+961

A Lebanese Blog

Category: Lebanon

  • De Prague Hamra closing today

    de prague hamra

    As per this article in The Daily Star yesterday, De Prague will be closing its doors today after 8 years of operating in Hamra.

    The reasons of the closure as stated by the bar’s general manager Pascale Azzi are the declining number of customers as well as the smoking ban that was introduced in September last year. Moreover, in a second article published today, the owner Raed Habib added that the bar will also be closing due to the general change of atmosphere in Hamra in addition to the increasing violence incidents in the neighborhood.

    These reasons didn’t really make sense to me because the economic recession and the smoking ban are affecting all the shops in Hamra, yet many places like February 30 and Main Street for example are doing pretty well and always seem to be full at night.

    What I guess De Prague should have done to stand out from the competition is possibly taking advantage of the relatively large space they have to setup a small stage and host music bands to get more people to come.

    Anyway, I’m pretty sure soon enough some investors will be renting the place and starting a new bar to replace De Prague.

  • Social Media Awards Beirut official results in numbers

    sma

    The people behind the Social Media Awards Beirut took a great step towards being transparent by posting their official results in numbers in the latest issue of Cloud 961 magazine.

    The results show how many votes did every candidate get from both the public and judges, and final score was calculated based on the below formula:

    Total score = (Candidate’s public vote count / 2) + [ (Sum of public votes / 2) * (Candidate’s judges vote count / Sum of judges cotes)]

    Basically most results made sense to me except for the best fashion blog, where only 1 judge voted in favor of L’armoire de Lana even though she’s making a great effort covering fashion event both inside and outside Lebanon.

    Moreover, I was glad to see that 327 people voted for me in the best news blog category (and I’m truly thankful to each and everyone of them) even though I’ve never campaigned for votes and didn’t even nominate myself in the first place.

    You can check the figures on pages 10-11-12 of Cloud 961’s latest issue here.

  • In support of the Lebanese army

    I’ve been noticing some traffic signs and parking meter machines around Achrafieh with stickers on them calling to take a stand with the Lebanese army.

    park meter sign

    I’m all for supporting the Lebanese army, but isn’t that also considered as an act of vandalism?

    Second photo via @nicolasehnaoui

  • News coverage in Lebanon

    It’s funny how Lebanese news outlets publish whatever is coming their way when an incident occurs in the country.

    Here’s what Tayyar, ElNashra, and LBC posted about today’s blast in Taanayel.

    Tayyar.org:

    tayyar

    Elnashra on twitter: (A rocket!)

    “النشرة”: الانفجار في تعنايل ناجم عن سقوط صاروخ على الطريق الدولية

    Bassam Abou Zeid from LBC on twitter:

    انفجار تعنايل ناجم عن عبوة صغيرة استهدفت فان أبيض وسيارة ب أم زيتية زجاجهما داكن وقد سقط زجاج السيارتين ولكنهما تابعتا طريقهما نحو المصنع

  • Hit-and-run woman driver kills a municipal police in Saida

  • Mobile phone prices in Lebanon increasing already

    mobile phones

    As you all know, and in order to stop mobile phones smuggling in Lebanon, the ministry of telecommunications is now requiring all traders to register the IMEI (a unique ID assigned to each mobile device) of every legally imported mobile phone or tablet.

    The collected IMEIs will then be used as of today June 1st to filter the devices that are allowed access to our mobile networks (alfa and touch). So typically speaking, a legally imported mobile phone with its due taxes paid will be allowed to connect to the mobile networks, while other smuggled ones will be denied access since their unique identifiers are not registered at the ministry.

    The weakest ring in the process is of course the group of people who will be responsible of the data entry of the registered IMEIs. Since they will be easily able to register and IMEI of some untaxed mobile if there was not much control over them.

    As a result, mobile phone prices ended up notably increasing over the last week. For instance, the guy who sold me my mobile was listing the iPhone 16 GB for around $650 since mid-May I guess, then he increased the price 2 days ago to $745. Logically due to the fact that the handsets he’s currently offering were legally imported and subject to some import tax.

    Everybody is eventually complaining about all of this, especially that it gets a bit complicated when you buy some used handset from abroad. And I know it’s wrong to complain about a price increase when it’s a result of complying with the government taxation rules, but still, a $100 increase totally sucks!

  • Videos and photos from Nejmeh Square today

    Protestors gathered at Nejmeh Square today to oppose the extension of parliament’s mandate, but shorty after took things a bit further by throwing tomatoes at the MP’s cars as they were getting out of the area.

    One of the protestors, Marwan Maalouf, even tried to set up a tent next to the parliament but was immediately arrested by the Lebanese army.

    Below are also some photos taken by Habib Battah.

    MP 4 MP 3

    MP 2 MP 1

    I wonder which MP was in that Mercedes which apparently took the biggest share of tomatoes!

  • We need a second Adel Shehab

    Ersal

    Following the news about the three Lebanese soldiers who were killed in Ersal yesterday morning, a story from 1958 involving the late army commander Adel Shehab started making rounds on Facebook.

    Back when General Adel Shehab was in charge, some gangsters killed lieutenant Benoit Barakat while he was on duty in Ersal. So Adel Shehab responded  by granting the villagers one hour for them to surrender their guns and hand him the criminals. Three hours later, when the people of Ersal didn’t do anything, the General ordered warplanes to start bombarding the village for several hours until all criminals surrendered themselves.

    This isn’t the first time for the people of Ersal to kill soldiers who vowed to protect their village and the whole country, and there’s definitely no guarantee that they won’t do it one more time, so what’s holding General Kahwaji from doing the same as Adel Shehab did in the 1950’s?

  • Celebrating FC Bayern’s win of the Champions League

    One would think the Lebanese national team was actually playing!

  • Aboul Ghadab got it right

    If only everyone in Tripoli thought the same as this man instead of hating on each other.