I was flipping through Al-Hadaf, a classified ads newspaper. You have the usual pages about houses / lands / cars / boats / chalets for sale / rent, the travel section where they advertise “amazing” offers e.g. 1 week in Varna including plane ticket and accommodation for 400$(the reality of it is a really old chartered plane and a really crappy hotel) and at the end of the newspaper you can find a section on penis pumps and excitement creams! Two entire pages of commercials on how to enhance men’s manhood and intensify women’s excitement level.

I’ll go through some of them and explain what’s written in Arabic for our readers who do not know the language well.

The ad is 2 fold:
Male: Air pump, easy to use + all accessories including an attractive perfume. This pump is for those who have heart problems. What I have underlined in red literally translates into the following: “Ask for the black man package, you won’t regret it!!” lol!
Female: New Girl cream that will make any girl a born again virgin in 7 days, GUARANTEED! No operation required.

This ad also has 2 sections:
Male: Enhancement pills that you can take for a week for a lifetime free of problems. Also, a cream that can make a guy’s package bigger. Comes with guarantee. I wonder how someone can demand a refund?
Female: At the bottom left corner of the page, 40 bucks for a cream to pull up and enlarge the breasts

And the best for last: WORLD’S LARGEST PENIS

Notice how happy the lady in the picture is?
It promises an increase of 2 to 5 cms in size. If 2 cms are missing for you to have the world’s largest penis, come on do you really need those 2 cms? Are you trying to become a tripod?

It’s the end of the month! Everyone is waiting for the sms telling them that their accounts have been credited with their salaries.

I recently got a loan from a bank, let’s call it Bank A. Initially, my salary used to be transferred to Bank B, which was the same as my employer’s, so I didn’t pay transfer fees. One of the conditions of the loan was that the company I work for has to transfer my salary to Bank A directly every month, i’m guessing as a guarantee.

I got the sms telling me that my salary had been transferred minus 13 dollars.

Customer service at both banks told me the 13$ are split as follows:
- 10$ transfer fee from Bank B to Bank A
- 3$ receiving fee for Bank A

Apparently the 13$ is a flat rate, doesn’t matter if you are transferring 500$ or 5,000$.

I wouldn’t mind paying this rate if I was getting a service for it, but 3$ for receiving the money? Really??

The Lebanese banking system is too expensive! They have all sorts of hidden fees, a dollar here, a dollar there, and you can’t really argue with them. If you want to deposit dollars in your account you have to wait 7 days until it gets credited. If you want to deposit checks, you have to wait 4 days.

Banks take all this money and they don’t offer services that make the customer’s lifes easier.

“We have online banking”

Online banking my ass…

You can’t do anything online, you can only see your bank account. You can’t transfer money other than your credit card account (because you give money back to the bank). When you call them, they always ask you to go to a branch to sort things out.

“We need your signature”. That’s the excuse I always hear. Isn’t it enough that I am accessing my bank account online with my customer number and secret code? Nooooo, you have to go down to the branch for a retinal scan to make sure it’s you! Make sure you bring a copy of your birth certificate and a dozen passport photos!

All Lebanese banks have beautiful websites promoting piece of mind, customer service, personalized service, immediate access to your money, easy loans… It’s all crap! The only way you’ll get all of this is if you know someone who is well placed at the bank.

Talking about getting a loan, do you know how much paperwork is involved in getting a loan??? OMG! I must’ve signed my name about a hundred times, in the end my signature looked like a doodle.

Instead of spending millions of dollars on hardware and software to block VoIP, maybe the government should spend some money on modernizing the banking system!

But that night he seemed to be in the mood for something else. So he asked the driver for a virgin girl he could “have fun with” for the night in exchange for $50,000. The driver came back an hour later with his 17-year-old daughter.

According to Nabil, when the taxi driver picked up his daughter in the morning, the prince paid him $5,000 extra “for the damages.” The teenager was taken to the hospital and treated for internal bleeding. The taxi driver took his daughter and disappeared without a trace after the incident. “I just hope she will be able to live with it,” Nabil said.

[Full Article]

Some claim that Lebanese can’t drive because they pay for their permit without passing any test. Well, this is the car we have to drive if we ever go to pass the test, the famous good old Willys.

So i am not sure how the test will help at all if it’s done with a WWI car.

[Picture from nowlebanon]

I was just informed today by a friend that we can get a detailed statement of our phone bill every month via email and for free!

I remember we had to go to Alfa and ask for an official bill and even pay for it or something. Anyway the procedure is very simple:

Fax your full name, phone number, valid email address and signature to Alfa at : +961 3 391124

They will call you to confirm some information and then start emailing you on a monthly basis. I’ve always wondered why sometimes my bill is that high, guess i can stop wondering now.

I was headed the other day towards the City mall on the maritime road when i saw some traffic near City Mall’s entrance. As i was getting closer to the parking entrance, i spotted a police car and two police motorcycles and a prison truck. The truck was stopped at the start of the bridge leading towards Roumieh. Cars were being forced back and the truck was slowly backing up from the bridge.

I start wondering what’s happening then i see a big truck blocking the road some 100 meters ahead of the prison truck. There was no accident or anything. The prison truck kept going backwards and then left using a different road.

It appeared like they were transferring some major prisoner as more police backups were coming. Not sure if it was a decoy to free the prisoner but the police officers looked pretty freaked out.

Prison breaks are not that rare in Roumieh and the last one saw 8 terrorists escape with one only succeeding but eventually getting caught hours later.

