ONLY IN LEBANON

Monot Street signage,.... very self explanatory!

They say Lebanon is not organized,.... well in this case, it's over organized. In case you missed the first sign, you must recogniz the other.

Double signage is necessary in Lebanon, for those who ignore street signs. Either that, or the Ministry of Works had left over money to spend!

Thank you Michel for providing this photo.

As the name says, the "Lebanon Nike SB Blazer" was inspired by the Lebanon flag. It features a green suede upper, with red accents, white sole, and gum toecap.

Downtown Beirut, like the rest of Lebanon, has more contradictions than anywhere else in the world.

This photo is actually a positive message about Lebanon. The most conservative of veils can be seen next to the least restrictive of skimpy clothing!!! Welcome to Lebanon, the land of tolerance.

Lebanese leaders Samir Geagea and Michel Aoun may be at each other's throats politically, but their namesakes in the Okla family get along like a house on fire.

Mazyad Ibrahim Okla, a farmer in Qabb Elias village 50 kilometers east of Beirut in the Bekaa valley, has named his five sons Aoun, Geagea, Chirac, Lahoud and even Bashar after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Now another baby is on the way, and Okla is impatient for the election of a new Lebanese president so he can give that name to the child if it is a boy. Each child's birth has coincided with a major political event.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner began his visit to Beirut at the weekend by crashing a wedding party and dancing the dabke, or traditional Lebanese dance, with the bridal couple.

Kouchner was dining at a fish restaurant in the Lebanese capital with friends and decided to pay a visit late Friday to the bridal party next door where he stayed for about 20 minutes.

Oscars organizers on Wednesday chose "Caramel" by talented Lebanese director and actress Nadine Labaki among the 63 entries in the Best Foreign Language Film category for next year's 80th edition of the Academy Awards.

What's uniquely Lebanese about this film isn't only the fact that it's a Lebanese movie, but also that the shooting of Caramel ended just 9 days before the Israeli war against Lebanon in July 2006!!! Can any other Oscar nominated movie claim that?

If you read the sign well, you'd notice that there's no difference between what the first sign and the second sign are advertising,... exactly the same,... but the price magically jumps from 3000 LL to 4000 LL, for the same product, by the same merchant, at the same cart!!!!

I'd like to meet those who paid him 4000 LL!!!!!!

It is possible to wrongly translate the name of a street or town, but for the whole geography of a region to shift because of translation, then that's impossible.

Actually it's possible, but only in Lebanon! This sign shows that when the names of the towns are translated, the arrows pointing to the direction of these towns have changed as well!!!

"Parties and Colors" is an example of Lebanese entrepreneurial brilliance. The country is in the midst of a six-month political crisis that could lead to the creation of two rival governments, financial collapse, and perhaps war, but someone there sensed a marketing opportunity.

The sticker albums are $2 each. But the stickers are sold separately, $0.50 for a packet of three or four. And like baseball cards, you can't tell which one's you are buying until you open the package. There are over 200 different stickers. Collect them all!

In Lebanon, you don't have to be famous to be followed by the paparazzis. All you need is a cab!

An advertising campaign for C&F in Lebanon places a semi-transparent poster on the passenger window in the private taxis of Beirut hotels. It makes it look like the passenger is being photographed by paparazzis. You're now famous,... so watch out! Maybe you should start signing autographs.

After 13 years as the world's richest person, Bill Gates has been nocked out in 2007 by Carlos Slim (of Lebanese origin) with a net worth of $67.8 billion.

His father, Julián Slim Haddad Aglamaz, a Lebanese from Jezzine, moved as a teenager to Mexico City in 1902. Julián established a dry goods store called La Estrella del Oriente (Star of the Orient) in 1911, and bought some prime real estate in the city center.

The Lebanese continue to hit the beaches of Tripoli, barely 15 km away from where the Lebanese Army battles the Fatah al-Islam terrorists.

This shows the resilience of the Lebanese people, and how much they have grown accustomed to being under severe circumstances, yet never losing the will to live, socialize and enjoy the summer. You would never see this anywhere else in the world!

During the fighting between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam terrorists, Miss Lebanon 2007 (Nadine Njeim), was fullfiling her role as a Lebanese Red Cross paramedic.

The picture shows her unloading bottles of water from a truck into an ambulance, to be taken into the besieged Nahr al-Bared refugee camp near Tripoli.

Lebanese researcher Michel Obeid, who is studying in France, announced his discovery of a new cancer cure.

Obeid, 24, said that he discovered the drug a few months ago, and that his findings proved effective after tests were carried out on nearly 5,000 mice without any side effects.

He hopes that the same results will occur with humans. However, it will be several years before the drug would be approved as a cure of human beings.

Obeid is from the northern Lebanese town of Bkerzla in Akkar. He went to the public school there, then to Mar Youssef, before joining the Lebanese University for a pre-med year.

Now here's the interesting story. Obeid wasn't accepted to medical school at the Lebanese University, because his wasta wasn't strong enough (he wasn't well connected!). That's why he left Lebanon to France in 2001! Talk about brain drain,... Lebanon losing its youngest and brightest!

After a night full of beauty at Casino Du Liban, only one girl wore the tiara & carried the title of Miss Lebanon 2007.

19-year-old Nadine Njeim was crowned by the former Miss Lebanon Gabrielle Bou Rached, as the new Miss Lebanon.

So, what's so unique about that? Well, this is the second time that a Miss Lebanon with the same name wins the title! Another Nadine Njeim was Miss Lebanon 2004.

A Lebanese bank is offering loans to finance plastic surgery to meet growing demand from people seeking to improve their looks.

First National Bank's "Plastic Surgery Loan" can provide between $1,000 and $5,000 to cover "all your plastic surgery operations and orthodontics," according to the bank's web site. "Today you can have the life you've always wanted," it says.

The bank has received more than 200 phone calls a day about the loan since the launch of an advertising campaign last week.

Every year at the Faraya ski resort the K-Lynn Lingerie show is held as part of the "Ski and Fashion" Festival.

This year, models in G-strings and lacy bras shivered from the cold as they strutted the catwalk at the foot of snow-covered slopes in Lebanon, to promote the Middle East's largest ski resort.

So, the saying that "only in Lebanon you can ski in the morning and swim in the afternoon", now has a different connotation!

Thousands of pictures were taken in Lebanon during the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, but it was a surprising picture by Spencer Platt, an American photo journalist for Getty Images, that was chosen as best news picture of the year.

It was awarded the first prize in the prestigious 2006 World Press Photo awards.

The picture appears to neatly summarise Lebanon's contradictions - glamour amidst the destruction. But there is much more to the picture than these cliches.

Spencer Platt took his picture on 15 August, a day after the ceasefire, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, as thousands of people flocked back to homes they had fled during the Israeli shelling. The original caption accompanying the picture read: "Affluent Lebanese drive down the street to look at a destroyed neighbourhood" .

In Beirut, some people laughed or shrugged their shoulders at the picture - it seemed so Lebanese. Only in Lebanon can you find a Mini Cooper against a backdrop of bombed-out buildings.

BUT IS THAT WHAT THE PHOTO IS REALLY ABOUT?

Four of the young people in the group are actually residents of the area and had to flee during the shelling. The driver was Jad Maroun, his sister Tamara, is the blond girl sitting in the front, in the winning picture. Liliane Nacouzi, on the left, is the only one who had never been to the area before. She held a tissue to her face, because of the fumes from the fires still burning in the rubble.

This car also has a story. This isn't just a bourgeois, trendy, tourist car,... this car played a big role in the war. It was used throughout the war to help deliver medication to refugees who had taken shelter in schools in central Beirut.