing ‘’no parking…NOT!’’
    That sign is basically saying that you’re not allowed to not park there so you have to park there a la those no smoking signs that have a cigarette with a line through it – meaning that you are not allowed to do what is crossed out there.

    *Eli reckons that the best way to determine whether someone is retarded or not is to give them a computer and an internet connection.
    3:40 am

    Thursday, September 20, 2007  
    Just got back from Beirut where I saw a sign outside a domestic employment agency (aka slave traders) screaming ‘’FILIPINAS ARE BACK!’’ as if they were red M&M’s* or something.
    Filipinas ,who Lebanese consider as the crème de la crème of domestics because of their education, their English and their not being completely black, had been banned by their government from working in Lebanon because of last summer’s war and allegations of abuse.

    *Red M&M’s were discontinued in 1976 after the FDA banned Red Dye No.2, a suspected carcinogen, despite the fact that they did not contain that dye.
    They were reintroduced to great fanfare in 1987 when the public had forgotten about it.
    10:30 am

    Friday, September 07, 2007  
    Watching a television interview with a certain Lebanese politician, my friend and neighbour Eli remarked that ‘’he’s always relevant because he never has a point’’.
    This guy is as repetitive as a porn movie.


    Eli says that, technically speaking, the proverbial glass is both half empty and half full.
    I suppose he’s right.
    So that settles it then.
    11:00 pm

     
    After a costly three and a half month-long battle, the Lebanese army finally manage to completely take over what is left of the Nahr el Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon.
    The 1969 Cairo Accord stipulates that the Lebanese security forces aren’t allowed in the Palestinian camps.
    I don’t think that that accord was breached in any way.
    There is no camp left.
    What camp?
    8:00 pm

    Sunday, September 02, 2007  
    I don’t know who killed Prime Minister Hariri but the mainstream theory (that the Syrians did it) sounds too true to be true.
    8:00 pm

    Sunday, August 26, 2007  
    There’s no such thing as an atheist.
    An atheist is just someone who doesn’t know or doesn’t accept that they're a believer. I said this to an atheist and she replied ‘’don’t insult my beliefs’’.
    I replied that non-believing cannot be regarded as a belief
    She then proceeded to carry on for God knows how long about her atheism.
    Literally much ado about nothing
    How can someone take so long to describe nothing?
    The funny thing is that she probably thinks that she’s the first person to spout this sophomoric nonsense
    The term atheist is a misnomer anyway, they believe in a God all right but that ‘’god’’ is themselves.
    There are some people who are so full of themselves, so self-absorbed that they can hardly believe in God because it would be a conflict of interest, polytheism.

    Anyway, regardless of whether or not there is a God, ‘’we have to act as if there is a God’’ as Pope Benedict told Oriana Fallaci.
    8:15 am

    Thursday, August 16, 2007  
    KNOCK, KNOCK!
    WHO’S THERE?
    LETTUCE.
    LETTUCE WHO?
    LETTUCE OUT (FORBIDDEN)!
    ''Today, on Al-Arabiya, a reporter said, clearly mockingly, that 'Yazidis prohibit the eating of lettuce for reasons that nobody knows'. No, we know. It is not a secret: there is a story of how Shaykh `Adiyyah was once turned away from an orchard where he wanted to eat lettuce. ''
    -angryarab.blogspot.com


    ONE-EYED FANATICS
    ‘’The Mozabites are a distinct Berber people who are part of a sect of Islam known as the Karejittes…having a unique revelation of Islam…They adhere to some different views than other streams of thought… They have a strict code of ethics which they seek to live by. The
    women wear a long white cloak, which covers most of their
    body, with the right eye also being covered by the cloak.''
    -www.gosahara.org (my emphasis)
    6:15 pm

    Tuesday, August 07, 2007  
    ''As for the Beirut by-election, Mohammad al-Amin Itani won as predicted, beating six other candidates with 22,988 out of 27,100 votes, while the second-place candidate, Ibrahim Mahmoud al-Halabi received 3,556 votes.
    Zuhair Ibrahim Khateeb received 75 votes, Mohammad Rashid Fardouhi received 12 votes, Saleh Faroukh received 3 votes, whereas Maher Abou Khdoud received no votes.''
    - today's Daily Star (my emphasis)

    How can you get no votes?
    Didn't he even vote for himself?
    3:00 pm

    Monday, August 06, 2007  
    "O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
    What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
    ...Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there
    .... O long may it wave"
    -The Star Spangled Banner(Francis Scott Key)

    ORANGE COUNTY
    -result announced at dawn confirms FPM win in yesterday’s hard-fought by-election in Metn mountains above Beirut
    The rising sun, covering the mountain in reddish-yellow hues, brought with it the news that the mountain is still orange.
    12:45 pm

    Friday, August 03, 2007  
    My cousin, Finance Minister Jihad Azour, recently became a proud father for the first time when his wife Roula gave birth to a healthy baby boy.
    The delivery went smoothly and there were no complications - in the modern era, the most difficult thing about having a child is naming the child.
    Modern parents tend to put much more thought into naming their offspring than their parents did.
    This was no exception.
    One of the names considered was Karim (meaning generous in Arabic) but the Prime Minister jokingly vetoed it on the grounds that ‘’Abu (father of) Karim’’ was an unacceptable appellation for a finance minister.
    Finance ministers anywhere are supposed to be canny but even more so in a country that has the highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the world (178 percent).

