Day 2
I'm not a fan of the outdoors, I was just tired of my daily chores. As I strolled in the open air, I saw a silhouette of what seemed like a pair. As they passed me I felt some pity, but I couldn't overlook their absolute gaiety. It takes you seconds to analyze that their lives had no room for lies. He never stopped staring right through her spectacles, assuring her
they can overcome all obstacles.

All she saw was his heart pumping wild, his innocence like a newborn child. There was nothing special about their looks, but they spoke with words topping literature books. But they needed not say a single word because their eyes sang like canary birds. Then I couldn't take it anymore as they kissed until their lips were sore. Finally, they disappeared into the dark and I was all alone in this horrid park. My night
ended but I felt some relief, for there is still hope if you're armed with belief.



"You're exaggerating"  
Written by Gina Z.

Let's face it, we Lebanese are the kings and queens of exaggeration, who can deny that? Am I exaggerating? The manner in which we carry our daily conversations is never dull to say the least, but rather colorful and quite vibrant. Spicing up casual everyday stories, putting an out of whack twist to otherwise ordinary daily incidents comes naturally to us. Just skim through TheLebanon wall casually, and you'll know what I'm talking about. Hyperbole is our middle name.

(Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect.) Maybe the fact that I've been stamped with the label "Lebanese Exaggeration on wheels" by my foreign friends could have something to do with this revelation I've become more aware of. Chatting with my non-Lebanese buddies or colleagues and in the middle of my run-on sentence with a desperate attempt to get a point across fairly confused expressions usually materialize.

This is when I know taming down the tone of my story might actually work wonders. For example, telling a co-worker I've called this customer a hundred thousand times with no luck makes perfect sense to me. After all as a kid I grew up to phrases like "siret aylitlik mallioun marra ma ta3mleh hek" Therefore numbers play a significant rather descriptive role in our conversations. So does passion, "bmout bi hal gheniyeh!!" reducing death to a three to four minute passerby phase with a beat is another skill we've mastered.
Being the overly expressive girl I've been accused of being, recalling a major event to a friend evidently would include a healthy dose of magnification. I mean seriously, what paints a more vivid picture telling my friend ' when he finally called me I was glad or 'when he finally called me 'dawa raseh!!!!'.

A few days ago I realized I might have went too far at work when I exclaimed to a co-worker " your two year old girl is so cute I can eat her." Another lesson learned, do not translate cultural pop phrases directly from one language to another. It's fairly normal for us to say something like "shou mahdoumeh bintik btitekal", although translating something like that has every potential of making you look like a three eyed monster.

Painting a larger than life picture, inflating a bad day, pumping up great stories are normally used for effect. After all, over emphasizing is a common method used in advertising and catchy slogans. So when we're trying to sell our story, transmit our feelings, or relay a message we tend to amplify for impression. With this said, I have to wrap up this article because 'fi bernemij 3al TV Bi3a2id , and if I miss it bif2a3! (The exaggerating impact of war on speech and communication).

"An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper" Khalil Gibran

Okay. So here is my problem. I am a Canadian of Lebanese origin and every time people ask me about my origin, I answer I am a Canadian Lebanese. You would think that would not be so bad. But every time this happens, the response is a chuckle or an outward laugh barely contained, and I am forced to look down and see if my zipper is open, or if I have something stuck in my teeth that would cause such hilarity. No, the root of such amusement does not protrude from either my pants or my teeth; it comes from a more subtle cause: prejudice.

For it is now common for people to equate Lebanese with lesbian. Not that there is anything wrong to being a lesbian or a Lebanese for that matter, however one should never generalize. Back to our band of hyenas and their gurgles. It's not their fault, the poor dears. Even though they don't mean it the words are too close for them to differentiate. Can you really blame them? This is after all an old joke in the world of comedy, comics and
other classic jokes. So I embarked on this journey. I decided I will educate the world on Lebanese people. Okay maybe not the whole world but I could not sit silent
in the face of such outrageous prejudice and generalization. And thus I went on this
adventure of finding where this misunderstanding between Lebanese and lesbian
happened. Basically, I just wanted someone to blame.

And lo and behold, I found someone I could blame. The perfect scapegoat! The happy
"brothas and sistas of da hood of holly" Too easy, say you. Maybe. But look at it this way. For a long time now Hollywood has used Lebanese and lesbian interchangeably. It's everywhere, in sitcoms, in comedy shows on stage, and yes, (big gasp) in movies. Just recently, I discovered that the character who was rumoured to be a lesbian in the movie "Mean Girls" turned out to be Lebanese at the end of the movie. So to these people, that are making overuse of this joke, I say "Stop this nonsense."

