Tip at the Burger King

I’ve been simmering over this one for some time.
We went to Burger King some days ago. While ordering, it occurred to me that there were three songs playing right through each other, and all pretty LOUD. One was a lame Christmas tune, another one was a quick disco beat and the third one a Happy Birthday song in French. When I mentioned it to the lady behind the counter, I hoped she would take the hint, and turn two off. “They have two birthdays upstairs,” she replied. ‘And your point is?’ I was thinking. They did not turn any of the music off, nor did they lower the volume.
You’d have to be pretty desperate and/or persistent to be sitting there in this horrendous noise. I had a bunch of muppets with me, so I was in the desperate category. Go tell them you changed your mind and want to eat somewhere else. That would be suicide.
So I sat through the – not so happy – meal with a painful smile, and hoped they would soon tire of it.

But what really got me upset is this bill. They leave a space for a tip. At a fast food restaurant? You tip at the Burger King these days? I wonder if this is only at the Burger King in Beirut, or whether this is a Burger King policy all over the world. That really sucks. There goes another customer.

Eid

It’s the Eid in Beirut. Everything is closed today.
In the Cedars the ski slopes opened today. You can sea the snow in the mountains right here in Beirut. It’s pretty early; the season usually starts in January.

And you wouldn’t say it either, as I was basking in the sun at the Solidere Marina. They’ve got some nice yachts moored there. I visited one 10 million dollar yacht. Nice. Very nice. “If you like it so much, ask your husband to buy you one,” said the man. Yeah, right. I’ll settle for the $500,000 model any time. Inspired by it all, we went for a boat ride. Not on the ten million dollar thing though. You need a crew of five before you can even think of turning on the engine. That’s no fun.
There’s this cliché about Lebanon that you can ski in the morning and then swim in the Mediterranean in the afternoon. The place is so small, and the ski slopes only 55 kilometers away from the beaches. I know it is feasible, but not practical.
If you come back to Beirut after a day of skiing, and you manage to drag yourself to the beach, you probably won’t get any further than the chair in the restaurant. They’ve got loads of restaurants right on the shore. And then after a couple of glasses of Lebanese wine, you’re ready for a nap. Only nuts go swimming. The water is way too cold now at this time of year (unless you’re from a Nordic place). You could dive, maybe.Air tanks at the dive shop of Solidere

So don’t believe this ‘ski in the morning & swim in the afternoon’ phrase. It’s a gimmick to lure tourists. But who is coming for a holiday to this place these days?

Beirut in Twilight

Today the government announced - and subsequently cancelled – presidential elections. This is the 9th time. I think we’ll make it into the Guinness Book of Records pretty soon. As a result, they closed down the roads. So the turkey lunch at work had to be cancelled, because the caterers, with a turkey in tow, were not allowed to pass the army check point into our area.

View to the NorthView to the south

It took the kids an hour and a half to get home, a distance of one kilometer, because the closure of some major roads in town caused a massive traffic jam.

One of the guys at work got blown up over the weekend when he changed the gas canister for his stove. He died this morning. And two kids at my son’s school have been diagnosed with cancer this year. Lately this place feels like the twilight zone.

There is snow in the mountains!

On the other hand, this is my view when going and coming from work. I see this every day! People in Holland work an entire year to be able to pay and see this for 3 weeks in summer. And this is also twilight (the sun sets early here. Sunset was at 4:31 PM Today).

Don’t you think this place is well worth it?

Mail & Burka Babes

I got scolded by the lady at the post office. How come I didn’t pick up my mail! Since we do not have street names (we have them, but don’t use them), we don’t really get mail sent to the house either.

Hamra at dusk; a lone biker in traffic, you don't see those very often

The mail company (LibanPost) does have mailmen, and a couple of years ago they introduced an intricate system of zip codes and mailboxes in building. But the Lebanese proved to be more resistant than that. I don’t know of anyone actually using their zip code (do you know yours?), and have never seen any of the official boxes that they tried to sell us. People figured why change a system that worked fine for them (not)?
So if you want mail in this place, you better have a PO box. You can have your mail from your P.O. box brought to your house at a small fee. In this place everything can be brought to your house. Even Burger King and McDonalds do home delivery. (And valet parking, I kid you not). And so I have a PO box, but the mail company’s hours are similar to mine, so I rarely make it to the post office.

