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Today was the day, Michael Suleiman is finally a president or (فخامة الرئيس)!

And while the majority preferred to stay home watching politicians making out with the new president on TV, I chose to go to Ain El-Mraiseh for a walk on the corniche with some friends. It turned out to be a good decision, especially when some entertaining motorcades returning from the parliament and heading to Phoenicia Hotel passed by with bodyguards inside that are fully equipped with machine guns and aiming at potential threats, also known as “pedestrians”!

Anyway, for once everybody seemed to be happy and relieved, and once again they were congratulating each other… OK I will shut my mouth this time!

One thing that interested me in Ain El-Mraiseh was a bunch of guys jumping from the sidewalk into the sea, check out this photo of one of them (Click to enlarge).

Decamping of the opposition from Downtown Beirut is an old news by now, and as you know people are back to going there again and filling almost every cafe and restaurant around the Nejmeh square.

So I went there today to see how does things look like now, and I was honestly surprised how fast the recovery phase was. Although there are still some business owners that are not done yet with the renovation work, but most of the almost all of the famous places are back into business again.

Here are some of the photos I took there.

Nejmeh Square (Click to enlarge)

Full restaurants (Click to enlarge)

In case you’re wondering about Buddha Bar, I think it will be re-opened soon since it’s currently being renovated. (Click to enlarge)

And finally, a silhouette of Riyadh Al-Solh statue. (Click to enlarge)

I live in Ras El-Nabeh, where clashes have been raging for the last 2 days, and thanks god today is relatively calm and under the Lebanese army control. But still, I didn’t go to work in fear of not being able to come back! Yeah feels like being under siege!

So far the opposition has defeated the Future Movement militia in our neighborhood and in almost every other area in western Beirut. Although this result was expected (to me at least), but I really didn’t expect for the Future Movement militia to fall apart that fast!
Lesson learned: A cat should never mess with a lion.

I am wondering what will the opposition do next, I am pretty sure things will not be over at this stage, but I hope the situation will not get worse.

Oh and by the way I really feel like going out and shooting with my camera, I’m sure there will be a lot of scenes that are worth keeping for history, but I am afraid someone might beat me… Anyway here is a panoramic photo I took today morning from my balcony (it’s made of 3 photos), it shows “Basta” to the left and “Ras El-Nabeh” to the right. Unfortunately my camera is a DSLR and doesn’t capture video, otherwise I would have posted some very interesting sounds from yesterda’s clashes!

Click to enlarge

I feel frustrated tonight, I have just found that the videos site is not working! This is what you get when you keep on messing with the source code…! I’ll be working on it.

Anyway, I’m publishing today a trance music file for a song titled “This is Beirut”. A small part of the file has been widely spread as a ringtone for cell phones, so for anyone who might be looking for it, here is a download link for the full version.

Update: The videos site is working again!

Click on the photos to enlarge

Bachoura

Murr Tower

Ras El-Nabeh

Beirut was still was on fire tonight because Nabih Berri was set to appear on TV, knowing that he asked his followers 2 days ago NOT to fire weapons during his interview.

One of my friends told me that 7 RPGs have been fired in the air up till now (1 hour and a half after starting the interview) and people heard their massive sound everywhere in Beirut, I just wonder what could have they done if he asked them to use their guns…

The Internal Security Forces were of course watching for anything unusual in the streets