Observations of a First Timer at Casino Du Liban

Casino plans somehow came up yesterday afternoon and we actually acted them out – for the first time ever. So we drove to Lebanon’s only casino in order to waste away some hard-earned money (or not).

Aside from the parking being beyond expensive – whether you’ll be there for an hour or ten, the fee is 10,000LL, we entered the casino and apparently you need to have a membership card in order to get access.

Getting a membership card isn’t problematic but you have to be above 21 to get it. They take your address and phone number and an ID. They then fill out a form which you have to take to another counter in order to print your membership card.

Then, if you’re Lebanese, you have to pay 10,000LL to get access to the casino. If you’re a foreigner, you get free access. Yes, you read that right. So if the one million reasons to get a foreign passport were not enough for you, add this up to yet another reason why our passport is of meaningless value – you even have to pay to access the only casino of your country.

Once you’re inside, you go to the cashier where you buy chips. And then you hit the machines. The first thing I noticed about the game rooms is that they are very dated. Casino du Liban might look fancy from the outside but inside might as well have been out of the 1950s.

The crowd that frequents the casino is also cringe inducing. Apart from the dress code being a myth by the looks of it, I don’t mean the way people looked as much as their mentalities. When I saw a man win $7,000 at a roulette table, I felt happy for him. Only then he decided to gamble his entire winnings and lost everything. How stupid can one get? If I had won $7,000 I’d make such a big fuss that security would throw me outside – the fall would be cushioned by the money and I wouldn’t care.

It is then that I decided I could never do that. I could never risk that much money, even if I had made it. And for what? to feel an adrenaline rush? I’d rather go bungee jumping instead. I guess I’m not a gambler at heart – or I’d rather not gamble my money away at a game of odds (roulette).

Contrary to popular belief as well, poker is not the most popular game at the casino – or it could be that I thought it would be seeing as it’s the only game that I play. In fact, the area reserved for blackjack and roulette trumps the space for poker tables significantly.

While observing the games, like I did, or playing your money away like some other people did, you get waiters circling the tables offering you drinks. Apparently those drinks are free and for you can ask whatever you want – after all, you are indirectly paying for them.

The casino was also smoke free. I had been once at the slots machines I was 19 (yes, we pulled a few strings to get me in) and smoking clouds were present all over the place. The carpets smelled of it, the machines smelled of it and once you got out of there, you smelled of smoke as well. This time around, I saw a few men with cigarettes that weren’t lit. A way to pokerface, perhaps? But “No Smoking” signs were plastered all over the place and you could smell the difference.

What I also found interesting was the fact that I saw so many veiled women there. Somehow I thought gambling was against Islamic rules. I guess not.

Would I go the casino again? I would assume so if I could find friends to go with. If not, I guess I could live without it. But I definitely need to fine tune my poker skills because they’re getting a little rusty.

Ronan (Lyrics) – Taylor Swift

Ronan is the new Taylor Swift song that was debuted at the “Stand Up For Cancer” event. It is inspired by a blogpost that Maya Thompson, the mother of 4 year old Ronan Thompson, wrote after her son passed away last year after struggling with neuroblastoma.

This is her blog (click here). All proceeds from the sales of this single will go to cancer research so you can get the single off iTunes here.

I remember your barefeet down the hallway,
I remember your little laugh
Race cars on the kitchen floor
plastic dinosaurs
I love you to the moon and back

I remember your blue eyes
looking into mine
like we had our own secret club
I remember you dancing before bedtime
then jumping on me waking me up
I can still feel you hold my hand
little man, and even the moment I knew
you fought it hard like an army guy

Remember I leaned in and whispered to you
come on baby with me, we’re gonna fly away from here
you were my best four years

I remember the drive home when the blind hope turned to crying and screaming why
flowers pile up in the worst way
no one knows what to say about a beautiful boy who died
and it’s about to be Halloween you could be anything you wanted if you were still here
I remember the last day when I kissed your face and whispered in your ear

Come on baby with me, we’re gonna fly away from here
out of this curtained room and this hospital gray will just disappear
come on baby with me, we’re gonna fly away from here
you were my best four years

What if I’m standing in your closet trying to talk to you
What if I kept the hand-me-downs you won’t grow into
And what if I really thought some miracle would see us through
What if the miracle was even getting one moment with you

Come on baby with me, we’re gonna fly away from here
Come on baby with me, we’re gonna fly away from here
You were my best four years

I remember your barefeet down the hallway
I love you to the moon and back.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers Concert in Lebanon: Look At All Those Traitors!

Strip them of their passport and national IDs. Take away their Lebanese pride! Shame on them! Shame on the few thousand people that attended this inhumane abomination!

By all accounts, the concert was a huge success. Some people reported being disappointed but still entertained. Others called it the best concert of the year. I didn’t go but I think the best concert of the year would still be Notre Dame de Paris.

My friends have told me they were immensely professional with an amazing stage presence and spirit.

The setlist for the concert was the following:

  • Monarchy of Roses
  • Around The World
  • Snow (Hey Oh)
  • Otherside
  • Look Around
  • Throw Away Your Television
  • Can’t Stop
  • Universally Speaking
  • The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie
  • She’s Only 18
  • Under The Bridge
  • Higher Ground (Stevie Wonder cover)
  • Californication
  • Goodbye Hooray
  • By The Way

Encore:

  • Chad & Mauro & Josh jam
  • Sir Psycho Sexy
  • They’re Red Hot (Robert Johnson cover)
  • Meet Me At the Corner
  • Give It Away

Now we know exactly what Mashrou3 Leila missed out on for being cowards with “principles.”

