The Dim in Beirut

The World's most Ridiculous Places Part 2: Paris

 

First, a disclaimer.The City in itself is wonderful. Not as mythical and picturesque as many suggest, but definitely up there with the most beautiful cities of the world.

But it doesn’t matter if it’s heaven on earth. Throw Parisians in there and you might as well be in the mounds of hell.

Filling the city with Parisians is quite evidently a sick practical joke God played on the world. Letting the natives loose in Paris is akin to letting a drunken beer bellied topless Englishman loose in an idyllic Mediterranean village.

Quite frankly, they ruin the aesthetics of the place.

For such a beautiful city, aggression should be hard to find. But on the contrary. It’s on every corner.

Let’s start with the metros. You need to be as flexible as a ballet dancer to avoid tripping on a homeless person or the umpteenth dog coming down the stairs. The stations stink of urine and aggression.  I’ve been on countless metro rides where fights have broken out. There’s no consistency or time or place discrimination in the fights either. Totally random.

You need to be ready to defend yourself and fight for everything in your daily life. Be prepared to pounce and let out your claws at any moment. I was once admonished for holding a few pennies on the metro. “You shouldn’t be showing your wealth off” is what a total stranger snapped at me.

People are curt and defensive whenever you ask them anything. They walk around with an eternal meteorite sized chip on their shoulder, moaning about everything and satisfied at nothing. For a people that insist on calling strangers the polite “vous” instead of “tu”, they sure know how to make it very clear (politely) that your very existence is pissing them off.

The lack of multi culturalism in Paris also bewilders. You never hear any foreign languages that emanate from anyone apart from tourists. For such a supposed international city, the fact it’s so insular is quite ridiculous.

And God help you if you don’t speak French. I’m lucky I do so I never had any problems. But a lot of my fellow students in college were routinely ignored or made to feel like total social lepers for speaking English. The food in restaurants may be good (when it arrives). But try ordering it in English. It’s worth it just to hear the sighs and sneers of the waiter.  

And it’s not like the waiters spare the French from their rudeness. I was once in a restaurant where a perfectly dressed native, who was sick of waiting for his food, told the waitress he was better off eating at home. She told him to go home then. The man huffed and puffed and got up waving his arms in the air.

The manager came out. He asked what the problem was. The man answered “I’ve been waiting for 30m for my food and your waitress told me to go home.” The manager, there to calm the situation, promptly replied “She’s right. Go home”.

No wonder Americans are in utter bewilderment when they visit. Coming from a country where they’re so nice in shops you feel guilty if you aren’t in Greece sized debt when you leave, it must be a huge culture shock for them.

But that’s Paris. A beautiful and historic city ruined by the sheer bad tempered and never ending unpleasantness of the people that inhabit it. Would top a great places on earth list- if it wasn’t for the offspring it’s hoisted on the world.

Ridiculous place.

Meet the (Clueless) Parents

I’m technologically impaired.

When I was a kid, my excitement in getting a new console was always tempered by the fact that I knew I’d have to spend hours begging my brother to set it up. All those cables used to give me chills. They made as much sense to me as a Gillette Mach 3 did to Osama Bin Laden.

I mean, you just need to take one look at the design of this blog to know that I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing. Look at the colors! Orange, yellow! It’s like a bad LSD trip. And who’s that man!! What the hell is he holding?

The funny thing is I actually took the time to thoroughly design this blog. I didn’t just stumble on to this design. It took hours. And that’s the best I can do.

(It's a good acid test to find out how well people really know me though. Those that I recently met tell me to fix the design. Others, who have known me for years, say: "Wow. You did that by yourself?"...).

Like many other things wrong with my life, I blame my parents. Because while I may be absolutely God awful technology wise, compared to them I look like one of those Nasa scientists.

In the interest of safeguarding any future inheritance I may be due, let me first assure you that they are 2 extremely bright individuals. They hold their own in every conversation on every subject and, as you surely have noticed, did extremely well in bringing up their children.

But when it comes to technology, they make George W. Bush look like a Harvard graduate (oh, wait…).

You will not believe how disastrously bad they are at anything technological. I’m reminded daily of their sheer ineptness.

