"Climate change" positive effects (lebanese version)

As a participant in the "Blog action day", i'm addressing my fellow Lebanese citizens...maybe through irony and sarcasm, they might get the message ...just maybe .

And i'm very sure that i'll be the only blogger today portraying the positive effects of climate change, thus the irony.

Climate change Effects :

1- in 2040 the death rate of "Rawche's" divers will drop to 0%



2- in 2060, No more spinning around to get to the statue...and a much wider parking space !



3- in 2050, Lebanese will be joining hands to vote for jeita's grotto as one of the underwater beauties (anything that unites us ...right ?!) !



4- in 2045, Lebanese Night Life will reach a new Peak...since day life will become unbearable !




5- in 2070, Lebanon will live in peace, well... mount Lebanon at least, since all the neighboring troublemakers will cease to exist



Et Voila !!!

asl plz

I had a conversation with an old friend who's now back in Lebanon after we lost contact when he immigrated to Canada.
We shared many years ago, during what i call "the post-school/pre-uni phase", the mIRC mania with everything on the side, since he owned a net cafe back then, and i used to hang out there till morning, beginning a new day with a freshly baked croissant au chocolat from the next door bakery ...:)

the nostalgia was triggered by a question "do you know what the hell happened to mr.lola ? " referring to that guy that was permanently high (on cough syrup), sitting 2 rows away, pretending he was "lola" luring horny "nicknames" to join his channel ...It was hilarious since he used to auto-dictate out loud whatever he's typing (solemnly with his right hand finger ), that uncoordinated , newly invented English, which btw helped him pass as a Russian "lola" :) :" heheheh, come i meet you, because channel very hot, waiting you..." (i dunno what shocks me more, his English or the fact that the spelling in blogger found nothing wrong about that quote :| )

Or this prank i pulled on that hyperactive guy, sitting right next to me ,who used to jump on his chair and do what seemed like a mating ritual dance each time someone answered his "hi"...i should have taken a photo of that moment when i told him that it was me joking around with him for a whole week , posing as a girl promising him a rendez-vous, so he had to shave and pour bottles of perfume everyday, hoping that this day he'll get an address :D ... priceless !!!

or that regular, that each time he skipped, we knew it will be for a whole week, since he used to "use" and get caught ....a lot!

or that huge guy, resembling "Newman" from "Seinfeld" who used to come daily, to his pre-reserved pc, no eye contact, no words, finishes pays and leaves ! for a while we thought he was a serial killer or something , but when , by mistake ;) someone checked the "keep log history",it showed that he was having cyber-sex from the net cafe ....with another guy :)

that girl that used to come over to check her mail with her fiancé, who was more of a bodyguard than a fiancé, and kept distributing threatening looks all around :)

i've seen it all, and i had my share of everything that comes with it ;)but that's for another post, another time (if the answer was "b" not "a" - refer to my previous post below). But i say i have seen it all , maybe cause i was an observer in a net cafe, maybe cause i saw both the real person and the nickname, sometimes it was funny, sometimes shocking.

funny as that unavoidable asl question and the false answers to each and every "a""s"and "l", or that someone who chats with BOTs :D , begging a channel Bot for a +, and it replies "I'm a Bot", and he answers "i'm not judging you, i just need a + " and it goes on and on ...:)then insults him and leaves the channel to try again the next day...discussions with an automated message...blind dates that went wrong :D, pranks , jokes, flooding channels ,or even stealing a channel's password ( Even though OPs of #liban didn't see the humor in it :P )

And yet not so funny, seeing all those people, trying to be someone else, in a parallel world,nerds trying to be playboys, underdogs trying to be powerful, even if just as a nickname, knowing people in higher places "ops", getting voiced + , or even founding their own channel so they can have their revenge by bullying people around, feeding their inferiority complex with that kick/ban weapon ...freaking out, if dallas' dalnet server crashes, like they were on life support machines and they were unplugged, realizing that they are back to the harsh reality of being themselves.

For me it was intense but very brief, knowing that i'm a narcissist, i discovered that i loved myself more than my nickname et voilà .

\quit #post

a or b

They say that in a near-death experience, you see your whole life events passing in a glimpse...i must be having that same experience but in slow motion, dying slowly, since most of my recent thoughts (as my recent posts show as my next post will) are flashbacks of my life, going through long forgotten layers of my memory, revisiting periods that i don't even recall living...it's either that, or it's just the fact that i'm bumping lately to many friends of that early stage and we are getting nostalgic :).