    On the subject of names, I know someone who didn’t have so much trouble naming his children.
    He named two sons from two different marriages a variation of the same name (Michael and Miguel).
    I don’t know whether this was on purpose or whether he even noticed (maybe he forgot) but it reminds me of Newhart’s "Hi, I'm Larry. This is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl."*
    Either way, he must have liked the name a lot and what’s not to like about it?
    It’s a very likeable name.
    Too likeable a name to use only once per family per generation.
    Twice is the bare minimum for such a lovely name.

    *The Michel's sister could introduce her and her brothers in a similar fashion – ‘’Hi, I’m – (forgot name but it’s not Michele or any other female variation of Michel).This is my brother Michel, and this is my other brother Michel’’.
    8:00 pm

    Sunday, July 29, 2007  
    IRAQ ‘’WINS’’ASIAN CUP FOOTBALL FINAL
    -not everyone convinced
    ''Let me make this prediction. Sports teams of countries with governments submissive to the US will be miraculously winning more games in the near future. In fact, with the new Salam Fayyad government, I would not be surprised if a Palestinian team wins the World Series. And it would not be surprised if Fu'ad Sanyurah is declared the world heavy weight champion of boxing, and if the Saudi King wins a gold medal in high jumping...
    Do you notice this in the US and Saudi media? How they are treating the victory of the Iraqi soccer team as it is a validation of the Bush doctrine? We will live to a day when countries are invaded under the pretext of improving the performance of their soccer teams.''
    -angryarab.blogspot.com
    6:00 pm

     
    ''The French foreign minister is visiting Lebanon. A reporter asked him a serious question about what France was really doing to help Lebanon. He answered her by telling her that "she is pretty" and that he salutes her.''
    -angryarab.blogspot.com
    7:12 am

    Friday, July 27, 2007  
    ''When Americans take their polls and surveys overseas, problems arise (in translation and in methodology). My best example is from one massive study by University of Michigan's Ronald Inglehart who has done more global surveys than anybody. But in his massive book, Human Values, which contains the results of global surveys, people were asked how they feel about having Muslims as their neighbors. According to the study, more than 90% of people in Turkey said that they would not like to have Muslims as neighbors. That leads you to believe that some misunderstanding, or mistranslation happened along the way''.
    - anygryarab.blogpsot.com (my emphasis)
    12:45 am

    Thursday, July 26, 2007  
    My eight hour day - eight hours trying to get to sleep, eight hours sleep (if I’m lucky) and the remaining eight hours doing what ever I can manage to fit into them.
    10:00 am

    Friday, July 20, 2007  
    SISTER ACT
    I’m not giving away any national secrets here, but for about two months, since soon after the shenanigans at the Nahr el Bared Palestinian refugee camp began, we have had heavy around-the-clock police security here at the Paradise Buildings.
    One end of the road is blocked off with concrete barriers and there is a checkpoint at the other end.
    Cars aren’t allowed to park next to the buildings on the adjacent highway.
    I must say that the police are very efficient, maybe too efficient.
    Almost every time I’ve left the house since the siege began, I’ve been accosted by a policeman (‘’’Ello Ello, what’s going on ‘ere then?’’).
    Their usual line is ‘’I saw you leaving the buildings’’*.
    My reply is that I was leaving the buildings because I live there.
    They politely apologize and leave to go and harass somebody else presumably.
    But it’s getting a bit much.
    Three weeks ago today I was going for a walk, albeit at 4.30am, I’d cleared the barriers and was walking down the highway when I heard thumping footsteps behind me.
    I stopped and turned around to see one of the cops chasing me.
    I was a bit peeved off and told him, in no uncertain terms, that whilst we appreciate and thank them for their efforts, they can’t chase me every time I leave the house and that we’re neighbours so they should get to know their neighbours already (which they belatedly have – they’ve finally stopped accosting me).
    The usual apologies ensued.
    Shouldn’t proper security be about scrutinizing people entering rather than leaving a secured area?
    If people are leaving a secured area and you don’t know who they are then you’ve already failed. This is not to mention the roaming police commando patrols who also accost me on my walks.
    These are tough times and it goes without saying that the police and the army have my full support but I finally broke my silence when I saw one of the coppers accosting a nun who had parked her car on the highway a couple of minutes ago.
    I couldn’t hear what they were saying but it looked like the nun was pretty adamant about staying there until she had finished dusting her car which she was in the process of doing.
    So she did whilst the copper stood guard, although not right next to the car as they usually do with cars that have broken down and are awaiting assistance.
    When she finished dusting the car, inside and out, she got in, adjusted her habit and drove off.
    Mission accomplished.
    Good on her – the Lord works in mysterious ways and who are we laypeople to judge that she wasn’t doing the Lords work there?
    Cleanliness is next to Godliness as they say.
    How many nuns are there who are members of al Qaeda?
    Maybe he thought she was Whoopi Goldberg.
    But I must stress they’re very decent and friendly blokes.
    My twelve year old cousin even has a crush on one of them (so cute).
    After all, he did say ‘’bonjour’’ to her twice; open the boom gate for her to pass while she was riding her bike even though she could have easily gone through the gap on the side and ask her brother what class she was in at school.
    I must also stress that I’m not making fun of them, just marvelling at their thoroughness.

