[Source]

Cheapflights.com (www.cheapflights.com) has come up with a list of top 10 places to celebrate Easter, with Lebanon ranked 3rd. Here’s what they say about Lebanon:

Visitors will notice the ornately decorated streets, shops and restaurants filled with all things Easter from bunnies to chocolate, painted eggs and even live baby chicks in some places. Good Friday is marked by mass. Easter Sunday is a huge celebration where absolutely everyone goes to church. After taking communion, the 40-day fast comprising a strictly vegan diet, is broken with a feast featuring lamb and lots of egg breaking. Get your hands on the delicious Easter sweets called Maamoul. These are little cookies made with a mixture of semolina and butter then stuffed with either dates or ground sugared nuts and dusted with icing sugar. [Source]

They sure are right about Maamoul. If you are interested in knowing how to make Maamoul, check out this awesome post at the Food Blog.

Full rankings are a follows:
1 – Argentina
2 – Greece
3 – Lebanon
4 – Scotland
5 – Spain
6 – Sweden
7 – France
8 – Germany
9 – United States
10 – Canada

Via A Separate State of Mind

I have no idea what the fight was about and looks like it just happened tonight. [YouTube]

via +961

My dad brought me this flyer back from New York as he was in the U.S for past three weeks. What caught my attention is that prices are almost similar to the Manakish places in Lebanon and for some items even cheaper than Zaatar wou Zeit for example.

The normal Cheese Man’ouche costs 2,500 or 3,000 in most Manakish shops while it costs 4000LL at ZWZ (Halloum Cheese Man’ouche at ZWZ costs 5,500LL though). The Regular Cheese Man’ouche at this NY shop costs 4,500LL (3$).

[Source]

The above announcement was made in 1967. I wonder if we’ll ever be able to visit Jerusalem.

I was in London last week when I decided to pass by the very popular Tate Modern Museum of Art. I’m not a big fan of museums but I went there hoping to see if the installation for the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was still on display. The original installation was removed but they had a smaller version in one of the rooms upstairs which was still cool to see. After leaving that room and I was wondering around slightly bored when suddenly I spotted a black plastic watch with a picture of General Aoun on display. I froze and was like WTF? And then I looked at the tag underneath it and read Omar Boustany which is a friend of mine and I just cracked up. If you knew my friend you would understand why it was funny to see his name under this object but I was still bewildered to what my friend and this General Aoun watch were doing at Tate.

Turns out I walked into a room where Lebanese artist Lamia Joreige was exhibiting her work on the Lebanese war and “how memory and trauma can be embodied in personal objects”. Walking around the exhibit I saw various objects ranging from obvious war related ones like radios, flash lights and empty plastic gallons to more personal items like a book or a key. It was pretty interesting to check out.

I left the room and continued walking around the gallery when I spotted some interesting black and white photos on the room. The one that grabbed my attention specifically was of “abou 3adal”. So I checked the description on the wall and it turned out to be a room full of photos by a Lebanese photographer called Hashem el Madani. Hashem was a studio portrait photographer who began working in Saida back in 1948. The photos were chosen and taken from his studio by Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari. There were some really great shots which you could check out on the Tate website [Here]

Two rooms full of Lebanese work at the Tate. That’s a pretty cool accomplishment.

Androka and Antsikoroke – a village closer to Ambohibola – were part of the villages that have seen women leave to work in Lebanon and I had the fortune, or rather misfortune, to find out that two of these women are now missing. The Androka woman was supposed to return home 3 years ago and the Antsikoroke woman was supposed to return home 12 years ago. Shocked yet? Let me continue, the Androka woman stopped sending money home at one point for no known reason and the Antsikoroke never even contacted her family. Now you might think I’m jumping to conclusions here by claiming that both women are probably enslaved or dead but what if I told you that 17 Malagasy maids died in Lebanon last year? What if I told you that foreign domestic workers are not covered by Lebanon’s labor laws?

An interesting and must read post by a Lebanese who spent two months in Madagascar as a WWF volunteer. [Link]

I finally got around to putting together this video I shot last week when I was in Lebanon. I rented a snowmobile up in Mzaar near the ski slopes from a company called Highland Club. It costs $100 for an hour but they have better deals on longer journeys. For example they can take you from Faraya to the Cedars and back for around $400. That’s a 3 hour trip each way and comes to around $65 an hour. If you’re interested in taking out a snowmobile you can call them on +9613860867 if you want to do the Arz trip or just head up near the slopes and stop by any of the snow mobile places there. [Vimeo]

The MEA pilots are still on strike even though the strike was supposed to end yesterday. My wife went to the airport today and turns out her flight out of Beirut Airport was canceled and she was stranded there along with hundreds of other passengers. I managed to book her on a Jazeera Airways flight back to Kuwait but I have no idea if MEA will refund her ticket or not.

I didn’t have a problem when the pilots were delaying all the flights by two hours. I actually was effected by their strike and they had my full support on it. But completely canceling flights that’s a completely different thing. While a two hour delay is a hassle, canceling flights is a life changer. It has a much bigger effect on everyone. Imagine you’re on vacation somewhere around the world and your flight back to your home has been canceled. I’ve never been in that situation and I hope I would never have to. They had a lot of support from passengers and people when they were delaying flights by two hours but by canceling all the flights I believe they’ve lost all the support they had including mine. I was with the pilots before, but I’m not anymore.

Note: It’s interesting that I couldn’t find any news on this strike neither on Naharnet nor Daily Star.

