Tag Archives | Beirut

Maya Zankoul’s Book Signing at Ceramic Lounge

Here’s your second chance in case you missed the first book signing of Maya’s Amalgam! This Wednesday October 28th at 6PM, Maya Zankoul will be signing her book at the Ceramic Lounge in Saifi Village Beirut. In addition, you can also get special edition comics that Maya has illustrated exclusively for Ceramic Lounge on ceramic items.

And while you’re their, you can get to enjoy homemade cookies by the COOKI3MAN who has been creating a buzz around the Lebanese twitterverse with his delicious choc chip, M&M, and Kinder cookies!

ceramics-A5-flyer-full

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Nike human race – Beirut

Nike human race beirut

Nike Human Race is a worldwide sport event that is going to take place in 35 cities around the globe, including Beirut, on October 24th 2009. It’s basically a multi-city event for celebrating the report of running by giving runners everywhere the opportunity to run together.

In Beirut it is going to take the form of a fund raising event. Those who sign up and upon paying the registration fees ($10) will have to mention under which association name are they going to race, and at the end of the event Nike will be donating registration fees to the Association which will gather the biggest number of runners.

It’s just a 10K fun run event with no ranking or winners, however all participants who will reach the finish line will get their Nike Human Race Beirut Medal souvenir.

Registration forms are available at all Nike stores – ABC Ahrafieh, ABC Dbayeh, Verdun, Kaslik, Tripoli and Downtown Beiru. Don’t forget to write the name of the Association you will be running for.

Click here for more details on Facebook.

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Banning motorcycles in Lebanon

I just came across a news that made it for me! Our minister of interior affairs Ziad Baroud issued a statement banning motorcycles between 6:00PM and 5:00AM as of October 15th 2009. In addition to making it clear that motorcyclists gatherings are forbidden.

Lebanese motorcyclist

بارود يصدر قرارا بضبط سير الدراجات النارية ابتداء من 15 الجاري
أصدر وزير الداخلية زياد بارود قرارا ً بضبط سير الدراجات النارية في الأراضي اللبنانية المختلفة اعتباراً من تاريخ 15/10/2009، وطلب الى المديرية العامة لقوى الأمن الداخلي التشدّد في تطبيق القرار.

وسمح القرار بسير الدراجات النارية المسجلة أصولاً لدى هيئة إدارة السير والآليات والمركبات والمستوفية لجميع الشروط القانونية، اعتباراً من الساعة الخامسة صباحاً وحتى الساعة الثامنة عشرة، ويمنع سير جميع الدراجات بين الساعة 18.00 والساعة الخامسة من صباح اليوم التالي.

By the way, every time I see a motorcyclist performing stunts on the highway, I get the urge to hit him and watch him rolling on the asphalt! Yes that’s how much I hate you Lebanese motorbike owners!

Photo via flickr

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Freeze Balou’ Balaa! I will shoot you!

Today’s episode of “Freeze I will shoot you” is brought to you from a nice village called “Balaa” in Tannourine, located around 70 kilometers from Beirut. I went there 10 days ago with some friends under the guidance of Mireille (from Life Geeked), who showed us a lot of nice places in both of Batroun, Tannourine, and Laklouk. So Balaa was actually just a stop on a one day road trip.

Balaa is very famous for its 250 meters deep natural sink hole that  has been carved by water 160 million years ago! According to Mireille, a magnificent waterfall can be observed during winter and spring with water vapors rising up to the surface, so I’m definitely going to revisit Balaa again.

Moving to the photos…

Balou balaa 7

There’s a distance of around 300 meters separating the sinkhole from the main road, and yes you have to walk to get to it.

Balou balaa 1

And we’re gettig closer..

Balou balaa 2

And here we are! The photos actually do no justice to the location. What appears like a shade in the middle is actually is small waterfall.

Balou balaa 3

As you can see, the place IS dangerous, the edges are a bit slippery and you really don’t want to risk falling down.

Balou balaa 4

The bridge in the middle is reachable, and the below photo is taken from its top.

Balou balaa 5

Balou balaa 6

Yep, 250 meters deep!

The location is suitable for a picnic by the way, but camping is forbidden as per the ministry of environment.

My next destination will hopefully be ammiq.

