Photo from Beirut Drive By

[YouTube]

It would have been better for LBCI never to have released the video of the 113 points, because we are getting laughed at all over the world now. The YouTube video has around half a million views now but has more dislikes than likes and the comments are mostly negative but also funny.

Here are few of them:

“is defense illegal in Lebanon?”
and the reply: they’re shot if they play any

” am from lithuania,here basketball is nr1 of sports… this video is not about basketball… it makes my eays hurt:(”

“anyone who dislike this.. knows how to play basketball..”

“The player had terrorist connections. You try to guard him, you get your house bombed.”

“Mohammed passes to Mohammed who passes the ball to the post player, Mohammed. Mohammed misses but his teammate, Mohammed, gets the putback!”

“Lebanese Defense apparently involves giving stern looks”

“Feels like a scene from a Sasha Boren Cohen film. R.I.P Defense”

“I thought this was a Globetrotters game.”

At this rate, Mohammad el Akkari will soon become Lebanon’s Rebecca Black. (This is me commenting)

Despite all that, it’s not too late for the FIBA to discard this game and restore some dignity into our Lebanese Basketball League.

“Aside from the major environmental and social benefits, it would also be incredibly iconic,” he says. “Just imagine: The world’s first rooftop garden city. [CNN] “

It’s good to see that Beirut’s hanging gardens have made it to the CNN website, maybe this will incite few Lebanese or NGOs outside to finance the project.

The total cost of the project is estimated at $3.5-4 million, which is honestly nothing compared to the benefits offered by this initiative. Given this fact, I don’t understand why none of our Lebanese billionaires has agreed to finance the project yet.

I think Wassim Melki, the architect behind this idea, should meet with Beirut’s municipality and key political figures and businessmen in Beirut, and not just rely on NGOs for the moment. There are a lot of parties that will be interested in financing such an initiative for their own sake and for the people’s sake.

I was passing by Haret Sakhr on Sunday when I noticed the old Kataeb house with a Phoenician ship on its roof is being renovated. I am not sure if the building still belongs to Kataeb, but it’s been there for more than 15-20 years maybe without anyone ever using it.

It’s good to know they are planning to preserve it because it’s one of a kind building. In fact I don’t recall ever seeing a house with a ship on its roof aside from this one.

They should turn the place into a touristic site or maybe a night club or restaurant even.

Photo from Hummus For Thought

If the poor girl in the picture slips and falls down to her death, they would call it a suicide in Lebanon. Maybe this picture will give the local authorities a valid reason to investigate those so-called “suicides” more seriously.

I second that!

Source

Via @JessyGeagea

Even though ABC mall in Dbayyeh is relatively small, I never find my way out easily specially that everything looks the same to me in the cosmetics and beauty section. However my friend pointed out to me the other day that whenever the floor becomes black, this means we are nearing the exit.

I’ve been going to ABC for years now and I never knew about that. I don’t think it applies however to the new entrances.

Half Bottle 26000
Bottle 32000

Not that I was considering drinking wine with my pizza but how did they come up with those prices? Come to think of it, why does Pizza Hut have wine on its menu in the first place?

I passed by the Chase Restaurant in Kaslik today and noticed they enhanced their outdoors by adding couches and forming small lounges. They definitely don’t have a great spot like Lina’s cafe in the middle of Kaslik street but it’s much nicer than the chairs and tables they had before.

Their Chocolat Mou on the other hand is still the same and is awesome!

[YouTube]

According to this report by Al-Arabiya, 13 out of the 76 Lebanese who died on the Titanic were from the same town Kfarmechki. Added to that, few Lebanese were shot dead by the Titanic’s guards for trying to force their way onto the rescue boats. One of them was called Daher Chdid Abou Chdid and he had escaped Lebanon after killing by mistake a girl from his own village while playing with a rifle. He was 19.

For those of you who don’t know, 3.42% of the passengers on board of the Titanic were from Lebanon.

I was checking an old picture of the Jounieh bay on Demaville’s blog when I remembered I had taken almost the same picture few months back.

Spotted at Kahwit el Sitt in Antelias.

Here are few pictures taken by fellow bloggers of the fog cloud that covered the majority of the Lebanese coast two days ago for over two hours and forced the airport to close down for some time.

[Pictures from Siestke]

[Pictures from The Beirut Report]

[YouTube]

We finally have a video of the 113 points Mohammad el-Akkari scored in Mouttahed’s game against Bejjeh. The guy has an impressive 3-points shot but there was no one to defend him and that’s just not a good nor a professional way to enter the book of records.

I can’t believe Ghayyath is actually comparing it to Kobe Bryant’s 81 points back in 2006. [YouTube]

Najib posted about how awesome MTC were two weeks ago for helping his friend out when he had a problem. Well I ran into a problem today and it was like a big WTF.

My previous MTC line got killed because I didn’t recharge it so since I’m in Lebanon for 5 days I figured I’d get another line so I could get online from my iphone so I can tweet and stuff. I went bought a line from a store, put the sim card in my phone and called 111 to get internet activated. Mobile Internet was the second option in the menu so I pressed 2 and listened to instructions on how to activate the internet which is sending and SMS with the word “mi” to 1188. I do that and get a message that mobile internet will be activated in 24 hours.

So I think great. But the automated system said something about a 25MB limit, I wanted at least 100 so I called 111 to talk to a customer support agent and while I am going through the menu options I get to around option #7 or 8 and I hear 3.9G Internet. I was curious to what that was and go into the menu and realize they have a package I wanted which was 19$ for 500MB. I hangup send the SMS “hs2″ to 1188 to activate that package and to my surprise I get the following:

“Dear Customer, you cannot subscribe to 3.9G – 500MB Service because you are subscribed to Mobile Internet Service. You can subscribe as of 2012-05-08″

I was like WTF? So I call and talk to a customer support agent, I tell him I wanted internet on my phone and the first option that came up I signed up to but I want to upgrade it to 3.9G and I am getting an error. He tells me I need to wait till next month. I was like you can take the $5 I paid for mobile internet, cancel it and let me sign up to the 19$ package. He was like he can’t do that. After like 5 minutes of arguing I was like ok fine, so whats the difference anyway? He’s like what phone do you have? I was like an iPhone. He was like Mobile Internet doesn’t work on your iPhone since mobile internet is WAP.

That’s where I blew it. I was like WTF? WAP? Who the hell still uses WAP? Why the hell are you calling it Mobile Internet and why is it the second option in the automated menu? I mean seriously? I got a new phone line, called 111, got an option for mobile internet which I assumed meant internet on my mobile and it turns out you have ANOTHER mobile internet option called 3.9G hidden later in the options and what’s even more confusing is what you call mobile internet is actually WAP?

I was super pissed and the guy wouldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t throw money at the problem, I asked to talk to the technical department and he refused to transfer me and I was getting really pissed. Finally I asked to file a complaint so that at least MTC know how stupid and confusing their terminology and menu layout is and he wouldn’t even do that. He told me he can’t take or file complaints. WTF?!! I then asked to speak to the person in charge at the call center and although it took some convincing I finally got through to him. The call center manager was much more understanding and unlike the first guy I spoke to was aware of this issue which seems to happen with a lot of people and was very apologetic. Still though nothing could be done about it.

So now my only solution is to buy another line so I can get internet on my phone. That’s ridiculous and MTC really need to fix this crap.