“What do you mean: Go on TV? I can’t go on TV. I don’t want to go on TV.”“But Ma’am, you applied to be on the show. You beat tremendous odds just to get a call back, and then you went through the test, got short listed, tested again, got shorter listed, and you knew all along that the ultimate goal of this process was to play for a million on Television.“Now, I’m telling you: You made it.
Every now and then I try to put my finance degree to use, but never for my own financial benefit for some reason. It caught my attention that Lebanese state-issued Eurobonds, which are bonds issued by a state (Lebanon in this case) in a foreign currency (USD in this case) to raise cash for state spending (let your imagination run wild in this case), are trading well below their face value,
Lost in all the Church vs Middle-Upper class liberties’ bubble fight last week was the fact that the Byblos Festival (and all other regional -read sectarian quotas- festivals) and all of its concerts are subsidized by the bankrupt Lebanese state. At a time where the President of this failed Republic is calling for sacrifices, people from all over Lebanon are contributing to fund a Yo Yo Ma
I’ve missed many money making opportunities over the years. When I was a recent MBA graduate in Miami I had a brief stint working in the Florida mortgage market. This was circa 2004 and none of what was going on made sense. Already risky mortgages were encouraged to refinance at a lower interest rate increasing exposure in the process. I felt something was amiss, but how could everyone be
There's no denying that there is a high that comes from the street. It's a natural high, unlike what the pee-sniffing authorities would like you to believe. But there is also a tendency to romanticize street protests and to give the illusion that people spontaneously mobilize in a response to a stimulus. While the garbage pile up in the city is both visually and olfactory stimulating, street
Tropical storms and hurricanes are given names for easier tracking. The names also serve an accounting purpose as insurance companies treat named storms differently. They have higher deductibles as some can be very costly in this line of business. A lot of money exchanges hands at hurricane wind speeds during natural disasters, which means the accounting audits are "temporarily" overlooked
There’s nothing wrong for someone in a position of authority to be humble. As rare as that might sound, there are actually numerous examples of humility in power. However, there is a not so fine line between genuinely humble and outright hypocrite. Tom Fletcher, who goes by the title of her majesty’s ambassador, is unmistakably the latter. This diplomat was deployed to Beirut in 2011. His
A Magic School in Palermo Viejo, Buenos Aires
I want to pull a rabbit out of a hat.
How cool would that be?
It's almost magical.
You have this slick thing where you just want to stick your head, and then just like that you pull out a living creature out of its hole.
I don't want to suit up, though. It seems like too much of a hassle. The getting dressed part is
One of the great perks about pretending to be a writer is that you can do any type of shit and call it research for a story.
Oh, sure I have a pathetic profile on a dating website, but it's only because I want to see how people react to creepy declarations of love. It's for a love novella I'm writing.
"Stumbling home drunk at sunrise in a city where I don't speak the language" is
I spent last ten years of my life calling Beirut home.
They were very eventful years and the archive of this blog can attest to that. While it is a personal blog, my person was mostly just present in the point of view.
But let me share something very personal. Of course, I will use it to get to a public issue, but of course I would do just that.
One of the most amazing
How do you parody poverty? I believe it's offensive to poor people not to make jokes about them because they're poor. Poverty deprives you of many material things but it shouldn't deprive you of a sense of humor. That's still free, even if comedy has been largely commercialized. Judging by some Hollywood "comedy" films I've seen lately, the comedy writing process has been pretty much
In the mid-1990s, a Guatemalan songwriter released a song called Si el Norte Fuera El Sur. Ricardo Arjona takes a few jabs at North American mono-chromic – or money-chromic – culture and war-loving politics and plays with how things would be different if North was South. In the last line, Arjona concludes that if North was South, it would be the same shit. "Si el Norte fuera el Sur, sería la
Rio along with the rest of the continent and other pockets around the world celebrate Carnaval this weekend.
Wednesday marks the start of lent, but at some point in history the revelry surpassed the piety involved with this event.
I must admit I left Rio before Carnaval, but you're going to have a hard time convincing me that the 2 weeks I spent there weren't Carnaval.
I guess it's time to talk Venezuela. Everybody else is pretending to be an expert on the country, so I guess having been born there 35 years ago and having spent 5 weeks there in 2 trips over the last year makes me a Super Duper Senior Expert. Here's something that might surprise you. The problem with Venezuela is that it's too far to the right. I know all you've seen over
Change of scenery, and language.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil!
I did have a stop along the way between Buenos Aires and Rio. But for some reason, the little country that is wedged between the 2 biggest South American Countries is often overlooked. Who am I to change that? I shall overlook Uruguay too.
But I have my reasons for doing so.
The Uruguayan capital Montevideo is just too
A couple of weeks ago Airbus released an updated price list. The cheapest of their toys is $72 million. The A380 is slightly out of my price range at over $400 million. Now if you want a smaller Embraer, you’d be looking at price tag of $16 to $40 million. The point is that airlines spend serious cash on their business. They also tend to lose money and be subsidized or bailed out by public
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After walking for 12 hours you can eat anything and not feel guilty... Or so I keep telling myself. After all walking is a good fat burning exercise. But like with any sport – walking is a sport I keep telling myself – the risk of injury exists. Last night I discovered that I suffered from a couple of walking related injuries. I had a bleeding toe, which has happened to me before. But it's
Pardon the rust. It’s
been a while.
Apparently it took for me
to be over 12,000 kilometers away from Beirut for me to get an urge to post
here again.
I was so tempted to
revive this blog when I was in Venezuela, but clearly the Atlantic Ocean and
its Bermuda triangle alone didn't exorcize the demons of the Lebanon. I had to
call in support from flesh-eating Amazonian piranhas to feel
After a few months of cutting a's and the's to make sure I please the twitter gods, I find out there are platforms where you can fit thousands of words... Here's a 3 part series on the so called economy of the so called lebanon. Part I http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/lebanon-inc-i-mergers-and-acquisitions Part II http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/lebanon-inc-ii-hostile-takeover
Would it kill you to throw a "please" in there?
I'm angry... That's why I've been quiet for a while... I just didn't want to share angry thoughts. Not in critical times like these. Then again in times like these noise takes over and I'm in no mood to whisper over the shouting. So I thought I'd give my self and my thoughts time to thaw. I thought I thaw... a pussy cat. Sorry, I had to do it..... Anyway this is supposed to be a serious angry
I had a chance yesterday to take a look at Lebanon in 1980 through the lens of Maroun Baghdadi. The film is called Hamasat, or Whispers, and it captures the zeitgeist of that era. This film along with the rest of Baghdadi's films will be released by Nadi Likul El Nas later this year for those who are interested. One could go at length about the work this private initiative is going through to
This memory is supposed to be joyful... Land and people liberated from brutal Israeli occupation is definitely worth remembering as it is no small feat, specially as it is an unfinished job... A step towards the end of an apartheid state that has plagued the region for decades. What changed this year is that the question of the chicken or the egg arose. Along with the Israel came a crop of
Last week, the elections of Lebanon's Order of Engineers took place. You know the people with that black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow sticker on their car. It was pretty clear why the Hariri's future movement would invest a lot of resources in making sure this labor union answers to them. After all, Hariri is one of the biggest investors in the real estate sector in Lebanon and