some guy in lebanon

Not much new to report – planning on bunking down tomorrow for the elections – have been to the store to pick up the staples: beer, chips, snacks, diet Pepsi, cheese and crackers. Hopefully it will be a high-uneventful day.

I wanted to share these: The first is from the nightclub White, the second from Chilli’s Restaurant in Achrafiyeh, and the third are from the Sea Club Sporting (they call it a beach club but there’s no beach so I refuse to honor that title, even though it’s an awesome place.

First, White – didn’t expect to be back so soon but I had a great night out there and managed to get some reasonable pictures with the phone.

Next, a frightening and bizzarre experience at Chilli’s Restaurant in Achrafiyeh, which might as well have been somewhere in the Mid West or Boston or something. A truly strange experience to walk out of Beirut and into Chilli’s!

Finally, the wonderful club Sporting – I took a 360-Degree set of shots from where we (Me, Catherine and Nick) were sitting – you can see Rouche, the Sea, South Beirut, and the Ferris Wheel at the Amusement Park.

I also had lunch at the restaurant at the Club, which sits above the main pool areas – we were sitting to the far right.

Click “Read More” to see all the pictures.

From InformationWeek:

Under a program called Project Match, IBM will help workers laid off from domestic sites obtain travel and visa assistance for countries in which Big Blue has openings. Mostly that’s developing markets like India, China, and Brazil.

The climate is warm, there’s no shortage of exotic food, and the cost of living is rock bottom. That’s IBM’s pitch to the laid-off American workers it’s offering to place in India. The catch: Wages in the country are pennies-on-the-dollar compared to U.S. salaries.

Note (8/19/09) – This post has been getting a lot of attention recently due to a link from a blog called ‘Dances with Klingons‘ – So I wanted to add a remark. Something that I didn’t understand when I posted this article, is the degree to which it is possible, if you have no dependents, [...]

From the Daily Star, by Your’s Truly – Published on December 27th, 2008 – Click here for the original BEIRUT: A strategic partnership between Lebanese technology companies EDM and eSharing is breaking the “go-it-alone” status quo of the Middle East IT sector. eSharing will develop enterprise resource software that interfaces directly with EDM’s new Global [...]

Although I find their analysis a little hackneyed and sadly standard, this is a nice article about the current calm and the future challenges facing Lebanon. As Nick said, “Using an unknown business man as the central pillar of a tired argument does seem like a stretch.” From the article: Construction cranes dot Beirut’s Mediterranean [...]

So Bernard Madoff has admitted that the Financial Services and Management division of his company is essentially an enormous Ponzi Scheme. $50 Billion U.S. is at stake, as are the subsequent investments of hundreds of millions of dollars hedged on money, debt, and guarantees from Madoff’s organization. In the end, charities are being closed, and [...]

Link to the Original Article, Published December 5th, 2008, Daily Star BEIRUT: Lebanon is well-positioned to offer web development, digital marketing, and information technology services to local, regional and international clients, according to several owners and partners of companies in and around Beirut. These experts agreed that Lebanon’s global position for IT services, outsourcing and [...]

Link to Original Article Published in the Daily Star, Published December 3rd, 2008 BEIRUT: The American University of Beirut (AUB) on Monday welcomed esteemed Harvard Business School professor John Quelch for a discussion on the ramifications and theories of his most recent book, “Greater Good: How Good Marketing Makes for Better Democracy.” Quelch, the senior [...]

I was the second person to arrive at the Captain’s Cabin at 7:30 PM yesterday, a bar here in Hamra where I’m staying in Beirut. I had been assured by several people that this particular bar had sworn to stay open until an American President was selected, many thousands of miles away… And so it [...]

If every American could watch this video, this would be a very different country. A very different country indeed. Thank you Dr. Brzezinski for talking some bloody sense into those idiots on the television. Why can’t we vote for HIM for President? If you cannot see the video, (like if you’re receiving this in an [...]

“In this economy, racism is officially a luxury. How is John McCain going to win if he can’t win those voters? – FiveThirtyEight.com has an amazing story out of Western Pennsylvania. A polster, traveling block by block attempting to learn more about working-class America’s election leanings reports: “A canvasser goes to a woman’s door in [...]

Update: Please note that this is a follow-up article to a previous post, “The Coming American Diaspora.” To begin what is really an extended diatribe, consider this quote from Nathan Gardels’ interview with George Soros on Friday: U.S. influence will wane. It has already declined. For the past 25 years, we have been running a [...]

Daily Star’s Nick Kimbrell Reports on the state of the Lebanese economy, given the current global economic volitility: BEIRUT: The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) senior resident representative to Lebanon praised the country’s central bank late Tuesday, saying the banking sector had few direct links to the current financial crisis and that Lebanon would likely prove [...]

Given that our government is in the process of radically socializing the American economy, and also given my increased interest in Libertarian Socialism, I am of the impression that we are about to witness a market-driven rapid growth of communes here in the United States. My general assumptions for such a communal movement include, Prior [...]

Update: Also read “Part 2 of the American Diaspora – Economic Consequences of the Bailout” which is currently a top-ranked article on Google for the keywords “American Diaspora”! I can’t believe I wrote this in early October… guess I had a little foresight, eh? People ask me why I’m leaving the country – why I’m [...]

Woa – You know things are bad when the Journal’s saying stuff like this: Last week, Republican presidential candidate John McCain called for a commission to “find out what went wrong” on Wall Street. It was an excellent suggestion: Public inquiries into Wall Street practices served the country well in the 1930s. And Mr. McCain [...]

Ron Paul weighed in on the Bush Administration’s planned financial bailout on CNN’s “Late Edition” today: WOLF BLITZER (“Late Edition” host): What do you say to the president who wants you and your fellow Republicans and Democrats to quickly pass this $700 billion bailout package? PAUL: Well, I think that’s a mistake because we don’t [...]

Really, the question on everyone’s mind is, “Where is this going, and when is it going to stop?” The point Joel Archenbach is trying to make is clear: If people were either responsible with their money or coerced into being irresponsible, at what point is it the tax-payer’s responsibility to bail out Wall Street in [...]

Direct effects of subprime fallout muted by Arab banking practices According to the Daily Star, The prudent policies of Arab banks and financial institutions have allowed these entities to avoid the negative effects of the acute crisis that hit the stock markets in the United States and part of Europe, a leading Arab banker says. [...]

[youtube]Xzc0re_3hQw[/youtube] Original Post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzc0re_3hQw