Okay, so maybe there are 3 million of us crammed on top of each other in a country barely bigger than the Greater Toronto Area. That doesn't mean we're all lesbians. Unless of course you define lesbianism generally by one's sexual preference to the female gender, then I would think that the average Lebanese male would proudly declare himself a lesbian. Though, this is certainly not a reason to generalize to all of us. After all, we do not call you "Hollywieners" or "Hollyweenies". See, we do not discriminate. For us you are just a "bunch of rich snobs." Which come to think of it, makes you as Lebanese as anyone who was born in that little odd-shaped dot of a country.
For a Lebanese is by definition someone who is poor as dirt but pretends to be a better-looking version of Bill Gates. And so I say stop the hate and stop the discrimination for after all we are all Lebanese.

And for those who like me are sick of hearing this sneering every time they mention the word Lebanese, I have the perfect recipe. Go back to your roots. Like that 50 year-old lady from Beirut, pretending to converse fully in the language of Shakespeare; or the 15 year-old in Tripoli or the Bekaa whom in his little class in the village learned to flawlessly quote Chaucer, Dickens and Poe. Respond to your nosy inquirer: "I am Libanise and I kôm frrrom Libanôn."

Thus, I finally decided to come out of the closet and say it out right. From the top of my pedestal (okay so I am comfortably seated in front of my computer) I proclaim:
"I am Libanise and I am proud of it." Here. Now I feel better.



Curiosity might Kills the Cat  
Written by Marvin

Creeping from below the car, the little boy I'll refer to as Gilo, ran towards the building, and climbed the fence, and there, he sat down peeked through the hole and started to watch the alternative actions that were going on in his neighbor's room. I wondered what he was looking at, although by ethics, one should respect other people's privacy. Nevertheless, it was quite hard to keep what was going in there private. Well, yes. It is what every reader is thinking about, it was a hideous sexual act with extreme screams and exploit to all the surrounding. Now don't take me wrong, I'm not against a sexual act when it happens, (on the contrary). But since we live with people and people live around us, it is only ethical to keep our private matters for us. Now imagine what was going around in that boy's head, a 5 year old who doesn't even know from where babies come from.

Well to go on with the story, Gilo finished his sight seeing and got back home before it was dark. To be on the common sense of society, it's quite normal for mothers to interact between each other as neighbors. So the other day, Gilo's mom was informing her next door neighbor how her son Gilo crept into the room at night while his father was still watching TV, climbed up into his mother's bed, slept over her, she thought he was playing around, captured her breasts and starting moving as if he was performing a sexual intercourse with her. Imagine the surprise on his mother's face when this happened and imagine the surprise on the boy's face when his mom made him feel that he was doing something wrong.

Now who to blame? Society, maybe, but as known in Lebanon or any other self centered society , nobody gives a shit about what others think as long as what I'm doing is satisfying oneself. Should we blame the parents for letting their son meddle in things that are not in his own business, well we can do that but how far will this boy understand if he's only 5. I'm 28 and still curiosity kills me.

In my opinions no one is to blame, only circumstance is the thing which went wrong. This thing might develop future imagines for the kid which will have a small impact on his life, maybe to the positive or to the negative. Who knows, curiosity only kills the cat that doesn't make the best of its result.

Live on, Dream on and Love more



Walk, Talk and Stalk the Universe  
Written by Marvin

Last week I was dining at a Chinese restaurant with a friend. Suddenly, a pretty young woman captured my attention; it was really hard not to notice her. She had a fork in one hand, the mobile in the other using her mouth to talk and chew at the same time. Moreover, she was eating with a really big appetite and arguing on the phone so aggressively that she feasted on all the food at the same time. She even was shouting so loudly that everyone just had to murmur about the way she was behaving. Nevertheless, she managed to gain the attention of all.

Now basically, in most cultures, talking and eating at the same time is considered as a behavior that is out of the "etiquette" manner. Besides that point, I initiated with this example to stress on the issue that the human being has become a multi- task machine that has to subject all its energy to finalize the daily task doing whatever it takes even if handling several issues at the same time. Here, two analyses can be made. The first is congratulating the person on how well organized and highly motivated that he or she has to fulfill life's demands on time and on equal basis. The second conclusion is that, TAKE IT EASY, nothing is escaping. Ok I agree that some matters have to be accomplished on a given deadline but other things which can be postponed, why the rush to do them when one can make up the extra time later on to do them. A very small and plain example, why opening a social conversation on the mobile while driving and at the same time trying to change the frequency of the radio. How can the mind associate between talking, discussing, driving and alternating at the same time? In this case we are overworking all our senses just for the sole reason of chatting. Now don't tell me the human capacities are great. But as great as they can be, there comes a time that all will back-fire on us, in any sort or any shape.

