Weekend Blues, and Greens, and other colors…

Posted on February 12th, 2007 in Married Life, Mood by abdallah

Umm, Weekends are swishing by just like that.
This Friday was weee…
Then on Saturday, afternoon, we had a quick Bayd-b’Awarma. Then went for a walk with the parents in Burj Hammoud. It was, well, too long! I’m getting old, I can’t even walk for 4 hours straight anymore
But, we topped it with a wonderful dinner with Mat :D Guess where?! Yep, none else than the Pasta di Casa, italian resto.
We had: Gnocchi Pesto (Paypouy), Carbonara Ham (Mat), Caneloni (Me).
And it went on till about 12+
On Sunday, we were invited to the Aboud’s place. Nice family, coming from Liberia, Africa. So we had a very nice African meal: Chicken with Peanut Butter. It was a nice afternoon. And after some “rest”, I went with Barkoosh to find Paypouy again and went for a nice dinner at Bread & Brown in Jounieh.
Paypouy’s been on my case about the difference between Jounieh, Zouk and Kaslik. As it turns out, these are actually different areas in Keserwan, go figure. Oh, and there are 2 Zouks (as it turns out, they are 3 in fact!) I won’t go into it any more… Paypouy will soon, with Graphics and Maps from Google (Heh, Yeah Right!) :P

Appliances [Round One]

Posted on February 10th, 2007 in Married Life by abdallah

We spent the day yesterday (Lebanese official holiday Mar Maroun) in large stores, looking for appliances.
It seems that everyone has the same brands give or take 1 or 2 that are either their own brand, or something totally unheard of.
The largest choice I found was at Abed Tahan & Sons. I could be wrong of course!
The range of refrigerators starts at 560USD and goes up to 1500USD for normal models. Of course, you can find larger ones for 3K and 5K, but I’m not going to buy one of those, not now anyway ;)
We didn’t exactly know what washing machine to look for. So, we ended up looking at everything from small ones with the 5Kg load to the large 8+Kg load. Again, it’s 300USD to 650USD. Some models where even priced in Eur, go figure!
As for the stove, 300 to 800USD is the range. Some of these are quite nice. I especially like the ones that look heavy duty, with large black metal cookers. They give the impression you’re meaning business while in the kitchen :D
Ah, and last but by far not least: the TV. You can get a TV for 50USD these days. Heh, yeah right! A Sony 32″ goes for about a 1000USD, a similarly sized “lesser” quality TV goes for, well less! But simply looking at them side by side tells you why… Anyway, we’re still looking into it, Paypouy might have to buy that one herself :P
Oh, that leaves out the Microwave (120USD Max), the “hoover” (60-100USD), the iron (20-50USD), etc… but we figured we’d get these as we go.

All in all, it’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to buy all this stuff. Hope you’re taking notes, might come in handy some day. Of course, if you know something I don’t, please send me a comment.

HOWTO: Build a house

Posted on February 5th, 2007 in Married Life by abdallah

We’re getting married soon*, and I do like to document everything. So starting today, I’m going to disclose some of the things I’m doing/learning, in the hope that it would help someone somewhere!

First and foremost, find a house. When you do, get/make the floor plans so that you could use them when you buy stuff for the house. Attached to this entry is a sketch of one house we saw.

After that, you need to go shopping. Here’s my list (created while discussing the subject with Paypouy).

  1. 3afesh
    1. Bedroom
    2. Living Room
    3. Salon
    4. Kitchen
  2. Utilities & Appliances
    1. Kitchen ware
    2. Berrad, Ghessaleh, Furn Gaz
    3. TV

The above list is by no means complete. Soon, I’ll have it fixed with a good translation (non-Lebanese), and perhaps price ranges for the specific items at the time of the writing.

Any comments are welcome.


* exactly how soon is debatable

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