Not French yet

Although I have mistaken German for English in the past, my French skills aren’t at the point where I can easily switch between languages. A case in point is the bread that Mary Ann bought yesterday. It’s traditional Arab flatbread, but was sold in a French bakery. Thus, the label was in Francais.

When I first looked at the package, I was a bit confused. I couldn’t figure out why someone would want to call a brand of bread “Pain”.



I will start my own bread line called “Arab suffering”, with expansion plans for misery, despair and melancholy.

Hand me downs

Several months ago, Mary Ann and I were shopping in the warrens of Sidon when we came across a little outfit for Stella that we rather liked. It’s not exactly something out the Carter line, but it had a certain amount of tie-dyed, Grateful Dead funkiness that we found really appealing. Plus, it was only about $3.50 so we bought it. Unfortunately, Stella has refused to wear since the moment she saw it. Over the last six months she has been absolutely resolute that she will not put this on under any circumstances.



Fortunately, we have a second child, so we don’t plan to give up just yet…

Zap

I'm thinking of getting some laser hair removal on my neck. I always have problem shaving my neck. Ingrown hairs, nicks, etc. What do I need all the hastle for? Why not just concentrate all the pain into a few zap sessions, and there you go, no more problem...

Catch up

I must confess to being a bit shocked that it's been nearly a week since I last posted. I guess that's a side-effect of having lots of things going on. Along those lines, we just got back from finalizing a lease agreement for a new apartment. We are much happier with the location. In fact, practically everything is better.

Hopefully, this next year will be better than the last...

Learning Process

The whole family went down to the Corniche today to try out Stella’s new bike. This was the first time Stella has actually had a bike of her own, although she has wanted one for a while now. Mary Ann volunteered to be the one to help Stella figure out the process. Acknowledging that example is the best teacher, Mary Ann pitched right in.



Nevertheless, Stella decided to push the bike for now.

Eyestrain

A little over two years ago, I started making some videos of our lives in Germany to send back to my grandfather, who couldn’t really travel. It turned out that these videos grew in popularity and ended up being copied and passed around to other family members. Fast forward to today, and there are now 17 people on the distribution list. Back in October we had some equipment failures that delayed our monthly mailings. We now have the right equipment to be back in the game, but the production line is seriously backed up. Here is the stack of DVDs ready for shipment:




Under normal circumstances, any audio/visual material has to be directly screened by the Lebanese government before it leaves the country. How would you like to be the person assigned to watch all these discs?

Dance for Mines

The title of this post is taken from the subject line of the email I received inviting me to take part in a certain event. The front and back pages of the brochure were included as attachments, which I have posted here.


So, yes, its pretty clear that they are talking about landmines. Interesting way to raise money, eh? The Lebanese do know how to throw a good party, that's for sure. What better than to combine it with a good cause?

Gender Bender

When I was studying for my paralegal degree, one of the program coordinators was a militant feminist. The sort who thought that “women” should be spelled “wymin”. Most of her ideas on gender seemed rather far fetched to me, but she did have a few things right. For example, she pointed out the feminist accusation that the wife nearly always listed second as the join owner with her husband on a title or other legal document. One of the standard refutations for this is that such things don’t really matter, and therefore don’t constitute a reflection of inequality.

The interesting part came around when she actually started inverting the order: “The land is owned by Mrs. Joan Smith and her husband Frank Smith.” The staff in the office were so taken aback by this that they had to call in extra backup before they would register the deed.

While I’m not going to advocate changing the spellings of words, I do find it interesting how many times the main character in a book or film is male. Since I want to keep gender stereotyping to a minimum in Stella’s life, I’ve adopted a little work-around for this issue.

When Stella and I read books, we look at the page and describe what is going on, while I make up some kind of story to go along with the illustrations. This way, it’s not quite so boring for me to read the same story 47 times, and it’s a bit more interactive. This becomes significant because when reading the stories, I have been asking Stella to tell me if the main character is a boy or a girl, and to give the character a name.

It’s been interesting to see that Stella will choose about 80% of her books to have a female main character. The same character in the same book will always be the same gender, but in several cases, what used to be boy is now a girl. For example, the following books have been gender-adjusted by Stella:

• Where the Wild Things Are
• The Giving Tree
• The Little Engine that Could (the train is a she)
• Things Dads Can’t Do (actually a very cute book, not really about what the title sounds like)
• Winnie the Pooh

At some point she is obviously going to learn that the real text in these books is male oriented, but I figure there will be a net gain if they stay female while Stella is in her formative years. Anyway, I think this behavior of Stella’s serves to reinforce the theory that all these male oriented aspects of our society that we tend to accept actually do have an impact of some kind. Maybe not significant enough to be meaningful, but it looks like there may be something to it…

Fun with idioms

At least temporarily, I’ve decided not to avoid idioms any more. In fact, when the opportunity arises, we’ve been having a bit of fun with them at work lately. In the last two days, this has featured the following:

1. Beat you like a red-headed step-child
2. Fair-haired son
3. Don’t give a rat’s ass
4. Pee in your cornflakes

Personal Artillery

While the French have a modern-day reputation as being militarily incompetent, they have made some very important contributions to what we consider to be modern day military structures. As with many historically influential aspects of French grandeur, this particular one dates back to Louis the 14th. Louis is generally less well known for his military campaigns, as they were mostly inconclusive. While not so great at reforming the territorial landscape, they were great for producing lots of wounded soldiers.

