Sc@-tt3r-ed Thoughts

I got my daily email from my dad this morning, and it sounds that the  bombing is always concentrated in one area, and they are not really feeling much of the effects so far other than hearing the bombs hitting southern Beirut and other areas. 

The website that my dad refers to in the email is pretty informative as it has up to the minute information as to what’s happening. It is in arabic though… there is an English version of it, but not for the update news…

I guess you are expecting to hear something from me about the situation… in fact it started to become boring as no serious action or real changes are taking place on the ground… bombarding is almost continuous especially on the south, and on Dahyeh, and more damage is obvious… more people are being killed mainly those who are moving on the roads. We hear a lot of noises, but nothing serious is taking place in our areas. They bombed empty fuel tanks in Dora, and few trucks at Beirut port, but you can easily tell that they are trying to avoid the Christian areas so far !

We can still find almost ever thing until now though prices for certain items have raised especially food stuff that comes from the south and Becca due to the disconnected roads. Gas and Mazout are getting short, but we can still find benzene. Electricity cut off is better than before in our areas.

I guess this is a brief description of the situation. If you have time, and want to know more about hour by hour changes, you can visit the following website: www.tayyar.org

Today, i received a reassuring email from my dad. Things seem to be ok on their side, and at this time, there’s nothing to worry about, thought things seem to still be deteriorating pretty quickly, so their fine for now. Keep checking for more updates.

I knew that you called, and are anxious to know how things are going here, though I am sure you are watching TV and seeing the disaster here, but non of the news are telling that the Khairallahs are all OK, and nothing wrong is going on in Achrafieh or Joura…. So, please be calm, and don’t worry as we are still feeling safe through this time, all airports, ports and road to Syria are closed, meaning, there is no way to get out of Lebanon.

Pat and Micha has a priority as they have French passports, and the embassy is offering helicopters for them to take them out… but they prefer to stay with us in Joura as it is still safe here. I don’t need to tell you how sever it is in Dahyeh as it became almost flat. They are shelling all major points from ports to bridges, to radars, to airports, to roads, to fuel reservoirs, to wheat stores, to electricity stations, so if they continue like this, we will have to get back on donkeys, and feed from the forests !! the good thing so far is that they are not hitting any Christian areas, though our areas are shaking because of the bombs and missiles. On the other hand, we can see that Hizbullah are hitting rockets into the heart of Israel as well which never happened before. They are shelling electricity stations and fuel stations, and train stations there, which I believe is making the Israelis more aggressive…. The news said that the Israelis are preparing for a commandos attacks which means they will come into face to face fights with Hezbollah, so God knows what will come next!!

I am staying at home for the weekend, and hope if things are still the same on Monday, I will try to go to Beirut as I cannot leave my Dad alone with Zalfa, and every time I call him, I feel mow much he needs me, so hopefully I’ll be down on Monday… and will write you more if there is any new situations…

This is all for now… Just pray for our safety!!

Today, i called my parents to see what the situation is, and to get the scoop on what’s happening. here’s the inside info…

First of all, they are all safe where they are, as Israel doesn’t seem to be going away from their targets. In fact, I thought it was interested that, before destroying a major target, a plan flies above the target, and drops flyers warning any civilians in the area to evacuate. Fortunately, the Israeli pilots are pretty accurate: My sister was telling me that the bridges that they hit are actually hit right in the middle of it. this is a little hopefuly as it will reduce the risk of civilian homes being destroyed. What I thought was funny, was that the flyers actually had some caricatures of the Huzballah leader, along with the warning of evacuation… we’re glad they have a sense of humor … 

That being said, Israel isn’t sparing a single target on their plan. so far, they destroyed about 62 bridges and freeways, and destroyed all of the harbors along the coast of Lebanon, in Sydon, Beirut and Tripoli, and I think they took out most of the cell phone towers as well.
Bread in the country is starting to lack, as well as some other necessities.

People from Tripoli are migrating towards Beirut, but they’re doing it walking, as all the roads are now destroyed, and no cars can go through.
 
France is sending boats to get its ambassadors and whatnot back to France, as well as the US. not sure if the 25000 are all going to be taken out of the country by helicopters, but that’s my understanding so far.

My parents seem to be doing fine for now. they said that everything is still far away from them, and apart from the roaring of the fighter planes, and the thumping of the rockets, they don’t really feel much else. The only thing they’re a little worried about is the one power plant by my sister’s house, as it is a stone’s throw away. my sister is still staying at my parents house. they opened all their doors and windows before they left, to avoid them blowing up if indeed the powerplant gets targeted.

