Check out this cool rendition of Warda’s Batwanes Beek by Anghami.
For their 5th anniversary, they recently gathered several musicians such as Jean-Marie Riachy, Guy Manoukian, and Jose Fernandez among others at their premises in Beirut to produce this cover.
If you’re a fan of Marvel or superhero movies in general, then here’s your chance to re-watch or catch up on the Marvel Cinematic Universe films for free. The people at a production company called “Monkey Business Dreams” are planning host screenings for 18 Marvel movies each Tuesday at 7PM starting January 2nd 2018 until “Avengers: Infinity War” is released on May 4th 2018. Each screening will be followed by a discussion and a Q&A on plot and production.
If you’re interested to attend, you can find the screening location coordinates here and below is their schedule:
No snacks or drinks are sold on location by the way, so feel free to bring your own stuff.
With new year’s eve just around the corner, chances are a lot of people haven’t figured yet where are they going to spend it. So if you’re among these, here are 25 events and parties happening around town to help you decide.
For even more ideas, you can check this list by Lebtivity.
I kept following the news and what people wrote on blogs and social media over the last few days about the murder of Rebecca Dykes on Friday night, and I found it quite astonishing how almost everybody was steering the conversation from Uber’s lack of responsibility to blaming the murder on our sexist culture.
I do acknowledge that we have a problem in our Lebanese society. Some women are exposed to domestic violence, others suffer from sexual harassment… but whether you like it or not this is unfortunately part of life and nothing is going to change overnight, just like you can’t expect gun violence to suddenly end in the US. Small progress however is being made thanks to the efforts of NGOs like Abaad and Kafa for example.
Still, the problem with the case of Rebecca Dykes doesn’t only lie in our culture which looks down on women, but also in the fact that Uber massively fucked up by allowing a driver with a criminal record to join their platform while people usually opt to use their service to feel in safer hands.
According to Uber’s webite, a clean Judicial Record is a minimum requirements for those who want to drive for them. Therefore, this incident could have been avoided if someone did their job right by rejecting this driver from getting on board… And to make things worse, they didn’t even issue a public statement to at least condemn the crime or apologize for the violation they did. On the other hand, when you visit their Facebook page, you ironically get greeted by an image with the tag line “Cheers to Safer Nightlife”. RIGHT!!!
Uber also had a similar problem in UK earlier this year by the way and were stripped of their licence in London for failure to report criminal offenses and lack of performing driver background checks. So it’s only logical to hold them accountable for doing the same here as well, in hope of at least getting a straight explanation about what went wrong on their side.
Update:
Uber reached out to me to give their side and below is what they wrote:
“All drivers that use the Uber app in Lebanon are fully licensed by the government and must have a clear judicial record.“ – Uber spokesperson
- We can confirm that the driver arrested for this horrific attack had a clean background check and all the correct government permits.
- We are in close contact with the authorities and we’re assisting their investigation in any way we can.
Walking through Beirut Souks, you can’t but notice these medallions fixed into the ground at various spots around the streets. I never knew their purpose until a couple of weeks ago when I looked closely to notice that they have “Beirut Heritage Trail” engraved on them and that each one points to a different direction. So I googled them a bit and found these medallions actually link archaeological sites, historic public spaces and heritage buildings over a 2.5Km walking circuit around the Souks and Beirut downtown.
The circuit will start at the Beirut Souks, which retain the 2,500 year-old ancient street grid and Ottoman access gates, and incorporate several archeological remains including the Phoenico-Persian quarter, the city wall and moat, the restored Mamluk Zawiyat Ibn Iraq and Majidiya mosque. Among the sites featured in the trail are the Emir Munzer mosque, the Roman Baths, Riad El Solh Square and the Grand Theatre to name a few. Source
The project also consists of 50 site panels providing information about the historic places around the heritage trail, so I assume one can learn a great deal about the history of Beirut by following the marks. I personally only know the history of very few sites in downtown, so I will be soon trying to make that walk especially that my kid loves to ride his scooter around the area there.
It goes without saying that Reddit has some pretty awesome content that can make even the most boring days more interesting. And for those with interest in Lebanese related stuff, there’s a fairly active subreddit (/r/Lebanon) with daily updates, vintage photos, interesting videos, and more…
One interesting contribution I came across today is a “cutural map” of Beirut by /u/EDBTZ0323 with locations for 40 prominent museums and art galleries in the city. I imagined it would be quite useful for art lovers and tourists alike and so I thought of sharing it here and you may check on this link.
Beit Misk was pronounced over the last weekend as the first “Smart City” in Lebanon after Ogero enabled internet connectivity over fiber optics to the residents there.
Earlier this month Ogero announced it will be offering residential fiber connection to the people of Hamra and Achrafieh but it came as a no surprise to have the Beit Misk residents getting it ahead of everybody else since the project developers took a fiber infrastructure into consideration during construtions, which eventually made Ogero’s job easier to provide this service there.
Speed tests conducted by Chairman Imad Kreidieh during the launching event in the presence of minister Jamal Jarraj reached ~900Mbps which is quite impressive, and I believe it would be great if households there got >50Mbps connections.
This cool guy, Georgie Fechter, is Masters of Dirt’s organizer and thought it would be a good idea to go for a swim in Ramlet El Bayda along with his friends while they were here in Beirut during the “BEASTS” event.
In the video you see him walking with excitement all the way from Raouche to Ramlet El Bayda despite a knee injury, and gets all cheerful once he gets to the water. However, moments after he starts swimming, a friend tells him the water tastes awkward and the two get back to the shore only to discover dead fish and pieces of shit everywhere… From there onward their reaction is absolutely priceless! 😀
Start watching at the the 2m08s mark.
I was on Reddit the other day when I landed on a thread about an issue of Batman from the 80s titled “A death in the Family” in which Batman pursues the Joker all the way to Beirut and the Bekaa valley!
The story is full of misconceptions about the Lebanese people and relates a lot to the politics back then (and unsurprisingly now as well). In the comic book, Batman and Robin go to Beirut and cooperates with a Mossad agent named Sharmin Rosen in order to stop the Joker from selling a nuclear missile to a “Shiia” terrorist group who intends to use it against Israel. They eventually succeed but at the expense of the Joker killing Robin and escaping to Ethiopia where he meets with Iran’s Khomeini and gets offered to become his ambassador at the United Nations (LOL?!).
Putting politics aside, especially if you Support Hezbollah, “A death in the family” is a fun read and is regarded as one of the highly rated Batman comics. If you are interested in checking it out you can do so in high resolution graphics on the below links:
Also check Claude El Khal’s post about the same comic book story here.
Over the last few months I’ve been relying more on Taxi Hailing apps such as Uber to get around Beirut especially when I’m out with my kid and don’t really want to care about finding a parking spot. The apps are quite convenient and frequently run promo codes, so you end up riding most of the time at a discounted rate.
A new offering by Uber recently caught my attention so I thought of sharing it here. In an attempt from them to promote tourism within our country, they’re offering what they call the UberTOUR between August 28th and September 11th which basically allows you to hire a driver for 7 hours to take you wherever you want around Lebanon for a $50 flat rate. You can also extend the trip for a maximum of 3 hours at $7.2/hour.
$50 might sound like too much for some, but when thinking about the gas price and the less stress you have to endure in weekend traffic, in addition to the fact that you can share the ride with a couple of friends, I guess it quickly becomes to sound very reasonable!
If you intend to use the service simply open the app during the above mentioned period and make sure choose to slide to “UberTOUR” to request an Uber and enjoy your next outing!