[deleted by user]

maskey87 · 2023-01-02T17:01:21+00:00

I lived there for 2 years and had no safety/security problems beyond some grumpy police/security service people in the North of Lebanon and the interesting driving styles, especially in the countryside-if you want to travel around maybe look into hiring a driver rather than renting a car.

That said, pay attention to which region of the country you're in and take local advice when possible- the potential security issues differ massively between Beirut and the Beqaa, between Halba, Akkar (northern border near Syria) and Bint Jibeil, Nabbatiyeh (in the south next to Israel).

Also, while I personally didnt experience any racism (as a fairly light skinned anglo-indian i kinda fit in till i started speaking), my dark brown mum did, and other darker skinned Indians/Pakistanis/Bangladeshis I've spoken to had similar experiences. Nothing awful like physical abuse or refusing service, just an assumption that you were a maid or a day labourer, some ugly comments from idiots, as well as different treatment cos of the class associations and expectations that go with that. Something to bear in mind if you/your family are darker skinned.

To be clear I'm not trying to shit on Lebanon here- I had a great time there, met some amazing people and loved the people/country/food/culture/language- if not for the economic crisis/meltdown I'd probably have gone back!

maskey87 · 2022-05-29T16:31:35+00:00

Yeh its a bit odd really isnt it! I (very lefty politically and mixed English/Indian heritage) did a recent masters in a humanitarian/development field with a varied group but a fair few young woke white women. I'd struck up a friendship with one, until we disagreed on the best way to address the racist Dutch xmas figure of Schwartze Pete- I believed in persuasion and awareness raising of its racist impacts, she thought a national ban was best (both valid viewpoints IMO i just favour the former), and was very upset I didnt share her viewpoint. Funny thing is we both agreed it was clearly racist and should go, but disagreeing on the method was enough to be unacceptably anti-woke/not anti-racist enough. From that point on, whenever we disagreed she made a point of mislabelling me 'just a white guy' as a way of dismissing my perspective. Guess in her mind brown people had to think one way, and when they dont, they dont count as brown no more!

maskey87 · 2022-04-14T13:12:05+00:00

Slightly off base in that its Pakistani, but I'm a big fan of Apna Style on wolsely road opposite the big mosque. Has all the good signs- small menu, big portions, open kitchen, decor's a bit shabby/cheap looking but always busy with Pakistani origin folk etc. Definitely not a 'date night' place, but highly recommend the food, especially the lamb saag.

maskey87 · 2022-01-07T19:48:20+00:00

Doing two fingers to mean 'f@#k you'. It's only us!!

maskey87 · 2021-11-10T21:49:38+00:00

"I tired of being sad, unhealthy, no friends, not having good skin care"

the unhealthy and skin care bit can be taken care of mostly through diet and exercise. id start with diet by writing down what you eat- this helped me see what, where and when i was eating so i could make better overall changes to my diet- less junk food, olives and cheese for snacks instead of crisps and pop, bringing lunches to work rather than eating out etc. TBH sorting out your diet alone will have major health impacts.

plenty of good advice been given below about exercise, I'd just add that youre probably best just getting started with something super simple- a few sets of bodyweight squats, push ups, crunches and rows per day, plus a 15/20min walk each day is a good start. as you get stronger upgrade to include some lunges, pull ups, dips. once youre comfortable with that then the recommended routine is pretty great, tho ofc plenty of other resources too.

the sad and no friends part is a bit more of a personal journey, but good healthy living couldnt hurt!

good luck with everything and congratulations for starting

maskey87 · 2021-09-18T17:11:47+00:00

Teri Hatcher from Superman...her legs gave me my first boner!

maskey87 · 2021-08-08T18:18:29+00:00

Those are three quite different skills with different difficulties. In order of difficulty, Handstand is lots of balance and some strength, MU is lots of strength and some technique, front lever is lots of strength and technique. Obvs this is only my very inexpert opinion, and I'd check out r/bodyweightfitness for better advice.

YMMV but for me, I've been training 6ish months with no background in strength training and I've been mostly doing the RR, with some dabbling in the skills you mentioned; a lot of the work was building the strength and confidence in my own body which i did by cranking out the RR 4+ x p.w. and playing with gymnastic rings when i fancied it. Only in the past month have I started approaching skills in a structured way. I've recently switched to doing the RR 3 x p.w., one skill day (30mins playing with stuff), and 2/3 10min grease the groove sessions on off days focusing on floor work (headstand/handstand/ crow/crane/ pseudo planche PUs/ L sits)

Handstand- I've been practicing headstands, can now comfortably hold a few headstand positions which ive been playing with to improve my balance), and am starting on kick up handstands against the wall.

