Shopping for Gynecos in Lebanon (For females only)

I have lately been shopping for gynecologists and obstetricians... shopping literally. I have seen a handful of them so far. I do understand that visiting a gyneco will never be a comfortable experience, but it shouldn't at least be a traumatizing one! However, in a frustrated society like ours, finding a good male gynecologist is hard and finding a good female one is even harder. I remember back at university when that stupid Med student used to brag in front of other guys how lucky he is because when he becomes a gynecologist, he would see as many naked women and women's genitals as he wishes! He did traumatize me to be honest and I still remember him every time I shop for a new gyneco. I would enter the clinic, scrutinize the Doctor, look for any lust in his eyes, and ask all sorts of questions, as if interviewing him for a job. They could be the best gynecos ever, but that doesn't make the experience any less pitiful. After seeing many of them in Lebanon, I ended up with a sort of categorization. You have the stupid ones, often religious, who would ask you "Miss or Mrs.?" to find out whether you are sexually active! and those who would instantly assume that you are married if they find after check-up you weren't virgin. Tell them you are single and you would get that forced smile betrayed by the round eyes!! Now you have the other category of gynecos who ask you to strip the moment you are in the clinic. They do the check-up in every single visit even if you were there just to ask a question. The third category is those, usually the older type, who look very nice at first, the teaching type, drawing vaginas and uteruses on paper, explaining all sorts of things you have to know, you say, finally that's the one, then, once the lecture is over, they take you behind the curtains, and ask you to strip while they stay there watching... sometimes even offering a hand! And finally you have the female gynecos. Those come in two types, the frustrated, never-had-sex-type and the hell-with-confidentiality-type. The first category are those self-hating women who give you the face of disgust and nag about how horrible it is to be a woman. They would be anything but gentle during check-ups. Now the- hell-with-confidentiality-type are the funniest. One of them once asked me where I am from and noted it down on my file (I now have files all the over the country) and when I asked why she needed to know this information, she said so that she doesn't give me an appointment that would coincide with another woman's from my area. At the end of that session, she offered me coffee and told me the life story of the woman who had left the room right before I came in, not only disclosing all her medical history but also telling me all sorts of gossips about her personal life! I never visited her again, and I opened a new file somewhere else. Now there is this one Doctor I visited lately who falls out of any categorization. I hated him at first, maybe because he was very handsome and relatively young. He also had this smirk that was hard to decipher. I thought that he is the arrogant type and that what goes through his mind is "all of you stupid patients who visit me!" He probably thought "if you are not a doctor then you are stupid." I judged him right away, and my first impression was that this guy is masquerading as a professional physician and said “the worst is yet to come!” But to my surprise, the visit went extremely well. He didn't ask for a check-up on my first visit and he kept a very decent and proficient attitude all through. Finally, a genuine gynecologist! I found out later that he is gay and that was truly relieving. Impartiality! I thought. That’s what makes a good gynecologist.

At the end of the Tunnel

Dear sectarian Lebanese people, those celebrating and those lamenting alike, amid those comi-tragic moments that you are all passing through, I bring you good news. Cheer up, the end of the tunnel is near. Dear Maronites, Christian Orthodox, Sunni, Shia, Alawites, Armenians, Druze etc. etc. etc. worry not for soon you will have a new sectarian government that will be more sectarian than ever so that it represents you all. It will be much more balanced than you have ever had so that it preserves your national unity, and it will be much more retarded than it had ever ever been so that it can respond to all your concerns and address your fears. Dear Christians, fear not, for this government will impose contraceptives on all Muslims. Dear pious Lebanese, fear not because art control and media censorships will be imposed stricter than ever not to scratch your feelings (in the meantime use your remote control devices). The next government is one that has learned from the lessons of the past. It will not allow a soul to dare insult your sectarian leader or religious figure. It will impose on buses and cabs to dangle crosses and crescents from their rear-view mirrors to give you a choice in which to ride. There will be equal Christian transportation means as Muslim ones, and there will be mixed ones too with a cross and a crescent embracing for those who have reached higher levels of co-existence and brotherhood, for the new Government will give you a choice. So why the long faces? Cheer up, the end of the tunnel is near.