    *It reminded me of an Australian television comedy sketch from the 1980’s where a psychotic Vietnam veteran security guard at a department store shoots a shopper because ‘’she was looking at the stuff’’.
    His flabbergasted superior tells him ‘’that’s standard consumer practice’’.
    4:30 pm

    Sunday, July 15, 2007  
    Despite all the political turmoil, I maintain that Lebanon is still a lot safer than most other countries in the world.
    Heck, there were more suicides than there were murders in the first half of this year.
    According to police statistics cited in local newspapers, there were 57 suicides compared to 51 murders in the first half of 2007.
    Although a lot of those suicides are probably what I’d call ‘’deaths in custody’’ – foreign domestic maids kept as virtual prisoners who commit suicide to escape - so should be classed as murders.
    3:00 pm

     
    Just watched half an hour of a documentary on the Discovery Channel about the building of a massive bridge in Hong Kong.
    I’ve seen enough – I reckon I can do it.
    I’m itching to give it a shot.
    How did they used to teach engineers before the Discovery Channel?
    I reckon I can also be an astronaut and customs inspector too (amongst other things).
    I also know how to make neon lights and hockey sticks too (amongst other things).
    All thanks to the Discovery Channel.
    4:30 am

    Tuesday, July 10, 2007  
    I spend half of my life trying to get to sleep and the other half trying to wake up.
    Nonetheless I try to keep busy when I’m awake because I believe that if you don’t ‘'work’’ during the day, you’ll ‘’work’’ at night.
    That is, if you don’t occupy yourself productively during the day it will catch up with you at night when you’re trying to sleep.
    Even then, it’s not a guarantee but at least you know that you did what you have to do and have taken ‘’precautions’’.
    Apart from being good exercise, my walks are a form of insomnia ‘’insurance’’.
    It doesn’t always work, just like insurance doesn’t always work, but it’s reassuring anyway.

    That’s why I classify myself as a “full-time professional insomniac’’
    It’s like a job!
    Eight hours!
    Most people don’t even work for eight hours a day!
    Even when I sleep on the first attempt, the whole procedure still takes at least four hours which makes it a part-time job.
    So I’m doomed to be either a full-time insomniac or, at best, a part-time insomniac but it could be worse, it could be a “3er’’ (taking three attempts to get to sleep) which, when it rarely happens, means that it takes me around twelve hours to get to sleep and is thus a full-time job with overtime.
    Now that’s time-and-a-half!
    I really should get paid for this because it’s not volunteer work.
    Nobody would volunteer to spend up to twelve hours trying to get to sleep so if it’s not volunteer work then technically it ought to be paid work.
    I certainly didn’t volunteer for this.
    If I’m going to be doing volunteer work then I’d much rather it be something like collecting tinned food for poor people.
    1:10 pm

    Wednesday, July 04, 2007  
    For guests that aren’t mine (i.e. my parent’s guests) I’ve developed a patented fail-safe system that creates an illusion of ‘’attendance’’.
    I ‘’attend’’ for the first and last hour of their visit (if they’re staying over – reduce to fifteen minutes if it’s a normal visit).
    Because they see you when they first arrive and before they leave (at the bookends of their visit so to speak) they will think that you spent more time with them than you did and that you were there throughout, subconsciously associating you with being there for the duration.
    First and last impressions count.
    1:45 am

    Tuesday, June 26, 2007  
    A SIGN OF THE TIMES

    ''In the nearby resort La Voile, a sign has been posted as a talisman to deter trouble and ensure security. "No politicians and deputies allowed in," it reads, indicating that politics is always accompanied by problems.''

    -Today's Daily Star
    8:00 pm

    Friday, June 22, 2007  
    HOW THE GRINCH STOLE EASTER
    Lebanese cabinet finally gazettes its decision (taken last December) to no longer acknowledge Good Friday as an official public holiday, yet keeps public holiday commemorating Hariri assassination.

    Update : After a groundswell of protests, Good Friday was eventually reinstated as a public holiday.
    8:00 pm

    Tuesday, June 19, 2007  

    Life goes on in Lebanon against a background of heightened security
    5:45 pm

    Friday, June 15, 2007  
    INDIE 500 – 500 BLOG POSTS AND COUNTING
    10:00 pm

     
    JUST SAY NO
    - 'Cause you're really only after '74-'75
    If ‘’they’’ throw a war and none of us attend, it won’t be a war or a very unsuccessful war at least.
    8:15 pm

    Saturday, June 09, 2007  
    Went on a rampage with my new digital camera at my cousin’s wedding this afternoon.
    Among my victim’s was my photogenic aunty.
    When I commented that my aunty was photogenic and that the camera never lies my uncle retorted ‘’true, but the camera can be lied too’’.
    8:00 pm

    Tuesday, June 05, 2007  
    IT WAS THE SYRIANS WHAT DONE IT
    A Syrian worker was detained (and subsequently released) for the highly suspicious act of running away from the scene of last night’s bomb blast in an eastern suburb of Beirut (the fourth in two weeks).
    How eccentric!
    Running away from an explosion!
    I don’t know about you but when an explosion occurs, I run towards it not away from it.
    12:30 pm

    Wednesday, May 30, 2007  
    A VERY TRYING TRIBUNAL
    A divided United Nations Security Council has approved a resolution establishing an international tribunal to prosecute suspects in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
    8:00 pm

