Another chapter in the chronicles of Distructo the contractor

It appears that life has taken no swerves this time…
Yup
It just kept chugging along clicking through the usual routines…

Routine it doesn’t sell newspapers and doesn’t make for great reading on blogs. Sorry there isn’t much to report.

Well other than the fact that I have been tearing down the balloon framed walls in the apartment.

Pardon my evil cackle but it was brilliant tearing apart the dry-walling and the paper thin aluminum studs (they call them bridges here in Lebanon). SOME BRIDGE! they don’t hold anything up and they are only thick enough to run penny screws through. You have to hope it holds the drywall without backing, insulation.

Yup you got it EL CHEAPO Construction AGAIN!!!

So what did OTTER get up to?
I had them put in TWO IRON beams… FLOOR to CEILING!!!
Which of course meant cutting the board…FLOOR TO CEILING (GRIN GRIN)
So there was welding… which was hilarious because HE DIDN’T HAVE A MASK. Every time he’d go to bond the metal he would CLOSE his eyes and put his hand in front of his face…
YES troops…. BLIND WELDING… apparently it’s done often in the Middle East. Having witnessed the resulting mess and ooze where there should be smooth connected ripples I was disappointed to say the least.

After the welding was done and the mess on my floor became quite apparent; the “engineer” (as they are known in Arabic) then pushed in bolts to hold both of these metal studs into the floor and ceiling. This of course do to an allergy to measuring tapes and exact design specs came with the usual wiggling and giggling of the Arab world.
NO NOT BELLY DANCING… although this Kerish(MAN GUT) did do a lat of wobbling… The wiggling and giggling is so that it all comes out MUZBOOT (I know it’s TH in Iraq but the jobsite was in Lebanon). Of course the Arabic language allows one to zubutah meaning to make it muzboot…

Then came the other welding project of getting the actual bars to hold the bike up in place… That was in itself almost as entertaining as watching the poor guy cut into the drywall with his jeans and long sleeve jumper come out looking like he was the Pillsbury dough boy.

Of course we had to cut holes in the two planks of drywall we had ripped out but all in all the entire operation was part three ring circus… part engineering make do cause it’s all we got nightmare… and part fancy dress Halloween masquerade ball.

Oh, and that NOTHING seems to have solved the situation of the seeping fistula…. rusty pipes above my bathroom.

Yes I have attempted to contact my plumbing wasta ( WASTA (pl. WASTAAT) def. = vile Italian mobster style connection that always seems to have a slithery way around whatever problem you face) but the dude isn’t exactly your regular cell phone carrying kinda guy.

Then come the bike cleanings… My poor Natoor seems to be obsessing about getting out on the bike with me. Poor guy doesn’t realize I’m going to end up cranking him over for a good hour ride of climbs within the city and then toss him back into the apartment building gasping for breath… What the hell maybe I’ll spring for some spinning shoes for him just to witness the whole affair!

Hmmm bike discussions…
Enter the monkey society theorem…. No this isn’t an Otter special… this is someone else spouting off about the behavior in this country…
I would put it at a more polite PRIMA DONNA IT IS as to the Lebanese condition but this dude posited the perspective that Lebanese behave like self centered monkeys. No rules apply concerning their own values… ME first then a long and distance second come those related by blood… followed by those related to me through religion/politics( the two are sooo messily stuck together in Lebanon it’s impossible to have the populous see they are two different things) and then of course that is all… The rest of us who don’t make it into those circles can go screw ourselves.
He stated that Lebanon was a Ghetto…
It’s the Arab 50 cent…
You don’t like my opinion… me and my homies are more in number than yours…
(Because MORE obviously = RIGHT)
and I got me a gun
and I’m going to shoot you cause you don’t agree with me…
I am right cause I said so…
Yup
Democracy…
Or the furthest thing from it..
The point he pinned it all on
was that Civilization is not based upon education or even construction…
It is based upon selflessness for the greater good…
The Lebanese he claims are cripples in this aspect…
I was shocked….
I disagreed because it felt wrong… but then I remembered a table scene…
I was surrounded by Lebanese and they were all grabbing the food… They all went for the BITS they enjoyed FIRST…
It was grab what I like screw it if other people like those parts too…
So basically your beloved author ended up eating chicken spine and dry breast meat… They didn’t bother wasting the precious oxygen which appears to be in short supply in Lebanon to ask…
It didn’t cross their minds…
It was a grab fest… scary and sad…

The political situation appears disgustingly similar… There is no compromise… NONE it is merely repeat the party line… Horrific…

Then of course there are the streets
and the driving…

The fact that there is a time when it is good to be Arab and another time when it isn’t and because I can I will hop back and forth between the two ensuring they maintain their own personal benefit.

I clammed up… As NASTY and as CAUSTIC as it was… There was a truth behind it…

I know this remark will raise the bristles of many a Lebanese hedgehog
but guys
PLEASE…
For the good of yourselves….
STOP THINKING ABOUT ONLY YOURSELVES FIRST!!!!
I know it is hard… It may ache like that first day at the gym… but it will be refreshing…eventually.