Today, for example, I sent a PDF file to my mother. She told me it didn’t open on her laptop as she didn’t have a program called “Adolf”. She of course meant, Adobe. But try explaining that to her without rolling on the floor with laughter.

That still pales in comparison to the time she first saw a computer and realized, after years of thinking the contrary, that the mouse was, in fact, NOT a real mouse. I was in hysterics for weeks afterwards. I still use that story to lighten the mood on first dates.

I change her Facebook profile photo monthly but she still doesn’t know how to do it herself. I’ve taught her how to copy/paste a dozen times, but she still looks at it as a slightly more arduous task than climbing Everest.

And the killer is, apparently, her friends are a lot worse than her and are thoroughly impressed at her level of technological knowledge.

My dad (who, knowing him, is surely laughing at my mother as he’s reading this) is hardly better.

He called Facebook; “Bookface” for 2 years. Every time a celebrity he follows tweets, he thinks they’re sending him a direct message. “Obama told me thanks for my support”. No dad. He didn’t.

My biggest nightmare is when he gets a new gadget. I-pod, blackberry, laptop… The moment he enters the house with one, I take 3 weeks off work. I need to set everything up for him. He depends on me to teach him how to use them. And then blames me a month later when he deletes his entire song library by mistake.

So, everyone, please give me some slack. I’ll fix the design of this blog soon. I won’t do it myself of course, lest it gets any brighter. But until then, please excuse me for my technological backwardness and understand where the fault lies.

It’s the genes.

The World's most Ridiculous Places Part 1: Dubai

NB: Now, according to Google analytics, the Dim in Beirut is big in Dubai. This has contributed to me mincing my words in the following article. Because, otherwise, trust me, I’d really let rip.  

Nothing against the locals (if they exist- I’ve never met one) but it’s hard to find the words to describe how ridiculous this place is. The outlandish architecture, the heat, the freaky malls, the 12 star hotels on top of a mountain in the middle of the sea which has a ski slope, the fact that I’ve been there 3 times and only ever gone to one street (Sheikh Zayed Road- I think it’s the only one that exists)…

Dubai reminds me of a small child that’s showing you his toys. He’ll start with one and then hurry to another and tell you “Look at this!” then throwing that one and jumping to another toy “and look at what this does!!” before showing you his Playstation games collection. He’ll be so excited, but you’ll be generally bewildered, though you’ll smile at his exuberance.

Ultimately though, you’ll leave shaking your head thinking what a spoiled bastard that child is.

That’s Dubai. You can’t really appreciate anything because there’s way too much of it. You go to a mall without a sky slope and you feel cheated, you go to a hotel without an aquarium as big as Buckingham Palace and you shrug. You don’t blink twice if a building is under 232 floors.

The place just screams “look at me” all the time. It’s like a walking billboard for 21^st century hysteria. A whole lot of huge, shiny new stuff but way too superficial to be anything other than what it truly is: flashy, fake, grossly ostentatious, soulless, too full of itself, blatantly copied from everywhere else, lacking class and history.

In football terms they’ll be Chelsea FC.

You take one look at the place and can’t help but wonder if Sheikh Maktoum is gorging himself in the city’s opulence to hide his inadequacies in other areas.

Talking about the main man, that’s another thing I hate about it: The hypocrisy. It’s a city built for foreigners. Their ads target Westerners, offering them “the closest thing to Europe in the Middle East”. They fill their hotels and bars with prostitutes, get DJs from abroad and generally do everything to bring Westerners over.

But the minute the Westerners start behaving like, you know, Westerners, it all kicks off. An English couple gets intimate on the beach and it’s like the end of the world. Some travelling DJ, who plays music catered to Ecstacy mobbed up people, has some hash on him, and he gets jail time.

Seriously Dubai, make your mind up. You’re either catering to these people or you’re not. Say what you want about Iran and Saudi, but by God you know where you stand with them. Same for the USA. You won’t scream “Allah u Akbar” in JFK airport. You know what the rules of the game are .There’s no double standards.

Dubai, however, is like a stripper in London: A sexy exterior, but ultimately superficial. And the minute you want what you think she’s offering, you get your arms broken.

Ridiculous place.

NB: (Though Dubai readers of the Dim in Beirut are, quite simply, boss. That goes without saying.)

What kind of Sadistic Child...