    Sunday, May 20, 2007  
    TONIGHT WE’RE GONNA PARTY LIKE IT’S 1999
    - Lebanese security forces clash with Palestinian Islamic fundamentalists in northern Lebanon in fighting reminiscent of Islamist uprising on eve of millennium

    SUNNI FOREIGN LEGION
    Palestinian (and other) radical groups have been armed and financed by the March 14th/Friday 13th Movement for years as a counterweight to the Shiites (a la the Sunnis and the Palestinians ganging up on the Maronites during the civil war).
    I used to simplistically blame the Palestinians for all our problems but now realise that those who use them are to blame.The perpetrators of the last similar uprising (Al Qaeda affiliated extremists who rose up in the north on the eve of the new millennium killing scores of soldiers and civilians) were all released by the new regime in the run-up to the 2005 parliamentary elections for political reasons.

    The Hajji spent all day calling relatives who live in the neighbourhood of Tripoli where the fighting began (before it moved on to the actual refugee camp).
    She was still at it at 10.00pm when it was time for my ‘’lunch’’.
    So I asked the hajji ‘’have your relatives had lunch yet?’’
    She replied in the affirmative.
    ‘’Well I haven’t’’.
    Life is all about priorities.
    8:00 pm

    Tuesday, May 15, 2007  
    OH, THE HOKEY POKEY
    Just got back from a walk to Jounieh.
    If you see someone walking the streets of Lebanon at four in the morning just assume that they have a dial-up so-called internet connection and have nothing else to do because their connection is practically non-existent at that time (or at any other time for that matter).
    I recommend Lebanese dial-up for any parent who doesn’t want their children spending too much time on the internet.
    I’ve given up calling the ISP’s so-called consumer helpline (AKA twenty four hour consumer excuse line) to complain because that just makes it worse.
    They’ll never admit that there’s a problem but will make all sorts of excuses and distract you with all sorts of tasks – restart your computer, check the connection socket, check the firewall… stand on your head, do the twist, do the Lambeth Walk (every evening, every day), put your left foot in and shake it all about, left foot on green ,right hand on red.
    It’s like playing Twister – you end up all over the place.
    4:00 am

    Monday, May 07, 2007  
    The quickest way to misery is to try and be happy.
    3:40 am

    Saturday, May 05, 2007  
    DO KIDS PEE IN THE SWIMMING POOL?
    Foaud, Omar and I were walking down to Jounieh once when Omar announced that he had to pee.
    Foaud said ‘’now? You just got back from the swimming pool!’’
    Suffice to say, Omar didn’t wait until we got to proper amenities – he’s at that age when the whole world is your pissoir.
    2:40 pm

    Wednesday, May 02, 2007  
    A source at a private secondary school in the north tells me that a member of a delegation visiting the school today, an Emirati princess, asked the students in one particular class whether education was needed to build a nation.
    All the students answered that it was except one girl who, thinking outside the box, said that education wasn’t necessary and cited as an example the late Sheikh Zayed, the founding President of the United Arab Emirates, as an example.
    The princess was understandably very impressed with this answer and rewarded her with a one hundred dollar note there and then.
    That sure beats a gold star.

    Which reminds me of the (possibly apocryphal) story I heard about a Lebanese man who had a put up a Saudi flag during the 1994 World Cup final being given five thousand dollars for his trouble by the Saudi Ambassador when he discovered it by chance.
    I also heard that Saudi players were paid a million dollar bonus by the king for every goal they scored during the tournament.


    BOOK BRAWL
    The same source also tells me that there was a brawl involving up to thirty students from that and another school who were manning stands ‘’promoting’’ their schools at the Tripoli leg of the Arab Book Fair over a perceived mocking comment said to one of the students.
    The police had to be called in and there have been vows of vengeance.
    What would they have done if they weren’t promoting their school at a book fair?
    7:00 pm

    Thursday, April 05, 2007  
    EVERBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD
    ‘’He only wants the presidency’’ is the common refrain you’ll hear from General Aoun’s detractors.
    Duh!
    How eccentric – a politician who wants power!
    Stop the press!
    Call the Guinness Book of records quick!
    Mcfly!
    Earth to Aoun detractors!
    Every Maronite male over the age of ten (and possibly even younger) wants to be president.
    An American journalist I know compared the field of candidates in Lebanese presidential elections to the field of participants in the Boston Marathon – everyone’s a candidate (although candidates rarely ever actually declare their candidacy).
    Maybe that’s why the Lebanese constitution (unsuccessfully) stipulates that a president can only serve one term* – to give everybody a turn.

    *Although a president may be elected again after another term has elapsed.

    GENERAL ELECTRIC
    Say what you want about General Aoun, but this straight-talking populist sure knows how to fire up a crowd!
    Electrifying!
    8:45 pm

    Wednesday, April 04, 2007  
    The bad news is that my watch has stopped (after I got caught in the rain during my walk on Sunday afternoon), the good news is that at least it tells the correct time twice a day.
    So now I have to schedule all my appointments for 4.30 in the afternoon or 4.30 in the morning.
    Anyway, I’m Lebanese so I don’t really need a watch.
    Besides, I have a brand new watch that someone gave me as a present which I don’t wear because I’m used to this old watch that I’ve had for more than twenty years (it’s more classical and streamlined than my new modern chunky watch which is very nice by the way).
    7:30 pm

    Tuesday, April 03, 2007  
    When my cousin Foaud was a toddler he used to think that there were two ‘’Lilatos’’ (what he used to call me) – the Lilato he used to see in the flesh and the Lilato he used to hear on the radio.
    Sometimes he used to say that he preferred ‘’the other Lilato’’ (the one on the radio) presumably because ‘’the other Lilato’’ never told him what to do and never gave him a hard time.
    When my mum used to baby-sit him and they’d be listening to me live on the radio in the living room, he’d go looking for me in my room and around the house during the commercial break.