Today I finally made it in time, and had a box overflowing with goodies. And an upset post office employee, who, in her anger, charged me an extra 4,620 LBP for ‘storage charges’. “You’re lucky we didn’t send it back to Holland,” she said. Lucky indeed.

'Cause look what I got for Christmas; an absolutely hilarious comic book. ‘Burka Babes’. Too bad it is only in Dutch, but the cover can be understood by everyone. (Bedankt Rosa, Susan, Marjolein, Tim en Raffi)

The Shape We Are In

“T’is the Season to Be Jolly’, but not over here. The kids are home. No school today. I don’t even know why. Maybe there are elections today? A day of mourning for the general that got blown up earlier this weekend? A parliamentary session? Security issues? Who knows.

It’s dog weather and it is raining. I ask the lady from downstairs why the school is closed. She’s got a child. “Who cares?” is her reply. And that’s the shape we are in. We don’t care.
Schools close, people get blown up, we still don’t have a president and won’t have one before the end of the year and we haven’t had a normal country since the summer of 2006. Or spring of 2005. How much more pathetic can we get? But we don’t care.

We’re in bad shape, here in Lebanon. Yesterday in the evening, I was walking in Hamra with H., picking up some Christmas present for her teachers. For some reason she got into the issue of ‘real people’. Where can we find some real people, she asks? I have no idea what she means by real people, and I am not really listening either. But her voice is rather high, and quite piercing, so everybody around us can listen in on this conversation.

And suddenly a man stops, turns around, looks at her, and says to her in English: “If you are looking for real people, you have come to the wrong place. You will not find any real people in Lebanon,” and on he walks.

Now how’s that for the shape we’re in? If we start telling complete strangers that this place has gone to the dogs, we're in pretty deep. The Lebanese are fed up. Thoroughly fed up.

But I’ve got most of my Christmas shopping done, and if you look at the copious amount of alcohol I’ve got stacked for the holidays, it’s going to be a jolly time at least in my house. And with the next storm coming in, it promises to be a White Christmas for me too! It doesn’t get any better than that.

Mapping Beirut

We don’t use street names in Lebanon. Instead, we move around based on landmarks. People live near the SNA building, around the corner from the Patchi store. Or they live near the Chevrolet building, the Cola bridge, the AUB Medical Gate, above the pet store in the building facing the alleyway next to the Philips building or near the Unesco (building). That’s how we find places; through landmarks

And since we don’t use street names, we don’t need maps either. But some courageous souls have taken it on themselves to map Beirut. I got this video sent to me (bedankt Dimphy!), and though it very funny. If you know Beirut, this is very recognizable.


If you want to buy the book, here are some more details.

Landmarks find home among street names in Beirut guide

BEIRUT: Ask for directions in Beirut and you're likely to get something like this: "Turn right at that bank and then turn left at the pharmacy and then across from it is a big white building with a shop under it that sells sweets."

"I grew tired of always seeing the Lebanese commuters stopping in the middle of the street to ask for directions, causing traffic chaos everywhere, and not always getting reliable answers," said Bahi Ghubril, the man behind the newly released "Greater Beirut Atlas."The A5-sized "Atlas" covers 100 kilometer square of Beirut and it suburbs, incorporating 34 municipalities and including 4,000 entries of streets and landmarks.

It retails for L.L.15,000."It is not just for tourists, but also for Beirutis themselves, especially the young drivers, who will find it easier to find places with the "Atlas" and save some time," said Ghubril.Inspired by London's A-Z and Rome's Tutto Citta, Ghubril began his research two years ago compiling street names from local municipalities and residents. B

ut this wasn't always easy as "some streets just had no names.""We decided to resort to landmarks such as public buildings, places of worship, shopping centers, or private businesses that have existed for so long they have now become landmarks," said Ghubril. GIS Transport Ltd., topographical experts based in Bourj Hammoud, then created the illustrated maps from satellite images.Around 10,000 copies will be available in bookstores, kiosks, and newsstands throughout Lebanon starting Wednesday.