So from the coffee shop here on Hamra where the only fresh air you find is from the filter end of a cigarette thanks to the horrific situation and lack of non-smoking sections your beloved author who now smells like a smoked salmon… Has decided to sign off…COUGH… COUGH… GASP...

Politics of the Playground

No he crossed onto my side of the line...
No he hit me first....
Oh Yeah well he lit that on fire...
But He was the one hitting me first...
I didn't do it
He did

No I didn't
Yeah he still crossed the line
No I did NOT
Yeah You did
your finger crossed it right there

Well pretty soon the kids start poking in one another'e eyes...
and then we all know how it ends
.....
MAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!
Both in tears....
Both showing off their scars and wounds....
Boo boo's a blazing someone else has to come in and judge what these two have done to themselves.

I wonder if it'll ever get beyond this in the Middle East.

Here in the Ottery end of the universe current democratic processes have left your author SEVERELY LACKING SLEEP!

The idea of democracy is YES to make your opinion known...but...
WHY
OH WHY
does that ALWAYS involve car horns here?
Every political faction has their specific beep routine...
Yesterday's pre rally festival made me truly regret the invention of the contraption called a horn.

Why had humanity decided this was the best way to alert people to a possible automobile accident? Does beeping the horn prepare one in any possible way for the more gritty scrape, shudder, and whine of metal rubbing on metal?

No I didn't think so either....

When twined with youths that ride 3 to a moped tooting in unison
I can only wonder how much of a laugh the angels are having staring at us idiots with free will.

It seems to have been written in to the conciousness here in the Furtile Crescent... The parades and noise seems to be part of human history... I guess it's been here all along .
so I'm surprised that the eviction from the garden of Eden story doesn't contain a beeping horn and "parade loop" part as Adam protests his plight...

Maybe that's just a given for those who copied the bible...

Onward to another day...
Hopefully this one doesn't appear so similar in it's protests as this on the 14th of February. I can understand wanting to mourn your political Guru but stopping the country like the dudes you are claiming cause it's collapse is a bit.... hypocritical!

A college of mine suggested everyone stopping for five minutes during an appointed time to do a really dramatic thing in silence across the entire country would have been amazing...
Imagine cars stopped and everything halted for 5 minutes to remember and then... life rolls on...

OH No
We had to get politicos shooting their mouths off harping on those tired and deep terms meant to tap into the pathos and ethos of the public...

I'm getting so tired of people thinking that vibrating the air in their throats is somehow going to improve the plight of the nation...
Doing....
GET'S THINGS DONE...
Nothing less.

Under the footbridge to Dora and the conversation of the coffee trolls

Here we go again....
Yes folks, February 14th is going to be a few ticks of the clock away but here in the wilds of Lebanon it doesn't mean Valentines...
I will float back the dial to a little incident that occurred two years ago...
I was standing looking out at the sea from the 7th floor of the Gefinoor building. It was immaculate the azure of the ocean the pale hint of blue that was the sky and then...
A strange feeling that the floor had decided to jump backwards. The bowing of the glass was ominous...
I was actually pushed back...
Then came the cloud... a white billow right near a spot I had just learned was Ain el Mrese... (Facing the Mediterranean)

Next on flicked the television as workers gathered around to guess what it was. I started out claiming it might be a gas explosion because there was no black smoke. The experts here claimed C-4 or a car bomb. I laughed because Lebanon was supposed to be through with that nonsense it had been over two years since someone had been whacked.
The carnage on Arabic television blows any of the snuff or death films witnessed in secret cubbies in the USA this stuff was the real deal and LIVE…
A man was being dragged from a van where the roof had melted in… I would later learn it was one of my college’s cousins.

It would be the beginning of the end for me…
The idea of floating back and somehow getting into the rotation in the USA in any sort of normal fashion was washed out with this little carpet of thunder that rolled across the city.

Life has an alarming way of stacking events up.

After all, all of us in our little daily problems are… well …. We are only treading water.
Those first few days in kindergarten when coloring in the lines felt like it would give you a migraine…
To those days of snapping out of the dream world that you may actually get into a medical school in the US…

Those moments when you gold up and give in to a fate that superglues you to the Middle East and makes you leave everything you used as a foundation in life alone...

The rattling of fake flakey people as they smile at you while you carry them through projects to earn your degree…

The near death experiences that come with the territory of the health issues I live with…
Damn there have been a LOAD of those…

The weight of seeing the first fingerprints of your own decline…

Those desperate efforts and attempts in recovery to ensure some sort of happiness in the tangled mess you find yourself in…

The constant state of failure…. As the threads and pieces once again fray apart..

Dreams and the fuel that keeps us going (humanity calls hope)…
Does and
Eventually WILL run out…

You can only tread water for so long…

And in the end… you just give out and give up…

So here it is the blog of truth and doom....

