What you SEA is not necessarily what you get: holiday brochures

Regardless of what may be your dream beach, photos of beaches you see in brochures or in some travel websites may not depict the real beach you plan to visit in your next vacation.

"Both CNN and NBC recently posted a story about how some hotels fake photos and reviews to lure tourists. CNN photos and NBC video are both worth checking out for those planning to take a vacation."

Our friend Lillywhite tells of his arty findings in and around Amman town, struck recently by something Egypt-centric, and sharing:

"So earlier in the month I went to a lecture at Darat Al Funun entitled “Surrealism without the Surrealists: Reviving the unconscious in Arab Modern Art.” The talk was by an MIT doctoral student, Anneka Lessen, and you can find more information here.

It was kind of interesting for two reasons: one because it was centered around Egypt, in particular a surrealist exhibition at the famous Townhouse gallery last year:

“FEMALE WORKERS OF ALL LANDS BE BEAUTIFUL”

Is this a yes/ no, closed question, rhetorical, where is this going?

A timely piece on the maladies of the Middle East and their root:

"Nick Kristof wrote a column for the New York Times in which he asked: “is Islam the problem?”

The ‘problem’ he’s referring to is a reference to the collective maladies of the Arab/Muslim world: stifled education, poor health care, antiquated infra-structure, economical underdevelopment, corruption, stagnating culture ..etc..

And despite the obvious fact that the region isn’t a monolith (evident by the presence of economically developed cities and regions especially in the Arab Gulf, and the ethnic diversity of the Levant and Northern Africa), the Arab speaking world share a good amount of symptoms that indicate a common root cause."

A word of caution on the social media pitfalls: using them responsibly and not just as a one-way tool that serves your commercial or business needs. Engaging and interacting to help yourself but profit the community also.

Everyone wants to take advantage from the Social media in Lebanon , IT professionals, Marketers, Designers,ONG, even some talk show hosts discovered twitter last week (mieux vaut tard que jamais).Everyone wants to raise money,everyone wants to be liked and everyone wants to have number of followers no matter what.They dm you the same event schedule 4 times a day on Facebook, they retweet every tweet that mentions the product they are selling, they ask bloggers to promote the product/service and ask some tweeps to spam the timeline all the day.
Honestly I am getting sick from those people who think that social media is about only getting...

The Lion King: The Story of Lebanon....

From the Huffington Post, Queen Noor's Blog:

In Egypt, considered the birthplace of Arab feminism in the 1920s, an estimated quarter of the million protesters at the height of the demonstration were female. In all the pictures from the protest, none was as powerful as that of the woman standing face to face with an Egyptian soldier in a pose of utmost defiance. One young female protester stated, "There are no differences between men and women here. We are all one hand."

This should come as no surprise. Women are consummate peacemakers, and civil protest has always been one of their most powerful tools of expression.