I heard on the radio this morning that unknown individuals broke into Crepaway-Mzaar and stole 30 million liras (Almost 20,000$). What surprised me when reading this piece of news is that this specific Crepaway branch is located inside the Mzaar intercontinental facing the hotel’s entrance and is almost impossible to steal.

Whomever did this knew his/her way around the hotel or maybe works in it or in Crepaway.

A march against Lebanon’s backwards rape laws is being organized by Nasawiya on January the 14th at 12pm from the Ministry of Interior in Sanayeh to the Parliament in Downtown.

This march comes after the large media campaign Kafa has initiated two weeks ago in an attempt to fight marital rape in Lebanon, which is not considered a crime, where they incited Lebanese not to vote for MPs against passing the law. [Link]

While I am all supportive of these demands, I unfortunately don’t see any change in this matter occurring anytime soon for all the reasons Mustapha pointed out earlier.

I can also add that most MPs and political parties rely on religious figures to get their votes and will not risk losing their support for passing a law against marital rape.

Nevertheless, there’s no harm in showing support for this righteous cause and spreading awareness.

This cracked me up so much! [YouTube]

[YouTube]

Tirashrash according to this report by Al-Jadeed TV means throwing Dollars and Riyals at women, basically like this Iraqi guy [Here]. Having said that, the song still doesn’t make any sense but it’s a good Dabke song.

Aside from the traditional Galette des rois that we have on Epiphany, there’s also “Zlebieh” (زلابية) which is a deep fried dough that is mixed with sugar. They don’t look delicious (see pic below) but they are good specially when hot.

Aside from the striking resemblance to Britney Spears’ Toxic Video that Ivy pointed out, I think that’s the first time we see robots dancing Dabke in a music video.

What was missing though was Clauda Chemaly giving some guy a toxic kiss.

I’ve been hearing a lot about Stone restaurant which opened recently in the Old Souks in Zouk so I decided to pass by yesterday to see how it looks like. The first thing that caught my attention was how big and how beautiful this restaurant is. I don’t think I’ve seen bigger in Lebanon. It is also very nicely located and has a great view of the Jounieh bay and of Beirut.

Stone serves international food and its prices are affordable from what I hear. In fact, their Sunday lunch menu which includes Appetizers, Salad, Main Course, Dessert and Drinks is for 30$ only which is very reasonable.

They are also featuring Il Tenor Eliya Francis every Thursday starting December 22. This guy is amazing and performs at Mandaloun. He’s probably the only Tenor we have in Lebanon. They charge 10$ extra for the show.

I was told the food is excellent but I will have to try it and judge for myself, hopefully very soon. Also, I hope it will revive the old Zouk a bit because it’s a beautiful yet forgotten area.

You can check out its website [Here].

Women pumping gas might seem like a strange sight in Lebanon, but that could change with the Queen, the first and only gas station in the country run and operated by a group of women. Queen, “a gas station with a feminine sensation” as it labels itself, was opened with the idea of giving women the opportunity to work in a traditionally men’s job. [Link]

I am not sure if they got inspired from the post I had written back in April 2011 about opening a women car wash in Lebanon but those are not the women I had in mind. Also, if you read the whole article, you will notice there are men working at the station, which pretty much goes against the original idea.

I saw this picture while reading the news on today’s bomb threat at Barja school. It’s pretty cool that we have such anti-terrorism units. With everything that goes on in Lebanon, it would be awesome if someone came up with a new Lebanese series on the missions those special units perform.

I am sure it will do better than those silly drama series they keep coming up with.

Nahr el Bared battle would make a whole season.

I thought people like Mike Feghali come up with predictions only. I wasn’t aware they express their own opinions as well.

Put aside who he wants to hang and why, how come this guy is allowed to go on TV and incite killing of human beings? Is that allowed by the Lebanese law?

You can check out his whole interview [Here].

No offense to the Daily Star, but I counted at least 4 images out of the 19 related to non-Lebanese, with 3 of them describing the same event. Not that I mind but I am sure there were more Lebanon-related events worthy mentioning in a “Lebanon Pictures of 2011″ album.

Also, it wouldn’t harm if they added more joyful pictures as Lebanon had a relatively calm and bomb-free assassination-free year for a change.

Check the rest of the pictures [Here].

I was reading an article on Israel’s plans to build a 1-kilometer security wall along the border of its northernmost village with Lebanon to prevent potential clashes in the area, and I thought to myself:

What’s so wrong about building a wall or fences all across our borders while keeping the exiting border gates? It’s not like we want to prevent our neighbors from coming in, but it wouldn’t harm if we were in control of our borders and prevented illegal entries, specially with everything that’s going on now.

Alongside the security risks, the prime goal of such a step would be to limit the economic damages this open-borders policy has been causing due to illegal traffic of products. Of course, no changes will be made to the transit rules with our Arab neighboring countries.

I don’t believe it would harm anyone if we knew who’s coming in and out of the country. We have 375 kilometers of borders with Syria and 79 kilometers with Israel.