Ringing with the answer... Though the massive majority of my dreams may be….
I often find that the bones of the desert carcass (this existence {has become}) is stuck being …

NOT DEAD YET!

I’ve been riding the bike…
Yes clad in the Armstrong live strong outfit I was passed in Dbayieh by that wonderfully affable guy Zaher… He’s Lebanon’s Number 1 Mountain Biker
He was with his Girlfriend Lina…She’s the silver medal winner in the Asian games Time Trial..
Second place * a constant place for this woman who always finishes AFTER LINA * came another Women’s Lebanon team member and her cousin…

We were clipping along beautifully…

My HR was pounding at 89-91% and they were all in deeply relaxed 70%...
But the fun of talking and kidding around made up for it across the three hours of riding.

The session would round out over an hour later as we were joined by Lebanon’s Number 1 road cyclist… a climbing specialist named John Pierre.

The conversation on the ride was wonderful as we snaked out of Dbayieh and into Jounieh and then back to Beirut…
The company was delightful but like usual…
My BG called an end to it as I ran out of candy bars to keep scarfing down…
I peeled my front tire off of what was the perfect line back down the riddled and rattled highway to find carbohydrates…

This led me to discover some of the most wonderful individuals under a bridge I have ever met…
NO THEY WERE NOT TROLLS…
They were espresso salesmen and their bus driving regulars.


Of course me in my alien outfit created quite a stir…
How much does the bike weigh?..
Wow it is light… no $$$$ it weighs less than 7kg… more like 3kg…
Then the near verbal fistfight as to the real weight of an empty gas bottle which is apparently the standard weight and measure used in the coffee serving circles of Lebanon
How much does it cost?…
Then come the guesses after I refuse to say how much I paid.
NONE OF WHICH ARE EVER

EVER

Near the ball park, zip code, or country of the actual price…

At least 4 bottles of Pineapple juice later I’m on my way…

Back home back to the little apartment
to a cleansing HOT shower after 4 hours of intimacy with the bike...

What NOT to do in front of road cyclists when you are on a mountain bike.... THIS INCLUDES GUNNING IT AND SAYING...Little Feets Don't Fail Me Now!

It was a dark and stormy night….
Actually it was a cold and windy morning too…
The bike ride was more something to fill the gaps in time. I had set an appointment to ride at 8AM we didn’t actually get going until 8:30.
The ride passed along some very memorable roads… Yup you guys know how memories can do that tiger trick to you…
My legs were wobbly and weak...
We (me and my riding copilot) would reel in mountain bikers and then clip a hammer pace to wear them out. The routine always began the same way. There was their stupid dash to prove they could keep us off
and... of course... we didn’t pursue.
Then as we wound them in with our steady pace they kept huffing and diving to get ahead. It was hard holding back and waiting there… It was horrible being vicious in making them suffer.
It was worse that I was out of shape and doing this.

“They don’t get that riding is a war of attrition. They seem to think it’s all quick sprints. That makes me even more sure; they have no clue about what it is to be a cyclist.”

It hurt hearing the German’s diagnosis.
This country was a spot where I wanted a tour; where I thought the people would love the idea of seeing the dudes from the grand tours in Europe duke it out.
The ride stung all the way.
There was the smell of the cars…
The jarring state of the road with it’s bumpy hazard riddled tortoise back and gaping holes…
The black donut prints on the ground where some political group had protested with a wall of traffic stopping tire burning…
There was the weaving through silly military checkpoints where nobody was checked and the slalom would almost always send some reckless bastard in our direction.
We paused in Byblos…
Yup
memories again…
After deciding to turn and call it a day due to “old age and poor health” the weather seemed to snap.
Yes we pulled the same routine on the way back and aside from one young silly punk we destroyed everyone we passed. (said young punk gunned it up a VERY VERY SHORT INCLINE and stopped at the top to stare back at yours truly who was only about 15 meters behind him)
Yeah I know I coulda had him but what was the use I had another half an hour of riding left.

The wind hammered all the way back kicking up glass and sand. I can still feel the burn on my legs where it feels like I was attacked by Huntington’s patient trying to dry me with sand paper.

I WAS supposed to deliver some long stem inner tubes to a wonderful shop owner on my road to the south but I gave up after the goings on today.
I seem to be lacking the respite from the world that riding the bike was for me.
Those empty moments at home just compound things..

Yup troops,
Life feels quite shattered.

Then there are the disturbing reports of the nation…

THIS IS A DISCLAMER
>>>For the sake of nerves of the dear parental units>>>
who are NOT PERMITTED TO READ FURTHER....
please be cautioned...
NONE OF THE BELOW ARE CONFIRMED EVENTS…
However there are those who attested to their authenticity.

Found…. two naked male bodies in dumpsters following Thursday’s unfortunate incident….
One decapitated….
The other shot with 2 rounds in the heart from lose range, a slash on the back from neck to pelvis and a bullet that seems to have traveled from thigh to ankle of left foot….
It should be noted that one of these men went to the scene of the trouble armed… he was looking for his brother and wanted to get him out alive…

Missing… 13 men from a southern suburb of Beirut.

