The On-The-Go Blog

Beirut’s Metro Al Madina has been hosting a monthly recurring event called “Story Telling Night”. For this month’s installment, they have chosen Eroticism as the theme of the night and will feature short stories by Lebanese writers and bloggers.

When the organizers approached me for possibly sharing one of my short stories, I thought the idea of the event was so refreshing I couldn’t resist saying yes, despite the fact that I wouldn’t be able to read the story myself seeing as I’m out of the country.

Thankfully I was lucky enough to find a surrigate reader who will do more than a great job at conveying the emotional and sensual intricacies of the story I wrote for this event.

All this to say that if you happen to be in Lebanon this week, make sure to head down to Metro on Tuesday night for what I’m sure will be a fun night of literature and erotic-themed stories.

Cheers !

As you look outside your window something looks different.. Through a spot of melted snow you can see the road’s asphalt that’s been in hiding for an eternity now, and across the street right beside some rocks, you can almost make out a patch of grass.

In the silhouettes of the people passing by, faces can once again be seen through women’s now shrunken wool scarves and men’s no longer fully closed hooded jackets, and that’s all the confirmation you need. 

The trees are still bare, but it’s too late to convince you otherwise. You put away your winter clothes and put on a light sweater. As you put your jacket on and prepare to step outside your winter gloves call out to you in a last bid to hold on to their job. You check the weather forecast for one last confirmation that you weren’t mistaken in seeing all the signs of spring coming: Yup, it looks like you won’t be needing gloves after all, the weather is no longer cold, just a refreshing zero degrees. Spring is here !

Steve Vai came to perform in Stockholm a few weeks ago and well, we managed to embarrass him a little..

For those who haven’t had a chance to watch him live (or haven’t heard of the virtuoso guitarist before reading this post), Steve Vai’s show involves a lot of active interaction with the audience. So towards the end of his set, Vai decided he was going to play a game with the audience: He was going to play a song so new, he hadn’t written it yet. In fact, he was going to pick members of the audience at random, and let them write the song the band would then have to play.

So Steve set out to pick two guys and two girls from the audience and let them onto the stage. And there they stood, side by side, all four of them, introducing themselves at Vai’s request. First guy introduces himself, passes on the microphone, second guy says his name, perfect, first girl introduces herself.. wait a minute.. that’s a guy’s name.. and a guy’s voice. That girl wasn’t a girl at all! In fact [she] wasn’t dressed in a particularly feminine way either. Nope, after close inspection, that’s just a regular Swedish dude with long blond hair and the signature Swedish no-facial-hair face.

I told you those Swedes are tricky..