words to ponder

Driving in Lebanon is now at the printer's and will be ready by mid-January! The finished products is 21x13 cm and 112 pages printed in 2 Pantone colors. It is in 3 languages with a language feature that, as far as I know, is an all-time first: to read it in Arabic, simply turn it upside-down. The images read exactly the same way in a right-to left reading :)

The book will be $8 and shipping for one copy is also $8, so to pre-order yours please paypal $16 (USD) to the following address: . For 2 copies please send $28.

The advantage or pre-ordering is that in case I find out, when the book is out, that it's heavier than I expected, you'll have gotten a good shipping deal XD Lebanon residents obviously don't need to pre-order, I will post the date and place of the official launch soon!

A little edit that completes the picture :)

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I was at my café at the first hour yesterday, and messaged 3 friends to see if one of them wanted to hang out. They all did, so I saw them in shifts, lol. Mer came first with her cousin and they proofread the Driving in Lebanon dummy with me, helping me with the Arabic titles in particular. As we sat there I recognized an old friend at the next table whom I only see occasionally as he lives in Kuwait – but he's the one who introduced me to Mr. Y. of café Y. the first time so I never have to make an appointment, I know that when he drops by, we will run into each other there. F arrived later and we went through the book again, and as he's a poet with a very good command of the language he had more suggestions to make – and took the dummy home to pore over it overnight and see if he could think of ways to significantly improve it.
At one point a semi-regular stopped by to say he'd liked the article on me last Tuesday in An-Nahar, and though he saw me at the café all the time he had no idea I was so talented. The article is this one and I didn't get to translate yet, it will be laborious. But a friend posted a google translation here which I warn you is downright psychedelic. Just a hint, where it says "rice" (أرزّ), the original word is "cedar" (أرز).
I'm not even mentioning the regular crew, the friend who is exhibiting her photography there at the moment, and the regulars whose names I don't even know but who I'm at conversation stage with by now – and the couple of foreigners who asked me what on earth my Wacom tablet was.
I moved on straight to the other side of town to meet up with R and as the place was crowded and unpleasant (it being Adha, a lot of expats came home for a few days) we went to his place instead where we listened to each other's music libraries for 3 hours, exchanging songs. From there again I went straight to K's place (it was 8:30 by then) for an evening of homemade karaoke, an amazing dance performance from A, and then dancing till late.
So with all this I saw almost all my friends in one day but still managed to complete two small jobs and send them off. But my suitcase is still half unpacked, hehe.

I went to London and back this week, and for a few days bathed in a rather intoxicating mixture of all the arts I don't partake in – music, theater, poetry. Came back with a definite blues soundtrack playing in my mind and fresh new inspirations...

Want it for Christmas.