I'm leaning towards the second option , cause i really have a lot to do, and i really need the time :)

How stupid was I ?

The above mentioned question or “statement” is one of the consequences of the “facebook” flu, More precisely the “school promo facebook flu” that can haunt you 11 years after your recovery from its last symptoms.

It’s amazing how many times this question pops into my head when I’m engaging in any of the group’s events or discussions!

-checking the tags of old photos , witnessing the hideous wardrobe of my childhood ,(thanks mom), btw mom, no boy , even a 7 year old, wears “collant” under his shorts for the “sports” class, even if it was cold , believe me I have checked all the classes’ photos , not only my class , no one, no one I tell u , wears that!! I browse and I browse asking myself ....How stupid was I??

- when leaving school I kept a specific image stored in my head of every single schoolmate, stamped by the attitude at the time of our last goodbye, and one decade later, in a reunion, I find myself impressed by the maturity and the amazing character of some that I didn’t even consider their friendship back then, and get astonished by the fact that some of the closest people to me during my childhood are still 12 year olds, still bullying the previously mentioned people, dying for attention, inviting you to join the parade! And I ask myself ….how stupid was I???

-and of course, many of the girls that I kind of dated at school wrote notes for, drew their portraits, made them compilation K7s (this alone deserves a “how stupid was I?”) played the whole teenage charade with, I watch them a decade later in disbelief (what was I thinking???) and in relief (thank god that’s over) and I ask myself …How stupid was I?

-On the other hand, that one girl , that I used to spot in the shades of the familiar trees in the playground, very different , very mysterious … I lacked of courage , didn’t let her know , days passed by , always spotting her among all the crowds , years passed by , still I spotted her , a decade later , in our reunion, among everyone, shining more than ever, I spotted her and I asked myself … How stupid was I ??????

-and above all, the flashbacks, the silliest details, the smallest jokes, the conversations with a friend, a friend that asked for my friendship at an age when we didn’t understand grown ups' words like “benefit’ and “interest”, a friend that now is gone, gone for good … a decade later I look back at these fragmented memories and notice that I took them for granted and ask myself … How stupid was I ?????????

At the end of this post , I think for a second and realize that I have just written a Post about a group on facebook and I ask myself : .........

posted by lilo:not so personal "Climate Change v/s Global Warming, What is Climate change?"

-P.S: as a way of spreading the word and contributing in a global cause that transcends over all divisions, I'll be posting about this subject and re-posting original posts by fellow bloggers, in this case from "Lilo:not so personal" blog LINK who has been dedicating quite a time for the issue that is global climate change . more posts updates and links from Lilo and others adressing this theme will be posted later .
the post by its original author is as follows :




In this post, I will be talking about what Climate Change (also referred to as Global Change) is, what Global Warming is, and the difference between them.

Global Warming

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. Global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the last century.

The greenhouse effect is the process by which absorption and emission of infrared radiation by gases in the atmosphere warm a planet's lower atmosphere and surface.

So in summary, with the greenhouse effect, the more the CO2, the more the absorption of the sun's radiation by the Earth, thus the increase of the global temperature. (See Photo)

Climate Change

Climate change is any long-term change in the statistics of weather over periods of time that range from decades to millions of years. Climate change may occur in a specific region, or across the whole Earth.

Lately, a change in the climate is occurring fast, and we can see those changes today. To name a few, increase in the sea water level (see previous post about the Maldives Islands to disappear, causing what we call Climate Refugees), increase in the spreading of diseases (e.g. the Dengue fever in Bangladesh), increase in the number of cyclones (e.g. in Oman), bleaching of coral reefs, glaciers melting, etc...

As now climate change will be affecting the whole Earth, it is also being referred to as Global Change.

Difference between Global Warming and Climate Change

Put in simple words, we can say that Climate change (the recent of course) is the consequence of Global warming. Global warming already happened, climate change is happening as we speak, and the target of these NGOs by December 2009 in Copenhagen is to introduce a treaty that will let the countries work on mitigating (decreasing) the effects of climate change on Earth as much as possible, by setting the goal of decreasing the gas emissions by 80% by 2050, to reach the 350 ppm (parts per million) CO2 in the atmosphere (it's around 378ppm now), to prevent from letting the temperature of the earth increase by 2 degrees Celsius (more details on this in future posts) which if they don't, it will have catastrophic and disastrous effects on Earth.

In future posts, I will be telling you about the effects of Climate Change on Lebanon directly, the difference between Mitigation (increase in gas emissions activities) and adaptation (in case the tipping point in climate change is reached, what will we do then), the science and the politics behind Climate Change and the most common words and expressions you will be hearing that are related to Climate change.

