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Written by Stephen Baines
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Thursday, 09 March 2006 |
There are two things I look forward to when travelling away from home. Two things that make the unpleasantness of being away from home and loved ones a bit more bareable. The reason I mention this is that today both are relevant.
The first one is exploring a little in the evening. I'm not one for slumping in the hotel, hitting the bar, and stumbling into bed and waking in the morning bleary eyed and ready for another day the same as the UK, except in a different time zone. No, I like to go and explore the area, go and see places that perhaps you shouldn't, in ways you shouldn't, or do the things that people tell you "you can't do that" or "you shouldn't do that" - the latter always strikes me as more of a challenge, I mean why shouldn't I do that?
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Written by Stephen Baines
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Wednesday, 08 March 2006 |
I didn't expect my posts from Lebanon and Abu Dhabi to go this way, but I guess it's the nature of meeting real people who live here that it will.
Today started with being collected by one of the guys from the office. He asked if I'd flown here direct from the UK, and I said I hadn't but from Lebanon. He went very quiet, then he asked what I thought of the place. I told him I enjoyed the couple of days I spent there, and that I found the people friendly and was amazed as some of the things they told me about the last 30 or so years. He went red, and then said "Oh, you probably won't want to talk to me, then, as I'm Syrian". I was amazed that someone would think that you have to take sides with a whole nation. It's not something I'd even considered. Sure, what the Lebanese had told me about the years past made me feel sorry for them, but I wasn't condeming a whole nation.
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Written by Stephen Baines
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Tuesday, 07 March 2006 |
It was with a lot of apprehension that I returned to Abu Dhabi. Not because I have unhappy or unpleasant memories of the place, but rather the opposite. It's now some 18 months since my last visit, and I still have very fond memories of the place. My worry, rather, was that on a second visit the magic would be gone, and the place I remember with such affection and speak a lot about would now seem ordinary or even unpleasant.
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Written by Stephen Baines
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Monday, 06 March 2006 |
It's been a very long day. The training day was some 11 hours, but worthwhile, and the guys I was teaching seemed to get a lot out of it.
I was picked up first thing and driven to the office. The city I hadn't seen clearly in the night was now visible in all it's raw beauty. The buildings - even the new ones - don't scream out the way the ones in Abu Dhabi do. These buildings tease you, and show their newness in far more subtle ways. What did strike was the buildings that remained unscathed - in the daylight the bullet holes and scars from mortars were clearly visible. It seems that very little of the city truly escaped the horrors. Talking to my hosts they tell me of how they were born in the early 1970s, and were barely walking and talking when Lebanon was gripped with war. That they spent the first 15 or so years of their lives in a strange world where bomb blasts and gun fire were normal, and the news of a major bomb caused them to go "hurray! No school tomorrow", through to their teenage years when they'd be out drinking, hear a bomb blast, yet continue their nights, and how the cities restaurants remained full all the way through the years because they weren't going to succumb to it.
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Written by Stephen Baines
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Sunday, 05 March 2006 |
It's a while since I last went to the Middle East - some 18 months. Back then I was very scared of flying, and found the whole prospect quite daunting. Today it's quite a different picture; I wasn't especially nervous of flying, and not really that nervous of going to Beirut.
Sure I was worried a bit, but only the usual worries, really no more than the worries I get going to somewhere in Europe that I haven't been before - have I got the right money, do I need anything special, will be able to get an internet connection. The usual.
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