The day I woke up with a silly mood

I don't know what it means to live day by day yet I decided today to live as such, to live today. But in what sense? does it mean, not to think about tomorrow? or not to plan for next week or next year? or not to care for yesterday or last year? or is it rather not to worry about the after? For some, it could mean no more than to put food on the table today and God helps tomorrow. For others it is merely to take Nancy out today and worry about Carla tomorrow. But for me this morning, it just meant to wake up and try to lead a normal day, a day I would not care to remember. I told myself: today, live with no aim, delete the word purpose from your dictionary, and let dreams be your worst enemy. Ask no questions and look for no answers. Just wake up and let each breath bring you a new fragrance, open your eyes and see (as Saramago says), listen to the music in words and forget the words, just be led by your senses. Carpe Diem? I wondered. Maybe. But it is funny when you think that the more you live by Carpe Diem the less you might leave this world with a mark, the less you will be remembered over the ages. But who cares if your life was watched in a film strip or read in a book or searched over the internet a hundred years after you are gone. You are gone. Maybe it is not important after all to leave a mark in life, maybe, it is more important that life leaves marks on you.

Beyond doubt

I attended the other day the funeral of a man in his late seventies. At the funeral, I heard people talking about his widow's "'Iddiyeh" or 'counting' which refers to a custom still practiced among some Muslims where the widow must lock herself at home for 100 days before she is allowed to go out. To be honest, I didn't quite understand the reason right away until I realized that this has to do with sex. Of course! When it comes to religion, sex and dignity have some mysterious links. She should lock herself in so that, in case she found herself pregnant, society wouldn't doubt for a second that her late husband was indeed the father. Poor woman, I thought. When he died, her husband was almost 80 and she was in her late sixties for God's sake!

P.S. In case this crossed your mind, let us be clear, this practice is not common among Christians not because of any greater enlightenment, but, because if a Christian woman locked at home after her husband dies, gets pregnant, there is no way to tell whether the father is her late husband or the holy spirit!

Prices taste too!

Why do I happen to know some of those Lebanese who befriend you depending on how many cheese varieties you can name provided that Halloumi and Picon are not among them? Those might be rare, you think? but take the ones for example who rate the taste of food by its price. It must be delicious because it is expensive. That's also how they choose where to dine, for instance, by the price list! And the lesser the food in a plate the merrier! They won't tell you that the food is great because it is expensive, they are not that stupid after all... they will only say that they like the place because it is clean. Recommend a cheaper place and you would directly hear the phrase "it's too popular" only to mean "filthy" or "poor", two words they usually use interchangeably. So those people will find the same camembert they eat in Beirut for 10 Dollars more tasty than the camembert baring the same label in Paris, (of course!) and those people would find Somali Banana in Beirut utterly delicious and local banana in Somalia just Yuck! To those I say: if you cannot cure yourself from your inferiority complexes, you can just cut it short and chew a 50 dollar bill for breakfast, a 100 Dollar bill for lunch and how about a Diamond for dinner?

One of their favorite sections

For better and for worse

Since I got married I have been removing broken eyelashes from my husband's eyes in rescue more than I imagined I would.

From Marquez again

"Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good". Love in the time of Cholera.

Beirut

I love this line from Gabriel Garcia Marquez for I can almost read Beirut hidden between the lines: "How noble this city must be (...)for we have spent four hundred years trying to finish it off and we still have not succeeded." Love in the time of Cholera.

Or did we?

Nothing annoys me more than this

How can some Lebanese people not see that this is a sectarian emblem? I mean this is so evident that any further explanation would be like defining what the word is is. We will never have a decent state or regime or nation or whatever you may call it until we stop seeing people as such, and it differs less if the cross and the crescent are embracing or pointing guns at each others. It is just the same thing. The more you see this emblem the more you realize the levels of sectarianism that this country has reached. You won't need a Boutus Harb to remind you of that.

