She’s back….

Via Mustapha, here’s a link to Octavia Nasr’s new website.

Good to see that she’s back, given all the unpleasantness.

 Arnold: Good in a fight.

His Middle Eastern analysis

ain't great though...

Of slightly less import, I too am back.

Remembering the past

On the Damascus Road, on the way to Aley, there’s a rather large concrete memorial that I’ve always wanted to check out. I knew it had something to do with the Civil War, but had never got off the highway to give it the once over. I still haven’t … but my folks have.

A bit of context: My parents are intrepid “off the beaten path” types. They’re the weird foreigners you bump into in the middle of nowhere who end up telling the locals more about the history of the country than they know themselves. Additionally, dad served with the Sultan of Oman’s Army in the 1980’s, so he’s, a., interested in militaria and b., can blag his way past unsuspecting sentries and officers alike in pretty decent military Arabic.

Anyway, here are the shots, taken from inside the base:

I Googled the site and here’s what I’ve found (via Nowlebanon and some obscure British sites):

It’s called Hope for Peace, it was designed by a local artist, known as Arman, in 1995. It sits in the Defence Ministry site at Yarzeh. Originally intended to sit in Downtown Beirut, it was deemed a little too raw and moved up the mountain.

It contains, among other AFVs, the remains of some British Charioteers and various artillery pieces.

My wife attended The London School of Economics in 2006. Upon her acceptance they sent her a copy of the university magazine, the cover:

*The folks are here at the moment, hence the touristy pieces. Normal service will resume shortly.*

National pride

I took a trip up to the nature reserve at Al Barouk today. It’s predominantly a site dedicated to the preservation of the Lebanese Cedar (Cedrus Libani to all you arborphiles out there). It appears on the national flag of Lebanon and, to my experience, holds a special place in the hearts of most Lebanese.

In a country that so often fails to maintain its natural environment, or its history, it’s always a pleasure to see somewhere like Barouk. Given that I've ranted about preservation before, it's only fair I share the good side too.

Before entering the reserve proper, I couldn’t help but laugh at the following sign:

Talk about highlighting the negatives

Here are a series of shots from Barouk:

No, this is not going to turn into a photo blog, have no fear.

On the way out, I saw something that sparked my interest:

Divided, but still going

 Apt, no?

And… we’re back…

Comments are now working. 

Nothing has been lost.

**Thanks for all the offers of help, much appreciated!**

Gremlins

Having some issues with the new layout of the site. The template appears to be incompatable with the comment widget I have been using.

Hopefully it'll be fixed by the start of next week.

Sweetness and light

I’m sure most of you have come across Pamela Geller - the woman behind the Ground Zero Mega Mosque debacle - before, however I thought I’d share a link to her site.

Makes for interesting reading and I’m sure Ms. Geller is a psychiatrist’s dream.

-

As you can see, I've revamped the site a little. I figured that, since I spend so long looking at the damn thing, it needed a little refresh.

Still, as with all things technological, I managed to screw it up somewhat. Comments disappeared, I'm not sure the RSS is working and it took forever to get the template going. But here it is. I think. I guess the proof is if people can see this post using RSS.

HSBC's revenge

So, following on from here, the bank situation gets even more ludicrous.

If you’ll recall, we used to bank with HSBC until they arbitrarily closed our account. Well, we still hold an HSBC credit card. Sooo… the wife gets a phone call the other day. It’s HSBC on the line. They tell her that you can’t hold a credit card without an account.

My wife’s co-worker describes the noise that followed that pronouncement as something akin to the Banshee’s wail.

Yes Honey, I love you

Anyway, long story short, the missus has been in filling out forms to reopen a bank account that the bank chose to close for us.

Awesome.

Gets better. We have a UK credit card, held with a UK branch of HSBC. We use it when we’re back in Blighty. So, there’s a little on there at the moment. Excellent says the wife, since I’m opening an account here in Lubnan, I’ll avoid all the charges and make payment through our new, shiny HSBC account, which, they assured her, will be open in time.

But … it’s not. It’s delayed. The reason? They got her to fill out the wrong form. She then called them, turns out they can’t push it through in time ... note: she called them. The result? We were on schedule to miss a payment.

Well… until I did something that I haven’t done in years… I had to call the folks to go to the bank in the UK and deposit around 40 GBP…. 40 GBP… Lord.

Time to start putting all my shinies in a sack and burying them somewhere, methinks. It'd be much more efficient and the rate of interest's probably similar.