Daily Life

Breakfast- I'm writing this in a small cafe about two blocks from my apartment. When you are outside of, say, North America, it can be hard to find a proper breakfast. Ask anyone who's tried. I'm talking eggs, toast, some sort of meat, and either hash browns or home fries. This place has the whole deal. They even have bacon, which is a small miracle here in the Middle East. I've been to other places around here and, when it comes to the most important meal of the day, none of them know what the hell they are doing. There is this one place near me that is fashioned to look like a 50's American diner. With the diner being the American breakfast mecca, I went in there my first week in Beirut figuring I would be in business. I was even told it had a proper American breakfast (by a Lebanese guy who had never been to America). My hopes were dashed when it came out: some poorly scrambled eggs, dry white toast, and tomatoes. Tomatoes! And the coffee tasted like old steel wool. Not the shiny new kind, the old kind that had been scrubbing pans for a few months.

Now, I can hear the defeatists saying “dude, just make it yourself in your apartment”. Fair enough. I do make breakfast on the regular. But on the days when I am out of eggs, or the sinks is full of dishes because the lazy maids are taking their sweet-ass time cleaning my apartment, I need a dependable place close by where I can just run out to, get a proper breakfast, and read the news. This place is that place. A breakfast oasis; its a little pricey, but its worth it. And I am always stuffed when I finish so you know its the perfect amount: a little too much. If I had to knit pick, I would fault them on not having “bottomless” cups of coffee, but that is completely unheard of outside of The States. Plus they do serve, to quote Jules from Pulp Fiction, “that gourmet sh*t”(as opposed to the kind Bonnie buys when she goes shopping). Plus, Kenny Rogers “The Gambler” was playing the first time I ate there, so I knew I was in the right place.

The Bar- Next on the list of making myself at home here is a solid bar, what I call “a drinking bar”. Now, I am certainly not a bar fly at home, but for my purposes abroad, the pub can be useful in a lot of ways. First and foremost, I live in a one bedroom apartment with another dude. He is a college freshman at the AUB and is by all accounts (most accounts) a great roommate. For me, that includes mostly not making a ton of racket when I am trying to sleep. We get a long really well and have a lot of laughs. I even get along good with his buddies. But I live in a one bedroom apartment. So sometimes I need a place to go at night when I need to get out of the house. That place is called the Captain's Cabin (referred to as “The Cabin”). When I was getting a tour of the neighborhood from my roommate, he pointed it out to me. My immediate impression was that the name sounded like some swanky place for which fisherman & pirates to rendezvous.

Needless to say, I was skeptical. But he also said it had cheap beer and when you are living on tight budget “cheap beer” is a huge selling point. This is especially true here in Beirut, which has been a lot more expensive than I originally thought. So one night I went down there not knowing quite what to expect. I walked in. The décor could be described as contemporary drunken sea captain. It was dank. There was a single dart board and a single pool table- people were using both. Led Zeppellin was coming out of the speakers. The crowd did not resemble the people you see on the street, either conservatively dressed, or flashily dressed wearing brand name everything. No, people there were rocking t-shirts and sneakers, and they were drinking beer and playing pool. Bars like this are almost a dime a dozen in The States, but in the Middle East, its a rarity. Most places are “clubs” that play techno. I am not against techno- I'll even confess to listening to it sometimes while working out or if I need to stay awake while driving- but I don't really like it at bars and clubs. Anybody that knows me knows I am a terrific dancer, but rarely do I feel the need to bust out my dance moves anymore. Plus, with bass and drum blasting in your head, its hard to carry on a conversation with someone you've just met. And that's a big part of why I am here (or anywhere), to talk to people and find out stuff about what's its like to live in the place I am talking to you in. That's hard to do in a techno joint. So The Cabin is where its at.

