Lots of people know what to do, but they don't do what they know ;)

Now you know!

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Anybody looking for work?

Even though usually I advise people not to get employed, to try to be creative and get themselves to generate some income by directly creating value themselves, and not by creating value to someone, some people still want to get employed, and still prefer to go the hard way in life. They don't respond positively to wise advice. For these, I have come across the following book that may give them some edge in their cover letters and job interviews.

Cinema Théatre Vendôme

Quand j'avais 7 ou 8 ans, là où on attendait l'autocar, sur un des murs d'une vieille batisse qu'on appelait Station Abou Arbid, il y avait chaque semaine une nouvelle affiche, l'affiche d'un nouveau film qu courait sur les écrans de Cinéma Vendôme. En ce temps, je ne savais peut-être pas ce que c'était un cinéma, ou je le savais? Un des copains qui attendait l'autocar avec moi essayait à chaque fois de décoller l'affiche sans la déchirer, parce qu'il faisait une collection d'affiches. Je me rappelle aussi le titre d'un film "Le Coup de Parapluie" de Pierre Richard, parce que ce type était particulièrement excité le jour où on avait collé cette affiche, sous prétexte qu'il s'appelait Richard, et que son frère s'appelait Pierre.

Plus tard, du temps de mon adolescence, cinéma Vendôme perdit un peu de sa superbe, surtout avec l'avènement des cinémas Empire qui monopolisaient peu à peu l'industrie dans tout le pays. Néanmoins de temps en temps, on allait cinéma Vendôme. Certes on ne prenait pas autant de plaisir que dans les salles Empire plus modernes, mais les salles n'étaient pas mauvaises après tout, et on pouvait voir l'écran sans gêne de la tête du spectateur devant nous. Puis encore et surtout, on référençait l'escalier Geara par l'escalier au milieu duquel il y a l'entrée d'un ciné.

Plus tard encore, peut-être un an ou deux auparavant, comme je travaillais quelque part dans la région, je passais parfois devant ciné Vendôme qui n'était plus qu'une vielle batisse sans aucune entrée, pour monter l'escalier Geara et aboutir de Nahr à Geitawi. Je ne manquais pas à chaque fois de regarder l'entrée condamnée par des blocs de bois ou de béton, et je me demandais si cette entrée rouvrirait un jour?

Aujourd'hui, en passant par la rue Nahr, et comme je voulais monter l'escalier Geara, je cherchais la demeure du ciné pour localiser l'escalier, et je ne le trouvais pas. Le panneau où on colle les affiches est toujours là, mais à côté, un chantier commence à se creuser. Un centre commercial ou un immeuble résidentiel se prépare rue du fleuve, et une autre page de la région et des habitants de la région se tourne. Dans l'espoir que ce soit une belle page, on peut voir dans la photo ci-jointe, les ruines de Ciné Vendôme.

Semsom - Lebanese Cuisine with a twist?

We finally went to Semsom at City Mall. Ever since it opened, we wanted to go, and it happened this Sunday.

The concept is quite original. It's strange to see the colored hommos, and the other varieties, and since our first thought is that it is a Lebanese Restaurant in the end, we have the impulse to make our orders in the old fashioned way. This is what should be avoided. The Semsom restaurant concept according to me is a kind of occidental way of presenting Lebanese cuisine, with the option to go the old way.

Each plate order comes with an option of 3 small mezzas, which come in the same plate, and make the table less chaotic than other Lebanese restaurant tables, and lets each person eat the mezza he or she likes the most without over eating. This is why I said above ordering the traditional way would be a mistake.

The food we ordered was good, except the cheese rolls (r'a'at el jibneh). The service was very good also, and each 10 minutes by the end of our lunch, we had someone of the uniform persons in the restaurant come and ask us if we were satisfied with everything. Usually this happens only once (if ever) in other places, and the manager does it, so we wondered if there were many managers?

The only thing we missed were the dessert, because we were so full we couldn't eat anymore. Even the kids enjoyed the meal, and stayed long part of the meal on their chairs, which is rare.

Overall, it was a good experience, and the restaurant location inside Citymall is a location of choice, overlooking the sea.

Les enfants vont faire dodo...

Les filles essaient de dormir... C'est le moment des batailles, des cris et de l'exercice du pouvoir, ainsi que de l'abus du pouvoir, comme cela finit par être tous les jours.

