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A Lebanese Blog

Month: October 2012

  • Kamashtak – More naming and shaming of Lebanese drivers

    Kamashtak is a new website by a group of people aiming to document the various parking violations causing traffic jams around Beirut by taking photos of the violating vehicles, tagging them on a map, and finally posting them on the website along with the violation type and the vehicle’s plate number. It’s a bit similar to Cheyef 7alak initiative by LBC Group, except that Kamashtak is limited to parking violations and is not crowd-sourced.

    I don’t know how effective will this initiative be. I mean Cheyef 7alak is already quite popular but did it change a thing? Thousands of photos have been uploaded so far and we still suck ass at driving… talk about wasted efforts. Anyway if you ever see the above sticker on your car, just know that you’ve done something wrong!

  • Claire Danes in Beirut

    So as I mentioned in a previous post, the events in the first episodes of “Homeland” take place in Beirut, but its producers decided to shoot these scenes in Tel Aviv and make it look like Beirut as shown in the above photo. Still, the result didn’t seem pretty convincing to Karl from Karl reMarks blog, and so he offered the below alternatives!

  • Xriss Jor performance on The Voice

    Xriss Jor is a Lebanese contestant on the Arabic version of “The Voice” currently being aired on MBC. Judging by her first performance, she looks so talented and promises to hopefully make it to the final rounds.

    You can follow and support Xriss on both of her twitter account and Facebook page. I have no idea by the way why does she write her name this way…

  • Beirut featured in Homeland TV series

    Fatima Ali, the first wife of a Hezbollah district commander, has information about an attack on the United States. Fatima refuses to speak to anyone but Carrie, who knows another secret from having recruited her eight years ago: She loves Julia Roberts movies. (What did she think of her in “Charlie Wilson’s War”?) This leads CIA counterterrorism director David Estes (David Harewood) and avuncular CIA vet Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) to pull Carrie back into the business for a three-day, one-off mission to Beirut, Lebanon. (The Beirut scenes, however, were filmed in Israel.) Source

    Funnily enough, the scenes in Beirut were all filmed in Tel Aviv.

  • Electricity all over Lebanon affected by today’s rain

    We all know the electricity situation here is very miserable, but I really find it hard to believe that three power plants, Jiyyeh, Zouk, and Deir Amar, went off the grid in the afternoon because it BARELY rained around the country today! Electricity consequently went off in the Beirut, Mount Lebanon, and the North.

    This winter is definitely promising to be a fantastic season for all generators owners!

    Update:

    Even worse, check these two videos showing what the rain did to some regions. And don’t blame the rainfall amounts, it’s actually all because of the poor infrastructure we’ve got thanks to our dear government!