I went to pick up the 4G SIM and Dongle for the test pilot phase today from Alfa’s premises. The 4G SIM won’t be activated though before the official launching date which wasn’t communicated yet but should be soon.

The testing is for only one-month and I will have 10G to try out on the Huawei dongle.

[YouTube]

A great report by Kalam Ennas on Food Safety in Lebanon.

I don’t know who Pamela el Kik is to be honest, nor which shows or movies she took part in but what I know is how the bus managed to get across the mid-road separator and hit her car. It may not be the driver’s fault this time but someone should discipline these reckless bus drivers that are endangering their passengers’ lives and our lives as well.

Both Pictures from Yasa.org

[High-Res]

According to Save Beirut Heritage, the Fouad Boutros highway project will destroy 28 heritage landmarks, endanger 30 more, and uproot thousands of meters of lush green spaces in the Ashrafieh, Hekmeh and Mar Mikhail neighborhoods.

Check out what will happen to the Mar Mikhail street if this project is implemented. If the picture is correct, it will practically destroy the Mar Mikhail street and its surrounding. You can check out the full study [Here] and more pictures and information [Here].

The last episode of Joe Maalouf’s Enta Horr was probably the first episode I watched fully and ironically turned out to be the last one as MTV decided to stop the show and fire Joe Maalouf.

To be honest, I am not surprised that MTV took this decision, but like I said before and if the rumors are true, the way Maalouf was kicked out was improper and disrespectful. Earlier today, Gino posted details of what happened between MTV and Enta Horr which I believe are accurate enough from what I heard, while Elie’s claim that Maalouf’s pro-LGBT stance was the reason he got fired seems a bit far-fetched to me.

While both stories may turn out to be true, I think we should look back at all the controversial topics Maalouf covered and see how many times he committed unforgivable mistakes and flops that caused waves of protest and even hatred and disgust against MTV and Maalouf. Since most of us Lebanese have a tendency to forget quickly, I will remind you of some of them:

1- Antoura’s sexual harassment case where Joe Maalouf revealed the names of the victims on TV and against some of the parents’ will.

2- Lebanese police conducted anal probes on 36 men from gay porn cinema after MTV’s Enta Horr unveiled activity in porn cinemas. Funnily enough, rumors spread that Joe is homosexual himself. A homosexual homophobic? That’s a first!

3- The brothel Enta Horr unveiled in Sarba while ignoring the tens of them in well known places in Maameltein and other regions.

4- Filing a lawsuit against a Lebanese Blogger and scrapping it later on.

5- Equaling metal music with satanism in one of his episodes.

Despite all these mistakes that probably were disastrous to MTV’s image, they never fired him but things must have accumulated and the latest incident was the tip of the iceberg and like everything in this country, there were politics involved. After all, TVs are all about ratings and I don’t recall that many people talking positively about this show. However and to be clear on this, I really think the whole concept behind this show is very smart and the intel Maalouf was getting was quite impressive but the show in itself wasn’t well prepared IMHO and the host from what I’ve seen wasn’t convincing in his approach neither to MTV nor to TV viewers.

Funnily enough, when May Hariri got into a dispute with MTV, I don’t recall that many people defending her even though both parties might have been wrong.

All in all, I don’t know why the show all of a sudden got everyone’s attention even though most of the online community used to criticize Maalouf and Enta Horr. If Joe wants to run his show somewhere else, I hope he takes into consideration the several remarks bloggers and the online community have expressed throughout all his episodes. If not, then I hope MTV will bring back the show with another host as it’s worth keeping.

He didn’t even bother remove the original plate. Bassita chou we2fit 3le?

Thanks Manal!

[YouTube]

The above is an ad done by a Spanish organization called the Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk Foundation, that displays a different message for adults and children at the same time [Gizmodo].

According to [Himaya], a Lebanese NGO against child abuse, 1 out of 7 children in Lebanon suffer sexual abuse in the places they should feel safe. However, the biggest challenge is to let them report such incidents when they occur and creating such ads is an intelligent way to do so.

Ad by Himaya

Thanks Nad!

[High-Res] It looks more like a Lada Niva than a FIAT

Only one model was produced in the whole world and it’s in Lebanon. Jokes aside, the Fiat Punto Abarth and 500 Abarth are awesome cars.

Comment #108 Jul and Comment #7 Razan!

Alf Mabrouk to you two! I will email you details on how to claim your prize.

Thank you all for participating and Many Thanks to FSB for this awesome giveaway!

PS: The second winner was my brother at first but I disqualified him. Now I have to invite him there haha!