"puffies"...i guess :|

A couple of weeks ago, we had a nice gathering of friends, discussing everything, important and silly, passing time, till the moment I got up and grabbed a bag of potato chips and asked them if it reminded them of anything ? I bought these chips from a near by market, and they were exactly like the ones I used to get 20 years ago…the peanut flavor chips, curly shape , that used to come in small green plastic bags, with a spider like design on them …I guess they were called “puffies” if I’m not mistaken… Little did I know that these curly little ships would steer our conversation towards a 4 hour Nostalgia.

We all went back 10 year olds, you could see our eyes sparkle beginning each question with a “and do you remember …?

“ Do you remember the "footballers’ cards" hidden in potato bags that we used to collect in the 1990 world cup? Do you remember “Sassuki” , “ Jongar” , “ mala3ibou el sighar” , “ton amie liliane” , “remi” , “Clementine”, “candy” , “sanafer”, “he-man”, "bel wa sebastien",“khoumasi”, “jaziratou el kanz” , “sindibad”, "count duckula", "thunder cats", "hunter", "night rider","tom sawyer", "moonlighting", "al rajoul el 7adidi", "heidi", "alat el zaman"," zena w nahoul", "transformers" , …. And of course “Grendizer” ( btw I have all grendizer episodes and I still every now and then , have a “grendizer” day marathon , where I watch more than 12 episodes in a row , and where no one is allowed to disturb me , even if they did I can’t hear them , as I did 20 years ago :D ) , what about the “grendizer” magazines , or gum with a sticker inside , or figurines ? Do you remember the set of army figurines with all the equipments, green against gray … the matchbox cars? The wafer bars ? the atari games,river raid... then sega and its sonic ...

What’s amazing is that we lived all these moments in danger , mostly underground, with the dancing flame of a candle and the dim voice of a radio counting bombshells, w "bezr zghir" …but when we went back we couldn’t see but all the good things , the laughing , the playing , the Saturday morning cartoons …all the nice things a child keeps for an occasional nostalgia later on .

Hasta la Vista ... Baby

when i heard its roaring i knew it was one of those vroom vroom "i'm a kitty that sounds like a tiger" drivers...so i let him pass by and ... : wtf ? phone...camera on ... steady ... HAHA took a shot ! all i thought about was thank God he didn't have to spell "Schwarzenegger"

:)

it's rare but it happens ... to wake up and live a day where everything happens just "right" , each single thing takes place the way you imagine ...well today was one of those days :D

Industrialisation...

Industrial Era : "Found to be sold" ... my personal "inked" point of view

José !

with everything going on currently i needed a pit stop, so yesterday i came back home and fell asleep at 6:30 pm, (woke up at 12 watched 2 episodes of "criminal minds" then fell back asleep).
I woke up early, very energetic, showered, prepared and enjoyed my breakfast and off i went to work, well not really, since my dear, beloved,unfaithful, piece of... car refused to start. I tried for 1 hour in vain. I didn't lose my good mood and my current "positive attitude" though so i called a taxi to get to work.
5 minutes and here he was, an old man , with "youssef 2lay2el's" head wear asking if i was the one who called.
I hopped in and i swear that even before i fastened my seat belt he started talking.
He asked for my name, age and destination...the answers to these three questions were the only thing i said the whole 45 minute trip cause he took over, i can literally write his detailed biography till march 03 2009.

Mr.Taxi: listen to me son, and learn from my mistakes, i 'm new to this thing, i used to be a car dealer, i lived in Europe and Latin America, but one son of a bitch that i trusted like my own brother stole everything while i was abroad, do u handle your own work or u have help? don't answer. if you have help they are screwing you over...do u know what i tell my son ? he's almost your age . I tell him my story , it goes like this , i was born in 1952 .....

The voice in my head : Oh boy, is he serious?!

we went through his childhood, his parents, his teenage years, his girlfriends, his marriage, his kids (their respective lives), his sister's divorce, his career, the theft, the traveling, his night life while traveling : , his hobbies, his friends, his politic opinion, his day and after a painfully slow 45 minutes we got to the part where he asked if i was the one who called for a taxi .
As i was paying and unfastening the seat belt , he shouts to say ...

Mr.Taxi: If u need anything I'm José, do not hesitate !

The voice in my head: How the Hell am i going to find you ? should i google you or add you on facebook or something? no way José ... just let me be with my good mood !