Comme chaque soir avant de dormir, et une fois au lit, les filles trouvent toutes les excuses du monde pour jouer, bavarder, se chamailler, se jeter les doudous, et j'en passe. La maman ayant présenté sa démission depuis quelque jours, c'est le papa qui se charge dorénavent du dodo.

La première nuit, depuis deux jours, le papa a pris le pouvoir par coup de règle. Paff, un seul coup, et le silence a reigné. Le papa n'a plus eu qu'à s'asseoir sur la chaise, et à lire son courrier sur son ordinateur portable. Hier, un autre coup de règle beaucoup moins fort que le premier et le silence a reigné. Aujourd'hui, les choses semblent plus simples, pas de coups de règle, seulement quelques shhhhhhhh... Espérons que ça passe.

C'est bizarre ce côté oriental et impatient chez nous, qui nous donne tous les droits pour utiliser tantôt la règle, tantot le sabot, tantot la main tout court, tantot les cheveux, et on assume cette sauvagerie qui nous fait taper nos enfants sans aucune vergogne, et sans aucun état d'ame, alors que tous les manuels de l'éducation, tous les principes interdisent cette pratique du moyen-age. Et on s'en vante.

Mais c'est bizarre aussi ces enfants qui n'écoutent personne et rien, qui ne comprennent que la menace de la force, et qui tiennent tête jusqu'au bout. Est-ce que c'est nous qui les avons menés jusque là, est-ce que c'est leur caractère d'origine, est-ce la fréquentation de gens mal éduqués ou est-ce leur école qui n'est pas en train de leur instiguer les principes d'obéissance, ou encore les grands-parents qui gatent?

Bon voila, les ronflements se font entendre. Je peux m'éclipser tranquillement.

How to lose fat: Two foods to avoid

One of the main problems with nutrition nowadays is that every person gives you a different insight about what should and what should not be eaten, about what is good for your health and what is not. It is a problem because rare are the people who really know what they are talking about, including doctors, and the problem of some people that don’t know is that they do not shut up and leave their ignorance for them, but they communicate it to others.

Some people even generalize and distribute their ignorance in the form of diet books, that become widespread and that a lot of people begin to follow blindly, only to discover later that all their efforts to lose weight or fat were in vain because they didn’t understand some rules.

Among these rules is one of utmost importance because it is among the most ignored ones. It is about 2 kinds of unsuspected foods that are to be reduced or deleted from your diet. These are 2 items that most people have always considered as healthy. These are the following:

- Wheat products: By wheat product, I mean all wheat, including all kinds of breads, complete or whole or brown, cereals, pasta and so on. In addition to the fact that a large number of people has some degree of intolerance to gluten, sometimes without suspecting it, the human body in general was never meant to eat large quantities of wheat, and never adapted to that as well.
Until 100 years ago, the wheat in bread and products didn’t constitute a major part of the human diet. This consisted more in meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds.

- Fruit Juices: Even though fruits in themselves are very good and very healthy for the body, when the juice is separated from the rest of the fruit, the fiber and other beneficial components of the fruit are left and not absorbed, which makes the fruit juice at best a high calorie sugary mixture.
Moreover, drinking the fruit juice alone doesn’t satisfy your appetite needs, and you are left with the same hunger feeling you were feeling before drinking, craving more carbohydrates, whereas the whole fruit slows down the blood sugar response.

From the above, two points are to be retained, especially for people looking to lose weight or fat and feel better:

- Stop or reduce wheat from your diet. Try it to begin for 2 or 3 weeks, and notice how you will feel better and lose weight. If you feel you cannot resist your carbohydrates cravings, realize that it is only in your head, and that this need is more psychological than physical. Soon without even realizing this need will disappear by itself, if you persist. In addition to feeling better, you will start losing body fat much faster, and you will get rid of migraines and other indigestion related ailments that has plagued you for so long

- Stop or reduce drinking fruit juices. These make you fat. Instead eat the whole fruit and take benefit from the full fiber and energy boost that these give you

Living healthy is not a theory, it is a practice. Unfortunately, we are not educated enough, we have been misinformed, and we have been taken into a vicious circle of bad habits, either by our parents or by the society around. Still, if we engage in learning about the truth of the matter, we can get back to the right track. This is not an easy task, but believing is achieving.