Also, something that's developing into a pet interest for me is the non-traditional youth culture here. It started with the graffiti study I did when I first got here. Then, on one of the days I was taking some photos of the art-vandalism, I noticed some skateboarders sitting on the sidewalk with their skateboards, drinking beers. Growing up, a lot of my friends were skaters and the scene was something eerily similar to what you might find them doing in Boston in the 90's. But when I found it here, I was a little shocked. (Have you noticed a pattern: I see something kinda western that I didn't expect and I write about it.) These guys had at least three things that stood out: they had long hair, they were drinking in public, and they were skaters. Its one thing for some kid from some American suburb to be part of that, but in the Arab world all three are incredibly taboo. Even here in relatively liberal Lebanon, it is a much more difficult choice to live like that. Anyway, The Cabin is a bit a haven for people like this, and for anyone who likes good music, and cheap beer in a laid back atmosphere. (If the owner/bartender is reading this, I can be repaid with free pints of Almaza beer.) So it serves two purposes, its a peaceful place for me to relax after a long day of reading and writing or studying Arabic, and it can be a convienent place to meet interesting people. Because a lot of times, if two people really like the same bar, they often have much more in common.

Cabs- Not much to report on this front. Our status is still the same pretty much. We have achieved an uneasy peace and it looks like neither party wants to upset that. Actually, there was a tense situation this past weekend that should be relayed. It started out at The Cabin (its like my Regal Beagle, if you know what that is), and I was rocking my lucky Larry Bird t-shirt, which usually means a good night. (Details of good night's past shall not be recollected here, so you'll have to take my word for it. After all this is a blog meant for the whole family.) I met some interesting people, drank a few beers, had some laughs and played some darts. After last call, some of us decided to go back to someone's house for some more beers and a nice night cap sheisha (flavored tobacco smoked out of a hookah).

It started getting very late, then it started getting very early. As the sun was coming up, I began to realize that I didn't know where the hell I was. I was pretty sure that I was still in Beirut, but it was not clear where, or who's neighborhood. Now, I am in the December of my twenties and pulling an all-nighter is just not possible for me anymore. My body and brain would go on strike for about six weeks, and there were no strike-busters I could hire to break their will, and no scabs I could hire to do their jobs until they relented. So, hyper-aware that I'd better not screw over my body and mind lest I face a ten fold retaliation, I charged out into the Beirut dawn with barely a goodbye to my new chums. In my haze, I wiped the crust from my eyes and reckoned three things: one, the mustacheod piranhas never sleep, so I knew I would be able to find a cab. Two, anyone who is up at 6:30 am on a Saturday is probably not going to mess with me while I charged around wherever the hell I was looking for a cab. Third and perhaps most importantly, I was still wearing my lucky Larry Bird shirt.

My instincts were, once again, correct. The only people who were up and out were some elderly folks and a couple of those people who walk around for exercise. Not two blocks from the apartment building I had just emerged from, I spotted a cab, who had spotted me about four seconds earlier. My blonde hair is like a lighthouse beacon to cabbies and so he stopped dead in his tracks. I told him I was going to Hamra and he gave me one of those almost imperceptible cabby head nods that mean “fine, get in”. I practiced a little Arabic on him and he practiced a little English on me. He may have been wondering what the hell I was doing strolling around that neighborhood at that hour, but if he did, he kept his curiosities to himself. The ride was longer than I remembered from the previous night and it was actually kind of far from home. We got close to my apartment and he stopped. It was the moment of truth. I asked him how much. He looked at me with the stern confidence of Doyle Brunson and told me ten thousand (about about $6.50). I thought about arguing, I thought about the détente and I thought about how long it took to get where we were at this “uneasy peace”. Then I thought that I was borderline desperate to get home and to bed, lest I my body and brain spend the remainder of my time here in Lebanon reminding me that I am almost thirty. I surmised that six dollars and fifty cents was a fair price to get me home from where I was at that hour, especially in the state I was in.

