Zaitunay Bay Observations

I visited Zaitunay Bay this past Saturday, several months after my first visit, so I was able to see the place with all its newfound hype.
The last time I visited, the place was very new. We were among the few people there. This time, however, was different.
To say Zaitunay Bay is crowded would be stating the obvious. It would also be a gross understatement. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, it’s the new “it” place in Beirut. People will get over it eventually.

Until then, here are some things I observed.

1 – Lots of Arab tourists. Taking poses on the boardwalk, taking pictures with yachts. Buses dropping them off and then picking them up when they’re done. The khalijis have apparently left their previous favorite Beiruti destination ABC and are not hitting the Bay.

 

Syrian men posing

Khaliji women walking


2 – Lebanese girls: you know those New York Times articles that talk about Lebanese girls walking on Zaitunay bay’s boardwalk in heels? They are actually true. My friends and I were sporting your regular everyday clothes. To say we were underdressed would be laughable. We were almost beggars compared to the girls with full makeup and designer clothes, coming to strut on the boardwalk. This isn’t a catwalk. This is a marina. You’re supposed to come here to have fun and not trip 23 times/meter while walking. But they gave us a pretty good laugh.

Guys, get your eyes off from the top portion of the picture.
They tripped so many times, it was as if we were watching the two stooges.

3 – Sturdiness: The place is very well-built and has many nice views of Beirut’s waterfront, as well as the Lebanese mountains. Do I think it’s enough for publications to gush about it? Absolutely not. It’s not a ground breaking project. If anything, it’s highlighting the shallow part of Beirut that I don’t particularly like. But for an hour or so, taking a walk around it is nice.

I invite you all for Sunday lunch on my yacht

The bay, edited with the iPhone app Camera+

You can see the Lebanese mountain Sannine in the background, the snow still visible

More Info on the Single “Blown Away” by Carrie Underwood

Graphic by Mike Pitocco

According to a source, Blown Away starts with the sound of lightning and thunder cracking, to which Carrie starts singing the following line:

“Dry lightning cracks across the sky…Those storm clouds gather in her eyes….Daddy was a mean ole mister….”

That opening line alone is enough to put you at the edge of your seat, waiting to hear what will happen next in the song.

Billboard Magazine has also leaked another line: “Some people called it taking shelter. She called it sweet revenge.”

Combining the new lines I mentioned and the line we already know is more than enough to get anyone interested in hearing this song.

Blown Away is the second single off Carrie Underwood’s album of the same title. Those that have heard it have called it ominous, intense and epic. The arrangement has been complimented as well as the lyrics. Its surprise factor has also been mentioned as a very important point.

“Dry lightning cracks across the sky, those storm clouds gather in her eyes… daddy was a mean ole mister.”

Could Blown Away be Carrie Underwood’s best song yet?

Spring in Lebanon: Batroun City

Batroun is probably my favorite city in Lebanon. Sure, I’m biased. But I cannot get over the charm that this little place has. Every time I go for a walk around its old streets, I cannot but be fascinated by how breathtaking they are and how long they’ve been there.

The churches, the houses, the streets, the beaches… all of these combine to make Batroun one of my favorite places in Lebanon.

Then again, the moment I set foot in this city, I remember my school, my best friends, my first crush. I remember how we used to go to Royal Pizza after every exam and have the most awesome food a person can have. I remember going to a beach named Blue-Bay at the time with friends. I remember running around the city on our various scholastic excursions. I remember going with my mom every single Saturday to run errands around its souks. I remember hating to wake up every morning to go to Batroun and I also remember how much I missed that when it didn’t happen anymore. I remember going clubbing for the first time in Batroun. I remember going to my first pub in Batroun.

I remember going for the first time to see Batroun’s Phoenician wall. I remember always wondering why this gorgeous city never got what it deserves.

I remember the great, great people I’ve met inside the walls and under the atmosphere of this city. They are the friends who lasted through it all.

This post is my tribute to all the Batrounis who read this blog, who don’t read this blog and whom I love. Thank you for making our city one of the best places ever and thank you for the time of my life that I’ve spent there.