    Also when he was around that age, Foaud intentionally hit another child in the head with a racket.
    Literally playing the man not the ball.
    When asked what he was doing he said ‘’tennis’’.
    He was punished for this out of character behaviour of course.
    I certainly don’t condone that sort of thing, but, in his defence, tennis isn’t that popular in Lebanon, so it’s understandable for Lebanese not to have a perfect grasp of the rudiments of the game, especially at his age.
    7:30 pm

    Tuesday, March 27, 2007  
    A man from our village wrote an encyclopaedia – literally wrote it in longhand - copying and pasting (the traditional way i.e. with scissors and glue) the pictures into it.
    Totally but wonderfully impractical and the very essence of the true meaning of the word amateur.
    Amateur in its original sense* meant somebody who does something purely for the love of it, not for gain or profit, and did not originally have the derogative connotation that we mainly associate with the word today.
    So in that true sense of the word, I’m proud to admit that I’m an amateur.

    *French, from Latin amātor, lover, from amāre, to love.
    6:00 am

    Monday, March 26, 2007  
    ‘’There is no Lebanon without the Maronites and there are no Maronites without Lebanon’’
    - Politician Michel Edde on this evening’s LBC television newscast.
    8:30 pm

     
    NO PROBLEMS
    More insomnia – just in case you thought it had gone away.
    But a career in insomnia has led me to the revelation that the insomnia (or any other ailment) is not the problem, it’s how you deal with it.
    Insomnia still sucks but if you keep cool about it and not let it get to you then your problem is half solved – a problem ignored is a problem halved.
    It’s not the problem that’s the problem, it’s the reaction to the problem that can or can not be a problem depending on how you deal with it.
    If you have an aim or a mission in life and keep your sights set on that then everything else is just peripheral.
    God, I’m sounding like a motivational speaker.
    This new side effect of my insomnia is by far the worst thing to come from it.
    What you’re now reading is also another adverse side effect of my insomnia – this piece, like so many others, was ‘’written’’ (I record them on the Dictaphone first and then transcribe them later) while I should have been asleep, so I’m glad that I’m not the only person suffering from the consequences of my insomnia but that you’re suffering with me.
    If that is you’re actually reading this, if you’re not actually reading this then my addressing you would be futile.
    Just like this whole piece and just like life (the motivational speaker has left the building – I knew it wouldn’t last long).
    If I was asleep I’d be writing whole lines of Z’s.
    ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
    ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZetc
    The most important letter of the alphabet to an insomniac is Z.
    The only place where Z comes last is in the dictionary.
    When asked what his secret to success is, a very rich friend of my brother’s said ‘’1) always get a good night’s sleep, 2) have rich friends - it’s just as easy to love rich people as it is to love poor people’’ and I can’t remember the third but it’s not important because those two are more than enough.


    Speaking of side effects, I reckon that the warnings on the packets of painkillers should be extended beyond ‘’WARNING: product may cause drowsiness – if affected do not drive or operate machinery ’’ to something like ‘’WARNING: this product may make you a shit gamer – if affected do not operate electronic games’’.
    Sometimes when I’ve taken a pain killer and am lying down playing my knock-off Tetris game, I find that I’m worse at it that I usually am.
    11:30 am

    Sunday, March 25, 2007  
    THERE’S A DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN
    Just got back from my walk to Jounieh.
    I got to Jounieh Square at around 5.00am just as the minibus that takes the Eastern European sex workers home from the ‘’super nightclub’’ there arrived.
    Not the first time that ladies of the night get home and to sleep and before I do and probably not the last time.
    There was nobody at the taxi rank in Jounieh so I had to walk about a kilometre north to the intersection where Jounieh meets Maameltein and where the real sleaze begins.
    Right on the edge of sleepy provincial Jounieh is the only remaining red-light district in Lebanon.
    With its old traditional stone architecture, famous restaurants and Mediterranean frontage, Maameltein is lovely during the day when the lowlifes are asleep or away but undergoes an ugly transformation at night.
    And in sleazy areas you get sleazy taxi drivers.
    I stopped at least five taxis whose drivers did not even know where Harissa was - three hundred meters as the crow flies up the mountain above, five kilometres away along the winding mountain road.
    The old-timers say that in the old days, before the ambient noise of modernity that is all around us but we aren’t even conscious of anymore, you could yell out to someone in Jounieh from Harisa and actually be heard and understood and that people used to often communicate this way.
    One driver said that Harisa was in the Bekaa (another province altogether).
    I felt like Diogenes the wise old man of legend who wandered the streets with a lantern looking for an honest man except I was looking to shine my lantern in the face of a man who knew where Harisa was.
    Suffice to say, they weren’t locals, probably not even Lebanese.
    God knows where they were from.
    I finally found a driver from the north who jettisoned the two little flower-selling* boys he was ferrying (they’ll live) to take me home.

