You’ve killed her a thousand times over with those senseless jokes, the rumors and then some more jokes when the rumors were debunked. But this morning, Lebanese singer Sabah passed away at the age of 87.

My earliest memory of Sabah is being a kid hovering around my mom’s waist as she sang her song “Sa’at Sa’at” while she cooked, or, if she felt playful, went about a round of “Jib el Mejwez.” Today, my mom is the one who reaches my waist, but she still sings those songs when she cooks, and they’ve become engrained in my mind as a result too.

With over 50 albums in her decade-long career, she is on the same rank as some artists that many consider worthier of more clout, such as Fairuz and Um Kulthum.

More senseless things happen daily that’s for sure, but Lebanon lost one of its giants today and that is something that should be acknowledged, whether you liked Sabah as an artist or not. Of course, Sabah is also yet another example of a Lebanese patriot who is under appreciated by both her government and her countrymen: you only need to look around to see the same people making fun of her over the years suddenly remembering that yes, she is human, and that humans die, as corny as that sounds.

Sabah’s death marks yet another nail in the coffin of true Lebanese artistry, at a time when Lebanese singers gave the world and their country true art, not some rehashed Turkish tune or some mysognistic song about how women are only supposed to stay home.

Earlier this morning, as I told someone the news, their reaction was “finally.” I, for one, hope the collective Lebanese population does not share that sentiment about Sabah passing away. I also hope the jokes, at least today, do not find their way onto the timelines and twitter feeds.

Rest in peace Sabah. May your songs live in the memory of those who love them forevermore. I believe that is the greatest honor that an artist could have and you’ve done that exceedingly.

I bet the above pictures look familiar. You saw them happening yesterday, didn’t you? Beirut’s airport being flooded, the tunnel leading to the airport being flooded and trapping cars for hours, etc…

Except the above pictures are not actually footage from yesterday’s Lebanese apocalypse. They are the same pictures I posted on this blog in 2012, around the same time of the year, when Lebanon had its first rainstorm of the season. Here’s the link (click) if you don’t believe me. And they happened again in 2013, and again yesterday.

It’s the same story every year. Whenever those dark grey clouds gather and those raindrops indicating the summer-long drought will soon be over, everyone and their mother is absolutely taken aback by how horribly our roads and infrastructure handles the year’s first downpour.

It’s akin to our ministry of public affairs and the various municipalities around the country being like the blue fish in Finding Nemo: no short term memory whatsoever. Every single year, they are absolutely dumfounded that their jurisdiction is nowhere near equipped to handle a few millimeters of rain. A state of utter shock ensues. It rained? In November? Oh my god, it can’t be!

I wonder: how much resources would it take the ministry in question to make sure the gutters are clean, the roads are equipped and that the country wouldn’t be in near-apocalypse mode when it rains?

Perhaps the energy that goes into the thought process in question is too much and too unnecessary. This is what happened in Lebanon yesterday:

1. It rained,
2. The airport’s road got inundated,
3. The tunnel leading up to the airport road got flooded,
4. Horrible traffic ensued,
5. Water piled up to 0.5 meters in certain areas, flooding houses. It wasn’t a monsoon,
6. Electricité Du Liban’s generators got disconnected off the grid, leaving the country in electrical blackout,
7. News surfaced that City Centre was closing down due to the electricity cut. This was later denied.
8. Cinema Abraj in Furn El Shebbak was flooded (check picture below), in what looks like a typical Hollywood movie that cinema was probably screening at the time.

The following are pictures that took place yesterday:

On the bright side, we can now say the four month drought in Beirut is officially over.

We live in a country that cannot handle two hours of rain, and some think we are equipped to handle the graver issues facing our great Lebanese nation of eternal beauty. It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Ladies and gentlemen, how about several pictures, two years apart, that are exactly the same in content?

Welcome to the country of utter and absolute corruption regarding which you can’t do anything. And if you thought that this year would end up in a lesson to our government to pull it together and prevent floods in 2015, you thought wrong. As they say: فالج لا تعالج. The following is a picture of Lebanon’s first rain in 1965:

Earlier today, minister of health Wael Abou Faour decided to go on a press conference and out high-profile restaurants and supermarkets across Lebanon that are, according to him, selling Lebanese customers “bad products.”

I was sent the following pictures that detail what are “bad products,” incompatible as they supposedly are with the ministry’s standards:

This isn’t about naming and shaming the restaurants and supermarkets in question. Actually this is far from it. If you’re reading this expecting an angry blog post about Roadster or Hallab, then you’re very mistaken. What this will be is a rant about the utter lack of maturity and professionalism that the ministry has handled this with.

