Author: Maya Zankoul

  • iPass

    Newspaper that reads: "Expect most innovative innovation of innovations"

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    Newspaper that reads: "The Chosen product to be announced today by Steve Jobs"

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    Maya eating pop corn in front of her laptop, saying "hush, it started!" (about Apple's Keynote)

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    Steve Jobs says: "I was out of ideas, so I thought, let's mix what we already have. We have a laptop, and we have an iphone. Let's make something in between".

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    Hands shown "baking" the iphone "so we took the iphone and we enlarged it like that"

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    Person shown ironing the iphone

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    And voila! The iPad is born! Incredible!

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    Maya, disappointed: "I just wasted this pop corn for nothing!"

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    what we learned today: when something requires THAT MUCH marketing before its announcement, it must mean the product in itself is not enough to convince. Steve Jobs must be mocking us - in my humble opinion. iPass this sophistication tool and stick to my dear macbook.

    As you can see I was disappointed by yesterday’s announcement, let alone how the name was ridiculed on Twitter later on with the #iTampon jokes. Anyway, I was expecting all this because of all the media buzz. Have a great day! 🙂 And here’s a song for you (that I heard on the radio yesterday and reminded me of the old days :D)



  • Discovering Woopra!

    Prologue: To those who don't know, Woopra is a real-time web tracking and analysis application that I installed after I self-hosted the blog, to be able to follow the stats, and see who visits the site, etc.

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    Before Woopra. Man telling me "Hey I saw your post about the plumber... So true!"

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    I reply "oooh! That's so lovely to hear! Thank you!"

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    After woopra. Man telling me "Hey! I saw your post about the plumber. So true!"

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    I reply: " I know. You saw it yesterday at 12:46PM. You spent 2 min 47 sec on the page through safari on a mac with 1440 x 900 screen resolution. Man appears dumbstruck.

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    AND! You live in Beirut, Lebanon. Man, afraid, excuses himself.

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    Woopra also improved geography skills, from the maps of the stats pages.

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    Woopra also allows you to show off your knowledge instead of your clothes. "Did you know that Sweden and Ukraine flags had the same colours?"

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    There's just one small issue: they forgot to mention "use with moderation". Shall I work now or shall I check woopra?

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    Checking woopra: wow! there are 20 visitors on the blog at the same time!

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    Woopra Diagram: Work or Woopra? > Woopra > Food or Woopra? > Woopra! > Sleep or Woopra? > Woopra! > Life or Woopra? .... >

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    Woopra! Maya, still at work, but looking very old. Spider webs are visible on computers with a spider hanging down the desk.

    And here’s my story with Woopra! I’ve become seriously addicted to following you guys go in and out of the blog, checking the pages, knowing all about your home countries and screen resolutions 😛 Sometimes, I even have the option to chat with you – so don’t be surprised if you get a pop out saying “Maya wants to chat with you”. It’ll be me spending my day or night on Woopra 🙂 It’s beautiful & touching knowing that at a given time, simultaneously, someone in Togo, someone in Estonia and someone in Norway is reading one of the comics of this blog. Makes me so happy! 🙂

    I really advise all of you who have websites to install it (but first get a paranoïa personality-type check, just in case). Also about Woopra, it is proudly founded by Lebanese Elie Khoury & partner.

    I’ll now leave you with Natalie Imbruglia’s song ‘One more addiction’ which fits the situation perfectly. From her album “Left of the middle” that I used to  listen to 24/7 when I was in 6ème (6th grade) in Jeddah. How time flies…
    See you soon! 😉


  • Life goes on…

    Post featured on itoot.net

    I woke up to hideous news this morning

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    Ethiopian plane crash in Beirut, EA409

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    I rush away from bed where I was reading the news

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    Watching business man making statement on TV through press conference, heart broken

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    Discussing with my mom. She asks me how exactly I

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    Mom says "you have to be strong! what about the boat that sank off Tripoli coast last week?" I reply "I

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    Mom says "what about the train that collided in iran yesterday?" I reply "I give up"

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    Life is full of accidents. It

    I”m too moved by this accident, so I”ll just leave music to do the talking Pat Metheny & Brad Mehldau”s Make Peace. Enjoy, and have a safe day.

  • Rainy days & crazy ways

    Maya adding a "for sale" sign on her car

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    Maya says "who needs a car these days?"

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    Maya holding an umbrella, says: "It's been raining for few days in a row, and naturally..."

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    "Our horizontally challenged highway has been very receptive! (shows a view of highway with water gathered on the side, and fish swimming in it)

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    Outcome: Hummer passing next to my small car, and starting to splash it.

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    Hummer splashing Maya's car with a huge wave of water. Maya looks terrified.

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    Major SPLASH! on Maya's car

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    I know how to solve this! (Maya shows in surfing outfit and holding a surfboard)

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    Woohoo! Maya surfing on splash caused by big car passing on water

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    "What? At least it's less noisy and less polluting than scooters and motorcycles!"