Lock yourself in

I lately spent too much time at home which made me forget why I took the decision in the first place to lock myself in. In short, since I stopped going out I started enjoying every moment of my days and nights and then I had this sudden outburst of "loving life" and a rush to go out and meet the sun. So off I went to meet the sun and then...regret. Let me explain what going out in Beirut means these days: a reminder that the main problem of Lebanon is not "sectarianism" as I always thought (which does not bother me anymore by the way... because habit makes normal), no, surprisingly, the root cause, and note this in the introduction of a conflict analysis strategy about Lebanon if you are planning to draft one, is STUPIDITY. It is stupidity magnificently manifested in the view of the Hamra street from the sky, if you ever had the chance, during Christmas and New Year holidays. You will see a stupid woman (me loving life again) in the car, or more precisely, only the lower part of my body in the car and the rest hysterically protruding from the window with rage in my hair defying the laws of gravity, gazing madly at that stupid boy on his motorcycle trying to squeeze himself and his vespa between my car and a truck larger than the street itself confidently blocking the way while three stupid women are happily crossing the street right in front of my car with stacks of huge shopping bags inhaling the black dust coming out of the truck and so indifferent to the deafening noise of the street only to find themselves stuck with their shopping bags in the middle of that apocalyptic scene. I go back home, and as I was in front of the door of my house, I pledge not to be on this side of the door unless necessary. Then a beautiful thought crossed my mind: I will spend New Year's eve at home.

New Year

New Year's is an illusionary beginning. Every morning is an illusionary beginning and New Year's is the king of them all. It is also an illusionary ending. There are beginnings because there are endings... and how can there be happy endings if the greatest ending is commonly known as Death? Beginnings always bring with them hopes, wishfulness, and fortune telling. They are survival musts, the hopeless longing after the ultimate illusion: happiness. A wise man's wish on New Year's eve would be for a few glimpses of it.

Santa Clause

I don't remember ever believing in Santa Clause and I am not sure I like that. I was never brought up to believe in magic or fairy tales. No one tucked me in with a bed story. And among animated characters, I liked Pink Panther because he never talked. I never believed in talking animals, or fairies who could transform a king into a frog or a carriage into a pumpkin, not even as early as 3 or 4 years old, at least I never remember I did. Three geese attacked me early in my childhood and that was enough to scare the hell out of me of anything moving on four for the rest of my life. And yes, if you ask me, I will tell you that geese, ducks, chickens, and birds have four legs. Throwing a horrified cat at me few years later didn't help much either. I had another bitter experience with a cow who suddenly somehow entered my grandma's kitchen and four men tried to push it back through the narrow door. I crawled under a table at the corner of the kitchen screaming madly, and peed in my pants, I am not sure if it was out of hysterical laughing or of a panic attack. To see animated Disney characters talk and live in houses didn't trigger much imagination or any fondness in magic. I preferred the real stories that my father used to recount about his childhood: the scarecrows that scared them more than the birds, the ugly doll he made out of mere sticks and threads, and gave to his younger sister, my aunt, as a present, and the chewing-gum they hid from each other and no one dared ever chew. The first thing I remember about Santa is that there is no Santa. I never thought much about it anyway but I remember wondering once about the stupid idea of making Santa come from the chimney. We never had a chimney, not one that can fit someone as fat and not when it is lit anyway. I was amazed this Christmas when I saw a group of kids anxiously waiting for Santa on Christmas eve, and when he arrived, one of them screamed: this is not the real Santa! Another three year old, hid under his mother's skirt and only showed up again when Santa was taking off. He waved good bye to him with a huge smile and in his heart, he hoped, he will never show up ever again.

Peace

Peace is rain on green meadows.

Of love

One form of love is longing for a hug from that same person who just hurt us. Love is in a way a form of masochism.

Miscalculations

Force yourself to laugh and you were never sadder.

Don't drink wine when you are sad. It creeps down your throat right to that burning lump.

When you are sad, look in the mirror and note down one more mistake.

Why smart people are often depressed

Excerpts from the article shared by wineofwisdom in his comment on "Why stupid people are often happy":

"Both perspectives, pessimism and existentialism, wouldn't necessarily see depression as a malady existing in a person's head. A pessimist and existentialist might, in fact, agree that the world itself is screwed up, that social norms are themselves pathological, that feelings of despair, anxiety, loss, and pointlessness may be typical in people who are exceptionally intelligent and observant."

"Philosophers such as John Stuart Mill, William James, and Friedrich Nietzsche suffered the worst throes of depression. A host of other artists and writers suffered the same fate, including Edgar Allen Poe, William Blake, Mark Twain, Wolfgang Mozart, Charles Dickens, Vincent Van Gogh, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and Sylvia Plath."

Why stupid people are often happy

Take this guy for example.