    *Reading Charles Dickens in Dickensian Lebanon is redundant – just go for a walk.
    5:45 am

    Tuesday, March 20, 2007  
    Contemplating how to temporarily fix my glasses with superglue.
    I plan on wearing gloves.
    I’m afraid of the stuff unlike the Hajji who, before she recently got new dental implants, used to superglue individual false teeth back onto their screw-on base in her mouth.
    On one occasion she managed to superglue her fingers onto a tooth that she had just glued back in so she had to use a knife to extricate that tooth and her fingers from her mouth.
    11:30 pm

    Monday, March 19, 2007  
    I think that people should have to obtain a licence to own and operate a car horn, separate from an actual driver's licence, because it takes a certain degree of civilization to be able to handle or (not handle) one properly and peacefully especially in this part of the world.
    A car horn is just as dangerous in the wrong hands as a car can be.
    3:45 pm

    Saturday, March 17, 2007  
    Most Lebanese Christians have a Southern Mediterranean- type attitude towards alcohol – alcohol is demystified and young people get used to it at the family dinner table from an early age.
    It’s seen not as some sort of illicit substance to abuse and get drunk on when you turn eighteen (or earlier if you can get it) but to enjoy in moderation.
    A Lebanese/Australian I know was pulled over by police for a breathalyzer test in Sydney years ago.
    He blew into it and sure enough it proved positive – he was over the legal limit.
    He protested that there must be something wrong with the machine and suggested they test it on his seven year old son who was in the car with him to prove that it was faulty.
    They did and it registered a similar positive reading so the police were convinced that there was something wrong with it and let him go.



    Lebanese drink as much as anybody else but they do it responsibly.
    Having drinks before dinner at a neighbour’s house, I declined his offer of a second glass of champagne because I didn’t want to ‘’drink too much on an empty stomach’’
    My bounteous host replied ‘’the first one was on an empty stomach but the second one isn’t’’.
    He was half joking but still it was logic I couldn’t resist.
    Cheers!
    2:00 pm

    Friday, March 16, 2007  
    Finally found a voltage regulator for my new laptop at a Beirut department store this morning.
    Nothing extraordinary in that but the last time I was at that same store, a staff member told me that they didn’t have any voltage regulators despite my friend having actually seen voltage regulators there (he even told me the exact brand).
    They must like them a lot and not want to sell them.
    So this time I just walked around looking until I found one which is what I usually do when shopping in Lebanon because I find that shop staff in Lebanon are either over helpful (rarely) and stick to you like glue or totally uninterested and don’t know where anything is yet still send you on a wild goose chase or try to sell you the wrong thing.
    I wasn’t so lucky finding an umbrella (I think I ‘’donated’’ my last umbrella to a taxi driver) – they told me that they didn’t have any (surprise, surprise) and I was too tired to look.
    So if anybody knows where they umbrellas are at Spinneys Dbayeh, can you please email me?
    Now that I’ve actually mentioned the name of the store, I must point out that Spinneys is my favourite department store in Lebanon and that the staff there are very friendly and relatively efficient but there are some still some all-pervading cultural traits that you’ll find across the board in Lebanon that won’t change so easily.
    It’s still a dream compared to others – there’s one supermarket in Jounieh that I won’t even enter because it’s the citadel of Maronite arrogance.
    So I end up going to a no-frills supermarket on the outskirts of Jounieh.
    It’s pretty downmarket and the checkout chicks there are ugly (as they usually are at no-frills supermarkets) but the staff are less intrusive (because they're ugly) and it’s close to my walk route.
    6:00 pm

     
    SPOOKY
    My uncle told me that he once saw a sequence of numbers in a dream.
    Thinking that they might be prophetic, he entered those exact numbers in the lotto.
    The prophesy was correct!
    What had been prophesized to him in his dream were the losing numbers in the lotto for the next three years!
    Which is how long he ran those numbers for until he finally gave up.
    I get goose bumps just thinking about it.


    The same uncle recommends that we ‘’establish a committee’’ when he comes over and we take too long to answer the door.


    My uncle also says that diet has something to do with the lassitude of the Arabs – an American will have just a sandwich for lunch and then go back to work at NASA whereas an Arab will have a feast of stuffed vine leaves for lunch and will be comatose for the rest of the day.


    A friend of my uncle’s went on the Hajj with his father many years ago.
    When it came time for the stoning of the devil ritual, his father told him to throw rocks at the pillars representing the devil.
    He refused, saying ‘’why, what has he ever done to me?’’
    Rare yet welcome Islamic isolationist non-interventionism.


