Tag Archives | Lebanon

Toastmasters Lebanon

Toastmasters International is a nonprofit educational organization that operates clubs worldwide for the purpose of helping members improve their communication, public speaking and leadership skills. Through its thousands of member clubs, Toastmasters International offers a program of communication and leadership projects designed to help men and women learn the arts of speaking, listening, and thinking.

There are actually two toastmasters clubs in Lebanon, one is in Beirut and the other in Tripoli. And I got introduced to Toastmasters Lebanon a while ago via Nour’s blog “Sunken Treasure 6”. Nour is a member of Tripoli’s club and she posts frequent updates on her blog about what goes on in the meetings and sometimes shares with the tables topics that she’s going to be speaking about.

Per my readings of her blog posts, Toastmasters evaluation system helps the individuals identify the weaknesses in their communication skills and of course work on improving them. One thing I have been wondering about though is when do members decide that they got enough practice and no longer need what Toastmasters offers and thus choose to just stop attending. I think Nour can answer this by commenting on the post!

Anyway, you can get to know more about Toastmaster Tripoli through the below reportage by Mounzer Al-Merehbi which was aired on TeleLiban few days ago.

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Save Kfardebian natural bridge

Faqra bridge

I admit I’m very late on posting this! Il 2ossa w ma fiya, someone is planning to build a cafe on our natural bridge of Kfardebian, which will result in “ruining” this naturally made landmark. What we can do is to show the media that we oppose this project and want to preserve that landmark by gathering tomorrow 9:00AM at the natural bridge.

Below is more details from Blogging Beirut about the schedule.

Our Natural Bridge of Kfardebian-Faqra is in extreme danger. The danger is that of urbanization, of a human kind.

The owner of the land close to the bridge has decided to build an amphitheater and cafe starting from the very edge of the bridge!

LAW 434 – Lists Lebanon’s Natural bridge of Kfardebiene-Faqra as the 8th great natural site and wealth of the Republic of Lebanon.

The law also states that this site is protected under a radius of 100m from any type of building or land adjustment. The center of the radius stems from the center of the bridge.

The law also states that for an additional 50 m, no building or activity of any type can take place, that will harm the identity and character of the site.

The land owner already built 9 steps and a concrete wall several meters wide within the first protected radius and has illegally bought the road that connects the main road to the bridge from the municipality of Kfardebien.

On August 8th 2009, a rally to voice our concerns to the media and protect our heritage from destruction.

We will conduct a hike from the Roman Ruins of Kfardebiene-Faqra to the Natural Bridge starting at 9am.

Join us at the ruins at 9am and hike with us to the bridge.

At 10:30 AM the media will cover our event with a press release to help communicate to the Lebanese public the dangers of these circumstances.

We will afterward s enjoy a picnic at the site and listen to a great Musician playing the Oud.

Please help support and protect our national heritage.

Contact Info:

E-mail: savethebridge [at) bloggingbeirut (dot] com

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Latest photography

Here are three of the last photos I took in the summer.

As you may know, summer is the weddings season in Lebanon, and so the two first photos are from a wedding a week ago.

Fireworks

Blowing Fire

This one was taken early in July from a building in the Sayfi area.

Beirut Downtown

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Beirut – The best party city

Check out this report by Cal Perry from CNN about the summer season this year in Beirut. So far this is the best summer after more than 4 years of continuous political instability that has started with PM Rafic Hariri assassination and ended with the 2009 elections 2 months ago, and Beirut is literally on fire with the countless events this summer, not to forget the booming nightlife everywhere in the country.

I loved how Cal Perry ended the report “This summer, the world is partying on the shores of the mediteranean”.

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Today’s weird news

I was reading today’s issue of Annahar newspaper when I came across this weird news:

بعلبك: معاملات نفوس مع النفايات!

بعلبك – “النهار”:
عثر احد افراد قوى الامن الداخلي صباح الاثنين في بعلبك قرب مقام السيدة خولة، داخل احد مستوعبات النفايات على اكياس تحوي اوراقاً ثبوتية من هويات وطلبات تصحيحها ومعاملات ومستندات تابعة لدائرة نفوس بعلبك.
وحضرت القوى الامنية على الفور، وارسلت الاوراق الى وزارة الداخلية وفتح تحقيق لتحديد المسؤوليات.

If you ever lost track of a file at one of the ministries, now you know where it might have ended up!

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What if president Sleiman was wrong?

Back in 1994, Youssef Shaaban was convicted for shooting a Jordanian diplomat in Beirut and got life sentence in prison.

In 2002, a court in Jordan found that others were responsible for the murder and convicted them! So logically speaking, Youssef Shaaban turned out to be innocent, however it was impossible to release him since the issued rulings could be overturned unless by a presidential pardon.

Three days ago, president Michael Sleiman pardoned Youssef Shaaban and he was granted freedom yesterday in Beirut.

That was in brief the story of Youssef Shaaban.

I have seen in the media how everyone was giving credits to the president for pardoning him, but I was thinking what if Youssef Shaabad was really the one behind killing the diplomat?

In a special episode of Kalam El-Nas with Marcel Ghanem last night, Shaaban himself admitted that he played a “role” in the Lebanese civil war in addition to being a member in Hamas. Remember that the reason behind the assassination of the Jordanian diplomat was because Jordan and Israel were in negtiations to sign a peace treaty, that’s a good motive for Hamas to commit the crime no?

In addition, those who are supposed to be the real murderers were executed in Jordan, and god knows how did the Jordanian police (maybe) made them admit they were responsible for the assassination. Now how can you assure that Youssef Shaaban is innocent? The Lebanese judicial council made a mistake by convicting Shaaban, so how can you assume the Jordanian rulings were flawless?

To me the crime is still a mistery. Think of it, the guy might really be the one behind the assassination.

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Lebanon is not a happy place!

Lebanon is not a happy place, that’s at least according to the new economics foundation (aka NEF).

Using the “Happy Planet Index” (HPI), NEF measured how happy are 143 researched countries, and Lebanon came in the 110th place!

Per their findings, we in Lebanon have a life expectency of 71.5 years, of which we live 33.7 years happily. Ya3neh we spend 37.8 years in misery (slow internet, no electricity, wars, explosions, Naser Qandil, etc…).

In addition, we scored 4.7/10 for Life satisfaction (though fi 3anna Skybar!!!), and we have an ecological footprint of 3.1.

You may download the full report containing the classification of all the researched countries in PDF from here, or in Excel from here.

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No, Jordan is ugly

On my way to work today, I saw this huge ad at City Mall Dora, it says “Jordan is more beautiful”. Whoever considered posting this in Lebanon should have thought of it twice, because it is both rude and ugly.

Seriously, in what exactly is Jordan better?! L7a22 3layyeh yimkin, I’m not following Amman’s nightlife news these days!!

al-2ordon-a7la

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Laguava resort

Beach is the best destination these days, and Laguava – Rmeileh was my choice on Saturday! Checkout some of the photos I took.

laguava-beach_small

laguava-beach1_small

laguava-beach2_small

laguava-beach3_small

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