Shifting towards something a little more personal, the biggest part of 2010 and the most impactful.

Life

In life you can never have everything, and when I moved over here, I knew that I was giving up a ton of stuff, but crucially I was also getting something that I can never get in England, and that’s family, mine and Yasmine’s. Once again this is a double edged sword but it’s one that I am extremely grateful for and really enjoying at the moment.

I love the fact that I don’t really have to cook, unless I really want to. I like the fact that I am generally taken care of in that department completely and totally. Be it my future mother in law, Yasmine, my aunts, whatever. I like the fact that I don’t have to iron, except on the rare occasions. I love the fact that the country is small and I can get around relatively easily.

I don’t like the banking sector in the country, nor do I like the stupid traffic in Beirut. I don’t like the insane drivers, nor how they force me to act while I drive on the road either. I do like the weather generally, although I do actually wish it would act like the seasons. We really honestly didn’t feel any autumn, nor are we honestly feeling the winter either. I guess this is all part of the global warming effect which I should discuss in more detail in the future.

Work

There are a ton of things that I want to institute in the office. Something will take a good long while to get them going, while others will be more immediate to implement. The best thing I learnt while working for any company is the following:

Don't ask for permission...rather ask for forgiveness

Do it first and then claim ignorance later. It’s not like you’re trying to upset anyone, rather trying to push any company forward is a tough thing that takes persistence and time and effort to change something that many people don’t want to change.

Feeling drained after that long trip to Syria yesterday (and back). It’s the first week where I don’t have a deadline at the end of Friday. I have to issue something minor, but by and large it’s not that tough a week. Thank fuck. It’s been pretty damn intense these last few weeks/months, but we’ve come through, and people are relatively happy with what we did.

There are elements that we could do further, edit, change etc, but ultimately we’ve done a pretty solid job for the 3 months work we’ve completed. Now I’ve got to haul my ass out of bed and take a shower and get outta here. Can I be bothered? Can I fuck.

Well, clearly the country just bypassed the whole autumn thing and just instantly went to winter. The temperature is still on the high side, but at least it is chucking it down. The thing is that in Lebanon when it rains, lets just say, it’s definitely not fucking around. We are talking buckets, we are talking Noah type rain here.

My only issue, and it’s a small tiny one is the noise that comes from my neighbour’s buildings and the piss poor job they do of securing their shit. The wind is a howler and it’s not forgiving in the slightest.

That is pretty strange. I just was looking at the traffic logs on the site and I noticed a really really strange trend. At the start of the year I was seriously moving back up in terms of traffic. June was an epic month but I think that’s mainly attributed to the fact that I had a spreadsheet hosted here for the world cup and that generated a ton of traffic from Google.

But after that month there is this unbelievable drop of nearly 1/5 of the visitors. I mean even the months before this epic month were not as low as that. Did I change anything between the two months? Well for a start there was a less posting on the site? The ‘Kode is not like other sites where I basically post 3 or 4 times a day and have a super specific niche. The site is a personal blog that talks about all sorts of random pop culture items.

There is a ton of those on the web nowadays, but the question is finding which ones have got a unique voice, and that’s actually incredibly difficult to do. I neither have the time, nor do I feel like I am part of a community of people any more. Blog comments don’t exist any more, or no one really uses them as much as they used.

I guess it’s all a matter of perspective, and I don’t mind the smaller readership, it’s kind of fun to be honest, because I can go back to being as foul mouthed as I want without having to worry about anyone taking offence (or maybe less so than I would normally), it’s just what the hell happened in July to drive EVERYONE away :).

The plan is, and lets see if I can keep this up, is to give at least 2 posts a day. Sometimes they will be links, other times it will be longer based posts on things that i enjoy or am going through, lets see if I can keep this up.brok

It’s 5:55 in the morning and I’ve just woken up to get ready for work after 6 long months away from a regular gig on the basis that I was on sabbatical. You don’t change your life all that often, but right now that’s exactly what I’m about to embark on.

I’ll probably be blogging more often and maybe doing a compare and contrast between life over here and life in the UK. The first difference at the moment is that rather than waking up and getting ready to go to work by walking to the Golders Green tube station, I’m waking up and getting ready for a 28 minute drive to Beirut.

Not sure which is better, which is worse, but what I do know is that it’s completely different and there is something of a novelty issue associated with it. Wish me luck everyone.

So I’m sitting in Athens International Airport, on my way to a new life. 6 months ago it would have been soo easy to simply nod my head and continue to stay as if nothing had changed for another year. Another missed opportunity. Instead, I said that I would first try and see what was outside the British borders.

I found the sun, family, food and a great deal more. I found a different way of life, which would allow me to actually start thinking about more than the next couple of years. The strangest feeling is that I’m going back to where I was born, but never lived. For years, it was the language, some customs and the summers that kept me feeling Lebanese in any way. For the most part I’m not Lebanese, but in many other respects I’m 100% Lebanese because oddly enough, like me there are MILLIONS. Well that’s not completely true. There are millions of people living outside of Lebanon that can claim in one way or another to call themselves Lebanese, but those that return to start a new chapter in my life? There can’t be millions, there can be thousands…maybe?

I do plan on doing a range of things over the next few years and I’ll be talking about them in a lot more detail on this website. It’s been the one of the few constants in this transitory period of my life and will be playing a very important role in the coming years as well.

To all those I left behind in London, I love you all, I will miss you soo much. 10 days was definitely not enough but we’ve got a lifetime to catch up.