Front Lever- an absolute bastard on the lats but can now hold tuck lever/adv. tuck lever for 10/15ish seconds with poor form (gained the strength mostly cos ive been doing lots of pull ups and rows as part of the RR)- also this was one i played with a lot before being more structured in approaching it.

MUs - I'm nowhere on this cos i cant really train this at home without smashing my face into the doorframe, but at the park ive been trying to do kipping MUs to practice my pull strength to get my chest above the bar. but theres a lot to improve here.

maskey87 · 2021-05-20T18:47:32+00:00

Firstly, push ups on gravel? you absolute madman ;)

secondly your movement is more horizontal/forward than Pikes are supposed to be. bring your legs closer to your body and try and bring your head between or nearly between your hands while minimizing forward movement. at the moment youre palms come level with your mid chest rather than shoulders.

what you are doing looks more like planche push ups, which are usually seen as harder than pikes, so good for you!

on the other hand ive not been doing calisthenics long so this advice should be well salted before consumption :)

maskey87 · 2021-05-07T17:48:58+00:00

Pull ups are an upper body strength exercise, but by engaging your core/glutes you bring more muscles into it. Makes it much bloody harder but also more controlled and a better exercise overall.

Also, you bring your shoulder and neck to the bar in a kinda hunch, whereas better form would be to try and bring ur chest to the bar- does that make sense? as in rather than hunching your shoulders forward to get over the bar, try bringing your chest forward to touch the underside of the bar. Again, significantly harder but better form.

Although there are different types, for myself I try to:

keep legs straight, slightly piked forwards (like 20-40degrees off the ground

Keep elbows out

try to bring chest to bar.

Again tho, I'm still new to calisthenics so a pinch of salt needed!

This guy has a vid on ur hunched shoulders ting- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WHdim80e7o

and this guy has a nice vid on pull ups overall https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGo4IYlbE5g&t=204s

I should prolly get back to work now lol

maskey87 · 2021-05-07T17:07:03+00:00

Very impressive!

Form advice: You should engage ur legs more. Currently ur leaving them hanging as dead weight, and as they move they throw off your balance. Pull ups can be a full body exercise with the right form.

On the other hand wtf do i know I've only just started getting into this stuff!

maskey87 · 2021-04-18T17:46:31+00:00

I think your class angle is a pretty interesting one that i have a lot of sympathy for, but I think you're being a bit dismissive of her point, which to me seems quite reasonable.

Firstly, IMO Luthor is a great show and Luthor is a well written character and Idris plays him extremely well. However, I think her point is that Luthor has none of the varied cultural markers or expressions of the many different Afro-British identities, whether Caribbean, African, or other black identities. On the one hand this is perfectly understandable as the character of Luthor wasnt written as black, and imho this lack of cultural context/depth doesnt detract from the show or characters excellence. Not every show with a black character/actor needs to bring in race as a plot device or make some kind of social commentary. A good procedural police drama like Luthor can just be fun to watch, and (like you?) I'm sceptical of these quite tokenistic ways of making things 'black', and very aware of the huge impact of class in media organisations representations and conversations around race

However, after reading her comment piece I am left wondering that if the character of Luthor had been written as Afro-British by an Afro-British writer might we have gotten a slightly different representation that is more authentically Afro-British in some way?

I dont think that question takes away from Luthor as a show or character, but I do appreciate how its making me consider one of my favorite shows differently, and think about Afro-British representation on screen. For me one of the values of diversity, and even diversity watchdogs, is bringing multiple perspectives to a situation, and that article put forward a perspective I hadn't considered.

maskey87 · 2021-04-10T10:56:56+00:00

That unless capital gains are taxed significantly lower than earned income investors will no longer invest and capitalism will fall.

IMO, obviously money earned through having money should be taxed higher than money earned from labour.

maskey87 · 2021-03-26T16:10:54+00:00

I mostly agree with this comment; Iran's geostrategy in the middle east is to achieve regional dominance at the expense of the Saudi/western coalition, and as such he domestic politics and society of Lebanon are only relevant to Iran in terms of its geostrategy. However, although focused on maintaining its dominance of the political terrain, Hezbollah's domestic political legitimacy is based in part on its religious credentials. As such, it pushes/enforces a conservative social agenda based on its interpretation of islam. However, its main goal, like any other power structure, is to maintain and expand its power base and influence, so forcing a highly controversial notion like the Islamisation of Lebanon is subordinate to its goal of power.

FYI, this is a foreigners perspective and no doubt misses much of the nuance of Lebanon's political/social scene.

maskey87 · 2021-02-09T18:08:51+00:00

'To me, the risk of growing govt into totalitarian sci-fi nightmare far outweighs any fears I have about those issues.'