    Finally, my uncle also says that the artificial physical exercises modern urban man does are essentially an imitation of the natural moves our Arcadian ancestors used to do in the course of their farming work.
    He’s got a point – you don’t see many farmers exercising unless they’re poor Chinese farmers being drilled by the Red Guard or something like that (f***ed if I’m going to Google that for exact details).
    Famers don’t need to excercise – they already ‘’exercise’’
    1:45 am

    Thursday, March 15, 2007  
    Banana company (that sounds funny – ‘’banana company’’) Chiquita Brands International have admitted paying $1.7 million in protection money to Columbian terrorist groups.
    That’s a lot bananas and good news for monkeys no doubt but why don’t they just surround the perimeter of their plant with banana peels?That ought to do it I reckon
    4:45 pm

     
    Habits are the bedrock of civilization.
    2:15 pm

    Sunday, March 11, 2007  
    This ‘’game’’ might not be for everyone but it amuses my friend and I(I won’t mention his name because he, unlike myself, cares about his good name).
    Introducing the porn game.
    It’s not really a game per se but it basically consists of brainstorming for the most clichéd and/or stupid porn movie plots ever.
    Each ‘’players’’ contribution invariably begins with ‘’oh! – did we say the one about…?’’
    After the inevitable ones about the policeman pulling over a hot chick speeding in a convertible, hot chick whose car has broken down going to a house to make a phone call, hot chick not being able to pay the rent in the conventional way, etc, you come up with some quite amusing ones.
    My friend’s best contribution is the one about a hot chick being driven around Paris (although I personally think it’s more likely to be Prague) in one of those touristy horse drawn carriages, then the driver takes her to a secluded place and then he…
    My best is the one about a hot chick going to a shoe shop and the salesperson caressing her feet while he puts on the shoes, working his way up and then he…(funny but they all end that way).
    I was reminded of this game when I just went for my usual walk to Jounieh and saw a nail salon and thought that lesbians in a nail salon was a pretty cliché porn plot.
    Oh! – did we say the one about…?
    11:15 pm

     
    I can bet you that all those people who like to portray themselves as indefatigable lions sleep like bears at night and probably in the afternoon too.
    I think that people should be legally obliged to disclose just how much sleep they get if they’re going to carry on like that.
    I call for mandatory sleep testing!
    2:00 pm

    Saturday, March 10, 2007  
    In an instant message exchange, an Australian friend of mine asked me whether there had been any more suicide bombings in this part of the world.
    I replied that there hadn’t been but that I was seriously considering it.
    He said that I shouldn’t rush into things because it is a permanent career movie.
    I agreed but pointed out that the fringe benefits are out of this world.
    Which got me thinking about the fine print.
    If you kill the wrong person does it still count, do you still get the 72 Virgin Megastores in paradise etc?
    Apparently the suicide bomber in the Hariri assassination was an Iraqi who was told that he was targeting the then Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
    Allawi, who had recently been on a visit to Lebanon, had already left the country but suicide bombers are not the smartest people in the world, besides you’re not going to read the newspapers so keenly if you know you’re going to die soon (you’re certainly not going to read the long-range weather forecast for example).
    Still, he should have read the newspapers unless he’d already cancelled his subscription.
    Is it success that counts or is it intentions?
    I think it’s the later – after all, the road to hell is paved with good intentions as they say.
    2:30 pm

    Tuesday, March 06, 2007  
    When trying to force-feed guests (a Lebanese hobby), I have two methods – one is non-violent and diplomatic and the other is ‘’violent’’, that is bringing in the Hajji (my mother who’s a lot better at it than I am).
    ‘’Don’t make me deploy the Hajji - let’s settle this peacefully between us’’ is my common threat.
    If and when agreement is reached, I’ll then bring in the Hajji to superintend and ensure compliance (‘’no violence Hajji –we’ve agreed’’).
    One of the Hajjis recent ploys when trying to force seconds, thirds etc is ‘’I cooked it so I know exactly how much each person requires’’
    2:30 pm

    Monday, March 05, 2007  
    Pretty rainy and stormy outside not that it concerns me – I went for a walk a couple of hours ago before the storm began.
    I always feel like a genius who's beat the storm when it rains after I’ve been for a walk not during or before.
    11:00 pm

     
    AIN'T POOR, JUST GOT NO MONEY (DOSH, SPONDOOLOCKS, BEES AND HONEY, DUCATS, ETC)
    Although I don’t have any money, I’m not actually poor as such.
    And I don’t mean the clichés about being rich in other facets of life or having a fortune that can’t be quantified in material terms etc.
    Poor is more of a social class in itself (i.e. lower class, uneducated etc) that I definitely don’t belong to rather than a lack of money per se.
    For example, you’ll often read about ‘’penniless aristocrats’’ not ‘’poor aristocrats’’ – poor and aristocrat being a contradiction in terms
    It’s all academic, a moot point really, because, whether I call myself ‘’poor’’ or ‘’just having no money’’, at the end of the day I’ve still got diddly squat.
    Cold comfort as I bask in the luxury of not having any money but at the same time not being poor.
    It sounds like Orwellian doublespeak and something that governments can use to their advantage – ‘’we don’t have any poor people, just ‘unrich’ people’’.
    As a matter of fact, I’m feeling rich already.
    Now if I can just get the people at the bank to see things the way I do.
    8:00 pm

    Saturday, February 24, 2007  
    I NEVER WANTED TO JOIN YOUR STUPID PARTY ANYWAY!
    - J'recuse!