When I traveled two weeks ago, I had the chance to go wait in the VIP Cedar Lounge for a change instead of roaming around in the duty free stores.

The place was nicer than I expected and had free internet access as well as free access to an open buffet and bar. The food however wasn’t that great as it mainly consisted of cold sandwiches, croissants and a small table for desserts.

I had a 3 hours wait, so after I ate and had a drink, I took a walk around the lounge and found a Kids area. I am not sure why it is called a Kids area as PS3s, Wii and Arcade games are not just for children. Also, you don’t get “Kids Area” when you translate “Salle des jeux” or “Sallat Al Al3ab” to English.

Anyway, I went in to try out all the games since there was no one and I had 2 hours to kill but it turned out nothing was working for some reason. So I headed back to my couch, watched some TV and browsed the internet.

It is definitely much better than waiting like everyone else does as the couches are really comfortable and the place is not crowded and you have free internet, but it is not that fancy for a VIP lounge.

You gotta adapt… Horses can’t play polo in the sand! You gotta use camels for that!

Spotted at Jeddah airport in Saudi Arabia

I travel to Dammam a lot for work. I recently downloaded the Trip Advisor app to see if there is anything to do in Dammam… I got my answer…

BTW, I checked in to Beirut Airport using Foursquare, to see if I could get the 10% discount on perfumes as I mentioned in an earlier post.

I was a bit worried that the salesperson wouldn’t be aware of the promotion and I’d have 10 people causing a commotion, trying to figure out what I was talking about. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that everyone knew about the promotion! I showed the saleswoman my iPhone screen and the manager came over and gave me the discount.

If I was in their place I don’t know what I would have done. I keep reading about planes being stuck on the runway for hours and I find it horrifying. Imagine being stuck on the airport tarmac for a duration longer than the actual flight back home.

More pictures and the full story [Here]

I travel a lot for work, mainly between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia but for some reason, I can’t seem to get used to the turbulence, it keeps scaring the hell out of me.

Last night, I had a flight from Dammam to Beirut @ 8:20 PM.

I got on the plane at about 8:00 PM. A couple of minutes later the electricity went out… I’m not very superstitious, but I don’t think the lights going out is a very good sign! It was funny coz some of the passengers started joking “n2ata3et el kahraba? Wselna 3a lebnen bi hal ser3a??” (Electricty cut? We’re already in Lebanon?)

The lights came back on about 10 seconds later. The boarding was completed and the captain asked the flight attendants to “arm doors and cross check”. As we started pulling away from the gate, the lights in the cabin were still flickering… It didn’t look very good

We had just started to taxi when all of a sudden the engines shut down! The captain then said “Cabin crew, disarm doors and cross check”. He then said that we were facing a small technical problem and that it will be resolved ASAP.

All of a sudden an ambulance and a firetruck parked right outside the aircraft.

Without electricity, the AC wasn’t working. Seeing as it was a cool 35 degrees with humidity, everyone was complaining about the heat. A weird looking truck parked right under the plane and started to pump in cool air. I had no idea such a truck existed to be honest.

And as we all know, all Lebanese people think they are knowledgeable in just about any topic. So a bunch of passengers walked to the front of the plane to share their experience and advice with the flight attendants… These are some of the comments I overheard:
- “Eh, ana sayra ma3e kaza marra, mesh awwal marra… walaw!” (This has happened to me so many times before.. come on…)
- “Hal meshkle akid khassa bel landing gear, ana 7assayt awwal ma tle3et 3al tiyyara enno fi shi ghalat..” (I’m sure this has to do something with the landing gear, I felt it the second I stepped on board)

About an hour and a half later, the “minor problem” was fixed (BTW, they didn’t tell us what the issue was). During that time, a couple of passengers stood up, gathered their stuff and asked to disembark. They were let out, but they had luggage checked in. So we waited for another hour for their bags to be located and removed from the plane

So we finally took off at about 10:45 PM. The flight was horrible to be honest, very turbulent, but after 4 glasses of Black Label, I felt like I was on a roller coaster and almost passed out

You have to read this story, it’s horrible. A Lebanese couple who were traveling from Istanbul to Beirut via MEA witnessed an act of racism on board the plane. A male Lebanese passenger complained to a MEA flight attendant that he did not want to sit next to a black man. You read right, he did not want to sit next to a black man, I mean wtf? If that wasn’t bad enough what happened next was even worse, instead of the MEA flight attendant asking the Lebanese guy to go back to his seat and shut the fuck up, she instead forced the black man to change his seat (probably sent him to the back of the bus plane).

While the whole world is moving forward around us we’re stuck with dial up speed internet, no electricity, the same politicians bickering over and over and to top it all off we’re racist. According to the pilot who spoke to the couple this incident was nothing compared to the amount of racism they witness on board flights from Dubai and Africa.

I find this very depressing…

Here is the blog that has the post on this incident [Link]
I found out about this story from the Lebanese Anti Racism Movement blog [Here]

1) ATV trip from Faraya to Arz
2) Paragliding from Harissa
3) Visit the Jeita caves for the first time (they’re 5 mins from my house)
4) Tour Lebanon in a small Cesna plane
5) Watch Lebanese men wrestling in Mayrouba (Abou 3adal was going to be there)
6) Ham & Cheese sandwich at Torinos in Gemmayze
7) Lunch and Arak with the bedouins in Hermil
8) Go to the beach
9) Have a cheeseburger at Road Runners in Bourj Hammoud
10) Check out the underground Lebanese nude female wrestling scene