Dreams of becoming a dentist?

I never understood that. It’s the one job in the world I just cannot understand how you end up doing.

All the others, I can find a reason. No one dreams of becoming a prostitute or a lap dancer, but you get into that when you need cash. Nobody dreams of becoming bin-man or a maid, but when you don’t have qualifications and need money, you do what you’ve got to do. And no kid really wants to be a referee but ,when you’re a corrupt idiot with bad eyesight and no football talent, you'll take it.

But a dentist? You need to seriously work hard to become one. You need degrees. Years of studies. Hard work. Dedication. A passion for teeth.

What kind of demented person went to the dentist when he was a kid, came back home, ran into his dad’s arms and told him” That’s what I want to do when I grow up”.

What hooked him? Did he enjoy the pain? Did he enjoy the drilling? Did he enjoy having his mouth wide open for an hour? Did he sit back in his chair while getting a needle in his mouth and say to his himself “You know what? This is class, this. I hope this lasts for hours”. Did he start dreaming of doing that to people, each day, from 9-5, for the rest of his life?

I could never get my head around it. Why would someone dream of doing the one job where you know people will hate coming to see you?

And make no mistake about it. People HATE going to the dentist. You only ever willingly go there if you’re in huge pain, and even then you’re basically dragged kicking and screaming. There are absolutely no advantages to it. Dentists are not like doctors: they can’t give you good news. They can’t tell a woman she’s expecting. They can’t tell a Lebanese man just back from a month in Amsterdam that he’s got the all clear.

Nope. Dentists will, at the very least, give you a cleanup. They’ll make you uncomfortable for at least an hour. And at the very most, should you need some real work, they’ll torture you so much that you’d wish you were water boarding in Guantanamo Bay. Yes, sometimes they provide relief from pain and fix your problem. Well done, psycho. I’ll still leave that place feeling I've gone 12 rounds with Mike Tyson and  praying I’ll never have to see your face again.

I can’t stand the sight of them with their silly green outfits and those huge goggles they have over their heads. I hate their clinics with the months’ old magazines and that ridiculous smell. I hate how they tell you to open you mouth wide every 20 seconds: What am I, a Tijuana hooker? You're the professional pal. Work within my limitations.

I look in their eyes and I see pure evil. I see the  eyes of men who were bullied when they were kids and used to chop frogs’ heads off for fun. Whose idea of pleasure was getting their teeth drilled on weekends. Who, while I dreamed of being a footballer, fantasized of terrorizing normal people like you and me.

What a bunch of sadists.

The Life of a Non Drinker

I quit alcohol 9 years ago. I had a bit of a wild youth and reached a stage where I decided to quit all substances. Yes, that’s all substances.

This means all alcohol too. I don’t drink beers. I don’t drink champagne at my birthday. I don’t have wine with my meals. I once had Vodka in my mouth but that’s because I thought it was Perrier. And it repulsed me so much I had to go spit it out in the sink.

 So I’ve been sober for 9 years. At first, I stopped going out or mixing with people that drunk. It was all about keeping temptation at bay. After moving to London, I realized I couldn’t hide from the realities of the world and joined up with those evil alcohol drinkers on their nights out- and drank Perrier while they downed shots.

The life of a non drinker has a lot of ups and downs. Obviously you save some money and limit your calories intake. But there’s other hidden stuff too. Here’s a list of them.

Pros:

1) The morning after: Not because you don’t wake up with a raving hangover or a girl whose name you can’t remember. But because you remember EVERYTHING. And that’s brilliant. Because you can then call your drunken friends. And then you can invent stories, make them feel guilty, get them to call people and apologize etc… And they’ll believe you because they know you were stone cold sober. It’s fantastic.

2) Explaining to people why you don’t drink: This is sometimes great fun as it pushes you to be creative. I once spent an hour talking to a girl in London convincing her I quit to become a Buddhist, but let myself down when I mentioned my favorite restaurant was an Argentine Steak Joint. You need to focus see, keep your eye on the ball. I’ve also made people believe I was in training in preparation of my hike of Mount Everest. They must have been really drunk if they believed that though, considering I weighed 98kg at the time…

3) Designated driver: That’s me. And it’s a big pro. Because believe me, in day to day life, no one trusts me to drive. Don’t ask me why. Apparently I’m a terrible driver. Unsubstantiated rumors if you ask me. Slanderous even. But as soon as drinks are poured and the night gets old, I’m the Lebanese version of Alain Prost (But shorter). It’s a great boost to the ego.