Up to that point, armies were largely made up of soldiers for hire and conscripts. If you were wounded that was your tough luck. Louis changed that by introducing some modern day improvements, such as veteran’s benefits. In particular, he started a retirement home/hospital in the middle of what is now downtown Paris. This structure has been expanded upon and aggrandized and now holds the main French military museum and the tomb of Napoleon. It’s truly an impressive structure and a very interesting museum. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in those aspects of history.

Some of the armaments they have on display date from the 1700s, including some fascinating examples of cannon from that time period. Back in 2002, Mary Ann and I happened across this piece, which I think my sister will appreciate.



This one might be of more general interest. Do you suppose this was the old-time equivalent of painting pin-up girls on bombers in WWII?



Incidentally, Louis went to great lengths to honor the war wounded. He in order to show the great esteem in which he held them, he had a chapel built in the facility where he would go to mass with the ex-troops. However, he needed to be conscious of his image, and not mingle too closely with the commoners. He found the perfect balance by building a huge altar piece in the middle of the chapel, with the vets on one side, and him on the other. Technically, he was at mass with them, but none of them could actually see him. Therefore, all conditions were met, and everyone went home happy.

This move towards honoring the troops made a big impression on the French and other armies in Europe, and started a shift towards providing for soldiers after the war was over. The French really took to this idea. Even today, veterans are clearly listed as having priority for reserved seats on the metro over a whole list of other folks, including the elderly and pregnant women.

I find honesty very attractive

Which is why I think this conversation I had with Mary Ann this morning quite amusing:

Me: So I had this really weird nightmare last night, that had…

So, that was pretty weird wasn’t it? I think it could make a good senior film project for some feminist film student somewhere.

Mary Ann: Yeah. It could also be really great material for a session with a psychiatrist.

Me: Thanks for your support.

Saida

In an effort to enjoy Lebanon a bit more, we decided to do something that I always enjoy… Archeological frolicking! Although we have been to Sidon numerous times, we haven’t yet been to the Sea Castle. While I often notice that most of Lebanon’s historical treasures aren’t very well protected, the Sea Castle is an exception. Not only do they have a ticket booth and a fence, they have given it that little added bit of protection that can only come by never actually opening the gates.

The ticket booth seems to be staffed on a complex rhythm synchronized to the flight patterns of migratory fruit bats. No ripe bananas, no ticket, and that’s the way it is. Fortunately, the bats were flying that morning, so we were able to get in. I did notice with some amusement, that the booth attendant was adamant that the admission price was 4,500LL, but the price on the ticket was clearly printed as 4,000LL. Whatever. If it keeps the bats happy, I’m happy.

I find this castle to be one of the more interesting crusader establishments in Lebanon. It was built in the 13th century to help fortify the city and its port against all those nasty, evil Muslims who had conspired to be there before them. Of course, to be fair the Muslims stole it from the Greeks, who happened to be there before them, who stole it from the Persians, who happened to be there before them, who stole it from the Phoenicians, who happened to be there before them, who stole it from the Neolithic natives who really were there first. That being said, the Phoenicians were committing terrible violations of animal rights against the indigenous population of murex snails to steal their purple dye, so the Phoenicians had it coming.



As with most crusader establishments, it was low on art, and high on defensibility. Still though, some flourishes were visible.





Among the favorite crusader techniques was the embedding of slices of Roman columns to reinforce the walls.



One thing I hadn’t seen before was a rather creative use of marble columns as moldings in door jams. Doubtless this did a great job of keeping out the draft and raising the resale value of the property.



As we were there during high tide on a windy day there were some exhilarating waves breaking against the seaside boundary of the castle. We took some great video and interior pictures, but I’m not posting any of it here because of all the plotting, identity thieving weirdos who read this blog. No, I don’t mean you.

Anyway, I did get a bit cranky over one aspect of heritage management. If you really care about preserving your history, why would you leave iron cannon out in an area that is constantly receiving salt water spray from the ocean? Wouldn’t you think that a tad likely to shorten the lifespan?



I realize that once they build up a rust crust that they are fairly stable, but still. If you don’t want to be nice to them, I’ll be more than happy to take one off your hands. I’ll just wait until the migratory bats of moved on, back my 12 year old car down the causeway, pop one in the trunk, and you’ll never even know I was there…

Don't blink...