    The highway I’m mostly referring to here is the part between Dbayeh & Jounieh. If you’ve passed there after the rain, you might’ve noticed how the left lane is empty of cars all the time. I rushed to it (when I saw it empty) only to find my car starting to drown in water. So I decided to find a solution to this issue! And here you are.

    With this, I wish you all a great Monday. Here’s some jazzy reggae to cheer up your week start: it’s from an Australian band, called “The Cat Empire”. Enjoy! 🙂 Protons, Neutrons, Electrons ~ The Cat Empire (if you like them check out their other songs: Two Shoes, Lullaby & The Wine Song – Can’t upload them all with my beautiful connection)

    By the way: I fixed the RSS feed issue, let me know if any of you still face problems subscribing to this new link. I’m also starting to fill up the “Alt” tag of images properly for visually impaired people to be able to read the comics (as it has been noted to me on Twitter that visually impaired people aren’t  able to read the comics.

  • A new era begins…

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    Welcome to your new home, my beautifuls! 🙂 I don’t know if it shows, but I’m super-super-excited about the move! After all these years, and all the heated Twitter discussions, I have finally made it!

    My blog is now self-hosted, and I can play around with it as I please! 🙂 Hope you like the new design (I know 2 or 3 of you who will be delighted to see the header has been changed :D)

    The major thanks goes to the loveliest Elie Khoury, who did the whole move in less than an hour – and supported me and gave me feedback, and who took my extreme nagging and worrying very positively, thus making the move possible with the most efficiency & fun! Thank you so much Elie!

    Now to all of you RSS subscribers, I’m going to please ask you to switch the blog URL from mayazankoul.wordpress.com, to mayazankoul.com. That’s 9 characters less – Save the Planet 🙂

    With this, I wish you all a beautiful weekend. Here’s a song dedicated to you: I’m Sticking With You – The Velvet Underground. Enjoy!

  • As much as you want!

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    (more…)

  • Fanart #7

    The latest very sweet fanart I received is from a Lebanese musician. It’s a beautifully painted porcelain piece, containing one of the comics from the Celebration story! I can’t tell you how touched I was to see it … Thank you 🙂

    In other news, Philippe El Hage’s website that I’ve been working on is up! Philippe is my all-time favourite jazz pianist. More on http://www.elhagephilippe.com/.

    Have a great weekend my darlings, see you Monday!

  • Sent from my laptop – with love!

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    Yes, that’s how I will end my emails from now on, because the medium through which we are sending emails seems to be essential nowadays! So I might as well specify that the email was “Sent from my laptop”. Proudly, mind you! 😛

    Have a great day my darlings, I’ve got a song for you today, a 2-piano piece by Simeon Ten Holt, Canto Ostinato. Enjoy! 🙂

  • Let's talk about colors…

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    To all of you who did post the colours & details of their bras, no offense 🙂 It did add some spice and fun to Facebook – which has been getting boring after Twitter and all that jazz… But in my humble opinion, the campaign did not in any way raise awareness about cancer, it only got people discussing bra colors in flirty ways in the comments section.

    Some interesting reads about the issue:

    • http://www.bigfishmag.com/extra/blog/8/

    • http://www.fakingnews.com/2010/01/thousands-of-voyeurs-spend-whole-day-thinking-about-bras/

    • http://dmhatingfemisfromhell.blogspot.com/2010/01/im-wearing-silky-leopard-print-pushup.html

    Enjoy, and before I leave you to your busy weeks, I’d like to dedicate a song by Lila Downs to you!

    Agua de rosas:

    Enjoy! 🙂

  • Illustrating for ELLE Oriental

    No comic today, just some illustrations that I did for this month’s ELLE Oriental magazine! More specifically for their report “ELLE en parle” which tackled the topic of “Hospitality in the Middle East”.

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    Click to enlarge – ELLE en parle spread 1

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    Click to enlarge – ELLE en parle spread 2

    Great stuff in this issue. Go get it now!! 🙂

    And have a lovely weekend!

  • High-priority salutation

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    GRRRRRRRR! Can you believe it? All this honking turned out to be a very creative and thoughtful way of saying hello to someone you cross in the middle of the road. Regarding the “truck that fell 3 days ago” that I’m referring to, here it is and here’s the aftermath. And before I leave you to your busy days, here’s a song for you! 🙂 Sarah Slean, Get Home. Have a great day!

    <– If this gives you “file not found” you can listen here.

    On a side-note: my designer-colleague Arine left the office to do her masters yesterday! I wish her all the best of luck for the coming year, will miss her a lot!

  • The kissing predicament

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    Seriously! It’s the same story EVERYTIME! How am  I supposed to know if it’s one or two or three? You always end up having to throw a “oh hehe I give 3 kisses Lebanese style!” or “oh! hehe you want to greet Lebanese style?” I guess it’s better to just stop greeting people completely 😛

    Oh!! First post of 2010 😀 HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU MY DARLINGS, love you so much 🙂 And because I do, here’s a song (that I absolutely adore)  dedicated to you to start your year with 🙂 Kiss Me, by Sixpense None The Richer – it’s a classic!


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