Over the past few weeks, I’ve been contemplating my online workstyle while dealing with a my webhost which has been less than ideal lately, in addition to dealing with Wordpress problems that I can’t seem to find a good solution for (not the formatting of the articles being all screwed up). Some say, it’s the theme, some say it’s the browser, I spent countless hours trying to fix it, then last night, it dawned on me…
I have been an avid fan of gmail since its inception, I use everything google as it is, so I re-checked blogspot, after abandoning it about a year ago, and i was pleasantly surprised with the improvements that have been made to it, the new Widget enable templates are really cool, allowing me to pretty much add anything I want on the blog.
As I contemplated the idea of the blog, I starting thinking back about web services that are in existence today that are more than adequate for a lot of tasks, namely photo galleries, with flickr, google gallery, .mac gallery, webshots, who needs to host their own gallery anymore. I used to enjoy having full control over that, but that eventually just becomes a nightmare really.
So… my new initiative.. is to start working on moving most of my services to the wonderful world of hosted web 2.0.
No worries on your end, if there are any faithful readers of this blog. I will only migrate fully once I have moved the archives to the new location, which, will probably take a little bit of time, as I haven’t quite figured out an easy way to move articles from WordPress to BlogSpot yet, mind you, there are a whole lot of articles that do the process reversed (BlogSpot to WordPress) … does this say something about the two services? I’d like to believe that it doesn’t but I will give it a shot anyway. I hope to be able to have a nicer looking page after all, while still providing interesting, education, and fun content.
Stay tuned as i go through this transition, and things will be dandy again soon.
Why should the wedding ring be worn on the fourth finger?
There is a beautiful and convincing explanation given by the Chinese…..
Thumb represents your Parents
Second (Index) finger represents your Siblings
Middle finger represents your-Self
Fourth (Ring) finger represents your Life Partner
& the Last (Little) finger represents your children
Firstly, open your palms (face to face), bend the middle fingers and hold them together - back to back
Secondly, open and hold the remaining three fingers and the thumb - tip to tip
(As shown in the figure below):
Now, try to separate your thumbs (representing the parents)…, they will open, because your parents are not destined to live with you lifelong, and have to leave you sooner or later.
Please join your thumbs as before and separate your Index fingers (representing siblings)…., they will also open, because your brothers and sisters will have their own families and will have to lead their own separate lives.
Now join the Index fingers and separate your Little fingers (representing your children)…., they will open too, because the children also will get married and settle down on their own some day.
Finally, join your Little fingers, and try to separate your Ring fingers (representing your spouse).
You will be surprised to see that you just CANNOT….., because Husband & Wife have to remain together all their lives - through thick and thin!!
I thought this was pretty cool, so I thought I’d share it…
Ok honestly, I’m not pondering anything with this one, though for some reason, I found the facts in it extremely intriguing, and if nothing else, it made me just think about where our world is heading, or at least try to imagine. This presentation address US Labor vs world labor, as well as education issues, and technologies, I guess I just wasn’t quite aware of some of these numbers, they left me gasping in surprise in some instances, I hope it would be some food for thought for you too..
I was browsing my facebook profile today, and one of my friends posted a news report about the fur industry, and they showed some really gruesome footage of some of the ways that fur is manufactured (in China, by the way), even though all brand names are proud to claim to be Italian made… Oh well… Look at this video, and perhaps, you may re-evaluate your “need” to buy fur clothing…
Here’s my thought on the media: they suck. Since there wasn’t anything interesting enough for the media anymore, they dropped the situation Lebanon off the face of the earth. that makes me not want to ever listen to it anymore, because as soon as something slightly more interesting comes up, they move straight to it… oh well.. I still get my interesting news from my dad, so here’s today’s little snippet for that:
As for us here, things are in a freezing mode, and no one can predict what will come next as all are still on the highest alert status, and you hear from one side or the other that they are preparing for another round! So say that it will be regional this time, meaning Iran and Syria can be involved, and there are some news that the “”Lebanese forces”” started to re-train… so does it mean that we will get back to the civil war?? Who knows…
As for the business, there is nothing still, so I am not going to the office because I don’t want to spend fuel without getting anything back…I go there once a week to see if there is anything special that I should do… and this situation applies to most business in the country… just for your information, our sales the whole last month was about $ 200 … yes just two hundred, and I had to pay Milia’s salary which is about 3 times this amount not to mention the other expenses… so, this is the situation…. We are opening till 2:00 PM and sometimes there is no electricity, so we leave even a bit earlier… days pass without a single phone call or a door open which is really depressing! But all is beyond control.