4) Not drinking is an aphrodisiac: Not for all girls of course. But, hand on heart, every single girl I’ve dated since I quit has been very supportive. I think it’s been an attraction even, the Brand Dimmy’s USP. Showing this amount of discipline has been seen as a sign of how responsible I am. This is fantastic considering that’s probably the only part of my life where I’m responsible.

5) Telling English people you don’t drink: It’s hilarious. They can’t believe it. Their eyes widen, their mouths open and their bodies stiffen. They don’t know what to say. It’s as if you’ve insulted their heritage. Taken a huge dagger straight into the heart of the Union Jack. I’ve got mates in London I’ve known since 2006 who STILL don’t believe I don’t drink. They just can’t bring themselves to admit someone can have fun without alcohol. By rights, in their view, my non drinking should make me a social pariah. And the worst thing is, I’ve got a British passport. They probably think they lost their Empire through handing citizenships to infidels like me.

Yep, you can have a lot of fun not drinking. But there are some cons as well.

Cons:

1) You have no excuse: For being an idiot… This is annoying, because sometimes you definitely need that excuse. You can’t play the “I was drunk” card. If you do something stupid, you’re doing something stupid naturally. It isn’t the alcohol. You can’t just wade in and start trying to kiss any girl that moves. You’ll get a reputation. It’ll stick to you. I’m sure I can sue for Soberist discrimination in the USA, because drunken people certainly get a lot more leeway.

2) Forget Clubbing: Seriously. There’s no point. If you’ve got as much  dancing talentI do (i.e. not a lot- I make a robot seem coordinated), forget about it. You can’t hear yourself think, let alone have a conversation, can barely move and you’ll be way too disoriented to pull any girls. Your soberness will stick out more than a rabbi in Dahie. You’ll enjoy the interminable wait for the valet to get your car more than the night out. Swerve clubs at all cost. Go home.

3) Drunken idiots insisting you stay and party: When it’s 1am, your body’s sore and you want to go to sleep. Meanwhile, they’re on their 9th drink and they won’t allow you to go home. “Just stay and party man”. These are the same idiots that are allowed to try and kiss every girl that moves while I’m discriminated upon. And they then wonder why I’m going to bed…

4) Shots: I can raise my Perrier glass to anyone. But when people start downing shots, you don’t know what to do. Do you put Perrier in a shot glass and drink it out of there? Do you look away? Do you smile like an idiot? You feel like the spare man at a wedding. It’s disconcerting. So you do a bit of all 3…You sip your drink, smile and look away all at the same time. And end up with Perrier all over your shirt…

5) English people are convinced you’re a Muslim: Convinced. Nothing wrong with being a Muslim, on the contrary, but it’s insulting that they don’t believe you when you explain them the truth. You’ve got dark skin, a funny name and you don’t drink. That’s enough for them. No amount of reasoning will get them to change their minds. Unless they notice you don’t fast during Ramadan. Then they really struggle. The look on their faces is similar to mine when I try to read an article about science: Total confusion.

So next time you see me out, spare a thought for me. Don’t ask me why I don’t drink, don’t do shots in front of me, don’t insist I stay one more hour and, if you’re English, don’t try to get me to admit I’m a Muslim.

Concurrently, for your sake, don’t pick up the phone the next day when I call.

Oh, and if I act like an idiot, please forgive me.

I was sober.

5 Things I Hate About.... Facebook

Or rather, people on Facebook.

At the risk of sounding like an absolute twat, let me share something with you.

A few months ago, I went on a rampage on Facebook. I’d realized that I hated using that site because my timeline was clogged with photos and comments of people that, deep down, I could not care less about.

I’m not unique in this. Most of us, certainly at the start, added people left, right and center. Facebook was new and fresh and I hadn’t thought about filtering.

There was, of course, also a competitive edge to it. Much like the US/USSR arms race, you were rushing to add friends because you noticed other people were blowing you out of the water. I used to compete with an ex girlfriend about how many comments we’d get on our birthday for example. I hated getting messages and not wall posts as they didn’t count.

