I think yesterday I witnessed the highest number of live accidents in Lebanon, but the funniest ones were one inside City Mall parking, one on my way back home yesterday night and one on my way to work in the morning. I say funniest because all were small and silly accidents in which no one got hurt.

It is really amazing how the second we have few drops of rains, all Lebanese drivers lose control of their cars or start driving really slowly. It’s like panic mode is switched on.

At City Mall, Two cars going the right way crashed into each other and a girl driving one of the cars refused to step down or even open her window. She just locked her door and stayed inside the car. I don’t know what happened next as I left but it would be interesting to know who the expert is gonna blame?

On my way back home, a mini van was going the wrong way when it bumped into a Mercedes. I was expecting them to go down and have a fight but instead both went down, shook each others’ hands and started babbling while waiting for the expert. Wish all Lebanese would behave that way. (Car was kept parked in the middle of the street though).

Last but not least, on my way to work today, while stuck in traffic, a girl driving a Peugeot hit a concrete separator put on the side of the road. She didn’t bother go down check her car but just pulled back the car and kept going lol.

Anyone who washes his/her car in Lebanon must have noticed how people like to do “sob7iyyet” while waiting for the car wash and seem to enjoy their time. Added to that, the washing business brings a remarkable income to the gas stations here.

As far as I am concerned, I don’t enjoy it one single bit but I was thinking on how profitable it would be if someone were to come up with a car wash and recruit sexy women or men only during the weekends. I am not talking about women in Bikinis here (Not that there’s something wrong with it) but just top models instead of the regular gas station workers you usually get. I am not quite sure car wash with only men will work because women rarely go to wash their cars here and Lebanese will probably label them as gay, but a car wash with female top models will definitly bring loads of customers.

You’d price the wash at 20$ the least and set up a nice lounge room or coffee shop and I am almost confident people will wait in lines for hours, plus you’d be employing more Lebanese that way.

This trend is quite popular in the USA so why not here? And there’s nothing demeaning to women or men top models about such work.

PS: A fashion house could promote such business by launching its new swim suit wear :P

Since we are so damn good at copying our songs, brands and almost everything from other people, I thought we make out of this “Lebanese speciality” a quiz this time and challenge our readers to see if they will be able to match this “amazingly disguised” logo with a logo they have surely seen somewhere.

So, what does that logo remind you of?

Hint: It’s small.

I’m sure the guy shat his pants when the car hit the railing!

This is one of Lebanon’s craziest roads with practically no lanes, no lighting, no speed bumps, rare roundabouts, and no radars (only Radar signs) or cops. I was coming back from Jeita yesterday when I saw a huge accident on the long straight after the Jeita Country Club turn. Nothing surprising though as you see those very frequently.

However, I noticed a very interesting fact about that road, that cars reach their top speed almost at Ziad Baroud’s house which happens to be at the end of Jeita. If you look at the map, it is after you get passed Frulatte and Starbucks that cars step on the gas till the end of the long straight some 1 km away.

Maybe if we hang a “Maintain Top Speed” sign there, Lebanese drivers will feel provoked and decide to violate it as they do with every law and as a result slow down.

Maybe we can all pitch in $10 each and help the highway department get new signs.

Seems like it’s not only in Lebanon that we have such drivers. Someone from Eatliver.com is pissed about them as well. [Picture]

I had posted a few days back about a flaw in the park meter’s system that journalist Imad Atallah had found in which he succeeded to cheat the park meter man by photoshopping the parking stubs and changing the dates.

Well I decided to email the park meter company yesterday and inform them about the flaw and I received a response today from their senior IT manager telling me they are looking into this and should resolve it soon.

I will keep you posted of any updates on the matter.

I was recently told that the company behind the park meters in Lebanon is going to upgrade their website to include an e-payment system which would allow you to pay online. [Link]

That would be a great feature as it would save us the time and effort to go to a Libanpost office in case we don’t have a card to pay with, and by card I mean the prepaid park meter card as credit cards don’t work even though their website says it should. [Link]

This however does not solve the problem of scanning and photoshopping the legal parking stubs that we discussed previously.

You hear a lot of funny stories about tantet el Achrafieh but nothing beats engaging in a discussion with one of them.

I was walking back to the office from Gemmayze today and had reached the small road leading to Kahwit Leila ( Previously Kahwit El 2zez or Kahwit el Gemmayze) when a car with two girls inside was going illegally downards on Road1 (see pic above). They reached the end of the road and could not go left or right as cars were coming from both roads 2 & 3.

The girl driving asked me how to get to Paul claiming she’s lost but a 4×4 coming from Road 2 was getting impatient and started horning, so I told the girl to move the car to the front a bit so that the 4×4 passes.

