Pecha Kucha Night #11 will be held on Wednesday, May 25 from 8pm to 11pm at the Beirut Souks. 20 images x 20 seconds to be presented by:

Maya Metni – visual communication
Ahmed Khouja – architecture
Cyrille Najjar – product design
Fadi Shayya – Horch Beirut
Emily Cremona – fashion design
Linda Selwood Choueiri & Simon Mhanna, BHARAT – arabic design workshop
Nahwa Al Mouwatiniya – NGO
d2w Oxo, Biodegradable Plastics – sustainable development
a3lab, Asterios Agkathidis – emerging technologies in architectural design
mating season, Dar Onboz – publishers
HIBR – newspaper
Eco Village – sustainable project
Carwan – pop-up gallery for limited edition design

For more information on the event click [Here]

What is Pecha Kucha? Click [Here] to find out.

My brother sent me this picture in the morning. One of my favorite breakfasts is eggs with Labneh and Laban, few black olives, Tomatoes (Banadoura Jabaliyye) and cucumber.

I also prefer Mar2ou2 over Lebanese traditional bread.

Ferrari issued one model only and sold it a Lebanese billionaire. It’s a staggering 1.4L 4 cylinders 139 horsepower engine. It can go from 0 to 100 in less than 25 seconds.

Thanks Johny

Naharnet is at last revamping their website. You can check out the new design by clicking [Here]. It’s still in beta but so far it’s a major improvement when compared to the old one. However, I didn’t like the Breaking News & Live News boxes since they occupy a lot of space and contain multiple information in them that keeps rotating. I prefer the new DailyStar better although both are actually very similar.

via BeirutSpring

Every now and then, I miss playing network games and go to Scratch in Mkalles to play Command & Conquer (Zero Hour) with some friends. Last time I went was on Saturday night and It was still as crowded as ever, but most were playing Counter Strike or World of Warcraft.

I never get bored of Zero Hour and think of it as the greatest of all the C&C games. The second best one was the Red Alert with the mad tanks and Tanya. The only problem we face while playing it is that it disconnects sometimes for no reason. It happens mostly when the game takes too long and there are too many armies.

In Day2 of my trip to Kobayat (See Day1), I drove around checking out few sites in the town, and visited the famous Mar Geryes monastery. Kobayat is 600 meters above the sea level and its nature is quite amazing as there are lots of forests and green fields. It reminded me a little bit of Jezzine.

As far as the roads and houses are concerned, there are some beautiful houses but a lot of ugly ones which I think the municipality should work on enhancing to make the town look nicer. The roads are in good shape even in distant parts of the town, except between few houses where you can barely fit your car ( like most old Lebanese towns & villages).

Last but not least, we went to visit some friends before going to the Mar Geryes monastery. They had prepared us a dozen of Kebbe Chmeliyye to eat even though it was only 10 am. We went afterwards to visit the Mar Geryes monastery and it was truly a beautiful place. After the visit was done, we ate Kebbe Chmeliyye and drank Laban with it. I usually hate Kebbe but it was nothing like the one we have in Beirut, as it was bigger and filled differently and tastier.

In all, it was an enjoyable and sort of adventurous weekend given how far the place is. The food was great, the town was beautiful but I don’t advise you to go there by yourself, as it’s very easy to get lost on the way and you will not enjoy it as much as you should.

Here are few pictures of the monastery

I found this flyer on my car yesterday. I loved the name and the idea behind it but there’s no damn address on the paper unless you consider Jounieh as a valid address.

I am always tempted to try out new places but I always like to visit them before ordering delivery.

I went to the cemetery last Sunday to pay my respects to my grandparents when I noticed the above printout on one of the tombstones on my way in. Pretty weird.

I just heard about this from BoingBoing. Telfezion is a website that emulates Lebanese television in the 90s. The website is created by Nadim Kobeissi and this is what he told BoingBoing about the project:

I grew up in Lebanon and didn’t move to Montreal until I was 18. I had very strong memories of how Television in Lebanon was during my childhood in the 90′s, and made telfezion.com as a project to emulate those memories as accurately as possible.

I spent days looking through YouTube/obscure Arabic websites for the footage, which is highly nostalgic Lebanese ads, political videos, cartoons that were popular in Lebanon during my childhood, etc. I’ve sent it to Lebanese friends – many got tears of nostalgia.