This is where we started our walk

St. Stephan Church

Batroun's mina

St. Georges Church

Saydet el Ba7er Church

The Phoenician Wall

This is where Ramy Ayash shot "El Nays el Ray2a" video clip

Ma23ad el Mir

Ba7sa beach

Pictures brought to you by @SemAgnes and @ElieFares

Skipper, Batroun's coolest pub

Sawary Resort - this is where we have a chalet

Formerly Blue-Bay, now Zoo beach.

Batroun's Mosque. You can see the Cross of the Sainte Famille school in the background.

A marine research facility that never finished getting constructed (and probably never will)

Batroun is famous for being a sailors' city

My school!

The playground for the young ones

My school's church - it closed for renovation in 2006. This was the first time in 6 years that I visited.

New ceiling, new windows, new walls and even a new priest - Pere Charles is back....

Remember playing this?

Where we used to hang out during breaks

And what better way to end it than with Batroun’s very own sunset….

Lebanese Transsexuals Exposed – A BeirutNightLife Article

This post is not to discuss the scientific content of the article at hand. This post is to discuss some technical parts of it – not even the scientific ones.

To say this needed a few revisions before going online is an understatement. Let me quote a sentence present in the first paragraph:

Ok, lets keep the wikipedia definition aside, the lady eye balling you all night IS A DUDE!!! A full fledged functional dude, just like you most probably with a package bigger than yours!!

Yes, this is a direct quote. Can I comment? I don’t find anything to say. But OMG, A DUDE?! With a bigger package?! OMG!

I’m not a grammar & spelling expert. But there are some things that are downright inacceptable, especially in a respectable publication like Beirutnightlife.

For instance, towards the end of the article, a man’s genitals are referred to as Gentiles. I didn’t know a Lebanese man’s penis is now a non-Jewish entity as well. Way to go, us?

 

The article also throws around scientific and anatomical information very loosely without going into their significance. Does a casual reader know what the basal ganglia is and how it could have a role in transsexualism? What purpose is served by throwing around the structure stria terminalis without explaining its scientific function?

I am a medical student currently studying these regions and I can barely grasp them.

This article offers nothing new and is very, very poorly written. Does BeirutNightLife really need shock factor to generate discussion? I really hope not.

Blown Away – The Second Single Off Carrie Underwood’s “Blown Away”?

Following Good Girl, people are wondering what could be the second single that Carrie has readied for country radio. And word is, it’s a song that will stun them even more than Good Girl did.

Blown Away is the song that will blow country radio away.

Starting with an ominous forecast of freak weather hitting Oklahoma, a recent article in Billboard Magazine mentioned a lyric from the song: “Some people called it taking shelter. She called it taking sweet revenge.”

The song, according to Sony Nashville’s chairman and CEO Gary Overton is very close to a mini-movie. The whole song is very dramatic. The production on it is very tight. The lyrics are shocking and Carrie’s delivery is exquisite. In fact, Carrie had the following to say about the song:

I’ve never been so excited to hear a demo as I was that one. I got chills…we needed to find things that would fit with this [song], because if I found 13 other tracks that didn’t match with that one, I’d start over and keep that one.”

 All of this is not enough to confirm Blown Away as the second single. What confirms it is the following.
– Carrie said they were torn between two songs for the first single: one that came later in the writing process and one that was great all the time. The former is Good Girl, the latter is Blown Away. If Good Girl was chosen as lead single, then Blown Away should be their second single choice.
– Carrie also said that they’d be shooting the music videos for the first two singles back to back so they wouldn’t need to wait long until they could release them. We have two images from Carrie that confirm Blown Away was already filmed:
– With her fourth album, Carrie said that her approach was drastically different – it was one geared towards more critical acclaim. With music insiders already gushing over the album and calling Blown Away a standout track among an album of standouts, the song could be the one Carrie needs. And what better way to take country radio by an even bigger storm than by the writers of Before He Cheats?
Either way, 16 more days until the album drops and until we can know for certain if Blown Away is worth all the talk. This could be, however, the first time Carrie Underwood releases the song of her album title as a single.