Danielle would like to say that taking pictures of babies with the red-eye reduction flash setting causes certain side-effects.

My own laser gun!

I want one!

"...burns holes in most materials."

I just love products with disclaimers like:

"This is a dangerous Class IV laser project and requires initial purchase of plans including our hazardous equipment affidavit that must be signed before purchase of the actual system. "

Still though, $1,750.00 for the out-of-the-box version is a bit steep. But hey, isn't it worth it to blast holes in your living room walls with your own laser gun?

Bwahahahahaha

Traveling man

I'm quite glad to be back with my family here in Beirut, but there have been a few issues. Ever since my trip, Stella has been having some problems:

1. She now requires reassurance when going to bed that I'm going to be there when she wakes up.
2. Mary Ann told me that Stella ran out her room crying that she was afraid tigers during the second week I was gone.
3. Stella is now very concerned about Monsters and doesn't want us to close the door to her room at night.
   

I can't make any clear causative case between my leaving and all these symptoms suddenly occuring. They might only be coincident. I doubt it though. Stella and I have a very close relationship, and me being gone for two weeks was a huge rock to drop in her pond. I've never been gone before at this. I suspect these things are happening because her world got rocked and that's causing her stress.

I'm concerned that things are going to get back to normal just in time for me to leave again. Still though, I can't just not take any business trips because it will disrupt her...

Let the therapy bills commence.

Anti-blogging

I’ve been think about starting a non-public section of this blog where I would share more personal information, pictures, and some of my more snarky opinions. Access would be given on an individual basis to people I know personally. Do any of you have an opinion on that idea?

Expat sum-up

This trip to the US had some real surprises for me. I had thought about tracking how I was reacting to America each day of the trip. However, the whole daily blogging thing got derailed fairly quickly. Instead, I’ve tossed together a kind of retrospective graph showing my desire (on a 1-10 scale) of moving back.



At the start of things, I wasn’t really that hot on the idea of moving back. That started to change toward the end of the first week, based on several key circumstances:

1. Spending time with my sister and her new husband
2. Seeing the kind of life I would likely have if I went back
3. Shellie
4. Reconnecting with all the family on my father's side
   

The first one is obvious, so I won’t go into that. The second one refers to me scouting out what it would be like if we moved back to Charlotte. Positive things included grass for Stella to play on, neighborhoods with happy children, and how generally easy it was to get things done. The incessant driving culture was a clear negative.

The third one needs a bit more explination. Shellie is a close friend of Terra’s who gave some hercluean efforts in keeping things going with the wedding arrangements. Two main things really impressed me about her life. First, they were a great demo of what I would want my family to be like if we moved back. Her family is about the same size as mine, her husband’s career is very similar to mine, and she has a really great life. Not Norman Rockwell perfect, but warts and all, a great thing. Except for the dog, that definitely has to go. Second, Shellie and her husband have really been going the extra mile to help out Terra and her husband through the whole dating and getting married process. That’s really nice of her, except for one thing.

That’s my job.

Shellie, you’re great, but I have to kill you now. No offense?

So anyway, Shelllie is personally responsible for the peak at day 8.

Things started to taper off again when I really started thinking about what it would be like several years down the road if we moved back. Would I start to find it boring after the first ~8 months? Would I start missing the international life? What if three months after moving there Terra’s new husband decided that he hated my kids for being the fantastic people they are and there was some big row?

Incidentally, we get that a lot. My kids are cuter, smarter, and more articulate that everyone else’s on the planet. Most people who meet them just decide to give up and not bother having children since they can’t possibly compete with mine. It’s a serious risk, but I digress.

These questions didn’t take the Moving Desirability index back down to 0, but it did take a hit. For the rest of the week, when I was spending time with the rest of my family, the index started to rise again. It peaked after my visit to some long-time friends in my hometown. By the end of the second week, it was back up into the plane ticket buying range.

This was cured by actually getting on a plane and reminding myself of how much I hate flying across the planet.

Days 15-17 consist of my gradually adjusting time zones, sleeping schedules, and telling Mary Ann all the stories of what happened during my trip. I finally finished up with this on day 18. Since that time, Mary Ann has put about 80% of her votes behind returning to the States. I’ll invite her to add her thoughts into the comments section if she wants to.

So, that’s how the visit impacted my views on future plans. I’ll be interested to see how things pan out as I get a little more established back into my life here. I’m planning on a nice excursion to Saida this weekend to try and get back into the Lebanese swing of things.

We’ll see.

Finally!

The weather in Beirut is cold enough that I can walk to work without needing to change out of a t-shirt when I arrive.

On the other hand, my now useless folding technique for getting a dress shirt to survive for 30 minutes in a backpack might earn me a patent.