Omegle (the less trashy sister of chatroulette)

Omegle is this website like chatroulette (without the constant porn!) where you can talk to strangers! Here is my latest experience on Omegle. New best friend? I THINK SO! :D

(Once again, click on the picture so that it gets enlarged. Unless you have super eyesight and can read the extremely tiny font!)

FOR THE WIN!

My mother posted a link on my FB wall today about Maya Zankoul's blog. It made me feel kinda awesome to tell her that I actually met the genius behind the blog and that she came to our Social Media class TWICE. Great day? I believe so :)

Pics of all the tweets from live.lausocial.com

Here are all the live tweets from http://live.lausocial.com covering session 10 of the Arab Popular Culture and the Media conference

Need a quick smile??

Some kid wrote the following on his exam in the bonus section, accompanied with an illustration:

First stick figure: "Give the man a bonus point or the stick figure gets it!!"
Second stick figure: "Please do what he says"
Teacher (in red pen): " I don't negotiate with terrorists"

Summary of the Arab Pop Culture Conference

This past week, LAU hosted the Arab Popular Culture Conference. On Friday at 2pm, Session 10 was taking place at the Irwin conference hall. The session was divided into two parts: Features of Online Love Stories in the Gulf given by Nele Lenze; Relationship Between Satellite TV and the Phone in Egypt given by Iman Hamam.

Nele Lenze discussed two online love stories. The first was about two girls whose car breaks down and they decide to take a cab. Now the cab driver is the owner of the cab company, however his car broke down so he took one of his company cabs. When he spots the two girls, he pretends to be an Indian cab driver and drives them. He even fakes an accent. One of the girls forgets her phone in the cab and ends up having to meet up with the cab driver. And then forgets her phone once again. In the end, they fall in love and get married. The second story is about a man who goes to a book store and he buys a book and finds a love letter. The letter tells him that if he wishes to continue correspondence, he should sell the book back to the book store and then come back and buy it later because she would've bought it, left another note and sold it back. This goes on for quite some time and eventually the man finds out that it is the book seller writing the love letters in order to keep his business going.

The stories were entertaining and covered taboo subjects like the mixing between the genders and the communication. There wasn't much to agree with or disagree with in this lecture, because she barely covered anything. She just read two stories and talked about what they had in common. That was it. There was no interaction with the audience and there were barely any questions besides "how old are the writers?" and the reply was that they vary from 15 to 30 years

Iman Hamam talked about the relationship between sms and satellite tv. How there are channels dedicated to viewers just sending in smses all hours of the day and then displaying them on the tv, so that it is one giant conversation on tv. She compared this interaction to the porn peep shows in the 1950's, although I didn't quite understand the comparison at all..I enjoyed her presentation but her comparison didn't make much sense. Yes there is an obsession with texting into the channels, but it's not worldwide. I never saw anything like this in any European countries nor in the Americas.

The whole hhtp://live.lausocial.com coverage of the event was so exciting! I knew exactly what was going on in the conference without actually attending most of the sessions (I only attended and tweeted two sessions). A bystander in the 10th session asked what I was doing and I showed her how we were covering the event live and she was actually quite impressed.

I didn't see any user engagement, or maybe it was because I didn't know where they were commenting? I don't know. I tweeted about the live coverage and put links on facebook as well, I don't know what more I could've done..

Arab Popular Culture and the Media part II

Conference: "Arab Popular Culture and the Media"
April 21–23, 2010
Beirut campus

Culture encompasses every aspect of our lives and is relevant to each
of our academic disciplines. The papers presented will discuss, among
other things, culture and medicine, religion, cinema, music,
literature, gender, architecture, emigration, the internet, as well as
romance.
Organizer: LAU's Institute for Media Training and Research (TIMTAR), &
the Department of Communication Arts

2:00 Session 10A – Irwin Conference Room

Moderator: Elise Salem

a) Features of Online Love Stories in the Gulf

Nele Lenze. University of Oslo

b) Relationship Between Satellite TV and the Phone in Egypt

Iman Hamam. American University in Cairo

c) Pride vs. Prejudice-LGBT Cyber-networks and the Challenge of Gender Based Violence in the Middle East