Lebanese chauvinism

The new ad by Audi Bank.

My share in the CBC report turmoil

A little bit of background first: When the Hariri investigation began, it seemed to me like some sort of an action detective movie that is worth following up if only for the adrenaline stuff, after I have devoured as a child almost every single book by Agatha Christie, that seemed very logical. I started highlighting paragraphs in the successive reports coming out of the investigation, and underlining a few lines here and there, and having long group chats and fantasies of possible scenarios and so on and so forth. Then 24 came in... the series... and it stole the thunder... the investigation got hotter but I suddenly found myself highlighting lines that seemed of greater concern to me. So if you ask me what I highlighted in the CBC reports you will get this:
To date, the UN inquiry has reportedly spent in the range of $200 million ...The tribunal currently has an annual budget in excess of $40 million...Hezbollah's website claimed the documents cited by the CBC were "purchased from UN sources."...In fact, the documents came from sources close to the investigation... "We paid for our hotel rooms, we paid for our air fare, we paid for our meals, but the information that was in those reports was given to us by sources who were offended at the handling of the investigation, or the mishandling of the investigation," said the CBC's Neil Macdonald, who broke the story..."It was given freely and out of a sense of outrage, and that's that," he said.
Apart from that: Some remote control device bearing Saudi-Syrian fingerprints will soon put an end to the movie and ask everyone to go to bed... that is if they find they still have one.

One more thing, the report might be fishy and very fictitious but I sense that there is something true about Wissam el Hassam having lied to the investigators, not necessarily because he is involved, it could be that he was planning to meet his mistress on Valentines days and indeed requested a day off and then spent the day on the phone planning the date.

Gemayzeh: A secret affair

I have some special connection to Gemayzeh, some sort of a love hate relationship. Let me be frank, I am not going to tell you that I hate Gemayzeh at night because it is too fake and too snobbish, although it is. I do like Gemayzeh on a Sunday morning and better on a Saturday when I can enjoy a Fasulia plate from "Le Chef". Gemayzeh in the day is my love in the open, in the legal if you wish. Saturday night is a different story. Gemayzeh can then be hated for its loud and clumsy Valet Parking people, for the traffic, for what it represents as a fake replica of a small French avenue, for you can be microwaved in one of its bars where the bar is most likely taller than you. For that and many other reasons, yes it can be hated. But it can also be an enjoyable experience. Apart from the wine effect (or whatever you choose), I enjoy watching the street on a Saturday night. For some reason, you feel the rush, everyone is rushing for one reason or another, they are always running late, walking fast, as if running from someone -of course Valet Parking people are running all the time, where do they park all those cars by the way? why can they find parking spaces and we cannot?- They are all rushing to get to a place where they can sit and wonder if maybe they shouldn't have gone somewhere else. In a country where everything is slow, it is amazing to see this place where everything moves fast, except the cars maybe, but who cares, just leave it with the Valet and run. Everyone is looking at everyone. Some looking for familiar faces others avoiding them. You remember that this place might not be the same anymore in few years, or maybe a few months if they keep buying the old houses at this rate. You remember and you hate it again. You want to be part of this mixture of lost souls in the darkness of Beirut and you want to tell yourself that you are not, that you do not belong and that you are there only to watch. But you keep coming back, you keep loving it, and you keep denying it. That's it. My love for Gemayzeh is something more like a secret affair.

The so called Independence Day

Since everyone is blogging about the so called Lebanon's "independence day", which turns out to be a celebration of the Lebanese army, although no matter how I turn it in my head I don't see the connection, at least not in Lebanon, and although to my recollection there is a special day for the Lebanese army. Anyway, if you care to know my own feeling during this "special" day here it is: nothing, nothing at all. I didn't even watch TV today to avoid stumbling upon some of the patriotic songs that our lame TVs and singers compete to air. And I didn't care to say anything about it but I saw that our so called independence has invaded the blogsphere and google I hear. So all I am going to say is this: One day, and it was midday, as I was walking the few meters from my car to my home, in a not very busy street, I pass across a Lebanese soldier in a corner, obviously bored to death. I would usually be thinking in such a situation if I maybe should greet him or at least nod, but would most probably just pass through quietly. But then he whistled and said something like "where to sugar?!".. the kind of sleazy comments girls always hear in the streets of Beirut but from the Lebanese army, that is not supposed to be very common -maybe from internal security forces, some would now fancy to comment-. Of course I did nothing. I even had a justification for him. But I did think that if anyone attacked me now, would I rush to him for help? that's the kind of insecurity we live in and that's the kind of things that come to my mind in the so called "Independence Day" to say the least. Bear with me if I don't get all the enthusiasm.