At this point, it’s not looking like anything is getting any better. Fortunately, the phones still work though, so at least I can know how things are going on the other side. my dad is still not sure whether to go to work on Monday ….to me it’s a no brainer… I guess there’s still another day before monday, we’ll see what unfolds.

That’s all the news for now, if I find out anything else, I will post it here… keep checking…

So for the past 2 days, since the Huzballah kidnapping of the isareli soldiers, things have been very unstable in Lebanon. I have been hearing the breaking news at CNN, and communication with my parents has been flaky at best.

Apparently, cell phone towers have been bombed, and the one of the main power plants has been bombed. My parents told me this morning, that the whole country is without electricity.

I tried to call them over skype this morning, and I was only able to get about 5 seconds worth of talk before I got cut off. Apparently, incoming calls to Lebanon are virtually impossible at this time. They had to call me back in order for us to be able to talk.

Unfortunately, they are expecting things to get worse. I am unsure whether communication over landline, or email will be even possible over the next few days. People in Beirut, and my family are starting to evacuate the city, but since there’s no outlet outside of the country, everyone is moving up to the mountains, in case Israel decide to start bombing Beirut suburbs, which sort of started in a way:

The airport has been bombed 3 times now, and is now completely unusable, the road to damascus has also been bombed and blocked, and the Israeli naval forces are blocking all sea ports. currently, the only open road out of the country is up north to Syria. Expectations are that this road will also be bombed to get blocked.

My parents have been stocking up on food, gas for the generators and some other reserves in case they get stuck with no resources.

I will try to keep this blog updated as I hear more from my parents. I know things are on CNN, but I might have some more details on things that are not in the news, when I hear directly from my parents.

Meanwhile,  here’s an email I received from my dad this morning, as a personal account of what they’re going through….

[...] 

As for the situation today, it is getting worse than yesterday especially in Dahyeh where they bombarded all the main road and bridges that lead there, and they are telling all the people to leave their homes who live near the Hizbullah offices, and I am afraid they will be bombing those offices. They already threatened Hassan Nasrallah the Hizbullah leader that they want his head dead or alive!!… they also bombarded the roads leading to Bekaa and the south including the new bridge in Sowfar and Mdayrej. They also bombed the remaining parts of the runway of the airport, and the fuel tanks there… and now they started bombing all cell phone antennas… you can hear the roaring of the aircrafts all day !!

In east side of Beirut, it is very calm so far, but people are in line at the gas stations and bakeries as it was the situation during the war… Micha and Pat are still staying with us as they are afraid that they might come to bomb Bsalim power station which is very close to their home…

[...]… but you should see the tourists yesterday running away towards Syria as the airport was bombarded, and Israel threatened to bombard the Damascus road (which they did this morning), , and most of the Arabs have their cars with them… about 12000 tourists left in one day and the hotels which was books by 108% two days ago became totally empty today !!

Finally, now the Israelis started throwing leaflets that they will soon bombard the bridges of Barbir and Charles Helou (which leads the way to Hamra)… so it seems it is getting closer to Achrafieh!!

I should close now as I have to go down to Zalfa and probably I should be going home as things might get more serious…

so it’s been a little more than a month since my last post.

I recently started my job with j2Global Communications.  (in the middle of February that is). Actually, come to think of it, it was when I started my new job that I had stopped posting. I guess I don’t have much time to finding cool stuff on the net anymore, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t post an update on what’s happening with me.

Since I left APU, my life has been a little bit of a roller coaster, and starting my job at j2Global was a bit of lifestyle change, because of my work hours…. 6:00am to 2:00pm, Tuesday through Saturday. For 5 years before that, my schedule was from 8:00 to 5:00, and my commute went up from about 10 minutes to somewhere around 1 hour 15 minutes. 

I thought that when I started with the new schedule, that I would get used to it eventually, but I guess once you’re a night owl, you’re always one. I can’t seem to get used to waking up at 4:30am every morning.

On the bright side, the job at j2Global was kinda fun. it’s a pretty kick back environment there, and I’m getting the opportunity to learn some stuff about telecom. Also, being in a 24/7/365 operations makes it for a different environment overall.. especially that we have colocations around the world, so we are always working in different time zones and what not.

On the techie side, I guess the only thing I can think of is that I upgraded my laptop RAM to a 2Gb, and man was that a nice upgrade. I can now use VMWare without bogging down the whole system, and I can still have outlook, and some other programs open at the same time outside of the VM.

i know I’ve done a bunch of other stuff, but I think I’ll post those in another post.

until then, Cheers!