So I gave him the ten thousand Lebanese Pounds and scurried up to my apartment where my roommate was still up, sitting on the couch, watching TV and surfing the net. (living together for over a month and he has gone to bed before me only once). Let me tell you something, when your 19 year old college freshman roommate gives you one of the “where the hell were you, I was worried”-type looks, its weird. I told him my phone was broke and next time I swear I'd call. I went into my room and got into my PJ's as quickly as possible, figuring that the sooner I get to bed with the sun not all the way up, the better off I'll be. Somehow, I managed to get over six hours of sleep and I awoke that afternoon, fresh as a daisy.

Sunny Days- It's starting to get summertime out and I think I am gonna give the sun a second (fiftieth) chance. Maybe I am being dramatic, but I liken my relationship with the sun to loving the wrong woman: sure its not good for you and it will probably give you cancer, but it feels good at the moment and you can't stay angry forever. Also, disturbingly, I just read another study that said that sunblock can cause skin cancer. So I am convinced that nobody knows that the hell they are talking about anymore. People tell me its not good to eat a lumberjack's breakfast every day for twenty years, but look at me: I'm the pinnacle of health. They say that my cholesterol must be off the charts, but its not, its actually quite low. Plus, having a man-sized breakfast is good for the soul. Show me some poor turd that eats a “cereal bar” every day for breakfast and I'll show you a person who is dead on the inside and hates his life. So I am going to give the sun another shot, because deep down inside, I know I only have so many to sunny days to enjoy. And I know they are good for me.

My Apartment- I have a love/ hate relationship with my apartment. I love the location, and it feels unmistakably like home, especially coming back after a long day/night. Its cozy and it has sweet balcony that I keep telling myself I am going to buy a nice deck chair and enjoy. For $350/ month in Hamra, its a good deal. I'll put up with the other stuff because the money I save on rent (I was prepared to pay double that) I can spend on going out and meeting people and having adventures and such.

That being said, its tiny. A collegue from grad school is coming to Beirut for a visit, and I feel bad that I don't have the space to put her up. For all intents and purposes, its a college apartment- a small college apartment- and its not a place for a respectable young lady to stay (non-respectable young ladies welcome). And the bathroom is ridiculously small. If you fumble the face-wash while in the shower, you almost have to step completely out of the shower to retrieve it. The shower couldn't contain a keg, a bar stool, or a plus-sized model (plus-sized models welcomed to try). At its best, the bathroom is adequate, but when using the shower, toilet, or sink, each maneuver must be carefully considered. And the place floods with water after every shower. There are strategic holes drilled in the corners of the room for which the water to escape, but whomever built the bathroom strategically built it so that the water flows away from the holes. It a wonder of design, really.

Not that the kitchen is designed much better. There is a sink and large marble bar counter. But no space was considered for a refrigerator, so it sits the middle of this small space (about the size of the bed of an Chevy S-10 pickup). Which doesn't make it easy to cook on our one plug-in hot plate burner. (Whaaaah, My apartment in the nicest part of the capital city of a very poor country isn't as posh as I would like, whaaaah!) Whatever but its true.

The only complaint I have about the bedroom is that I don't have my own.

The only complaint I have about the living room is that it feels real crowded when there are more than two guests. And the weird thing is that we have a huge balcony that is never used by any of the Lebanese college kids that come over, except to make the occasional candid phone call. In The States, there would be deck chairs, a barbecue, and a beer-pong table set up out there, guaranteed. When I first moved in, I remarked to my roommate that its gonna be sweet to hang out there when the weather gets nice. He said why would we do that? I said its nice to be outside when its warm, because I am sure the apartment will get stuffy. He looked at me strangely and said everyone would just hang inside like usual, but with the AC cranked. I was baffled. I can't fathom spending so much time indoors especially on a nice day, and especially when most of his crew smokes butts like they're about to be outlawed.

So look for me on hot summer nights, sitting out on my Beirut balcony, drinking a couple cold ones. There's a good chance I'll be by myself. Would anyone like to join me?