I feel better now...

I know someone who represents everything I hate, everything. So this is how this person might describe herself with pride: I hate Palestinians. They don't dress well. I hate the poor. They smell. I hate Muslims. They don't behave. I hate maids. They are stupid. I hate Arabs. They are retarded... On top, this person is unprincipled, obnoxious in every sense, stupid, lame... add to this a look that if my grandfather sees would describe as "constantly smelling shit". I am not the type who would care or give a damn about people like that, but I hate that I have to greet her with my fake smile because hardly words come out of my mouth to say anything lest I speak my mind.

Different outfit... same core

I know, the blog now gives you the feeling that the winter collection is out!

I like smart ads

Meet the stupid Obama

While taking questions from reporters at the G20 summit, Obama looks at an Asian reporter who raised his hand and says "I will now take questions from the Korean press". The reporter stands up and says "...I am Chinese".

P.S. I didn't watch it myself, but again a trusted source.
P.S. 2: BBC is running this particular segment. I just watched it.

Taxi wisdom... for real

My husband was in a Taxi in Beirut and as he was paying the driver, he finds out that he has no small money and asks the driver if he has any change. The driver tells him that he will pay him the change once the rest of the passengers pay. There were another Lebanese guy and a foreign maid in the car. Here, the Lebanese guy pays right away to help solve the problem while the maid says in broken Lebanese: I pay when I arrive because I am "sawda" (black). The driver here says: so what if you are black? it's not like I am going to steal your money or throw you in the middle of the road!! "Yes, you will," she says, "they all do that... they take the money and say get out... because I am sawda." The driver replies "but you are my relative... look at my color... do you see me blond with blue eyes?." She pays. He asks her: do they really do this to you?. "All the time," she says. He drives her right to her destination and says "may God be with you".

Taxi wisdom

A British guy who lived in France for a while had the following conversation in a Beirut "service" (Taxi):

Cab driver in English with a strong Lebanese accent: Why are you crying? (The guy just looked upset)
British guy (trying to speak slowly): Because I had a rough fight with my girlfriend.... she wants "la liberté".
Cab driver: Did you hit her?
British guy: non... non... jamais
Cab driver switching to French: Moi.. Je frappe ma femme chaque jour. Ici, la liberté, il n'ya pas... femme aller. Il y'a beaucoup. Allez... Toz.


True story from a trusted source sitting in the back seat.

On the edge

I sit there watching TV... or that's what you would assume. I am in fact just watching the reflection of my hand holding the remote control device for the past half an hour in the shadowy spots of the screen. I was watching the news but the news ended some time ago. What was it about? how different from yesterday? or last year? or the last century? war and peace. The formula that enslaves us but the words that we dare not name. I was thinking: everyone is afraid of war but peace frightens me to death. I know how to cope with war but I have no clue how to function in peace. You are maybe more at risk in wars but less alert in peace. The worst of all is living on the edge of either of the two. You don't dare to grab your weapon lest you are misunderstood or leave it behind lest you are shot in the back. You are that PC that someone had given a zillion instructions in no time each undoing the previous one and then redoing it until it lost track of what it is supposed to be doing. Confusion creates dysfunction. Between that and war, I definitely choose war. Just grab a hatchet and smash the PC and the TV to pieces and watch it fall apart, a reflection of your own soul.

Blackmail

Lebanese parents, mine included, desperately try to keep their children close. They try all sorts of manipulations. They know your weaknesses and they take advantage. You play the fool. You play the game. My mother's technique: She cooks my favourite food. It works.

Another small confession

Speaking of memory, having a selective memory is annoying but can be fun too. I can watch a movie and then forget all about it and then I can watch it one more time and enjoy it all over again. The fun part is that my husband who has a very strong memory watches me in amazement cry over the same scenes and wonder what will happen next and laugh my ass off at a joke that I heard not long ago. Okay, I am exaggerating a little bit here, or not.