Category Archives: Random

Lebanese Restaurants Not Following The Smoking Ban: Feniqia, Jbeil

I was taking my Australian cousins out to dinner today and I decided to have them try out Feniqia in Jbeil. One of my cousins, who has been visiting Lebanon more or less frequently lately, complained about the place having too much shisha and smoke. So I gleefully told her about the smoking ban and how a decent place like Feniqia was surely abiding by it.

As we neared the place, we saw a man smoking a shisha. But we was immediately next to a window so I thought that maybe that was their policy – you get to smoke if you’re close to an open window as long as you blow your fumes outside.

Then, as we had our dinner, a couple sat next to us. The guy held out his pack of Marlboro and lit a cigarette. So I told him that it’s forbidden to smoke here. He replied: really? So I told him: Yes, haven’t you heard of the new law?

He said that he was aware of the law but that he saw many people smoking shisha. So he called the restaurant manager to make sure. The manager came over and I asked him: isn’t your place abiding by the non-smoking law?

His reply? Of course and without a doubt not.

He said so with pride and left. The guy’s date ordered her shisha and she started smoking as well. So I decided to try and call the number to which you can report such incidences. After much searching, someone on twitter let me know that the number you need to call to report restaurants not abiding by the smoking law is 1214 – the hotline of the ministry of health.

I called that number 3 times. It got disconnected almost immediately. They must be sleeping – such a hot hotline, right?

As for Feniqia, I don’t expect it to follow the law anytime soon. Not even when winter rolls around and it can’t leave its windows open for aeration. And being a regular, I haven’t seen them undergo modifications of the place to bring it up to par with the regulations. And for proof’s sake, here are a few pictures.

Update:

The numbers that you need to call to report restaurants are either 112 or 1735. Call the numbers when you’re at the restaurant not the following day.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky) – Book Review

I started reading this book this morning. I am reviewing it in the afternoon. If this isn’t a testament to exactly how “captivating” it is as a read, I don’t know what is.

It’s 1991. Charlie is a fifteen year old boy about to start his freshman year of high school. And he’s terrified. Especially after one of his friends commits suicide a few months earlier. The only way he manages to cope with the looming idea of what awaits him is to write letters to a “friend” who doesn’t really know him, with no return address and no way to trace back the letters.

The letters he sends are, more or less, diary-like entries: elements from his every day life that he feels are important to share, events that he feels are shaping his life, changing him and making him grow up. During his freshman year, he meets Sam and Patrick, two seniors, who accept him in and show him the life that they’ve been living. Be it driving in Sam’s truck through a tunnel with her standing in the back feeling in the fresh air to experimenting with LSD and pot at parties to opening up to sexual experiences.

Sam and Patrick, and later on their other friends, open Charlie’s eyes to a wide range of opportunities in life that he’s unfamiliar with. They call him a wallflower: a person who listens, observes, doesn’t talk about things and understands them. They make him feel included. They make him accepted. His advanced English teacher, Bill, realizing Charlie’s brilliance, starts giving him extra readings to do, shaping up this young man’s life. And in doing so, the new additions to Charlie’s life help him cope with the dark past that he is oblivious to and which lurks under his skin, ready to surface at any moment.

Published in 1999, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a much deeper book than it seems to be. It is easy to categorize it as a simply a teenage trashy book simply because of its general mood. But when you know that this book is one of the most challenged by parents in the United States, you are forced to reconsider. Why do parents feel The Perks of Being a Wallflower is “dangerous” to their children? Because the themes the book deals with are gut-wrenchingly real and they are dealt with in such a brilliantly realistic manner. Drugs, pregnancy, abuse, sexuality – all of these topics that matter to teenagers are approached in the book in a way that isn’t complex. The writing is very simplistic, approachable and easily comprehensible. At the same time, the book runs deeper than the easy language it boasts.