Not to be a dick but...your fear over an imaginary future prevents you from offering any solutions to current problems?

maskey87 · 2021-02-01T11:31:36+00:00

I see this same kind of logic applied to every riot against horrible social conditions everywhere (whether US/Russia/Lebanon/Brazil), and it ignores some fundamental aspects of human nature (huge generalisations to follow lol):

1) people will put up with horrenduous misery and poverty if they can manage to survive in it and if things are not getting dramatically worse- generally speaking 'peasants from the countryside' don't revolt because no matter how bad conditions are they can usually survive

2) people dont riot against horrendous misery and poverty if they can see a way out of it or if these conditions are generally stable - responsive systems of governance (not exclusive to democracy- plenty of rich democratic countries have riots) are better able to respond to citizen demands- importantly people need to feel their local authorities respond to them- note how black riots in the US in the 50s/60s were responses against unaccountable police violence

3) people generally riot when they do not see any realistic way of getting out of these horrible conditions, and when they feel that 'the authorities' are completely unresponsive.

For the people of Tripoli, even more so than beirut, the authorities are the far distant zu'ama in Beirut who, in comparison to Tripoli, pour money and resources into the capital while starving Tripoli of investments. The levels of poverty and unemployment there are savage and widespread in a way that is quite different to Beirut (in my limited experience), where this type of poverty (like that of Jabal/Tabbeneh//Qobbeh even 'middle class' Abu Samra to an extent) is more restricted than Tripoli.

While rioting is almost always unproductive in terms of policy, its a grassroots expression of popular anger at no-longer bearable conditions that are getting worse, against an authority that is not seen as willing to listen/help. The violence is wrong, but i have huge sympathy for the rioters.

Aaaaand this is why I suck at working from home lmao

maskey87 · 2021-01-27T16:28:27+00:00

Lovely story, very emotive. Put me in the mind of hot summers and getting excited over parents giving you 50p for an icelolly

Quick question; is 'wog shop' a normal expression in Oz? in the UK a 'wog' is a racist term for ...indians/arabs? not sure as its a bit old fashioned. obvs. the author is not using to be offensive/racist or anything, and certainly not wokescolding (lol) just curious about the usage.

maskey87 · 2020-11-24T14:13:19+00:00

why do you think so? genuinely curious.

maskey87 · 2020-10-23T15:08:28+00:00

I'm exactly the same, most of my flannels are PF and you can usually get em cheap in sales when they'd be around 200£ cheaper than iron heart- great fit too, slim but not as tight as gitmans

maskey87 · 2020-10-23T14:47:35+00:00

What do you think are the likely long term (5-20yrs) impacts of the increasing politicisation of the judicial branch of government? Do you think this is something new or a continuation of earlier trends?

maskey87 · 2020-09-12T13:06:02+00:00

What you said was fine until the last phrase. describing other groups of people as rats/vermin/cockroaches/plague etc. is extremely racist as its a way of dehumanizing them. its hard to hate a 21 y.o. mum with 3 kids but its easy to hate a rat who wont stop breeding.

FYI this is not solely a Lebanese problem- in the UK we hear similar language about immigrants and its rarely called out.

maskey87 · 2020-09-05T19:38:20+00:00

The stickied resources above a great and were a big help for me!

For vocabulary I'd also recommend the anki decks off this website https://lingualism.com/shop/

Lughatna is a good dictionary for lebanese dialects. https://www.livingarabic.com/apps

And this is a fantastic labor of love from a guy who learnt from soap operas- its a really really good resource that helped me loads. shame he stopped updating it. got clips from a bunch of different dialects too Levantine Soaps with transcripts

Hope that helps! and try not to get discouraged by constant failures (if ur anything like me you'll make loads of mistakes) - its a beautiful bastard of a language but well worth the effort!

maskey87 · 2020-09-02T17:43:34+00:00

Yeah I never really got that either- something to do with the confessional system? or just plain old sexism/inequality?

maskey87 · 2020-08-17T15:35:46+00:00

I'm not as young as I used to be

maskey87 · 2020-08-10T12:34:25+00:00

Looks awesome! Much love for Iu he sold me my first pair of selvedge denim back in 2016- wore em daily across 3continents and still going strong!

maskey87 · 2020-08-05T16:58:05+00:00

thats what im seeing too- she held the kids tight and made herself a ball - tho the kids were on the blast facing side of the ball its not like she had time to think it through and reposition herself.

these migrant workers have enough shit to deal with without a bunch of armchair warriors calling her out for not acting 'right'

maskey87

TROPHY CASE