• A flag Q&A

    Just a quick thought during the flight to Geneva! 🙂

  • Add Ma Baddik! [As much as you want]

    Presenting… my latest animation! 🙂

    Here’s the original post that the animation was based on.
    [Youtube blocked at your work? See it on Vimeo. Vimeo blocked at your work? Change your job!]

    I’d like to give a BIG thank you to Toni Yammine who offered to help with the sound, making the animation much richer and more fun!!!

    Here’s a sneak peek of the making of, enjoy!

    I will end today’s post with a song by an ‘underground alternative’ Lebanese band from the 80’s, the Quiminboos. This song, called Behsos, is impossibly cute, authentic and funny [mostly if you understand Arabic & Lebanese accents]. It’s from the CD compilation of Lebanese alternative music, Banadoura. Have a lovely day! 🙂

    03 Behsos

  • Ode to Municipal Elections

    Ode to Municipal Elections: On a breezy April morning, just like a divine call The holes where my car was accustomed to fall Suddenly disappeared, all On that same [once un]fortunate path That used to host drivers' wrath Flamboyant roundabouts have blossomed Midst this jolly festival I ask myself: what the h##l? Must be municipal elections already! Maybe we should make them yearly? For road adjustments more regularly!

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    Ode to Municipal Elections: On a breezy April morning, just like a divine call The holes where my car was accustomed to fall Suddenly disappeared, all On that same [once un]fortunate path That used to host drivers' wrath Flamboyant roundabouts have blossomed Midst this jolly festival I ask myself: what the h##l? Must be municipal elections already! Maybe we should make them yearly? For road adjustments more regularly!

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    Ode to Municipal Elections: On a breezy April morning, just like a divine call The holes where my car was accustomed to fall Suddenly disappeared, all On that same [once un]fortunate path That used to host drivers' wrath Flamboyant roundabouts have blossomed Midst this jolly festival I ask myself: what the h##l? Must be municipal elections already! Maybe we should make them yearly? For road adjustments more regularly!

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    Ode to Municipal Elections: On a breezy April morning, just like a divine call The holes where my car was accustomed to fall Suddenly disappeared, all On that same [once un]fortunate path That used to host drivers' wrath Flamboyant roundabouts have blossomed Midst this jolly festival I ask myself: what the h##l? Must be municipal elections already! Maybe we should make them yearly? For road adjustments more regularly!

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    Ode to Municipal Elections: On a breezy April morning, just like a divine call The holes where my car was accustomed to fall Suddenly disappeared, all On that same [once un]fortunate path That used to host drivers' wrath Flamboyant roundabouts have blossomed Midst this jolly festival I ask myself: what the h##l? Must be municipal elections already! Maybe we should make them yearly? For road adjustments more regularly!

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    Ode to Municipal Elections: On a breezy April morning, just like a divine call The holes where my car was accustomed to fall Suddenly disappeared, all On that same [once un]fortunate path That used to host drivers' wrath Flamboyant roundabouts have blossomed Midst this jolly festival I ask myself: what the h##l? Must be municipal elections already! Maybe we should make them yearly? For road adjustments more regularly!

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    Ode to Municipal Elections: On a breezy April morning, just like a divine call The holes where my car was accustomed to fall Suddenly disappeared, all On that same [once un]fortunate path That used to host drivers' wrath Flamboyant roundabouts have blossomed Midst this jolly festival I ask myself: what the h##l? Must be municipal elections already! Maybe we should make them yearly? For road adjustments more regularly!

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    Ode to Municipal Elections: On a breezy April morning, just like a divine call The holes where my car was accustomed to fall Suddenly disappeared, all On that same [once un]fortunate path That used to host drivers' wrath Flamboyant roundabouts have blossomed Midst this jolly festival I ask myself: what the h##l? Must be municipal elections already! Maybe we should make them yearly? For road adjustments more regularly!

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    Ode to Municipal Elections: On a breezy April morning, just like a divine call The holes where my car was accustomed to fall Suddenly disappeared, all On that same [once un]fortunate path That used to host drivers' wrath Flamboyant roundabouts have blossomed Midst this jolly festival I ask myself: what the h##l? Must be municipal elections already! Maybe we should make them yearly? For road adjustments more regularly!

    I hope you like my poem. I felt like writing it to express my amazement at the latest road adjustments in Jounieh. Note that this is freestyle poetry so don’t judge the rhymes or syllables 😛

    Now for the true poetry, here’s Ella Fitzgerald singing ‘Ev’ry time we say goodbye!’ Have a beautiful week! 🙂

    1-01 Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye


  • May Goodies!

    And here is May’s wallpaper! Download away! 🙂

    Download sizes: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, iphone.

    As for today’s song, here is Lisa Ekdahl’s amazing ‘You’re gonna see a lot of me’. Enjoy!

    Song

    I’ve got quite a lot coming up for the month of May, will update you about all of it on Monday. Until then, have a lovely weekend!

  • Crest Smile – UPDATE

    If you support this, you can now vote or comment HERE! Thank you Crest for approving the submission after all! 🙂

    No song today, I have the flu and need to catch up on some sleeping, so have a beauuutiful day all!