Looks like this is the new trend in Lebanon. As soon as someone opens a website for selling cars, tens of websites follow.

Mark already posted about LebanonRides and now we have daweronline.com who’s being advertised through billboards on the streets.

My question is: If your website is not yet finished, why the hell would you want to advertise for it already? It’s not like you are advertising for a product. People expect to go in and see cars, not a message that says:

“We are collecting the subscribers cars data and images, please keep checking the site, DAWERONLINE will be available very soon.”

I was googling Top Lebanese Sites when i saw a site called www.toplebanesesites.com.

I entered the site hoping to find some new Lebanese websites i haven’t heard about, but it turns out it’s an outdated website with not much information, except one very interesting section entitled “Lebanese lawyers, Attorneys and Legal Consultants” with one entry under it: End Weight Discrimination

It’s a website dedicated to stopping discrimination based on appearance.

“Help us put an end to comments like “You fat bitch!”… “You fat cow!”… “You fat bastard!”… and make them ILLEGAL!..”

Pretty weird place to find such a link to be honest.

Also, under Links, you find under the category “Arts” a link to meet Lebanese singles called tanoora.com. Pretty cool name for a dating website but it seems like a fraud site from the look of it.

There are also many other links that are out of place. In few words, another waste of a time website.

That “f” looks suspiciously like a “b”.

This is the third or fourth time i go to Jbeil this summer and i must say i am finding it very enjoyable everytime.

I had tickets for Riverdance, the Irish dancing show, who are performing for three consecutive nights at the Byblos Festivals. There was little traffic to get to the theater and parkings and guides to help you out everywhere. You walk along the Byblos seaport to get to the amphitheater that’s located right on the beach. We were seated on the second row few meters away from the dancers which was great. The whole show was breathtaking and i recommend it to everyone. It is entertaining and beautiful to watch.

After it was over, we went to Ksar restaurant in Jbeil also to have a drink. The place looks like an old renovated house and is very spacy from the inside. The menu was very rich and had some specialities that looked quite interesting, three of which caught my attention.

(Those are drinks)
Taht el Arishi: Arak, PineApple, Liquorice.

Kan Zaman: White wine, Blackcurrant, Halloumi Cheese.

Abou el Zolof: Gin, Date, Orange, Grenadine.

I never thought Arak could be mixed with anything, and PineApple didn’t look quite appealing to me. Halloumi Cheese in the second drink seemed a bit nasty and i hate Gin so i didn’t try the third one as well.

I went for a fruity cocktail instead that consisted of “ward” and lemon, and wasn’t bad at all.

Afterwards, i left back home without facing any traffic on the way back. It was a great night out and definitly better than going to Beirut and getting stuck in all the traffic on the roads and inside the pubs and restaurants.

Someone uploaded a family video shot with an 8mm camera back in the early 70s. I love the scene with the old man, the whole video actually isn’t that bad or maybe I’m just a sucker for vintage videos and pictures… [YouTube]

So much for this much expected internet cable that will enhance the download and upload rates and make our lifes better. Yesterday, there was a press conference at the Ministry of Telecommunications and the outcome was as expected, talks and talks and empty promises.

According to Matt Nash, a blogger on nowlebanon who attended the conference, Lebanon is still awaiting a response from Egypt indefinitly. It appears to me the Egyptians emailed us the response with a large attachment and our ministry needs few weeks to download it!

However, until we receive an answer, the government will increase in the next 18 months bandwidth at 42 Ogero central offices by 15 Mbytes, which is better than nothing.

On a final note, and this is addressed to Matt Nash, he seemed pretty upset by the addition of only 15 Mbytes and justifies his anger by giving the following example:

With a BlackBerry plan you get 50 megabits of free downloading per month. And that’s for one person, not the whole damn neighborhood. Good god.

Bandwidth rate has nothing to do with how much mbytes you are allowed to download per month. If the whole Achrafieh area has 500 users who presumably download at 512 Kps rate but can only reach 394 kps, adding 15 mbytes to the whole Achrafieh Bandwidth will allow those users to maybe reach the 512 kps as it is spread among them.

Lottery draws on cars and bikes are held at the airport on a regular basis. The company in charge of this business calls them competitions but it’s pure luck. There are usually Porsches, Audis and Range Rovers to be won but this is by far the hottest car they’ve displayed.

There are 2400 tickets @ $135 / ticket.

Now the part they don’t tell you:

When you win the car, you still have to pay the customs duty. So in case you win the Aston Martin you better have 60 or 70K in your bank account if you want to drive it on the road. Apparently what happens is that when it is won, the winner is approached by brokers who try to convince him/her to sell the car at a cheaper price.

A Kuwaiti businessman’s plane is still being held for investigation by the Italian police in Napoli after it was fired at when leaving the Beirut Airport three weeks ago.

The plane is a Challenger 604 and was departing from the Beirut Airport when gun shots were fired at it causing several holes in the plane’s body.

Now here’s the funniest part of the story.

International investigators handling this case are claiming that Lebanese living next to the airport could have shot at the airport by mistake in post-game celebrations during the World Cup. [lebanonfiles]

If this turns out to be true, we should be very relieved to know that anyone can sneak in Beirut’s Airport and get on a plane without anyone noticing and that every plane is in shooting range from the airport’s nearby habitats.

I just started my diet 5 days ago and I’m craving a million things. I love manakish in general but I prefer saj more, two things I can’t have anymore. Below are pictures of a zaatar and jebneh saj which I had awhile back at a snack in Bcharreh near the Cedars forest.