"The next step for us will be to contact the travel agents, car rental, and Taxi services," added Ghubril.Soumar Dakdouk, 22, said she would get a copy of the "Atlas," as she likes to "discover places as she walks.""It is useful as there are a lot of roads in Beirut that I would like to know, and there are many new roads. So many times I end up accidentally taking some huge detour before reaching my final destination," said Dakdouk."It has been a while since we had a good or representative map of Beirut," she added. However, she did have one suggestion for the "Atlas": "I wish it would indicate which streets have a lot of traffic so we could avoid them," she laughs.As for 50-year-old Saleem Sukari, he felt there might be "some language problems" with the "Atlas.""I was looking for the Masarif Street in Downtown Beirut in the "Atlas" index and couldn't find it, and then thought of translating it to English, "Banks Street" and then I found it in the "Atlas."

Not everyone will know the English translations of the streets," said Sukari.Sukari nonetheless liked the fact there is an updated comprehensive map of Beirut available, and said he would opt for buying one once it becomes available in the book stores."I like to be independent and just look up places, but most of my friends say they would rather just ask around and not bother looking through an 'Atlas,'" said Sukari. (Source of article)

Bomb in the Morning, Bomb at Night?

‘KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!’

An intensely deep roar rips through the kitchen. The familiar sound of metal bulging and windows rattling. Wow, what was that? is my first thought. Something massive just exploded. Sounded like a bomb! What? Now? At 6:05 in the evening, right next door? Two in one day! That can’t be.

I run to the kitchen where I find a rather perplexed looking housekeeper staring into the oven. Sheepishly she looks at me, slightly disheveled.

“I forgot I already put the gas on,” she says.

Wow, she almost blew us up! Thank God she still got her eye brows.

Never a boring day in this place.

Filtering Out the Bad Stuff

At work, a colleague looks out of the window.

“It’s going to be a calm day,” he remarks.
“Calm? Calm as in meteorological calm, or political calm?” I ask.
“No, the weather. It’s going to be a gorgeous day. After this morning’s bomb, you think I was referring to the political situation?” he replies.
“Bomb? What bomb?”
“There was a bomb this morning.”

Now this colleague has an eternal twinkle in his eye, so you can’t tell for sure if he’s serious or not.

“You’re kidding me, right?” I ask.
“No, there was a bomb this morning. They blew up the replacement of the president.”

I had to check it on the wire. And so they did. They blew up the man who was going to replace the general who was going to replace the president. Mind you, the president is not the president yet, only a ‘possible’ candidate to the presidency, and so the replacement general was not actual the next commander of the army. But it does not matter now, the man has been blown to smithereens.

But indeed. The weather is gorgeous, and it is promising to be a beautiful day.

I’m a bit puzzled. How come no one mentioned this to me? I must have seen at least several of my colleagues this morning, but none have said anything. Don’t they know? Or are they filtering it out, like most people do these days?

A Rainy Night in Beirut

There's a storm coming up. The sea is getting rough; waves are white-capped. The Corniche is empty, the palm trees bending in the wind. The wind is howling around the house, the curtains billowing (windows never close well in this place).

We've got to place towels in front of all the doors and windows now, because with these aluminum windows, the water gets blown through the ventilation holes in the bottom of the sliding windows. They never had that problem when they used to make their windows of wood. Nowadays it's all aluminum, but they haven't perfected the art yet.

Our neighbors in the mountains had in their old stone house window sills and shutters made not just of wood, but of cedar wood. Aah, those were the days.

Winter is defenitely on its way. Maybe we can ski by the end of the month.

H²O x Beirut Cars = Beirut Cars³

It has been raining in Beirut, and when it rains in Beirut, something miraculous happens: Cars multiply. I am not kidding! This is a phenomenon that I have observed on numerous occasions.
I have even formulated it into a scientific equation.

H²O x Beirut Cars = Beirut Cars³.

Okay, so I won’t be winning the Nobel Prize with this one, but I am telling you, it happens every time; the moment it starts raining in Beirut, suddenly the amount of cars that flock the roads increases significantly.

And indeed. As I got out of work, in the pouring rain, I got stuck at an intersection for a good half hour. I was in an excellent mood, and so was everyone around us in traffic, because the knot we had created was so absolutely ridiculous that it was funny. If they would have to put it into a scene for a movie, they couldn’t have done a better job.