  • Smile like you mean it!

    What's with the whole "vote for my smile" contest for femme magazine cover?

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    Come on! We already have enough voting to do with the municipality elections!

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    So femme and crest are doing a competition for best smile cover girl

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    so i thought.. why not show my smile for crest and femme?

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    my submission, which got rejected...
    I wish they had accepted my submission! Their moderator doesn’t seem to have any sense of humor at all…
    I hope the girls submitting their photos read the terms well!

    “8. By sending her photograph, a Participant assents to its free-of-charge publication at any time by the proprietor of the “mycrestsmile.com” domain.”

    If you want to know what I’m talking about, you can see the campaign site here.

    In other news, I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about another war happening in Lebanon soon… the thought of which brings out very ugly feelings in me. Here’s this song (&video) by Meen produced in 1 day only during the 2006 war. Hoping this is all only talk and Lebanon will keep on growing like it has been doing for the past 4 years. You can listen to the piano version of the song here.


  • Parking Ticket Sticker – update

    UPDATE:

    The parking ticket sticker made it to the newspaper this morning! 😀 You can read it in today”s issue of Al Akhbar.

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    I”ve been getting A LOT of parking tickets around Beirut. So I thought that I might as well be courteous with the policemen working hard on adding the tickets. So I created those stickers!

    In English:

    In Arabic: [I guess the darakeh will understand this better]

    And because I love you all so much, I”ve uploaded the PDFs for you to download, print, and add to your cars!

    * Download CarSticker_EN in English

    • Download CarSticker_AR in Arabic


    The stickers are licensed under Creative Commons, you can download them, use them, remix them. But you cannot sell them. And don”t forget to mention the source! 🙂

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

    If you”re wondering how to place the sticker, here”s a HOW TO image:

    Have a beautiful week my darlings! Here”s a song for you 🙂 Nick Drake”s “One of these things first”.

    04 One Of These Things First

  • Parking ticket here!

    I”ve been getting A LOT of parking tickets around Beirut. So I thought that I might as well be courteous with the policemen working hard on adding the tickets. So I created those stickers!

    In English:

    In Arabic: [I guess the darakeh will understand this better]

    And because I love you all so much, I”ve uploaded the PDFs for you to download, print, and add to your cars!

    * Download CarSticker_EN in English

    • Download CarSticker_AR in Arabic


    The stickers are licensed under Creative Commons, you can download them, use them, remix them. But you cannot sell them. And don”t forget to mention the source! 🙂

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

    If you”re wondering how to place the sticker, here”s a HOW TO image:

    Have a beautiful week my darlings! Here”s a song for you 🙂 Nick Drake”s “One of these things first”.

    04 One Of These Things First

  • Lebanese Laïque Pride

    I am NOT telling you my religion because it”s about time we learned in a country like Lebanon that you cannot judge and stereotype a person based on something that, in 99.9% of the cases, (s)he was born with.

    Tomorrow is the Lebanese Laique Pride. See you at 11:00am near Ain El Mreisseh.

    As for me, if you must know, well I believe in music. It”s the only thing I truly believe in. Here are 2 beauties for you today: Ella”s fantastic Mac the Knife, and Lhasa de Sela”s fantastic Pajaro.

    02 Mack The Knife

    09 Pajaro

  • Briefly in the elevator

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    The guy managed to tell me his autobiography from the ground to the 14th floor. It was interesting and I felt it’s really a Lebanese superpower to be able to converse deeply with anyone you face, in any situation, at any time!

    Today’s song is Tarzan Boy’s Baltimore. This tune is full of positivity! Have a great day/weekend my darlings! 🙂

  • Schengen Disagreement

    There, I said it. I’m so sick of all the Schengen procedures, when I’m only going to participate to a round table on blogging [more details on that soon] and not to blow up the country, really.

    Anyway, here’s a song to brighten up your days. Who else than Brad Mehldau? <3 Enjoy! 🙂

    10 No Moon at All

  • CC Beirut highlights

    To those who don’t know, Friday April 16th was the 1st Creative Commons Salon in Beirut. Creative Commons in a type of ‘flexible copyright’ that allows you to share your work with less restrictions than the classical coypright. All the content of this blog is under a CC license [see bottom of right sidebar], which means you can take the comics, use them and abuse them, as long as you mention the source without making money out of them.

    You can check photos of the event here and here. You can check a video here [thanks to Hyperstage.net]. For more details about the presentations lineup, check the Facebook page ‘description’.

    A big thank you to Donatella, Mohamad, Naeema & Habib with whom I worked closely to make this event possible. Here’s Donatella’s announcement of the Salon.

    In short, it was a fantabulous event. Thank you to all who helped and attended! Hopefully this will be the first of many! Let’s spread the spirit of sharing our work 🙂

    In the spirit of Creative Commons and sharing, Slutterhouse just released their first single EP “Inside the Station – remix EP” in all digital stores worldwide, AND for download. For more about this Lebanese ‘electro-rock with a twist’ band [whose music I love!!],  check their website www.slutterhouse.com, or start your Monday with their song 🙂

    Slutterhouse – Inside the Station (Pushtronic mix)