Glad I’m a man

Ever woke up and thanked God you’re a man? Well I have. I used to joke about the perks of being a man by saying that we get to pee standing up (seriously, isn’t it great?). Any who my beautiful wife is pregnant and she’s due in about a month, yet to this day she’s a freaking tank. It’s crazy how much pain and misery women can sustain during their pregnancy, nausea, headaches, backaches, swelling, weight gain, constant visits to the doctor, blood tests and huge amount of hormones just bouncing around not giving them a moment’s peace.

I do help around the house as much as I can yet she still pulls off most of the work indirectly making me feel ashamed of not pulling more effort. She still goes to work every day, pulls off ten hour shifts, goes back home to cook food and do the laundry and dishes. The most I’ve heard from her is “I feel tired”.

Could a man pull off pregnancy? I think not, we are such a lazy gender. Lebanese men tend to feel as if they are superior to women given the history of our culture when women used to sit home and care for the children whereas men head off to work. Today in the 21^st century, women are pulling just as much weight as men whilst still having to maintain their other role, whereas men hardly place any single effort to help around.

Let’s break down the list of tasks that a married couple must pull off throughout their daily lives.

Task	Man	Woman
Have a job	X	X
Pay the bills	X	X
Cook food	X	X
Care for the children	/	X
Maintain their looks	/	X
Laundry	/	X
Dishes	/	X
Cleaning		X
Ironing	/	X
Lifting/Carpenting/Electronics	X
…	…	…

Although this is a rough list, I think it’s enough to show that women do pull off more effort than men. Of course there’s always exception where a man and a woman do have an understanding about their tasks and how everything is split and perhaps sometimes men pull off more work. My wife and I do have an understanding yet I tend to shy away from tasks I hate doing. I guess that makes me a bad husband

Glad I’m a man, are you?

“Help us improve!”

Don’t you just love those cards when you visit a restaurant or any food related outlet? “Help us improve!” , “Because we care what you think” and all the mumbo jumbo you can think of. They have cool drawings, checkboxes and my favorite; a location on the card where you can enter you contact information.

Clearly, they plan on contacting you right?

I’m a pretty nice guy, really, i am. But if there’s one thing that gets on my nerve the most, is never getting what i ask for when i order some food, whether in a restaurant or through delivery.

Scenario

- Waiter shows you to your table
- Waiter leaves and comes back after god knows how long with the menu.
- You’re ready to order and yet you practice some gymnastics while trying to get the waiter’s attention who seems to be enjoying his conversation with the other waiters.

Yo waiter! \o
Hello? |o
HEY! \o/

- Well, clearly he’s too busy to give you any attention so why don’t you get your ass off of your chair and go poke him.
- Waiter tags along with you to your table.
- You are now ordering

Me – I’d like to take a Margarita Pizza, less cheese and extra sauce
Me – Do you mind writing that down?
Waiter – Don’t worry i’ll memorize it.
Me – mmkay…
(some more orders…)

- 50 minutes later (what the hell? we’re the only ones in the damn place!) your pizza arrives.
- You take a look at the pizza and its overflowing with cheese. Okay, i’ll bite, perhaps the extra sauce will make it up. But of course there was less of that.

I’m picky about food. I’m the worst kind of food critic you can find on the planet. I change every single thing and no one has the damn right to tell me how i can or cannot eat a certain meal. I’ve sat down quiet for so long that an incident that happened to me on this very same day, prompted me to mark most of my programming related blog posts private and just start picking on every single detail that i find wrong in this very country.

It all started about a week ago when I ordered a meal from Zaatar w Zeit. Now mind you, I’ve been a regular customer in Zaatar w Zeit and i’ve spent so much money there that you’ll probably think I’m rather crazy (or perhaps fat) considering the ridiculous prices they have. Anyways, i’ll keep the number crushing for later on in this post. I ordered about a week ago two sandwiches from Zaatar w Zeit.

1- Zoushi + Vegetables
2- Tuna in normal bread with extra spice(Normal as in not the multi-cereal or sun-dried tomato bread)
3- A coke

The person that answered the phone (God bless her soul, she’s very nice and she’s always very considerate) notified me of that the delivery time is at a maximum of 45 minutes. One hour and thirty minutes later the delivery guy arrives with the following:

1- Zoushi + No vegetables
2- Tuna in multi-cereal bread no spice
3- No coke

I was charged 2000 L.L (1.33USD) for the *extra vegetables* and another charge for the coke. Clearly this irritated me, but despite my rage i did not act upon it. I did notify the person who takes the order of the mistake at which point she really wanted to send me back other sandwiches and such, which i clearly declined (I was famished and couldn’t last for another hour). One thing you need to note is that the two incidents (one i just described and the one that will follow) aren’t the only incidents i’ve had. Now the entire flame is probably tuned toward Z&Z but it applies to every single restaurant in Lebanon. Trust me you’re all included.