It was all tongue in cheek of course, and I certainly didn’t take it that seriously. But somehow or another, after a certain time, I’d accumulated a whole lot of people on my friend list that I didn’t care about, liked but was not interested in knowing so much of or, sometimes, quite frankly, didn’t like at all.

So I went on a cull. It was like the Killing Fields. I summoned up my inner Hitler and spent a couple of hours deleting a bunch of people. It was purge unseen in the Middle East for decades. I was judge, juror and executioner all at once.

It felt great. It was also very entertaining.I called myself the Butcher of Beirut. I’d talk to myself as I judged each “friend” on his or her’s own personal merit. Comments ranged from “Sorry pal, you don’t add value” to “No chance habibi, you’re out” to “Yeah, you’re a good boy you, don’t fret”or "What are you worrying about? You know I'm your number 1 fan".

It was the modern equivalent of throwing Christians to the lions in Roman times.

I kept eradicating unwanted elements off my friend list until I reached the stage where I felt pretty comfortable with the amount of people left. Now, I visit the site without getting pissed off at seeing the latest pictures of a guy I met once, or the latest musings on Gossip Girl of the best friend of girl I dated years ago.

But there are still a bunch of things that piss me off about how people use that site. In no particular order, here are the top 5:

1)      People who “like” their own comment or status: It’s even worse when no one else comments, though at least it becomes funny then. Seriously, what is the point of this? What sane person does this? How does this translate itself to normal life? Have you ever heard a person, in the middle of a conversation, say something and then add “You know what, I really like what I said there. Loved my comment, thought it was great.”?

 

2)      People who change their marital status instantly: And I mean instantly. Like at the altar. The minute the vows are done. When they’re with all the people from their friends list that they actually care about. It’s like changing your marital status on Facebook has become one of the great added values of getting hitched. Back in the day, little girls used to dream of the wedding dress, the reception, the honeymoon. Today they dream of changing their status to “married to…”.  It’s a worrying trend.

 

 

3)      Endless friend requests from the same person: The Facebook equivalent of the cold call. Now, I’ve done some cold calling in my time and you sort of notice after a few tries whether the person is interested or not. I’m all for persevering, but after a dozen tries if the person still hasn’t accepted you, moving on is probably a good option.

 

4)      Women whose info says are interested in women: But are not really interested in women. Quite frankly, it’s unbelievably annoying. Will somebody please think of us men? We’ve got enough dirty thought to last us a lifetime, we frankly don’t need you to waste our mental energy. (On a side note, I once stumbled onto one of my ex girlfriends profile and she said she was interested in women. Don’t know what that says about my performance levels, but there you go…).

 

 

5)      People that put their wrong birthdays to protect their privacy: And then tell you it’s not their birthday when you congratulate them. Smugly. You do know you can just hide it right? What’s the point then? And why do you have your real name smartass?

 

Those are the main ones, but I’m sure I’ve got other bug bears I can’t think about now. All in all, Facebook is great though. I’m definitely a fan. It’s allowed me to stay in touch with people I wouldn’t have otherwise, spy on girls I haven’t met yet but decided I have a future with and put me in touch with a bunch of people who share the same passions as I do.

And most importantly, it’s allowed me to play out my deepest tyrannical fantasies.

All Great People are Fat

All great people are fat.

And I’m not talking just your average, run of the mill, great. But proper greats. They’re all fat.

I noticed it a few years ago when I gained 20 kilos in 18 months. I don’t know whether my sudden ballooning contributed to my enlightenment, or if it was just a coincidence. I was munching on a cheeseburger at the time and that’s when it hit me

The top people in every walk of life, the crème de la crème, the icons, the legends, the main men, all those that left their mark on history and the people we look up to all have one startling similarity: they’re all fat.

Don’t believe me? Well let’s break it down for you.

Of the 3 people that united to fight Hitler, 2 were fat: Churchill could barely walk across the room without catching his breath and Stalin had at least 10kg to lose. Yet, they fought the biggest “evil” power of the 20^th century (who was ridiculously thin by the way) and won. It’s no shock to me that the thinnest one of the 3, FDR, passed away before he could claim victory.