Destroyed one brand new Mercedes in a parking lot close to the incident… YES it was insured but these are counted as acts of war, God or whatever the cowardly insurance agent can use to weasel his way out of paying.

There were apparently several attempts to light things up that unfortunate day with what started as stone throwing and escalated into systematic property damage punctuated by what is over 10 more unreported homicides. In addition to the fact that Thursday was TWO SEIGE EVENTS NOT JUST THE ONE. They tried to start it up again when night fell.

Of course each side is showing video of not exactly well behaved young men doing bad things to “innocent people”

There are also images of the army standing and staring at the goings on.
What do you expect from conscripts? DO YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE they will put their lives on the line with the way you treat them?

There are also over a hundred arrests in those goings on…
I wonder how those poor guys at the hobbit style police station under the bridge where we met the Syrian version of the Patriot are holding up.

Ok there it is the unreported news

Of course there will be the note made by the author that ANY surface to air weapons that prevent Israel from conducting DISGUSTING little Fly over exercises would be much appreciated.
There will be the complaint that if police had ticket quotas maybe all of the laws would be enforced…
Then I wake up to the idea that a lot of people seem to be quite content that their section of the world is going to hell in a hand basket…as long as they can catch their friends at the local ministry or institution where the work to shake hands and kiss cheeks…chat and do absolutely nothing… things are fine.

Also of note….
Myopia concerning the future is not a good thing if you want to be safe or strategic.
Lip service is only exercise for the face that LEADS to wrinkles rather than preventing them.
Democracy is 50% tolerance 40% patience 10% logic and all constructive critical open mindedness…
vomiting back party lines like a good little French student reciting poetry is NOT thinking!!!

I wish you all a good night as I make my lonely little way back through the rainy season here in Beirut…

tires blaze and the university students clash (decide to have a stone throwing contest)

Thursday arrives and I have to get my passport photos and police report translated.
Another session of Otter ping pong ensues only this time it’s trying to find someone who is an officially sworn translator to translate officially.
The day and the time during which the embassy deals with such issues BURNS…
I finally get around to the translator after dealing with the photo issue at noon a FULL HOUR AFTER THE EMBASSY IN AWKAR is done with business for the WEEK.
The papers will be ready Friday.

Then after heading to AUB I find out that 4 are dead and over a hundred are wounded in a clash at local universities…
I’m told LAU, Hawaii, and the state university BAU (Beirut Arab University) are involved…

Not to worry troops!
It’ll be a grim day when the embassy (bastion of USAID) here at AUB faces any such trouble…

Especially during finals…
The phone lines are clogged…
I’m trying to help those people in Lebanon who I care about the most but things aren’t working out so well.
Panic ensues… It’s usual for this customer…
I send an SMS to their relative with a receipt.
“Contact your sister. If you need help getting out I’ll meet you. The car might not be an option.”

There is a parking lot of traffic everywhere and things are deathly quiet.
Having gotten no SMS or call from the student
and with it being around 6:00 pm
I head out. Hamra is shutting down and the streets feel hollow once again. I call up the gym to check on the situation…
“Do I have class?”
“We’re wanting to close”
To me it sounds like the guys are trying to empty the club and feed into the panic.
They did it during the war without thinking of the devastation to the club’s reputation. I head home and pack the gym bag.
The walk back to the club is deafeningly quiet.
I make it past a long search by one overly interested police officer with a big honking M-16 and trudge up to the gym…

It’s quiet
dark
and empty…

My phone beeps to let me know there’s a message…

It’s the fitness manager’s SMS and her particular ring letting me know that classes have been canceled!
Wow!
Great timing!
I call her back...
No answer…
Ok, so I’m worried…

I grab a cab above the StarCo building and the brusk A$$ up front is screaming at the driver not to give me a ride.

Out steps the young police boy in white and brown fatigues as I slide my stuff in. The guy up front is swearing at Lebanon.. Cursing it and spitting. We swing up the road and the passenger up front is rattling through conversation.
“I’m headed to Karakas”
“It’s a Druze neighborhood right?” asks the jerk up front.
“Yeah”
“Where are you headed?" asks the driver.
I repeat myself and he makes sure to confirm this is a “taxi ride.”
We swing up past the burj il mur… The Mur tower ( a scarred building where snipers used to hide in the war. Its’ towering stories gutted and its’ walls pocked with craters stand silent in the night)

The cab revs over the bridge and swinging back to the intersection above the Mur tower dumps the jerk! The guy up front squeaks himself through the door steps out cursing again. I catch the glimmer of his pistol in the back of his pants… He’s obviously mukhabarat… Ignorant, vile, and haughty…

The driver is panicked, lurching, and leaning the car as he whips around for directions. “taxi right?” He's nervous scared and driving like a maniac

“Sure none of the other guys paid, I know the car doesn’t run on water, someone’s gotta pay for gas might as well be me (and my sorry looking forgein ass)”

I keep telling him “its ok Just head to the end of Hamra” But he keeps stopping at military hajiz (checkpoints) asking for directions.