And these are the people with “principles.”

Thank you @KingRoudy for the last picture and the following Facebook page for the others.

 

Welcome To The Republic of Cheap Controversy

We, as Lebanese, sure know how to breed controversies. We love it. We adore it. We feed our need for gossip off of it. And it happens so often without it becoming redundant.

We have a need for it.

The latest:

Yes, you guessed it: Mashrou3 Leila’s decision not to open for RHCP.

The discussion regarding Mashrou3 Leila nuclear bombing themselves by giving up their opening gig for the RHCP took a turn that I didn’t foresee. It became less and less about how they got to their decision and more about whether their decision was correct or not.

Of course, the debate isn’t about supporting the Palestinians or not. It’s not about hating Israel or not.

Were they bullied? Or did they reach their decision out of conviction? And it is here that I believe is the issue’s main question.

Mashrou3 Leila signed to be the RHCP’s opening act a long time ago. They knew RHCP had a concert in Israel and yet they still signed the contract. To say they didn’t know about the Israeli concert would infer they are massively ignorant, which they are not. So for all matters and purposes, they didn’t care about the next stops on RHCP’s tour.

And they canceled their gig. Were they bullied into it? Well, speaking from experience, the anti-Israel crowd have a knack for making anyone who doesn’t play for them feel as if he’s an accomplice to killing all the Palestinian children.

You’re not with us? Then you’re a traitor and I hope you can sleep at night knowing the blood of Palestinians is on your hands and knowing that you are also stealing their land. 

It is the same Bush-era logic that they love to hate: you are either with us or against us. You can’t be in between.

Select Lebanese bloggers know how it is when you don’t write in agreement with them. They will bash you. They will threaten you. They will call you names. They will make you feel as if you’ve done something wrong which you perfectly know you didn’t. And if you’re tough enough, you won’t budge.

Mashrou3 Leila budged. And the ripple that they caused was deafening. For instance, BeirutSpring, a renowned Lebanese blogger who doesn’t address all issues that happen in Lebanon and when he does, he addresses the issue with one short and straight to the point post, wrote not once (click here) but twice (click here) about Leila. That second post has a ton of comments, some of which are proclaiming exactly what I alluded to before. Treason and then treason and then treason some more.

The BDS people should be proud. Commenting from their awesome new Macbook.

Another controversy:

We might also be the only country in the world where enforcing a smoking ban is met with a wave of anger and disgrace and people throwing around brilliant logic to justify opposing the ban. You want a taste of that logic? Click here.

Has any other country in the world caused so much controversy by simply applying a law straight out of the 1980s in 2012? Definitely not.

But in Lebanon it did. A smoking ban became an issue of national debate even though it shouldn’t. Smoking somehow morphed into a basic human right, which it isn’t. Some restaurants are even opting not to follow the law – and they’re proud of it (click here).

Some people have said: “the smoking ban supporters preach. The restaurant owners speak facts. The former need to rest their case – they’re not making sense.” Our need for controversy transcends our ability for logical reasoning. So we go with the flow of beautiful rhetoric that pleases our brain cortices and tickles our enthusiasm. Scientific studies? The hell with that. For reference, this is a British case study that shows a positive economic impact for smoking bans (click here).

Previous controversies:

The Lebanese Olympic squad and its Israel-related incident may or may not have happened. But it sure has caused a frenzy. I even asked this simple question: wouldn’t it be a greater victory if we play and win? Wouldn’t it be greater if we debate them and put them where they belong?

All hell broke loose. Because expressing your opinion is frowned upon – unless your opinion is mainstream. Getting called a traitor? It’s become my favorite pastime lately.

The Republic of Cheap Controversy:

When you realize that two of those controversies happened within a week and the third one happened within a month of the other two, you get three national “debates” that have led nowhere except have people go at each other’s throats in such a short timeframe. That’s also without taking into consideration Michel Samaha, the Mekdads or Myriam Klink or anything else that happened in the past couple of months. The republic of cheap controversy unfolds in front of you.

It’s not a republic of shame as LBC wants you to believe. It’s not the republic of anarchy as I’ve told you before (here). It’s another face of Lebanon, one that we don’t notice because it has become so deeply engrained in the fabrics of our society that we don’t notice it anymore – we don’t even notice how often we do it.

Our controversies address deep issues sometimes but more often than not they simply scrap the surface of far deeper problems without diving in. We live off of that – discussions that give us something to talk about while steering clear from more “pressing” issues (the election law comes to mind). Sometimes the discussion is cheap and shallow. Other times, the “discussion” takes a dangerous turn when the allegiance of others and their moral values come into play.

And people are interested in reading and talking about it because it gives them a sense of participating. And we write about it because it makes us feel important – that we are heard and some people want to know what we have to say. I’ve done it. You’ve done it. We’ve all done it.

When will the next controversy take place? I would say it’s a 50-50 chance for next week. Do we love it? Maybe not. Welcome to the Republic of Cheap Controversy.

 

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.