The woman driving the 4×4 had all the specifications of an “Achrafieh Tante”, as she was smoking, talking on the phone, makeup and her puppy on the right seat. Anyway, to make things worse, she decided that her car cannot pass and wanted the two girls to go all the way back in reverse. I assured her that she has over 2 meters of free space on her right and that she could pass easily, but all I got was: “Chou bta3rif a7san minne dimensionet siyyarte?”

And to prove me wrong, she kept turning the same way without using the empty space she had left and bumped into the other car and yelled “Chefet?”.

To make things even worse, the two girls did not know how to go reverse in their car, so they asked me “iza ba3rif sou2 arriere?” as if that’s an optional feature for drivers. I pulled back the car and redirected it on the right way and let the tante pass, noting that she didn’t give a damn about hitting her car, neither did the other two girls.

The end.

I’ve started carpooling with an old friend who recently became a colleague of mine and happens to be living near my house. I think it is great as it is very tiring to drive sometimes specially in the morning plus you get to save gas. The only inconvenient is that our working hours are not fix and I rarely leave on time, which could be problematic.

Anyway, there’s a Lebanese website now dedicated to carpooling in Lebanon and to finding car mates. I am not sure how much it will work but I think it’s a great initiative.

PS: We carpooled using my car today and I won’t be going back home straight forward. Sorry R!

Not only one has problems finding trustworthy mechanics in this country, but you cannot even rely on an electrician to fix your radio.

I am having problems with my car radio, whereas the sound is just going off for no reason and randomly. After asking around, I went to a place in Dekwaneh that is assumingly good. I told him what my problem was and he told me he needs 3 hours to figure out what’s wrong, as it could be from the Amplifier, the radio, the CD box or the cabling.

He then took out his Mercedes scanner, which is surprisingly found at most mechanics even though it should cost a fortune, and started checking out the defects. Some 20 minutes ( 3a 2asses 3 hours) later, he unplugs the cd box and takes it out and tells me to drive around for a bit and let him know if the problem persists. Ten minutes later, I come back and tell him the problem is still there.

Next thing he does is take out the radio as well and put a used one he had and asks me to try it and get back to him on Monday.

The radio he put worked fine and I came back on Monday to see what happened with my radio. He tells me the radio processor is messed up (processor is screwed) and can’t be fixed; therefore I have to change it. I ask him how much does a new one cost and he answers back 130$.

Afterwards, I asked him to put everything back in place and told him I will get back to him as I wasn’t convinced about this whole processor thing. Funny thing is that as he was putting the cd box back, all the cds were not in place, turns out he was playing my cds on his stereo!

That was 3 weeks ago, since then my radio started working normally with few cuts from time to time and the cd box which was working fine is disfunctional now!

There is another guy which I was told about in Beirut which I will give a try next.

Is it so damn hard for Lebanese to do their jobs properly without cheating or stealing? All I want is a professional who doesn’t charge me some 800$ for a new radio like the Mercedes garage does in Lebanon or messes up my radio and cd box like this guy did.

No this is not another Red Bull event, but something that occurs spontaneously every night at Marina Dbayyeh. Chahe was telling me about his friends who race on the Marina road but I thought he was joking until I saw it on Saturday night.

I was on my way back from Beirut heading to take the maritime road that gets you to ChopSticks Dbayyeh when I saw three cars blocking the road. I approached slowly and then stopped as they were going on reverse. Two cars were parked next to one another and another was on the right with its driver standing outside.

Then they started warming up and as the third car horned, they accelerated all the way until Chopsticks. The cars were an old Golf (90s) and an old BMW 3 series. The Golf won.

Next time I should park in the middle of the road and film it as it happens.

PS: Note that the ISF headquarters in the region is at the end of this road.

Talk about speeding on the roads, F1 driver Robert Kubica had a crash while driving in a rally that almost cost him his life. At first surgeons were fighting to save his right hand but now he is moving fingers and much better. He needs a year or less to be back.

Even though I am a big fan of motorsports, I never understood those rally tracks where you are within centimetres from hitting a wall or falling down the cliff. I mean seriously! Who sets the safety standards for rally championships? The Lebanese ministry of public works?

Just watch the movie and you will know what I mean.

I was driving from Jounieh to Beirut on Sunday morning when I was passed by a BMW M3 (2009 or 2010 model), a Golf GTI (2010 model), a Volkswagen Scirocco and a white Porsche GT3. A Picanto was funnily trying to cope with them and almost crashed into another car. I was doing 100 kph so you can imagine how fast they were going.

All four cars were racing down the highway doing some crazy maneuvers all the way until they got to Beirut. I accidentally saw one of them parked near Annahar when I had gotten there some 10 minutes later.

Having said that, I ask again:
- Which is more dangerous? a car driving 50 on a 30 kph road or four cars doing some Need for Speed tricks on the highway?
- How is it possible that there’s not one single police officer all the way from Jounieh to Beirut to stop them?
- Are those speeding radars so well hidden they can’t spot cars anymore?