I finally give up on the Hamra route and relate directions that take him along the Corniche and he coasts along changing the tape from one of what sounds like the Ouwat rally songs (Samir Geagea faction of Lebanese forces/ Maronites/ Christians/ Vicious/ Proud/ half of what bled the people dry in the civil war) to something else. In pops some silly over produced Arabic woman singing some tinkley song. I get dropped of in front of my apartment building and I had over the 5 thou… “No it’s on my account”
“No! Seriously that is rude,
I’m paying!
Take your money, the money that I owe you and God be with you”
Another night in Lebanon draws to a close
But it’s not over yet…
Not until after a gut wrenching phone call that is bittersweet in all senses of the word and my past existence…

The Patriot.... Syrian style... and what really happened to Lebanon's CEDARS

Yup troops another update from the fraternal council of all things rainy…
The beloved author’s luck has once again turned to mud!
Leading our intrepid wordsmith on…
Another one of these fruitless missions in Lebanon.

My passport in all her wonderful and faithfulness, decided to go on a trip…
WITHOUT ME!!!

Losing a passport is pretty serious business..
Losing one in Lebanon…
Is tantamount to tying bricks to your feet and jumping in the ocean for a dip
during a hurricane.

Yes that day I discovered what happened to Lebanon’s cedar…

It wasn’t burned in recent protests, as some may suggest

It was used to collate my one police report concerning the passport.

Of course with bureaucracy came the loop d loop tour of offices…

Just to spice things up the decided to have all of the English speaking bureaucrats on vacation indefinitely leaving only the francophones…

God help me…

So after being dropped off at the Brand new pretty General Security building near the museum (which in my two years here I have never gone inside)..

beeping through the metal detector…

In the Middle East they are supposed to beep to let you know they are working…
No!
Of course you don’t go BACK through the machine!
Only foreigners do that!
Little do those poor saps know that the beeping and alarms are merely for show.
Of course there won’t be a strip search!
They might get a bit curious about your purse and what brand of lipstick and perfume you use but other than comparing it to their nearest of kin’s there won’t be much hassle.

Your next destination is information just to the left of the metal beepy thingy where two wonderfully friendly fellows will attempt to muddle the situation as best as they possibly can.
This is their chance to practice English and their Sherlock skills in order to give you what looks like a green worm wrestling mat with the scrawl of an epileptic telling everyone who sees it that you were the idiot that lost your passport.

Recently instituted is the new method of enforcing the no cell phone policy.
I think it has something to do with the fact that Saddam’s Hanging and police torture in Egypt were both made public embarrassments by cell phone cameras.

Now truth be told cell phones haven’t been permitted in the General security for ages but that didn’t mean that you did anything but walk in with it as if it were pasted to your pocket.
Recently you have to check them in… Meaning they write a number on the back of your worm wrestling paper and then toss your phone in their desk.
I ran up the stairs to the second floor looking for the lost passport section where I was redirected 4 times until finally reaching a 10m X 20m office of 5 guys trading dirty jokes.
They then informed me that I needed to visit the General security near the ADL… meaning the ministry of Justice.

So after skirting down the road destruction to get to the OTHER older General security building I was informed to go to the other guard shack at the other end of the building.
At this point I have just covered 17 discussions of exactly the same ilk…

Yes…
No…
Nooo…
I LOST my passport.
I was told to come here to…
But they told me it was here….
So where am I supposed to go….
(repeat back the directions)
(have the directions corrected)
(the guy sitting next to the directions guy disagrees)
(have the directions corrected)
(have a discussion on how the directions were corrected)
(unanimous decision reached)
(directions agreed upon)
(repeat back the directions)
And that is where I can get what I need to give to the US Embassy?
I hope to God too…
Ok thanks…

So now I head to the Ministry of Justice… sprint right up the imposing imperial stairs only to be told that I need to go to the guard shack around the corner… it’s only a couple hundred meters away…

Why is it always THE OTHER guard shack?

I get subjected to another metal detector.. But this time it gets interesting…
I take off my wallet and they go to pass it on..
Today the guard station is manned by a fan of the TV show 24…
He tears apart my wallet and pulls off the chain…
Impatiently insisting on victimizing my cell phone next

I then get snagged by a bespectacled brunette who offers translation services
She spotted her customer after hearing me ask the metal detecting maniac where do I go to report my passport lost.

She directs me to the snack counter behind the curtain where I get a statement saying: that I lost my passport; that I am of sound mind and body; that I live in an apartment; that the apartment is in a neighborhood in Beirut; that my mum is from England and has an English name; and that I am a sucker enough to pay for the translation of something so simple and the 2 stamps that go with it.
I have never seen stamps used for mail in Lebanon they always go on official documents.

