I was looking for articles on crimes in Lebanon when I fell on this 1976 fiction novel by a certain Damien Lewis.

Its summary goes as follows:

1976, war-torn Beirut city. Under the cover of a massive firefight, an unknown band of armed men blast their way into the Imperial Bank of Beirut. Over the next 48 hours they load up three trucks with gold bullion, and the raiders and the loot disappear forever.

Someone should make a movie out of it.

Here is a nice article on the number of robberies occurring and the techniques used.

Weirdly enough, 381 out of the 567 robberies reported were in Mount Lebanon while only 93 occurred in Beirut. Something doesn’t seem right about those stats.

We received an email from one of our readers back in July saying that he spotted a billboard in Kaslik revealing the opening of an American Eagle Outfitters store.

Well the banner is up there now and it looks like they are opening soon.

For those who don’t know about American Eagle Outfitters, it’s a leading American clothing line which offers casual clothes to men and women from age 15-25 and is well known in the states for its originality, good quality and affordable prices.

Even though such news don’t really interest me as I don’t shop much, it’s good to have new clothing stores and more importantly to see Kaslik attracting more and more stores and getting back to life.

Thank you Joe

Can’t believe this is actually a pasta ad!

I bet MissFarah won’t be too happy about this.

BBC have a video up on a beauty parlor in Beirut for girls aged four years and up. That can’t be good. [Link]

You can check out more sexist ads in Lebanon on Kherrberr.org. Funny how ZWZ have the #1 sexist ad of the week with the small video they produced to launch their new logo few months back.

Quite shocking how Aishti has a completely naked woman on their website.

PS: The above ad is initially a cargo ad.

Not that I agree with the decision yet to be taken by the authorities, but I wouldn’t mind not seeing Mr.Library’s (Maktabi) face on TV tonight.

Not sure if it’s only me, but I find this guy very annoying to watch.

Found those stickers in the elevator two days ago. Turns out Ksara is organizing a social gathering at the Sofil Garden on Wednesday 28th of September starting 4pm.

Wouldn’t mind a nice glass of wine after work.

Why don’t they go for the Lira bill and place some Lebanese politician’s head in the middle with a bullet in his mouth? Wouldn’t that be the best thing to have?

As some 4,000 Lebanese take 3G for a test-drive this month, battles continue to rage between the Telecommunications Ministry and Cedarcom, an Internet Service Provider petitioning for the technology’s suspension.

Cedarcom has taken legal action against the ministry, alleging that the government had not taken the proper legal routes to release the new service. [DailyStar]

I don’t know who’s right or wrong in this case, but I hope both parties reach some sort of agreement on this matter as it is unacceptable that we keep connections as they are.

It would be nice to hear Cedarcom’s feedback since they read the blog before we hear Sehnaoui tonight.

Looks like the migration to 3G has been stopped. [Link]

Via @_Ant1_

I was told yesterday that twenty people got food poisoned after eating Knefe at Sea Sweet in Adonis last week.

Has anyone else heard this story?

Because Sea Sweet is up and running and it doesn’t look like any incident occurred in the past few days.

What a terrible loss for the UAE national football team!

The Emirati winger Theyab Awana was involved in a fatal accident when his car crashed into a truck on Sunday after leaving the national team’s camp, while his brother remains in hospital. [Source]

For those of you who follow the blog, he’s the UAE football star who shot the penalty with his back heel in a friendly against Lebanon, causing a controversy. [Link]

I’ve seen Karkit Arak but never a May Zaher one. It’s pretty cool that they still use them these days.

Even better, there are some authentic Lebanese restaurants who organize a Karke night every now and then.

Ever wondered where that old Lebanese proverb came from?

Well I figured that out yesterday during my visit to the Soap Museum in Saida as the guide was showing us a collection of old objects used in the soap industry.

Turns out the “tasse” was a small tool used long time ago to shower and to take out the water as well, so every time it would get lost, bathroom would get flooded and everyone would be looking for it.

It is not the wheel cover like this site suggests.

For those who don’t know the proverb’s meaning, the expression is metaphorically used when referring to a chaotic situation, a chaotic organization, chaotic event, and so on.