Author: Maya Zankoul

  • New Year options!

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    Those beautiful billboards ALL OVA THE STREETS have been haunting me! Are there people who REALLY enjoy going to ‘OSCAR PALACE’ to watch Marimar & Toufic Abdo singing and dancing for 800-2000$ per person? Well maybe there is, but please stop those New-year-style badly photoshopped billboards! So my darlings, this is my last post for 2009. It was an amazing year, and I hope that 2010 will only be better for all of you. Enjoy your eves and don’t get too drunk you don’t want to start your next year with a headache! 🙂 See you next year!!! Love you all!! 🙂

  • Quid Pro Quo

    Laila's Discussion with her granmother

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    *Nefrah mennik = you get married (translation for non arabic-speaking readers)

    I thought social pressure for marriage starts for women in their early 30’s. But guess what! From the moment girls are born, they are brought up to “hope” and “dream” of the day they will get married (most women I know dream of this day). Marriage & childbearing is still regarded as the most rewarding achievement in the life of a woman, while all the other “career-related” achievements are only secondary and should be avoided if the financial situation allows it. This clearly causes a lack of confidence and sense of failure to some of the women who are not married – which I find completely wrong! I’m glad Kolena Laila initiative is giving me the space to say what I think about all this!

    Other Lebanese “bloggeresses” for Kolena Laila.

    Café Thawra “Fighting the right ennemy”

    • Identity Chef “The Lebanese Laila: 5 lessons in Marketing & Self Branding”

    Independence05

    Lara’s photograph

    • … (let me know if I missed someone! 🙂 )

    Now before I leave you back to your holidays (for the fortunate ones) and to your work (for the not-so-lucky ones like me!) here is a song from the soundtrack of a movie that I’ve been CRAVING to watch, but haven’t had 2 free hours in a row to do so. Walk The Line <3 The song is ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’ sang by Joaquim Phoenix & Reese Witherspoon for the movie … Enjoy, and have a great day 🙂

  • I can feel it coming…

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    It’s here! It’s Christmas fever. Christmas is in 2 days and I still didn’t get all the gifts for friends & family, and the TRAFFIC isn’t helping!!  But anyway 🙂 now is not a time to complain! It’s one of my favourite times of the year (except for the items listed above). I love the lights and the gifts and the whole spirit! Have a great day (to those of you on vacation) and to the rest of you who like me have to work until the 25th… GOOD LUCK 🙂

  • Fanart #6

    I’m SO happy! Just got a fanart by the very sweet Beshr Kayali. Thanks so much Beshr, it’s lovely! Beshr & his bro Mohammad are one of the pioneers of podcasting in the Arab World. More on Hyperlink Podcast.

  • Time to celebrate!

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  • Overworked

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    I keep receiving emails and messages asking why I’m not posting a lot. Well, here’s the explanation 🙂 So, my darlings, I hope you will be more understanding! I still have a load of work that I am happily finishing; will keep you updated! Here’s a song to brighten up your day: Trouble is a friend, by Lenka

  • On Exotica's Christmas Blog

    My Different Christmas is Exotica’s Christmas Blog that completes their whole Christmas campaign which encourages people to get creative this season! They approached me to prepare a guest post on their blog, and I was more then happy to participate 🙂 CLick on the image below to view the submission:

  • Taxi?

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    In case you don’t know, this saying means “run from him, he will follow you”.

    So my darlings, I’ve missed you so much, and I’ve missed doing those posts that I just do for the fun of it! Since a lot of you has been asking me about the slowness in posting such posts, well, I have to tell you that it’s 4:30 am when I posting this, and I just had to do it after I finished the huge load of work that I had for the day. I have A LOT of work in the horizon, so I’m sorry if I don’t post as often as I used to. Have a bright day unstalked by taxi drivers! 🙂 Grr can’t take a walk without at least 3 services honking to ask me if I want a ride. Well, NO! Because if I wanted one, I would be telling you! Uft!

  • CCF exhibition

    • Nowlebanon.com

    Thank you to nowlebanon.com who have covered the CCF exhibition in their arts & culture page!

    http://nowlebanon.com/Arabic/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=131881

    • TéléLiban

    Thank you to TéléLiban who filmed at the exhibition and aired a report about it in their morning show “صباح الخير يا لبنان”

    [youtube= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1eipeO228E]

    The exhibition is ongoing until Dec 22! So see you there 😉

  • Some updates

    Here are some events to add to your busy calendars for Wednesday, Dec 16th

    1- Will be giving a talk at AUB at noon, Nicely107. Theme: Expression through image (vs. txt)  by modern youth in Leb.

    2- Will participate to a round table at the French Culture Center at 6:30PM along with Stavro Jabra & Armand Homsi, moderated by Julien Le Bot.

    Hope to see lots of you in those events 😉 Cheers!

  • Introducing Live Tweeting!

    And now… the project that has been keeping me just a little bit busy from you!

    Live tweeting is a real-time interactive web application for multi-language live coverage, based on micro blogging service twitter. Dec 9 – 10 is “the” internet event of Europe, Le Web, and this application will allow Arabic speakers to follow the event live & translated! I will also be translating on Twitter tomorrow.

    I got to design the livetweeting visual identity & website, and got to do some illustrations that you can discover throughout the website 😉

    Here is a scoop for you my darlings:

    Illustration to represent LiveTweeting from the floor of Le Web:

    Illustration to represent Crowdsourced Arabic Translation:

    Illustration for wrong URL page (404):

    Illustration for Error page (500):

    Now it’s true that I’ve overnighted a couple of times on this project 😛 , but the biggest credit is due to the team who worked on it, Samer Karam (who came up with the concept), Beshr Kayali (who developed the whole site! and in very very short time!), Mohammad Kayali (who did the amazing video you just watched!), and supporters, contributors: Meedan.net, Maroun Najm, Omar Christidis, Habib Haddad, Emile Cubeisy, Elie El Khoury… What do you guys think of the outcome?

    See you tomorrow on www.livetweeting.com!

    And last but not least, here’s a beautiful song to brighten up your day 🙂 ‘Make Peace’ by Brad Mehldau & Pat Metheny (WHAT  a combo!)


  • Another collab with Qifa Nabki!

    Click here to continue the story…

    Once again, I get to enjoy illustrating for a blog that I admire big time, Qifa Nabki. Hope you’ll enjoy it 🙂