Loading Serenity...Plz wait

Reaching for Serenity... clearing my mind for the next phase

Positive

In order to go through this phase of "decision making" and as a way of stress handeling, i'm adopting a new attitude towards things and situations ... a positive attitude !
I have no idea how long it will last, but till now it's working properly.
For example, yesterday night the front tire of my car blew up, almost crashed, couldn't change it because the wheel wrench didn't fit the screws, there was no open repair shop within a 5 Km radius, it was 10 p.m, and i was already exhausted ! Usually in such circumstances, i would kick my car, curse the manufacturer, insult the country of origin, and shout and swear loudly so that the owner of that repair shop, 5 Km away, could hear my frustration ... But i didn't. I stepped out of the car, leaned on it and started laughing out loud like if i'm watching Seinfeld !
Is this a good or a bad sign , permanent or temporary... I have no idea :)

Overloading...

it has been a while ...
these last couple of weeks were very frustrating and very charged .
Views i had about my future changed or at least were masked by a blury layer in some parts and became clearer in other parts .
Stress reached a new high score which drove me to fundamental decisions ...
i'll be elaborating about this phase later on ... but for now , i need to think .

Connect via belly button...

Our life changed dramatically with all this technology.Whatever your believes are about creation and evolution,"a Darwin fan, a Mother Nature supporter, a biblical follower", disregarding the one responsible for the changes...changes happened, tails disappeared, organic functions have been modified to adapt to the new world, which brings me to my point...what about that belly button!

Our logic is mutating to adapt to our way of life, our leisure and our work. Typing, analyzing data, following pixels in an ocean of high resolution, cutting, pasting, resizing, cropping...I leave work and just see lines and dots everywhere. My logic is "screwed", I look ahead and estimate the distance to the next table, I see numbers, passing right there in my cappuccino foam.even while making love it's different...Insert, page down, page up, repeat last command, repeat last command, eject, it's safe to remove hardware ... sometimes after eject it's cancel, cannel , Escape :P but that's not our topic today.

Our mind is not the same, so why doesn't our body follow. I would really like to see that belly button replaced with an "UNDO" button ! wouldn't that be great! :D

You screwed up, for example...you were watching a game your girlfriend rushes in and whimpers about feeling ugly and fat, and since your brain can't process two things at once during a game, you unconsciously told her that she's a bit on the chubby side lately...oh boy!!!! well why so sad?? u have that undo button don't ya ? see ?!?!

Or how about a "SAVE AS" button ...you miss, don’t know which guy to date?? push that button save a copy of the gym-guy, and check that math teacher out...the possibilities are infinite !! infinite i tell you ! >:)

the only hanging issue is that of the "alt+ctrl+del" combination...when i figure that out , i'll get back to you ;)

160 to 0 in 2 seconds

I wasn't planning on posting now, but i was just thinking about an issue that pissed me off a couple of days ago.I asked myself and still didn't get an answer back about the " chute libre " of the human Intelligence meter when in presence of a certain individual that he/she considers of a higher status ... it's amazing to just sit there and witness the IQ of a bunch of educated people (that few minutes ago were discussing global warming and the financial crisis effect) go from 160 to 0 in 2 seconds.

Bare with me...with us ...We're in a living room exchanging ideas and that guy of "important status" joins the circle, and for 2 seconds silence crawls all around, even the T.V goes to mute (no not by itself...it's not a horror/thriller ) then he speaks...they all answer and laugh . they laughed at each word, a very silly laugh just like kids laugh when watching W.E Coyote draw a tunnel and a train goes through it and over him. Even though there was nothing funny about what he said. I just sat there like a "tennis" spectator , watching him pronounce a very plain combination of words, sometimes meaningless, sometimes sad, and gazed back at the laughing effect, red faces, hands supporting their backs, gasping for air...

The MAN:
“Then i saw the man fly over my windshield and hit the ground"
The LOL band:
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA....did He make it ? "
The MAN:
"NO"
The LOL band:
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...and what about the Congo crisis"
The MAN:
"What about it??”
The LOL band:
"HAHAHAHAHAHA...ahhhhh ya allah mesh ma32oul HAHA"
The MAN:
"Euhhhhhhh"
The LOL band:
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA"
ME:
"WTF?? Where is that freaking remote ?? "

First Post

since it's just me and me 2 for this first post
i won't be long ...just marking my territory trying to get comfortable in this little window.
i don't know if there will be readers later on , i don't know if i'm gonna keep writing...
all i know is that i'm clicking on "publish post" :D