This will be part of a new series of posts that basically deal with my moving over to Lebanon and exactly what I’ve been going through. It’s important to me to catalogue these things to make sure that I don’t forget how things are in a normal country, because it’s very easy to assimilate and you eventually think that actually what you’re doing is normal….when it’s actually not.

So I was meant to fly into Lebanon tomorrow afternoon (which I’m still doing hopefully) and then take a cab from the airport directly to the VW dealership - oh yeah I bought my first ever car. This one here:

It’s a Golf. It’s shark blue. It’s a solid little car and what I need for the time being in Lebanon. I really really really wanted an Alfa Romeo Guillietta, but alas, spare parts in Lebanon are extortionate and getting someone to actually sort it out for you isn’t really all that easy. There are a set number of places that can help you out.

Now the place I bought it from is the Kettaneh dealership, which has got several cars under their banner. So my representative, nice guy, but unfortunately not very organised. His sole task was to get my car registered in time for me when I got back to Lebanon. Big Massive Fail (BMF for short). No he only got around to sending it off today. It officially takes 48hrs. So I’ve had to go and rent a car for 24hours. Not sure how much it’s going to cost me, but alas it’s a pain in my ass, that could have been prevented if he’d basically registered the car when I transfered the required payment to them 10 days ago.

So file this one under:
In Lebanon, they all lie.

Driving in Lebanon (a user manual) - Thought I was making it up eh? Hell a whole book has been published to catalogue some of the crazy shit these Lebanese do with their driving over here. The best part of the book is in the introduction explaining that it’s not ‘bad driving’ but rather ‘superior driving skills but irresponsible conduct’.

Movies in Lebanon - Another link for those on the ground in Lebanon. Two drop down links, gives you the movie listing by theatre and by film. Then it’s got a quick breakdown of the times they play. I’ll probably be peppering my blog with these quick links. They’re more for me and others like me, who don’t live here and need information quickly once they get here.

If you’re planning a trip to Beirut, Lebanon, be sure to either buy yourself the printed copy of ‘Zawarib Beirut’ or keep this link handy. It’s basically the equivalent of an A-Z. Essential even though Beirut is not that big.

So today I went to Bank Med to open myself a bank account here in Lebanon. For all you people outside the country, shit happens very very differently over here. Some for the better, other for the seriously fucked up.

The first that you realise, is that you actually have a bank manager. You have a problem, you have an issue you want to deal with, a transaction you need help with, here is a name that will provide you with the information you require. He knows all your information, he knows where you live, how much you make and generally where you are. In a country the size of Lebanon (fucking tiny) your bank manager knows a great deal.

In London, I’ve never had to speak to a bank manager…since I opened my account back in Nottingham in 1997. This lack of Bank manager for your mortgages was one of the things that the government lamented was missing and part of the reason for the economic depression.

Where was I? Oh yeah, back to my bank account. So I’m about to sign up and the guy tells me a general clause that I have to sign. The first is the fact that I’m not allowed to take with me the terms and conditions of my new bank account. I’m sorry, what the fuck? You want me to sign an 8 page document, and you don’t want me to take a copy to review at home later on, or for me to understand my rights? Nope, you cannot. This is ‘confidential’ information by the bank and for the bank? Obviously you’re allowed to read through the thing and the guy will get you a coffee while you wait. The pertinent points of course is that you get a SECRET ACCOUNT. As in, nobody is allowed to get into it, not the government, not anyone, well at least that’s what I’ve been led to believe, except I can’t tell you because that fucking information was not given too me.

The other thing of course that made me stop was the bloody way in which I was made to sign another form which basically allows the bank to keep the cash ‘frozen’ in the account for 6 months if it’s over $100,000. Ok, what the fuck is that all about? Not sure, but the value of money wasn’t written on the form. Seriously, as if it was some big secret.

Trust me, it won't be held for smaller values, just for monies over $100k.

I left the bank with an account, but with little information regarding my rights as a client or as to what my fees would be and what I would require to pay, interest rates etc. In a way I feel cheated. Cheated because I have no other option but to open a bank account in this stupid fashion. It’s not just BankMed that does this, it’s most (if not all Banks over here) or at least that’s what I’ve been informed (Bank Audi is just as elusive with information, except they charge you for EVERYTHING).

I’ll stop moaning about this, just thought I’d share today’s experience. Merry Christmas everyone, hope everyone has a great one.

So I finally got internet connection today, and this is my first post in Lebanon in over 5 years. So what do I think of the place so far? I’m not going to complain because honestly if I wanted to complain, this list would be absolutely massive. Instead I’m going to focus on somethings that I’ve noticed so far, and over the course of the time I spend here I’ll sniper attack dumbfuck assholes that annoy me (trust me living here for 2 weeks has made me encountered my fair share of supreme idiots).

Weather

Lucifer is washing his wife.

Not sure where this comes from to be honest with you…these Lebanese say some fucked up shit. Hopefully the rainy season is over and I can except dry and sunny weather for a few weeks.

Driving

There are specific rules for roundabouts here as well. He who comes from outside the roundabout has way. You can also use the entrance of the roundabout if you wish to do a quick U-turn. This saves you the time going around the roundabout. Where’s the police? They’re eating falafels. Seriously. The stereotype of the big fat American cop eating donuts can be seen here as the not so fat, idiot cop eating his falafel. I don’t blame him, they taste AMAZING.

Food

So far it’s been interesting, but hopefully tonight I also get to spend some time in the house and start drawing and writing again and from tomorrow we can start seeing other parts of this country and getting an understanding of what it all has to offer. Stay tuned.