Next I go up to the office upstairs and deal with the various bureaucrats there and after a quick set of Otter ping pong they hand me off to go back to the General Security near the ministry of Justice.

Now note each participant in Otter ping pong adds a minimum of one blue soaked inky stamp one scrawled signature and one extra page to the packet of stuff I am carrying.

I head to the guard shack and of course get told to go to the OTHER GUARD SHACK…

Back at the General Security I WAS SUPPOSED to drop the packet off and call back a week or two later…

OH HECK NO!!!

I sat with the papers telling them I wasn’t sure when I was going to fly it could be in the next couple days. I would have come Tuesday but hell broke loose in Lebanon and the black tire stains are still on the streets.

This little embarrassing episode that they all wanted to forget seemed to grease the wheels.
I was sent; from one big mucky muck, to another… People were sent to find out if things were possible in the SAME DAY…
WOW!
Hot diggity!
Things are getting done…
Up a couple floors and a funny conversation concerning my first name and it’s origin..
I later find myself in front of a highly decorated WOMAN?!?!?
Wow I was deeply moved and impressed.
SHE HAD A STAR AND EVERYTHING!
There was no conversation just a signature but that encounter…
It hit pretty hard… I smiled
It’s wonderful on those rare occasions your expectations get exceeded…
I was proud to be a feminist!

I was then sat in an empty office were I waited for some young hot shot...
He must be headed places because he had a nice watch.
After explaining I used to dive with one of the Generals of the General Security and swapping stories about the USA
I was got myself “fast tracked”
Which meant I got to have an escort …
This Napoleonic statured employee was supposed to walk through the offices and get things done. We only visited one office…
I was then led out of the building round the corner and to this stairway in the foundation of a bridge…

WEIRD…
It looked like the entrance to an underground subway station or a secret hideout of the Italian mob…

It was… A police station complete with ping pong table, wooden benches, felons and detectives…
I was to have the pleasure of sitting there waiting for my police report to be written in Arabic for the next 5 hours…
I covered all sorts of discussion with the local police who were very intent on knowing what I was studying… how much I could hope to earn… and how long I would have to keep going to school…
I took this opportunity to test my Blood sugar… same rules applying here as everywhere else in Lebanon… it was high… I injected
The officer sitting in the corner had pretended not to notice… so as I sat back after injecting and hiding my supplies away…
he couldn’t resist…
For me it’s part of the usual routine….
How long had I been diabetic?... How did I get it?... What did I do that was different to everyone else?....Did he have diabetes?....

Then, came the next event of the day…
An Accused man’s wife had been crying….
She wanted to see her husband and had to be gone by 3:00 because of the kids…
What conversation followed was HILARIOUS to say the least.
I pitied the woman but couldn’t help laughing…
“So madam what is the trouble with your husband?”
“I dunno!”
“Whaja mean you dunno? You have two kids by this man and you don’t know what his problem is? I can’t help you if you can’t tell me what’s up.”
She sits there sobbing in the corner…
“I donno what he was doing in the middle of that mushkil(incident/ trouble)”
After an hour of her sniffling they seem bored
The lead her out…
In come a couple agents to discuss what the deal is…
They then lead in the man in handcuffs. He’s a mountain of human flesh with a beard, a warm jacket, a big gut that seems like it’s trying to burst through the bottom of his grey
t- shirt,“So tell me what’s up with you”
“Well, I can’t go back to Syria”
“What’s that on your hand?”
“I was inked in prison”
“Prison?”
“Yeah”
“Why?”
“Well I got in trouble with the Syrian Secret police (mukhabarat=intelligence). They kept coming to my house looking for my brother who is in Germany. They came and tossed the house 4 times and I didn’t say anything. The last time they came for me…
There were 4 in the car… I got a hold of one of their AK’s and shot three of them. I would have shot the forth but they shot me in the gut and that is why I need my medication. I can’t lie down on the floor and there are only Sudanese in there”
“They won’t give you a spot to lie down?”
“No they are all Sudanese”
In comes the local prison doctor… He’s a young guy with slicked back hair…
“Yeah he’s got something wrong with his stomach as you’ve heard.” With a nod the doctor confirms it. The man is lead out and the wife thanks the detective profusely.
I sit there silently waiting it’s about 4:40 and the fifth time they ask me if I want to eat. “No thanks I can’t it’s the diabetes”
They call the judge and get the signal to make out the report. I had to wait until 5:05 for the judge because apparently it’s nap time for those guys.
After the call and conformation I have in my possession a written police report concerning my passport. I head to the faculty and then home…
I know it’s supposed to be translated in English and officially stamped but that will have to wait for Thursday.

Reporting from below the burning tires and sounds of gunshots

Welcome to another weird wild and wonderful installment of opinionated drivel here at Otter’s own base for shooting his mouth off.