Anyways, just today i picked up the phone at around 1:00pm and ordered some food. I will not bother telling you what i ordered but given the information i already shared you can safely assume there’s modifications. The person that answered was not the usual lady who takes my orders but hell that doesn’t matter. She told me that the order will take a maximum of 35 minutes. I was ecstatic! I will be eating very soon!

An hour and a half goes by (2:30pm) and there’s no food on my table nor in my stomach and i’m still starving. I pick up the phone and dial Z&Z’s number at which point yet another person answers. I told her i’m still waiting for my 35 minute delivery that i ordered 1.5 hours ago and she asked me a couple of questions:

1- What number did you register the order on?
2- What did you order?

That’s all fine and dandy, i answered the questions to which she replied and i quote:

“I have no registered order on that number nor of that kind”

To which i replied:

“Person X took the order at exactly 1:00PM”

To which she replied:

“I just arrived here and i see nothing, so that will be Meal X + Meal Y + Coke?”

I stood silent for second and figured i’d bite YET ANOTHER TIME!

“Ok how long will that order take to get here”

And thus the magic number arises:

“35 minutes”

I told her that I’m not interested anymore and politely said thank you and hung up the phone.

Here’s some number crunching for you people:

- I was employed in 1999 up to 2002 in a company that was close to a Z&Z outlet.
- I ordered every single day in the morning a Man2ousheh, a Chocoba and a Coke.
- If let’s say for three years I’ve ordered fifteen meals per month, that means i’ve ordered 540 meals at around 10,000L.L per meal.

That’s 5,400,000L.L (3600USD) for breakfasts in three years. Or if we’re presuming that the delivery guy’s salary is 600USD per month, it’s six damn salaries for a single driver!

Fine, if that’s not enough let’s fast forward to 2007. I’m employed in another company that is also close to another Z&Z outlet. I ordered every single day for lunch two kinds of meals and a coke. If we were to follow the previous facts and believe you me, i’ve ordered much more than what i’ve mentioned. We would have the follow numbers:

P.S.: My lunch is more expensive. The entire order sums up to around 15,000L.L (10USD)

That’s 8,100,000L.L (5400USD) or what is probably nine salaries for a single driver!

Please do tell me why i can’t get my damn order on time after i’ve almost literally employed a delivery guy in your firm for fifteen months!

People, if you own restaurants or any food related outlets or deliveries or what not, ensure that your services are to a high standard. I’m not going to stop ordering from Z&Z simply because i love their food, and even if i did, they will not be affected in any way. Though the more this keeps up the more customers they are prone to lose on the long run.

Remember, delivery is probably the most profitable part of the business.

Ranting done. Can you relate?

Planning to buy a house in Lebanon?

Horror; that pretty much identifies what you would be facing once you decide to buy a house in Lebanon. Aside from the fact the cost of apartments does not conform to the average cost of living in Lebanon, you bust your ass trying to find a nice apartment or house and then you get stumped as to how much the landlord/owner is actually requesting. My only regret is that I did not buy an apartment two years ago when the prices were relatively low (~540$ for 1m2) compared to what they are right now (1000$ for 1m2). It’s quite common for people to actually hire someone to do the work for them (semsar), however those people are such thieves! They are so fluent at locating great prices but they shield the current owner of the apartment from you and request a higher amount than what the owner is actually requesting. What’s even worse is that the law states that you ought to pay that guy 2% of the entire cost. So hey! The guy finds a great deal, 150m for 100K$, he adds 20K$ to the price for himself and then expects you to pay the 2% of 120K$.

Now this is all good but in all honesty those numbers are so low. I found a nice apartment and I hope it’s going to work out!

I got married!

That’s right ladies, Omar Abou Mrad is no longer single! I can feel the sadness across all of lebanon when i walk by with a ring on my finger. All “Da Ladiiiesss” are sad pandas!.

My beautiful bride is called Roula, she’s been my highschool sweetheart for oh so many years. It was a beautiful wedding and ofcourse she looked like an angel. Here’s a picture of her:

I’ll try uploading some more pictures soon, but if you can’t wait to see more (I don’t blame you). Add me to facebook: Omar Abou Mrad