It is a coming of age book, like the story of its protagonists, that is candid. Charlie shares his stories with remarkable honesty, pulling you into whatever emotional state he conveys in his letters. When he’s happy, you can’t but smile. And when he goes into dark phases of depression, you can’t but empathize. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a collection of Charlie’s most important moments and his realization of the need to live those moments as much as you can, be it a shortcoming or a victory.

As Charlie discovers that he likes girls that are unconventionally beautiful to books that require him to be a filter not a sponge to the realization that truly loving someone is about wanting to see not hurt at all, even if it means being apart, you see him grow on the pages in front of you and transform from an insecure kid to a growing young adult. And as he comes to the realization that in order to reach his full potential in life he needs to stop being a wallflower, you can’t but share his infamous sentence and say it out loud: “And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”

Teenagers should read more of this and less of Justin Bieber related things.

8/10

Alfa Introduces New Plans: “Midline” – With a Hilarious Ad!

After a rather successful introduction of U-chat to the Lebanese market, Alfa has come up with two new bundles for its customers, this time for postpaid users. And they have called the new lines “Midline.”

The two bundles consist of the following:

Midline $60:

Midline $35:

 

If you’re a postpaid (sebet) user and you want to switch to midline, you call 111 and you’ll be done. If you’re not a postpaid user, you have to go down to an alfa office where you have to sign a contract and pay $50 as a connection fee.

Honestly, I have no idea how useful these plans would be with such dismal SMS quantities. 25 or 55 SMS for a whole month without a data plan? Really?

So before subscribing to them, make sure you mentally add at least $20 for the 500MB internet bundle, which makes the whole “midline” business very topline.

Either way, similarly to their funny U-chat ad, Alfa have an ad for Midline as well. And it is hilarious as well. Check it out:

Summer in Lebanon: A Trip Through the Lebanese Mountains

After much talk, a few friends and I decided to go on a North Lebanon road trip yesterday that took us through Batroun to Tannourine from which we crossed over to Becharre, descended to the Bekaa and then returned to Ehden.

Massive amounts of driving aside, I took a few pictures that I figured I’d share with you. All of these pictures were taken with a Nikon D5100 and weren’t modified in any way. I’m also not a professional photographer so these aren’t supposed to be perfect – they’re there to show the beauty of the Northern Lebanese mountains.

Some of the cedars at Tannourine

The cedars of Becharre

Residual snow

Lebanon’s highest peak – Kornet el Sawda

The Bekaa valley

Saydet el Hosn – Ehden

And the following picture I took with my iPhone and modified using Camera+:

This is what you see when you’re literally above cloud nine

 

Lebanon’s Team Makes Its Entrance at the London 2012 Olympics

Mustapha of Beirut Spring is right. We don’t really care about the Olympics. And there’s no explanation for it. The only reason I tuned in to the Opening Ceremony was because I read on Twitter that the British were doing an excellent job at it. The moment I tuned in, Lord Voldemort was terrorizing children in an homage to British literature. I, of course, was transfixed and decided to persevere.

However, what we do care about is our men and women who make us proud in representing Lebanon with all that they can, despite the non-existent support they get from almost all sports-related institutions and our government first and foremost.

These are Lebanon’s athletes making their entrance at the Olympics and making us proud. They may not win anything but the fact that they are there, against all odds, is honorable in itself.

Thank you @figo29 for the picture

The 10 athletes are:

– Tvin Moumjoghlian (Ping Pong)
– Andrea Paoli (Taekwondo)
– Katya Bachrouche (Swimming)
– Ray Bassil (Shooting)
– Ahmad Hazer (Athletics)
– Gretta Taslakian (Athletics)
– Zain Shaito (Fencing)
– Mona Shaito (Fencing)
– Caren Chammas (Judo)
– Wael Koubrosli (Swimming)

An 11th athlete, Fadi Tannous, passed away a few days ago. (Details). May he rest in peace.

(Click on their name for a profile) and I wish them all the best of luck.