Here is a sample of a commandment I can go with:
I will not watch TV, go on line, listen to music, talk on the phone, have something to eat and play internet game all at the same time.

This then is my pledge: Everyday in everyway I will think about the task I'm doing and be satisfied with its result, do my best to complete it before I do another, and therefore, do a better job of what I have in my plate.

That's it people, you may now, continue you MSN chat, login to whatever site you were surfing, have a snack, call a friend and download all the necessary software for the net. WE can't change the world overnight, can we?


Lebnan ya ot3it sama  
Written by Abdo Bejjani

Well yes ot3it sama but maybe 1 million years ago, as they said that when god created lebanon he saw that it is so perfect that he created Lebanese to spoile this perfection.

I am lebanese I have a lovely car I go out to lovely places like all lebanese do. But deep down we are all so empty inside that all this stupidity we do is pulling us back and spoiling our country.
Shou ya man wain shorit mbere7?.
Yih ken ma3na flen. ibno la 3elten.
Yoy shou 7elo.

Yi re7na 3al crystal fata7na anninit champagne bi 3000 $ yoy shou 7elo they all looked at us and saw us WOW we are so Fuckin important!..
WELCOME to lebanon. Oh yes this is our new lebanon.
We all are trying to eat each other to get these couple of bucks just to show off at night and be famous for a couple of minutes
Is this what we want??? Is this the futur we want ???

This is the road that leads us to become the new prime minister or the new deputy �
Why don't we do something good for lebanon.
Having a degree so that mom would show off in the sob7iyi !!! GOOD one: �yo2borni ibni ana mkharraj min amerca"( but she did not know that her son was a dish washer in amerca or even adrab").

SHOW OFF SHOW OFF SHOW OFF..

This is the new lebanon!..
So I would need to contact wadih el safi and tell him to change his song to
Libnan ya ot3it show off!..

Why can't every body judge you for the person you are not by the number of bottles you opened last night or the AMG your daddy bought for you?
Yoy ana ma beshtere ghair min Aishti' as if the armani in Aishti would make me a man ????
is this what lebanon needs well if yes let the Sanyoura rip our guts out With his TVA we deserve it.


Letter to the educationalist  
Written by Yara

Children are very fragile delicate living "crawling all over" creatures.
You have to raise them and take care of them...Nowadays, the way of raising a child is way different from old conventional ways. Now we have these official powerful organizations that grip very strictly child abuse, and even the pedagogical system of raising a child in any institution has changed and is being monitored.

The big emblem: "Making our children mature happily"

But there has been a gap that only the Lebanese society managed to avoid.
Western civilization failed to pass up and flipped down the pit.
Here is the flip and the flop of the topic.

During my killing time session at a bookstore, I jumped down over a book on how To raise your child in a good way: "safely and wisely raise a child". most likely written by a female doctor who on no account had a child before! Or even, never dated anyone.

Here are some nice things I read:

1-Don't hit the child. Don't penalize, punish and chastise him. Try to talk to him. Even, if the child still plays the stubborn kid, try to make a deal with him!!!
Make a deal? What is that? What next? if I lose the deal, shall he punishe me?
Should I beg him to make him stop his stupidity and stop being mulish?
Here is a Lebanese advice for the author of the book: If the child does not get it from the first time, beat the hell out of him. Hit him with anything that comes to your hand. This is how I was raised: Look at me; I am a respectful person whose only vice is lots of nagging.

2- If during a fight with your wife it happens that your child was listening try to clarify to the child why your and his mother are fighting.. Don't let him think by himself...
Great, what next? Give him a report about when we will have nasty sex? Here is a lebanese advice: If your son happens to be listening during a fight, slap him with the back of your hand. It is bad to listen to big people and sneak on them..

3- When a child asks you on how was he born, take him aside and tell him a nice story about the bees and the seeds.
Well, what 's the point? Sooner or later he will know about sex. Here is a Lebanese advice: If your child asks you about that, slap him and send him to his room. No sex talk in your house without written permission. The day your son gets his first pubic hair, buy him porn magazines. He will get the picture alone.

4-Don't promise your child and not fulfill your promise. If it happens , apologize.
Lebanese advice: don't ever promise from the first. Period.

Well, now let us compare: western community has a zero leveled social life. Childs leave the house at 18, girls get pregnant at 16, and on drugs at 18. They forget about their parents at 20.

In here, we still live a very nice social respectful life.. we stay with our parents, and take care of them along with having a nice personal life.
See, so keep beating.
Keep raising the old way.

What would you choose?