For starters Mr. Faour, what’s the point of a high profile press conference to name and shame restaurants without actually listing how those restaurants failed to meet the standards checked by the ministry? No, I’m not talking about what the “products” in question, but about how exactly those products failed to meet the standards.

This brings me to point #2. What are the ministry’s standards for evaluation exactly? You’d think a big ass conference that is bound to cause such a stir would at least start with that: on what basis were those places evaluated, what scientific measures did the samples go through to be assessed, how reputable are the labs where those samples were taken, how qualified are the doctors who actually oversaw what was taking place to begin with. None of this actually happened.

Mr. Faour’s press conference was yet another example of the fact-less, crowd-pleasing, let-us-get-the-biggest-buzz-possible Lebanese mentality of handling things: the less everyone knows the better; why do people need more information to be critical anyway? Faour knows best, and he knows where you should eat and where you shouldn’t.

In the next few days, everything you will hear about will be the restaurants named by Mr. Faour. There will probably not be any other piece of news that is worthy of airtime. People will freak out and panic and call for boycott all based on nothing but an empty list by a ministry known for its inaptitude. I mean, just look at the hospitals that are run by its teams. I’m rotating at one currently, so I would know exactly how miserable and despicable the conditions are over there. But isn’t this government, ministry and country all about half-assed measures?

Many of the restaurants that Faour named have standards that the ministry can only dream of reaching.

ISO-22000. This is an international certification that a few of the restaurants in question on Faour’s list have. To ensure that this certification is not revoked, those restaurants have to submit to regular quality checks. The ISO certification is internationally recognized for its high level of standards, and is applied in countries where governments are always vigilant and do not, like ours, wake up from a deep, deep slumber every now and then in order to fight for the gastroentereological rights of Lebanese citizens. That is a standard I trust, not some shady ministry measure aimed purely to create a scandal and boost a minister’s popularity.

I suggest you do the same for now.

It is that time of the year again, which is basically every other day, for some person you hadn’t known existed to become the talk of the Lebanese town because of something he or she did somewhere most of us dream of living in, just because that person is Lebanese.

In this paragraph, I will discuss the lineage of the person in question. Of course, it doesn’t matter if the person is as Lebanese as Lebanese people having elections, but a Lebanese origin Chromosome is a Lebanese origin chromosome and this cannot be ignored.

After establishing that whatever percentile of Lebanese-ship this person fits in, I will draw out the family tree. In the case of many Lebanese who make it abroad, that family tree brings us back about three or five generations back to the time when our grandparents hadn’t been gametes yet, but no matter. Lebanese blood never runs cold – even after several generations out in the wilderness of those countries that those of Lebanese origin will never find home.

In this paragraph, I will discuss what that person did to make him the point of national Lebanese pride, and how whatever he did will definitely reflect positively on the fabrics of Lebanese society in his home country, leading the way to a tangible decrease in sectarianism and political tension. Of course, that person could as well have gotten married to a celebrity (Amal, I’m looking at you. It’s not like there’s anyone other than you), but what do you mean getting married to George Clooney won’t bring us a president?

I will now move on to discuss immigration and how it has shaped this country for the past three hundred years, far longer than the idea of “Lebanon” possibly even existed. I will become the go-to expert on the socio-political causes that have made immigration such a tantalizing option for many Lebanese families to leave this country. From Ottoman rule, to French hegemony, to Lebanese sectarianism and the Civil War nobody understands to current times of political bankruptcy.

This effectively leads the way to the most massive name drop of all time. OF ALL TIME. I will start with Gebran Khalil Gebran and go on and on about “The Prophet,” a book I have probably not read, to Hassan Kamel Al-Sabbah, the inventor they bombarded us with back in 5th grade, and the conspiracy theory that it was the CIA that killed him because of his brain, up to Shakira in which case if I were from Zahle I’d go on and on about how her vocal capacities are definitely due to her ancestor drinking lots of water from the Berdaouni, all the way to Amal Alameddine, of course, who hooked George Clooney simply because she came from Baakline. I mean is there any other reason for those big fat Lebanese nuptials (in Venice and London)?

My conclusion (I can’t believe I wrote such a small blog post) will be all about Lebanon, the little country that could, that has sent millions upon millions of people to shape the world as we know it. With the mountains close to the sea, with our unparalleled nature, with our joie-de-vivre of lifestyle, with our unmatched capital, it’s really baffling to see that this little country of ours hasn’t ascended to the throne of THE BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. But it’s only a matter of time because, as you know, someone out there of 1/100th Lebanese origin is bound to make that happen and Lebanon will be the only thing he or she will think of when they do.