Yesterday, Rami, Nissrine Doris Teta salwa, and Pat and Mich came to us and spend the night and all the day today… and now Nadim and Randa will follow to we can do so food on the saj just to refresh ourselves a bit, and try to be distracted from thinking about the situation we are in !
so … do you think it’s over yet? People living in Lebanon don’t seem to think so, so all we can do now is keep your fingers crossed to see what’s going to happen.
I have talked to my parents yesterday to get an update on the situation in Lebanon. Fortunately, they’re still safe. Resources are still getting lower and lower by the day.
At this point, there is no more gas in the country, and there is at least an hour wait at any gas station to get gas, and that is only to get about $6 worth of gas… do the math … so my dad is going down to work only about twice a week now, and once his tank is empty, they’ll pretty much be staying home. Same goes for electricity, there are some fuel ships awaiting to enter Lebanon to supply fuel for power plants, however, these are not being allowed to go in, so at this rate, in about 1 or 2 weeks, there will be no more electricity, and we’ll go back to the stone age with candles.
Food seems to still be available in moderate quantities, so that’s not to worry about for now. As I speaking with my dad, we are starting to have talks about alternatives of communication (if at all possible) if we actually do loose communication. Obviously, if there is no electricity, E-Mail communication will cease, as well as as probably phone services, especially that Israel is threatening to destroy any communications channels that Huzbollah might be using, which is sometimes the same channels that the rest of the population uses.
This morning, I received a couple of pictures from my sister. no worries, nothing gory this time, but interesting nonetheless. If you’ve been hearing the news, you might have heard of the city of Dahieh, which is mostly muslims, with a lot of Huzbollah in it, the following is a before and after picture of it…
The next few pictures are from (what used to be) the Mdairej bridge, which is the highest bridge in the Middle East, or so I think.
The next few are the ”little smile” part of the post my sister’s email comment was that:
This why hizbolllah declared war???
In order to die in the hands of the Israel’ soldiers.
So in the past couple of days i haven’t really posted, since I haven’t really been hearing too much about the situation other than what CNN and all the media says, but that’s stuff that you can read about yourself. Today, and yesterday, I’ve been hearing that the Israelis are starting to reach some of the Christian areas. I’m still not entirely sure about the reason as to why that’s happening, and whether Huzbollah is setting up rocket sites there as mentioned in a previous blog.
A little snippet from my dad’s email today mentioned something about that, so I’ll go ahead and include it here….
[…] As for the war situation today, it is getting into the Christian area where the Israelis bombarded 2 bridges in Jounieh Area, then one in Batroun (Bourj el Fidar) where we had our honeymoon… and Jbeil… on the other hand, the Ouzaai area, and Dahieh, were very heavily bombarded, so today, the streets even in our areas are almost empty. Micha and Pat did not go to work… but I drove down to Beirut as I was promised to get paid by a client… […]
As you can see, business is so bad, that my dad has to risk driving down to work if he is promised a payment by a client.
Of course, all this in happening on a personal level, then on the media level, i gotta say that I’m sick of hearing about the false promises about wrapping this up. If I remember correctly, yesterday there was a promise in the media that there was going to be a negotiation yesterday that was going to wrap things up, but that same promise has happened 3 times now, so we’ll have to see happens.
Well I haven’t posted any updates in a couple of days, as I had not heard from my dad, and the reason was in his email. Apparently, going down to work (where he has the internet access) is useless, and a waste of money at this point, since gas prices are skyrocketting, and are starting to be available in low quantities. Fortunately, they are still safe, but economically, the situation is horrible, and as far as the war goes, check CNN and you will know about the details on that. Meanwhile, please read below for some details on what is happening wiht my family and their inside information about the situation.
You might have said where is Mich as I haven’t written for few days, but what happened is that I am not going down to Beirut for more one reason… first and main reason is that the fuel delivery is getting less and less, and we have to line up for about half an hour to fill 20 liters… the second reason is that there is no business at all… the whole day passes without a single customer, besides, there is no electricity for almost half the day, and last thing, Milia is coming as she normally comes on foot, so we are keeping presence just in case.
On the other hand, and as you know, Aahed left about 2 weeks ago, and I have to do all the garden work, feeding and cleaning for the animals and birds, which needs at least 2 to 3 hours daily, plus a full 2 weekend days.