First off I am in one of my more spectacular moods.
One could say it’s been a rough couple weeks…month… run…whichever holds up long enough to cover the latest expanse of bad things following one another or attacking in unison.
Today is what I am beginning to traditionally hope every morning…
This… I find myself saying…is hopefully the end to the convergence of crap that gets thrown my way.

I’m getting a bit sick and tired of the build up.
If it’s not one thing it’s another.

I had intended to post this catalog of memories a bit earlier yesterday but then something happened.

I have recently had a lot of time on my hands.

It is in times like these that your beloved author takes time to go over some memories.
I’ve got some ones that will live on in silence and some I jotted down to keep a mark of.

These below are like stones thrown in a pond that send ripples right out to the shore
They sting with the need to have the sensations back again
To build on them… again…

Dancing in the rain…yes of course…. White…
The amazing mission impossible shot thief and the bouncing head of hair that made the loop around the entire place.

Watching the Beirut skyline and
the glow of Michel’s face from those dim lights below the glass
as he greets you with that famous knowing nod of his.

The classic “you know how I get when I am hungry” line… before or just after some appalling behavior.

The shine of everything in ABC at the holidays
the wonderful feeling of having sprung a surprise.
The watching selecting and listening to…”listening to tracks at Virgin”…

Being valiantly rescued at Fly, pampered and cared for.
Like almost all those other times it happened and in flew that angel that held back the world for those moments.

Picking out new glasses.

The rise of the road up the mountains of Broumana.
The way the fog wrapped around the little hamlets as a chill fell during the war
Us, the strangely dressed people, who shared those feastings up in those hills.
That silent jarring ride down
when
for once
everything made sense
and that true feeling of resonance
hit me.

Watching the clouds rush up the side of a place called Sakra
The husband, that got reincarnated as a parrot, eating on the chair.
The Lesbians and their big meeting at the table near the wall.
Peering into the black hole that was what had become Da’hiyeh
My putting us on the longest shortcut ever to get all the way down again.

Trips to 499 Orient… And the great Abaya parade
Surprise the silver one too.

Roadster’s…. AGAIN?!?!?
FRIES…

Coffee at Costa…

Foot massages at the Rouche Starbuck’s.

Foot massages in general.

Chopsticks and the great take away office dinner option with all the necessary glassware.
Shogun
Benihana
Those beans at Soto

Karam… and their little asafir

Yes I want a whole chicken at Deek Duke…
Abu Koko that wasn’t Abu Koko but some other restaurant…

The many many times at Casper and Gambini…

The nut shells at Waterlemon in the salad
and later fruit smoothies.

The Bab al Mina Sunday tradition

Appointments for running on the treadmill

The Haagen-Daaz cure to sadness

I can’t ride past Ge’ant without thinking over that tea buying splurge…the cart riding…
and the horrible sound of kiddie entertainment...

The monastery up on Mount Cherbil and that crazy swooping ride down.
Finding rings in the bathroom of that famous food spot up there.
Getting caught toying with a smile and someone at another table.

Pinocchio… and the fact I never set foot in that kitchen shop

Mayas… the bubbling tummy and the mariachi

Soy sauce stains beneath the Buddah…

Tapping on that frosted glass door where I mounted the Nike symbol
with such precision and bearing as to get its’ position exactly like the LOGO..
hearing that not so welcoming “come in”

Waiting in the cold and dark of that Hazmiyeh building parking lot.

Painting the walls… and shorts.
High on Turpentine
the Royal Plaza.-Great for both the world cup and a detox zone

Choosing the curtains.

Trying to get all the wiring done so that the place would be presentable.

The restaurant meal on big white plates that some crazed idiot decided to bring to the car.

The red BMW that met such a horrible end…
That sore feeling in middle of my chest
that I had been cheated when I found out what happened to it
and for how long I wasn’t allowed to know.
The forgiving it because…back in there somewhere there had to be a reason.

Daisy and her sneaky way of diving around traffic and giving a leg work out at the same time.

Messages from the hospital…
The constant barrage of testing that never seemed to make the worries any smaller…
Are you sure I don’t have…? How do you know?
The big book that should explain EVERYTHING for those questions.

Sending that SMS “sorry I couldn’t make it to class because I broke my collar bone..”
Having an all night post concussion discussion…

Dragonfly
and that feeling of finding a long lost friend.

That feeling when I did lose…BIGTIME…forever..
And yes the idea that these memories...shall be frozen
never to be shared with the farmer that planted them…
not being allowed to give those memories any more brothers and sisters…

That hurts…

Sadness such as this I am told
eventually fades
but here in the thick of it…
I know it never does…
It merely hides
to wait and catch you when you are completely unaware.
To tear you to pieces like a tiger hidden in the thicket.

You never forget.

When that attack does happen; you get that distant look on your face.
A half baked smile
and that bulge at the bottom of your eyes that looks like a tire that has a flat.
Because the happiness of then
will never be topped or reborn.
It will never be part of something
because the other half refuses to be in them
They make the now of the visiting fleeting memory all the more bitter.

