BlogBaladi was featured once again in the October 2011 Communicate Levant issue. This time, the post mentioned was the one entitled “Answering Lebanon’s Ministry of Tourism ads“.

You can check out the other fellow bloggers mentioned [Here].

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.

That looks like quite the challenge but Salma Hayek seems committed to making it work. [Read More]

I found in my wallet the other day a 52,000 LL voucher from Librairie Antoine that I had forgotten about. I passed by Librairie Antoine at ABC Dbayyeh to see if it’s still valid since it dated back from March and luckily I was told their vouchers never expire.

I had no clue what to buy since it’s been ages since I’ve gotten any books and prices were relatively high for any interesting book I checked, until I spotted L’eleve Ducobu comic books.

I bought two new publications for 51,000LL and was not reimbursed a 1000 LL because their accounting system requires that you buy with the same exact amount of the voucher or more. I didn’t argue though as I was in a hurry.

I read both issues the same night and they were as funny as always. Added to that, I just found out they released “L’eleve Ducobu” the movie two months ago.

I spotted this at Librarie Antoine and it brought back some good old memories from school.

Even though most students hated it back then, I was a big fan of grammar exams.

BlogBaladi featured in the Communicate Levant Edition Magazine in its February 2010 edition. This is the second time we are mentioned in the Blogosphere section of the magazine.

Here are few nice illustrations done by Maya Zankoul for the Global Journal on domestic workers in Lebanon. The last one is sadly true but hilarious.

This is not the Baroud we know, meaning our minister of interior Ziad Baroud, but some guy called Alfred Baroud who apparently wants to exploit this whole anti-speeding campaign to sell some books.

A friend of mine made me realize there are a lot of interesting things that can be found using the Google Books search feature. I did a search for Lebanon and I found a ton of mentioned of Lebanon in books and articles, too many to mention here but I have mentioned some interesting ones below as examples of what can be found. If only there was a way to copy all this stuff onto my iPad I would have a lifetime of reading material with me! Does anyone know where the pool pictured above is located?

1952 Jabby in Lebanon
1955 Beauty show chaperon
1958 Uprising in Lebanon imperils U.S Friend
1958 Tortured little land poses a big problem
1966 Little Lebanon brings Las Vegas and the Riviera into Old Araby
1977 Taekwondo a tool for peace or destruction?

So I’m sitting at home watching TV when I get a phone call from my sister who was at the Virgin store at the Beirut Airport. She asked me if I had a book called Beirut Street Art. I told her no so she said one of my graffiti work was in the book so she bought it and passed it to me. Turns out someone took one of my pictures from my old flickr account and published it in the book along with a ton of other graffiti work.

Anyway the book is actually pretty crap especially for $30. The design and layout is unexciting, the paper used is cheap generic semi-gloss stuff and the whole thing is binded so poorly that it’s already falling apart after just flipping through the book twice. On the other hand the actual graffiti that’s featured is really good. Ignore mine since it’s probably the most basic one in the book but the rest are a lot more visually interesting. Most of you have probably seen them near Forum De Beyrouth and around Hamra. If you haven’t, skip on buying the book and just check out some of the most popular works on the blog Leb Graffiti [Here]

Just found out via the blog This is Beirut that Blog Baladi was one of the Lebanese blogs featured in Communicate Magazine. That’s pretty cool. [Link]

I was at the airport picking up a magazine when I spotted Maya’s book for sale at the cashier so I picked up a copy for $12 which is a pretty fair price. I managed to finish the book while waiting to board the plane and I found some of the illustrations really funny. The only thing I thought wasn’t necessary was the small copy at the bottom of the page after every story explaining or talking about the subject in the illustration above it. I thought that took away a bit from the experience and I personally didn’t think the illustrations needed it. Overall its definitely worth picking up at the very least to support a talented blogger like her.

If you don’t know who Maya is click [Here]