Tag: beirut

  • Visiting Zahle #1

    Last week, March 8 [International women’s day], was the opening of ‘Amalgame’ exhibition at the French Culture Center [CCF] of Zahle. It was a chance to discover a beautiful town far from Beirut’s chaos...

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    Zahle is a gorgeous town that was nicknamed "bride of the bekaa" by poet said akl

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    It's located right behind the mountains, in the Bekaa valley.

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    The area is full of blossoming almond trees

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    … That was the “touristic” aspect of the Zahle visit! Isn’t Lebanon just beautiful? You can see some photos of the visit on the Facebook page. Tomorrow, I will tell you about the “serious aspect” i.e. exhibition, book-signing and encounters with lovely local schools & university students.

    And before I leave you to your busy days, here are 2 Lebanese songs that I love [for a change!] by Fairouz: Al Bint Al Chalabiya & Shayef El Bahr Shou Kbir. Enjoy & have a beautiful day 🙂

    AL BINT EL CHALABIYA

    09 Shayef el Bahr shou Kbir

  • Consumption, creation and Arabs

    I was very lucky to illustrate 2 cartoons for the presentation of Donatella Della Ratta at the Young Leaders Social Media Cafe. Dona is the manager of Creative Commons Middle East, and we are now helping her organize the 1st CC Salon in Beirut, so stay tuned! 😉 Here are the 2 illustrations:

    1- “From Bedouins in a desert to media savvy terrorists: those are the Arabs in the eyes of the West. How do we get rid of this??”

    2- “Switching from the culture of consumption to the culture of creation. Can Arabs do it?”

    And here”s a photo of Dona”s presentation [credits: Darine Sabbagh]

    The cartoons are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

  • Sunday updates (+Fanart #10)

    Yesterday, Saturday 27th February, I got the chance to give a presentation to the children of the Armenian Thorossian school in Bourj Hammoud. We talked about drawing, blogging, going after what you truly like doing in life. And we had a lot of fun! I only have this terrible photo that I took with my phone from where I was presenting.

    In other news, yesterday was also the book signing of the illustrated Arabic poetry book Haltabees (حلتبيس، اشعار من سمسم وخيار), result of the collaboration between the incredibly talented David Habchy & Rania Zaghir. Mashrou3 Leila also sang the poems, and cucumbers & semsom were given away with the book. Beautiful combo & beautiful people! AND I got my copy signed! 😉

    I wish you a beautiful Sunday, and I can only tell you one thing: you’re in for a special surprise tomorrow!!! 😉 So stay tuned! And while you wait, I leave you with Lhasa de Sela’s Desdeñosa.

    Un, deux, trois. Deux, deux trois…

  • Sunday updates

    No comic today: it’s Sunday. Instead, here are the latest TV interviews I participated to this week (yes I know it’s weird, 2 interviews in the same week!)

    The first was on BBC Arabic, and was about the blogging experience in Lebanon compared to other Arab countries. Here it is:

    For the full episode, check out fellow blogger Samer Karam’s post who was also interviewed.

    The other was on mtv and was about the blog, book, exhibitons, comics, illustrations and life. Here it is in 2 parts:

    Have a great Sunday! 😉

  • Freestyle slalom

    It's the season for... Freestyle Slalom!

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    Maya appears in full ski outfit and holding ski sticks

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    Let's do this thing! Maya puts on ski glasses

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    Our challenge today is to cross the 2 km from home to highway WITHOUT hitting the obstacles

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    The obstacles: 1- potholes (or "joora" for the experts)

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    Obstacle 2: fixed potholes! (or "mtabb" for the pros)

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    .Car shown from top view crossing road full of pothole. Depending on combination of pothole in an area, it is tagged "difficulty level 1 or 2" or even "oops... trap!"

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    .Success! (car crosses ribbon)

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    .What can I say? Living a video-game-life is such fun!

    And here’s how the daily pothole-crossing phenomenon is turned into fun! Any volunteers to turn this into a video or flash game? 😛 Oh and by the way, I’ve never skied in my life and don’t intend to learn 😀 Hope you all have a beauuuutiful Monday, and here’s another jazzy song by Lisa Ekdahl whose music has been making my days sweeter. “My Heart Belongs to Daddeh!” Enjoy 🙂

  • 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.

  • 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!

  • 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!! 🙂

  • 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 🙂

  • 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:

  • Amalgam + Point, Ligne, Bulle in Femme magazine

    A big thank you to Jenny Saleh for both features! Reminder: The exhibition at CCF in ongoing until Dec 22, so if you did not visit yet, it’s not too late! 😉 No posts today, as I am preparing you some “surprises” for the holiday season! Stay tuned!

  • AIDS… in Lebanon?

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    Translation of Arabic sentences:

    “B3id el sharr: God forbid!

    Sayer bi zahi2 hal TV: TV is so boring lately

    Sketo Naji tole3 ma3o sida. la2to mnel philipiniyye: Rumour has it that Naji is HIV positive! He caught it from the domestic worker at his house.

    Lah ya 7aram ya Rosanne. Shou hal ossa!: Oh no! Poor Rosanne.. What a disaster!”

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    So, today is World Aids Day 2009. In Lebanon, sex and all its derivatives are still rather taboo subjects. Besides, the not-so-alarming numbers of HIV-positive people makes the issue not-so-alarming comparing to other political or social problems. However, why wait until it is spread like in some other countries? The increasing sex-tourism approach to Lebanon, combined with the very high lack of STD awareness in Lebanon (mainly due to non-secular school systems) AIDS is very vulnerable to spread, and to spread fast. Let us not forget to raise awareness about it everytime we get the chance.

    Other Lebanese bloggers on World Aids Day:

    • Café Thawra

    • Chantal