Some facts:
* “Telfezion” is how television is referred to in Lebanese Arabic
* Contains almost an hour of footage, adding more every day.
* It uses sessions and a sorting algorithm to queue the footage randomly but with proper spacing

I plan to find and add more news/political footage, as Lebanon was only beginning to emerge from a highly political 25-year civil war in the 90′s.

My motive for making this site is just that it’s so much fun. All my Lebanese friends recognize how valuable it is – it’s so weird for them see the Internet mirror intimate and highly relevant childhood memories and I love working on that.

Sadly Nadim forgot to emulate Lebanese internet in 2011 and so I’m currently having trouble watching it. Takes me like a minute to watch 5 seconds of footage. [Link]

For those of you who don’t know it, HJB is a typical American style bar and grill. The original one was in Qoraytem if I’m not mistaken. They’re reopening soon in Gemmayze. I’ll definitely try it once they open. The location is very convenient for me, right next to where I work.

You can check out their website [Here]

It’s Janerik season! or generik, or jararang or whatever you wanna call it.

Does anyone know what it’s called in English?

I’ve been planning to try out a new restaurant in Beirut called Um Sharif, but the two times I called, the place was fully booked, last time being yesterday.

It is not very common for a place to be booked on a Wednesday night in Lebanon, knowing that it’s not cheap at all. Indeed, you are bound by a 35$ formula for lunch and a 60$ formula for dinner excluding beverages and arguile.
There’s also a live show (Derbakke, 3oud etc ..) every night that starts at 10:45 pm.

I tried looking up the place on Google and found on Naharnet directory having the same number a place I’ve never heard of called Paris New York located in Beirut. [Naharnet]

I am curious to know if the place is truly worth paying that much money, so I would appreciate if anyone who’s been to that place shares his experience on the blog.

I don’t really enjoy watching Lebanese movies or TV shows because I always have the impression that they’re shot using cameras made for home use with bad lighting, horrible sound and really unconvincing actors. I feel there is always an echo, and to add to that, almost all the stories are the same: guy and girl are in love, girls parents refuse to acknowledge that, guy and girl need to find a way to make it work. Sometimes there is a drunk uncle who ends up killing the guy or the girl.

Let’s not talk about the acting… every actor has the same look in every scene. They all look like they’re really thinking veeeeeeery hard.

A couple of weeks ago I started watching a series on YouTube called Beirut I love you [Link]. It’s a series of short films (~2 to 4 minutes) and the story revolves around the lives of a group of friends who live in Beirut.

I really enjoy the way the clips are shot. For a team of amateurs, I think they do a better job than the pros we have in Lebanon. The two main actors also write and direct the show.

You might recognize the main actor, Cyril Aris, from a recent bank commercial for car loans. My Dad loves that commercial, he laughs every time he sees it. Can’t find a clip online though. It’s the one where a girl asks a guy to drop her off after a party, and the guy agrees and stops a service and opens the doors for her. He says he has a dentist appointment and ends up going home on his mobilette.

The clips are in Arabic with English subtitles.

Here’s a link to the YouTube account of Orange Dog Productions, which produces these short films [Link]

When you read this piece of news, you’d think the driver who hit the 59 year old person and left him to die is immoral and an asshole, but the truth is you might want to do the same thing if you ever hit a person with your car in Lebanon.

Why is that? Because of our rotten and archaic laws that blame the driver under any circumstances, even if one throws himself/herself in front of your car. Indeed, looking at the place of the accident, this highway is one of the most dangerous in Lebanon yet people insist on crossing it and not having a bridge is not a good enough excuse to risk your life and blaming the government afterwards.

I remember at some point there were beggars throwing their children in front of cars to get some money out of it and there was nothing you could do about it except driving away.

Even people passing by might not want to call the ambulance because they could be dragged for interrogation later on. I personally saw someone lying on the road on my way up to Mansourieh few years back and did not hesitate to call the ambulance yet luckily did not receive a call afterwards, probably because it was a foreign worker and no one reported him as missing, or officials just ignored the whole thing.

IPT opened a self-service gas station in Kaslik. I think they already have one on the Batroun highway. There’s still a full service option though.

Has anyone tried it yet?