+961

Thanks to a ”technical difficulty” my host was facing, you might have noticed that +961 was down for the past two days. Needless to say, I’m now searching for a new host. Any suggestions?

A guy who participated in the Lebanese Laïque Pride march for a secular state on March 15 2011 started one of a kind blog calling for help, and it’s nothing related to the cause of the demo he attended, he’s actually searching for a person.

He found himself extremely attracted to one of the girls in that march, and it was his second time to notice her after last year’s march, so he took that as a sign and decided trying to approach her one way or another, and he got really close to his aim until she disappeared!

That’s why he’s now calling for the help of the internet people in Lebanon in an attempt to find her. And in a country where everyone knows everyone, I guess there’s a good probability for that man to find her!

You can read all about his story and the updates he will be posting on his blog Finding Dulcinea, and below  is the description of the girl he’s trying to reach:

1. She has chestnut color hair, natural color not dyed. (Couleur Châtaigne)
2. Blue eyes
3. On that day, she was wearing a black tight biking pants and a white jacket.  She was carrying on her back a red sports bag, I think it was an Adidas (not sure)
4. She had 2 silver rings on her left hand; one of them had a purple stone. (I didn’t notice a wedding band – Geez that would be a bummer if she turns out to be married – but hey let’s keep it positive for now)
5. All I know is that she works in the protected area of Solidere where the parliament is. So that area stretches from Costa/Blom bank on the upper level facing the Grand Theatro building all the way down to the area past parliament building/Abed Clock area.
6. I am speculating that she must have left her bike in the office that day and was returning to get her bike and leave the sign at her desk.

I can’t but wish him all the luck!

This is insane! One of the leading bloggers in Kuwait wrote about his bad experience at Benihana there, and the next thing he knew… they’re suing him for the article!

It’s all over the Lebanese blogsphere now… Yesterday night I went to T-Marbout along with several Lebanese bloggers to meet with Philippe Couve, Pierre Haski (www.rue89.com), and Eric Scherer from Radio France Internationale.

The meeting purpose was for the French journalists and bloggers to get to know more about the Lebanese blogsphere and its status. We discussed several issues such as why blogging isn’t very popular here in Lebanese, and why do some bloggers post very frequently when things heat up in Lebanon and then dump their blogs when everything calms down. They were also interested in knowing if anyone of us had a problem with the authorities because of some content (I wasn’t surprised with that question, at the end we’re an Arab country!).

In addition, while discussing the Lebanese people in general, we all agreed that they hate to read and write, they’re just good at grasping already processed information. Which explains why they’re all active on Facebook, and very few of them thought of starting a blog. Lazy nation!

w heik..! by the end of the meetup I was glad I had the chance to finally meet Maya Zankoul & Tarek Chemaly.

Here’s a list of the bloggers who were there:

20minutes.fr
beirutntsc.blogspot.com
choueichoueibeyrouth.blogspot.com
qussa.nl
diaryofahalfandhalf.wordpress.com
mayazankoul.wordpress.com
29letters.wordpress.com
klekeesh.blogspot.com
hanane.me
onoffbeirut.com
rue89.com
atelier.rfi.fr
kibot.blog.com
bloggingbeirut.com

And finally, here’s what others have posted about the meeting:

Maya Zankoul
Tarek Chemaly
Samer Karam
Pierre Haski
Hummus Nation (a blogger I really would like to meet someday!)

Just started to install a new theme on the blog… hope nothing goes wrong!

Update:

I am almost done, everything went fine except for some compatibilty issues with Internet Explorer (I HATE IT!).
The main advantage of this theme is the 3 tabbed widgets to the right (Recent posts, Recent comments, and Archives), and they appear normally in Firefox, however I noticed they’re appearing under each other in Internet Explorer. I promise I will work on fixing it by tonight.

I will also restore the missing widgets (Beirut photos & Eyes of Lebanon) later today.

Still, I’d love to have your feedback, what do you think about the new theme? Anything to improve?

Update 2:

Woohoo! I fixed the tabbed widgets! They’re working fine on Internet Explorer now.
The contact is now gone for a while since its background doesn’t match the new theme. Gotta go find a better one.

Update 3:

Be careful what colors you choose next time you plan the change your website theme, I just got a question asking if I am a aounist since the color of “961″ in the header above is orange!!