    ''Qualification for membership...Clause-7: - Must be disqualified any person, addicted to porno book-magazine,cinema and ordinary songs.''
    -United Liberation Front of Assam website-geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/7434/ulfa.htm (via angryarab.blogspot.com)
    5:05 am

    Monday, February 19, 2007  
    Insomnia is the most solitary disorder – when your head hits that pillow, you’re on your own.
    6:45 am

    Friday, February 16, 2007  
    Better slow than no.
    6:00 pm

     
    NOBODY TOLD ME THERE'D BE DAYS LIKE THESE
    - strange days indeed


















    TRADING PLACES (from left to right) : Muslim fundamentalist holds poster of right-wing Christian politican Samir Geagea (photo:anecdotesfromabananarepublic.blogspot.com); Christian slut wears Hezbollah flag (photo:remarkze.blogspot.com); Sri Lankan maid marches for her Lebanese mistress's cause (photo:angryarab.blogspot.com)
    1:50 am

    Thursday, February 15, 2007  
    ''YOU'RE ALL INDIVIDUALS!''
    Am I the only one who sees the irony in this?
    March 14th Movement member former MP Nasib Lahoud, addressing hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered in downtown Beirut yesterday to commemorate the second year anniversary of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, said ‘’let us clear all our squares of demonstrations and finalize a national solution’’.
    Sounds good to me – send all these people home and get off the stage bozo.
    1:30 am

    Wednesday, February 14, 2007  
    GET A LIFE
    The ruling March 14th Movement (a coalition of warlords and robber barons) has ‘’countered’’ the opposition’s legitimate right to protest with a banal advertising campaign – ads and billboards all over the place proclaiming ‘’I Love Life’’.
    As if those opposed to them don’t love life (love death for example).
    If you love life so much why don’t you start by removing the graves from downtown Beirut?
    I’ve said it before; the heart of the reborn capital of a reborn country should be about life and not death.
    3:30 pm

    Sunday, February 11, 2007  
    My father and sister returned from the supermarket yesterday afternoon with some unwanted purchases – a one kilogram box of biscuits and a seven hundred gram jar of mayonnaise - both thinking that the other had chosen them.
    Somebody must have accidentally put them in their trolley or it could be a clever marketing ploy – put things in people’s trolleys when they’re not looking.
    It reminded me of years ago when I used to go to a local manoucherie and the owner’s toddler son used to give me lollies from the display.
    I’d politely refuse but he’d insist, so I’d take them and, when the manouchie was ready and I was paying for it, I’d also pay for the lollies.
    I did this a couple of times until I realized that it could have been a scam and stopped.
    3:00 pm

    Thursday, January 25, 2007  
    WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS
    -donor nations pledge eight billion dollars in aid to Lebanon at Paris III conference

    ‘’The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’’
    - Russian proverb
    8:00 pm

    Tuesday, January 16, 2007  
    Somebody I know saw a man getting Arabic letters engraved onto his laptop keyboard at an engravers recently.
    Hasn’t he heard of stickers?
    The original English letters on his keyboard are stickers anyway.
    Talk about overdoing it.
    9:00 pm

    Friday, January 12, 2007  
    Bought a pair of runners in Beirut today.
    Not a big deal in itself but it is for me – just like I scoured the whole of Sydney for one pair of runners, I scoured the whole of Beirut for this one pair of runners.
    Even then, like with almost everything I do, I was in two minds about it – the fit in this case.
    The salesman clinched it – ‘’trust me, they’re the right fit, my name’s Mustafa and if they don’t fit well, when you’re wearing them invoke curses upon me’’.
    Who needs a consumer protection agency when you can ‘’invoke curses upon'' people who sell you the wrong thing?
    Although I had looked forward to walking around in ill-fitting shoes muttering curses under my breath cartoon -style (‘’coises, coises!’’), curses weren’t necessary because they turned out to be a perfect fit and subsequently I invoke blessings upon Mustafa when I wear them.
    Mustafa (like most workers in Lebanon) might get paid peanuts but he has my blessings.
    8:00 pm

    Thursday, January 11, 2007  
    HAGGLE BUSTER
    - don’t haggle with a Hajj
    Bought a state of the art ‘’brick game’’ (Tetris knockoff) from a street vendor in Beirut this afternoon for all of 3000 Lebanese Lira.
    Even then I tried to haggle, after all the only ‘’overheads’’ he has are the sky, clouds and the sun, but the vendor cut me short with ‘’I’m a Hajj’’ (i.e. he’s not going to rip me off).
    Everything’s Not A Dollar* (just down the road from ‘’Everything’s A Rip-off, around the corner from Everything’s Crap and across the road from Everything’s A Dollar…NOT! ) in Jounieh sells them for 2500 Lira but I was quite happy to pay a 500 Lira Hajj premium at Honest Hajj’s.
    I also bought two books while I was in Beirut – one was fiction presented as fact (The Beirut Spring** –a coffee table book about the so-called Cedar Revolution) and the other was fact presented as fiction (Upton Sinclair’s brilliant but disturbing novel The Jungle, incidentally also for 2500 Lira – pity the nation where el cheapo knockoff electronic games are the same price as literary classics).
    Although a century and a continent apart, these two books have a lot in common – The Beirut Spring is about the movement that canonized and mythologized Rafic Hariri and The Jungle is closer to the reality of life for workers in Lebanon under the Hariri Dynasty (1992-Forever).

    *The name has been changed to protect the guilty - the last place you’ll’ find stuff for a dollar is at so-called dollar shops
    **A souvenir from Lebanon for my brother Guy and his lovely fiancée Jenn who are getting married in Kuching Malaysia next week.
    8:00 pm

     
    This page is powered by Blogger.
    BREAKING NEWS-LOSER ACTUALLY READS RIGHT DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE OF RENATOOBEIDSWORLD,WORLD FIRST -