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Achraf Rifi acting silly

Achraf Rifi

According to this news article, chief Achraf Rifi issued an “unusual” order to his force calling on them to vote in favor of Jeita Grotto for the seven natural wonders of the world.

“I gave orders to 23,500 police officers to cast their ballot in favor of Jeita Grotto so that they do their part as citizens and our entry comes out the winner,” General Achraf Rifi told AFP, in commenting on his written order.

Next week’s “unusual” order will be calling them to either join the Internal Security Forces group on Facebook, or become fans of his Facebook page.

Mr. Rifi, teach your officers how to respect us and behave well in the streets before giving them orders to do online voting!

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Francophone Games – Beirut 2009

50 Francophone countries are participating in the sixth Francophone Games, which will take place in Beirut from September 27 to October 6 2009!

50 pays francophones se regroupent à Beyrouth pour les 6eme Jeux de la Francophonie du 27 Septembre au 6 Octobre 2009!

Website: www.jeux2009.org

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Ministry of Tourism: Lebanon is the place to be

Usually you have 1001 reason to leave this country! (Electricity, water, mobile network, slow internet, Ammar Houri, etc…) But for some reason I find myself attached to it, and more precisely addicted to its capital Beirut.

Below is a nice short video found on Twitter promoting Lebanon and showing how charming this country is despite all its problems!

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Freeze Sodeco! I will shoot you!

I thought of a fun idea today which is to start a new series of posts called “Freeze, I will shoot you!”. Breathe, the thing has nothing to do with the shooting we’re used to in Lebanon, the idea is to go to some area in Lebanon (where else?!) for the purpose of taking some nice photos of the place  and then publish them in a blog post here. I’ll be also open to suggestions if you have some nice place in mind.

I will start today with Sodeco, one of my favorite streets in Beirut. The reason why I originally went there was to shoot the old buildings that still have marks from the civil war on the. I leave you with the photos.

Civil war marks 2_small

Facing Sodeco square, this building is currently being renovated by the municipality of Beirut.

Contrast_small

Showing contrast between two buildings, one has witnessed the civil war and the other eventually didn’t!

Civil war marks_small

Civil war marks 1_small

Building renovation_small

Another building currently being renovated.

Building interior_small

Same building from the inside.

Building interior 1_small

Same building from the inside.

Towards monot_small

The street leading to Monot.

P.S: For some reason, the lightbox plugin on my blog (the image overlay thing) seems to be broken, so whenever you click on an image you will be taken to a new webpage instead of displaying it on a grey background. I promise I’ll be working on it today!

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Lebanese bloggers meetup at T-Marbouta

RFI

It’s all over the Lebanese blogsphere now… Yesterday night I went to T-Marbout along with several Lebanese bloggers to meet with Philippe Couve, Pierre Haski (www.rue89.com), and Eric Scherer from Radio France Internationale.

The meeting purpose was for the French journalists and bloggers to get to know more about the Lebanese blogsphere and its status. We discussed several issues such as why blogging isn’t very popular here in Lebanese, and why do some bloggers post very frequently when things heat up in Lebanon and then dump their blogs when everything calms down. They were also interested in knowing if anyone of us had a problem with the authorities because of some content (I wasn’t surprised with that question, at the end we’re an Arab country!).

In addition, while discussing the Lebanese people in general, we all agreed that they hate to read and write, they’re just good at grasping already processed information. Which explains why they’re all active on Facebook, and very few of them thought of starting a blog. Lazy nation!

w heik..! by the end of the meetup I was glad I had the chance to finally meet Maya Zankoul & Tarek Chemaly.

Here’s a list of the bloggers who were there:

20minutes.fr
beirutntsc.blogspot.com
choueichoueibeyrouth.blogspot.com
qussa.nl
diaryofahalfandhalf.wordpress.com
mayazankoul.wordpress.com
29letters.wordpress.com
klekeesh.blogspot.com
hanane.me
onoffbeirut.com
rue89.com
atelier.rfi.fr
kibot.blog.com
bloggingbeirut.com

And finally, here’s what others have posted about the meeting:

Maya Zankoul
Tarek Chemaly
Samer Karam
Pierre Haski
Hummus Nation (a blogger I really would like to meet someday!)

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