I mean, there was no way out of this one. People didn’t even attempt it anymore. The soldiers on the side of the road (who after an attempt quickly gave up trying to get us out of this mess) even climbed on their tank to get a better view of this incredible blockage. It reminded me of a rat king. A rat king is when several rats somehow get their tails intertwined, and can’t get out of the knot. And the harder they pull, the tighter they get stuck of course. That was the situation we were in. And when the people driving into this spaghetti noodle realized the mess they were getting into, and wanted to back up, they’d gotten blocked in the rear. Since people noticed the hopeless situation they were in, they even pushed a little further. I mean, if you’re going to get jammed, you might as well get jammed real tight.
We had a good time, calling out to the police man (who was in discussion with some people on the side) for help, chatting with the neighbors in the cars next to us, and taking pictures. After twenty minutes, the policeman got into motion, organized traffic a little, and slowly some movement came into the knot. Ten minutes later I was on my way home.
“Good?” asked the police man, as he walked by me. Yes, absolutely. Usually these situations annoy me to no extent, but this one was so bad, you might as well enjoy it. Yes, that was a good one!

Update:

Anonymous said...
We all knew you were bad at math, but this is getting ridiculous. If:--> H²O x Beirut Cars = Beirut Cars³ then--> H²O = Beirut Cars² and--> (Beirut Cars = H2O)^½and that would mean the growth rate of Beirut Cars would diminish with every drop of water you add. Now clearly from you article this is not the case. So I think it should be more something along the line of:--> Beirut Cars = ((H2O)^(³*RHF))*1/log(NP)with RHF being the rush hour factor and NP the number of policeman on the intersection.

Sinterklaas in Beirut

On his way from Spain to Holland, Sinterklaas made a pit-stop in Beirut this Sunday. The Spanish bishop came to check on the little Dutch children, and little half-Dutch children – had they been good or not? After all, good children get presents, and bad children get bagged and taken back home to Spain.

And while the Sinterklaas was engaged in lively conversations with the children, the mothers were networking around a barrel of ‘bishopswijn’, better known as ‘mulled wine’.

H. was surprisingly shy with Sinterklaas, did not want to look at him, did not want to let go of my hand and almost cried. So much for the otherwise bold soul. Once he left though, and turned his back, she gathered her courage and wanted to check out where he went.

Next year Theo will be Sinterklaas. That should be fun!

After the party, Sinterklaas left for Amsterdam, where he is expected to hand out presents to all Dutch children on December the 5th.

Riders on the Storm

Not much is happening. And so I’ll talk about the weather.

We had a thunderstorm last night; it may have escaped your attention if you don’t live in Beirut, but you couldn’t have slept through this one. What am I saying; you could practically read a book with the lightning! It is my favorite weather at night; thunderstorms.

When thunderstorms are right overhead, it triggers all the car alarms in the entire city. A thunderstorm last week was so loud it set off the fire alarm at work, and everyone had to evacuate the building in the pouring rain. All the office ladies tried to shield their helmet-hair do’s with their handbags, in fear of disintegration, but as the handbag fashion calls for little bags in Beirut, that didn’t do much good. It was pretty funny to see.

6:00 in the morning. With a little imagination you can see the lightning bolts in the north (left side of the picture)

Last night’s thunderstorm was some four kilometers north of us. That’s one thing that stuck from elementary school; every three seconds between lightning and thunder equals one kilometer. (Don’t you do the counting?)

A couple of years ago we got a direct hit into the building, and TV’s blew up on three different floors. I’ve heard from plenty of people who’s computers ceased to operate, or their network cards fried, and so I unplug the appliances. Sounds simple, but you’ve got to do it in the middle of the night, and you also have to drag in the laundry, take all balcony furniture pillows inside and push in the cage with the squirrels and the dog house under the awning, otherwise they’ll have drowned the next morning.
Well, maybe not drowned, but the amount of water that comes down is impressive. I had never heard of this excuse in Holland, but ‘my house was flooding’ is one that I’ve heard often here. It has happened to me a number of times. When I moved into an apartment, no one told me I should keep the drain covers on the balcony clear. I learned though. I remember waking up and seeing a tennis shoe floating by. That definitely was the most surreal thing ever.

The edge of the thunder clouds

Thunderstorms in Holland are dull affairs. Four lightning bolts, some rumbling, usually more than eight kilometers away, a bit of rain, and it’s over before you know it. The land is flat and they drift away quickly.

Here in Beirut thunderstorms can go on for 24 hours or more. Imagine 'Riders on the Storm'. They come in from the sea and get stuck in front of the mountains, so they hang, and they thunder and light, until they are completely discharged. Or slowly drift northwards. Or to the south.

Can you see nothing is happening these days? An entire post about the weather.