As for the war situation, I am sure you are following up the aggressiveness of both sides. And this Kanna massacre of about 57 civilians which were bombarded by the Israelis, but on the other hand, we hear from many sources that Hizbullah are not allowing the people to evacuate the South as they need them as a human shield, and they are hiding and launching their rockets from inside populated villages !! also they are hiding their rockets in the mosques and churches !! so, both parties are not playing a fair game!! So far, there is no signs for a cease fire in the near future, and only God knows where we are going…
Locally, there is a very large part of the Lebanese people who are against Hizbullah, where are there are some who are with him… so we always fear that clashes can start at any time especially that those refugees are challenging those who are taking care of them by putting the Hizbullah flags and the pictures of Hasan Nasrallah the leader of Hizbullah in the schools where they are living at present, and as you know, and especially in Christian areas, this is very irritating, and by the way, even the majority of the Sunnies and Druze are against Hizbullah.
I think we are living a terrible situation, and we do not know how this disaster will end… so please keep praying for our situation…
I don’t know if “boring” is the correct word to describe this, but it’s starting to feel like this war in Lebanon is just not going anywhere, is it just me or does anyone share this feeling? it’s a bunch of destruction, and lives taken and a country being destroyed, and I’m afraid at the end of it, we’re going to end up at the same spot that we started with. I’ve been reading tayyar.org, and all I read is:
1- Bombing on so and so area
2- So and So talked with this and that person, and are discussing, or are “planning” to meet to discuss the situation in the middle.
**Meanwhile In the Middle East**
Houses are being bombed, civilians are dying, and officials are taking their sweet time to “discuss”.
Ok so now that my personal thoughts are out of the way, here are some facts from my dad’s email today.
[…] As for the situation here, it is sort of calm in our areas, and you can go and come without a problem. We still have fuel, but only the 98 octane (no 95) but still it is OK… you can still find almost everything you want from House Gas cylinders to vegetables (though more expensive due to high transportation costs), bread, meat, etc… but who will eat !! no appetite because you do not feel at ease though I am not looking to the TV any more because they are all a bunch of liars, and they never say what is really true!! In the south and Dahieh, the shelling and fights are still going on, but we can hardly hear them here in Achrafieh or Joura… the only concern we have is if they decide to bombard the Satellite station that we have near our home… I think nothing will happen to us personally, but we will not have any glass left in the house… other than that, all is good.
In Theopolis. Our church are taking refugees from Baalbek and the south and put them in the camp site and offer them food and whatever they need. The youth are cooking for them and offering assistance. Also, the BBS evangelical school in Mousaitbeh also opened their doors for refugees, and Dr. Riad is going there for medical assistance. I offered to volunteer with him in his mission, so if he needs me, I will go…
Camille my cousin and myself discussed the possibility of giving one of the houses in Bhamdoun to any of the refugees, so I told Ali that if he knows someone that needs to use this house, it is available for free…. […]
So, you might be wondering why I haven’t posted, well … I guess the good’ole saying, no news is good news applies here.
For the past couple of days, I’ve been in contact with my parents over the phone just about every morning, and they are almost living a normal life, at least from a safety standpoint. Unfortunately, resources are starting to lack more and more in the country, here’s the an excerpt of an email I received from my dad this morning regarding this situation:
As for our status as of today… we had a calm night, and we started getting used to the situation especially us who are living in the relatively calmer areas… though it cannot last for long as many things started to run short… yesterday I went to buy some feed for the chicken and rabbits, and the man said probably this is the last time you find feed for them as there is no supply anymore, and if things stop now, it will take at least a month to re-stock again!! And this applies to many other materials including fuel for cars, generators etc.., wheat for bread, … raw materials for food industry etc… and talking about industry, many factories have closed because of the shortage in raw materials as well as the foreign labor (Mainly Syrians and Egyptians) who fled away back to their countries as it is the case with Aahed our worker.. and now I have to do all the work myself…
By the way, I think you remember my friend Ali… he lives in Dahyeh, though he left to the mountains some time ago… but yesterday he visited his home, and found out that though it was not directly hit, but all the windows and doors were wide open because of the pressure of the explosives which are at least few hundred meters far !
That is all for today, but keep an eye for some more updates. I will try to update a little more often than I have in the past couple of days.
Fortunately, in this case, not having updates is probably a good thing.
And by the way, what is up with this crazy heat? I’m melting!
my sister’s email comment was that:.JPG)
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