View from Centrale

This Gemayze bar is perched up a couple of floors and its rounded
ceiling opens up, revealing a view of downtown Beirut.

Children's Paintings

at Kanafani Foundation Center, Mar Elias Palestinian camp. There's an
exhibit going on in most of the camps featuring young children's art.
This large piece was one of my favorites.

Highway view at Dora

View from a pedestrian bridge over the highway at Dora, just northeast
of Beirut, in the sunset.

Archaeological site near Kfar 3abida

Spent a couple of days there helping out, excavations of a 5,000 year old town, fantastic site. In the fore is a staircase they revelead that seemed to lead up to a fortification wall that surrounded the city. In the background you can see walls of the now-buried settlement houses jutting out of the tel (hill).

 

 

Nazareth 2000

Palestinian film director Hani Abu Asad in discussion after a
screening of his wonderful and very very funny quasi-documentary on
Nazareth.

Stupid

In a classic example of the misappropriate adaptation in the East of
standards developed in the West, the American University of Beirut has
just enacted an outdoor smoking ban. OUTDOOR!!!! WTF? Today they had
these stupid posters all over the campus. STUPID!!!! Does AUB not have
anything better to do than enact and enforce smoking bans now? Oh, and
hey, how's that security guard gonna catch me running with that
cigarette in his mouth? I said an Eastern misappropriation, but in
fact the typed statement (what the lady's reading) is signed by John
Waterbury, the university's gringo president. The statement says
something about making AUB a healthier campus for everyone. How the
hell is it going to be healthier if there's no smoking outdoors? Uh,
people, second hand smoke is really not a problem unless you're
indoors. AUB may be one of the top research institutes in the Arab
World, but leave it to them to continue on with the high-schoolization
of their treatment of students. I empathize. AUB, quit dicking around
with your students and get your act together on the million academic
items that need improvement.

Downtown Beirut

The old Roman baths, or what remains of them, exposed in downtown Beirut. It's interesting to note that the floor level of these baths is well below street level today, typical of old cities built on top of each other (or else the Romans liked their baths in the basement).

Stage set up near the Roman baths, free live music from a range of local musicians. This was Arabic hiphop, Katibe Khamse I believe.

The street cafes and restaurants are packed, and it's Holland vs Russia on the big screen. Ultimately a crushing defeat for the dutch on the big screen. What happened? Holland tore France and Italy each a new one, and then they lose 3-1 to Russia???

Fishermen on the Corniche

Plus sewer gutter.

Scooter Bike!

I bought one!

Lumi, live in Beirut

At the Ajram Beach thingy, electropop meets indierock. Cool.

Bunnies and Pop Stars

In Hamra.

The view from my office...

... is still ridiculous.

Indy!

The chase scene from the new Indiana Jones movie took place in New
Haven. None of the streets they followed made any sense. The movie was
kinda poopy btw.

This is a country where...

...or so I hear.

Bullet in the wall

This is at a friend's house. The bullet came through the outside wall
of the building and got lodged in the wall right above his bed.
Happened about 3 weeks ago.

Beirut skyscape, near Tellet al-Khayyat

Philippino Town Rising?

Area near my house is seeing a number of small philippino shops appearing that sell all sorts of random stuff and some of which serve food. right now it's just for the philippino community here, but could this be the start of a philippino-town district in beirut?

Lebanese Cedars

Med Coast at Shakka

Hizballah - The Mug

Palestinian Kids' Photo Exhibit

Beirut at night

International Sign for 'Garden'

Om Kalthoum/Warhol Purse

Old Yellow Bug

Gig at Bardo

I played a gig at Bardo Sun night. DJ Rico hooked me up. People seemed
to dig it.

http://www.myspace.com/okydokyjams

Falougha and Hammana

View from the restaurant in Falougha where we had lunch, overlooking
the town of Hammana. The valley leads westwards, to the Mediterranean.

Bombed-Out Bridge

This is one of the larger bridges on the highway to Chtaura, and,
eventually, Damascus. It's still under reconstruction after the
Israelis bombed it in summer 2006.

The Magically-Appearing Mechanic

I have no idea who this guy is, but that's my family's car. 

It's a bit of a P.O.S., and on the way to lunch in the mountains it broke down. We hadn't even come to a complete stop before this guy pulls up right in front of us, jumps out, pops the hood, and gets to work unscrewing things. He fixed the problem, whatever it was, within 15 minutes. He asked $80 for his services. We coughed it up. The afternoon conversation often came back to whether that was literal highway  robbery or not. It's a lot of money, but if this happened in the US, you'd be waiting an hour for a tow truck, then you'd have to leave your car in a garage for several days, only to pay an assload. 

By comparison, 80$ to have your own on-the-spot personal service (that appears out of nowhere) ain't too bad, but for this country that's quite a chunk of change.