They buy our kids for life for 10 cents

I was sitting there working when suddenly I felt like a Big Burger with a lot of fries from one of the fast food chains around. While talking to my wife, I told her about my craving, and she told me that she felt exactly the same. Having been both of us following some good eating practices lately, the fact that we both felt like eating that crap struck me.

The images of the fast food chain setting full of colors, with big pictures of Burger and fries, and the soda counters where you can fill all you can drink are so appealing. But being health wary, and knowing about all the unhealthy stuff that is wrapped in their meals, we cannot but ask ourselves where does that appeal come from? Why is it that we feel the need to indulge in eating that zero benefit, all fat meal that has disastrous effects both on our health, body and morale?

While thinking about that, I came across the fact that children adore these fast food chains. Everything is done there to attract families, and children ask to go there, both because there are playgrounds where they can play all they want, because they get their meal in nice flashy boxes, and because they get that extra toy with every meal. They even become collectors of these cheap 10 cents items, and sometimes just for the sake of getting that extra item that is missing in their collection, they make the whole family go to a fast food chain.

Parents want their kids to be happy and entertained. Their choices are dictated by those of their children. The children choices are in turn dictated by their attraction towards places where there are playgrounds, and where they give them extra stuff, even if that stuff only costs 10 cents for the piece, even if these same places sell crap for 10 dollars a piece, and most importantly even if they load you with fat and long term health problems and diseases.

So, the answer is there. No wonder if we crave these fast food chains as adults. We have grown up as children with pleasurable feelings towards these places. No wonder that we like these salty fries, we have come to accept them as the standard of good fries from our young age.

With this in mind, our reaction today should be not only to fight the craving feelings we have towards eating a big burger accompanied with crispy fries, it should be to instill in our children some good sense about eating good stuff and not eating bad stuff. We should from now on educate our kids to know what is good for them and what is not. We shouldn't allow these fast food chains to buy our children with 10 cents for their life to come, like they bought us years ago.

Citizen Protection Rights: Trash

At the old days of school, some students used to throw things in the playing field, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Teachers used to ask us then "At home, do you throw tissues on the floor after using them?" and we used to answer that of course not, but at that young age of ours (seven or eight years), we used not to perceive the full meaning of throwing things around, especially that there were janitors. Sometimes, students who were seen throwing matters were punished by being assigned to clean the whole playing ground, some other times, students were asked to volunteer to clean the playing ground. I don't know if that had any effect on me, and I don't even remember if I have followed this rule everywhere, at all times in my life.

Still, nowadays when I see people throwing trash out of their cars, or in the street, or I see long alleys by the sea full of trash, I cannot but ask myself why is it so impulsive for people to throw their stuff on the road. Is it because they don't want to go through the pain of collecting the trash in a bag and throwing it later where it should, or because of lack of education or because of lack of knowledge? Whatever the answer, and since every human action can always be reduced to one of the two governing emotions of Pain and Pleasure or to a mix of both, it should necessarily be that people throw their trash on the street because they feel more pleasure doing it than collecting their trash for later disposal, and more pain in holding that impulse. Maybe they feel proud about it?



Anyhow, and things being what they are, these untidy people are affecting a whole country, so in my opinion, the only solution to this issue is to enforce the pain related to throwing trash in the street in these people and also the pleasure related to not doing it. This can be executed in the following way: Whenever someone is seen throwing garbage in the street, he should be convicted, he should be made to pay some penalty and in the same time to execute some cleaning task. Very easy to track, easy to execute, and easy to set as an example, especially that people that are throwing all their trash on us are not hiding to do it. They are doing it proudly in public places, and the worst thing is that they do it in places they go to themselves. So it's only logical that they do the cleaning themselves.

This is part of what the citizen protection rights should consist of!

Lundi, bof!

Et voila, ça redémarre... Lundi passé, la machine se remet en marche. C'est bizarre combien le lundi est tout négatif de connotations, de pensées, et combien on se sent déjà mieux le lundi soir, en buvant le café au lait dans le bain :) Sérieusement, on se sent déjà mieux tout court.



Le dimanche après-midi, soudain, on se sent toute chose. C'est comme si on prévoit les 24 mauvaises heures à venir. Mardi, c'est autre chose, c'est le boom de nouveau. Autant que je puisse revenir en arrière en mémoire, je ne me souviens d'aucun lundi qui ait été agréable. Bon, enfin, je généralise un peu, mais c'est juste pour dire que la connotation négative du lundi est ancrée dans nos têtes.

