Categories
Food Lebanon Weird

One Milk Carton, Two expiry dates!

Yesterday morning I wanted to eat a cup of Corn Flakes with milk, I checked the fridge to see if we have milk and found a “Taanayel Les Fermes” milk carton, during the summer we don’t drink a lot of milk here so I checked the expiry date and well I couldn’t tell if it was expired or not! If I read the English part, well the milk expired 5 days ago but the Arabic part gives the milk 4 more days!

Taanayel Les fermes Milk Carton

Taanayel Les fermes Milk CartonI ended up drinking the milk since it’s a UHT sterilized milk so a couple of days added to the 6 months if the English date is true is not a big problem but I threw the rest of the carton since it is expired anyways and we won’t be drinking from it soon.

Categories
Lebanon People

Atheism in Lebanon

I found an article on Digg about the least religious nations so I checked it and found it’s source. I used the source to check the percentage of atheists in Lebanon. As I expected it’s not a big number. Two statistics have some numbers related to Lebanon, the first one is from BBC saying less then 3% of people do not believe in god, the other is from Moaddel and Azadarmaki showing that less then 2% of Lebanese do not believe in god.

Categories
Lebanon Politics

“Civilians” left Nahr L Bared

Today the wifes and children of the Fath L Islam terrorists left the Nahr L Bared camp and are under the Lebanese Army’s custody, I don’t know if this should have been accepted by the Lebanese Army, housing and helping terrorists makes you a terrorist. I am afraid Fath L Islam only did this to have more food for the remaining days, and that this will enable them to last longer.

Lebanese Army Tank

Categories
Funny Lebanon

Kalem L Ness – Comedy

LBCI Kalem L NessTonight “Kalem L Ness” was about comedy, on LBCI’s 22 birthday the gift for Lebanese was to take the politicians out of the screen, so Marcel hosted Lebanese comedians and discussed with them every aspect of comedy, it’s effect on the Lebanese society, the Taboos still present in Lebanon and the way they deal with politics and politicians, the talk show was funny and new! It was one of the few times you felt the same way as the person on the show! it wasn’t a politician talking, it was a Lebanese citizen that was talking about your problem in a funny way, they were making us laugh about the problems we live in! During the show they also showed hilarious parts and extracts from the plays and creations of everyone present and all of them were hilarious! I hope Marcel Ghanem hosts more similar shows instead of just focusing on the politicians, the comedians today really said what the people want to say and since the name of the show is “The talk of the people” hearing people more will really make the show better in my opinion.

Categories
Lebanon People

Land Mines in Lebanon

We all know that Land Mines are contaminating many areas of South Lebanon, but we rarely see a news report about the extend of this problem in other areas of Lebanon.

A couple of days ago I was in Batroun, while in the car I noticed that the road is surrounded by barbed wires with a red sign saying “Algham” (Mines in Arabic), I asked why the area is full of mines and the answer was that this was the border between some of the free areas of Lebanon and the areas occupied by Syria, when we reached our destination the same sign was hanging on an Electricity pole!

Danger Mines Lebanon Batroun

That wasn’t the first time I know about mines in areas other then the south, we were once in Rechmaya (Aley Region) and a friend pointed to Deir L Kamar (Chouf Region) and said that the whole mountain was full mines the Lebanese Forces planted while they were retreating to stop the Druze advance.

Today I searched for some map of the locations of the minefields, the only one I found is from 1999, it’s attached to this article (also from 1999). What’s scary in the article is that apparently they don’t know the exact number of areas contaminated, some countries won’t give us the maps of the mine locations (Syria and Israel) and many militias don’t want to give information (weird since all of them are now part of our “political life”), what’s also scary is that according to the author every year 200 people are injured or killed by mines in Lebanon!

Lebanon Mines Map

I also found this speech by Jeffrey Feltman (US Ambassador to Lebanon) from 2004 containing some estimates, in the speech he says that we have an estimated 400,000 mines and unexploded ordnance in Lebanon and that 2800 people have been killed by them!

So what is real extend of the problem? How many minefields (and undiscovered minefields) are outside the south and do they pose a danger to the people living in those regions?

Categories
Lebanon Politics

President Bachir Gemayel

President Cheikh Bachir Gemayel

25 years ago, on the 23rd of August 1982, the dream of many Lebanese started to come true, Bachir Gemayel was elected president of the Lebanese Republic, a new era had began.

This dream didn’t last long, 21 days later he was assassinated, since then the situation in Lebanon kept deteriorating, Christians destroyed each others, The country was occupied for many years and now the politicians Bachir used to fight are “leading” this country (or what’s left of it).

I never knew Bachir and many people my age didn’t, but just listening to his speeches makes you love him, he was Lebanese and had all the qualities of a leader, he could have saved Lebanon and that’s why they killed him.

Here’s a Video of the election day, the celebrations that followed and the foreign medias reporting the news.

Categories
Lebanon Photography

Trip To 3youn 2erghoch

Yesterday we went to 3youn 2erghoch, this village is located on the other side of the Cedars Mountains overlooking the Bekaa Valley, the village is very small, you can only see a couple of houses in it and some restaurants surrounding small lakes.

Here are some pictures of the trip:

Driving in the clouds

Driving in the clouds

Categories
Internet Lebanon

ADSL in Lebanon

I wanted to check and compare the ADSL prices between different ISPs in Lebanon but apparently they all have the same prices:

  • 24$ for 128kbps up/32kbps down, 2GB monthly bandwidth
  • 34$ for 256kbps up/64kbps down, 3GB monthly bandwidth
  • 47$ for 512kbps up/128kbps down, 4GB monthly bandwidth
  • 77$ for 1024kbps up/256kbps down, 5GB monthly bandwidth

The only difference between ISPs is the size of the mailboxes you get with your account, and a few dollars between modems available, Terranet offers to double your speed from 8pm to 8am but adds “Free Double Speed Feature is subject to feasibility study.” so I don’t know if you can get a doubled speed at night.

I also doubt that the monthly limit is enough now that people watch a lot of videos and download a lot of media from the internet.

ADSL

Categories
Lebanon Politics

Lebanese Hawker Hunters flying next week?

The LBCI reporter said a few days ago that Hawker Hunters might help bombing Nahr L Bared, I wrote a post about that but nothing was confirmed yet.

Today I found this Aviation Forum, it contains a post confirming that the Hunters will fly again, here’s what a user said:

Was on the phone with a former retired Hunter pilot and he was a little doubtful but confirmed the news that they are getting ready to fly again. They already have contacted him in case they needed the help of more experienced people for the Hunters.
He said they will try to make the first flight this week. If the Hunters fly, it would be absolutely amazing for all the fans!

I hope they fly again and send those animals to hell!

A Lebanese Hawker Hunter

Categories
Lebanon Politics Programing

Vista Sidebar Gadget: Lahoud Term End

Vista Sidebar Gadget: Lahoud Term End PreviewThis is a Gadget showing a countdown of the remaining days of Lahoud as a president of Lebanon.
To use the gadget you must have Windows Vista, download the gadget and install it, if the image is broken on the borders after the install, close the gadget and re-start it.

Click here to Download the Gadget

If you want a gadget showing the duration of the opposition sit-in click here.