Luisa Gandolfo. Institute for Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies (IMEIS)

Don't forget to follow my live feed at http://live.lausocial.com

Arab Popular Culture and the Media

Conference: "Arab Popular Culture and the Media"
April 21–23, 2010
Beirut campus

Culture encompasses every aspect of our lives and is relevant to each of our academic disciplines. The papers presented will discuss, among other things, culture and medicine, religion, cinema, music, literature, gender, architecture, emigration, the internet, as well as romance.
Organizer: LAU's Institute for Media Training and Research (TIMTAR), & the Department of Communication Arts

The session that I will be covering live is:
1:00 SESSION 5B —LRC 21
Moderator: MAHMOUD TARABAY
a) Arab Hip Hop in an International Frame
Caroline Rooney. THE UNIVERSITY OF KENT
b) Popular Music and Student Identity
Wael Khatib. YARMOUK UNIVERSITY
c) Palestinian Hip Hop: Youth, Identity and Nation
Sunaina Maira & Magid Shihade. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-DAVIS, LAHORE UNIVERSITY OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCES


FOLLOW MY LIVE COVERAGE AT: http://live.lausocial.com

LAMEBOOOOOOOK

There's this wonderful website, Lamebook. And I believe this recent conversation between me and two other people belongs on Lamebook bi ouweh!! (click on the image and then when it opens to a new page, click so that you can zoom in!)

Why are me, my hubby and his bestie such ADORABLE losers? :D

iPod Malfunction!

AHHHHH!! So while I was sick last week with some TERRIBLE food poisoning, a friend of mine called me asking me what to do because his iPod had frozen. So since I guess I am the resident technical expert (God knows why...I mean I'm always having problems with my laptops and iPods and such...so I don't know why anyone would consider me an expert or come to me for advice about these things..anyways). Ayman called me and was like "HELP ME! what should I do?" So I gave him the standard Apple advice. "Press and hold the middle button and the play/pause button and wait", he did that and nothing happened. So I told him to toggle the hold switch and repeat. He did and nothing happened. So I gave him advice that Apple doesn't give..."just wait until the battery dies and then recharge it and you'll be fine." Which turned out to be exactly what happened!
Last night my iPod decided to have its own spazz attack and freeze WHILE ON HOLD! So I followed the standard Apple advice and when that didn't work, I just waited for the battery to die. Woohoo! And now it's working perfectly again! Frustrating though because I had wanted to use my iPod at that moment :( Sad me :( :(

Just a question for Apple: WHY DO OUR IPODS FREEZE LIKE THIS????

CLASSICO

Saturday, April 10th 2010 was the date of the Classico game: The game between Futbol teams Real Madrid and Barcelona. This particular game was at Real's field, which meant that they should've had the home advantage. There were about 13 of us at our table, however, in the restaurant we were seated at, there were over 275 people packed in an area that normally seats half of that amount. There were no seats left, so there were people standing and people on the street peering at the screens. There were two Real fans at our table, but most of the restaurant was Real fans.

When Barca scored the first goal, the Real Madrid fans began chanting "Bassita chou sar, Real mitlil nar" ("what happened is okay, Real is on fire")
After the first half, nearly 40 people left to go to another restaurant, leaving our area of the restaurant dominated by Barca fans.

And when Barca scored the second goal, all hell broke loose and the Barca fans started to sing "bye bye, bye bye, bye bye ya 7elween" (bye bye, bye bye, bye bye cuties) to mock the Real fans.

The game ended with all Barca fans counting down the last ten seconds, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!!!! WE WON!!!
After the bill was settled, every single person seemed to head to Bliss street and honked and cheered "GO BARCA!!!", after bliss, the procession continued onto rawche and then everyone headed home. CONGRATS BARCA :D

On a side note...

It's funny how Lebanon seemed to be united watching a futbol match, but they can't agree on everyday issues...