It is the point where you discover you are an orphan..
I feel so small and so damned hollow.

But instead you get this….
Yes Lebanon decided to throw another one of those interesting curveballs my way…
A bit like the day I got evacuated…
Once again words come out muffled…
Somehow lacking the emotion I have invested in them…
They come out pale and wane instead of being those fully colored things that I feel.
It’s amazing how easily words betray
the why and the what of my intentions and meanings.

I have to put up with the fact that though I have the best of intentions things never come out the way I hope they do.

I’m not so hot at living up to expectations…
Or maybe it’s that the expectations always seem to be a quarter inch too high…
I get caught feeling like the short kid in the white exercise t-shirt that’s always three sizes too large.
The big feet and gym shoes that just seem more looney toon than should be allowed in the section of life we call the real world.

Yup it’s hard to overcome those ideas and self image issues one has coming up though those formative teenage years.

But here I am denigrating my writing skills without getting into the meat of today’s posting.

Pardon my Yosamite Sam impression here but it only seems a fitting way to describe the sorry state of my neighborhood…

There was a… shootings… a….. burnings and….
a whole lot of other goodies and shenanigans
going on this Tuesday in the Karakas and nearby sections of Beirut.

There were of course political co-opted goings on too
But the truth is everyone in a very personal sense is sick of the entire region.
The arab world has become corrupt.
It’s been developing for a while actually… since the fall of the house of wisdom in Iraq.
With the ottomans the beuracracy and the pointy headed idiocy became magnified
Each ruler outdoing the last in ineptitude
until now we have what we have in this region..
It is now an oligarchy of patrons of their own silk linings.
The haves and
“have been robbed”s
are growing farther apart
With the death or should I say escape of
the middle class society here is shredding itself apart.
This all means the loss of a state…
The loss of the cornerstones to development…
The loss of movement and evolution.

Lebanon has been in a state of limbo since her creation.
Her politicians and neighbors seem hell bent on keeping her that way.
From what little I know of the history of the civil war… and in it
being a war there was nothing civil about it…

From what I have not been able to avoid as far as politics are concerned I have been forced to diagnose a problem here in Lebanon.

And what with the country… as I have said before… being IMAGE OBSESSED….
I think this place may have suffered another fatal blow…
Not to the people the protests were actually pretty lame. There were a few burning tires and some gunshots... actually TONS near the apartment where I live.
But, nothing really came of it.
Like most protests here in the Middle East NOTHING comes of it.
A soundbite on the news... and then of course.... the protest's purpose and intent gets hijacked by some political entity for their own ends.

Here I am stuck doing what I can
like usual..
Which incidentally… feels damned pathetic.
I visit the not so well endowed regions of Beirut with my trusty Blood Glucose monitor…
I do the test right out in the open…
Yup here I actually DON’T Hide the fact I carry and use needles.
It isn’t like in the USA where everyone automatically assumes you are a druggie..
Here they are sadly innocent of the issues of heroine in their own country.
Here whipping out a needle and injecting is a point in time you can teach.

Believe it or not a HUGE majority of the population wanders around as undiagnosed type two diabetics.

More than once I have had to deliver bad news.

That sorry buddy but as I told you 100 is normal
and I know you may have had a cup of tea and eaten something sweet but 400 is nowhere near respectable…

Go get yourself checked out and see what you need to have dialed up on your pills…

Not being a doctor and not being licensed to practice sometimes drives me up the wall

More than once I have told people who can’t afford to pay for basic things like a small bit of meat to go and scrape together enough for a glucose monitor.
More often than not
I am told that the local pharmacy has one
and that the test subject will go to the “saydalieh” to get their blood glucose tested for a dollar a test.

HORRIFIC
I know

These people should be testing a minimum of three times a day and here they are, going something like once a week.
There are huge populations in the South of Lebanon claiming they need BG monitors and also claiming they aren’t diabetics…
I guess here in Lebanon they don’t think you qualify for that honorary title unless you have to take something for it.

There is one particular guy in the neighborhood whom I keep demanding sugars from…
He usually runs a good 200 to 240 on a daily basis.
I have told him to visit the doctor and get his doses dialed up…
I’ve asked him about his diet…
I’ve told him where to adjust…
Trouble is…
I am not employed to be his diabetes educator…
Apparently neither is anyone else!
I wonder why non-governmental malitia have such power? Hmm could it be that these little groups are the only infrastructure these poor populations have ever known. Whatever happened to the responsibility of the state?
I mean there are some UGLY HIGH TAXES here in Lebanon!
The politicians get to roll around in some wonderfully nice cars and their houses are appallingly MASSIVE!!!
The average Joe is living hand to mouth just to make the bills.
(which I must add seem to get inflated according to how white and forgein I appear)
Yup there is no single law for everyone.
There is no sorry I'm not sure how to do that...
There is the sorry lie that says... I know how to fix it...
Then followed by a fixing it.... that results in the VICTIM cough cough patient's demise.
When are things really going to get repaired?