Et ce qui est le plus étrange, c'est que objectivement, lundi est un jour comme un autre. Est-ce que ce sens négatif qu'on lui donne revient du temps de l'école? Est-ce que ça nous rappelle la peine de se lever le matin dans le froid, pour prendre l'autocar alors qu'il ne fait pas encore jour?

Bon, dans tous les cas, il faut trouver un moyen pour changer cela, et je crois que le meilleur moyen serait de prendre congé tous les lundis!

Mmmmh délicieux, à répéter sans modération!

Ce matin, j'ai eu envie d'un plat de "foul mudammas" de chez Foul Iyyem Zamen.

Plus tard, tout en me gavant sur mon bureau, je priais pour que personne ne vienne me rendre visite, et que personne ne m'interrompe, parce que j'avais fait un étalage devant moi de menthe, d'oignons, de tomates, etc.



Avec chaque bouchée, délicieuse comme tout, je songeais à l'importance de ce plat du point de vue nutritionnel, surtout s'il est mangé (j'ai bien dit mangé, pas dévoré) de bon matin. Il faut dire qu'il contient tout, et l'ail qui est inclus dans le mélange, avec les oignons, les olives, les tomates et la menthe qui accompagnent, tout de bonnes choses autant sur le plan gustatif que sur le plan anti-inflammatoire.

Je vous conseille vivement ce plat délicieux, même si vous ne devez rien manger de toute la journée, car ce plat seul suffit à vous faire le plein, et vous pouvez être sur qu'en même temps, vous ne manquez d'aucun élément nutritionnel.

Feux d'artifice ou tête d'artifice?

C'est beau à regarder les feux d'artifice, surtout quand ce n'est pas toi qui en fais les frais. Toutes ces couleurs, ces formes, ce rêve, notre visuel est epoustouflé.

Et puis quoi? Et puis c'est parti, pffft, c'est du mirage, c'est de l'instantané, on oublie 1 minute après ce qu'on a vu ou senti, même les caméras ne peuvent capter la beauté et l'immensité du moment, c'est tout simplement du virtuel, de la fumée et quand on se réveille on n'est même pas sonné.

On se demande d'où vient cette odeur de plomb, toute cette pollution? Soudain nos oreilles bourdonnent des éclats qu'on n'avait pas entendus alors qu'on observait, et le visuel parti, tous nos autres sens se demandent et réfléchissent au sens de tout le spectacle.

Et le sens, c'est justement ça qui manque, autant au spectacle, qu'au but du spectacle, qu'à la cervelle des instigateurs du spectacle. Les feux partis, l'artificiel apparait, l'artificiel brûle et réveille. Le rêve d'un instant sombre devant le vide des moments qui suivent, des cervelles brulées qui manquent de substance et qui nous polluent de leur présence.

Alors, qu'ils aillent ailleurs ces fous d'artifice, qu'ils nous délivrent de leur présence et de la beauté de leurs feux qui cachent la pollution de leur existence.

Kids in the street - You are killing their future

They go in the street, asking for money and playing on people's feelings to get a pound or two. You encounter them all day long, each time in a different place, always dirty, always trying to sound miserable, they are a plague in each society, and they are barely 5 or 6 years old.

The truth is they are miserable, not because of themselves, but because of their parents, because there is no applicable law to protect them, and also because of the people that give them money

While you in the car cannot do anything to change their parents, you may do little to get the children protection law to be applied, but what you can surely do is NOT TO ENCOURAGE THESE KIDS TO STAY THE WAY THEY ARE. What you are doing when you give them money is a crime, because you are encouraging them to stay where they are, and you are encouraging their parents to keep exploiting them.

So open your eyes, and do not feel guilty if they stick at the window of your car and you do not give them anything. They need to learn that in life we do not get anything for nothing, and their parents need to know that by exploiting their kids, they are not getting any return. You have a mission to accomplish, and this mission is to improve your society. So stop being stupid, and instead of encouraging negative behavior, put your money where it encourages good behavior. There are a lot of associations working to improve kids life and on educating children that have no parents, you can go there if you are so kind.

Very well thought :)

So true!

Posted via email from nicolaze's posterous