I got a late message yesterday from my cousin telling me that Chopsticks, the Chinese food local chain, is apparently out of chopsticks for the next two weeks!

What’s the point of eating chinese if it’s not with chopsticks? I mean this is like McDonalds running out of fries.

This is a poster from Roadster’s campaign on its new non-smoking areas. To be honest, i think they should stop smoking all the way because those non-smoking areas are useless specially when they are not isolated from the smoking areas.

I just got back home and i saw from my balcony what looks like a fire at the Casino du Liban or nearby it. The picture is a bit dark because electricity is off (as usual), but i am pretty sure it is a fire.

Update: There was indeed a fire near the Sun Hills hotel caused by fireworks at around 12:40am.

I mostly go to Gelato to eat ice cream but i thought i try their cocktail this time. I ordered a large fruit wedges cocktail and it was really good, but what i could not understand is why it is so freakin’ tall!
You have to basically stand up to be able to eat it properly or hold it yourself. The chairs are also relatively low and the couches even lower.

Still it was a good cocktail but maybe i will take it to go next time. They also make awesome waffles if anyone is interested.

After Mark posted about news of Lebanon in old magazines, i remembered a post i have been wanting to publish for a while. It’s about my old school’s supervisor who died one year and one month ago and who was one of Lebanon’s legends in sports.

Chawki Rababi was a professional athlete in the 1950s and 1960s and was a member of the Lebanese volleyball team. He won the Luxembourg games in 1952 with the Lebanese team and coached the national team later on for two years. While searching his name, i found surprisingly a few old and recent pictures about him on Abdo Gedeon’s website.

Of course we mostly loved him back in school for being very kind and forgiving when we were kicked out of the class, but he truly was a great guy. He used to give us advice and tell us stories about his glory days.

My only regret is that i never managed to visit him since 2005 as things just got busy and time flew by.

A friend of mine made me realize there are a lot of interesting things that can be found using the Google Books search feature. I did a search for Lebanon and I found a ton of mentioned of Lebanon in books and articles, too many to mention here but I have mentioned some interesting ones below as examples of what can be found. If only there was a way to copy all this stuff onto my iPad I would have a lifetime of reading material with me! Does anyone know where the pool pictured above is located?

1952 Jabby in Lebanon
1955 Beauty show chaperon
1958 Uprising in Lebanon imperils U.S Friend
1958 Tortured little land poses a big problem
1966 Little Lebanon brings Las Vegas and the Riviera into Old Araby
1977 Taekwondo a tool for peace or destruction?

I have a friend whose brother is called Rodger and he insisted that it is Rodger and not Roger. When i asked him why adding the “d”, he said his parents insisted on adding the “d” because they thought the kid was special.

I am not sure he is aware of it but rodgering means shagging someone in slang dictionary and was related to Roger Moore as “the spy who rogers more” when he played Bond. I didn’t know myself until i googled it but that should provide a good explanation of his name.

Funnily enough, my friend is called Richard but without the “T”. He’s no special kid, at least according to his parents heh!

There are a lot of funny names in Lebanon, with people still calling their kids Hitler and Mussolini or Malfoufe and Khasse. According to WikiAnswers, the weirdest and funniest name in Lebanon is Adonis Zibara.

I keep hearing rumors that IKEA will be opening in Lebanon and I hope they do. It’s really weird why they aren’t open yet but I desperately need to get a kitchen for my new apartment and everything I’ve seen so far is priced more expensive than a brand new Beemer. IKEA, where are you?

I heard it in the morning on Radio One and just read it on autoblog:

“Following a series of high-profile fires in its new 458 Italia, it is rumoured by US car blog Jalopnik that Ferrari will today announce a recall of all 458 Italia models worldwide to fix the problem.”

And to think i asked Marie-Claire to let me drive the car and was even considering buying it (yeah right!).

On my way to Russia last week, i had two hours to waste at the Beirut Duty Free so i walked around checking out stores. Next to the Tumi bags stand, i was checking out a jewerly shop, forgot its name though, when i spotted a weird that was displayed. It was a cross with skull heads on each side and looked like something heavy metal or death metal people might wear.

Now that might not look bizzare in other countries, but it is quite strange to find such crosses in Lebanon unless they have some religious meaning that i am missing.

The Lebanese National Basketball team continued its humiliating streak and lost to Spain by 34 points (91-57) tonight and is therefore out of the world championships that are being held in Turkey. Spain is a very strong team and the world champion, but the Spaniards weren’t at their best at all since the start of the tournament and lost two games already.

Why did Lebanon lose by that much?

Simple. Same Shitty tactics, same shitty plays, same shitty coach. We had no inside game and no centers to defend ourselves and as a result the top two scorers of the Spanish team were unsurprisingly its centers, with Mark Gasol scoring 25 points and Fran VAZQUEZ scoring another 15 points.

Jackson Vroman (the Lebanese player??) has been the most consistent so far in this tournament. Fadi el Khatib only played well in one game and was neutralized in the other games. Rony Fahed, Elie Rustom and Ali Mahmoud played hard and were the real asset of this team. Matt Freije played like crap, probably because he was not fit enough as he picked up an injury before the championships and the rest of the Lebanese players were practically in lalaland.

Of course let’s not forget our coach who cost us over 100,000$ and humiliated the Lebanese basketball team like never before. Maybe the Lebanese Basketball Federation should start using its brains and investing money in young talents instead of spending money on naturalizing foreign players and getting foreign coaches.

A very sad ending to what was supposed to be our most promising championships.

Varouj is an incredible Armenian restaurant located in a tight backstreet of Bourj Hammoud in Lebanon. The place is tiny on the inside with only 4 tables and the restaurant is run by a father and son, the son cooks while the father takes care of the guests. Anyone who’s watched the Seinfeld episode with the soup Nazi will feel right at home in Varouj because the father is Lebanon’s version of the soup Nazi.

What makes Varouj unique other than the really good food is the character of the father. We were five people having lunch and we were ordering the cold appetizers when the father decided we had enough appetizers and walked away. He wouldn’t let us order any more. Then when he felt it was time he came to us and asked us what hot dishes we wanted and while we were ordering he again told us that he thought we had enough and walked off. We wanted frogs for example but he refused telling us we already had enough dishes. Then later he even decided to cancel one of our other dishes. So we ordered frogs again and again but he kept telling us we didn’t need it. The table behind us called the father and told him they wanted some soujouk and makanek (kinds of sausages) and he told them not now later. Its crazy. He also wouldn’t remove a dish from the table unless it was wiped clean.

The food was delicious, we ordered: hommos, moutabal, fattoush, loubyeh, batata harra, labneh, tongue, spleen, kibeh neyeh, sheep balls, little birds, chicken liver, chicken wings, basterma, soujouk and makanek. All the dishes were the best I have ever tasted.

The way everything is priced is also interesting. Basically nothing is priced and there is no menu. You go in, you order what you want and in the end he will tell you how much you need to pay and you don’t even get a receipt. Our bill came out exactly 100$ but according to my friend if we had ordered less or more the bill would have still come out the same. If you are planning a trip to Lebanon this is a place you need to try if you want a taste of local cuisine. The best way to find the place is to ask a taxi driver in Bourj Hammoud to take you or give the father a call on 03-882933

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Note: This was a repost from my other blog.

Has anyone noticed the hand dryers in the City Mall bathrooms? They have Dyson AirBlade’s installed which are incredibly powerful and very fun to use. Next time you pass by City Mall you have to try them out. [YouTube]