The most famous secretary of state the US ever bestowed on the world, Henry Kissinger, was fat. One of the main men in the French revolution, Danton, loved his croissants. Fidel Castro was always portly. And he was propped up by the laughingly fat head of the Soviet Union at the time, Nikolai Kryuchkov.

The most populated country’s most famous leader was fat. In a country where we’re told everyone’s thin, and no one’s got enough to eat, Mao ruled China for decades. He was huge. I’ve been repeatedly told that all they eat there is rice and soup but you take one look a Mao and you know that’s completely ridiculous. He must have been having sweet and sour fried pork in his sleep.

In the Arab world, the most famous leader we had was Abdul Nasser. He wasn’t huge, but he was certainly not thin. If he’d live in our times he’d be advised to cut down on his carbs.

 In Lebanon, the 2 people that have had the most impact on the political scene since the civil war look like the greatly enjoy our hummus.

Rafik Hariri was proper fat. No chance you’d see him in the gym. He had a huge impact in Lebanon. His son, however, has had difficulty matching his accomplishments. Some people blame it on his lack of experience and international factors; I blame it on his weight. He’ll be see the light when he reads this blog an then it’s upward and onwards for him.

Sayed Hassan Nassrallah’s accomplishments speak for themselves. No one’s stood up to Israel like him, but then again no one’s had his waistline. It’s one of my biggest regrets he’s such a devout Muslim because he’d make such a perfect Santa Claus. (On a side note, Nassrallah is only getting fatter. What the hell is going on? I thought he was living underground, jumping from one bunker to another. I’m as admiring of Hezbollah’s accomplishments’ as the next man but surely they haven’t built underground Hardees and KFC have they?? Somebody explain this to me!)

And that’s just politics!  And I haven’t even mentioned that the world’s only superpower have a huge obesity problem. Well, they call it a problem, but I’m sure that successive US presidents have encouraged people to keep eating. They know it's the true path to greatness.

Let’s move on to other aspects of life (and before any smart ass wants to mention Mandela, he doesn’t count. South Africans did everything to keep him thin, going as far as putting him in jail for 27 years. I’m sure Nelson was chubby as a kid though…)

Diego Armando Maradona, the best footballer of all time, was stocky as a player, dangerously obese as a retired coke addict and endearingly chubby as a manager. The best boxer of all time, Muhammad Ali, was chunky and had to fight baby fat his entire career.

Even the great managers are fat! The last one to win the world cup, Vicente Del Bosque, was big to say the least. The only man ever to win 3 European cups, Bob Paisley, loved his fish and chips.

The best movie in all time, in my view, is “The Godfather”. There’s a holy trinity that made that film: Mario Puzo who wrote the book, Francis Ford Coppola who directed the film and Marlon Brando who made Don Corleone come to life. Those 3 have one single thing in common: they don’t wear skinny jeans.

The best or most famous TV presenter in the history of the USA is Oprah Winfrey. I don’t need to add anything apart from the fact that ratings came down for the show every time she’d lose weight. It’s the real reason behind her weight swings. The network was on her arse the minute she got thin.

In music, Jim Morrison looked like a bleached whale by the time he died. BB King and Louis Armstrong both auditioned for the part of the orca in Free Willy.  The best opera singer of all time, Luciano Pavarotti, was immense. He could block the sun out. The King of Rock and Roll, Elvis, loved his food more than his music. Ok, so the Beatles weren’t fat, but they were Liverpudlians. They already had the good genes.

I could go on and on but I’ll just give you one more example because I’m getting hungry.

Who’s the richest man in the world? If you said that scrawny geek Bill Gates, go back to the start of the article. You’ve obviously not paid attention.

It is of course, this man, the wonderfully ironically named Carlos Slim.

 

Just look at his chin. Sorry, chins. The salad hating Slim's' wealth is estimated at a whopping $63 billion. Basically, a billion for every jeans size.

So the moral of this story is, don’t believe the hype. Don’t let advertisers say you need to be thin to be happy, to be accepted. Don’t let movies teach you that fat people are there to become the first victims of a serial killer. Don’t buy your parents’ line that you need to study to be successful. Nope. That’s all bollocks.

Eat, eat, eat, eat, eat and then eat again.

It’s the path to greatness.