I think we can easily say سفر برلك has generated more positive and funny comments tonight than all of the Inta 7urr episodes combined. I don’t know what happened between MTV and Joe Maalouf but based on what I’ve read, it got pretty ugly. In fact and if this story turns out to be true, Maalouf and his crew were kicked out of the studios by the security personnel at MTV and asked not to come back.

To be honest, I didn’t like the way things ended and I hope they keep the show as the idea behind it is really nice, but give it a try with another host.

As mentioned in previous posts, Virgin Radio Lebanon is set to open on the 15th of May officially and Sir Richard Branson, founder and chairman of Virgin Group, is coming personally for the grand opening.

Having said that, I will be among the lucky few to meet Branson a day before and ask him few questions. I still haven’t prepared my questions yet as it’s not easy to address someone like Branson but I am looking forward to it.

If you don’t know who Richard Branson is, you can read more about him on [Wikipedia] and [Forbes].

My younger brother recharged his prepaid line earlier this morning and got the above message, which means that the 50% increase came into effect as promised.

Now what remains to be seen is whether the extra consumption for postpaid lines will be included in the extra 50% granted or charged separately. I called Alfa this morning and they told me that it will be counted within the upgraded data plans, which means that if you have a 500MB plan and consumed 650MB (150MB Extra) this month, you won’t be charged for them and will have 100 extra Mbytes to consume till the end of your cycle.

Obviously everyone wants more than just a 50% increase but it’s better than what we had.

[High-Res] – Spotted near Forum de Beyrouth

I saw this picture on Twitter few days ago but lost track of who uploaded it. Glad another friend of mine sent it to me today. Don’t text and drive.

Thanks Rachel

Those pictures were taken in the past 3 days 5-10 km off the Zouk Power Plant and posted on Virgin Radio Lebanon’s Facebook Page. That’s pretty cool.

Funnily enough, it’s much older news than the upgraded data plans

Telecom Minister Sehnaoui announced yesterday the good news that a bid was launched for the addressing of all of Lebanon, and that from now on, every home or office in Lebanon will have a proper address. Of course everyone got excited about this, including myself, but the truth is Lebanon’s postal system has been revamped since 2002 but remains unused.

To make myself clearer, check out this article from the Economist dated January 3, 2002 and entitled: “Lebanon’s postal system Revamped and unused”

A FEW years ago, only optimists would have dreamt of posting a letter in Lebanon. Today, that has changed. The problem now is getting people to use the post.

In 1998, the government granted a licence to SNC Lavallin, a Canadian contracting giant, to run the postal system. This was no minor endeavour. Years of war had wreaked havoc. Postmen, whose encyclopaedic knowledge of their neighbourhood had long been the backbone of mail distribution, had lost track of their flock during the fighting. Most streets have no name, and addresses are often no more specific than “second floor in the white building next to the flower shop”. SNC Lavallin brought in Canada Post as a technical adviser and created a new sorting and distribution system. Every building in the country has now been assigned a postal code, and most letters reach their destination within 24 hours

The Lebanese, however, have learned to get by without a post office. Private courier services flourish; the government failed to enforce SNC Lavallin’s monopoly.

This article clearly states that every building in this country has been assigned a proper postal code almost 10 years ago but no one bothered using it. This being said, I am not sure whether Minister Sehnaoui was aware of this company, or the fact that the project of addressing Lebanon that he’s been promoting has been available yet unused for 11 years!

It is worthy noting that SNC-Lavalin signed a 12-year contract with the Lebanese Government, which means that we paid money for a company over 12 years and didn’t make proper use of it. You can read more about the contract signing [Here].

Can the new owner succeed where western experts failed? Snail mail may be losing ground to more modern forms of communication, but even in developed countries, ever more letters are being posted every year. Having secured a longer licence, Lebanon Invest expects to break even on mail delivery. But the real money, it thinks, lies in other uses for Libanpost’s infrastructure. It wants to turn the company into a full-fledged distribution and logistics group, offering everything from one-stop billing to financial services, where the margins are higher than on mail delivery. As everywhere, it will take more than letters and stamps to build a profitable postal system.

On a final note, this bid might not be the right thing to do considering the past experiences, taking into account that more modern forms of communications are spreading nowadays and more importantly given that this project has already been done before! What needs to be done is re-implementing the addresses we paid tens of millions of dollars SNC-Lavalin to do for us, and update them internally to make them up to date and cut costs.

Screenshots taken from A Separate State of Mind

Thanks M for the article!